“What is it?” Olga’s face looms above Marina, her brow furrowed with concern.

Marina has not shared her secret with anyone, but she decides impulsively to make this present to Olga. “A baby,” she says shyly. “I am going to have a baby.”

But Olga doesn’t congratulate her. Her lips pressed together, she shakes her head slowly.

“You are not pregnant, Marina. It is the dystrophy. You must know that.”

“No,” Marina protests. “My menses stopped, and…”

Olga cuts her off, gently. “Dear girl, half the women in here have stopped bleeding. It doesn’t mean what you think.” She pats Marina on the shoulder, comforting her. “Someday, you will have lots of children.” This, too, seems dubious, as there are so few men left to father children, but clearly Olga thinks she is not quite rational.

“I’m not crazy,” Marina says and meets Olga’s eyes steadily. “Here.” She moves her hands across her belly, like radar, feeling for the baby. When she finds him, she takes Olga’s hand and presses it on a spot to the left of her navel. “Just a moment. Wait.” The two women wait, listening with their hands. After a moment, Marina feels the baby stir. She raises her eyes to Olga’s and sees confirmation in her look of astonishment.

“It is not possible,” Olga insists, shaking her head. She removes her hand but continues to hold it just above Marina ’s belly, as though warming herself at the warden’s stove. Her homely features soften. “A baby.” This woman who knows so many poems finds herself at a loss for words. “Life…well, well,” she says.

Marina becomes aware that she is being scrutinized by the floating heads around her. There is whispering and sidelong glances as the news is telegraphed around the bath. And then an old woman emerges from the steam and stops in front of Marina. Perhaps she is not really old-it is impossible to tell a starving person’s age-but she looks like a crone, her gray hair pasted in wet rivulets to her scrawny shoulders and shriveled teats. In the watery light, she is as pale as a wax figure.

“May I?” she asks, and holds out two skeletal hands. Marina clutches her belly protectively, and Olga waves her hand at the woman.

“Leave her be.”

The woman ignores Olga and waits for Marina to answer.

Marina feels the baby inside her, floating in his own warm bath, safe and secure. “Yes, it’s all right,” Marina finally volunteers, as much to the baby as to Olga. She slides her hands away and exposes her belly. The old woman reaches out, and Marina feels a light skittering touch on her skin. As though rising to the unfamiliar touch, the baby swims toward the old woman’s hand. She nods, her dull eyes glitter, and her lips pull into the insinuation of a smile.

“He is very strong,” she says. “A boy.”

Olga snorts.

“Yes, a boy,” the old woman insists. “I have helped deliver scores of babies, some of them in this very bath. And this one”-she pats Marina ’s belly with affection-“is a boy. Here,” she says, “feel how strong he kicks.”

Emboldened by the crone, other women have gathered behind her. One by one, they appear through the steam and passively hold out their hands, as though in the breadlines. Marina nods and then waits patiently as each set of hands touches her belly. They are polite: as soon as they feel the baby move, they move to the side for the next woman. They whisper among themselves. Marina hears a woman remark, “Look at her breasts, how full they are.” And another says, “How far along do you suppose she is?” One of them, when the baby kicks, crosses herself and announces to those around her, “It’s a miracle.” There is general agreement.

The old crone whispers in Marina ’s ear.

“I have bread for you. It is in my coat pocket. I will get it.”

“No, auntie,” Marina says. “You mustn’t.”

“He needs to eat,” the old woman says, and before Marina can protest further, she melts away into the steam like a ghost.

On the first day the trams are running again, it seems that everyone in the city has come out for a ride. The clanging bells draw them out of their dark homes and offices and into the spring air, and even if they have nowhere to go, they line up along the routes and cheer the approach of the bright red cars. There is no pushing or shoving as there was in the old days. People wait patiently and they give up their seats to those who are too weak to stand. Some carry bundles of bright flowers in their arms.

From the service entrance of the Hermitage, Marina watches one of the cars rumble by. As though it is a holiday, passengers on the tram wave to her as they pass. She would love to ride out to the edge of the city, but there is too much work to do here. She waves back, then picks up her empty pail and turns back into the museum.

Unlocked from its shroud of winter ice, the Hermitage is thawing. The walls ooze moisture, the ceilings are seeping, and rivulets run down the walls. Snow melts on the roof, dripping through the skylights and spattering muddy water onto the floors below. The enormous population of the Hermitage has been reduced to a skeletal staff of perhaps fifty, mostly old women, and a third of those are recovering in the Hermitage clinic at any given time. Like shipwrecked survivors in a leaky lifeboat, those who can work bail water ceaselessly, but it is slow work and they are barely able to keep ahead of the filling buckets. All morning, Marina has been ferrying pails of the filthy water out of the Skylight halls, through the long, vacant corridors, and down the stairs leading out to the embankment. In ten-odd trips, she has seen no one she knows, only a handful of cadets from the naval academy, carrying pieces of furniture.

She climbs the Council Staircase. Most of the windows in the museum have been boarded over and it is almost completely dark, but she knows her way without sight. As she passes through the long corridor of the Rembrandt Room, she ticks off the former inhabitants as though taking attendance. Flora and Danae, the Father and his prodigal son, the poet Jeremias de Decker, the old man in red, Baartjen Martens Doomer, Abraham and Isaac, David and Jonathon, the holy family. She doesn’t have time to stop, but out of the corner of her eye, she sometimes seems to catch a glimpse of a familiar face peering out of the dimness.

She turns into the Spanish Skylight Hall. Its dark red walls once teemed with religious fervor, Murillo’s Jacob dreaming a swirl of dark angels, Zurbaran’s martyred Saint Lawrence carrying the gridiron he will be roasted on, and wherever one turned, another saint caught up in some terrible ecstasy, their eyes cast upward to the celestial light streaming through the monumental barrel-vaulted skylight. Now, though, the room seems more like an underground cavern or an abandoned mine. After a shell explosion shattered the skylight, it was tented over with plywood lashed to the frame with wire. In the gloom, the room echoes with the dripping of water, and, looking up, she sees telltale pinpricks and slivers of light. The braver women on the repair crew have repeatedly crawled out onto the skylight and tried to seal the leaks, nailing down loose boards and shellacking canvas over the seams, but wind and water continually find fresh weaknesses.

Her boots slap across the muddy floor toward a thin waterfall that spatters noisily into an overflowing pail. She hefts the heavy pail and replaces it with the empty one in her hand. Hundreds of tons of snow are melting on the roof, and it seems to Marina that she is hauling it out one pail at a time.

Her back is aching and she is short of breath. When she first knew she was pregnant, she would forget for hours at a time and be amazed afresh every time she felt the baby move. But now it is a continual presence, pressing into her bladder and against her diaphragm, waking her in the night. The baby is beginning to settle heavy and low, and the nurse says it could come any day now. Marina is of two minds on this. So long as it is in her womb, she can protect it from the world. But already it is two weeks late, and the lake is thawing.