On the third table was a bar of soap, shaved and shaped out of a larger, used bar of soap, twenty kopecks. A rusty butter knife, five kopecks. A blackened light bulb with a broken filament, three rubles. Why, when a new bulb was forty kopecks? Since there were no new light bulbs for sale in the stores, you took this used bulb to your office, replaced the bulb in the lamp on your desk and took the good bulb home so that you wouldn’t live in the dark.

Arkady slipped out the back door and walked across the dirt toward the second address, a milk shop, cigarette in his left hand, which meant that Kim had not been inside the cooperative. Up the street, Jaak seemed to be reading a newspaper in a car.

There was no milk, cream or butter in the milk shop, though the coolers were stacked with boxes of sugar. The empty counters were staffed by women in white coats and caps who wore the boredom of a rear guard. Arkady lifted a sugar box. Empty.

“Whipped cream?” Arkady asked a clerk.

“No.” She seemed startled.

“Sweet cheese?”

“Of course not. Are you crazy?”

“Yes, but what a memory,” Arkady said. He flashed his red ID and walked around the counter and through the swinging door into the rear. A truck was in the bay and a delivery of milk was being unloaded directly into another, unmarked truck. The store director came out of a cooler; before the door snapped shut, Arkady saw wheels of cheese and tubs of butter.

“Everything you see is reserved. We have nothing, nothing!” she announced.

Arkady opened the cooler door. An elderly man huddled like a mouse in a corner. In one hand he clutched a certificate naming him a volunteer civilian inspector to combat hoarding and speculation. In his other hand was a bottle of vodka.

“Staying warm, uncle?” Arkady asked.

“I’m a veteran.” The old man touched the bottle to the medal on his sweater.

“I can see that.”

Arkady walked around the storeroom. Why did a milk shop need bins?

“Everything here is special order for invalids and children,” the director said.

Arkady opened a bin to see sacks of flour stacked like sandbags. When he opened another, pomegranates rolled around his feet and over the storeroom floor. A third bin, and lemons poured over pomegranates.

“Invalids and children!” the director shouted.

The last bin was stacked with cigarettes.

Arkady stepped carefully around the fruit and exited through the bay. The men loading the milk tucked their faces away.