Piotr, the messenger, is also responsible for overseeing the pantry and the attic, according to Claudia’s orders. The portrait is in a corner of the attic, but Piotr is nowhere to be found.

“Why isn’t he back yet? I can just imagine, he’s so scatter-brained sometimes.”

Claudia is antsy.

Years ago, when Sergei and Claudia were newlyweds moving into their home, she asked for the things that had belonged to Sergei when he was a boy—his furniture, trunks, toys, pictures, and books. “I want our children to play with the toys you played with and to read what you read.”

“Why, Claudine? I was an unhappy boy. My son”—Sergei could imagine fathering only one child—“should be a happy child, he shouldn’t have anything of mine.”

“You weren’t unhappy, you became unhappy, which is different, but we won’t talk about that.” Not talking about that is the key to their marital harmony.

Claudia hasn’t kept anything from her childhood—because of the life they led, moving from one city to the next, because of her parents, who were consumed by their own ambitions (which is how they were able to leave a modest inheritance to their children). That’s why she was so keen to have all Sergei’s things.

Sergei’s childhood effects were all they took from the Karenin Palace. Claudia made sure these things—the furniture, pictures, and clothes—were stored in their new home, relegated to the attic. The three portraits of Anna Karenina leaning against the wall—Mikhailov’s, the one Sergei’s father commissioned before that (it hung in his study until she killed herself), and the one Vronsky, the dilettante, left unfinished. These three crazy women had lived in the attic for years; Claudia hasn’t set foot in that part of the house since they moved in. “Fate didn’t smile on us”—that’s what she said when people asked her about children—so they didn’t need any of these things. “What’s the point?” she used to say. “Time is so fleeting.”

• • •

At twelve noon Claudia decides not to wait any longer for Piotr, the singing footman. She brings two servants to the cave of treasures from Sergei’s childhood—to the attic.

Next to Sergei’s school desk—where he scratched little boats and hieroglyphics as a boy—Claudia sees a box covered in blue fabric and tied with a silk ribbon. “What’s this? Isn’t moving to a new house just like that? Things disappear, get lost, and eventually reappear.” She blows on the box a few times to scatter the dust, then picks it up, taking care not to dirty her dress.