With the job came an apartment in a communal block, known as a kommunalka, in a new suburb Maria did not know, far from the River Neva. The four of them slept in one room, and they had to share a kitchen and bathroom with nine other families, but it was clean and modern and there was an enclosed courtyard where the children could play.

“How lucky we are!” she exclaimed, looking around—and then she stopped, remembering her slaughtered family and the basement in Ekaterinburg that still haunted her dreams. Luck was only relative.

* * *

Maria couldn’t have explained what made her take the children on the Tsarskoe Selo bus one morning after Peter left for work. She hadn’t told him her plan because he would probably have tried to talk her out of it, worried that someone might recognize her there. He was always cautioning her not to stand out from the crowd. She had tied a red scarf around her hair, and wore a wide skirt and a polka-dotted blouse. Over her arm she carried a woven basket, so if challenged she could claim to be collecting wild herbs.

Stepan, now aged four, and Irina, aged two, screeched with excitement and laughed as they were jolted up and down on hard wooden seats when the bus’s wheels struck ruts in the road. Tsarskoe Selo had been renamed Detskoye Selo by the Soviet authorities, just as St. Petersburg had been renamed Petrograd. Anything to do with the Church or the monarchy had been obliterated as the Communist authorities tried to reeducate the people. Maria peered out at the fields where workers with hoes were breaking up the winter-hardened ground for planting, and felt immensely grateful that their farming years were over. It was too tough to make a living and the winter months were a struggle for survival.

The bus stopped in town and she led the children up the hill to the Alexander Palace, which had been her family’s main home before the Revolution. She’d heard it had been turned into a museum, but it did not appear to be open that day and the gates were locked. She stood and peered through the railings at the long facade of the building with columns in the center and wings on either side. It seemed run-down, as if no one had repainted the exterior since the family left under guard in July 1917. Sunlight blinked off the vacant windows and there wasn’t a soul in sight.