“Ask the boss if you can have more holidays. Tell them your wife insists,” she said.

Peter rolled his eyes. “I’ll send a telegram to General Secretary Stalin. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

He was accepted as a shock worker and part of their reward was an apartment with three bedrooms on the second floor of the same block. It felt like a palace: the boys slept in one room, the girls in another, and Peter and Maria in the third, so they had a little more privacy. They received coupons for new winter coats and valenkie, the cozy felt boots that were worn under galoshes on snowy days, as well as trousers, skirts, and shirts. Peter worked longer shifts, though; it used to be four days on, one day off, but now it was six days on before the day off. Maria felt his absence keenly, but he reacted with his usual equanimity.

“I’m happy as I am,” he said, and she knew it was true. His family was the center of his world and he would have done anything for her or any of their children.

In early 1931, Maria was careless over the dates on which they made love, half thinking she was too old to get pregnant at the age of thirty-one and half wanting another baby. Within a few weeks she knew she was expecting again, a baby who would be her sixth child, the fifth living one. Yelena was a round little dumpling, the biggest of her babies, with chubby cheeks and bracelets of fat at her wrists. There was no question that she was healthy. She greeted each morning with a cheery smile and beamed at strangers in the street. “What a lovely baby,” they said, and Maria glowed with pride.

Peter doted on the little one, whispering to her, bringing out the wooden toys he had made for the others, writing another letter to his mother and sister with no return address, but in private he said to Maria, “I think five is enough, sweetheart. Don’t you?” and she had to agree.

As she fed Yelena, it came to her in a flash of insight that she had subconsciously re-created the family she had lost: that had consisted of four girls and one boy, whereas she had three and two. Perhaps the idea had been buried in the back of her mind all along.

* * *

One evening, while Maria was bathing the baby, there was a sharp knock on the door. She wrapped Yelena in a towel and went to open it. One of the local Party bosses and his sidekick—an unpleasant pair if ever there was one—were standing in the hallway.

“Citizen Dubova,” the boss said, glancing coldly at the wriggling baby, “we have heard a report that you keep a card index of citizens’ private details and we wish to examine it.”

“Why?” She was puzzled. “Have you lost a family member?”