“So far,” he said in his enigmatic style, making her stomach flutter with nerves.

“Do you think we might have to fight?” What if Stepan was called up? She couldn’t bear that.

He shrugged and didn’t answer, and Maria decided not to persist. She was still scared of him. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

“Regarding the information you wanted,” he said, “there are no executions to report.”

That was a relief at least. The killing had been worst in 1937 and 1938, but the rate had slowed now; more men were being sent to gulags in Siberia, with an average sentence of twenty-five years.

He gave her a note of the gulags where the men she was asking about that week had been sent. It must be hard for their families, Maria thought, but at least they could send packages of food, blankets, and clothes, along with letters. She would give anything to be able to write to Peter and read his replies. Almost two years had passed since he had died, and she still cried every day.

* * *

Two weeks after Britain and France went to war with Germany, Soviet troops invaded eastern Poland and annexed a vast swath of territory there. On the radio the announcers spoke of Polish citizens welcoming the Red Army with open arms, giving them gifts of bread and salt, and Maria wondered if they knew what they were letting themselves in for.

During the winter of 1939–40, Russia went to war with Finland and grabbed yet more land, this time to the north of Leningrad. With each new announcement Maria was terrified that Stepan would be forced to fight. He had almost finished his studies at the Institute and his English was near perfect, while he spoke French and German as well. She hoped he would get work in a university. It would be awful if he were forced to enlist.

As the months rolled on, the news from western Europe was grim: the fall of Belgium, Holland, and then France; the hasty evacuation of British troops at Dunkirk; the bombing of London. Loudspeakers on street corners, in the factory, and outside apartment blocks broadcast the latest developments. Maria saw photographs on the front page of Pravda showing ruined buildings, women and children being carried from them on stretchers by men wearing tin helmets while fires burned in the background. It looked like a vision of hell. Thank God the Soviet Union was not involved. Life went on more or less as it had before, far from the tragedy engulfing their western neighbors.

* * *

On June 22, 1941, a Sunday, Maria was on her way to Peter’s grave with the three youngest children. Stepan had gone fishing and Irina was out with her friends. Suddenly a voice boomed from the loudspeakers; she recognized it as that of Vyacheslav Molotov, Commissar of Foreign Affairs.