When she rang the bell of the man’s apartment, she could hear a shuffling noise inside, but it was a long time before the door was opened by a gaunt woman who looked to be in her seventies.

“I’m so sorry,” Maria said, reaching out to touch her shoulder, “but I have bad news.”

The woman nodded when Maria told her and did not seem unduly surprised. She was thin as a pole herself and seemed very frail.

“Do you have children who can help you fetch the body and bury him?” Maria asked.

“My two sons are in the army,” the woman told her. There was a tear glinting in her eye, but it was as if she did not have the strength to cry.

“How about a neighbor? Or a friend?”

“Maybe the man at number twelve would help?” She didn’t sound too sure.

Maria went to knock on his door, and the man who answered agreed to come with her, although he did not seem too robust himself.

“I heard they are running out of coffins,” he told her. “Bodies are being taken to old churches for storage until a funeral can be arranged. Perhaps we should take Pavel to St. Panteleimon’s. That’s probably the nearest.”

He sighed when he saw the body still lying where Maria had found it, covered with a sprinkling of fresh snow. “Poor man. What an end,” he said. “A year ago, none of us would have left a dog lying in the snow like this, but now . . .” He left the sentence unfinished.

Between them they lifted the dead man. Maria held his feet while the neighbor clasped his chest, and they staggered slowly to the church, slithering on the icy pavement. In her head, Maria prayed for him, commending his soul to God.

“Will you look after the widow?” she asked before they parted.

“My wife and I will do what we can,” the neighbor said. “I wish you and your family strength.”

* * *

A month later, Maria looked back on the day she found Pavel lying in the snow and remembered how little they suspected then of what was to come. By mid-January 1942, it was common to find bodies in the street. Some folk sat down on a wall for a moment’s rest and never got up again; others lay in gutters, half buried in snow, their faces blackened and mouths gaping to show lost teeth. Every time she came across a body, Maria searched for a ration card so she could notify a relative, but sometimes it had already been stolen. Coats and shoes were often missing too. There was no longer any respect for the dead, and that felt unbearably sad.