In the morning, if Stepan told her, then she must weep and grieve and arrange a funeral. But if he did not, she would continue to pray for Katya in private, just as she had always done.

Next day, Anna and Alexei woke her at six as usual. Maria pulled on a robe and led them to the kitchen, where she began to warm milk and gave them both a sukhari with cinnamon and raisins.

Stepan came into the room and kissed each child on the forehead, then embraced his mother. He had shadows like bruises under his eyes; he always got them when he hadn’t slept.

“How was your trip?” she asked, watching his face. Now was the moment of decision. Would he tell her or not?

“I got what I went for,” he said. “Everything is fine.”

Maria nodded and turned back to watch the pan. She had to make sure the milk did not boil over, which it could do in an instant, and she did not want him to see so much as a glint of a tear in her eye.

Chapter 56

Petrodvorets, March 7, 1953

LUDMILLA GOT HOME FROM WORK JUST BEFORE SIX, as Maria was feeding Anna and Alexei their dinner.

“Have you heard the news today?” she asked.

“No. What’s happened?” Maria couldn’t read Ludmilla’s expression: was it good or bad news?

Ludmilla switched on the Mir radio set just in time for the bulletin on the hour. It was read by Yuri Levitan, the man who had been the voice of all those exaggerated wartime broadcasts. He sounded choked with emotion as he read the headline. “The Central Committee of the Communist Party, the Council of Ministers, and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR announce with deep grief to the Party and all workers that on the fifth of March at nine fifty p.m., Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, Secretary of the Communist Party and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, died after a serious illness.”

Maria felt a tingling on her scalp. She put down the bowl she was holding in case she dropped it, then sat heavily on a chair. “I should be overjoyed,” she commented. “I loathe that man. I blame him for the death of my husband and the disappearance of my daughter. He’s the one who engineered a regime in which Russians’ lives were worth less than air.” She gestured with a flick of her hand. “Yet now that he is dead, I just feel flat.”

“He should have answered for his crimes in a court of law,” Ludmilla said. “I would like to have seen him get twenty-five years in a gulag.”

“There would have been justice in that,” Maria agreed. “I wonder what will happen now. Probably life will go on as before and we won’t even notice the difference.”

When she went out with the children the next morning, church bells were tolling.

“Nice music,” Anna said.