Now they thought only of survival from day to day, by keeping a tiny zone of warmth around their bodies.

It was above all the izbathat saved them. Everything in it had been conceived to resist endless winters, bottomless nights. Even the wood of the great logs was imbued with the harsh experience of several generations of Siberians. Albertine had sensed the secret breathing of this ancient dwelling, had learned to live closely in tune with the slow warmth of the great stove that occupied half the room, with its very vital silence. And Charlotte, observing her mother's daily actions, often said to herself with a smile, "But she's a true Siberian!" From the first day she had noticed the bundles of dried plants in the hall. These reminded her of the bouquets that Russians use at the baths to beat themselves with. It was when the last slice of bread was eaten that she discovered the true function of those sheaves. Albertine soaked one in hot water, and that evening they drank what they were later, jokingly, to call "Siberian soup" – a mixture of stems, grains, and roots. "I am beginning to know the plants of the taiga by heart," said Albertine, pouring this soup into their plates. "Indeed I wonder why the people here make so little use of them…"

What saved them was also the presence of the child, the little tzigane whom they found one day, half frozen, on their doorstep. She was scratching the hardened planks of the door with her numb fingers, purple with cold… To feed her Charlotte did what she would never have done for herself. At the market she could be seen begging: an onion, a few frozen potatoes, a piece of pork. She rummaged in the rubbish tank next to the party canteen, not far from the place where the ruler had threatened to shoot her. She found herself unloading railway trucks for a loaf of bread. The child, skeletal to begin with, hovered for several days on the fragile borderline between light and extinction. Then slowly, with a hesitant astonishment, slipped once more into the extraordinary flow of days, words, and smells that everyone called life…