When the mayor’s wife finally does speak, she says about her son’s death, “He froze to death” (146) and then she repeats it. On page 145, at the bottom, Death provides his/her details about the son’s death, does it sound like he froze to death, as she th

Death carried Ilsa's son away from the barbed wire fence in which he was entangled. He mentions nothing about the cold, only the barbed wire and an illusion to a crown of thorns.... as if her boy were a sacrifice. We can infer that Ilsa's son was dead long before the cold took him.... but we are told nothing for certain.