by D. R. Bell
22 February, 1942
The bread rations have been increased to 300 grams for dependents. This is not enough to survive, but we still have a bit left from the Zhdanov’s package. The days are getting longer, the darkness starts to retreat.
We gather round the radio, taking in Olga Berggoltz’ latest poem:
Another day of siege.
A girlfriend came over,
Without tears told me that yesterday she buried her best friend,
And we sat silent until the morning.
We ate the bread that I saved,
Wrapped ourselves into a shawl for warmth.
Leningrad became very quiet,
Only the metronome kept working.
In our small nightly ritual, I am reading the book to Andrei and Nastya. Dantès, disguised as the Count of Monte Cristo, is almost done exacting his revenge against de Morcerf, Danglars, and Villefort. He tells Fernand, “How did I plan this moment? With pleasure!”
But Nastya does not like it. “He became like his enemies,” she says. “He is not saving anyone; it’s all about vengeance.”
11 March, 1942
A few banyas in the city reopened, and Nastya went to one, saying “I want to feel like a human being again.” I went yesterday with Andrei. We sat in a warm communal bath for the longest time. Andrei is six now, but he weighs as little as a three-year-old. Most men in the bath looked like us, bones rattling inside bags made of grimy yellowish skin.
Our last candle burned out as we were finishing the book. Valentine and Maximilien get reunited and inherit the Dantès’ fortune while he sails away with his concubine Haydée. Dumas tells us to “Wait and Hope.” That’s what we do, wait, hope, try to survive.
15 April, 1942
It’s Nastya’s 17th birthday, and Mershov gives me a day off. The sun is out, and it’s almost warm. The Germans are shelling, but the three of us decide to go for a walk while the sun is shining. Nastya puts on a blue dress she had saved from the old apartment. She lost a lot of weight, and it dangles on her like on a hanger despite a belt she tightened, but after many months spent swaddled into every conceivable piece of clothing, she looks like the young woman she is. I don’t have a suit, so I put on a jacket that the previous occupants left in the closet. It’s a bit large but not too bad. We convince Andrei to put away his toy soldiers and come with us.
On the street, Nastya tries to make a dance move with me and almost falls. I catch her, and we all laugh; it’s wonderful to see color in Andrei’s face. We walk down the Nevskiy Prospekt that’s been cleared from the snow, stopping frequently because we are out of breath. Very few people are out, but it’s no longer a graveyard, just a beautiful empty city, an architectural museum. It’s like the city itself has a lean, hard, starved look. Suddenly a tram goes by, I have not seen one moving in months. It stops, and we climb aboard. The tram takes us almost to the Admiralty. From there, we walk to the Bronze Horseman. It’s covered to shield against the bombardment, but it’s still there, protecting his city. The legend has it that as long as Peter the Great rides his stallion, the city won’t fall.
We stand before the statue, cold northern sun warming our faces just a bit. Nastya starts crying, remembering her parents, her sister, my mother, Andrei’s mother. I put my arms around her and say, “But we are alive!” She nods, whispers, “Yes, we are!” Nastya lifts her face, wet with tears, and kisses me hard on the lips. I stroke her face, smell her hair, her sharp scent.
It feels strange reading about my parents’ courtship. If one can call it that. Starving, frozen, taking care of a little boy. The first dinner I had alone with Sarah, I complained when my food was overcooked.
29 May, 1942
It took us almost a month to teach Andrei to sleep in the other room. He would only fall asleep once he crawled between us. He was always holding Nastya’s hand, and the moment she tried to get up, he would start screaming. Nastya sat by his new bed night after night until he finally was able to sleep on his own.
The first night he did, we made love. It was my first time, and so was hers. I desire her so much; I wish I had more strength. We are still weak and malnourished, we moved slowly, whispering to each other. She murmured through tears, “I wanted to remain human, to remain a woman.”
She fell asleep, and I sat by the window, enjoying the warm air of an early white night. Northern lights give a performance, dancing across the sky.
A page is torn.
26 July, 1942
Knowing that I will be called into the army soon, Nastya and I got married today. A one-armed officer officiated; Mershov and Makar served as witnesses. Andrei carried the rings. The rings were made of brass, not gold. We had a small reception afterward. Thanks to Mershov and Lieutenant Kulikov, we had vodka and food. There are now small garden plots everywhere, and we are no longer starving. We have very little, but we’re happy because we don’t have much to lose. Except for each other, of course.
Makar gets drunk, toasts us for saving Andrei, then starts talking about “fat pigs” that live off the others while hundreds of thousands die. Mershov takes him outside to sober up. Kulikov looks down, you can tell he is feeling guilty.
We were supposed to evacuate Andrei, but he cried so hard that we did not have the heart. He is skinny and gets out of breath after the shortest exercise, how can we send him to some orphanage in Siberia? Here, he has us and a friend, a five-year-old from the floor below that also survived the winter. Andrei does not have to go to school for another year. Mershov frowns disapprovingly, but says nothing. I can see that Makar approves.
I asked Kulikov whether Andrei’s father may still be alive. He shakes his head. “Ten years without the right of correspondence” is a sham sentence for the relatives; it means the father was killed soon after his arrest in 1938.
Yesterday, they paraded German prisoners down the Nevskiy. Some women were screaming, but most watched in silence. What is the mentality of the people that indifferently and deliberately attempt to starve millions of old men, women, and children? I don’t think I’ll ever understand.
Who is Lieutenant Kulikov? I don’t recall him being mentioned before.
August 9, 1942
Today, Leningrad performed Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony. I could not get tickets, so we listened on our radio by the open window. It felt like the performance started with an artillery barrage, only it was our artillery keeping the Nazis in their dugouts. The metronome kept us alive, and now the symphony is telling them: “We are alive! You have not conquered us!”
20 August, 1942
Tomorrow, I am leaving for the army. Rumors are the Germans are preparing another offensive, and we have to stop them. Nastya’s and Andrei’s eyes are red. I call Andrei aside and tell him to look after Nastya.
Mershov and Makar promise to take care of both of them.
27 March, 1943
I had a slight wound, really just a scratch, but it has earned me a two week’s break from the army. Nastya and Andrei are doing well, but the extra food I brought in helps. Mershov is keeping an eye on them. Makar was killed by a German shell a month after I left.
We broke the blockade in January. The Germans are still close and continue shelling the city, but we are no longer encircled. I was lucky, I missed the Sinyavino offensive, not many came back from that one. Our fighting was brutal, but the Germans are weakening.
Again, a page is torn. Does not seem they needed it for the burzhuika any longer. They were removed on purpose. Why? By whom?
May 3, 1944
I got two weeks off after months of non-stop fighting on the Leningrad Front. In January, we finally threw the Nazis away from the city. Then it was the Narva offensive. Half of my battalion’s been killed or wounded. The things we saw…the things we did in return. Brutality, evil – it’s in all of us. Just scratch the surface.
Leningrad is busy. People are coming back from evacuation, repairing factories, schools, hospitals. The life is returning to the city. Andrei is fini
shing first grade; he is a quiet, studious boy. Nastya is almost done with her 10th grade in the same school, she is the oldest student there. Not many girls from her year survived to finish their studies. She wants to be a teacher. Nastya tells me that Andrei often wakes up screaming; sometimes he breaks down crying. She took him to see a doctor, who said there is nothing obviously wrong with the boy but added, “Nobody survives what he survived without paying the price. Nobody.”
The exhibit of “Heroic Defense of Leningrad” opened last week in a building on Market Street. We all went to see it yesterday. Paintings, photographs, letters, documents, bread cards, pieces of clothing shredded by artillery shells…Hundreds of people walked in silence, interrupted by sobs.
We are trying to have a child. There are very few children in the city; Mershov told me that only a few hundred have been born in the last year. A few hundred newborns in a city that used to have four million people.
While still on the front, I started writing a play about a family living through the siege. I wrote on small pieces of paper when I could find a quiet minute during fighting. My fellow soldiers first laughed at me but then asked me to read to them. Gruff, foul-mouthed men were crying when they heard what the winter of 1941 in the city was like. Our lieutenant, who taught school literature in Pskov, told me “You must tell this story, you have a gift.”
June 16, 1945
The war is over! I was demobilized almost immediately, Mershov requested that I be released to work in the Leningrad militzia. I am honest with him that I don’t plan to stay for long. Nastya is done with her first year in university, Andrei with the second grade. They are helping out in the “Defense of Leningrad” museum, collecting and organizing exhibits.
Andrei was struggling in school at times; the malnutrition must have had an impact. There was another malnutrition impact as well: a doctor has told Nastya that she is not likely to conceive. She is devastated, crying all the time. I try to console her, tell her that many orphaned children now need parents, but I am heartbroken myself.
I finished the first draft of my play that I call “The Metronome.” I plan to enroll in night studies at the university. In the meantime, I gathered my courage and went to the Zvezda magazine to ask for help. Instead of laughing me out of the office, the editor-in-chief remembered my father’s name, an editor like himself, and called out “Misha” to a fifty-something man. It was Mikhail Zoshchenko, a famous writer. I’ve made a fool of myself telling Zoshchenko how much my parents and I loved his stories. He thanked me and volunteered to review and critique my play. I ran home, unable to believe my luck.
October 6, 1945
Yesterday, Zoshchenko took me to meet Anna Akhmatova. She lives in a small room in the Sheremetyev Palace. We had to check in and show our documents at the entrance. It was strange – are they protecting her?
At least a dozen people crowded into a small room. Olga Berggoltz was there, too. I told her how her poetry readings gave us hope, helped keep us alive. She remembered my father. We stood silent for a minute, to honor him, Olga’s husband, and countless others who died.
The diary ends with a few torn pages, leaving me with a lot of questions. What happened to my father’s play? And what about Andrei? I don’t recall anyone by that name growing up.
We land in LAX on time, I take a shuttle to a rental car, and by 1 p.m. I am on the 405 freeway heading north. After fighting my way through a seemingly endless suburban sprawl, I am driving along the ocean. Years back, we leisurely drove from Laguna Beach to San Francisco. Kids were bored, but it was one of my favorite vacations. Driving with the Pacific stretching to the horizon has a calming effect on me.
I go to the Garden Inn first. While checking in, I show them my father’s picture, the one I brought with me from St. Petersburg.
An indifferent clerk shakes her head. “No, don’t remember him.”
“He stayed here in March of last year.”
“I was not working here then.”
The police station is indeed only a short walk away, in a neat Spanish-style building. I come to the reception area, show a policewoman the picture and ask if they remember seeing my father. She shakes her head, then calls her male colleague to come over.
The officer looks at the picture and nods. “I remember the older guy. He was here last year, wearing the same sweater.”
“What did he want?”
The officer looks at me suspiciously. “And why do you want to know?”
‘It’s my father. He’s been killed, and I am trying to find out why.”
My reply takes them by surprise. The male officer mulls over the picture. “Give me your name and number. I have to talk to someone. You don’t have to wait here, but don’t go too far.”
I retrieve the picture and walk over to the major thoroughfare of State Street, a tourist trap I remember from the last visit to Santa Barbara. I am hungry, so I stop at a small Italian restaurant and order pasta and a glass of wine. Before the food arrives, my Blackberry rings.
“Mr. Rostin, this is Detective Rozen. You are looking for the person that met with your father last year?”
“Yes.”
“That would be me. Where are you?”
“Palazzio on State Street.”
“Stay there, I’ll come over in ten minutes.”
I am still working on my pasta when I sense someone standing over me. I look up and see a short, bald man in his fifties, wearing khaki pants and a checkered jacket.
“Mr. Rostin?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
He points to a half-empty restaurant. “I would be a really bad detective if I did not. Besides, there is a resemblance. Do you mind if I sit down?”
“Please, thank you for seeing me.”
He noisily squeezes himself into a chair. “He told me your name. I am sorry, I don’t remember what it is; my memory is not what it used to be.”
“It’s Pavel.”
“Yes, yes. I recall now. You live on the East Coast, you are a physicist. He was very proud of you.”
I swallow hard and say nothing. The waiter must know him, because he brings a glass of ice tea without asking.
Rozen continues, “I am sorry to hear about your father. You said at the station he’s been killed?”
“Yes, I did. Although it’s not clear whether it was a murder or a suicide. It happened last week in St. Petersburg.”
“And that’s why you are here?”
“Yes.”
“What makes you think that a visit to Santa Barbara would lead to your dad’s death?”
“I don’t know if it did; I am just trying to understand why he came here. He was not exactly a traveling kind, but at 80 he flies half across the world to visit a police station in a small city? There must have been a reason.”
Rozen drums fingers on the table, probably deciding how much to tell me. “It’s getting close to 5, the place will fill up. Why don’t we go back to the station and talk there?”
At the station, I follow Rozen into a small, cluttered office with two desks facing each other. Rozen sits behind one of the desks, points to the chair in front of it. “Make yourself comfortable. The other detective is out today; we have our privacy.” After I sit, he casually throws out, “Do you remember the case of John Brockton?”
Rozen must have wanted to be an actor; he enjoys the dramatic effect of a perfectly delivered surprise, but after a few seconds and my stunned nod he can’t hide a proud smile.
“Yes, the biggest case to grace Santa Barbara in God knows how long. A filthy rich financier and his mistress, Natalya Streltsova, get killed by a son of someone who committed suicide over the losses inflicted by that very financier. Murder, greed, sex, the Russian connection – the media had a field day with this.”
“I read that this was an open-and-shut case. The murderer had the weapon and literally blood on his hands?”
“Most people thought so. Imagine my surprise when a barely-speaking-English old man shows up her
e in March of last year, claims to be a private investigator from Russia, and asks for me. People at the front thought the old man was a nut case, but it was a slow day and they amused themselves by directing him here. The guy pulls out an old badge with Cyrillic letters and says in a prepared sentence that he used to be a detective in St. Petersburg, retired in 1992, but still takes on cases, and that a client hired him to investigate the Brockton’s murder.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I took his name and made some inquiries via Interpol. I used to work in Washington before I decided to head to a smaller city and warmer climes, so I had my connections. To my surprise, they confirmed that indeed Vladimir Rostin was a detective in the St. Petersburg militzia, now retired.”
“Did he tell you who hired him?”
“He did not, but I can guess. During the trial, we had a visitor from Russia who came to see me – Mark Bezginovich, Streltsova’s brother, an attorney from Moscow. Streltsova was a name she took for TV work. He thought that Natalya was the target. He would be my number one suspect amongst potential clients.”
Rozen starts finger-drumming again.
“And?”
“Well, Mr. Rostin, I told your father things that were not in the newspapers, and now he is dead. So I wonder how much I should tell you.”
I rub my forehead. “Detective, I appreciate your concern. I don’t have a death wish. But I do want to know what happened. This may end up having nothing to do with my father’s death.”
“That might be,” agrees the detective. “Anyway, there are things about this case that never smelled right, and that’s been eating away at me. I have trouble letting go when something does not add up.”