Ida consented, and the girl touched her face. She ran her fingers gently over Ida’s features. She touched her mouth, her nose, her eyes, her lips. Ida shuddered. How long ago was it that someone had last touched her. How worn-out and terrible, how cold, how rigid, how ancient she must feel. But the girl didn’t seem to mind.
‘I have to do this so I can imagine a face, and I can often guess a person’s age as well. Shall I tell you how old you are?’
‘Go on, then.’
‘Mid-forties?’
‘I don’t know myself any more. I’ve stopped counting.’
‘I’m fourteen.’
The girl said it with pride, as if being fourteen were a great achievement. And perhaps it was. Perhaps, in this city, it was a great achievement to have reached your fourteenth year.
‘Do you live here alone?’
‘My cousin is here sometimes. But she has to look after my grandfather; he’s not well. And she works at the school. But I manage. I’m allowed to play again. Fortunately we didn’t chop up the piano for firewood. Mother was planning to, but I wouldn’t let her.’
‘Please, could you go on playing? I haven’t heard music for so long.’
‘You could play with me. Something for four hands.’
‘No, no, I couldn’t; my hands are like claws. It would be horrible. I’d like it to be beautiful.’
‘As you wish. My teacher once told me that I had a flair for the French composers. Shall I play something by Debussy? I’m so fond of him. Something from the Preludes, perhaps?’
‘Whatever you like.’
The girl concentrated, rubbed her hands together, blew into her fists, and began to play. Ida leaned against the wall and listened, enchanted. She followed the girl’s playing, and with every note the war was driven from her arms, her body, her head; she was transported her to another world. A world of brightly lit cafés and shining boulevards where well-fed people strolled up and down. A place with purple Chinese lanterns, neat entrances to buildings with furnished apartments; a place where you could order apple cake with your tea, a place that smelled of French perfume. Where people wore warm coats and leather gloves. Where you could go to the cinema or listen to concerts. A place where the girl playing the piano had a mother, and sparkling green eyes.
‘Sacred Dance. That’s what he called that piece.’
The girl’s voice broke into Ida’s thoughts, brought them abruptly tumbling down. Ida looked out of the window at the empty courtyard. She remembered that she had to go to the post office and shook her head, as if trying to rouse herself from her dream.
‘Why are you still here? Why weren’t you evacuated long ago?’
‘I wasn’t an invalid back then,’ the girl said. Her directness was both disarming and somehow brutal.
‘But …’
‘My mother worked for the Road. We got by.’
‘You have to come with me.’
‘Where?’
‘To Karavannaya, to the post office. They’re compiling new evacuation lists. The siege has been broken, haven’t you heard?’
‘I haven’t been out for days, and my cousin hasn’t been able to come.’
‘When was the last time you ate?’
‘My neighbour, Comrade Tashkova, gives me some of her food, because I play for her son. He’s mentally handicapped, and it soothes him.’
‘Stand up.’
‘I don’t have a coat. I can’t go outside.’
‘I’ll give you mine. You have to come with me, now.’
‘But …’
Ida was already pulling the girl to her feet and putting a coat around her shoulders. She wrapped her in the scarf that she had knitted herself, and they went outside. The girl sniffed the air like a dog. Ida took her hand; she pulled it back and answered proudly, ‘I can manage on my own. I’ve been blind for two hundred and thirty-four days now. I’m learning.’
The queue was visible from a long way off. They had to wait in line, and by the time they finally entered the building the light had gone.
Behind a little table — more like a school desk — sat an older woman and a young Red Army soldier. Ida gave her name.
‘I’ll have to look.’
The woman started leafing through an enormous file. People are happy to burn pianos, but files are sacrosanct, thought Ida.
‘I was assured in October that I’d be put on the priority list,’ she pointed out.
After a few minutes the woman did indeed find her name on the list. Ida had to present her passport and her tattered, crumpled health certificate, which had been issued to her by a malnourished doctor after a cursory examination: it did not look good. The woman rummaged again in her mountain of files.
‘February the twelfth. Mikhailovsky Garden. It’ll be a transporter. You may take no more than one suitcase, and don’t forget your passport. And this document I’m issuing you with — don’t let it out of your sight.’
When the woman said this, Ida thought she would be sick. The girl just stood beside her, motionless, as if she hadn’t heard.
‘This girl has to come with me,’ began Ida timidly. ‘She lost her eyesight in an air raid and her mother’s dead. She has no other relatives, which means she’s a first-degree invalid.’ Ida tried to speak as neutrally as possible so the girl didn’t get the impression she pitied her.
The woman slowly raised her head and stared long and hard at the girl. ‘I really am very sorry, but I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do. She has to get on the list first, like everyone else. They’ve all been waiting for months already, if not years.’
‘It’s all right,’ said the girl. Her face betrayed no disappointment.
‘No, it’s not all right!’ Ida shouted suddenly. She was surprised by how loud her voice was. ‘Nothing is all right. Look at her! This damned war has taken everything she has, and yet she’s still sitting there, forgotten even by God, in a cold, empty apartment, playing the piano. She could be an extraordinary pianist. She has to stay alive, she has to get something to eat, she has to play! She’s only fourteen!’
The older woman looked at Ida with indifference, as if she was used to outbursts, breakdowns like these. No one in the queue dared say anything; everyone was entirely focused on their own survival. The girl was clearly embarrassed by it all; her head was bowed in shame.
‘Come on, please, let’s go …’
‘No!’ Ida shouted again. ‘You have to get out of here!’
‘Then give her your place, for heaven’s sake, and put yourself on the list again!’ a one-legged man behind her shouted, visibly annoyed at the delay. For a moment the room went quiet. Ida said nothing. She looked at the girl.
‘No, for God’s sake — don’t do that!’ the girl blurted out, turning her eyeless face to Ida.
But Ida was already bending over the desk, and saying to the woman, ‘Please make out the document in her name. And put me on the next list.’
The girl seized Ida’s hand and tried to drag her away.
‘No, absolutely not, you mustn’t do it. Your hands are alarmingly cold, I can feel it. You’re not well. You have to leave. My cousin —’
‘Stop it and do as you’re told!’ The customary hardness returned to Ida’s voice.
‘Name!’ said the woman at the table.
‘What’s your name?’ Ida realised she hadn’t asked the girl before now.
‘Ida,’ she said.
‘Your name — I mean yours,’ Ida insisted.
‘Yes: my name is Ida. Ida Efremova.’
‘Well, that’s convenient. So I only have to change the surname and date of birth,’ said the woman behind the desk.
Ida’s knees buckled.
*
They spent the days before her departure together, in Ida’s darkened apartment on Vasilievsky, and in Ida Efremo
va’s empty apartment; I don’t know its exact location.
Ida heard music again for the first time since the start of the blockade. The younger Ida was always ready to play something for the elder, who would first warm her hands for her by placing them in her armpits: the two of them would stand like that for a while, until the younger disengaged herself and ran, with a laugh, to the piano. Then she would play, lost in the music, while Ida stood beside her with her eyes closed and followed the melody back to her past.
Ida E. spoke incessantly about the future. About sharing an apartment, somewhere where it was warm; about piano lessons, because Ida E. was sure that, once the war and the cold were over, the elder Ida would want to play again. She talked about the hens they could have that would lay eggs every morning, about the competitions she would take part in, and envisaged herself travelling the world with Ida as her companion.
One afternoon, as they were standing in the courtyard warming themselves around a fire the neighbours had lit, Ida E. touched Ida’s shoulder and suggested she adopt her.
‘I mean, you don’t have any children of your own, and I’m sure you want some. It would be ideal. Besides, I’m almost grown-up already; you don’t have to change my nappies or spend sleepless nights with me. You’d have a ready-made child who can play you beautiful music. What more could you want?’
Ida had to smile at Ida E.’s direct, precocious way of explaining her vision of their future together. She gave her a tender kiss on the cheek.
Before the girl took Ida’s place on the back of the truck, and seized the tentative, trembling hand of life, she asked Ida if there were anyone on the outside she could send a message to: a family member, a friend.
‘Before you join me,’ Ida E. added.
‘I don’t know … Perhaps you might be able to find an officer in the marines — Jashi is his name, Konstantin, also known as Kostya. If he’s still alive. He trained here in Leningrad at the Frunze Higher Naval School, and as far as I know he’s serving in the Baltic Fleet.’
‘And what should I tell him?’
‘If …’
‘I’ll find him.’
‘That I wish him happiness.’
‘That’s all?’
‘That I haven’t forgotten him.’
‘And?’
‘That I … You think of the rest. You have a vivid imagination — embellish it for me. Tell him something nice. Tell him whatever nice things come into your head.’
‘Right. I will.’ Ida E. nodded firmly.
They put their arms around each other and stood there, motionless, as people pushed impatiently past them and threw their suitcases into the truck.
‘We’ll see each other again, in May at the latest, in some Kazakh village. And by then I’ll have tracked down a piano, and found my brother and your sailor. And until then you must take care of yourself. All right?’ The girl pressed the tip of her nose against Ida’s and breathed in Ida’s scent. She felt her face with her fingertips and Ida sensed that at that moment the girl saw her — really looked at her — that she knew her, for all that she was, all that she had dreamed and missed out on, all that she had loved and lost, sought and found, aspired to and failed to achieve, wished for herself and never had, all that she still hoped for, and feared.
Suddenly she felt something warm, damp, running down her cheek. Ida E. was crying. Ida wouldn’t have thought it possible, but those dark hollows had come to life, and tears were running from them.
*
Ida died just two months later. A neighbour found her dead outside the door of her apartment. The door she had once flung open to Kostya. That he had hammered on so bitterly at the end. She had collapsed after climbing the stairs to the apartment. She hadn’t made it inside, to her bed, where she and Kostya had once celebrated their love and all obstacles had seemed so effortlessly overcome.
Ida E. became a renowned concert pianist. Her career reached its peak in the late fifties and sixties. Whilst on tour she played a date in West Germany, and stayed there; three years later she enabled her husband, a viola player she had met during her studies at the Moscow Conservatory, to leave the USSR. She became known above all for her daring interpretations of French composers. The dark, oval glasses she wore during her concerts became her trademark. Her autobiography, published in Germany in 1982, was a great help to me in researching Ida’s story. The book was dedicated to her.
It was many years before Ida E. found my grandfather, but she found him.
More metal, more guns!
POSTER SLOGAN
Because of the Germans’ heavy losses at Stalingrad and the devastating outcome of Operation Edelweiss, Army Group A was ordered to withdraw from Vladikavkaz, which at the time was still Ordzhonikidze, and by the end of the year the Military Road was open and passable again. Stasia was able to make her way home. In March 1943, she reached Tbilisi. Simon’s last letter, unusually sentimental for him, had frightened her, but she would not allow herself to think the worst. She knew from Christine that Kostya was alive and had served with distinction on the Leningrad front. She reached the grand house on the hill whose garden had long since run wild, its fountains dried up, its treasures sold on the black market. She fell into her daughter’s arms and tried to weep, to experience some sort of relief, but she couldn’t. It was only bit by bit that she learned from Kitty and Christine what had happened in her absence: Andro’s disappearance, and the sad, anxious months in Tbilisi, where at least no shots had been fired. It was only much later that Kitty mentioned a miscarriage, as if in passing, without wishing to discuss the subject in more detail.
They sat in the kitchen, baked corn bread, and gazed at each other in rapture. Christine kept massaging her older sister’s shoulders; she made her a face mask of cucumber peel, prepared hot hibiscus tea to renew her strength, heated buckets of water for her so she could take a bath, gave her new stockings and boots, and cut her hair.
For the first few weeks, Stasia was in a sort of daze. She couldn’t bring herself to go out, couldn’t concentrate during their conversations. Her eyes would close of their own accord, and she would yawn constantly. Kitty and Christine went about their daily business: they took the food vouchers and went shopping, went to the hospital, cleaned, cooked, darned jackets and coats for soldiers at the front, fetched wood, cooked meals, and listened, spellbound, to the old Blaupunkt radio.
Some nights, Stasia heard loud screams in the house; heard Christine’s bedroom door open as she hurried down the corridor to the former playroom where Kitty slept. Heard her daughter whimpering, moaning, raising her voice, then Christine’s soothing words. Sitting up in her bed, she heard Christine talking to Kitty for some time, until their voices fell silent again and Christine returned to her room.
On those nights Stasia wished she could find the strength to go down and take her daughter in her arms. To whisper just such soothing words in her ears; to ask her where this despair came from, what had made her so afraid. But she feared the secret Kitty shared with her aunt; she feared Kitty’s nightmares, which might be contagious.
*
Spring brought people out onto the streets, into the parks, into the wide boulevards and the narrow alleys. The ice-cream sellers were heard again, touting their wares; the neighbourhood women, sitting on benches, exchanging the latest gossip; the dice rolling across the backgammon boards. Fresh laundry hung again in inner courtyards, transforming them into white, war-free zones.
The old man who used to have the big fruit stall on the corner now sold his few apples and plums out of zinc buckets. The academic’s fat wife wore feathers in her hat again; crowds of gypsies wandered the streets telling people’s fortunes — only the happy, bright, promising ones, of course. Bad tidings in wartime could lead to a sound thrashing.
On sunny days like these, Kitty, Christine, and Stasia went for walks around the hilly streets of Vera, ate sunflower see
ds, drank malt beer. By May there was still no news from Simon, so Stasia went to the military People’s Commissariat and submitted an application in the hope of learning something of her husband’s whereabouts. Stasia had already given up hope when a letter arrived for her with a Moscow postmark. The message was brief: the Red Lieutenant had most probably lost his life in the glorious victory of the Battle of Stalingrad. She should take this letter to the relevant commissariat in Tbilisi. They could be of more assistance to her there, particularly with regard to her widow’s pension.
At the commissariat a young woman in uniform explained to her that, although her husband was not to be found on any of the casualty lists, she should be aware that they had suffered very high losses in Stalingrad.
‘You mean there’s no body?’ asked Stasia, sounding composed.
‘We’ve contacted his division. Your husband is still registered as missing. But it’s assumed he was killed in the final days of the battle.’
He had fought heroically, would probably be awarded a posthumous medal for bravery. Stasia interrupted her. ‘As long as there’s no body, he can’t be dead,’ she declared. Then she turned and walked out of the building.
Christine and Kitty were stunned when Stasia repeated to them, calmly and collectedly, what they had told her at the commissariat. Kitty chewed her lower lip nervously, and Christine’s eyes filled with tears. It was clear from her expression that she accepted the news of Simon’s death as fact. She wondered whether the certainty that Simon would not return also gave her the dreadful certainty that Andro could never return, either.
And Kitty wondered whether Christine was weeping for the loss of her own husband, and of her face; and she wondered whether Kostya would share Simon’s fate.
Suddenly Kitty too began to sob.
‘Why are you crying?’ asked Stasia. ‘He’s not dead. He’s just missing. This man has been missing for half his life; it’ll be no different this time. He’ll turn up again, don’t you worry.’
‘He’s dead!’ gasped Kitty.
‘Where there’s no body, where there’s no grave, there are no dead, either!’
The Eighth Life Page 30