General Hunger, on the other hand, was not what you would expect. His cheeks were rosy, his hair sprang from his head, and his eyes were moist and bright. He was in his element. The two generals sat down on their chairs, planted their tall polished boots in front of them and leaned towards one another. They began to boast of what they could do to their enemies.
This is what I can do,’ said General Hunger. 7 make their skin flake and crack at the corners of their mouths. I make sores break out on their lips. They screw up their eyes and try to focus, but they never see me. They don’t realize that it’s I who have changed their eyesight.
‘I whittle most of them down to skeletons, but with some I play a trick and fill their bodies with liquid that keeps them pinned to their beds. What I like best is a big, strong, well-muscled lad of eighteen, who burns up food like a stove. You should come back and see him after I’ve been keeping him company for a few weeks. He melts faster than a candle, in my hands. His muscles waste away. All those big strong bones stand out. I can turn him into an old man, I can make his eyes weak and watering, I can loosen his teeth in his gums until a crust of bread will pull them out. No one eats himself up quicker than a fit young man.
‘I turn old men into children whimpering for food, and I turn five-year-olds into old men. It’s all the same to me if they’re young or old, ugly or beautiful, and I make them all the same. I’ve seen a lovely young woman of twenty-five shrink back from the sight of herself in a mirror after she’s been living with me for a month or two.
‘If I can’t finish them off on my own, I groom them for my friends. A little cold that wouldn’t keep them in bed for half a day soon proves fatal when it visits them after I’ve been staying.
‘I strip them of their thoughts. I take away their feelings. I get into their blood. I am closer to them than they are to themselves. They can think of no one else.
‘My dear cousin, you have got to admit defeat.’
‘Very good,’ said General Winter, scratching his ear with a nail of ice. ‘But now hear what I can do. I hide the earth so they cannot see a single shoot of green. I drive the sap down into the trees’ roots. I search out everyone who has no shelter. I fill roads with snow, I cut off retreats, I block all movement. I ensure that nothing can grow and nothing can thrive.
‘If they leave a hand or a foot uncovered, I seize it. I scorch their skin to red and purple, and then I blacken it. I make their flesh rot like the flesh of turnips when frost gets into a clamp. I harry them with wind and I blind them with blizzards. I freeze the seas so they cannot travel, I blow through the holes in their windows. I make them slow, and miserable, and afraid. I cut off their water supplies, and take away their light. I make them wade waist-deep in snow to find a handful of fuel. When they are ill and off-guard, I creep into their beds and rock them to everlasting sleep. I send gales and ice-storms. I drown them in mud. My greatest power lies in the fact that each year they forget how strong I am. In summer, when they lie under trees bathed in sunlight, they cannot believe in me. They make their plans, and they leave me out. But I have already made mine, and mine are always the same.
‘So, Cousin, what is hunger without winter? Without me, they would be able to eat the green shoots, and catch fish from the streams. Without me, the sun would keep them warm.’
General Hunger frowned, and folded his arms. His face was dark with thought.
‘There is something neither of us have mentioned,’ he said. He glanced around, but no one was listening. The two generals drew closer, so that their heads were almost touching.
‘Without the help they give us, we could do nothing,’ whispered one general to another.
‘Yes, it’s true, without them…’
The two generals thought of the armies gathered to do their work for them. General Hunger broke into a smile, and slapped his thighs with meaty palms.
‘Let’s join forces!’ he said. ‘What one of us misses, the other can take care of. Together, we will be invincible.’
And the two generals stopped arguing. The talks were over. From that time on, they have always worked together.
‘ Who wrote that story, Daddy?’
‘I wrote it down, Anna. But I didn’t make it up. It’s a true story.’
Inside Anna’s dreaming flesh the child stares at her father. Anna twitches as if a mosquito has bitten her, and turns over in her sleep.
The next morning, Sunday morning, the weather stays fine. Little Mitya Sokolov comes over to play with Kolya, while Anna finishes her mending. Two shirts of her father’s, her red blouse, and that pair of last year’s shorts which will do Kolya for another summer if she patches the seat. She can hear the children’s voices from among the trees, where they’re building a camp. Her needle flashes in and out with quick, impatient stitches. Her father’s poking about with a bit of guttering which has come loose. She’ll go and give him a hand in a minute, because she’s pretty sure he hasn’t got a clue what he’s doing. But it’s good to hear him whistling like that. She’ll just finish Kolya’s shorts, and then she’ll have a hunt for the twine. That’ll fix the guttering for the time being, at least, and stop it clattering at night when the wind blows. But where did she put the twine after she’d finished using it in the garden?
This is when she hears Mitya’s mother yelling. ‘Mitya! Mitya! Mitya! Where are you? Come here this minute!’
Stupid woman. What’s she bawling like that for? She knows perfectly well Mitya’s up here, playing with Kolya.
‘Mii-tya!’ The voice rises to a panicky shriek. Anna bundles up her sewing and runs to the verandah steps. Something’s wrong. An accident –
‘Darya Alexandrovna?’
But the woman is so out of breath she can’t speak. She must have run all the way from the farm. She’s fat, like all the Sokolovs, and she smells powerfully of sweat. There are beads of it on her broad forehead. Her breasts heave under her overall.
‘Mitya’s fine, Darya Alexandrovna. He’s only playing with Kolya – look, they’re just over there. I thought you knew he was up here with us –’
‘Haven’t you heard? Haven’t you heard the radio?’
‘No-’
‘It’s war. They’ve attacked, the devils, just when we weren’t expecting them.’
Looking terrified, Darya Alexandrovna wipes her hand across her mouth, as if to spirit away the words that have just left her lips.
‘War, don’t you understand?’
‘The Germans?’
‘Of course it’s the Germans! You don’t think we’d be attacking ourselves, do you? They’re dropping bombs on us already, the bastards.’
Anna stares up at the clear blue sky.
‘They’ve bombed Kiev,’ gasps Darya Alexandrovna, words tumbling out of her mouth like betrayed secrets. ‘Holy Kiev, would you believe it? And other cities, they say. It was Molotov himself who told us.’
‘Molotov? Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure. Wasn’t it I who heard it? Bombs and shells, dropping on everywhere.’
But the perfect sky is empty. War doesn’t belong here, in the country. War. Everything will change.
‘The children –’
The children’s voices are piercing. ‘No, Mitya! That’s my piece of wood. You’ve had your turn.’
A tussle, a wail of rage. ‘It’s not fair…’
‘I’d better sort them out.’
But Darya Alexandrovna detains her, pressing a hand on her arm.
‘At least they’re the age they are, my Mitya and your Kolya. They’re too young to get dragged into it. But my nephew – you know, our Vasya – he’s your age, twenty-three. God alone knows where they’ll be sending him off to.’
The image of Vasya rises in Anna’s mind. Plump buttocks straining the cloth of his too-tight trousers, stiff bristles of blond hair and little, cunning grey eyes. A Sokolov all right. He’ll look after himself.
‘I’m sure Vasya will be fine, Darya Alexandrovna.’
�
�It’s always the same,’ mutters Darya. ‘The high-up ones start things, but it’s us who have to finish them off.’ And she glares at Anna as if suspecting her, too, of being a ‘high-up one’ who will expect Darya, Vasya and the whole tribe of the Sokolovs to put right her mistakes. Then she goes pale, obviously realizing that a different construction could be put on her words. She’s dropped her guard in the panic of the moment.
‘No offence, mind – when I say “high-up ones” I don’t mean anything by it. You know that, Anna Mikhailovna.’
‘I know. It’s the shock. You don’t know what to think.’
‘They’ll be swallowed up, those Fascists, that’s what they’ll be. They won’t get away with it. Our lads’11 soon beat them off, under Comrade Stalin’s leadership.’
‘Of course,’ says Anna mechanically. She knows this is not the way Darya Alexandrovna really thinks, or talks. It’s just the usual stuff everyone has to spout the whole time. Like the way old people in the village thank God every second sentence, if they haven’t been taught how backward it is. Luckily, the words form themselves into clichés so naturally that you don’t even have to think about it. Out here in the country, those words sound even more grotesque than they do in the city.
Darya Alexandrovna’s right when she says we weren’t expecting the Germans. But why weren’t we? Why didn’t those ‘high-up ones’ know anything? They know whose stories should be published and whose not. They even know people’s thoughts. They know that Olya’s got to lose her job, and hang around the bread queues like a ghost. But they don’t know that the German army’s about to drop bombs on us.
And here comes her father, hesitating when he sees Darya Alexandrovna. He doesn’t like her, and she doesn’t like him. Writers are useless articles, in her opinion. Her father holds a broken bit of guttering in his hand.
‘Anna Mikhailovna,’ says Darya is a hurried undertone, ‘I don’t reckon I’m going to be able to oblige you with that honey after all.’
‘But–’
‘It’s the bees. I ought to of told you before, our bees’ve not been doing as well as they should. It’s those late frosts. We had to light fires in the plum orchard to drive the frost away. I thought we’d have honey to sell this year as usual, but the way things are, we’re going to need it all for the family.’
I bet you are, thinks Anna. Dark, rich honey, full of calories and vitamins. Honey that will last all winter. You’ll keep it for yourselves. You’re not stupid. But I am. What a fool I am, wasting time, standing here talking to you. We ought to be back in Leningrad, looking out for ourselves, the way you are. They’ll all be in the streets by now, stripping the shops bare. There’ll be nothing left. If Dad takes Kolya, and I get back as fast as I can on the bike –
‘Father!’ she says. ‘We must leave straight away. We’ve got to get back to Leningrad as soon as we can.’
6
(Extract from the diary of Mikhail Ilyich Levin.)
30TH JUNE
It never ceases to amaze me that people can hold two completely opposed beliefs at the same time, without feeling the slightest sense of contradiction. We are told that there is no real threat to the city. The bulletins may not be good, but that’s only temporary. Our forces will turn back the German aggressors, and run them all the way to Berlin. And we both believe this, and don’t believe it. The locusts have already settled on the shops, stripping the shelves clean of oil, buckwheat, sugar, dried peas, tinned goods: anything that will keep. Prices in the market are doubling and trebling.
My poor Anna was beside herself when we got back from the country to find the local shops already empty. However, she’s made up for it since, pedalling from one side of the city to the other, bargaining in the market, chasing each fresh rumour of a sausage delivery. Usually these turn out to be only rumours. If the goods actually exist, they are much too expensive for us to buy them.
The banks closed down as well, because people were taking all their money out in order to stuff it under their mattresses for the duration. Although they’ve re-opened now, you can’t withdraw more than a certain amount. But for a while nobody could get at their savings at all, not a single rouble of it. We’ve got no savings left anyway, but it was depressing to see such crowds, their faces animal and desperate, waving their pass-books, fighting past each other to get to the bank doors. For once our lack of money was a blessing. Imagine if I’d felt it was my duty to Anna and Kolya to shove everyone else out of the way and yell and bang on the bank doors along with the rest of them until I was chased off by the police.
You have a certain idea of yourself: what you’ll do, and what you won’t do. It’s hard enough to hold on to it.
Anna doesn’t know whether they’ll keep the nursery open or not. People have been sending their children out of the city since the first Sunday, and now organized evacuation is starting. No one seems sure where the children are going. South of the city, somewhere, out in the country where they’ll be safe from the bombing. But Kolya is staying here. I haven’t got the slightest faith in our ‘organization’. There’ll be some sort of muddle, that’s for sure, and I don’t want Kolya caught up in it. We’re waiting, all of us, to see what happens.
(Why do I keep writing ‘we’? I don’t know. These past years, I’d come to believe that ‘we’ had finally disintegrated. Fear does that. And by the time we got to the Yezhov years we hardly dared be human in public. Old friends made excuses when they met you on the street, or they scuttled past you, heads down. You’d ask for news of a former colleague. There’d be a quick glance round, perhaps a whispered, ‘Haven’t you heard?’ You’d know that your colleague had evaporated.)
But here we are, looking into the face of something even more terrifying than the misery we’ve been able to pile up for ourselves. We scurry about like ants with a stick poked into their ant-heap. Why the stick’s been poked, we don’t know, but our lives and houses are upside-down just the same. That’s what war means: blunders and muddle, and doing things without understanding why you’re doing them. A long time later, if you’re lucky, someone comes along and writes things down so that they make sense, and calls his story history.
This I should not be writing down. How can a man with children be so criminally irresponsible? But there’s something deep within me that says: Write, whatever happens.
So I keep on writing. I have a little place under the floorboards, big enough to hold a couple of these notebooks. There’s a rug over the floorboards, and a table covered with work planted on top of it. Anna would never dream of disturbing my work.
We’ve had a few siren alerts, but no bombing so far. Everyone’s talking about London, and the aerial bombardment there. Are we going to get the same? The barrage balloons are up, there are fire-fighting units being trained everywhere, and every apartment block has a kid perched on the roof with a bucket of sand to throw on to incendiary devices. Anna is on the fire-watch rota for our building. Nothing stops her. When she gets back from scouring the city for food, she starts pasting paper strips crisscross over all the windows, according to instructions. The rooms aren’t exactly gloomy, but it’s nothing like the light of a June day.
Anna and Kolya sleep in their clothes, in case of a raid, but I still get undressed. I sleep badly anyway – why make things worse? If there’s an air-raid, who’s going to care about Mikhail Ilyich’s patched vest? We’ll be too busy ‘making our way to shelter in an orderly fashion’. There aren’t enough places in the air-raid shelters, though, so I doubt if I’ll bother to go.
And yet nothing happens. We’re all waiting. Was it like this in London? Leningrad still floats in its usual sea of summer calm. Any minute now the bands will strike up in the parks, the ice-cream girls will come out, and everyone will start talking about swimming and rowing and berry-picking in the forest. That still seems like reality. War is the dream from which we could wake, if we made enough effort.
This morning I went out at five o’clock and walked along the embankment, then
down the Nevsky. I walked for hours, it seemed, but I wasn’t hungry, and I didn’t grow tired. I couldn’t have swallowed anything, not even a sip of tea. I must write this down, although it’s almost impossible to put into words. These heightened states all sound banal once you write them down. For instance, there’s nothing more tedious than lovers writing about being in love. You need to be outside the experience, not caught inside it. And for once it seems I’m caught inside.
But this is what happened as I walked. The last years fell away. I saw only our city, as it always was and always will be. It was as beautiful as before, but it wasn’t fierce any longer, or proud. Rather than crushing us down, it seemed to be asking for our protection. Everything looked newborn, as if the city had dipped itself into the waters of the Neva overnight and then risen again, naked and vulnerable, with water streaming from it. As if to say, You know that all my masterpieces are built on bones, but I am human, too. Even the columns of the Kazan cathedral no longer looked like elephants’ feet ready to crush the human ants that run this way and that way, trying to escape.
I stood there for a long time, looking at Kutuzov’s statue. There he was, with his sword still pointing at Napoleon’s army, ready to drive it back. And he drove it back. He played his part. He saved Russia, there’s no arguing with that. Kutuzov, along with General Hunger and General Winter.
There were just the two of us, me and Kutuzov. It’s all very well for you, I thought. I may even have said something aloud. You are stone. You are safe inside history. But we are still flesh, trapped in a present we don’t understand, and being shoved towards a future we can’t predict. The times are scared, and so are we. If only I could forget what human blood smells like. Hot, and rank. And then after a while, as it sinks into the ground, it changes and begins to smell of iron. You knew all about that, didn’t you, Kutuzov? All those men you ploughed into the earth, like a farmer.
The Siege Page 5