The Siege

by Helen Dunmore

  We have to face the Germans this time, instead of Napoleon’s army. More blunder and muddle, and who can tell how it’s all going to turn out? Maybe you know, Kutuzov. Maybe that’s why you are still holding out your sword.

  I’d have liked to shout up to him: ‘What’s going to happen, Comrade Field Marshal? Do you know, up there? You’re still with us, aren’t you? With us all the way!’

  And perhaps those stone lips would have moved.

  But you don’t do such things, unless you want to get carted away. The ‘black crows’ are still out on the streets, never mind about the German advances. Police business goes on as usual, and once they get you into one of those vans, you don’t come out again.

  All the same, I found myself smiling as I walked on. Me and Kutuzov, eh? Each step I took seemed to give me the strength for a hundred more.

  Well. All very high-flown, isn’t it? The upshot was that I came home and told Anna I’d decided to report for duty on the Luga line, with the People’s Volunteers. Even an old man whose stories are unpublishable can dig a tank-trap. The Luga line’s where we’ll hold them, if we hold them anywhere. Strange how the name of a river can suddenly turn into a defence system. The Luga line, we say to one another, nodding, as if we’ve known it all along. That’s where we’ll stop them.

  But the stupid thing is that I’m still elated. I still feel as if I’m walking through my city in the dawn, and it’s lying there, beautiful and naked, asking for my protection. Mine! – as if I mean anything.

  As I said, 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. Whatever happens now, those frozen years are over.

  Anna has got hold of a kilo of salt cod, and some smoked lard.

  7

  The statues are disappearing. They are covered in sandbags, or wooden planking. They’ve been carried down to cellars, or camouflaged. Peter’s bronze horse no longer rears above the city, smashing the air. His hooves beat against the sand which packs against him and the planks that mask him.

  The whole city is going into disguise, and its people are going into disguise with it, carrying pickaxes, spades and entrenching tools over their shoulders, smearing their faces with sweat and dirt, clodding their boots with mud. They’ve taken trams and trains out of the city, to work on its defences. They sleep in hay, boil water for tea over twig fires, and bandage their blistered city hands with rags. Students, schoolchildren, women, old men: they’re all here, digging for their lives.

  This is the Luga line. No one can imagine beyond it. River, forest, villages, shallow hills. Woods smell richly of pine resin, just as they have always smelled when Leningraders go out to the country on their summer excursions. There are the little huts, empty now. There should be peasant children clinging to their mothers’ legs, peering at the summer people. Look, here’s that fantastic place for bilberries! And didn’t Sasha get a whole pail of horse-mushrooms behind that grove of birches last year? Little Sasha, staggering out with the pail so full the mushrooms bulged over the top and he kept dropping them.

  If they can’t hold the German army here, it will drive straight on to the outskirts of Leningrad. There’s nothing to stop it. Only flat, forested land, little hills, villages.

  Anna digs. She remembers a dam she built across the stream that runs by the Sokolov place, years ago, when her grandmother was still alive. And her mother, too. Someone was helping her – who? Vasya, of course. Vasya Sokolov, long before he had whiskers like pig’s bristles. That was when he was her friend, and they banded together to outwit his family, who wanted him to work on the farm every hour that they weren’t forced to put him into school.

  Vasya used to come up and knock on the door for her to come out and play. The stream was running fast, with a winter’s weight of water behind it, and the water was icy to their bare feet. It must have been early in the year. They built their dam of earth and sticks and stones, plastering more and more earth on to the structure while freezing water gushed between their legs. Her hair flopped forward over her face. Her hair-grip fell out, and flicked into the water. She peered between the stones, trying to find it. Hair-grips were hard to get hold of, she knew that.

  ‘My hair-grip, Vasya! Can you see it?’ But he didn’t hear her. He was watching the dam.

  ‘It’s holding,’ Vasya yelled, as a pool began to swell behind the dam. ‘We’ve done it!’ And he screamed and hopped up and down on the bank, jeering at the stream that couldn’t flow any more. But Anna was watching more closely. Prickles of water were coming through the dam. As she watched, their plastered mud began to crumble.

  ‘It’s coming through! It’s coming through, Vasya!’

  And the water was spurting now. It swirled through a crumbling gap. Mud eddied, thinned, and disappeared. Anna slapped on hand-fuls of earth, but they flowed away between her fingers.

  ‘Quick, Vasya, help me.’

  The sticks began to move. Even the stones were going now, as the water elbowed away the dam. The water ran thick, muddy, fast. Their dam was gone.

  Anna is digging again. She’s digging for her life, but the sounds and smells of summer keep confusing her. If there are woodpigeons turning over their sleepy song, surely someone will come soon, and say it’s all over, you can go home now. Spread out, have a picnic if you like, enjoy yourselves. But there’s the crumple of artillery, far off, then suddenly not so far off. There are aeroplanes like black crows, searching the fields for grain. By now she can spot a Junkers when it’s still a pinhead in the sky.

  Anna thrusts her spade deep, turns up a spadeful of stony earth, throws it behind her, digs in again. There is burning pain between her shoulder-blades. Suddenly a roar rises from a group of workers hauling timber. ‘Get out of the way, can’t you?’ But it’s not her they’re shouting at. She digs on. Spade in, bear down, turn. They’re butchering those trees.

  Her shirt’s soaked with sweat. She’s worried about one of the blisters on her hands, which looks as if it might turn septic. She soaked her hand in salted water this morning, and bound the blisters with rag. But everyone’s hands are raw with blisters. If you smear honey on they heal quicker. Honey’s an antiseptic. Position the spade, bear down with full weight, turn, lift. Over and over, a hundred times and then a hundred more, all through the long summer day, as long as the light lasts. They were on anti-tank ditches yesterday, today they’re back on trenches.

  ‘All right, girls, you’ve reached your target here. We’re moving on. You’re being assigned to fortifications at the railway station. Get going!’

  Little Katya, on Anna’s right, scrabbles out of the trench like a kid who’s afraid she’s taken more than her turn in the sandpit. She’s terrified of getting things wrong and drawing attention to herself. She doesn’t realize that it’s precisely her nervous quickness to obey orders which makes her stand out. But then she’s only fifteen, so what can you expect?

  ‘It’s all right, Katinka, there’s no big rush. Here, have a swig of my tea.’

  ‘Are you sure? Don’t you want it yourself?’

  ‘I’m offering it to you.’

  Katya’s brought nothing with her. Only herself, and her small, rather delicate hands which have certainly never held a spade before these past weeks. She was crimson with shame when her period started and she hadn’t ‘got anything’. Anna had to sort her out with some borrowed rags, and show her how to wash them in the stream. Katya’s blood unrolled and ran away with the clear water. Luckily, in this weather everything dries quickly. Anna rinses out her own sweat-sodden shirt and underwear every night, and sleeps in her jacket.

  Katya takes a small, polite sip of the cold tea.

  ‘Go on, have some more. The sugar will give you energy.’

  But by now Arkady Konstantinovich is looking for blood.

  ‘Do you ladies think this is a tea party?’ he scorches them. ‘Get your backsides over here now! Get in line.’

  The
y stumble over the rough ground. It’s a couple of kilometres to the station, but at least they’re not digging. A change of position is as good as a rest. With your spade slung over your shoulder, a different set of muscles takes its turn to ache.

  Not a tea party… Anna glances at Katya, at Evgenia beyond her, at the whole line of them tramping forward, boots caked with earth, hands wrapped in rag bandages, sunburnt faces streaked with mud and sweat. Hair is tucked into scarves, or plaited and pinned out of the way. As their line advances under the trees, shadow dapples them. Evgenia’s red hair sparks, then dims as she goes on into the shade of a fir tree. What a lot of different colours there are in red hair, when you look at it. Rust, copper, black. Evgenia’s sleeves are rolled up, showing strong, creamy arms which the sun has splashed with freckles. As she works, her strength and bulk become grace. No one can dig out a section of trench faster than Evgenia. She doesn’t hurry, she doesn’t grunt with effort. She makes her way look like the only possible way of digging a trench. Why is it that some people make you want to watch them, while others – like Katya – have the effect of chalk squeaking up a board?

  Katya is pretty, unlike Evgenia. Her fair hair can’t help escaping from its plait and curling around her small face. It’s one of those rosebud faces which don’t stand up well to dirt and exhaustion. Her eyes are frightened. She stiffens when she hears shell-fire, and she’s terrified of enemy planes. No wonder, when the first thing she saw on her way here was a girl about her age, stitched to the ground by bullets. She hadn’t made it into the ditch with the others. ‘They just left her there,’ Katya told Anna. ‘They didn’t even put anything over her. We all had to file past her.’

  ‘It’s all right, Katinka,’ Anna soothes her now. ‘They’re miles away. You can tell from the sound of the engines.’

  Katya gives her a pitiful, grateful smile. At least it’s as easy to cheer her up as it is to frighten her. She ought to be at school, frowning over her geometry like a good girl. Instead she’s here, along with every Leningrader who’s capable of holding a spade, and plenty who aren’t. God knows how many thousands there are altogether. You only see your own bit, but no doubt there are thousands of Annas and Katyas and Evgenias, stretching the length of the Luga line.

  Everything becomes normal so quickly. It’s normal to get up at dawn, and queue for the hastily dug latrines, and not mind if someone else is peeing alongside you. It’s normal to sluice your face in a stream, bundle your hair into a headscarf, gobble down a couple of slices of bread and stumble to work. Your eyes are bleary, your back aches, your arms ache, the muscles in your neck burn. But just get going, and you’ll soon warm up. That’s the way to deal with stiffness, Evgenia says. Work your way through it. Just keep on digging and don’t give yourself time to think about it.

  It’s normal to run for cover at the sound of aircraft. It’s normal to see someone who didn’t move fast enough, sprawled in a ditch. Sprawled there, they look as if they’re still running for shelter, deep into the earth. But when you pick them up they have a strange, warm floppiness and their heads fall back.

  There are two realities now. There are summer trees, flights of startled birds, the smell of honeysuckle in the depths of the night. This is the old reality, as smooth as the handle of a favourite cup in your hand. And then there’s the new reality which consists of hour after hour of digging, and seconds of terror as sharp as the zig-zag of lightning. Lightning that’s looking for you, seeking out warm flesh on the bare summer fields.

  ‘We could die out here!’ Katya cried the first time the planes came over. She stared in horror, as if it had never occurred to her. Someone is trying to kill me, me, Katinka, with my top grades in physics and chemistry, me, with my ambition to become a doctor, me, with my new summer-dance dress waiting at Gostiny Dvor.

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Evgenia sarcastically. ‘Ain’t that a shame?’ And she went on shovelling earth.

  When they reach the railway station they fall out immediately and begin work. Anna is assigned to a work-group which is to dig a tank-trap on the station approach. There’s rubble to be cleared first, and a stretch of wall to be knocked down. An older woman with glasses and grey hair begins to recite as she swings her pickaxe into the side of the wall:

  ‘And so he brooded:

  From here, we shall menace the Swede,

  Here shall we raise a city that will taunt

  Our haughty neighbour…’

  ‘Pity it isn’t the Swede this time,’ someone else interrupts. ‘They were nothing compared to these Fascist bastards.’

  ‘Don’t spoil it! Let her go on,’ other voices shout.

  ‘Nature has fated us to cut here

  Our window on to Europe, gain our foothold

  To stand firm by the sea…’

  ‘Only the window’s got broken, and now the rain’s pissing in,’ mutters Evgenia in Anna’s ear. But as the recitation continues, surely Evgenia is working even more powerfully than before, her redhead’s sweat staining her shirt. Working alongside her, Anna smells Evgenia’s sharp, foxy scent, which seems to belong to the forest and be part of it.

  Trains are still leaving from here, taking evacuees to the north-east, out of the danger zone. A crowd of kids is being bundled on to one. Kids are packed into every corner of the carriages, kids are jammed against the windows. They’re being taken back to Leningrad again, having been evacuated out here for safety, at the end of June. Evacuated straight into the path of the Germans, as it turns out. The children are dressed in layers of clothes which are much too thick for the weather. This is how their mothers must have dressed them for the first evacuation, so that they’d have their winter clothes with them. Very few are crying. They look dazed, and the little ones press up against the bigger ones as they wait passively to be boarded. Anna searches along their faces. Maybe she’ll spot one of the nursery children. But it’s probably better if they don’t see her, even if by some tiny chance she sees one of them. It’s terrible to see someone familiar, and then lose her again. They are already doubly lost, and there’s nothing Anna can do.

  ‘Poor little sods,’ says Evgenia.

  ‘Have you got children?’

  ‘Me? No. I had a kid, but my mum looked after him, and now he thinks my mum’s his mum, if you see what I mean. So I don’t interfere. It would only upset him. What about you?’

  ‘I’ve got my little brother, Kolya.’

  ‘Your mum’s dead then?’

  ‘That’s right. She died when he was born.’

  ‘So you’ve brought him up. I bet he thinks you’re his mum, really. It’s the one who sticks around that counts, with kids.’

  ‘We do talk about her. Our mother.’

  ‘Yeah, but talk doesn’t add up to much, does it? Where’s he now?’

  ‘Back in Peter. A friend’s looking after him.’

  ‘He’ll be all right, then. You a student?’

  ‘No, I’m a nursery assistant.’

  ‘I’d have had you down for a student. You’ve got that educated look about you. Watch out, those bricks are coming down.’

  The brick wall bulges and bursts outwards. They jump back, all of them except Katya, who is in a dream as usual.

  ‘Katya! Get out of the way!’

  But Katya still doesn’t see. She blinks and smiles, looking uncertain, as the wall sways behind her. And although it’s only a bit of a wall, it’s still big and heavy enough as it comes down around her, one wave of bricks knocking her to the ground, the second raining on the back of her neck, her head, her fallen body.

  ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘Get her out quick.’

  They pick the bricks off her, their hands fast and frantic. They drag her clear, as gently as they can with the smeared thing covered in blood and brick dust. But their thoughts can’t catch up with what they see. Katya’s been and gone and done it again – why doesn’t she ever listen?

  She isn’t listening now. A thread of blood seeps out of her right ear. Her face is
bluish-grey. Evgenia bends over her.

  ‘She’s gone.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Dead.’

  They carry Katya’s body into the shade by the station waiting-room.

  ‘Somewhere the kids can’t see it,’ Evgenia urges, and someone goes inside, finds a curtain, and wraps it over Katya. The curtain smells of stuffy rooms, and dust.

  ‘Someone’d better tell Arkady Konstantinovich.’

  ‘We ought to pull the rest of that wall down first. The tank-traps’ve got to be finished by tonight.’

  It’s not that we don’t care –

  It’s not that we don’t feel for you, Katinka, under that heavy curtain when you ought to be in Gostiny Dvor, trying on your new dress and frowning and saying it doesn’t quite fit on the shoulders –

  It’s not that we wouldn’t have done anything for you, anything,

  if you’d still been alive and we could have helped you –

  Sun moves around the corner of the waiting-room. It touches the bundle in its thick curtain. It plays on the exposed tips of rather white, rather delicate fingers. We didn’t wrap the curtain round her tightly enough. From close by there comes the shrieking whistle of a train, panicky now, as if there’s not much time left. And then the children on the train begin to cry at last, as the carriages judder and the wheels slowly turn. The small familiarity of the station pulls away from them, gathering speed.