The Siege

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘I don’t know. We haven’t heard anything.’

  ‘But our kids’ll get out safe, won’t they? I mean, you won’t be sending them anywhere there’s bombs?’

  ‘They’ll be safer out of the city, away from air-raids.’

  The mother nodded convulsively, putting her hand up to her throat.

  ‘Please, don’t worry. We’ll look after them.’

  The mother seemed about to speak again, but instead she made a gesture with her hand, as if pushing something away, grabbed both children in a clumsy hug that knocked their heads together, then turned and rushed out of the room.

  The little one began to wail. Her sister scrabbled in the child’s pocket, and fetched out the rag. Flushing, she explained to Anna, ‘Mum lets her have it when she cries.’

  ‘It’s the best thing, Nyusha. Your mother wouldn’t want her to be crying all the time. Give her the rag whenever she wants it.’

  The little girl had stopped crying. She was rubbing the silky edge rhythmically over her lips, slipping away into safety, her eyes wide, dark and unfocused.

  ‘Now, let’s get you two sorted out. You’ll be going into that room first, with all the others, so you can be divided into groups for the journey. We’ll make sure you stay together. You’ll be going on a train, you know that, and we’re sending plenty of food with you, so you don’t need to worry.’

  ‘Mum’s made our sandwiches.’

  ‘I know. But maybe there are children who haven’t brought anything. We have to look after everyone. What’s your little sister’s name?’

  ‘Olenka. She doesn’t talk.’

  ‘But you can tell when she’s hungry and when she wants to go to the toilet?’

  Nyusha nods importantly. ‘Yeah, I can tell. She sort of pulls me when she wants things.’

  ‘That’s good. Now, in here, just wait on these benches and we’ll be as quick as we can. Move up a bit, the rest of you, there are two more here who want to sit down.’

  The unaccompanied children sit in rows, packed together. Only their eyes move. They watch the accompanied children enjoy the luxury of naughtiness. Those children who still possess their mothers wriggle out of their grip, jump up and down, and invent a game called Dead Man, which involves standing in a row and leaning sideways hard but without falling over, until the child at the end topples on to the floor. Other children play the usual games of tanks, Red Army, and being evacuated.

  ‘This is your number. Don’t take it off or you’ll have to be processed all over again.’

  ‘Wait a minute. I’ve got to put my doll back in my knapsack. She’s being really stupid, because she doesn’t understand about bombs.’

  Many of these kids are experienced evacuees, having been withdrawn from the Luga area already. Frazzled, frantic mothers shout at them, but don’t dare leave the queue for the tables where they will receive billeting details. Queues snake everywhere. There’s a queue for processing, which ought to be confined to the end hall, but has got too long and now winds in and out of the queue for mothers of accompanied, processed children to receive their billeting details.

  Suddenly a big woman dressed in trousers and a Party blouse comes in and claps her hands.

  ‘Transport is leaving for Sortirovochnaya station NOW, with a capacity of fifty accompanying adults and one hundred and fifty children. Form queues in the courtyard immediately, processed adults and children only.’

  ‘Quick,’ says Anna, ‘all of you get off that bench. Follow me.’ A sense of panic has seized the halls. There’s transport, but who’s going to get on it? The queue for billeting details quivers, as mothers hesitate, step out of it, then back. Then they surge. Children, bags and mothers jam the door to the courtyard. Just get on the train, that’s the main thing, and then worry about where you’re going afterwards. As long as you’ve been processed, you’ll be all right.

  Mothers shove past Anna, dragging children. There’s a smell of sausage, wool and armpits. They can’t possibly all cram through that doorway at once, but people are still elbowing forward. Bodies struggle in the bottleneck towards the bright doorway that leads to the courtyard. And the children –

  ‘Mind the children! They’re getting crushed.’

  The unaccompanied children have no mothers to lift them above the crush and force a way through for them.

  ‘Get in tight behind me,’ shouts Anna to the children. ‘Hold on to each other. Citizens, please, for heaven’s sake – these children can’t get through. They’re going to get hurt.’ No one takes any notice. Behind her a child begins to wail in terror.

  She will not let this happen. Above the crowd, beyond her, she sees the woman in the Party blouse. Fixing the woman with her eyes, she yells above the noise: ‘Comrade! These are the children of essential workers!’

  The words reach the ears of the woman in the Party blouse. Her arm sweeps up. Her voice booms above the children’s crying. ‘This is no way to behave! All of you, stand to one side and let these children through at once.’

  And they do. Not grudgingly, but willingly, as if they have been recalled to themselves. Everyone stands still, and suddenly there is room enough for everyone to get through. It’s as if fear had swollen them. Shoving kids out of the way like that – that can’t have been us, can it? It was just that we didn’t realize —

  The smallest children are lifted carefully above the crowd, and passed from hand to hand until they reach the courtyard.

  The courtyard is cool. Already, in the third week of August, there is a tang of autumn in the air that has collected here, along with the rasping smell of diesel fumes. Most of the evacuees will go to the station in trams and buses, but there are three lorries here as well, tailgates down, engines running, belching out exhaust. Elizaveta Antonovna immediately goes to the cab of the first lorry and begins to argue with its driver.

  ‘Comrade! Not only are you choking us, but you’re wasting precious fuel.’

  The driver doesn’t take offence. He leans down and says tolerantly, ‘No, the way it is with these engines, it’s more efficient to keep them running.’

  His words silence Elizaveta Antonovna. ‘Oh, of course, if it’s a question of efficiency… ‘ And she frowns at the milling, inefficient mass of children and mothers. Mothers are scrambling into the lorries, balancing babies and toddlers on their hips, pulling older children after them. A stream of instructions flows as they settle the children down.

  ‘And don’t start messing about with those buttons. Next thing someone’ll pull your coat off and you’ll lose it.’

  The children sit in rows again, solemn, bundled. They don’t cry, or cling to their mothers. They give each other little sideways looks, expressionless, as the grown-ups step off the lorry backs. So many children packed into the lorries, and so few adults to look after them. But it’s all properly organized. They know what they’re doing, they will make sure everything’s all right.

  A boy calls down, ‘Have I got to keep my coat on all the way, Mum? I’m too hot.’

  ‘Yes, but where you’re going, the weather might be different. And besides –’

  She doesn’t finish the sentence. Besides, winter’s on its way. It comes so quickly, once it starts. Yes, I know we said you were only going away for a week or two, until things settled down. But all the same, when I got you ready, I put on everything. Those lined boots I queued for most of a day last January. Don’t be stupid, they’re not too tight, they still fit you perfectly. They’ll do for the whole winter, and don’t scuff them like that – Mitya’s got to have them when you’re finished with them. A pair of mittens on strings round your neck – no, all right then, you don’t need to wear those yet. Tie the strings of your hat round your neck. Once that’s gone, it’s gone. Vests, jumpers, woollen trousers. Yes, I know you’re too hot. But better too hot than too cold, as you’d soon find out if I didn’t look after you properly.

  These children should be bare-legged and rosy, wearing shorts or a cotton dress. They should b
e running in the park, tasting the last of summer.

  The lorry engines roar. A man jumps out of the passenger seat of the front lorry and goes round to the tailgate. He lifts it, holds it in position, fastens one set of bolts, then the other. As he works he leans over the back and jokes with the children. ‘No undoing this, mind, or we’ll have you lot bouncing all over the road.’ Then he goes to the next lorry and does the same, and to the next, shooting the bolts home with a clang that echoes above the noise of the engines.

  As he jumps back into the cab, the driver puts the lorry into gear, and it rolls slowly towards the archway that leads out of the courtyard. They’re going. They’re really going now. Most of the children are hidden by the lorry’s sides, but one or two older ones climb up until they can just see over the side. Four or five faces show, pale, staring, and terribly young. As the lorry swings into the dark under the courtyard gate, these children search the crowd for their mothers. All the mothers wave back, whether or not they can see their own children. They wave and smile, and call out goodbye as if the children are leaving for a summer picnic. On the faces of the children who have climbed up there is a blaze of delighted recognition, as if they are not leaving at all, but coming home.

  ‘Don’t just stand there!’ snaps Elizaveta Antonovna. ‘We’ve got another hallful to deal with.’

  Thousands and thousands and thousands of children. Leningrad children, children who’ve already been evacuated once, as the Germans advanced, children who’ve slogged their way to Leningrad past bodies in ditches, and burning huts. Some of them play ferociously in the halls of the evacuation centre, and band together to make trouble for the adults. Some are passive, and will not look directly at anyone. They’ll piss where they sit rather than ask to go to the toilet. These children know that lorries are the easy way. They know about walking for miles, until the soles of their shoes flapped and their blisters burst, and the grown-ups screamed at them: ‘Keep up, can’t you? Do you want us all to get shot?’

  So many children, and so little time. The railways are being bombed. Packed trains full of children wait in sidings, creep forward, wait again, then slowly glide back to the station they passed through ten hours before. By that time all the sandwiches have gone, and no one knows if they should touch the food stores that are packed and labelled to go with the children to their destinations. Food is pouring out of Leningrad, as well as children.

  ‘It’s chaos!’ snaps Elizaveta Antonovna at last. Her pale hair is stuck to her forehead with sweat, her eyes are red-rimmed, and none of her columns of figures will add up. Whining, mithering children clutter every step she takes. ‘It’s complete chaos! If only people would follow instructions.’

  Parents besiege Anna, wanting to know if it’s true that a train full of children was bombed somewhere near Mga two days ago.

  ‘We haven’t had any information. I swear I’m not keeping anything from you. I’ll tell you everything as soon as we know it.’

  ‘Think they’ll tell you anything? They’ll tell her, but she’s the sort that’s so uptight she won’t even let her own shit go down the pan.’

  And sure enough, there’s Elizaveta Antonovna, face to face with a sweating, half-demented mother who has run all the way from the Lepny machine-tool factory at the end of a twelve-hour shift, on hearing the latest bombing rumours. Elizaveta Antonovna is wagging her lists at the mother. ‘You’re simply making things more difficult for everybody. I shall have to put in a report –’

  ‘Elizaveta Antonovna, allow me to inform you that you are urgently required by a Party official in Hall Three,’ breaks in Anna, shoving between them. Thank God, Elizaveta Antonovna spins round, a tiny spot of crimson on each cheek, and marches from the room.

  ‘Please, come and sit down; forgive us, she doesn’t know what she’s saying. In this little room here.’

  ‘I suppose you’re another of them who doesn’t know anything about anything,’ shouts the woman, but she allows Anna to lead her into the cleaner’s cupboard. In the stuffy darkness, her shoulders bow. She breaks into heavy sobs.

  ‘I only sent her away for the best, I didn’t want her to go.’

  Anna does not attempt to comfort her. If only Elizaveta Antonovna keeps out of the way. If only they can have a few minutes’ peace in this cupboard that smells of damp mops.

  ‘I didn’t even say goodbye properly, in case it started her off crying.’

  ‘Listen, you stay here as long as you like. I’ve got to go and sort out the children. But I promise you, as soon as we hear anything –’

  ‘You won’t hear anything. The ones like you never do. It’s the ones like her that they tell everything to.’

  Parents bring their children to the evacuation centre, change their minds, take them home again. And the system is completely overloaded now. There aren’t enough trains, and no matter how many children are processed, most never leave. Suddenly six busloads of children reappear, whom Anna had thought must be well on their way to the Urals by now. An exhausted mother explains, ‘The line was torn up by a bomb five kilometres ahead. They kept waiting and waiting to see if they could get us through, but then we ran out of food so they had to send us back.’

  News comes of the bombed train. Not the train near Mga: that was just a rumour, although it’s true that the Germans are still trying to cut the railway line there. But a train was bombed, with nearly two hundred children on it, and forty adults. There are thirty-two survivors. Perhaps the children on that train were among those whom Anna squeezed on to the benches, and told to line up for transport. Children who were too hot in their winter hats with flaps that tied over their ears, and who started eating the sausage and apples in their knapsacks as soon as they were out of their mothers’ sight.

  That night Anna lies awake, listening to Kolya’s breathing. Leningrad still bulges with children. For every evacuee sent away to the east, it seems that another arrives from the south and west, fleeing the German advance. And Kolya remains here. The room smells of his sleep. Has she made the right decision? If Marina Petrovna wasn’t here, she would have had to send him. Anna’s working sixteen hours a day, and with her father coming out of hospital as well, in a couple of days, it would have been impossible to keep Kolya. How strange to think that it was only by chance that Marina had come here at all. Yes, she’s beginning to think of her like that, dropping the patronymic even from her mind: Marina.

  She would never have thought she could be grateful to Marina. But day by day, steadily, Marina has earned her right to a place in their lives. She queues, she makes meals, and she even manages to keep Kolya happy too, with stories, pretend games, and drawing, while the queues slowly move forward.

  Marina is obsessed with food, even more so than Anna herself. She will walk halfway across the city on the chance of a bag of sugar for their store-cupboard. The sun is still shining, there is still food in the shops, and the rations aren’t too bad. Prices have shot sky-high, though, and if it weren’t for Marina, Anna would no longer be able to buy sugar or fats off the ration. Eighteen roubles for a bag of sugar, can you imagine? But Marina pays it. She has money.

  ‘You mustn’t spend so much, Marina. I’ll never be able to pay you back.’

  ‘We are not going to be able to eat money,’ is all Marina will reply.

  She gets Kolya walking too. They set off, the pair of them, Kolya bouncing along, his black eyes glistening with excitement as Marina breaks off her story just at its most exciting point.

  ‘I’ll tell you the rest when we’ve walked as far as that building down there – look, the one with the brown doors.’ She points away into the distance and Kolya, instead of grizzling and dragging at her hand, as he might do with Anna, bounds forward with a squeak of pleasure.

  Anna crushes the stir of jealousy she feels. But how quickly Kolya has transferred his attention. Not his love, no, she doesn’t believe that. But every morning he rushes to Marina as soon as Anna has finished helping him to dress. Their laughter spills out
as he helps Marina to fold her blankets, push back the sofa and make the room ready for the day. There’s something magnetic about Marina. Anna has to remind herself that her mother didn’t feel it. Vera wasn’t attracted, she was repelled. And she must have had her reasons. What were they?

  Marina bends over her shopping-bag, and pulls out a jar.

  ‘Two hundred grammes of lumpfish roe!’

  ‘Marina! What did it cost?’

  ‘I keep telling you, money’s not going to mean anything soon.’

  Kolya and Marina crouch over their pot of wallpaper paste, dipping in strips of newspapers and layering them on to the wire bones of Kolya’s fort.

  ‘Am I doing it really well, Marina?’

  ‘Really well. Look how smooth you’ve made that wall.’

  ‘The walls have to be high, don’t they, so the enemies can’t climb over them.’

  ‘That’s right. One more layer should do it, Kolya, then we’ll leave it to dry. We can start the painting tomorrow.’

  Marina sits back on her heels, and wipes paste and newsprint off her hands. What if I drew her like this? Anna thinks. In her mind the old pose Marina took at the dacha still hangs. That’s the portrait she’ll finish one day, when all this is over.

  But perhaps it isn’t. Everything’s changed, so why shouldn’t her work change too? Perhaps it’s better to find a different way of working. Break up the portrait. Turn it into dozens of sketches, quick and fluid, charcoal on sugar paper. Instead of one definition, go for her now, frowning over the wads of dirt packed under her nails. Or now, twisting to warn Kolya not to try and lift the fort yet, let the papier-maché harden. Or now, noticing Anna’s stare and offering back the candour of a face which knows how to change itself into anything it wants.

  Anna lies awake. The night is taut, tensed, watchful. All over Leningrad people are awake, as she is. She thinks herself through the walls, into apartment after apartment after apartment. All of them waiting, counting the hours. Up on the roofs, fire-watchers keep themselves awake, too, gripping the metal rims of their sand-buckets, waiting for the noise of aeroplane engines. No one knows what’s going to happen next. Even the Germans may not know. We think they know everything, but maybe they’re waiting, just like us, for orders that haven’t been written yet, and thoughts that haven’t even come into anyone’s head.