‘It’s snowing!’
Kolya runs to the window, but the exertion makes him cough and he grabs the back of Anna’s chair. She pulls him on to her lap. His face is dusky, and his eyes stream with tears.
‘How many times have I told you not to rush about like that! Now, breathe out slo-o-wly. That’s good, you’re doing fine. Another big breath.’
He lies back against her shoulder, eyes shut, exhausted. She chafes his hands.
‘You should keep your gloves on, Kolya. Yes, I know you don’t usually wear your gloves indoors, but see how cold it is.’
There is no fuel. The electricity is off. The apartment is cold with the kind of cold you usually encounter on coming home after a long absence in winter. It’s a cold that penetrates clothes and upholstery, and makes furniture icy to the touch. The beds will not warm. You clamber into them, shivering, and in the morning you ache from trying to keep yourself warm. Your sleep is shallow. It is packed with dreams, and refuses to deepen into the bliss of oblivion.
Anna puffs out her breath and a white cloud forms, then disappears.
‘Marina-’
‘Yes?’
‘What do you think about the burzhuika?
Marina sighs, knitting up her face into lines. She’s been trying to read, but her eyesight hasn’t been so good these past few weeks. She ought to have reading-glasses, if they could be obtained. Her eyes tire quickly, and the lines of print fizz and dazzle. I am turning into an old woman, she thinks. The thought of not being able to read frightens her so much that she pushes it straight out of her mind. ‘I don’t know. How much are they asking for it now?’
‘Three days’ bread ration, or a kilo bag of sugar and two hundred grammes of lard. Plus five hundred roubles.’
‘The money’s no problem. I’ve got that.’
‘You can’t have much left.’
‘No, not a lot, but I’ve certainly got five hundred.’
‘But a kilo of sugar! A whole kilo.’
Anna cuts Kolya’s bread ration into three small chunks. Three times a day she smears a chunk with sunflower oil, then scatters a thick icing of sugar on it. Kolya loves sugar. They have only two kilo bags left.
‘But without the burzhuika, and with winter coming… ‘Anna continues. This is how she and Marina solve the hundred daily problems of shortages. They think aloud, until the words make some kind of pattern in their tired and hungry minds, and then they find that they have made a decision. They’ve got to make their minds up, because now the snow’s come the price of these little stoves is shooting up every day.
‘Is it extra for the stove-pipe?’ asks Marina.
‘Yes. Another two days’ ration, or you can make it up in sugar or coffee.’
‘But on the other hand, if we wait until it gets colder, the price will go up. And maybe they’ll run out of burzhuiki and we won’t be able to get one at all.’
Kolya begins to cough again. Marina rises, fetches a blanket from the sofa, and wraps it around him, tucking in the edges carefully. ‘He should be wearing his fur cap,’ she observes. ‘A high percentage of heat is lost through the head.’
‘I know. But he keeps pulling it off, don’t you, Kolya?’
‘It’s stupid, wearing a cap in the house. Everyone will laugh at me.’
‘I bet they’re all wearing their caps now,’ says Anna. ‘Alyosha, and Shura, and all your friends. They’ll all be wrapped up, just like you.’
She strokes his hair. ‘Listen, I’ll pull up a corner of this blanket and that’ll keep your head warm. Like a soldier’s helmet. No, don’t wriggle. You’ll feel much better.’
‘Tell me what Alyosha’s doing now. Will he be at nursery?’
‘Nobody’s at nursery now. It’s closed.’
‘I thought I was at home because I was ill.’
‘No, you’ve been at home since long before you were ill, don’t you remember? Because of the Germans. It would be too dangerous to go to nursery, with all the shelling, even if it was still open.’
‘I wish you would buy us a burzhuika, Anna. I’m so cold.’
‘I know.’
‘When’s it time for dinner?’
‘Not yet. But Marina’s going to make you some of her special drink.’
Marina rises. She looks into the other room, where Mikhail lies on his back, very still, apparently sleeping. He hasn’t managed to get up today. It isn’t that he’s given up again, it’s just that he’s so weak. She goes into the kitchen. Although there’s no electricity today, they’ve still got a little oil left. It will last another day, perhaps, not more. They desperately need to get a burzhuika, which can burn anything. Chopped-up furniture, books, banisters. They can go scavenging in the parks. They’ll be able to keep one room reasonably warm, and heat water for tea as well as cereal.
By the time Marina brings back Kolya’s drink of hot water with a spoonful of honey and a grating of nutmeg, both women have come to the same decision.
‘I’ll go now,’ says Anna. ‘You’re right, all the stoves might be gone in the next few days, with this snow falling.’
‘We’ll have to move your father in here. We can’t possibly keep more than one room warm, and it’s much too cold for him in there.’
‘Where are you going, Anna?’ asks Kolya anxiously as she settles him on the sofa, still wrapped in the blanket.
‘I’m going to get something wonderful for us. A little stove with a long pipe that goes out of the ventilation window. We’ll be able to burn wood in it, and keep warm even when there’s no electricity.’
‘Can I light it?’
‘Of course you can. But you have to be very careful, because we can’t waste matches.’
‘Anna, will you bring me something to eat?’
‘I don’t think I can. I don’t think I’ll be able to carry anything on the sledge except the stove. It’s very heavy.’
‘But I’m so hungry. Please, Anna, can’t you just get me a few sweets? You can put them in your pocket and they won’t weigh anything.’
She sits down on the sofa beside him, and puts her arms around him under the blanket. He is still cold, in spite of the layers of clothes and blankets around him. And he’s getting thin. Those fine hairs on his legs and arms seem thicker. Isn’t that a sign of malnutrition?
It didn’t help, his having that cold. At least he didn’t develop a chest infection. As long as she can keep his chest clear, his asthma won’t get too bad. She needs goose-fat to rub on his chest at night. It’s an old wives’ remedy, but it really works. And some eucalyptus oil. But it was wonderful that Andrei managed to get hold of the vitamin C powder.
She hugs Kolya more tightly. The shape of his ribs is clear under her hands. When she last undressed him to wash, she saw that the fat had slipped off his buttocks to reveal the distinct outline of his pelvic bone. The bread ration for a child of five is only two hundred grammes a day now. The temptation is to use up their reserves too quickly. There is a sack of potatoes left, fifteen onions, two jars of honey, the sugar, a jar of lard and a half-bottle of sunflower oil. Before the weather turned cold Anna searched everywhere for nettles, but she’s not sure how much nourishment will remain in the few semi-dried leaves which she has hung between the inner and outer windows for the cold to preserve them. There’s been no difficulty in storing the potatoes after all, now that the apartment is virtually unheated. But if it freezes too hard, they’ll blacken, and rot.
They are well-off, compared to many. Anna plans to allow one of the onions to sprout, because Kolya needs the vitamin content of the green shoots. This is the kind of thing she talks to Marina about now. There’s no more fake intimacy, no pretending. They are a unit, in spite of everything. If they’re going to survive, they’ll only survive together. Marina looks after Kolya and her father, while Anna rakes Leningrad for fuel and food.
Thank God, her father eats very little. For a while she kept on trying to persuade him to eat, preparing cereal with a little honey for him, and m
oistening his bread with sweet tea. But now she senses a change. He wants life more than he’s ever done, but it’s not his own life he craves any more. It’s hers, and Kolya’s. He takes less than his share of the rations, and she no longer tries to persuade him.
‘Don’t tire yourself, my little one. Conserve your energy,’ he says to her, following her with his eyes as she moves through the cold, dark apartment like someone wading in deep water. Words which she has never heard before flow from his lips. It’s as if a spring has been released within him, which was tamped for years so that the water ran deep underground and never surfaced. My soul, he calls Anna, and my bird. His eyes follow her, and they glow with a life she’s never seen in them before. His shoulder wound, which was beginning to heal well, has opened again, but Andrei says there’s no infection. It’s only that the healing process will be very slow.
‘Thank you, my darling,’ he says when she washes the wound with boiled water, and dresses it. The words creak hoarsely in his throat, because he doesn’t seem able to draw deep enough breaths any more. But Anna doesn’t hear the failing of her father’s voice. To her, everything he says now is bathed in meaning, even if she can’t understand it, any more than she understands the last bubbling of a blackbird’s song on a spring night. After she finishes the dressing, she sits and holds his hand.
Even when her mother was alive, she never heard these words. Her parents didn’t use sweet words. Her father is going back a long way now, to his own grandmother who took care of him when he was a child, who stroked his cheek, rubbed his chest with goose-fat in winter, told him stories by the stove, and lavished words on him like caresses as he drifted between sleep and waking. My little pigeon, my blossom, my treasure trove.
For Anna’s father, the spirits of the past have come alive. They cluster thickly in the icy spaces of the apartment. Sometimes he can see them, sometimes not. They are not impatient. Sometimes they shift position, and when this happens he always discovers that they have come closer to his bed. He believes he can hear their thoughts. While he watches frost gather on the inside of the windows, their faces appear out of the patterns. They watch him eagerly, waiting for him to notice them and speak to them. His grandmother’s face is there, and the stern, intelligent, bony face of his mother. Only Vera does not come, not yet. He lies and waits for her. He is sure that she will come, because her children are here. Why has it taken him so long to see that Anna moves just like her mother? Look at the way she bends over Kolya to massage his chest.
When he was still well enough to get out of bed he would lie on the sofa and watch Kolya swallowing his kasha. His eyes followed every movement of Kolya’s lips, and his lips moved in unconscious mimicry, chewing on nothing. As the child swallowed his food, so the father swallowed on air.
‘Good boy, keep eating. You’ll grow strong.’
He’s living on tea with sugar. ‘It doesn’t take much energy to lie around,’ he said, and smiled at Anna, a curiously sweet smile which showed how far his gums had drawn back from his teeth. His skin was yellowish, tight over prominent bones of his forehead and nose. But Kolya wasn’t frightened of him any more. He knew who he was. Sometimes he was allowed to carry his father’s tea. ‘As long as you do it very carefully, Kolya, and don’t spill a single drop.’
‘Dad’s getting better!’ he announced cheerfully, each time he brought back the empty tea-glass with a few grains of sugar left in the bottom. Kolya always swept his finger round the glass to gather the last drops of sweetness, and sucked blissfully. Only once did he spill the tea. He had his eyes on his father’s face as he carried the glass towards the bed, but he tripped on a ruck in the rug, and hot tea spilled on to his father’s chest. Anna heard Kolya cry out, but her father made no sound. When Anna pulled up his woollen undershirt, she saw his waxy skin stained red with the scald.
‘Don’t worry, Kolya,’ her father said slowly, wheezing from the shock. ‘You didn’t mean to do it. You’ll bring me another glass, eh?’
‘I’m off, then,’ says Anna. The roubles, sugar, lard and bread are in a cotton bag tied around her waist. Anna made the bag a few days earlier, out of a sheet which was too worn out to be turned sides to middle. She’s sewn a flap which buttons down to secure the bag. A bag which you can wear under an overcoat is safer these days than a shopping-bag. She’ll take Kolya’s little sledge to carry the stove, the rest of the sheet to cover it, and some torn strips of hem to tie the sheet down. It’s best if people don’t see what you’ve got.
‘Be careful,’ says Marina. ‘You know how rough it’s getting down there.’
‘I’m taking my father’s silver cigarette box, in case there’s any more vitamin powder.’
‘Does he know?’
‘No.’
She has known the wording of the inscription on the silver cigarette box since she was four years old. Before she could read the words, she used to trace them with her fingers.
‘To my beloved Misha, on the occasion of our marriage…’
Inside, it smells of real tobacco, not makhorka. A spicy, luxurious scent has lingered there for years.
‘He would want us to sell it. But I don’t think he needs to know.’
Marina sucks in her lower lip as she examines the cigarette box. ‘I wish you weren’t going alone. Listen. Take this.’ She pulls off the ring Anna has admired so often, a rich, glowing ruby, set in dark gold. Because the ring has become loose, Marina has wedged a little piece of silk under the gold band to keep it on her finger. Marina twists the ring, and the wad of silk falls to the floor.
‘But Marina, this ring must be worth thousands of roubles. You can’t just give it away –’
‘It’s worth a stove-pipe, anyway. Put it in your pocket, not in the bag, so they don’t see it. Then you can bring it out if the bargaining gets tough. But take care who sees it.’
Anna turns the ring over. Inside the band, there is an inscription in minute lettering: For My Cordelia.
‘Did you play Cordelia?’
‘Obviously.’
‘You should keep this.’
‘Oh Anna, I played so many roles. I kept it for the stone, not for the inscription. Besides, I never identified with the character. I am much too aggressive. I would have taken Lear by the shoulders and shaken some sense into him. That kind of vanity amounts to madness, don’t you think? All of us are to grovel on the floor declaring our love for our great leader. But of course, you have to find a way into every part.’
How thin her fingers are, Anna realizes. The bones are skeletally clear on the back of her hands. If it weren’t for the silk, the ring would simply have dropped off.
Yes, she’s thin, and she looks old. I would draw her differently now. It would be a better drawing. Marina, my father, Andrei, Kolya, me. We can’t separate now, even if we wanted to.
‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
‘Be careful. Take care of yourself.’
‘Don’t forget Kolya’s massage.’
‘No, I won’t forget.’
18
The wind has dropped. Snow falls straight down, in large, soft flakes that blur footprints as soon as they are made. All sounds are muffled, except for the whump of German artillery. The shell-bursts are just irregular enough to tear nerves which are already raw with cold and hunger. They are shelling the south side of the city today, at close range.
The streets are quiet. A few figures struggle along, muffled into shapelessness, keeping to the safer side of the street. Because the Germans have dug in to the south of the city, the northern sides of the streets are said to be the most dangerous. On the ‘safe’ side, there is some protection from overhanging buildings, as long as there isn’t a direct hit close by. This is the theory. The facts of life have been torn up and scattered, so you might as well believe in theory and rumour as anything else. Very probably injuries from blast would be equally bad on both sides of the street. Everyone has stories of people a few metres from the site of an explosion who were miraculou
sly thrown clear, unharmed. And there are stories of others, stripped naked by blast, who died at what should have been a safe distance. If you started trying to find logic in any of it, you’d go crazy.
It is hard work walking through the snow. Already, after a few hundred metres, Anna’s heart is thudding painfully. She stops to cough. She’s out of breath, and a sweat of weakness starts out over her body, trickling between her shoulder-blades. She ought to have tried harder to get hold of some horehound pastilles for this cough, which has been dragging on for two weeks now. But when they get a stove, everything will be better.
Because she can’t walk fast, she isn’t keeping warm. Usually her blood seems to flow more brightly in winter. She’s buoyant, glowing, always the one who stays in the park long after dusk, hauling children up slopes on their sledge. Winter suits her. Her eyes are bright, her skin clear, her lips red. More than anything she loves winter nights, with their scent of tangerines and frost, and the staring brilliance of stars. But today the snow is oppressive. Anna’s not even sure that she’s moving forward. Perhaps only the veil of falling snow is moving and she herself is treading in the same footprints, over and over again.
She forces herself on. She’s so hungry. Somehow the hunger feels sharper out here. Indoors, you become torpid. You’re weak, but you don’t understand quite how weak until you try to do something which demands energy. You move slowly, and rest a lot, like an invalid. You take time to build up to making tea, and lean against the table while the water boils. Hours drift past, glazed.
But out here it’s frightening. She mustn’t rest, not even for a minute, or the cold will get her. Even though there’s no wind, the snow seems to be pushing her backwards.
Across the street she sees Klavdia from the nursery laundry, dragging a heavy canvas sack. But Klavdia’s eyes stare blankly, or. even with hostility, and Anna’s greeting dies in her mouth. Was it really Klavdia, or just someone who looked like her? Or perhaps there was no one there at all. You can easily imagine things. Sometimes grains of blackness thicken in front of her eyes. A cluster of falling flakes takes on the shape of a face. At the corner, snow devils are dancing, in spite of the lack of wind.
The Siege Page 17