Burying the Sun

by Gloria Whelan

  That night we had a party with Yelena and Olga. Yelena made up a poem for Fyodor about the fish.

  Trading water for air

  you leap into our pot.

  We are sorry to eat you

  but thanks a lot.

  There was not much time for fishing, for Dmitry and I were assigned a new job, a strange one. The shelling and the bombing had not stopped. Day and night the German planes flew over us, and from the edge of the city their mortars fired away. The German spring offensive was under way, and once again the Germans were trying to take Leningrad. Half the buildings in the city had been shelled, and many were destroyed.

  The shelled and boarded buildings were depressing people, so it was decided that something must be done. They ordered false fronts put up. Dmitry and I and our brigade were given sheets of plywood and paint. We made a mock-up of the front of a building as it had appeared before the bombing, and then we painted on windows and doors. The false fronts that covered the burned-out buildings might have been a scene for a stage play. There was a lot of competition to see who could make the most realistic building. I painted a little dog on the false front of the house I was making. It was the only dog in the city, and it made the people who passed by smile. Dmitry, who was clever with paints, did me one better. In one of the windows he painted a scene of a feast, a dining-room table laden with a great roast, heaps of potatoes, a green salad, and a big chocolate cake. There was standing room only by his painting.

  The amazing thing was that when we were given the photographs to copy showing how the houses had once looked, we saw that the pictures had been taken by our “German spy,” Josif Vasilyevich Vronsky.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE LENINGRAD SYMPHONY

  Spring, summer 1942

  We began to hear unfamiliar sounds coming through the walls: Olga was practicing music so strange and powerful that when you heard it, you just stopped what you were doing and listened. We knew she must be practicing the Shostakovich. The music would go on for several bars and then die down as if a phonograph needed winding. The first chance I had, I asked, “Olga, how is it going?” She began to cry.

  “Why are you crying?”

  “It is so hard to play. My arms don’t have the strength do the work justice. I can practice for only a short time. It’s that way for all the musicians. We don’t think we can do it. The first day, Conductor Eliasberg could hardly move his arms to direct us. The rehearsal was to go on all afternoon, and after just a quarter of an hour we had to stop. Ivan had only enough wind to make a squeak with his French horn.” Her voice changed to a whisper, as if she could not say the words aloud. “Saddest of all, Georgi, out of a hundred musicians, only fifteen of us are left. The others have died of starvation or been killed by the bombs. Where can we find musicians to take their places?”

  I tried to cheer her. “Your strength will come back,” I promised. Each day the music on the other side of the wall did become a little stronger and went on a little longer.

  The orchestra found its replacements. Andrei said, “Yes, we know all about the symphony. We sent out a notice from General Staff headquarters that any soldier who played an instrument was to report at once for duty here in the city, and good news—they’ve discovered a military band at the front, sent there to cheer the soldiers. They are on their way.”

  While Olga practiced every day, Dmitry and I, like most of the city, had become farmers. By order of the authorities, rows of cabbages, potatoes, and turnips were planted in all the parks and guarded by policemen as if the vegetables that sprang up were made of gold.

  Dmitry and I dug and planted day after day, breaking up the soil and bending over to plant seeds and potatoes. When I came home at night, I could barely get up the stairs. The gardens we were planting in the parks were the property of the city, but here and there were small private gardens, and along the streets wherever a weed sprang, someone immediately pounced on it. I myself brought home a dandelion I had found growing through a crack in the sidewalk. It went right into the soup, flower and all.

  “What questions I am getting at the library, Georgi,” Yelena said. “‘How can I make a soup from clover?’ ‘How can I gather the nettles to cook without stinging my hands?’”

  It had been so long since people had seen something green on their tables, there was not a patch of lawn left in the city. As soon as something green appeared, it was eaten. Yelena had been right in her prediction that we would eat grass.

  The city was handing out vegetable seeds, but where to plant them? Anything grown in an untended plot could be stolen. I was standing on our balcony when the idea came to me. An hour later I arrived home carrying a heavy burlap bag.

  Marya stared at it. “Georgi, what do you have?”

  I dragged the heavy bag out onto the balcony and emptied the soil onto the balcony floor. “Georgi!” Marya shrieked. “What are you doing to our balcony?”

  I laughed. “Calm yourself, Marya. We are going to have our own garden this summer. Our peas and beans and lettuce will be better than rubies and emeralds. No more standing in line for a few shriveled potatoes that cost a fortune. Now, quickly, get Olga and Yelena and tell them to bring anything that will hold dirt.”

  Marya got our largest mixing bowl, Olga a scrubbing pail, and Yelena a wastebasket. We were a strange parade hurrying through the streets. I led them to an excavation to repair a broken sewer line. The dirt from the excavation was sitting in a beautiful pile. When the workmen had seen me take the first sack of dirt, they had laughed. “Help yourselves. It will save us the trouble of carting the dirt away. It’s a mystery, but when you dig a hole, there is always more dirt left than fits back in.”

  Now they watched with amusement as we began to scoop up the dirt.

  “Well, comrades, if you have a recipe that turns dirt into food, I wish you would share it.”

  “That’s just what we have,” I answered.

  When our containers were filled, we hurried back to the balcony. By the time we made our third trip, we had an audience. The little knot of people were too puzzled to make fun of us. After all that had happened in the city, no one could tell what strange thing might be done for what strange reason.

  One old man cried out, “Scoop up the whole city. It’s good for nothing.”

  At last we had two feet of dirt on the balcony. Although it was nearly midnight, it was still daylight. We sat around talking of what we would plant and what meals we would make from our harvest. Before Yelena and Olga left us, Yelena asked, “I know it’s frivolous, but could I plant just a few flowers?”

  “Why not?” I said. “Vegetables for the stomach, flowers for the heart.”

  The next morning I was up at five. “Where are you going?” Marya asked, half asleep.

  “I’m going to take the trolley across town to the soldiers’ stables where they keep their horses,” I said. “We need a little fertilizer for our vegetable garden.”

  She sat up. “You can’t mean to carry manure on the streetcar! People will laugh at you.”

  “Who will know what is in my bag?”

  “Everyone. It will smell!”

  “In the streetcar there will be plenty of smells. No one will notice.”

  It was early in the morning, so the streetcars were not so crowded. No one looked twice at my empty bags. The parade ground, when I reached it, was deserted, but you could see that plenty of mounted soldiers had been there. A young cavalry soldier came riding out from one of the stables. I wished the earth would swallow me up. I had wanted to be a soldier like he was, and here I was, gathering manure. The soldier only called, “Well, son, that’s the best gold of all. Plenty more where that came from.” He laughed and swaggered away. I hoped he would fall off his horse and break his neck.

  Back on the streetcar I struck up a conversation with the man next to me about how fine it was to have the streetcars running again. After a few minutes the man looked suspiciously at my bags and, getting up, hurriedly moved away
. Soon I had a whole section of the trolley to myself.

  When she finally stopped laughing at my story, Marya helped me work the manure into the soil. While I had been gone, she had picked up the seeds that were being given out. We made neat rows, planting lettuce, beans, carrots, tomatoes, turnips, and radishes. The seed packets were stuck on little sticks and looked like small, brightly colored flags. I had never put my hands deep into warm earth. It was a strange feeling, almost as though the earth were alive.

  Marya held up a package of morning glory seeds. “For Yelena. They can twine around the balcony railing with the cucumbers and squash and won’t take up any space.”

  When all the seeds were planted, I brought a pail of water from the canal, and after carefully watering our garden, I stared at the dirt, hoping a bit of green might show.

  That afternoon Yelena rushed into the apartment. “Georgi, come quickly! Help me!”

  I followed her into the Daskals’ apartment, afraid of some disaster, though there had been a look of joy on her face.

  She pointed. “There, there on the wall.”

  A yellow butterfly was fluttering about. The cocoon had opened, making a small miracle.

  “Help me to get it out the window,” Yelena said, “but don’t touch the fine dust on its wings.”

  Together we were a moving barrier, sending the butterfly closer and closer to the window until it flew out. Yelena burst into tears.

  I thought that unreasonable. “You wanted it to fly out the window,” I accused.

  “Yes, yes, I know, but I liked having it in the room with me. It was so…so flimsy, yet it survived the winter. Georgi, it was so encouraging.”

  Late in June we had our first vegetables from the balcony garden. Marya had urged me to wait a week or so before harvesting them. “The lettuce and radishes will be larger by then.”

  “But not so tender,” I said. Recklessly I picked the lettuce. When a row was empty, I quickly planted another row. Yelena came daily to examine the morning glories. Bits of color showed on the tips of their buds, and then one morning I looked out onto the balcony and there was a great blue trumpet-shaped flower, as blue as the bluest sky. This time it was I who ran excitedly for Yelena.

  Olga jumped up in alarm, but I said, “It’s only a flower.”

  We all stood looking out at the single flower that had bloomed with the first rays of the sun.

  “The flower is a miracle,” Yelena whispered.

  It had been a year since war had been declared. I thought that after all we had been through, it was amazing that a single flower could make us so happy.

  There were gardens like ours all over the city. The official gardens were in parks, but unofficial gardens were to be found everywhere, in pots on windowsills, along stairways, and on rooftops. Wherever you looked, something green was growing; and almost always, as in our own garden, there was a bright flower or two. With the vegetables, people began to appear a little healthier. Fyodor lost his haunted look. Yelena’s eyes were a clear blue again and, though I was too embarrassed to say it to her, the color of the morning glories.

  Olga was eating each evening with the other members of the orchestra. “Not bad,” she said. “Cabbage soup, and sometimes you can see the cabbage.” One day she arrived home hungry and in tears. “Eliasberg is so strict. If we are late for practice, our rations are taken from us. He makes no exceptions. I stopped for just a moment to have a word with a friend I met on the street. We congratulated each other on still being alive. I was five minutes late to rehearsal, and Eliasberg said, ‘No excuses’ and wouldn’t let me eat with the others.”

  I had just picked some beans from the balcony. Marya cooked them up for Olga, and she began to tell us how rehearsals were going.

  “We have to prop up the bass for Anna,” she said. “She doesn’t have the strength to hold it herself. And our soldier recruits are on duty into the night, so they fall asleep at rehearsals. I don’t know how, but we managed to get through the whole first movement of the symphony.”

  The war and the shelling and the bombing went on. On July 25, Navy Day, a group of German prisoners was paraded down the prospekt. It was the first we had seen of prisoners of war in Leningrad. They were a sad, bedraggled bunch, some of them younger than I was. People lined the streets to stare at them. A few shouted curses and threw things. Dmitry shook his fist at the prisoners, but most of us stood silently, too angry for words or the shaking of fists.

  The scene left a bitter taste in my mouth, so when Marya opened the door for me with a huge smile on her face, I said crossly, “If you believe there is anything to be happy about, you are living in another world.”

  Marya laughed. “You’ll soon change your tune, my boy.”

  Mama was there, Fyodor holding on to her skirts, Olga and Yelena close by. Mama threw her arms around me. “Georgi, where does that bitterness come from? When I left, I left a cheerful son.”

  I was instantly ashamed. Whatever I had suffered in the city, Mama had surely seen more terrible things at the front. “Where did you come from?” I asked, dancing her about the room, Fyodor laughing and spinning around after us. “How long are you here for?” It seemed too good to be true.

  “They are desperate for nurses. I am here to prepare some women for duty at the front. I’ll be here until their training is accomplished. Now you must tell me everything you have been up to.”

  Though I had written Mama, she wanted to hear all about the trips across Lake Ladoga.

  Mama said, “We heard at the front about the bravery of the truck drivers and how they saved the city with their cargos of food supplies. Let me tell you, Georgi, what you did was just as important as any soldier’s job. You risked your life every time you got into the truck and set out onto that treacherous ice.”

  I was embarrassed by Mama’s words. I had done only what many others had. Quickly I asked, “Mama, was it very bad at the hospital?”

  “Yes, Georgi, I can’t pretend it wasn’t. Every minute there was another tragedy, and the worst thing of all was that the soldiers were getting younger and younger—they were only boys.”

  She saw the look on my face. I was thinking that on September sixth I would be sixteen. I thought all the time of the soldiers fighting to save our country. I knew I would find a way to join the army.

  “Georgi, promise me you won’t go do anything you shouldn’t.”

  Perhaps it was a little dishonest, but I promised, for I didn’t think fighting for my country was something I shouldn’t do.

  Eager to change the subject, I said, “What do you think of our garden?” The door to the balcony was open, and you could see fat tomatoes ripening and the cucumbers hanging on the vines among the morning glories.

  “It’s a wonder. One of the hardest things to bear on the front was the ruined land. I think if I could have seen a field of wheat or the blossoms of a potato field, the misery would have been easier to endure. Where there had been farms, there was nothing but burned houses and bombed-out craters, no live thing and no green thing. I’ll be content to sit here by the hour and devour the sight of your beautiful garden.”

  That night we had a celebration for Mama’s return. Olga and Yelena and Andrei were all there. We picked our first ripe tomato, and I split it seven ways with much direction from everyone about how to make the slices even. Though the soup was thin, the bread was coarse, and afterward my stomach was still empty, I have never had a better meal.

  Olga left early one evening for the dress rehearsal. The concert was the following night, August 9. “Tonight will be the first time we have played the whole piece right through,” Olga said. “It takes an hour and a half, and there was not the strength to do it before.” Yelena and I sat together, waiting up for Olga, for there was a huge amount of bombing going on, but it was from our side. It sounded as if we wanted to destroy the whole German army in one night. When she came in, Olga was breathless with the night’s efforts and climbing the stairs.

  “We manage
d it!” she said, flinging herself down onto a chair. “We got through the whole symphony.”

  True to her word, the next night Olga had seats for Mama, Yelena, Marya, Andrei, and me. A friend from the Hermitage offered to care for Fyodor. We hurried through the little park with its statue of the poet Pushkin and into Symphony Hall. We were among the privileged, for though we were early, the hall was filling up and long lines were still forming at the ticket office. We were all wearing our best clothes, which were little more than rags. I had on my one good shirt, so thin you could read a book through it. Yelena wore the dress I remembered from our picnic at the Summer Garden.

  She laughed when I complemented her. “Georgi, there is more mending than material! I only hope it lasts through the concert. Certainly I can’t move an inch.”

  The hall was impressive with its red velvet and its tiers of boxes that had once held the aristocrats of St. Petersburg. I caught Mama looking up at what had been the royal box, where she had sat with the tsar and the empress and their children.

  Suddenly something startling happened. There was a brightness all about us. Electric lights had lit up the stage. It had been months since anyone had seen an electric light. All around me people gasped with surprise and pleasure. One by one the musicians walked onto the stage. You could see they were making a great effort to walk briskly and carry themselves well, but every few seconds one or the other would have to slow a bit or shift the weight of an instrument from one hand to another. The musicians were thin and shabby, but on their faces was an expression of great pride, as if they were kings and queens. There were cheers and applause. After they were seated, the conductor, Eliasberg, walked onto the stage amid great applause and bowed to the audience. He raised his baton. The hall was silent. The music began.

  Though for weeks I had heard Olga’s violin through the walls of our apartment, and though Mama always had on the broadcasts of the philharmonic orchestra, still I knew little about music. I liked popular tunes better, but the Shostakovich symphony pounded you over the head with its power. First came something that sounded like an evil army marching in the distance and then pounding drums, coming closer and closer. Next there was sad, waiting music followed by music that grew louder and more exciting. The excitement died down, and Olga, her face shining, played a violin solo. Yelena squeezed my arm so hard I nearly yelped. The music grew stronger and stronger and ended in a great victorious crash. We all felt it was the Russians defeating the German army.