3July 1941. With every minute of every hour the Germans get closer to
Leningrad. After waking up, we rush to the radios. Washing down the bitter
pills of war news with cold tea, we were slow to realize what was happening.
Nevertheless, we continued to believe that sooner or later victory would ap
pear before us with an apology.
Leningraders are hurriedly putting up barricades made of stone, metal, waste lumber, and of their fanatical love of the city. Camouflaging structures lean over architectural monuments with care.
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5 July 1941. The institute where I work is being evacuated to Saratov. Dima was given a military deferment and told to stay in Leningrad. That’s why he didn’t want me to leave. We fought. Hurtful and unfair words flew between us. We were helpless before them. They took on a life of their own, independent from ours. This was our first fight. Dima came home on his break. “I can’t work, knowing that you are angry,” he said. “Let’s make peace.” We made up, but something remained standing between us. We already were not the same as before the fight, and not the way we were before the war. We had changed with catastrophic speed.
July 1941. Bitter battles over Kiev! The Germans have taken Pskov! Leningrad is threatened!
July 1941. The Finnish army has begun an offensive toward Lake Ladoga. Apparently, together with the Germans, they want to encircle Leningrad.
July 1941. Lena has diarrhea and a fever. We’ll have to put off the evacuation for a few days. And in general, how is it possible to travel without sterile bottles? I just don’t know.
July 1941. The Germans have seized almost all of the Baltics and almost all of Belorussia. They have reached the West Dvina and the Dnieper.
July 1941. Hitler is a non-entity which imagines itself a genius. He is trying to force his “blitzkrieg” on the USSR with all of its expansive forests and absence of roads. But the USSR isn’t Poland. Sooner or later it will stick in his throat.
July 1941. My institute has left!
July 1941. Without warning, Lena’s nanny left for her village, appropriating some of my things.
—July 1941. The stores have re-opened. In two days all of the food was snatched up. The only thing left was millet. I bought two kilograms. (I hate millet porridge.)
8 August 1941. The enemy rushes toward Leningrad!
10 August 1941. With fantastic speed, the Germans have launched an offensive on the line of Novgorod, Chudov, and Tosno. Bitter as it is, we need to recognize that we were not prepared for Hitler’s aggression.
22 August 1941. Today, while walking with Lena to the children’s clinic for milk, I saw an appeal on the wall of a building: “Comrade Leningraders, dear friends!” I couldn’t read any further. I only pressed Lena closer to me. God, how I fear for her!
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23 August 1941. The Germans are between Bologoe and Tosno. The evacuation route runs through Ladoga. Lena is still sick, but we need to leave; waiting is not possible anymore.
August 1941. The road to Mga has been cut by the Germans. Convoys of Leningraders sat in a railroad yard for several days and then returned. Evacuation has ceased. I am to remain in Leningrad!
August 1941. People are fleeing from the suburbs into Leningrad, as into a mousetrap.
September 1941. I walked to the children’s clinic for milk. From afar I saw a huge hole in the façade of a four-story building. Next to the building stood a large crowd, staring at the hole. A part of a room was visible through the hole. I wanted to ask if there were any victims, but reconsidered. What was the point? War was just beginning for us. The casualties would be many, for sure. Each one of us must be ready for anything.
September 1941. There is still a crowd by the building, damaged by the shell.
September 1941. Almost all of the large-scale enterprises have been moved out of Leningrad.
—September 1941. Today Dima came by a kilogram of cookies somewhere. He was feeding them to Lena, stirring sugar into tea with a spoon. The sound of silver bells poured into the cup.
Suddenly, the silence of the city was torn by the roar of planes. I looked out the window. Low, just above the roofs, German bombers flew.
“Get down, quick!” cried Dima, leaping up from the table and tipping over a cup of tea on himself.
We ran downstairs for the building manager’s office; there was no bomb shelter in our building. A bomb explosion resounded. Then another, and another quite close. There was a jangling of broken glass.
The office was packed full of people. We had to stand in the stairwell, holding Lena in our arms. Only toward morning could we go back up to the fifth floor.
9September 1941. The extensive Badaev food stores have been bombed:
blackish-red rags of fire, blowing about in the wind, can be seen from all ends
of the city, burning sugar, groats, and flour.
—September, 1941. All roads to Leningrad are cut off. What will happen to us now?
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11September 1941. The bread ration has been reduced again. We now receive
850 grams.
September 1941. Wreaths of black smoke still rise above the Badaev stores.
September 1941. The Germans bomb Leningrad every night.
10 October 1941. Our supply of rusks is rapidly diminishing. Dima is probably eating them, even though we had agreed not to touch them except for the portions allocated for dinner.
20 October 1941. The Germans continue to bomb Leningrad, but almost no one hides in the bomb shelters. I sit at home. When I hear the whine of the bombers I merely cover Lena with my body in order to die together, should death come. This makes Dima angry at me: “You have no right to risk the life of the child.”
“But I haven’t the strength, try to understand. And if we are killed together, that’s not the worst thing that could happen.”
“That’s an idiotic philosophy,” he screams, “we have to preserve her life no matter what. Even if we ourselves perish.”
“Why? How will she live?”
We fight for a long time, each one of us holding to our own opinion.
15 November 1941. Starvation has set in. Our personal supplies have ended. An idiosyncratic Leningrad cuisine has been developed. We have learned to make buns out of mustard, soup out of yeast, meat patties out of horseradish, a sweet gruel out of carpenter’s glue.
10 December 1941. Almost all Leningraders have become dystrophic. They have swelled up and gleam as if covered with lacquer—this is first stage dystrophy. Others have become desiccated—second stage. Women walk about in pants. Men in women’s scarves. Everyone looks the same. Leningraders have lost all signs of gender and age.
12December 1941. Today I felt that something strange is happening to my
face. I brought a shard of a mirror from the kitchen and peered into it with cu
riosity. My face resembled that end of a pig where its tail grows.
“What a mug,” I spat into the mirror. Dima’s gaze slid down my face like a dead fish. He himself had bloated up long ago.
13December 1941. Lena is ill. Dima’s on sick call. He no longer helps me.
He doesn’t ever look after Lena. But he goes eagerly to the bakery and prob
ably eats the small pieces added to make the weight. We cook “soup” from
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the soft center of the bread. We eat it with tiny crusts. I pour Dima four serving spoons and two for myself. But for this I have the right to lick out the pot, though the soup is so thin, there is, in fact, nothing to lick.
Dima eats his “soup” with a teaspoon to prolong the eating. But today he ate his portion quicker than I. There was a hard crust in my soup which I chewed with pleasure. I sensed the hatred with which he watched my slowly moving jaws. “You’re eating slowly on purpose,” he
suddenly exclaimed malevolently. “You want to torment me.”
“Oh, no! Why would I do that?” I blurted, startled.
“Don’t justify yourself. I see everything.” He glared at me, his eyes glistening white with rage. I was terrified. Had he gone crazy? I quickly swallowed the crust and cleared the table. He kept grumbling, but I was silent. He wouldn’t believe me anyway. Lately, he has become very suspicious and irritable.
15 December 1941. As I was returning from the bakery, I saw a worker running toward me, his small fox-like head pushed forward. I began to move aside as he ran by, but he snatched the loaf of bread from me. I screamed and looked around, but he was gone. I looked at my empty hands with horror, slowly comprehending what had occurred. There wasn’t a crumb to eat at home. That meant that today and tomorrow, until we get our next ration of bread, we’d go hungry, and worst of all, there was no food for Lena.
My legs suddenly become heavy as irons, and I barely made it home. In the hallway I bumped into Dima and immediately told him everything. He gave me a wild look from underneath his sooty eyelashes, but said nothing.
17 December 1941. Our sense of smell has become very sharp: we now know the smell of sugar, of pearl-barley, of dried peas, and other “non-odorous” groceries. Dima hardly gets out of bed. He doesn’t even go for bread. This disturbs me—those who lie about die sooner.
“Don’t lie in bed all the time.” I sat down next to him and cautiously touched his sleeve. He threw me a cross glance.
“What would you have me do?”
“Go up into the attic. Maybe you’ll catch a cat up there?”
“So that’s it,” he said sarcastically.
The stupidity of what I had said suddenly struck me. All the cats had been eaten long ago. I furrowed my brow trying to think of something else.
“Maybe we ought to buy a mousetrap,” I said indecisively.
“What would that do?”
“We’d eat mice.”
“That’s an idea,” he exclaimed, sitting up.
“I think the mice would taste no worse than the cats,” said I, encouraged.
“Not a bit.”
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“Everyday we would have meat.” “That would be terrific,” he murmured indistinctly.
His animation was gone. He lay down again, his back to me, and pulled his hat over his ears. I understood that he had no faith in my plan.
19December 1941. Having gotten up before me, Dima circled the room re
peatedly, bumping into furniture and cursing. Finally he left, slamming the
door. He was gone the whole day.
“Where have you been?” I asked when he returned.
“Walking around,” he said vaguely. Suddenly, he winked and said, rapid-fire: “Looking for a little loaf of bread.”
“What are you saying?” I was frightened. He looked at me with curiosity.
“You seem to think that I’ve lost my mind.”
“No, no. But, after all . . .”
“Cut it out. I know that bread doesn’t lie in the streets. That’s not the point.”
“What is the point, then?”
He didn’t respond. I stood staring at him. Then he began to talk. At first slowly, then faster and faster. Suddenly he was seized by an incomprehensible agitation. He had encountered a child’s sled loaded with bread. A convoy of five men was escorting the sled. A crowd followed, fixedly staring at the bread. Dima fell in with the rest. The sled was unloaded at a bakery. The crowd attacked the empty cases, fighting for crumbs. He found a large crust trampled into the snow. But some urchin grabbed the crust from Dima’s hands. This vile snot-nose began to chew it, drooling and chomping. An insane rage seized Dima. Grabbing the kid by the scruff of the neck, he began to shake him convulsively. The kid’s head on its thin neck began to flail back and forth like that of a Petrushka doll. But he continued chewing hastily, his eyes closed.
“It’s all gone, all gone, uncle! Look!” he shouted suddenly, opening his mouth wide. Dima threw the kid on the ground. He was ready to kill him. But fortunately, a clerk rolled out of the store like a breakfast bun.
“Kish! Kish!” he shouted, waving his arms.
“As if humans were sparrows,” noted Dima with offense, “and the most amazing thing is that no one pasted that scoundrel in the face.” He became painfully pensive and stared at one spot.
Sensing that he was holding something back, I looked at him quizzically. But Dima sat disconnected from everything, seeing nothing and hearing nothing. This would happen to him more and more.
20December 1941. Dima was gone again, having sharpened the stick which
served him as a walking cane. He was back in about an hour. His appearance
was strange. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked inadvertently.
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“Nothing . . . I’m just very hungry,” he said, his face in a weepy grimace.
I shrugged my shoulders. We simply did not talk about hunger anymore: it was our normal condition. Suddenly he broke into a convulsive laughter, pulled a loaf of bread from under his clothes, and threw it in my lap. “Here, you silly thing, eat,” he said tenderly.
I stared at the bread, dumbstruck. When my stupor passed and we ate our fill, he said: “I found a bakery where the bread is easy to steal. It’s very dark there.”
“Steal?”
“Yes, steal, of course. You don’t think that they gave me this loaf of bread as a gift.”
I was silent. Little flames of anxiety began to dance in the depth of his pupils. And suddenly a malevolent vexation scorched his face. Rubbing his face with the palms of his hands, he continued. It turned out that it wasn’t all that difficult. You had to get unobtrusively to the counter, wait for the right moment, and quickly spear a loaf with the stick. That was it.
When the bread was under his coat filling his senses with its hot exhalation, Dima wanted to laugh, shout, and dance with joy. But he forced himself to leisurely leave the bakery, maintaining external calm.
Now, telling me this, he laughed like a madman. I looked at him with horror. What could I say? That stealing was wrong? That would have been idiotic. So, I only said: “Be more careful.”
28 December 1941. The trams are not running. Children’s sleds are the only means of transport. They move along the streets in endless convoys. They carry planks, men, corpses.
There are corpses everywhere. In these times death is not just an occasional guest. People have become accustomed to death. It constantly bumps up against the living. People die easily, simply, without tears. The dead are wrapped in bed sheets, tied with rope and pulled to the cemetery where they are laid in rows. There they are buried in common pits.
6 January 1942. Dima doesn’t steal bread anymore. For days on end he lies in bed, his face to the wall, saying nothing. His face is covered with a thick layer of soot; even his fine, fair eyelashes have become thick and black [from the makeshift, un-vented wood stove]. I cannot imagine that he was once clean, well-groomed, and proper. And I, of course, am not much cleaner than he is. We are both tormented by lice. We sleep together—there’s only one bed in the room—but even through the cotton wadded overcoats we shun each other’s touch.
9 January 1942. We live in our room as in an ark, seeing nothing, encountering no one. We don’t even know the news from the front. We only get incidental bits of news while standing in the queues. Dima and I have become a
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single organism. Illness, antipathy, the foul mood of one is immediately reflected in the other. At the same time we have never been as far apart as we are now. Each one silently struggles with his own suffering. In this we cannot help each other. After all, I only sense my own heart (only I hear its beating), . . . my own stomach (only I feel its gnawing emptiness), . . . am aware of my brain (only I bear all the weight of unexpressed thoughts). Only I
can coerce them to endure. We have come to understand that a human being must know how to struggle with life and death alone.
10 January 1942. Lena has unlearned how to speak. She can no longer stand or even sit. Her skin hangs in folds as if she had been stuffed into a cloak much too big for her. She quietly sings to herself all the time; evidently, asking for food.
Today I bought her some toys: a matreshka nesting doll, a clown and a stuffed bear. They were seated on her bed waiting for her to awaken. Upon seeing them, Lena sobbed loudly and scattered them over the floor. Of course, it was a stupid idea.
I kissed her hungry wolf-cub eyes. Looking at her soot-covered face, I myself wanted to howl like a dying she-wolf. I could not lighten her suffering with anything but kisses.
24January 1942. It is 40 degrees below zero.
The camouflage curtain is frozen to the window. The room is in semi-
darkness. The walls, smeared with oil-base paint, are clammy. Slim streams
of water run down to the floor.
Setting off for bread, I wrapped myself in Lena’s flanelette blanket, leaving only a slit for my eyes.
Outside, I winced, so bright was the sky. Next to the entryway a tree covered with snow and frost glistened unbearably.
Under the tree lay two bodies, haphazardly wrapped in bed sheets. The bare feet of one of them protruded from under the sheet, the big toes at an odd angle.
25January 1942. The plumbing no longer works. We have to go to the Neva
River for water. Due to the lack of water, the central baking plant has stopped
working. Thousands of Leningraders who could still get about crawled out of
their burrows and, having formed a human chain from river to bakery, passed
buckets of water to each other with their frozen hands.
The Russian Century Page 35