The Siege (5 page)

I bet you are, thinks Anna. Dark, rich honey, full of calories and vitamins. Honey that will last all winter. You’ll keep it for yourselves. You’re not stupid. But I am. What a fool I am, wasting time, standing here talking to you. We ought to be back in Leningrad, looking out for ourselves, the way you are. They’ll all be in the streets by now, stripping the shops bare. There’ll be nothing left. If Dad takes Kolya, and I get back as fast as I can on the bike –

‘Father!’ she says. ‘We must leave straight away. We’ve got to get back to Leningrad as soon as we can.’

6

(Extract from the diary of Mikhail Ilyich Levin.)

30
TH JUNE

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. We are told that there is no real threat to the city. The bulletins may not be good, but that’s only temporary. Our forces will turn back the German aggressors, and run them all the way to Berlin. And we both believe this, and don’t believe it. The locusts have already settled on the shops, stripping the shelves clean of oil, buckwheat, sugar, dried peas, tinned goods: anything that will keep. Prices in the market are doubling and trebling.

My poor Anna was beside herself when we got back from the country to find the local shops already empty. However, she’s made up for it since, pedalling from one side of the city to the other, bargaining in the market, chasing each fresh rumour of a sausage delivery. Usually these turn out to be only rumours. If the goods actually exist, they are much too expensive for us to buy them.

The banks closed down as well, because people were taking all their money out in order to stuff it under their mattresses for the duration. Although they’ve re-opened now, you can’t withdraw more than a certain amount. But for a while nobody could get at their savings at all, not a single rouble of it. We’ve got no savings left anyway, but it was depressing to see such crowds, their faces animal and desperate, waving their pass-books, fighting past each other to get to the bank doors. For once our lack of money was a blessing. Imagine if I’d felt it was my duty to Anna and Kolya to shove everyone else out of the way and yell and bang on the bank doors along with the rest of them until I was chased off by the police.

You have a certain idea of yourself: what you’ll do, and what you won’t do. It’s hard enough to hold on to it.

Anna doesn’t know whether they’ll keep the nursery open or not. People have been sending their children out of the city since the first Sunday, and now organized evacuation is starting. No one seems sure where the children are going. South of the city, somewhere, out in the country where they’ll be safe from the bombing. But Kolya is staying here. I haven’t got the slightest faith in our ‘organization’. There’ll be some sort of muddle, that’s for sure, and I don’t want Kolya caught up in it. We’re waiting, all of us, to see what happens.

(Why do I keep writing ‘we’? I don’t know. These past years, I’d come to believe that ‘we’ had finally disintegrated. Fear does that. And by the time we got to the Yezhov years we hardly dared be human in public. Old friends made excuses when they met you on the street, or they scuttled past you, heads down. You’d ask for news of a former colleague. There’d be a quick glance round, perhaps a whispered, ‘Haven’t you heard?’ You’d know that your colleague had evaporated.)

But here we are, looking into the face of something even more terrifying than the misery we’ve been able to pile up for ourselves. We scurry about like ants with a stick poked into their ant-heap. Why the stick’s been poked, we don’t know, but our lives and houses are upside-down just the same. That’s what war means: blunders and muddle, and doing things without understanding why you’re doing them. A long time later, if you’re lucky, someone comes along and writes things down so that they make sense, and calls his story history.

This I should not be writing down. How can a man with children be so criminally irresponsible? But there’s something deep within me that says: Write, whatever happens.

So I keep on writing. I have a little place under the floorboards, big enough to hold a couple of these notebooks. There’s a rug over the floorboards, and a table covered with work planted on top of it. Anna would never dream of disturbing my work.

We’ve had a few siren alerts, but no bombing so far. Everyone’s talking about London, and the aerial bombardment there. Are we going to get the same? The barrage balloons are up, there are fire-fighting units being trained everywhere, and every apartment block has a kid perched on the roof with a bucket of sand to throw on to incendiary devices. Anna is on the fire-watch rota for our building. Nothing stops her. When she gets back from scouring the city for food, she starts pasting paper strips crisscross over all the windows, according to instructions. The rooms aren’t exactly gloomy, but it’s nothing like the light of a June day.

Anna and Kolya sleep in their clothes, in case of a raid, but I still get undressed. I sleep badly anyway – why make things worse? If there’s an air-raid, who’s going to care about Mikhail Ilyich’s patched vest? We’ll be too busy ‘making our way to shelter in an orderly fashion’. There aren’t enough places in the air-raid shelters, though, so I doubt if I’ll bother to go.

And yet nothing happens. We’re all waiting. Was it like this in London? Leningrad still floats in its usual sea of summer calm. Any minute now the bands will strike up in the parks, the ice-cream girls will come out, and everyone will start talking about swimming and rowing and berry-picking in the forest. That still seems like reality. War is the dream from which we could wake, if we made enough effort.

This morning I went out at five o’clock and walked along the embankment, then down the Nevsky. I walked for hours, it seemed, but I wasn’t hungry, and I didn’t grow tired. I couldn’t have swallowed anything, not even a sip of tea. I must write this down, although it’s almost impossible to put into words. These heightened states all sound banal once you write them down. For instance, there’s nothing more tedious than lovers writing about being in love. You need to be outside the experience, not caught inside it. And for once it seems I’m caught inside.

But this is what happened as I walked. The last years fell away. I saw only our city, as it always was and always will be. It was as beautiful as before, but it wasn’t fierce any longer, or proud. Rather than crushing us down, it seemed to be asking for our protection. Everything looked newborn, as if the city had dipped itself into the waters of the Neva overnight and then risen again, naked and vulnerable, with water streaming from it. As if to say,
You know that all my masterpieces are built on bones, but I am human, too.
Even the columns of the Kazan cathedral no longer looked like elephants’ feet ready to crush the human ants that run this way and that way, trying to escape.

I stood there for a long time, looking at Kutuzov’s statue. There he was, with his sword still pointing at Napoleon’s army, ready to drive it back. And he drove it back. He played his part. He saved Russia, there’s no arguing with that. Kutuzov, along with General Hunger and General Winter.

There were just the two of us, me and Kutuzov. It’s all very well for you, I thought. I may even have said something aloud. You are stone. You are safe inside history. But we are still flesh, trapped in a present we don’t understand, and being shoved towards a future we can’t predict. The times are scared, and so are we. If only I could forget what human blood smells like. Hot, and rank. And then after a while, as it sinks into the ground, it changes and begins to smell of iron. You knew all about that, didn’t you, Kutuzov? All those men you ploughed into the earth, like a farmer.

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.’

They 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?’