The Siege (9 page)

‘Just about sums it all up, doesn’t it? “I’m not wasting bloody sausage.”‘

And Evgenia laughed, showing her white teeth.

But who could explain Evgenia to this young man who has never met her? Evgenia at the Baltic station, when their train had clanked into the platform at last, after spending hours in a siding just outside the city. The crowd of women clung together, even after they’d all got off the train. It was a warm morning, but they were shivering. In the everydayness of the station their filthy clothes and mud-caked boots looked terrible, though they’d seemed perfectly normal before. They were so tired that the station appeared like an hallucination of itself. But they were still in it together, a team, until a woman close to Anna said quietly, ‘Well, no use me hanging about here,’ picked up her pack, and trudged off alone, towards one of the exits.

They didn’t belong to one another any more. There were no orders to follow, no more digging and shovelling and entrenching to be done.

‘Not for now, anyway,’ said Evgenia, ‘though I reckon they’ll be needing us again, before long.’

Her red plait was coming undone, and her freckled skin was grimy.

‘So you go back to your place, and I’ll go back to mine,’ said Evgenia, ‘and maybe we’ll meet again.’ ‘Wait, I’ll give you my address.’

But Evgenia shrugged. ‘No need for that. If we’re meant to come together, we’ll come together. I don’t believe in all that giving addresses and keeping in touch.’

‘Don’t waste bloody sausage, that’s what I say,’ said Anna.

Evgenia laughed. Still laughing, she turned and plunged into the crowd, her red plait slapping between her shoulder blades as it unravelled. Suddenly she turned and bawled back:

‘And don’t let those hands get soft! Piss on your blisters!’

‘They pulled us back all along the line,’ says Anna to Andrei. ‘They couldn’t use us there any more, so we came home. I don’t know what’s going to happen next.’

‘We’ll consolidate –’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you know them? Those six who were killed, I mean. Were they friends of yours?’

‘Not really. Only one, who was killed earlier on. She was like a child, even though she was fifteen. She should never have been out there. She used to get me to brush her hair for her.’

‘You must have been close,’ says Andrei, trying to imagine the degree of intimacy which would be required before he brushed someone else’s hair. But of course, with women, it’s different.

‘No, I didn’t like her much. She was pretty, but she was spoiled. You know the type. Father in the Comintern, food parcels delivered to the apartment, summer camp at government resorts. I don’t suppose she’d ever stood in a queue in her life. But it wasn’t her fault.

‘I keep on thinking about her. You know the way you are at fifteen. Too much of some things, and not enough of others. Nothing had begun to add up for her, she wasn’t even really a person yet, and then she was dead. And we wrapped her up in a waiting-room curtain, with roses all over it. The worst thing is that the roses looked so terrible. As big as cabbages, and the colour of mud.’

‘Don’t think about it.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’ll stick. You can’t go on remembering the curtains.’

‘Maybe it should stick.’

‘But not in you.’

He looks up at her, straight at her, intimate. No one looks at her like that. Even the nursery children, who long for her attention and are always trying to get as close to her as they can. When she tells them stories they creep forward, snuggling against her legs, patting her skirt. They notice everything about her. If she cuts her hair, or wears a new colour, or has had a bad night, they’ll pick it up at once.

‘Anna Mikhailovna, why are you looking in that face? Are you sad?’

She is their support system during the long days. They must check all the changes in her, in order to reassure themselves that she is still the same. And perhaps her father’s expression, when he looks at her, is not so very different. She is used to that kind of attention, and she can deal with it. But Andrei’s look makes her uncertain. He’s curious. He wants to know more. His gaze probes and grows close. Anna feels the warmth of her own skin, and the soft touch of her cotton wrapper on her thighs.

‘Have some more tea,’ she says, to restore her balance. She always feels safer when she is doing things for people. But he doesn’t seem to hear.

‘You have to protect yourself,’ he goes on. ‘Not become heartless, I don’t mean that. But when I first went on the wards, there were things that I couldn’t get out of my head for weeks. After a while I realized it wasn’t possible to be a doctor that way. You have to keep something inside yourself, that can’t be used up and taken away from you.’

‘And you’ve got that?’

‘I’m trying to. I suppose it’s the same for you, working in a nursery, with all those children. Your father told me about it. You must have had to work out a way of responding to them without being eaten alive.’

‘You’re right. But how strange that you knew it. Most people – my father, for instance – can’t see that my work involves anything of the kind. They see the routine and all the physical stuff you have to do –
all that drudgery,
he calls it – but they don’t imagine there can be any challenges. We go on and on about the workers, but because we’re all supposed to be improving ourselves all the time, and getting qualifications and making progress, we still can’t really value work unless it has status. So although my boss doesn’t understand anything about the children at all – in fact she doesn’t even like them – she’s the one who fills in the reports and makes decisions. And everyone accepts that this is the way it should be.’

‘Or maybe just that this is the way it is.’

‘It’s worse than that. We bow down to diplomas as if they were icons.’

‘Perhaps you’re right…’

‘No. I’m just prejudiced because I haven’t got any. Diplomas, I mean. And I’m sure I’ll be as bad as everyone else when it comes to Kolya. I’ll be shoving him on to get as many qualifications as he can. It won’t be hard for him. He can read already. He’s a real Levin.’

‘And you’re not?’

‘No, I’m not like them. All the Levins do brilliantly at school, and they love writing. Nothing is quite real to my father until he’s written it down. But I was nothing special at school.’

‘Like me.’

‘You’re a medical student.’

‘Yes, but I have to work at it. You wouldn’t believe how I have to work. But once we’re applying the theory, I’m fine. It’s a great feeling when patients come in and you notice a tiny thing about them – the colour of their eyeballs, or the way they stoop to one side. Even before they’ve started telling you what’s wrong, you’ve got an idea. That’s what I like.’

‘Yes.’

Without smiling, they exchange a glow of recognition. She watches his hands as he drinks the last of the tea. They are strong and broad, with long fingers. His hands look as if they know things. In the heat of the kitchen he’s unbuttoned his collar. There is a triangle of deep sunburn, and then a line of paler skin, fine and close-grained.

He puts down the glass, takes a small piece of folded paper from his breast-pocket and hands it to her.

‘This is the ward, and this is the name of the surgeon in charge. I’ve written it all down. You can come later. He’ll be awake then. But don’t be alarmed if he’s running a fever. It’s very common, at this stage, and it doesn’t mean there’s an infection.’

‘Of course, I understand,’ she says, even nodding her head as if to show her readiness and understanding. What is the matter with her? Why can’t she behave naturally? And why is she wearing this ugly old cotton wrapper of her mother’s? And above all why is she so conscious of the fabric against her nipples, rubbing them a little every time she changes position, making them harden until she’s afraid he’ll see their outline?

‘Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye.’

‘Perhaps, when you come to visit your father –’

‘I should have thanked you. It was such a shock when you came, and I thought you might have been –’

‘It was stupid to come so early. I ought to have thought. It was just that I wanted to tell you straight away that he was all right.’

He is holding her hand. Her nails are broken, and there are raised welts of callous across her palm. He doesn’t look, but he can feel them. He thinks of her digging with those hands. Without meaning to, he folds her fingers gently into a fist.

Well, goodbye.’

‘Yes.’

But they don’t separate. They stand close, her hand in Andrei’s. He takes her other hand. They stand like dancers: she sways a little, to music he almost believes she can hear. She is warm, fluid, soft.

‘Do you like dancing?’

‘Yes.’

‘Me too.’

We’ll go one night, shall we? If the bands are still playing.’ ‘They’re still playing at the Astoria. We could go there. You have to queue, but it’s worth it.’ ‘All right.’

They smile, too close, blindly. They want oblivion. They want night, and dancing.

Well, goodbye.’

‘Goodbye.’

Dancing in the dark. That’s what they call it. Both of us together. I’ve never done it. Once I nearly did but I thought of Kolya. I thought, what if I get pregnant, and die?

I want to shut my eyes with him. Andrei Mikhailovich Alekseyev. Imagine, both our fathers are called Mikhail.

I want to shut my eyes with him. I want to see black velvet in front of us, and prickly stars. I don’t want to make tea for him, or take care of him. I want to dance in the dark with him. Can he tell that I want that?

11

‘Elizaveta Antonovna, two more unaccompanied children –’

‘Can’t you see I’m in the middle of important calculations?’ snaps Elizaveta Antonovna. The tip of her nose twitches. ‘Now I’ll have to add up these columns again. Take them into Hall Two with the other processed children, but for pity’s sake don’t go and mix them up with the unprocessed groups. And if you could
kindly
stop those boys running in and out of the end room. I can’t concentrate with all this noise.’

Elizaveta Antonovna ought to be in her element. She hasn’t had her clothes off for two days, as she’s already told Anna several times this morning. She just grabs a few hours’ sleep, then carries on. And where’s Anna been? Oh yes, of course, working on defences. But Elizaveta Antonovna doesn’t want to hear about that. What matters is what’s happening here, where she is.

‘So you’re back, are you? About time.’ Building defences has got nothing to do with the all-important crisis that circles around the vital figure of Elizaveta Antonovna. Lists, figures, snatching up of telephones, respectful listening to superiors and barking of orders at inferiors, that’s Elizaveta Antonovna.

The telephone cord has got twisted around the stand of her in-tray. Let her snatch it up one more time, prays Anna. Let the cord pull tight and the tray slide off the edge of her desk. Let it fall on the floor and scatter all her important papers so that she’s got to spend an hour putting them in order and she won’t be able to stop us getting on with the work. But Elizaveta Antonovna notices the cord, frowns, untwists it.

Elizaveta Antonovna has been seconded to the District Evacuation Centre, and now she’s battling against all odds to fulfil her quota of processed children. Hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of children, who are now to be evacuated from Leningrad as soon as possible, into the deep rear. The Germans are going to attack from the air, everyone says. It could be worse than the blitz on London. Suddenly there is a cityful of children to be herded into buses and trams for the railway station.

Never has there been such an opportunity for lists, forms, quotas, processing and delegation. Rarely has a knowledge of the needs of children been of so little use. It’s a handicap, in fact.

‘I can’t go with them, I’m an essential worker. Here, take them. Remember, Nyusha, keep a hold of her hand, don’t let her run around or gobble up all her sandwiches before you even get on the train. Do what the lady tells you and you’ll soon be back home again. Quick now.’

You would have thought she felt nothing, but for the staring pallor of her face. The children, too, seemed numb. They were stuffed into their winter coats, as round as little cabbages. The little one held a bit of grey cloth, and stroked its silky edge against her face.

‘Put that back in your pocket.
Only when you’re in bed,
remember, or they’ll take it off you.’

The little girl whipped the cloth into her pocket, and huddled against Nyusha.

‘What’s this lady going to think of you, carrying round a bit of dirty old rag?’

The mother spat on her handkerchief, bent down, and briskly polished her daughters’ faces. ‘There. There’s good girls. Now then –’

But as she straightened up, Anna saw her face, tight with anguish.

She whispered, ‘Is it true what they say, that they’re bombing the railways the kids are going on?’

‘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 be 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.’