‘He’s dying.’
‘You didn’t have to tell me. I knew without you even telling me,’ says Kolya coldly. He bends over the chess pieces, excluding the rest of the room. ‘Would you like another apple? You’re still hungry, aren’t you? Come on, boy, co-ome on. Don’t be frightened.’ He picks up the paper knight on horseback, holds him close to his lips and disappears with him under the blankets. As Mikhail continues to snore, they listen to Kolya whispering to his little horse.
24
It’s on her way back from the bread queue that Anna meets Fedya, dragging his loaded sledge. For once he doesn’t try to avoid her, but stops and stands planted in the snow before her. There they are, for the first time, face to face like real neighbours. Hunger has eaten out hollows in his face, and greyed his skin.
‘I took our little one to the cemetery today,’ he says. ‘Zina wanted to come, but she wasn’t equal to it.’
There is nothing to be said. It was just a few months ago that Zina came out on to the landing to show Anna the new baby, swaddled deep in his cream woollen shawl, fists crossed on his chest. It was another world. Sunlight glowed outside the dirty landing window that no one could climb high enough to clean. Anna leaned over the baby and smelled his warm, damp, powdery smell.
It should have happened again and again, for years. Zina would have come out on to the landing with the latest bulletins, when Fedya was safely out of the way. Vanka’s first tooth, Vanka pulling himself up on the furniture, Vanka’s first tantrum. He rolled over today, all on his own. When I turned around, there he was, lying on his tummy.
He knows Fedya already. He always gets excited when his daddy comes home, don’t you, Vanka?
He’s dribbling so much – look, this jacket’s soaked through. Do you think he can be getting a tooth already?
But little Vanka, lifeless as wood, has already joined the queue at the cemetery. Not many people get buried these days, with the ground like iron. Bodies pile up in the frost, outside the cemetery gates. Some don’t even get that far. They stay at home in their beds, because no one has the strength to drag them to the cemetery. The living rig a curtain round the dead, in their corner of the room.
‘I’m so sorry,’ says Anna. Fedya spreads his hands and looks down at them as if he’s surprised they’re empty. Then he clears his throat.
‘There’s an apartment building down by the Baltic station that’s been shelled. Overlooking the canal. A mate of mine told me about it when I was on my way back from the cemetery. It was on fire, but they managed to put the worst of it out before the whole building went up. There’s a reception floor made of wooden blocks. Most of it’s still all right.’
Now that he says it, she can smell the stink of charred wood. He’s lashed a blanket over his heaped sledge.
‘Was there much left?’ she asks.
‘Could be as much as a sledge-load, if you get a move on. The building’s safe, but watch out for yourself. There’ve been a couple of fights over there already. One guy had a knife.’
‘Thanks.’
His big hands pull at the sledge ropes. ‘Zina’s very taken with that likeness you did of our Vanka. She keeps it by her all the time. I’ve got to get back to the works now, but I’ll be leaving her with the wood. And she’s got her ration card safe.’ He clears his throat again. ‘She wanted to keep the baby at home with her, so I had to tell her it wasn’t the proper thing. She’s not herself. But I don’t know when I’ll be able to get home again. The way we’re fixed at the works, there’s no time for that. You get a few hours’ kip if you’re lucky, then back on shift.’
They are still rolling tanks off the line at the Kirov works, she knows, even though the workers there are dying like everyone else. Fedya has become exactly the kind of heroic worker Zina’s always believed him to be. He’s taken his baby son to the cemetery, and now he’ll go straight back to work.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on her,’ says Anna. She looks straight at him. ‘You know Zina’s always welcome to come in to us, if she wants.’
Fedya looks down at his hands, with the delicacy of a decent man. She always knew he was that. ‘No. No, best she doesn’t. She’ll be all right on her own.’
‘If you say so. My father’s dying, so maybe you’re right.’
He nods. ‘Zina told me.’
But he can’t do it, even now, thinks Anna, watching him. He can’t bring himself to say he’s sorry that my father’s dying.
‘Those Fascist bastards don’t know what’s coming to them, excuse my language. They don’t know what they’ve got themselves into.’
‘We’ll find them space in Russian earthy Anna says.
‘You’re right there.’
‘It wasn’t me who said it. It was Pushkin.’
‘Well, he knew what he was talking about. There’s space all right. We’ll bury them.’
They stare at each other in sudden, savage unity.
‘You don’t go down as far as the station, it’s on this side of the canal – the Obvodny. You can’t miss it.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Zina told me what you did for our little one about the sugar.’
‘It wasn’t much.’
Fedya’s fists clench on the rope. ‘Nothing could’ve helped him. They made sure of that. They might as well have put their hands round his throat and squeezed. Our Vanka didn’t stand a chance.’
Back in the apartment, Anna and Marina calculate. Her father’s breaths are noisier now, more widely spaced. A thread of pulse jumps in his wrist. Before Andrei left for the hospital, he raised Mikhail up on a heap of pillows, to ease his breathing. Mikhail’s skin is darkening, growing dusky around mouth and nose.
‘It’ll take me at least an hour to get there,’ says Anna. ‘Maybe more. I’ll have to stop and rest. And then I’ve got to dig the blocks out…’
‘Is it worth it? You’ll wear yourself out, and there might not be any wood left by the time you get there.’
‘We’ve got to get fuel. I’ll take some of my ration with me.’
‘Here, have this half-slice before you go.’
‘I can’t take your bread, Marina.’
Because once that starts, it’s the end. If you even let yourself begin to imagine getting more than your own ration, it’s like rousing up a wolf inside you. People collapse in the street, and straight away there’s someone else on top of them, going through their pockets for bread or a ration card. If you go too close, they snarl you away.
You could lie all night long, dreaming of the crust you’ve put aside for Kolya when he wakes up. Anything, so that he won’t cry and cry. Without knowing it, your hand could slip out and touch the surface of the bread. The bread feels as warm as life in the room’s glacial midnight. Just a touch can’t do any harm, you’ll tell yourself. So you touch it. Your fingers work away at the rough surface. A few crumbs loosen and are carried to your mouth on a finger damp with saliva. In the morning the bread’s gone, your hand is empty, and Kolya cries.
‘Go on, take it, Anna. Think of all the calories you’re burning, getting our bread and now our wood. You’re keeping us alive. And what if you were to collapse out there, what would become of us all?’
She should keep on refusing, but she doesn’t. This morning, on the way to the bakery, she found herself leaning against a wall, pressing her forehead into it. Already the cold of the stone was branching into her brain, making its home there and telling her she should rest, rest, until cold became warmth and sent her to sleep. The silence of the city gathered around her, fold after fold. The city put its hands over her lips. Listen. Can’t you hear that we’re all sleeping? Why wear yourself out struggling, when you could rest, too? Come here. Lie down.
But she crushed a handful of snow and rubbed it over the inside of her wrists until she couldn’t hear the voice any more. She tricked herself by saying she would only walk ten steps, then she would rest again. She counted the steps as she used to count them with Kolya. And one,
and two, and three, and four… When she got to ten she didn’t stop, but counted another ten steps, and another, until she reached the bakery.
Marina’s bread dissolves on her tongue. Marina watches in a way that seems familiar, although Anna can’t place it. That fiercely focused gaze, those lips working a little, as if Marina is eating too, nourishing herself on what she’s given away…
*
It’s half past two, and already growing dark, by the time Anna sets out with Kolya’s empty sledge bumping behind her. She has a couple of empty sacks too, and some twine to tie them on to the sledge once they’re filled. It’s only a child’s sledge, but it’ll carry a fair load.
The streets are almost empty. She passes the hump of a body frozen into a doorway, covered with drifted snow. It looks like a bag of rubbish, but Anna knows it’s a body because she saw it before the snow hid it. It’s an old woman. Maybe she stopped to rest on the way back from fetching her ration. Anna doesn’t like going past the park any more. There are people sitting on benches, swathed in snow, planted like bulbs to wait for spring. They stay there day after day. No one comes to take them away.
It’s cold, so cold. Anna adjusts the scarf she has wound around her face. She’ll rest for a couple of minutes. No longer than that, because in her weakened state the cold could easily finish her off. The scorching frost goes down into her lungs like a knife. She coughs, gasps, shifts her weight from foot to foot, and bats her hands together. Her gloved hands make a muffled, ghostly sound. She thinks of the bulbs under their coverlet of snow, and shivers.
Nothing seems surprising any more, not even the bodies piled by the Karpovka canal, or outside the cemeteries. Andrei has told her about them. They are like two walls on either side of the road. It is not surprising that her father is dying while Andrei makes his way to the hospital to work, leaning on the cherry-wood stick which he needs more than Anna does now. On his swollen legs the skin is drawn and shiny. He labours on, as she does, ten steps and then ten steps more, passing the bodies of the dead. They lie exposed, charred by frost until the next snowfall covers them.
Being dead is normal. You have to patrol yourself all the time, to stop yourself slipping over the border between this world and the next. If you let go, and sit down in no man’s land, the snipers of cold and hunger will soon finish you off.
She walks on through lifeless silence. There are no dogs, no pigeons, no cats, no plump, rosy-cheeked children screaming with excitement as their sledges hiss over the frozen snow. And then home to a bowl of hot milk, or a piece of gingerbread as big as your hand.
Anna’s stomach gripes, and she swallows down the taste in her mouth. Her father has always chewed liquorice root to keep his teeth strong and white. She found two sticks of it in his camphor-wood box, when she was taking down the box to burn it. She made Kolya chew on the liquorice root too, although he cried and said his teeth hurt and there was blood in his mouth. When she felt his gums, he was right. There was blood on her fingers, and his front teeth were loose. Perhaps his second teeth were pushing them out? After all, at Kolya’s age you expect wobbly teeth.
The liquorice root has become yellow and stringy, and it hardly has any taste left, but they keep on chewing it. It’s good to have something in your mouth. There are three things which she can give to Kolya when he cries with hunger and there is no food. One is the liquorice root. The second is a strip cut from an old leather school-bag. Anna has already boiled the leather for stock, but the softened, chewy strips that remain seem to comfort Kolya, and perhaps there is still some goodness in them. The last thing she offers, when everything else has failed, is her own finger. He sucks it, clutching her hand with both his hands, and sometimes he goes to sleep.
‘Yes, sleep,’ says Anna aloud as the image of Kolya dissolves into the snow. ‘Sleep all winter and wake up when spring’s come.’
If only she could do that for him. Wrap him up like a squirrel and put him to sleep until all this is over. It’s unbearable, the way he wakes up and tells her, ‘Anna, my stomach hurts,’ as if she doesn’t already know. He looks at her, accusing her.
‘Guess what, Kolya, it’s time for your honey,’ she says, and he follows her with his eyes as the honey jar comes out, and the special pewter spoon, chosen because it is the smallest they have. But the honey won’t last for ever. What about when it’s gone, and there’s nothing left to distract him with, at the start of a day which will only bring him two slices of bread and a couple of hours’ warmth?
‘Can’t I have two spoonfuls? Just today? I promise I won’t ask for it tomorrow,’ he bargains. Calculation flashes in his eyes. Hunger’s making him older than he should be.
She shakes her head. ‘We’ve got to make it last, Kolya.’ The life dies out of his face and he watches as she puts the honey high up, out of reach and out of sight. He’s a good boy. But one day he clawed at her legs, trying to drag her down so that he could climb and get at the honey.
Those snow devils are dancing again. It’s only the wind spinning off the drifts. But the devils have faces, and they take on the shapes of people she knows. There’s Evgenia, tossing a clod of earth over her shoulder. There’s Katya, shaking back her hair. There’s her father, sharp against the evening sun, holding a trout he’s caught.
I’m not going crazy, it’s just hunger. Let’s see what I can remember. Facts. Measles can be identified by white spots on the inside of the mouth. What are those spots called? Elizaveta Antonovna always checks in the mouth if one of the children develops a rash with fever. Sometimes their mothers bring them in with fever, and rush off before we can call them back. But you can’t blame the mothers too much: they have to work. They can’t take endless days off. The children never disobey Elizaveta Antonovna when she tells them to open their mouths so she can look inside.
‘Hmm. I thought so. Koplik’s spots. Isolate this child immediately, or we’ll have an epidemic in the nursery.’
And off she goes to fill in her report in triplicate, leaving the child standing there, flushed and dazed, mouth still open.
‘It’s all right, you can shut your mouth now,’ I say, and that’s when they start to cry.
Did I really work there all those years? Imagine what Elizaveta Antonovna would say if she saw Zina’s dead baby.
‘Definite signs of maternal neglect. I shall be making the fullest possible report to the Committee.’
Or Kolya chewing my old school-bag…
‘A highly inappropriate diet for a child of this age-group. Kindly report to me for nutritional re-education, Anna Mikhailovna.’
One thing’s for certain. Elizaveta Antonovna will survive. If she’s not on special rations, she’ll have wangled her way off to Moscow on a military flight. She’ll be there sure enough, making the fullest possible report of a highly confidential nature.
(At the street corner, a man carrying a Bokhara rug glances across at the bundled figure pulling an empty child’s sledge. Is it possible that he heard a laugh? People are going crazy in the streets these days.)
What did I say to Fedya? ‘We’ll find them space in Russian earth.’
Space – yes – and vengeance. I didn’t even know I was going to say it, but the words jumped out of my mouth. I know it’s Pushkin, but I can’t remember what poem. My father would know. Let’s see if I can remember any more.
You hate us anyway…
And for what? Answer me.
Because, in the blazing wreck of Moscow
We blanked the insolent will
Which made you tremble? Is that why you hate us?
Because we made our earth swallow
The juggernaut which crushed nation after nation
And with our blood redeemed the freedom,
Honour and peace of Europe?
Is that why you hate us?
But there’s a lot more. I’ll remember it in a minute. One and two and three and… We must have had to learn the whole thing at school. Funny how things sink into you when you don’t even k
now that you know them. It’s a safe bet that it’s Pushkin. Yes, he’s right, that’s all we want: freedom and peace. So it’s all happened before, that’s what he’s saying. The same suffering, the same invasions and battles. We’ve had to face it once and now we’re facing it again. Only the people are different. Everything’s happened before and will go on happening.
Yes, it’s coming back! I wish he could hear me reciting poetry like this.
Will Russian earth not rise and bristle
With steel stubble-glitter?
It’s all exactly like now. You’d think Pushkin had visited the Kirov works. You’d think he was with us, watching all this. I must write it down when I get home, before I forget it again. Steel stubble-glitter, that was it. I wish I’d remembered that line before, when I was talking to Fedya. He’d have liked it.
25
It’s dark by the time Anna reaches the burned building. The charred stench of it catches in her throat. She stands a hundred metres away, watching. There are shadows on the snow ahead, and a couple of bobbing lanterns. They seem to spill light and then wipe it up again without illuminating anything. She grips the rope of her sledge as she approaches the building. Part of the roof has caved in where the shell hit it, and the second and third floors of the building have collapsed along a third of their width.
Heaps of rubble lie on the pavement, but the main entrance has been cleared. As she watches, a shadow flits inside. If people are still going in, then there must be wood left. She moves forward over rough, blackened ridges of ice, where snow has been melted by the fire, and has frozen again. She pulls her scarf closer over mouth and nose, steps across the threshold, and lifts the sledge behind her.