There’s someone in front of her, carrying a light that throws his shadow back over her. She does not think of speaking. Each of them moves like a ghost through the ruins, lost in its own dimension. The figure darts sideways, and his light disappears.
But it’s still not quite dark. The space closes around her, packed with shadows. On her right a goblin-red light jumps from another doorway. She edges forward silently, and peers into the small room which must have been a vestibule. The floor is churned up, and in the middle a little fire burns, close to a woman who’s hacking at a thick column of wood, more than two metres long. The woman’s saw looks as if it comes from a child’s carpentry set.
‘Fuck off out of here. This is mine,’ says the woman. She stares up at Anna from where she’s squatting over the wood. Her shawl has fallen back on to her shoulders, exposing her face. She looks old, but probably she is young. The saw won’t cut, not only because it’s a child’s toy rather than a tool, but also because the wood is hardwood. Mahogany, probably. A newel post or something like that, put into the house when it was young and magnificent. That woman will never be able to cut it up, and she won’t be able to drag it home in one piece, because she’s as weak as a cat. But she won’t leave it, either. She stares up at Anna, not aggressive any more, and certainly not asking for help. There are only three things to deal with here: the wood, the cold, and her own weakness. None of them is negotiable.
Anna backs out of the room.
She’s in the big, bare, stone-floored hallway that stinks of smoke. She feels her way to the stairs, in case the banisters are still there, but her hand touches nothing. Upstairs, something settles with a wheezing sound. There might be stuff worth having up there. It’s too late to hope for furniture, but some of the wooden fittings might have been missed. But she stays still, pinned at the foot of the stone stairs, listening to the noise of the building as it settles on itself, dust teeming into crevices, cavity rubble slipping down the inside of walls that hang at crazy angles. If she climbed to the turn of the stairs, she’d be able to look up straight through the gash in the roof.
A door slams. There can’t be people still living up there, surely, in the undamaged rooms? No, it’s one of those tricks of sound that makes you hear life long after it’s finished.
That’s why she can’t move. It’s her father’s breathing, back in the apartment, that keeps her pinned here. All her life he’s been breathing. Why didn’t she count those breaths when she had the chance? Why didn’t she stop still and listen, on just one of those bad-tempered mornings when she was late for work and Kolya was whingeing that he didn’t want his porridge because he always had porridge every single day? She’d never once stopped to bless the fact that her father still breathed. She certainly never stopped to bless the everyday porridge. Instead she hustled Kolya into leggings, tied his scarf crosswise over his chest and back, crammed him into jacket, fur cap, mittens – and don’t forget the extra pair of socks in case the ones he’s wearing get wet if the snow goes over the top of his boots – and then hurried him out of the door before he began to sweat. In a rush of spite, she’d even slammed the door as she went out, so that it would wake her father. Why should he sleep?
Anna listens to the noises of the burned building. There’s her father’s pulse. Weak but steady, it ticks on, like drop after drop of water falling into a basin. Anna shakes her head to get the sound out of her ears, but it goes on. She can’t tell if it’s real. Perhaps the whole of the city is thinning into a dream, becoming transparent as it starves. In a few more days, if she lives, she’ll be able to walk through walls, skim the surface of the Neva, and glide from one side of Leningrad to another at the speed of her own thoughts.
The sound of her father’s pulse continues, and she listens. Is she even alive herself? She rolls back the thick cuff of her coat and feels under it. Her arm is thin and cold, but soft. When people die, they go hard as wood. She strips off a glove and puts her hand against her mouth. Yes, she is breathing.
The pulse-sound shifts, steadies, and resolves itself into the tick of a clock, which has survived shelling and fire, and goes on telling the time to no one. The tick grows louder, elbowing her out.
She’ll go. She’ll get out of this tomb, never mind about the wood. It will all have been taken already.
But as she turns a man comes from the back of the hall, holding a candle, hauling a sack. He stops beside Anna. ‘You don’t want to hang about here,’ he says. ‘You want to get off home quick.’ Then he too catches the sound of the clock. ‘Keeps on going, doesn’t it, even though there’s no one to wind it up. Stupid, just like us.’
How long has she been standing here? She’s wasted too much time already. Whatever made her think she could leave without getting any wood for the burzhuika? She must have been crazy. By the retreating light of the man’s candle, Anna picks her way to the back of the hall and into the reception room. The light of several candle-stubs sends a dozen shadows swooping up the walls and folding across one another. Heaps of rubbish on the floor turn into women, who crouch there, grunting as they lever up the last few blocks of wood. How vast this room is. It falls away into blackness like a cave. Surely this can never have been an apartment? It’s a ballroom, from more than fifty years ago. People would have crowded in here under chandeliers, the naked white shoulders of women gleaming against the men’s stiff black. They danced on this floor, those former people.
In the candlelight the diggers look like women on a battlefield, stripping clothes and rings from the dead. The air is thick with effort as they scrabble in the dirt, trying to prise up the wood that remains. When Anna goes too close to a pram which contains five or six lumps of wood, its owner spits like a cat.
But here there’s a space. Anna kneels, and harnesses the sledge securely around her waist. She sweeps her hands across the floor in front of her. Nothing but empty grooves where the wood was laid. She twists round and sweeps behind her. Again, nothing. She’ll try closer to the wall.
As she crawls, her hands strike a block. Just one. She pulls, but it won’t give way. It’s firmly stuck, and that’s why it’s been left for easier pickings. Anna takes out the chisel from the bag around her waist, and begins to lever. There’s a suggestion of give, like the first weakness in a sound tooth. She levers again, until the chisel slips and drives into the side of her other hand. Breathing quickly and shallowly to dull the pain, she pulls off her glove and brings her hand up to her mouth. The taste is warm and salt, but as she lips it carefully she can tell it’s not a bad cut. Lucky she kept her gloves on. She sucks again, drawing in the taste of her own blood. It tastes good…
Now she pulls the glove off her other hand and holds it between her teeth so that she can gouge at the underside of the wood with her bare hand. The block comes out of its socket so suddenly that she falls backward, still clutching the chisel. Anna stuffs her prize into her sack. But she mustn’t drag the sledge behind her any more. One of the other women could creep up and take the wood out of her sack without her seeing. Anna crawls forward again, but now the sledge is in front of her, shielded by her body, as she gropes across the ashy, stinking ground.
People are all around the walls, levering up half-charred blocks that remain where fire must have swept around the side of the room. Anna finds her own metre of space, and squeezes in, wedging herself against another woman who’s trying to prise up blocks with a knife. She’s lit a whole candle, and in its light Anna can see that she’s using a solid silver knife with initials twined just above the blade. She doesn’t look the monogram type – but then gold and silver travel like lice these days. A silver knife’s no good for this anyway. Too soft. She needs a chisel to get those blocks up. Stealthily, Anna applies her own chisel, shielding it with her body so the woman won’t spot it. Block by block, the burned wood comes up. It’s badly charred, but at least a third of it will still be good for burning in the burzhuika. She prises out a couple more. They are looser here, and they come up as sweetly as new
potatoes.
‘Comrade.’ The whisper is hoarse. ‘You’ve got tools, haven’t you? Give me a lend of them, just for a minute. I swear I’ll give them back.’
Anna’s hand tightens on the chisel. Once it’s gone she won’t get it back. The woman’s big, and better fed than Anna. Maybe she’s got a knife, a real one tucked away in her belt. Maybe she’s seen that Anna’s sack is already half-full. Anna does not answer. The whisper begins again, whingeing, singing, and the woman’s body barges against hers.
‘I swear to God you’ll get it back. Let me just get up a few blocks.’
Anna stuffs the chisel under her coat, her skin prickling. A wash of dirty breath flows over her face as the woman’s voice rises. ‘Igor! Igor! Over here quick! She’s taking my wood.’ But the woman has been kneeling too long, and her legs have gone to sleep. As she lunges after Anna she loses her balance and falls, snuffing out her own candle.
Now the shadowed hall is safety. Anna flattens herself against the farthest wall, and listens. The woman’s voice has died away. No sign of Igor, if he even exists. Anna has the chisel, the sledge, and her half-full sack of wood. That’s enough. It was stupid to imagine I could ever carry two sacks home, thinks Anna, as she ties the sack on to the sledge with her twine. This weight is going to be enough. She’ll go a few hundred metres, then she’ll have a quarter-slice of bread. That’ll be enough to turn the air back into air, instead of thick, resistant glue that leans against you as you try to go forward.
She stiffens at the regular tramp of boots outside the building. Soldiers on patrol. The ones Evgenia talked about, who’ll stop you and shoot you on the spot if you’ve got more food or ration cards than you ought to have. And here she is, in a building she’s got no right to enter, with a load of looted wood. But the footsteps don’t slacken, although a splodge of light hits the entrance to the apartment building. Imagine, they’ve got torches. She can even hear their voices, low, hurried and perhaps a little frightened. Yes, you’re right, you should be frightened. We should all be frightened of one another these days. And we should be frightened of ourselves.
Now they’ve passed, and it’s time to go out on to the street, into the blessed night air.
They’re shelling again. She pauses to get the direction, but it’s all right. Nowhere near home. It’s coming from over towards Smolny again, by the military headquarters. It’s going to be one of those iron nights the bombers love, with a frost so deep that everything can’t help sparkling, even when there’s only a quarter-moon. The sledge-runners squeak as Anna makes her way slowly down the pathway between drifts of uncleared snow. The streets are empty. It’s too cold, and too dangerous. Everyone’s indoors, although it can’t be five o’clock yet. They are curled in their beds, conserving body-heat while another layer of frost grows on the window-panes. Every window she passes is blank with blackout. It’s impossible to tell if the people in the houses are living, or dead. In all the city it seems that she’s the only one moving, creeping forward with her load of wood.
But of course, she isn’t. At the next crossroads a shadow comes away from the wall and crosses into her path. A man in a fur cap, with a candle-lantern slung over his arm. He opens his lantern, takes out a match, strikes it on the heel of his boot, lights the wick, closes the little glass door again, and holds the light up to Anna’s face. He’s wearing steel-tipped boots, not felt boots, thinks Anna, hypnotized. Why isn’t he wearing felt boots? His feet will freeze.
‘Hello, what’ve we got here?’
His face looks strange. After a second she realizes that it looks unfamiliar because he is fully fleshed. It’s a long time since she’s seen anyone who looked well-fed.
‘What’s that in the sack?’
‘My brother,’ says Anna. ‘I’m taking him to the cemetery.’
His eyes are set deep in folds of flesh, and she can’t see his expression.
‘Poor kid. Littlun, was he?’
‘He was five.’
‘He looks like a littlun. And that’s all you got in there, is it?’
‘Of course it is.’
‘’Cos the reason I ask, is I wouldn’t like to think you were telling me the tale. Nice-looking kid, was he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s see, then.’
‘No! You can’t do that to him. I told you, he’s dead, leave him alone.’
For a moment it is Kolya lying on the sledge, like so many other children, stiff and blue. Perhaps her words have killed him.
‘No, I won’t let you touch him!’
‘I won’t do your brother any harm. Just having a little look, that’s all.’
He’s playing with her. He’s got the energy to do that. He’s not starving. He puts a hand on her arm and she pulls it back.
‘Don’t worry, darling. I’m not interested in you. A little crow like you’s not worth a bite for a man like me. No, it’s your brother who’s got me all curious.’
He lifts the lantern higher and his eyes glisten at her. They’re human eyes set in folds of human flesh, but her skin crawls. Something has been wiped from them, that should be there. He could do anything. It’s only chance that’ll hold him back. She stands quite still, retreating deep inside herself as his lantern light moves over her. After a long time, he puts his lantern down on the packed snow, and kneels by her sledge. Expertly, he unties Anna’s knots, and opens the sack.
‘There you are. I knew you were telling me the tale. Funny sort of dead brother this is.’
He upends the sack and tips the wood on to the snow. Thought flickers on and off in Anna like a faulty light. He’ll kill me. He won’t kill me.
‘That all you got? Pathetic, I call it. Thought you might have something worth having tucked down the bottom of the sack, but no, you’re a real little crow all right. All the same, wood’s worth something. Pick it up and put it back in the sack.’
Her fingers blunder. He’ll get angry. She’s crouched in the snow and he looks down on her from his height. His right leg is by her cheek. The steel-tipped boot shifts, touches her, shifts away. He could smash her skull like an egg. The boot shifts. She shovels wood into the sack. I must live. Kolya in bed, twisting to look at the door, asking where I am. If I die he’ll die.
‘Not trying to shove a bit of that wood up your jumper, are you?’
‘No, no –’
‘’Cos if you did, I’d have your clothes off you as well.’
He says it calmly, almost pleasantly. The wood’s all back in the sack now. She crouches on all fours, looking up at him, not daring to stand until he gives the word. The man lashes the sack of wood back on to the sledge, picks up the rope, and slings it over his shoulder. Without saying anything more, he turns and heads off in the direction from which Anna has come. Anna listens to the squeak of the sledge, until it fades into silence. Stiffly, she scrambles back to her feet.
But he didn’t get the chisel, she tells herself. He didn’t get the last quarter-slice of bread. She crosses her arms on her chest and beats her hands against her arms to warm herself. She wants to run but she’s too cold. At least, he doesn’t know where she lives. She swallows down the taste in her mouth, then takes out the piece of bread and cradles it in her hand as she begins to walk down the bare, blank street, grating off crumbs with her teeth and softening them with her tongue.
26
It is much harder to walk without the sledge. Strange that it should be so, when the sledge was heavy to pull. But without its anchor, she might drift anywhere. She might even stop moving, and not know it. No regular squeak of runners behind her now. Only herself, empty-handed, stumbling home through ruts of frozen snow. To the next lamp-post. To the next. To that corner. To the second courtyard entrance.
She passes two more soldiers in their long coats and felt boots, who look at her but don’t speak. Shelling’s begun again. The air shudders, but nothing comes near. It’s not far to go now. A kilometre, no more, and she’ll be home.
Behind her, a cough. She tu
rns, and there’s the flicker of a candle-lantern. He’s after her. He’s followed her. She’s got nothing, he knows that. Now he’s taken her sledge and her load of wood, what more does he want? I’ll have your clothes off you as well. Anna reaches under her coat and grasps the chisel.
‘Anna?’
The voice wavers across the wasteland of ice that separates them. ‘Anna, it’s you, isn’t it? It’s me. Evgenia.’
She would never have known that voice, hoarse and cracked like an old woman’s. But if Evgenia says so, it must be her. Anna shakes her head to get the numbness of cold out of it. The figure glides across the snow towards her, holding up its lantern.
‘Thought it was you. I’ve been following you, didn’t you see me? You’ve been weaving about all over the place.’
‘Have I?’
‘Yeah. Let’s have a look at you.’
For the second time, a candle-lantern swings up to Anna’s face. But now there’s Evgenia’s sharp yellow face behind it, and her human eyes.
‘Here, take my arm.’ She links arms with Anna, as if they’re two girls off to a dance together. But it’s nice, the feeling of Evgenia’s arm across her back, supporting her. ‘Come on. It’s not far.’
‘But you’re heading the wrong way, Evgenia. I’m going home.’
‘You’ll never make it like that. We’ve got to get you warmed up or someone’ll find you flopped in a snowdrift tomorrow.’
‘I’m not cold, Evgenia, I’m warm.’
‘Yeah, you feel warm, but you’re freezing. That’s what people feel like just before they snuff it. Come on.’
They go on past heaped, dirty-white snowdrifts that gleam in the light of Evgenia’s lantern. There’s a man propped against the drift, head sunk on to his chest. A rind of yesterday’s fresh snow covers his feet. His boots have gone. They turn off the avenue, into a narrow street and then a narrower one. Anna knows these streets. Off the broad public avenue, where the trams run and people walk to shops and offices with quick, firm purpose, into a world of children screeching from apartment window to apartment window, women on doorsteps who stop talking and stare as you pass, and a drunk snarling at nothing.