Burying the Sun (4 page)

September 1941

Dmitry and I patrolled our section of Leningrad carefully, for rumors were flying about that there were German spies in the city. One evening after supper, as we were walking down the Nevsky Prospekt, we noticed a man taking pictures. He photographed the old Straganov Palace, the Kazan Cathedral, and a bookstore. Dmitry and I looked at each other and back at the man. He was dressed in an old overcoat, much too big for him. His long white hair straggled out from beneath a little peaked cap.

“I've never seen such a cap,” I said. “It looks foreign.”

“German,” Dmitry whispered.

“He's taking pictures so the Germans know what to bomb,” I said.

We followed the man, keeping just behind him and pausing in the shelter of a storefront while he took a picture. He was photographing the Gostiny Dvor, a collection of stores and stalls.

Dmitry whispered, “We should report him.”

“By the time the police get here, he could be gone,” I said. “We should make a citizen's arrest.”

Dmitry didn't look too happy. “What if he shoots us?”

“There are two of us and only one of him. One of us can go for the camera and the other for his gun.”

“I'll get the camera,” Dmitry said.

I was beginning to feel a little doubtful. “First we'll ask him what he's doing.”

As he raised his camera to photograph the Anichkov Palace, I confronted him. “You are taking photographs for the bombing.”

“Yes, yes, now get out of my way. You have
already spoiled a perfect shot and film is scarce.”

It was all the confirmation we needed. Dmitry and I struck. Dmitry grabbed the man's camera and I wrapped my arms around him, getting a stranglehold so that he couldn't reach for a gun.

The man fought back, kicking at my shins and butting Dmitry with his head. At the top of his voice he screamed, “Thieves! Thieves!”

A crowd began to gather. “Keep him from escaping!” I shouted. “He's a German spy!”

At the same time, he was yelling at the crowd, “Thieves! Get a policeman!”

Much to my relief, a policeman appeared, but instead of taking the spy into custody, he grabbed me and Dmitry, who was holding the spy's camera.

“He'll get away,” I said to the policeman.

“These hoodlums have stolen my camera,” the man said.

“But he admitted he was taking pictures of everything so the Germans would know what to
bomb,” I insisted. “He said so.”

“I said nothing of the kind. I am Josif Vasilyevich Vronsky of the Leningrad Historical Society. I have been commissioned by the society to photograph all of our famous landmarks in the event there is damage from bombs. We must know how to reconstruct the buildings.” He was fumbling in his pockets and now drew out a leather case, from which he extracted his identification papers.

“Will you press charges?” the policeman asked Vronsky, handing back his camera.

Vronsky looked at us. I think he must have seen in our faces our bewilderment and how embarrassed we were. He began to laugh.
“Nichevo,”
he said to the policeman. “It is just a misunderstanding. I have no time to waste in a police station.” He turned to us. “The next time you go spy hunting, use the sense God gave you, or all the citizens of the city will end up in jail.”

Red-faced, we slunk away, trying not to hear
the laughter of the crowd.

The next day Dmitry reported that Vladimir had gone off on another assignment to the front. Dmitry didn't know where, but he whispered that he thought it was north toward Finland. “The dirty Finns have joined up with the Germans. Vladimir says they are nearly to our northern border.”

“If we hadn't invaded their country, maybe they would have been with us instead of against us,” I said.

At first Dmitry looked like he was going to start another fight, but then he only shrugged. After our spy mistake a lot of the fight had gone out of us.

The Germans and the Finns were to the north, and to the west there was the Gulf of Finland with all the German navy. One day we were shocked to hear the sound of cannons firing into the city from the south. There was still Lake Ladoga on the northeast of the city, but our hopes were pinned to the southeast, where the railroad ran from Leningrad to Moscow. Our hope gave out, for on the very day we heard the
cannons, the Germans parachuted into the city of Mga and cut off the railroad. My first thought was of Marya. How would she get back?

“We are like rats in a trap,” I said to Dmitry. “The circle is complete.”

Now that they had us encircled, the bombing grew worse. Leningrad's famous roller coaster, the
Amerikanskaya gora
, went up like like a box of matches. The zoo was bombed, and we could hear the pitiful cries of the animals. Yelena and Olga were horrified and crouched inside with their hands over their ears. Marya and I had ridden on the roller coaster and spent afternoons in the zoo. All that was over.

It was on the fourth of September, two days before my fifteenth birthday, when the great tragedy happened, changing the lives of everyone in the city. Mama and I were reading a letter from Marya. The postmark had been blacked out, and even though we knew she was somewhere in the city of Sverdlovsk, Marya was not allowed to send a return address. She
said she was well and wished she could send food our way. “My children are safe,” she said, and we knew she meant the treasures from the Hermitage.

As we were reading the letter, I happened to glance out the window. The whole sky was exploding in a firestorm. We ran out onto the balcony. The people on the prospekt were looking to the southwest side of the city, where flames were rising. Mama said what I had been too afraid to say aloud.

“God help us. They have bombed the food warehouses.”

It was true. The whole of the city's supply of food was being destroyed—all the sugar, flour, butter, and meat. All gone. The faces of the people on the street below us were a frightening red from the reflection of the flames. We were all coughing, for the smoke had settled like a suffocating blanket over the city. That morning there had been enough food for the city. By the evening we were all facing starvation.

The next day we learned the terrible results of the
bombing. With the smoke still covering the city, an announcement was made that our rations would be cut in half. In the past, if you had a little extra money there were stores where you could buy what you needed without ration coupons. No more. When Mama went for a loaf of bread, the bakery was closed. For breakfast I had one of Mama's dried rusks with a little jelly and weak tea. Since the beginning of the war I had been able to eat my fill, but now I was hungry.

Olga knocked on our door. “Katya, what am I to do? Yesterday I traded my ration coupons for a jar of caviar. I know it was wrong, but the conductor of the symphony is cross with us all of the time and caviar always cheers me.” She looked longingly at Mama's bag of dried bread rusks, the crock of cabbages in brine, and the row of jellies on our shelf.

“We will help you, Olga, but you must also trade. I will have to do the same,” Mama said.

“But I have nothing to trade.”

“Nonsense,” Mama said. “You have a closet full
of clothes you don't need. You can take those to the outskirts of town, where there are farms, and trade with the peasants for food. I mean to do it myself.”

We all trooped into Olga's apartment. Yelena looked surprised. “What will the farm women do with Mother's clothes?”

Mama smiled. “They will turn the dresses into quilts to help them keep warm. The shoes they will take apart and turn the leather into something sensible.”

When Olga opened her closet door, it was like one of the paintings in the Hermitage. It looked like a hundred paint pots had been spilled. Hanging up were Gypsy skirts, embroidered blouses, and fringed scarves in rainbow colors. Shoes were heaped up on the closet floor.

“Not this one,” Olga said, tenderly holding a silk scarf covered all over with flowers. “I wore it at my first concert. I would never give it up.”

Mama swept up the scarf and several others, as well as an armful of shoes. Olga watched, tears in her
eyes. “Listen,” Mama said. “Soon even the food the peasants have on the farms will be gone—or, worse, we won't be able to get to the farms. What good will these things do you then? Can you eat them?”

Yelena was searching through her own things, adding to the brightly colored heap. I recognized a dress she had worn the first time we had gone out together on our own. We had attended a movie, the great director Eisenstein's
Aleksandr Nevsky
. Yelena had cried when the Russian prince had died. I had tried to comfort her, but she only shook her head and sobbed, “I love pictures that make me cry.” I was sorry to see the dress go.

The next morning Olga and Mama left with their packages, and that evening when they returned, Olga proudly showed off sausages, cereal, and dried berries.

“Look, Yelena,” she said, “six fresh eggs!” I couldn't help noticing that her beloved flowered scarf was poking out of her pocket.

Viktor, looking hungrily at the eggs, congratulated Olga. “I hear there is still food to be had on the outskirts of the city, where the Germans are bombing,” he said. “The farmers left some of the root vegetables in the ground when their houses were destroyed.”

I got out our map and asked Viktor to show me where those fields were. Immediately, Mama said, “Georgi, put that map away. Don't even think of going there. I have enough worry without thinking of bombs falling over you.”

I took one more quick look at the map and folded it up. Early the next morning I was at the Trushins' apartment, calling for Dmitry. As soon as I walked into their apartment, I noticed something missing. There was no smell of fresh baking. I think until that minute I hadn't really understood what the fire at the food warehouses would mean. Mr. Trushin had just come home. He was black with soot and ashes.

“There is nothing left in the warehouses,” he said. “Only a little melted sugar we are trying to scrape up
from the ground. Every little bit counts.” He sighed. “No more little presents for my dear wife.”

“Ivanovich, what are you talking about?” Mrs. Trushin said. “I have the greatest gift of all.
You
weren't burned up in that terrible fire. What a day I had until I saw you, but it's true we will miss the things you brought home. We have nothing but a little kasha and some cabbage, and the stores have nothing.”

“I think I know where we can dig up some vegetables,” I said, “if Dmitry wants to come with me.”

Her face lit up. “What a good boy. How I would like to have some carrots for our soup. Dmitry, you go with Georgi.” She found some sacks and a knife for each of us and sent us on our way.

If she had known me the way my mother did, Mrs. Trushin wouldn't have been so quick to send Dmitry with me, but Dmitry knew me. The minute we were outside he said, “What do we have to do to get these vegetables?”

I explained.

“What do you mean, bombs?”

“They're probably not bombing there anymore, since everyone has left.”

“Everyone has left because they are smarter than we are,” Dmitry said, but he didn't turn back. He was thinking, as I was, that if we could not be soldiers, we could at least have our own adventures.

As we neared the farmland, the artillery grew louder and louder. I looked at Dmitry and he looked at me. Each of us was waiting for the other to turn back, but neither of us wanted to be the first to make a move.

I had been here before. On summer days I had come with Mama and Marya for a day in the countryside. We would bring picnic baskets, and after asking permission from the farmers, we would sit under a tree and have our lunch. The grain would be golden in the fields and cows fat and sleek. Before we returned to the city, we would buy eggs, and milk still warm from the cows. The farms had looked like a child's drawing with a big sun in the sky; now it
looked as if someone had taken a black crayon and scratched out the pretty drawing.

It would be quiet for a few minutes, and we would think the shelling was over, but just as we started to relax, there would be a crack like thunder and I could feel the ground shake under me.

As we neared the deserted farms, we began to see more people like ourselves, and we felt a little better. It was unlikely that we all would be killed; some of us at least would escape. The first farmhouse we reached was a burned-out skeleton. The windows were shattered and the roof gone. Two women were digging in the ground, filling sacks. They looked at us as if to say, “We were here first.” We turned away.

Every farm was occupied by people from the city with their sacks. If you approached, they stopped their digging and gave you a threatening look. After a bit we came to a farm where there was a terrible smell from a cow that lay dead next to what must have once been a stable. No one was digging there. Dmitry and I took our handkerchiefs and wrapped them around our
noses. “They say you get used to bad smells,” I said.

“I hope I get used to it before I throw up,” Dmitry said.

We spotted the wilted ferny leaves of carrots and began to dig. There were turnips and parsnips in the ground as well. By then we were so hungry, we chewed away at the carrots, no longer caring about the smell or all the dirt we were swallowing. We had almost become used to the shelling and the distant explosions, but we were unprepared for the great clap of thunder as a shell hit close to us and clouds of earth shot up into the sky and then rained down on us. I don't know which one of us ran faster. Sometimes I was ahead and sometimes Dmitry, the sacks slamming against our legs. We were not the only ones running. Everyone was heading for the city.

We made our way through the backstreets, ready, should we be stopped, with a story that we had visited relatives in the country, but no one stopped us. It was nearly dark when I left Dmitry at his house and
reached our own apartment. I was sure Mama would be so pleased to have the vegetables that nothing would be said about where I had found them. I should have known Mama better.