Authors: Helen Dunmore
17
Anna has always loved the first snowfall of winter. She knows as soon as dawn comes that it’ll be today. The sky remains dark, with a yellow tinge to the clouds. The light has a sharp, raw edge. Everything is waiting, silent and expectant.
Snow will come. The shrivelled leaves of autumn, the dying grasses, the chilly, dun-coloured earth, will all be covered. The snow will wipe away all mistakes. Light will stream upwards from the immaculate white of the ground.
When the first snow falls, Anna always goes to the Summer Garden. There, the noise of the city is muffled, and the park is eerily luminous. Small, naked-looking sparrows hop from twig to twig, dislodging a powder of snow. The trees are lit up like candelabra by the whiteness they hold in their arms. Underfoot, she hears for the first time the squeak of snow packing into the treads of her boots. She bends down, scoops up a handful of the new snow, throws it up into the air and watches it scatter into powdery fragments as it falls for the second time. And although she’s cold and she ought to get home, she always stays much longer than she means to, because she knows that this feeling won’t come again for another year. The snow will continue to fall, thaw, freeze, turn grey with use, be covered again and again by fresh blizzards. But nothing again will have the freshness, exhilaration and loneliness of the first snowfall. She’s the one thing still warm and alive in a world which is going to sleep.
She looks up, into the snow which spirals down the steep funnels of the sky, whirls into her face, lands on her eyelashes and melts into tears. And then she goes back to the apartment, along streets where trams are already thrashing the new, soft snow into slush. Children skid around street-corners, yelling, their faces blazing crimson. Soon it’ll be time for skis and sledges. And tomorrow, when she wakes, the snow will be thick and crusted with ice. The sun will be out, and all the shadows will be blue. This is how she has welcomed the snow every year of her life.
But not this year. The first snow falls on the fourteenth of October, drifting down through the sky and settling on the ruins of shelled houses, on to tank-traps, machine-gun nests and heaps of rubble. The snow is silent, but ominous. No one knows, this year, whether it will be an enemy or a friend. The Russian winter defeated Napoleon, people say to one another. Perhaps it will defeat Hitler, too.
A ring of siege grips the city. Nothing comes in, nothing goes out. And in the suburbs, within sight, the Germans have dug themselves in. There they stay, hunkered down for winter in deep trenches, behind defended firing-positions. The Germans have always been good at digging trenches, say older Leningraders who fought in the last war. Luxury trenches, they have, with carpets and chairs and pictures hanging on the walls. There they squat in the outskirts of Leningrad, like wolves at the mouth of a cave. They pour shells on to the city, but they do not advance any farther. This is blockade.
The Germans eat. Of course they eat. Through binoculars our boys can see that they are well-muscled and healthy. They move briskly through the chilling air, swinging their arms. They write letters to their families, saying that they’ll be home soon, when they have won the war. Behind them, unbroken supply lines stretch all the way back to Berlin. The Germans are altering their rolling-stock to fit Russian railway lines. They have got the harvests of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on hand, and they can wait as long as they have to. An iron ring squeezes around the besieged city, slowly throttling it.
‘It’s snowing!’
Kolya runs to the window, but the exertion makes him cough and he grabs the back of Anna’s chair. She pulls him on to her lap. His face is dusky, and his eyes stream with tears.
‘How many times have I told you not to rush about like that! Now, breathe out slo-o-wly. That’s good, you’re doing fine. Another big breath.’
He lies back against her shoulder, eyes shut, exhausted. She chafes his hands.
‘You should keep your gloves on, Kolya. Yes, I know you don’t usually wear your gloves indoors, but see how cold it is.’
There is no fuel. The electricity is off. The apartment is cold with the kind of cold you usually encounter on coming home after a long absence in winter. It’s a cold that penetrates clothes and upholstery, and makes furniture icy to the touch. The beds will not warm. You clamber into them, shivering, and in the morning you ache from trying to keep yourself warm. Your sleep is shallow. It is packed with dreams, and refuses to deepen into the bliss of oblivion.
Anna puffs out her breath and a white cloud forms, then disappears.
‘Marina-’
‘Yes?’
‘What do you think about the
burzhuika?
Marina sighs, knitting up her face into lines. She’s been trying to read, but her eyesight hasn’t been so good these past few weeks. She ought to have reading-glasses, if they could be obtained. Her eyes tire quickly, and the lines of print fizz and dazzle. I am turning into an old woman, she thinks. The thought of not being able to read frightens her so much that she pushes it straight out of her mind. ‘I don’t know. How much are they asking for it now?’
‘Three days’ bread ration, or a kilo bag of sugar and two hundred grammes of lard. Plus five hundred roubles.’
‘The money’s no problem. I’ve got that.’
‘You can’t have much left.’
‘No, not a lot, but I’ve certainly got five hundred.’
‘But a kilo of sugar! A whole kilo.’
Anna cuts Kolya’s bread ration into three small chunks. Three times a day she smears a chunk with sunflower oil, then scatters a thick icing of sugar on it. Kolya loves sugar. They have only two kilo bags left.
‘But without the
burzhuika,
and with winter coming… ‘Anna continues. This is how she and Marina solve the hundred daily problems of shortages. They think aloud, until the words make some kind of pattern in their tired and hungry minds, and then they find that they have made a decision. They’ve got to make their minds up, because now the snow’s come the price of these little stoves is shooting up every day.
‘Is it extra for the stove-pipe?’ asks Marina.
‘Yes. Another two days’ ration, or you can make it up in sugar or coffee.’
‘But on the other hand, if we wait until it gets colder, the price will go up. And maybe they’ll run out of
burzhuiki
and we won’t be able to get one at all.’
Kolya begins to cough again. Marina rises, fetches a blanket from the sofa, and wraps it around him, tucking in the edges carefully. ‘He should be wearing his fur cap,’ she observes. ‘A high percentage of heat is lost through the head.’
‘I know. But he keeps pulling it off, don’t you, Kolya?’
‘It’s stupid, wearing a cap in the house. Everyone will laugh at me.’
‘I bet they’re all wearing their caps now,’ says Anna. ‘Alyosha, and Shura, and all your friends. They’ll all be wrapped up, just like you.’
She strokes his hair. ‘Listen, I’ll pull up a corner of this blanket and that’ll keep your head warm. Like a soldier’s helmet. No, don’t wriggle. You’ll feel much better.’
‘Tell me what Alyosha’s doing now. Will he be at nursery?’
‘Nobody’s at nursery now. It’s closed.’
‘I thought I was at home because I was ill.’
‘No, you’ve been at home since long before you were ill, don’t you remember? Because of the Germans. It would be too dangerous to go to nursery, with all the shelling, even if it was still open.’
‘I wish you
would buy
us a
burzhuika,
Anna. I’m so cold.’
‘I know.’
‘When’s it time for dinner?’
‘Not yet. But Marina’s going to make you some of her special drink.’
Marina rises. She looks into the other room, where Mikhail lies on his back, very still, apparently sleeping. He hasn’t managed to get up today. It isn’t that he’s given up again, it’s just that he’s so weak. She goes into the kitchen. Although there’s no electricity today, they’ve still got a little oil left. It will last another day, perhaps, not more. They desperately need to get a
burzhuika,
which can burn anything. Chopped-up furniture, books, banisters. They can go scavenging in the parks. They’ll be able to keep one room reasonably warm, and heat water for tea as well as cereal.
By the time Marina brings back Kolya’s drink of hot water with a spoonful of honey and a grating of nutmeg, both women have come to the same decision.
‘I’ll go now,’ says Anna. ‘You’re right, all the stoves might be gone in the next few days, with this snow falling.’
‘We’ll have to move your father in here. We can’t possibly keep more than one room warm, and it’s much too cold for him in there.’
‘Where are you going, Anna?’ asks Kolya anxiously as she settles him on the sofa, still wrapped in the blanket.
‘I’m going to get something wonderful for us. A little stove with a long pipe that goes out of the ventilation window. We’ll be able to burn wood in it, and keep warm even when there’s no electricity.’
‘Can I light it?’
‘Of course you can. But you have to be very careful, because we can’t waste matches.’
‘Anna, will you bring me something to eat?’
‘I don’t think I can. I don’t think I’ll be able to carry anything on the sledge except the stove. It’s very heavy.’
‘But I’m so hungry. Please, Anna, can’t you just get me a few sweets? You can put them in your pocket and they won’t weigh anything.’
She sits down on the sofa beside him, and puts her arms around him under the blanket. He is still cold, in spite of the layers of clothes and blankets around him. And he’s getting thin. Those fine hairs on his legs and arms seem thicker. Isn’t that a sign of malnutrition?
It didn’t help, his having that cold. At least he didn’t develop a chest infection. As long as she can keep his chest clear, his asthma won’t get too bad. She needs goose-fat to rub on his chest at night. It’s an old wives’ remedy, but it really works. And some eucalyptus oil. But it was wonderful that Andrei managed to get hold of the vitamin C powder.
She hugs Kolya more tightly. The shape of his ribs is clear under her hands. When she last undressed him to wash, she saw that the fat had slipped off his buttocks to reveal the distinct outline of his pelvic bone. The bread ration for a child of five is only two hundred grammes a day now. The temptation is to use up their reserves too quickly. There is a sack of potatoes left, fifteen onions, two jars of honey, the sugar, a jar of lard and a half-bottle of sunflower oil. Before the weather turned cold Anna searched everywhere for nettles, but she’s not sure how much nourishment will remain in the few semi-dried leaves which she has hung between the inner and outer windows for the cold to preserve them. There’s been no difficulty in storing the potatoes after all, now that the apartment is virtually unheated. But if it freezes too hard, they’ll blacken, and rot.
They are well-off, compared to many. Anna plans to allow one of the onions to sprout, because Kolya needs the vitamin content of the green shoots. This is the kind of thing she talks to Marina about now. There’s no more fake intimacy, no pretending. They are a unit, in spite of everything. If they’re going to survive, they’ll only survive together. Marina looks after Kolya and her father, while Anna rakes Leningrad for fuel and food.
Thank God, her father eats very little. For a while she kept on trying to persuade him to eat, preparing cereal with a little honey for him, and moistening his bread with sweet tea. But now she senses a change. He wants life more than he’s ever done, but it’s not his own life he craves any more. It’s hers, and Kolya’s. He takes less than his share of the rations, and she no longer tries to persuade him.
‘Don’t tire yourself, my little one. Conserve your energy,’ he says to her, following her with his eyes as she moves through the cold, dark apartment like someone wading in deep water. Words which she has never heard before flow from his lips. It’s as if a spring has been released within him, which was tamped for years so that the water ran deep underground and never surfaced.
My soul,
he calls Anna, and
my bird.
His eyes follow her, and they glow with a life she’s never seen in them before. His shoulder wound, which was beginning to heal well, has opened again, but Andrei says there’s no infection. It’s only that the healing process will be very slow.
‘Thank you, my darling,’ he says when she washes the wound with boiled water, and dresses it. The words creak hoarsely in his throat, because he doesn’t seem able to draw deep enough breaths any more. But Anna doesn’t hear the failing of her father’s voice. To her, everything he says now is bathed in meaning, even if she can’t understand it, any more than she understands the last bubbling of a blackbird’s song on a spring night. After she finishes the dressing, she sits and holds his hand.
Even when her mother was alive, she never heard these words. Her parents didn’t use sweet words. Her father is going back a long way now, to his own grandmother who took care of him when he was a child, who stroked his cheek, rubbed his chest with goose-fat in winter, told him stories by the stove, and lavished words on him like caresses as he drifted between sleep and waking.
My little pigeon, my blossom, my treasure trove.
For Anna’s father, the spirits of the past have come alive. They cluster thickly in the icy spaces of the apartment. Sometimes he can see them, sometimes not. They are not impatient. Sometimes they shift position, and when this happens he always discovers that they have come closer to his bed. He believes he can hear their thoughts. While he watches frost gather on the inside of the windows, their faces appear out of the patterns. They watch him eagerly, waiting for him to notice them and speak to them. His grandmother’s face is there, and the stern, intelligent, bony face of his mother. Only Vera does not come, not yet. He lies and waits for her. He is sure that she will come, because her children are here. Why has it taken him so long to see that Anna moves just like her mother? Look at the way she bends over Kolya to massage his chest.
When he was still well enough to get out of bed he would lie on the sofa and watch Kolya swallowing his
kasha.
His eyes followed every movement of Kolya’s lips, and his lips moved in unconscious mimicry, chewing on nothing. As the child swallowed his food, so the father swallowed on air.