The Siege (16 page)

‘Good boy, keep eating. You’ll grow strong.’

He’s living on tea with sugar. ‘It doesn’t take much energy to lie around,’ he said, and smiled at Anna, a curiously sweet smile which showed how far his gums had drawn back from his teeth. His skin was yellowish, tight over prominent bones of his forehead and nose. But Kolya wasn’t frightened of him any more. He knew who he was. Sometimes he was allowed to carry his father’s tea. ‘As long as you do it very carefully, Kolya, and don’t spill a single drop.’

‘Dad’s getting better!’ he announced cheerfully, each time he brought back the empty tea-glass with a few grains of sugar left in the bottom. Kolya always swept his finger round the glass to gather the last drops of sweetness, and sucked blissfully. Only once did he spill the tea. He had his eyes on his father’s face as he carried the glass towards the bed, but he tripped on a ruck in the rug, and hot tea spilled on to his father’s chest. Anna heard Kolya cry out, but her father made no sound. When Anna pulled up his woollen undershirt, she saw his waxy skin stained red with the scald.

‘Don’t worry, Kolya,’ her father said slowly, wheezing from the shock. ‘You didn’t mean to do it. You’ll bring me another glass, eh?’

‘I’m off, then,’ says Anna. The roubles, sugar, lard and bread are in a cotton bag tied around her waist. Anna made the bag a few days earlier, out of a sheet which was too worn out to be turned sides to middle. She’s sewn a flap which buttons down to secure the bag. A bag which you can wear under an overcoat is safer these days than a shopping-bag. She’ll take Kolya’s little sledge to carry the stove, the rest of the sheet to cover it, and some torn strips of hem to tie the sheet down. It’s best if people don’t see what you’ve got.

‘Be careful,’ says Marina. ‘You know how rough it’s getting down there.’

‘I’m taking my father’s silver cigarette box, in case there’s any more vitamin powder.’

‘Does he know?’

‘No.’

She has known the wording of the inscription on the silver cigarette box since she was four years old. Before she could read the words, she used to trace them with her fingers.

‘To my beloved Misha, on the occasion of our marriage…’

Inside, it smells of real tobacco, not
makhorka.
A spicy, luxurious scent has lingered there for years.

‘He would want us to sell it. But I don’t think he needs to know.’

Marina sucks in her lower lip as she examines the cigarette box. ‘I wish you weren’t going alone. Listen. Take this.’ She pulls off the ring Anna has admired so often, a rich, glowing ruby, set in dark gold. Because the ring has become loose, Marina has wedged a little piece of silk under the gold band to keep it on her finger. Marina twists the ring, and the wad of silk falls to the floor.

‘But Marina, this ring must be worth thousands of roubles. You can’t just give it away –’

‘It’s worth a stove-pipe, anyway. Put it in your pocket, not in the bag, so they don’t see it. Then you can bring it out if the bargaining gets tough. But take care who sees it.’

Anna turns the ring over. Inside the band, there is an inscription in minute lettering:
For My Cordelia.

‘Did you play Cordelia?’

‘Obviously.’

‘You should keep this.’

‘Oh Anna, I played so many roles. I kept it for the stone, not for the inscription. Besides, I never identified with the character. I am much too aggressive. I would have taken Lear by the shoulders and shaken some sense into him. That kind of vanity amounts to madness, don’t you think? All of us are to grovel on the floor declaring our love for our great leader. But of course, you have to find a way into every part.’

How thin her fingers are, Anna realizes. The bones are skeletally clear on the back of her hands. If it weren’t for the silk, the ring would simply have dropped off.

Yes, she’s thin, and she looks old. I would draw her differently now. It would be a better drawing. Marina, my father, Andrei, Kolya, me. We can’t separate now, even if we wanted to.

‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

‘Be careful. Take care of yourself.’

‘Don’t forget Kolya’s massage.’

‘No, I won’t forget.’

18

The wind has dropped. Snow falls straight down, in large, soft flakes that blur footprints as soon as they are made. All sounds are muffled, except for the whump of German artillery. The shell-bursts are just irregular enough to tear nerves which are already raw with cold and hunger. They are shelling the south side of the city today, at close range.

The streets are quiet. A few figures struggle along, muffled into shapelessness, keeping to the safer side of the street. Because the Germans have dug in to the south of the city, the northern sides of the streets are said to be the most dangerous. On the ‘safe’ side, there is some protection from overhanging buildings, as long as there isn’t a direct hit close by. This is the theory. The facts of life have been torn up and scattered, so you might as well believe in theory and rumour as anything else. Very probably injuries from blast would be equally bad on both sides of the street. Everyone has stories of people a few metres from the site of an explosion who were miraculously thrown clear, unharmed. And there are stories of others, stripped naked by blast, who died at what should have been a safe distance. If you started trying to find logic in any of it, you’d go crazy.

It is hard work walking through the snow. Already, after a few hundred metres, Anna’s heart is thudding painfully. She stops to cough. She’s out of breath, and a sweat of weakness starts out over her body, trickling between her shoulder-blades. She ought to have tried harder to get hold of some horehound pastilles for this cough, which has been dragging on for two weeks now. But when they get a stove, everything will be better.

Because she can’t walk fast, she isn’t keeping warm. Usually her blood seems to flow more brightly in winter. She’s buoyant, glowing, always the one who stays in the park long after dusk, hauling children up slopes on their sledge. Winter suits her. Her eyes are bright, her skin clear, her lips red. More than anything she loves winter nights, with their scent of tangerines and frost, and the staring brilliance of stars. But today the snow is oppressive. Anna’s not even sure that she’s moving forward. Perhaps only the veil of falling snow is moving and she herself is treading in the same footprints, over and over again.

She forces herself on. She’s so hungry. Somehow the hunger feels sharper out here. Indoors, you become torpid. You’re weak, but you don’t understand quite how weak until you try to do something which demands energy. You move slowly, and rest a lot, like an invalid. You take time to build up to making tea, and lean against the table while the water boils. Hours drift past, glazed.

But out here it’s frightening. She mustn’t rest, not even for a minute, or the cold will get her. Even though there’s no wind, the snow seems to be pushing her backwards.

Across the street she sees Klavdia from the nursery laundry, dragging a heavy canvas sack. But Klavdia’s eyes stare blankly, or. even with hostility, and Anna’s greeting dies in her mouth. Was it really Klavdia, or just someone who looked like her? Or perhaps there was no one there at all. You can easily imagine things. Sometimes grains of blackness thicken in front of her eyes. A cluster of falling flakes takes on the shape of a face. At the corner, snow devils are dancing, in spite of the lack of wind.

Heads down, scattered on the white streets like flakes of soot, a few figures fight their way onward. If she collapsed, no one would be able to help her. No one has the strength. It’s hard enough to survive, to get the bread ration, to fetch water if you’re in an apartment where the pipes have already frozen, to toil from empty shop to empty shop in search of milk for a sick child.

‘But I’m fine,’ Anna says aloud, and tastes a flake of snow on her lips. It’s only being alone in the snow that makes her nervous. Her heart’s beating so hard. If only she had some valerian drops, to calm herself. Even though the snow is moving, and she is moving, it’s all like an icy dream from which life has fled. She could look down on herself and watch herself struggling on, an insect which doesn’t know that it’s winter and it shouldn’t be out. It’s quite funny, when you look down on yourself like that.

There’s life in the Sennaya market. It has become the crossroads where those who have meet those who want. Those who want bring their jewels, rolls of paper roubles, icons, silver knives and forks, velvet dresses, rolled-up canvases cut from paintings, Venetian glass wrapped in layers of woollen cloth, war medals and porcelain plates. Journey by journey, they bring the accumulated wealth of several lifetimes. On each journey, they get less back for it.

The prices are never fixed. Here, the laws of supply and demand apply in their purest form. A woman who possesses lard, bread, oil or a scrap of bacon can set them against whatever her heart desires. If she has a jar of sugar, she can cover herself with rubies. The market operates with ruthless force, inflating its prices day by day and sometimes hour by hour. As Anna moves close to the stalls, she sees a stallholder flip an offered gold locket with his finger. He has bread to sell.

‘I’ll give you a hundred grammes for it, that’s all. Take it or leave it’

‘But it’s worth-’

‘Take it home and eat it, then.’ And he turns huge, bored shoulders on the trembling woman whose locket has slipped through her fingers into the snow.

No one says, ‘I’ll sell you this bread.’ They say, ‘I’ll give you this bread.’ The brutal truth is that before the Tsar of bread everything else must sink to its knees. Everyone knows it. Your jewels? Your father’s life-savings? Can you eat them? No. What use are all your possessions, if you haven’t got the means to keep life in your body? Hand over everything, and I might give you life for another half a day.

Everyone now knows what it takes to keep life in a body. You can be separated from your life so easily. It might happen in the street, or in the bread queue, while you’re typing or while you’re sleeping. You can die from a cold, an ear infection, or a miscarriage. If you have a stomach ulcer, it will open and bleed. You can die so casually these days.

The stallholder attends to another customer, while the woman with the locket grovels at his feet, scrabbling for gold in the snow. When she holds it out to him again, submissively this time, he simply nods, pockets it and hands her a little chunk of bread. She stares round, unfastens coat and jacket, and thrusts the bread into her blouse. Then she stands still for a moment as if she has forgotten where she is and what she is doing. Her blue-tinged face is vacant. She’s a goner, Anna thinks, making the rapid, automatic assessment she’s learned in the past few weeks.

Anna skirts the stalls, making eye-contact with no one. Her cotton bag of bread, lard and sugar bumps against her waist. She is sure that others can see the bulge it makes in her coat, and so she hunches forward, walking more slowly than ever, hiding herself in the shroud of falling snow. She hasn’t yet seen any
burzhuiki
for sale. Three men stand guard over a stall where a few small pots of meat pâté are on display. She walks on, lowering her eyes, dragging the empty sledge which hurts her arms as much as if Kolya and two of his friends were packed on to it and she were pulling them uphill. For a moment she almost believes they are there behind her: Kolya, Alyosha and Shura, squeaking and giggling, their cheeks burning crimson with frost and health, their plump little legs encased in winter trousers and felt boots.

‘Please, Anna, please, just give us one more turn!’

But her empty sledge sticks in a snowdrift, shudders, and then comes free.

‘Anna!’

‘Oh my God, Evgenia, you frightened me.’

‘I saw you by Lavra’s stall. Don’t go near there again. He’s dangerous.’

‘Who’s Lavra?’

‘Don’t look. The one with the meat. What’re you doing down here, anyway?’

‘I’m looking for a
burzhuika’

Evgenia glances at the empty sledge, then at Anna’s empty arms.

‘Got the price? They won’t take money, you know.’

‘I’ve got it.’

‘Come with me. I know the woman who trades them. She had two, last time I went by. Her name’s Galya, not that she’ll want you to know her name. But she knows me. She doesn’t want to get in wrong with me, in case things turn out different from expectations.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Galya’s canny enough to realize that we might not all die. She’s done all right out of the war so far, but the customers she’s screwed into the ground won’t forget her, if any of them are still alive, that is. The only thing people like her are afraid of is life returning to normal. She knows I’ll be back to see her, unless she treats me right. I’m not going to die.’

They are standing very close, but even so, flakes of snow are falling between them. Evgenia’s red hair is wound up in a thick shawl. The planes of her face are flattened by hunger, and her freckles stand out yellowly. In normal times you’d say that she looked terrible. You’d ask her what was the matter, and what she was doing out of bed. But Anna believes her. Evgenia will live, and not die.

‘Is your kid all right?’

‘He’s at home.’

‘You keep him there, Anna. Don’t let him out. The streets round here aren’t safe for kids. Let’s go and get that stove.’

The woman with the
burzhuiki
is tucked away, standing in the shadow of a wall. As Evgenia and Anna approach she glances round, darting her head this way and that with a strange, inhuman movement.

‘Looking for her bloke. Her minder. She got set on the other day when she wouldn’t sell for a kilo of bread.’

‘Do you come here a lot?’

‘I’m here most days,’ says Evgenia. ‘Here, Galya, this is a friend of mine. She wants a stove, and a stove-pipe. She doesn’t want any of your rubbish either.’

‘Stoves and stove-pipes are sold separately,’ chants the woman, staring at Anna with flat, expressionless eyes. Then she retracts her head into the folds of her scarf. She’s a lizard, that’s what she is, Anna realizes. Lizards are cold-blooded.

‘Not to me and my friends they aren’t,’ says Evgenia.

‘What’s she got?’

‘I’ve got a kilo bag of sugar,’ begins Anna, when a shove from Evgenia silences her.

‘My friend’ll give you the sugar for the stove and the stovepipe.’

The stove-seller just shrugs. ‘Don’t make me laugh. I could get twice that. These
burzhuiki
are like gold-dust these days.’

‘You could, but it wouldn’t do you any good,’ says Evgenia quietly.

‘What are you saying? Are you threatening me? Piotr, come over here!’

‘I’m not threatening anyone. We’re neighbours, aren’t we? Good neighbours. And we want to go on being neighbours. Neighbours’ve got to sort things out themselves, haven’t they? We can’t always be running off to the authorities, or our lives won’t be worth living. Did you know, Anna, they aren’t bothering with arrests or trials or any of that stuff now? Anyone who looks like a speculator, they just get shot. Stopped on the street, open your bag, and if you’ve got stuff in there you shouldn’t have, that’s it, you’re a speculator. No more questions: bang. Galya knows that, don’t you, Galya? Neighbours need to stick together in times like this. We’ve all got to help each other, that’s the way it goes.’

Evgenia speaks so quietly that Piotr, hulking outside the little cluster of women, can’t hear a word.

‘A kilo of sugar and three days’ bread ration,’ says Galya rapidly. Her tongue flicks over her lips. ‘I’m giving it to you.’

Anna half-turns, so the stove-seller won’t see the contents of her bag when she opens it. She extracts the sugar and bread, and pushes the rest of the stuff to the bottom of the bag.

‘Give us the stove first,’ says Evgenia. The woman reaches down, and pulls out a stove from under the stall.

‘Where’s the stove-pipe?’

‘Here.’

‘That section’s cracked. Do you want to poison her?’

‘Most of those I sell to don’t even buy a pipe.’

‘My friend’s buying a pipe, one with four sections. The other one, the one you’ve got tucked away behind the stall. The one that’s not cracked. That’s the one she’s paying you for.’

Grumbling, Galya crouches down and ferrets out a second stove-pipe.

‘Get it on to the sledge, Anna.’

‘I want my payment first.’

‘You’ll get your payment when my friend’s got her stove fixed on her sledge.’

Evgenia stands over Anna, arms folded over the sugar and bread, while Anna packs sections of stove-pipe beside the squat body of the stove. She wraps her torn sheet over stove and stove-pipe, and ties it down with her strips of hem.

‘You ready now, Anna?’

‘Yes.’

‘All right then, Galya, there’s your sugar and there’s your bread. Mind out for those patrols on your way home. They don’t think any more of shooting a speculator than shooting a pigeon. There aren’t any pigeons around any more, ‘cos they’ve all been eaten, and there’s plenty of speculators. Not many as nice and plump as you, though, are there, Galya? Maybe we can eat speculators for a change? We could have a little chat with Lavra about it.’

Galya’s head darts out of its collar. She looks as if she’s going to hiss like a lizard.

‘Watch what you’re saying,’ she mutters, almost inaudibly.

‘I know what I’m saying,’ says Evgenia, ‘and so do you. You mind what I say, Galya. Bang!’

Side by side, Evgenia and Anna walk across the market. The stove feels heavy, but already snow is falling on to the sheets that cover it, disguising it.

‘You’d better get off home quick,’ says Evgenia.

‘Evgenia, here.’ Anna fumbles with the flap of her bag, and gets out the lard and the five hundred roubles. ‘You have this. I’d never have got the stove without you.’

Evgenia takes the lard and tucks it into her coat pocket. ‘I don’t need the money,’ she says.

‘Evgenia, how’s your mother, and your little boy?’

‘He’s had this same cough everyone’s had. Mum bought some cod-liver oil for him, but it’s all gone. There’s nothing else wrong with him, once he gets rid of his cough. Only hunger.’

‘If that woman had been on her own, I’d have taken the stove, knocked her into the snow, and run.’

‘Yeah, I reckon she knows that. That’s why she keeps Piotr close at hand. She has to give him a cut, of course, but I should say he’s worth it. If even a nice girl like you is thinking of bashing Galya over the head and running off with her stoves, there’ll be plenty who’d do much more than think about it. Me, for a kick-off.’