The Siege (24 page)

‘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 turns, 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.

Now, there isn’t a flicker of movement. The streets are canyons of uncleared snow. The windows are masked with blackout. An entire house has been torn out by a shell. All around there’s heavy, dead silence, the silence of a mother whom even her own children’s crying can’t wake.

‘Here we are. Up these steps. We’re on the third floor.’

The two women pass through a doorway which is fantastically looped and wreathed in ice from a burst pipe above. A stalactite stabs the side of Anna’s head. The stairway to the third floor is raw and damp.

‘This is us.’ Evgenia unlocks the door, and they go in.

The room is warm. Smells of smoke, warm flesh, frowsty bedclothes, lamp-oil, fat and old boots wash around Anna. She’d almost forgotten it. This is what life smells like.

‘Sit down on here.’

It’s a bed, covered with heaps of coats. Evgenia kneels down, pulls off Anna’s boots and begins to rub her feet.

‘How long’ve you been wandering about like that for? Your feet are like blocks of ice. Let’s have a look. No, you’re not too bad, you’re not frostbitten, but don’t go near the stove yet.’

Her feet are hurting now. They didn’t hurt all that time when she was walking. Evgenia’s pulled off her gloves as well, and now she’s rubbing Anna’s hands between her own.

‘You shouldn’t be out after dark. I told you before, it’s dangerous. You don’t know who’s out there.’

‘I do know.’

Evgenia looks up. ‘What happened?’

‘A man took my sledge and the wood I’d found.’

‘Yeah, I thought something must’ve happened. You didn’t look like yourself. Did he beat you up?’

‘No.’

‘You were lucky then. We may have eaten all the real rats, but we’ve still got the human ones around. He could easily have knocked you over the head. That’s all it takes. One shove and you’re in the snow and you don’t get up.’

‘When I saw you, I thought it was him again.’

‘I thought you didn’t look too pleased to see me.’

Evgenia’s voice is so different. Where it used to be full and deep, it’s hoarse, as if she’s been ill. She looks different too. Thinner, of course, though nowhere near as thin as lots of people. She’s not starving, and she’s not short of wood either. Just think of leaving a stove lit when you’re not even at home. She must have plenty of wood. Yes, there’s a pile at the foot of the bed. Good stuff, too. It looks like sawn-up planking from one of the old wooden houses they’re tearing down.

‘You’re still working?’

Yeah, still working. Though now that the factory’s down to twenty per cent production, I do most of my work here.’ She points to a corner of the room which is curtained off by a sheet.

‘You bring them back here?’

‘Well, their balls would drop off if we did it in the street. Besides, they like their home comforts, samovar lit, stove burning and all that. They’re a bit more free with their money then.’

Evgenia’s teeth show. ‘Funny, isn’t it, how the real dirty bastards are always the ones who are soft about home and their mothers? Not that they give a flying fuck about anybody else’s. I look at some of them and I’m thinking:
Your soul’s been squeezed out. There’s nothing left in it any more.
But I don’t ask them anything. I don’t want to know. I tell them Mum’s here when I bring them back, so that keeps them in order a bit.’

Anna looks carefully around the room. ‘Your mum’s here – ?’

‘There.’ Evgenia points to the bed where Anna’s sitting. ‘Under those coats, up against the wall. She always creeps up close to that wall in her sleep. She sleeps most of the time now.’

‘Is she ill?’

‘No. She just wants to sleep.’ Evgenia is still holding both Anna’s hands. ‘Things’ve been hard for her, you see.’

A flash of understanding passes between them. Anna moistens her lips. ‘Your little boy?’

‘Yes. He had enough to eat, it wasn’t that. It was his cough. It went down on his chest. I paid the doctor to come here, but he didn’t have anything to give him. Mum sat up holding him for three nights.’

I had a kid, but my mum looks after him, and now he thinks my mum’s his mum, if you see what I mean. So I don’t interfere.

‘What was his name?’

‘Gorya. He had a proper burial, I made sure of that. I didn’t dump him at the cemetery gates. Mum couldn’t come because of her legs, so it was just him and me. I paid a bottle of vodka for them to dig the grave, and I stood over them and made sure they did it right. He was all wrapped up warm. I took him there on the sledge, but it was a long time to wait while they dug because the frost’d gone so deep into the ground. But I wasn’t going to go until I’d seen him safely buried. I picked him up and held him. It was just him and me then.’

‘When all this is over, you’ll set a gravestone for him.’

‘Yeah. You know, Anna, the worst bit is, I keep thinking that when all this is over it’ll go back to how it was. The dead aren’t really dead for ever, only for the duration, if you get what I mean. Like when a kid’s playing hide-and-seek and they hide for ages, dead still, until you shout, “It’s all right, you can come out now.” And they do come out. I think like that even though I saw him buried. And then I start going crazy and thinking maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe I only thought it was me standing there holding him. But I don’t feel it properly. I think, “Gorya’s dead,” and that seems normal but not true at the same time, if you see what I mean. And then I think, “What if I start feeling it?” You know, when things are different. When all this is over.’

Anna turns Evgenia’s hands over and strokes the palms. ‘We can’t think about it.’

‘You’ve warmed up a bit, anyway.’

‘Yes. I must go soon. They’ll be frightened about me at home.’

‘It’s nice, though, just sitting here talking. I never have time. You sit here for a bit, while I make the tea.’

The room swims in warmth. I’ll rest, just for a minute, while she makes the tea. Imagine, a stove with a pile of wood in the corner. And they’re eating, you can tell that.

But snow has got into the room somehow. It dances in front of her, and out of it comes a figure, man or woman, walking towards her. The sledge squeaks…

‘Here. Don’t drop it.’

Evgenia places the glass of hot tea in Anna’s hand. Its fragrance wreathes around her face. She sips. It’s real tea, hot and strong, and there’s sugar in it.

‘One of my clients gave me half a cup of sugar. Well, if someone gets so drunk he can’t see, then he’s going to lose stuff, isn’t he? I’ve still got Mum to look after.’

There’s a note in her voice Anna’s never heard before. Harsh, defiant, but shamed.

‘It’s these times,’ says Anna. ‘There I was earlier on, crawling round on the floor of a burned-out apartment building, digging up half-burnt blocks of wood. This woman wanted to borrow my chisel, and I didn’t let her. But it’s not just that. I’d have stuck the chisel into her if she’d tried to grab it. You find yourself doing things you’d never have thought you could do.’

‘That’s it. You know you’re changing, but you still think you can find the way back to what you used to be. Then one day you know you can’t. You’ve gone through a drunk’s pockets and stolen his stuff, and then tipped him out of the door into the snow. And not cared if he froze to death. Well. So how are things with you?’

‘My father hasn’t got long now. With the rest of us it’s only hunger, the same as everyone.’

‘I can let you have some wood.’

‘But you need it yourself.’

‘I can get more. As long as I’ve got my clients, we’re better off than you are. And everyone knows me. Besides, they don’t want to come back here and get frostbite in their wedding-tackle, so I usually get to hear of it if there’s a wooden house being torn down.’

‘Wedding-tackle! Is that what they call it? They don’t sound the marrying kind.’

‘It’s the same as the way they all have a thing about their mums: they like talking nice when they get a chance. Shut up about it now, Anna, Mum’s awake.’

The coats stir as if an animal is digging itself out of hibernation. Two small, sharp eyes regard Anna.

‘Who’s this then, Genia?’

‘This is Anna, a friend of mine.’

Evgenia’s mother pushes off the coverings and painfully edges her scrawny body off the bed.

‘I had such a sleep…’

‘I know you did, Mum. You’ve been asleep for hours.’

‘I kept hoping I’d dream, but I didn’t dream. Is it morning yet?’

‘It’s evening, Mum. It’s not late.’

The old woman hobbles over to the far, shadowy side of the room. She lights a second candle, and Anna sees the embroidered cloth, the little lamp, the icon, the small photograph of a child.

‘When are you going to get oil for my lamp, Genia? My beautiful corner’s not right without it.’

‘When I can, Mum. You know there’s no oil in the market now, and we’ve got to keep what’s left for the big lamp. You’ve got your candle.’

The old woman heaves herself to her knees in front of the icon, and crosses herself repeatedly.

‘She’s a believer, you can’t change that,’ says Evgenia quietly. ‘That last campaign against backwardness we had, they called us in one by one at the factory and asked if our children were baptized, and if there were any icons in the house. So what could I do? I had to lie. I didn’t baptize Gorya, but Mum crept off somewhere and got him done, just like I knew she would.’

Slowly, tremblingly, the old woman leans forward until her lips touch the painted feet of the infant Christ in his mother’s arm.

‘I must go now.’

‘I’ll walk with you as far as the Cathedral. Then you’ll be all right.’ Evgenia bundles wood into a hemp bag.

‘Not as much as that, Evgenia.’

‘Kids can’t keep themselves warm like we can. Take the rest of this sugar for your Kolya.’

Anna watches as Evgenia pours the remaining sugar carefully into a cone of newspaper, and twists the top. ‘Evgenia, what about your mother? She’ll want that.’

‘Look at her.’

The old woman is still keeled forward, whispering.

‘You know what she’s saying?’

‘Evgenia, don’t, she’ll hear you.’

‘She won’t. She’s deaf. She’s giving them her instructions about Gorya. Mind he keeps his jacket buttoned up, and he doesn’t like parsnips, so please, merciful Virgin, give him carrots instead. Then at bedtime he has to have his cod-liver oil and he sometimes tries to spit it out, so, my dear one, make sure you watch him till he swallows it.

‘It’s as much as I can stand to listen to her sometimes. They’re a lot more real to her than I am. It’s them she wants to be with. I put good food in front of her and she just stares at it as if she doesn’t know what it is. Then she goes back to bed, and sleeps, like you saw. Because she doesn’t want to live any more. She wants to be with them. But I don’t, and I don’t know if that’s right or wrong. I do want to live. I don’t care how bad it is, I still want to live.’

‘I know.’

‘I knew as soon as I met you that you were like that too. You can tell straight away. Some people don’t have it in them, and they just fade away. I could have looked at you and Katya, out there, and known straightaway who that wall was going to fall on. It’s not even something we want, it’s the way we are. We just have to keep on. Often I think it would be easier to be like Mum now. Only I can’t be. So everything I do now, I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life.’