The Siege (28 page)

He should not have spoken of Marina like that, as if he were on a ward-round and she were any anonymous patient. Quickly, to blot out his words, he says, ‘We mustn’t let her sleep too long. We must rouse her in not more than an hour’s time, and feed her. And we must keep checking her temperature.’

‘She’s exhausted, that’s all,’ says Anna. ‘I don’t know how long she was sitting in that room.’

‘No.’ He frowns, lost in his own thoughts. ‘We shouldn’t have let her go on talking like that. She’s too weak.’

‘She wanted to.’

‘Yes, people get like that. The past is clearer to them than the present. They have to speak about it. And then they stop talking, and you know they aren’t remembering any more. They’ve gone back there.’

‘… and the horse stamps his feet so hard that all the people are frightened and they hide in their houses, right back here where the horse can’t get at them…’

‘Anna. Would you do that?’

‘Do what?’ she asks, to gain time, because she thinks she’s already understood the question.

‘If I were dead, and there was nothing you could do for me any more, would you still go and sit with me?’

‘We’re not like them, Andrei.’

‘I know we’re not.’

‘We’ve had different lives. And they were born in such different times. They try to belong to the present, but they can’t.’

‘They loved one another.’

‘She loved him. I’m not so sure about my father. Perhaps he loved the fact that she loved him.’

‘But she kept on.’

‘Yes. And she won’t stop. She’ll go on until she dies, too.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘It’s true.’

‘You sound so cold, Anna.’

‘I’m not cold. It’s only that I don’t believe in sacrificing yourself, when the sacrifice doesn’t benefit anyone.’

‘It’s what she wants.’

‘I can see that.’

‘So you wouldn’t sit beside me?’

‘Andrei, you’re asking me something that doesn’t make any sense. I’m not Marina. I’ve got Kolya to think of.’

‘I know you have. It’s not that I don’t understand that, it’s just –’

‘I know. You wish that I hadn’t got him. You want us to start together from nothing, together, with nothing to think about but each other. I don’t blame you. Elisaveta Antonovna, at the nursery, always used to get angry about the way I was with Kolya.
“
Really, Anna Mikhailovna, anyone would think that child was your own son. Don’t you realize what a bad impression you’re making?”
She didn’t think any upstanding Soviet citizen would look twice at me. My class origins for a start, and then a child in tow… Well, maybe she was right.’

‘How can you say that? You know that isn’t what I mean. I’m talking about you, not about other people.’

‘Yes.’

Kolya’s voice has faded to a murmur. He’s tired, too, after the burst of energy that the jam has given him. He lies back on the sofa cushions, his face wiped clean of mood, his eyes unfocused, staring at the paper strips that crisscross the window. His lips move.

‘Kolya, what are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking to my little horse. I’m telling him to be brave, because the big horse has hurt his head. He kicked him.’

‘That wasn’t nice.’

‘No. You shouldn’t kick people. Anna, is Marina dead?’

‘No, of course not. What made you think that?’

‘Only she looks dead.’

‘She’s sleeping. She’s very tired.’

‘Like Daddy.’

‘He’s dead, Kolya.’

‘I know. But he was tired as well.’

‘You remember, you said goodbye to him.’

‘Of course I remember. I’m not a baby. Anna, do a lot of people always die?’

‘No, not like this. I told you. It’s because of the war. Usually, people don’t die until they get old.’

‘Oh, I forgot you told me that.’

‘I’ll play a game of chess with you, Kolya,’ says Andrei, ‘and then I’ve got to go.’

‘To the hospital?’

‘Yes, to the hospital.’

‘Andrei?’

What?’

‘Are we – you know – like Daddy and Marina?’

‘You mean, are we going to die?’

Kolya presses his lips together, and nods.

‘No,’ says Andrei. We’re not going to die. Not you and me and Anna. We’re going to live.’

Kolya’s lips purse in an exaggeratedly nonchalant, soundless whistle. ‘It’s only that I wasn’t sure, so I wanted to know,’ he explains.

Andrei sets out the paper chess pieces, going over their positions with Kolya. ‘Now you show me, Kolya, where your king goes, and where your queen goes.’

They play for ten minutes or so, in the guttering candlelight. Anna watches without speaking. Soon, she will have to move, but not just yet. She has found a leather manicure case which belonged to her father. He must have forgotten about it, because it was in the pocket of his dressing-gown. It is pigskin, she thinks. She has emptied out scissors, clippers and emery board, and removed the metal fastenings. Now she must fetch water, and put the manicure case on the stove to make broth from it. It will take a long time before the pigskin softens, but it will be worthwhile. There’ll be nourishment in it. They’ll drink the broth, and Kolya can chew the pigskin.

Andrei glances up. The angle of candlelight flushes his hollow, old man’s face with youth. He smiles at her. Although his eyes are only shadows in this light, she knows their exact colour. They are blue-black, like the waters of Lake Baikal. Andrei says that Lake Baikal is ten kilometres deep. No one knows what is down there, though they say that Baikal sturgeon can live for three hundred years. The waters of the lake are pure and life-giving. Even the stones from its shores bring luck.

How much you could hide, in water ten kilometres deep. But Andrei’s eyes don’t conceal anything from her in their depths. However deep she goes, there is still love, so complete and undistorted that it frightens her. She is used to living with tangled people, and their tangled stories. But Andrei isn’t like that.
I love you, I want to be with you, come with me.
She hasn’t grown up with such words. Maybe that was why she turned him away when he asked his question. Maybe he frightens her, just a little, because he’s at ease in such deep waters. He is going to make her join him there. And he asks her questions no one has ever asked before.
‘
So you wouldn’t sit beside me
?’

‘You look so nice,’ she says now, ‘you and Kolya.’

Andrei smiles without answering.

‘Yes, I would,’ she goes on, so quietly that he can’t possibly hear her. But he does.

‘What would you do?’

‘Sit with you.’

*

Outside, the wind whines. It brings snow with it, which will swallow up Andrei as soon as he steps out of the apartment building’s shelter. It will buffet him, blind him, cover his cap and his eyelashes. It will sting his eyes with particles of ice. He will stumble on, hugging walls, and feeling for the edge of the pavement with his cherry-wood stick. It’s a blizzard in which anyone could be forgiven for dying.

‘Anna, when’s Andrei coming back?’

‘Not until tomorrow. I’ve already told you, so don’t keep on asking. He’s doing the night shift.’

‘He’s been gone ages.’

She blows out the candle, and lifts a corner of the blackout. But there’s nothing to see.

‘Is it still snowing, Anna?’

‘Yes, it’s still snowing. Go to sleep.’

In the German lines sentries stamp their feet. Christmas is over, and here’s a new year of filthy Russian weather. We should have been halfway to China by now. Soon will be. A few more weeks ought to do it.

In Leningrad, a tank rolls down towards the Moscow Gates, on its way to the front line. Its thirty tons of steel rock and grind over the tramway. From city to battle is no distance at all.

By the Baltic shores, the sea is frozen, too, and snow lies so thickly on it that it’s impossible to tell where the sea ends and the land begins.

Snow falls between the birches, and on to the frozen Neva. It covers the rubble of shelled apartments, and the burned-out farmyard where Mikhail bought his eggs. It drifts into abandoned, looted villages, hiding shallow graves. Two armies stare through the blizzard, straining for enemy movement. All planes are grounded, and there will be no bombing tonight. Over the ice road, the road of life, lorries move slowly forward from control post to control post. The ice is thickening every day, as winter grips more deeply. The ice road is beginning to do its job.

*

Vasya Sokolov never expected to end up driving lorries over the ice road, but that’s where they’ve posted him, and that’s what he’s doing. He knows he’s lucky. He’s kept hold of the Sokolov luck. He hasn’t ended up on the front line. This is his second crossing of the day, loaded up with flour and ammunition. He’s going to be several barrels above plan if he manages a third crossing.
Comrades! Every extra bag of flour you carry will save a hundred Leningrad children from starvation
!
Yeah, but you can’t think like that. Not all the time. Not when there are delays, and the bags of flour sit on the back, getting nowhere.

This lorry’s a bastard anyway. Something’s been wrong with the steering all week. Vasya smashes his hand down on the steering-wheel. Don’t play tricks with me, you fucker. People are getting shot for less. The lorry groans and heaves itself on over the rutted ice, slipping and sliding. Still dragging to the left. How far back was that repair station? A couple of hundred metres? Could head back there. No. Go on, you bastard. Don’t fuck with me.

The lorry mounts a ridge of ice. Its wheels spin, then catch. The engine labours. At that moment the lorry’s juddering loosens a connection. The electrical spark can’t quite jump across. The engine stops.

Vasya knows immediately what the problem is. It’s happened before. All he has to do is get the hood open and restore the connection. Vasya’s got a real feel for engines and he’s done a maintenance course. It won’t take him five minutes to get this bastard going again, at least for long enough to push on to the next control post.

It’s very quiet. Snow sifts across the windscreen while Vasya fastens his ear-flaps and reaches down for the screwdriver. He opens the door and the wind hits him. A wind straight from the north, stinging with snow. Thirty below, fifty with this wind. It’s like being skinned. A shocked sound comes out of Vasya’s throat. He shuts his mouth, and feels his way round to the front of the lorry, keeping one hand on the metal. In this whiteout he could be five metres from the lorry and lost for good.

The hood creaks open. He props it and clambers up to peer inside, but snow’s falling so thickly he can’t see the wiring. He wipes his face and starts again. It’s not the same connection. He tugs gently, but these wires are secure. Right. Try again. Snow spits and melts on the warm metal. There it is. The wire’s snapped and he can’t see the end of it. It’s frayed now, and too short. It won’t reconnect. Still, that doesn’t matter, all he needs is another piece of wire, and he’s got some back in the cab. No problem, now he knows where the problem is. He feels his way back to the cab, gasping with the punch of the wind, climbs up, and looks for his wire. Nothing. Some bastard’s nicked it.

No. It was him. He used the wire yesterday and forgot to replace it. Vasya’s face darkens but he doesn’t do anything, doesn’t punch the steering-wheel this time.

Got to think of something quick. Any piece of metal’ll do. Wire securing the crates in the back, maybe.

A hair-grip would do. What if he’d had a girl in the cab and her hair-grip fell out when they were doing it and he found it now, closed his hand on it, just the right length. He could get the job done in no time.

Round the back, untie the straps over his load, get a look at those crates. Suddenly he thinks he hears an engine. Coming closer, someone behind him, one of the boys, maybe Ugly Yuri or Mitya.

‘Here, mate!’ Vasya shouts. ‘I’m over here!’

And he’s let go of the straps, he’s waving his arms, he’s stepped away from the lorry towards the engine noise. He’d never have done it if it hadn’t been for the wind knifing up his brain.

He’s on his own. He’s left his load. People get shot for less. He reaches out, sweeping about him with his arms. Snow that way. Is that the way the engine noise came? He can’t hear it now. The wind’s so loud, beating into his skull. Snow this way. He takes another step, reaching out for metal. Snow falls into his arms.

His sacks of flour with the stamps on them: FOOD FOR LENINGRAD. He won’t be above plan if he doesn’t get a move on. Get back to the lorry, find a piece of wire, make the connection, start the engine.

But he can’t find it. His lorry won’t tell him where it is. It stays quiet, playing hidey in the snow.

‘Where are you, you fucker?’ shouts Vasya Sokolov.

The wind drives. The snow pours on to him. He puts up his hands to shield his eyes but the snow stings its way into them. Now he doesn’t know where he is.

A hair-grip, that’s all he wants. Like little girls wear to keep their hair back. They’re always losing them and then their hair flops over their faces.

‘Vasya, Vasya, can you see my hair-grip? It’s fallen in the water. I’ve got to find it!’

Who said that?

Andrei stops in the shelter of an apartment doorway. He knows where he is. Straight on, third turning on the right, and down to the hospital. He can find his way, even in this whiteout. Perhaps he could let himself rest for a few minutes. If he kicks the snow off these steps, and sits down, just for a little while, it will be quite easy to lever himself up again. He’s got the stick to help him.

He’s used to worse blizzards than this, and he knows what to do. He doesn’t come from Irkutsk for nothing. It’s peaceful here, in this little doorway which is fantastically hung with icicles. Here, there’s time to think. Imagine little Kolya, asking if we were going to die, just as if he were asking about a trip to the zoo. And I said no.

But in the hospital there’ll be more patients than ever. Children with shiny skin stretched over swollen bellies, old men dead in corridors, fever, dysentery, dystrophy, frostbite, failing eyesight, suppurating gums, tuberculosis, pneumonia. Most of them will die, but before they do they need a doctor there to look carefully into their eyes and mouths and ears, to sound their chests, to take their pulse and offer water, and such drugs as we have. They must have what there is. There must be someone who is still on his feet, to take the baby out of the arms of its dying mother and tell her, ‘It’s all right, we’ll take care of him.’ We are men, not beasts.