The Siege (8 page)

The soldiers walk on and on. Each group is alongside the truck for a while, and then it falls behind. The truck may not feel as if it’s moving at all, but it’s still going faster than the column of refugees and fleeing soldiers. Somewhere there’s a place where there’s no bombardment, no tanks rearing over the crest of ploughed fields and making straight for you with the wicked little snouts of their guns swivelling to get you in their sights. No Junkers shitting flame, no parachutes coming down like thistle-heads with a beautiful, rocking, side-to-side motion. Then they spit out men with machine-guns. No din of bombardment that crowds the inside of your head and can never be shaken out.

What did Mikhail say? Tor Christ’s sake, I’m one of the few men round here who know how to use a rifle, and they won’t even give me one.’

There weren’t enough rifles. One between six, to start with. Mikhail got one in the end. Someone died, and his rifle was handed over, still hot.

If only the children wouldn’t cry like that, on the same thin, high note of misery as they run along beside the truck, begging for a place. Some of these kids are on their own. The bigger ones heave up the little ones and try to hoist them on to the truck.

‘I can’t, don’t you see? There are wounded men on here.’

A man appears, thrusting a baby at him. ‘My wife can’t walk any farther. He’s only two weeks old, he won’t take up any space.’

‘I’ve got to tend these men. Your baby’s safer with you.’

The truck driver puts his hand on the horn and accelerates, scattering people out of his way on the road ahead. Andrei looks back and there’s the man with the baby, dwindling, his arms still held out in front of him, offering the baby. Its rhythmic shrieks stick in Andrei’s ears.

Mikhail’s still unconscious, over there in the corner of the truck where he won’t get jostled. He’s concussed: possible skull fracture, but at least there’s no bleeding from mouth or ears. The wound to his shoulder and upper arm looks bad, and it’s certainly bled a lot, but it’s not dangerous. A piece of shrapnel has ploughed through the flesh, and there are bone splinters. That wound needs to be probed under anaesthetic. Scorch marks and soot and blood everywhere make things look worse than they are.

Andrei feels a sudden, overwhelming longing, as powerful as sexual desire, for the carbolic smell of the Erisman Hospital. There, everyone knows what to do. You work as a team, moving like a corps de ballet. The more urgent things are, the more quietly people speak, throwing out a few words as they fight cardiac arrest or haemorrhage.

‘Soon, we’ll be there,’ he promises a man who ‘got a real kick in the guts when I wasn’t expecting it’. His skin is grey, with a sheen of sweat on it, and he is strangely garrulous. ‘The thing is, Doctor, I can’t feel a thing. Only I’m so effing cold. If this is summer I want my money back.’

The cart bumps on. The man’s pulse changes. He is blue around the mouth now. He says in a changed voice, ‘Hold me, I can’t seem to feel myself.’

Mustn’t let anyone else get hold of Mikhail’s diary, thinks Andrei with a small, cool part of his mind as he works on. Could be dangerous. They’ll find the papers when they undress him in hospital, if I leave them in his pocket. Better give them to the daughter – what’s her name, Anna. She’ll know what to do.

The diary sheets don’t crackle in Andrei’s breast-pocket. They are soaked with sweat. Later on, he will take them out to write his pencilled note, and see that they are also stippled with blood. Maybe Mikhail’s, maybe another man’s. Andrei will be unable to remember whose blood it was that suddenly jetted into his face, making him flinch with instinctive revulsion. It was the memory of his own revulsion which would return night after night to haunt him, not the blood.

In his second year at medical school, Andrei wrote down these precepts in his private notebook:

A good doctor always works with method.

A good diagnostician does not speak of theories. He begins with what he sees, feels, touches, tastes and hears. A doctor who neglects to smell a wound in order to judge if it is infected will never be a good doctor.

Andrei refuses, and will always refuse, to speak from anything but his own experience. What he has touched and talked to: that he believes. He believes in one truckload of wounded men, one road blocked with retreating soldiers and desperate refugees, one baby whom he was unable to rescue. He believes in what he can see and touch and smell, what he has held in his own hands.

Andrei will never regard himself as a witness to the collapse of the Luga line. He did not see ‘desperate counter-attacks’ or ‘valiant resistance’, or understand that ‘the Luga line was collapsing into a shambles’. What he saw was men without weapons, fighting with their bare hands, snatching up spades, pitchforks and the rifles of the dead. He saw fourteen-year-old boys crouching in dugouts, pretending they knew what came next. What he felt was the give of cheap cotton as he ripped it into bandages, and what he tasted was the golden-yellow yolk of an egg so fresh that if it had been put in water, it would have sunk like a stone.

10

Andrei stands in the empty, sunlit street. No one about. Of course, it’s still very early. Not even six yet. He keeps forgetting. The days have been pulled out of shape and they won’t go back.

This is the right street. That building over there, fourth from the end, with its entrance door open. Behind the façade, there’ll be the courtyard and staircases with the apartment doorways leading off it. Third floor, then the door on the right. It’s exactly like a thousand other Petersburg apartment houses. Dark staircases give way to cramped, subdivided rooms, where parents sleep behind a curtain and grown-up children can’t leave home because there is nowhere for them to go.

Andrei’s lucky. He shares a fifteen-square-metre room in a communal apartment, and gets on well not only with his room-mate but with most of the other people in the apartment. Even Frol the drunkard, who lives in the stair-cupboard, has taken a fancy to him for some reason. When Andrei’s trying to study, Frol bawls at anyone who’s making too much noise: ‘Shut your faces, can’t you? How’s the boy going to learn anything? Where do you think you’re going to get a doctor from, when you’re dying?’

It’s all very different from Irkutsk.

‘How I envy you,’ his father said the day before he left. ‘There’s nowhere in the world like Petersburg.’

His father had been a Petersburger, an idealistic young engineer who took up a post in Irkutsk soon after the revolution. Andrei grew up on the legend of his father’s brilliance and youth.

‘Your father could have done anything.’ The little boy was quite happy with that. His father could have done anything, but he’d come here, where the only family he could ever have had awaited him. He’d married Andrei’s mother, and it can’t have taken him long to realize there would never be any question of separating her from Siberia. It was her blood and her life. When Andrei was four years old, she would take him camping in the taiga with her. They would hike for hours, then pitch their tent. His mother knew every inch of the ground. What he loved most was the sound of the wind, moving softly over the face of the earth, stirring the grasses and delicate fronds of summer moss. When he lay on his back, he could feel the earth moving under him as the wind blew faint clouds over the clean blue face of the sky. He used to believe that the rushing sound he could hear was the turning of the earth.

There’s nothing like that in Leningrad. Here, the wind is funnelled down avenues of stone. It blows dust into your eyes, and the air tastes as if it’s been breathed before, hundreds of times, by hundreds of people. Leningrad air isn’t a living thing, caressing you through your clothes, moulding you to the earth.

But people here in Leningrad have strange ideas about Siberia. They talk about cold, but what they don’t understand is that it’s an entirely different kind of cold. Mist gathers on the Neva, and thickens into dank, bone-piercing fog. But in Siberia, at twenty degrees below, the cold sings. Siberia’s more than a place, it’s a spirit which can’t be translated anywhere else. People talk more openly there. They’re not so scared.

In Siberia, there is too much of everything. Too much space, too much sky, too many thousands upon thousands of trees marching away towards a horizon that never grows closer, too great a crowd of stars on winter nights. But when you know it, it’s not frightening at all. Siberia becomes the only place where you can really breathe.

But he’s here, in Leningrad. Andrei’s head is light with sleeplessness. The silence makes his ears ring. On his way, the morning calm was so uncanny that he wanted to shatter it. He wanted to yell until they opened all the shutters and hung out of their windows to listen.

‘Don’t you know what’s happening?’

But he walked on through quiet streets that smelled of bakeries. An old woman, who was sweeping her steps with a worn-out knuckle of a broom, stopped and stared at him. Did he look strange? No, old people stare at everything.

This is where she lives, the daughter. Anna. He takes off his cap. They’re a trusting lot here. Not only is the outer entrance door to the courtyard open, but the inner staircase door as well. No one’s about. He climbs the staircase that smells of onions and cabbage, with its feeble electric lightbulb cased in a mesh of wire. Quite a nice place, though. Stairs clean and well-swept, no rubbish in the courtyard. The handrail is old, smooth wood that’s been polished not long ago. This must be the door. Yes, it is. He hesitates. It’s very early, but after all he’s bringing good news.

Andrei raps firmly on the door, and stands back two paces, as his mother taught him to do when he was a child.

‘Don’t crowd up at the door so you fall into the house when they open it. It’s not a cultured way to behave.’

A light goes on, but no footsteps come to the door. Don’t they know that he can see the thread of light under the door? He can hear somebody moving about inside the apartment, with light, quick footsteps. What are they doing?

He knocks again, and this time feels a draught at his back. The door opposite has opened. He turns, and there is a man, watching him. A big, pale-haired guy in his vest, with bulging muscles. He says nothing, just stares at Andrei, and then slowly closes his door. Andrei’s skin prickles. This is Leningrad for you. Everyone watching and listening, but saying nothing. Boldly, he steps right up to the door, and lances his voice through the wood: ‘I’m a friend of your father’s.’

The door opens so suddenly that he tumbles in. She must have been listening just behind it. He falls against her, apologizes, clutching at the door-handle, trying to right himself. He fell against her breasts. He felt them against him, soft and full and warm. She is naked under that cotton dressing-gown. And then he pulls back from the sensation, for she’s the daughter of his friend.

‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’

‘It’s all right – I’m a friend of your father. Andrei Mikhailovich Alekseyev.’

She shrinks back from him, her eyes narrowing as if he is her enemy. ‘Oh my God, you’ve come, you’ve come –’

‘No, it’s not that. He isn’t dead, I promise you. He’s alive. He’s in the Erisman Hospital, with a shoulder wound. He came back with me in a hospital truck.’

‘Is it bad?’

‘It’s not good, but it isn’t dangerous. He had concussion, which can be more of a problem, but there doesn’t seem to be a skull fracture.’

‘You’re a doctor?’

‘Not yet. Fourth-year medic’

‘He got himself shot!’ she bursts out. ‘I should have known it, I should have stopped him going.’

‘You couldn’t have stopped him going.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean? He’s got a son who’s only five years old, did he tell you that? Or did he just forget about Kolya, the way he always does when it’s not convenient? And now on top of everything else, he’s got hurt. People are getting hurt all over the place who shouldn’t even be there; they’re not doing any good, they’re just getting killed and then someone rolls them up in an old curtain if they’re lucky and they’re left for the Germans, like logs of wood. Well, thank God, you brought him back. And now he’s wounded and – I’m sorry. I should be being grateful to you.’

Though she’s retreated from him as far as she can, the entrance to the apartment is so tiny that he can still feel the sleep-warmth coming off her body. He smells the warm, strong scent of her skin and hair.

‘Should we… Can we go inside? I’ve got to get back to the hospital in a minute, but I’d like to talk to you.’

‘Don’t go in there. Marina Petrovna’s asleep. Come in the kitchen. Hush, we mustn’t wake Kolya – he’s been having bad dreams.’

They actually have their own apartment. He stares round. Yes, they have their own kitchen. It’s tiny, but imagine not having to label all your food and put it on the right shelf in case someone else swipes it.

‘It’s a nice apartment,’ he says.

‘We have two rooms. Seventy-five square metres. We’re very lucky, although I don’t know how long we’ll be able to hold on to it.’

She flushes, as if she’s said more than she intended.

‘A man like your father needs his space.’

‘What?’

‘A writer, I mean.’ He pronounces the word ‘writer’ with a mixture of respect and doubt which makes it clear that there are no writers in his family. ‘Even in the dugout, he wrote pages and pages, just as if he was sitting at his desk.’

‘What happened to it?’ she asks sharply.

‘It’s all right, I’ve got it here. That’s why I’ve come – well, part of the reason. I didn’t want to leave it lying about in the hospital.’

‘No.’

He reaches into his breast-pocket and brings out the sheets of closely written paper, folded, limp and warm with the warmth of his own body.

‘Thank you. But why don’t you sit down?’

She sits him at the little folding table, and automatically begins to prepare tea.

‘And I don’t suppose they gave you anything to eat,’ she mutters, taking out half a loaf of black bread which has been carefully wrapped in muslin overnight. ‘Well, you’d better have something here.’

‘Watch that knife.’

‘What?’

‘You’ll chop your finger off if you’re not careful.’

She looks down at the loaf she’s cutting, then up at him with a small, reluctant smile.

‘He’s really going to be all right? You’re sure about that?’

‘Sure.’

‘I’ll go back with you. There are all sorts of things he’ll need –’

‘Leave it for a few hours. He’s asleep. He’s had his wound probed, and they removed the shrapnel. He’ll be knocked out at least until this afternoon. Anyway, it’s chaos down there. Stretchers all over the corridors, calls going out for blood, temporary theatres being set up all over the place. This is the first time I’ve been able to get off duty.’

She’s rummaging in the store-cupboard, reaching up with her back to him. The sash of her blue dressing-gown is pulled tight around her waist. She’s not slim, she’s rounded and strong. He takes in the curves of waist, hips, calves. He remembers the feel of her breasts. He’s sitting forward, and there’s so little space that her dressing-gown tickles his knees as she turns. He looks down quickly, so that she won’t see his thoughts in his face. He hears the chink of glass jars, then she brings out a jar of honey, opens it, and spreads honey on the bread for him. ‘Here, eat this.’

Bread and honey. It tastes like heather honey, dark and sweet and smoky. And the bread all the better for being a day old, with that chewy texture black bread gets on the second day. She’s put butter on it, as well as honey. He can taste the salt in the butter. Delicious. He hadn’t know he was so hungry until he swallowed the first mouthful. And the tea, just as he likes it, strong and with three lumps of sugar in the bottom of the glass. How did she know that was what he liked? She must have asked him, though he doesn’t remember it. He’s so tired. Tiredness is racing through him in waves. The truck, then the train. Hours of waiting on the platform beside the men. There was a crowd of peasants who’d flocked to the station with their bundles, and he made them break off bits of fencing to serve as makeshift stretchers. They didn’t want to do it at first.

‘We’ll get into trouble. They call this sabotage, don’t you know that? It’s more than my life’s worth to touch a railway fence. That’s State property, that is.’

‘That’s right, Sir, State property.’

They nodded self-righteously at one another, as if Andrei were a pitiful fool who didn’t know the way things worked.

‘I’ll give you State property,’ said Andrei. ‘I know your type. Break up those fences or I’ll order you to be shot.’

They believed him, maybe. Anyway, they did it, and so the worst cases got stretchers. And the strange thing was that the man who’d been the most difficult about the fencing fetched a bucket of water and a dipper, and went down the line of wounded, helping the men to drink. One of them was too far gone to drink from the dipper. The man with the bucket knelt down beside him. For five minutes he knelt there, dipping his fingers in the water and letting the wounded man suck them like a baby. And when he caught Andrei looking at him, a helpless, childish smile spread over his face, and he said, ‘This is what we do for the calves when they’re being weaned, Sir. Always works a treat with the calves.’

The sweetness of the tea spreads through Andrei. If he were alone he’d dip the last crust of the bread in it. Nothing nicer than black bread dipped in sweet tea…

‘Go ahead if you like. I don’t mind.’

‘What?’

‘Dip your bread. We all do here – me and Kolya, even Marina Petrovna.’

‘I shouldn’t be eating your ration.’

‘I gave it to you. Eat it.’

‘When I was in a dugout with your father, I used to dream about sitting in a kitchen, drinking tea.’ He doesn’t add that in the dream there was always a woman, warm, blurred, moving around the kitchen, brushing against him.

‘I know.’

‘You know?’ He doesn’t intend it, but all his meaning comes out in his voice.
How can you know, when only we who were out there can ever possibly know.

‘I was there until two days ago. Farther back from the line than you, but not very far. We were digging an anti-tank-trap when the shells finally came too close even for us. Six women were killed, and then they ordered us out of the sector. We got a train back to Leningrad, just as if we’d been on a camping holiday. Except that the train was so full we weren’t sitting on seats, we were packed in so tight that even if we fell asleep we didn’t move an inch, we stayed upright. And the guard kept yelling, “Get those heads inside the window or they’ll be knocked off!”’

Packed in next to Evgenia. Their faces only centimetres apart.

Sometimes sleeping, sometimes talking about things which were over for ever, as if they were still going on.

‘I reckon pickaxe blisters are worse than spade blisters, don’t you?

‘No, a shovel’s worst of all, until you get used to it.’

‘That Lena still stuffing sausage into her face when we were running for cover. She wasn’t going to miss a mouthful, was she?’

‘Yeah, and shouting, “I’m not wasting bloody sausage!” when you told her to get a move on.’