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The severe winter days of the blockade . . . The glow of fires never died down over Leningrad. The soldiers and officers glared at the enemy’s trenches with fierce bitterness.
After the death of Lesha Ulyanov, I began to work as a pair with Zina. Once early in the morning we were observing the adversary’s first line of trenches; plumes of smoke rose from their bunkers, and we could hear the ring of an axe somewhere. Suddenly one of the Germans ran out into the trench to tend to some need. Stroyeva spotted the Nazi and fired, then turned her head and spat.
When we returned to our bunker, Sergeant Andreyev jokingly greeted us with the words: ‘Akh, you snipers didn’t even take pity on a man who’d been sent out in this weather.’ The Sergeant pulled a blue envelope out of the pocket of his short fur coat and flapped it in front of my nose: ‘For the killed fascist, thank you. So here’s your reward!’
It was a letter from my wife:
Greetings, my dear! Yesterday I received your letter. You can’t imagine how happy we were to learn that you are alive, healthy, and in good spirits. Don’t worry about us. We’re all alive and well. But our separation is hard on me. There are such questions in life, dear, that can’t be resolved in letters. If you could only know how much I need to meet with you, if only for just an hour! There’s an important matter we must discuss!
I was lost in speculation: what could have happened? I stretched out on my plank bed, and I don’t recall if I dozed off or imagined it, but I could clearly see my wife’s face. She was standing over Volodya’s bed. Her chestnut-coloured hair cascaded down around her pale neck. My wife was saying something to our son. Her large, dark-blue eyes were laughing. Volodya, stretching out both of his little arms, was babbling something.
I lay there, holding my breath, afraid to move. What could have happened with them?
Senior Lieutenant Kruglov walked up to me. Looking at me closely, he asked, ‘What’s the news from Leningrad?’ I handed my commander the letter. Its contents, of course, reminded him of his own family, which remained in Leningrad. However, he kept his own feelings concealed. Returning the letter to me, he quietly said, ‘Yes. It is hard for them without us.’
Then he stretched out on a plank couch and folded his arms under his head. His thick eyebrows were twitching. At times, his forehead wrinkled in concentration before relaxing again. I had seen this many times before – it was a sign of deep worry.
A runner entered the bunker and handed Senior Lieutenant Kruglov a letter addressed to the deceased Ulyanov. The commander opened it and read the letter out loud:
Greetings, my precious son Aleshen’ka. Yesterday I received your long-awaited message. I can’t express my joy. My son, write me more often and don’t forget Naden’ka. The poor girl is waiting for you and is very worried. Aleshen’ka, you’re my dear; I pray for you every day and believe that you will return. Don’t worry about me; I have everything I need except for you here beside me. Write, my son, as soon as you drive this fascist scum from our land. Greet your comrades for me, my son, I’m praying for them too, so that enemy bullets will always miss them. A deep bow from Uncle Prokhor and Aunt Anastasia. Naden’ka herself will write you about everyone. Farewell, my dear.
I am tightly hugging you. Mama
3 November 1941
Kruglov bowed his head. We were also silent.
Uncle Vasya, tossing and turning, was coughing on the upper bunk. Andreyev quickly walked over to the stacked guns, grabbed his machine gun, and stepped out into the trench. Zina was sitting next to the burning stove, her lips tightly compressed. Now and then she wiped her eyes.
The company commander quietly lit a cigarette, neatly folded the letter, and stuck it into the breast pocket of his combat blouse. ‘Viktor Vladimirovich,’ Zina spoke up, ‘don’t write Lesha’s mother now, wait a little bit.’ Kruglov started to reply, ‘It’ll have to wait. Why it’s . . .’ His voice trailed off as he left the bunker.
Soon I received a pass for a three-day leave in Leningrad. My joy was boundless. Three whole days with my family! Three days, three years, three centuries!
It was four o’clock in the morning. I reached the fork in the road from Leningrad, one leading to Strel’na and the other to Ligovo. I looked around. Behind me, over the front lines, flares were going up. In front of me lay a straight, paved road, covered with a thin icy crust. Little wisps of snow were writhing and twisting across it. ‘I step out alone onto the road . . .’ – for some reason I recalled this childhood verse.
I travelled the 8 kilometres in an hour. I stopped on Prospekt Stachek to rest a bit. The war had changed everything around. The façades of buildings were peppered with shell and bomb fragments; instead of windows, yawning black cavities looked out onto the snow-covered streets. A long, tightly-packed line of people stretched along a wall on Narva Prospekt. Spotting me, my face totally reddened by the frosty air and my rapid gait, the people turned their pale faces in my direction for a second. But only for a second, and then the heads turned back again and the gazes of the famished eyes returned to the shop door. Many were sitting; hunkered over with their hands between their knees, they seemed dead. A brief German barrage fell, but no one headed for a shelter. The people were patiently waiting for the bakery to open, in order to obtain their blockade ration of bread.
Fatigue and sleep were overcoming people. Some of them sat down on the frozen ground by the wall in order to rest a bit and died on the spot. At the corner of Raz’ezhaya and Ligovka Streets, an enormous five- storey building was burning. Nobody was trying to save their belongings. People were standing outside the building, stretching their hands towards the fire, and using the heat to warm their backs and sides.
Two women along Nakhimson Prospekt were labouring to pull sleds, which were bearing tightly-shrouded corpses. A group of Red Army soldiers was moving towards the front. One could hear shells constantly exploding.
I approached the street, where my family lived. My heart was pounding. Here was Mikhailov Street and my apartment building.
I ran up to the third floor and stopped before the door of my apartment, not daring to knock. ‘The children are probably sleeping,’ I thought. All the same I cautiously knocked on the door and began to listen. It was quiet . . . I knocked again, this time more strongly, but nobody came to the door. I took a seat on a staircase step and lit up a cigarette. My hands were shaking. Fear was crawling up my spine: ‘Where are they? Why didn’t
anyone answer the door? What might have happened over the four days since I had received Vera’s last letter?’
Suddenly I heard footsteps on the staircase. I rushed down the stairs. It was Katya Pashkova, our building’s janitor. She had changed so much it was hard to recognize her.
‘Aunt Katy, where are my wife and children?’
She didn’t answer, but quietly embraced me. Without looking me in the eye, she finally said: ‘Vera Mikhailovna left home day before yesterday and she hasn’t returned.’
‘Where did she go? Were they evacuated?’
‘No, she left without her things, together with her older boy, but where they went, I don’t know.’
Barely moving her feet, Aunt Katya descended the staircase, not responding to my further inquiries. I stopped outside in the middle of the yard. Where to go? Where to look for them? It was an early morning hour. I started to wander the empty streets of the city; patrols kept stopping me to check my papers, and then I walked further without any particular destination in mind. I reached Kondrat’ev Prospekt. An air-raid warning started up. The sirens howled piercingly, joined by alarm whistles from factories and locomotives. In the sky one could hear the heart-rending hum of enemy aircraft engines. Our anti-aircraft artillery opened fire. Shell bursts appeared in the night sky.
For some reason only now did a thought occur to me: I should ask the residents of our building whether they knew anything about my wife. Returning to my building, I began to ask neighbours where my wife went. No one knew anything.
‘Perhaps she got caught in a barrage and was wounded,’ I thought. I visited all the hospitals. No. She was nowhere to be found.
Not far from our building, on Nizhegorodskaya Street, I saw people gathered in front of a shattered building. Here, I was destined to experi- ence the strongest grief in my life. The people were watching as recovery teams dug the dead out of the rubble. One elderly woman recognized her daughter among the dead. They led the stunned, grieving mother away. Several hours of waiting passed on Nizhegorodskaya Street. Two young women emerged from the ruins with the mutilated body of a child on a stretcher. I immediately recognized my 7-year-old son Vitya. I took my son into my arms and pressed my ear against his chest, but my fragile shred of hope was in vain: he was dead.
Without releasing my dead son, I took a seat on the street kerb; how long I sat there – an hour or two, or days – I don’t recall.
Passers-by gathered around me. They were saying something, women were crying, and some were arguing with the police that were there. I didn’t pay them any attention. I sat there, my head lowered, tightly clutching my child in my embrace. I was afraid to lift my eyes, knowing that I might see them carry out my dead wife.
Someone touched my shoulder. It was a policeman – he asked me to take my son’s body to a nearby truck. Here, beside the truck, I saw the mother of my children Vera Mikhailovna, lying on a stretcher on the ground. She was also dead. I dropped to my knees in front of her and laid Vitya beside her. Then I picked up first my wife, next my son, pressing each one to my chest, kissing their dead faces. Then I laid them back down side by side, not really understanding what I was doing.
Aid workers took my wife and put her on the truck together with my son. The next morning I buried them together in one grave in the Bogoslovsky cemetery. I sat for a long time by the fresh gravesite. While I was there, trucks transporting the bodies of Leningraders kept pulling up to the wood shed by the gates of the cemetery. I dragged myself over to the shed, into which they were carrying the mutilated bodies of adults and children, searching for my infant – my son Volodya – among them. Not finding him, I again returned to the gravesite.
Somewhere in the city, shell explosions were audible, aircraft motors hummed in the sky, and little snowflakes whirled in the air, as if fearing to fall on a ground so soaked with human blood. I couldn’t stop thinking of my second son, Volodya. Where was he? How could I find him? I decided to head back to my apartment and begin my search there.
Another air-raid alarm caught me on my way back. I stepped under the archway of a building and wanted to stay outside, but two young female civilian patrol workers persistently demanded that I go to a shelter.
Cribs and baby carriages stood in the spacious air-raid shelter, which was lit by a kerosene lamp. The small children were sleeping. Those a bit older were playing hide-and-seek. The adults were sitting quietly, their heads bowed. One of the girls went up to her mother and began to tug on her sleeve: ‘Mama, I want something to eat, give me a piece of bread, give me.’
The mother caressed her daughter’s head: ‘No, my precious daughter, we have no bread.’ The girl buried her face into her mother’s lap, her thin little shoulders convulsively shaking. The mother, biting her bluish lips, caressed the child’s blonde head with a withered, lifeless hand.
I took my knapsack off my back and pulled some bread and a chunk of dried meat out of it. I cut off a piece of the stale bread, laid a slice of meat
on it, and handed it to the girl. The other children stopped playing and looked at me silently and expectantly. Like a machine, I cut slices of bread and meat. I gave them to the children, continuing to think of Volodya.
An old woman walked up to me: ‘Dear comrade, don’t feed us with your own ration. Keep it for yourself, you must fight.’
The air-raid sirens stopped . . .
Aunt Katya greeted me in our building’s courtyard. My appearance must have been terrible. I hadn’t closed my eyes for the last forty-eight hours, and I had forgotten entirely about food. The janitor didn’t ask me about anything. She already knew everything. She silently took me by the hand, and led me up to her room like I was a blind person.
There I heard her say: ‘Forgive me, an old fool, for not saying anything upon meeting you downstairs. We’re all living for the moment now . . . He’s alive, your son Volodya is alive; I have him.’
I rushed over to the crib standing in the corner and saw my sleeping son. Alive! Unharmed! My son, my heart. My heart was overflowing with happiness, and I kissed the emaciated, wrinkled hands of Aunt Katya.
We cautiously went to the common kitchen and closed the door behind us. This kind, simple Russian woman, holding me by the hand like I was a child, tried to comfort me: ‘You mustn’t despair, Yosif Yosifovich. You have a son, and you must take care of him.’
I took my knapsack off my back, pulled the remnants of my rations out of it and spread them out on the table. As soon as I took a seat on a sofa, however, I fell fast asleep, and I didn’t hear Katya approach me, lay me down on it, remove my boots, and cover me with a blanket. When I woke up, it was already seven o’clock in the morning. There was no one else in the kitchen. I quietly opened the door to Katya’s room and glanced in on the sleeping Volodya. After a short time had passed, Katya returned. She was carrying two buckets of water from the Neva. Little pieces of ice were floating around in it.
Aunt Katya sat down on a stool. Her hands were trembling. She was winded and breathing heavily through an opened mouth. Silvery flecks of frost glistened on her eyebrows. Her head slowly nodded. She dozed for a few minutes. I was afraid to move, so as not to disturb her peace.
Giving a jolt, just as if from a blow, Aunt Katya stood up with diffi- culty, and headed over to the table where the bread was sitting. She tore off a little piece of the crust with her fingers, placed it in her mouth, and began to fire up the makeshift heater.
Katya. ‘What’s wrong with you, Voloden’ka,’ she said tenderly, ‘don’t you recognize your father? It’s your Papa; Papa has come.’
Volodya turned his head. Knitting his brows, he glanced at my face, but continued to cling tightly with both arms to the neck of the unfamiliar woman. The word ‘Papa’ soothed him – apparently he had heard this word many times from his mother. Then at last Volodya was sitting on my lap and fingering my Orders and medals.
That evening I went to the district health department and obtained a referral for my son to an orphanage. When I started to say goodbye to Aunt Katya, she picked Volodya up into her arms, pressed him to her breast, and asked me to leave Volodya with her for a short time.
‘That’s not possible, Aunt Katya, that’s not possible.’
I left her the address of the orphanage and asked that she visit Volodya, time permitting. I opened the door of my apartment and stepped into it with my son, in order to say goodbye to my orphaned home. The rooms were dark and cold. I found a lamp – the base still had some kerosene – and lit it. Volodya toddled over to the play corner, where toys were lying on the rug. He began to move them from place to place, saying something, and waving his little arms.
Everything was in its place. A photograph of my wife and eldest son Vitya in a leather frame was standing on the chest of drawers. Only now, looking at the photo, did I feel the full depth of my grief. I don’t recall how many times I laid my face on the sofa, where the skiing outfit of my eldest son had been casually tossed. Someone touched me on the leg. I didn’t immediately understand who. It was Volodya, who was holding a toy pistol in his little hand. Pointing with his finger to the window, the toddler firmly repeated: ‘Bu-Bu-Bu.’ I embraced him, and gathering him up, squeezed him against my chest.
An hour later, I took him to the Children’s Home. Volodya didn’t want to go to the unfamiliar woman in the white gown. He started to cry loudly and kept insisting: ‘Papochka, I want to go home. I want Mama, I want Mama!’
I kissed the most precious one that remained of my family, and silently went outside. The voice of my son continued to ring loudly in my ears for a long time: ‘Mama, Mama!’
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