Burying the Sun (5 page)

“Georgi, where have you been? I've been looking all over for you. I went to the Trushins' and Dmitry was gone as well. They said you were out digging vegetables. Georgi, tell me you didn't go where the bombing was.”

I handed her my bulging sack. “They're root vegetables, Mama. They'll last us all winter.”

“Do you think I would exchange my son for a bag of turnips?” She looked very angry.

“There are carrots and parsnips as well,” I said.

“That makes it better?”

For a minute I thought she was going to pitch the bag out the window, but she only threw her arms around me. A moment later she was pushing me away. “What is that terrible smell? Take a bath at once.”

September, October 1941

“Moscow must finally be paying some attention to Leningrad,” Viktor said. “They've sent General Zhukov to us. I hear that since the old man came, everyone on the General Staff has been on duty twenty-four hours with no sleep. He's like a dog with a rat between his teeth. He's shaking up the whole General Staff, but whether Moscow sent him to save the city or destroy it, who knows?”

Viktor's words, “save the city or destroy it,” took on new meaning. The German shelling of the city and the bombing increased. The German army crept closer
and closer to Leningrad. Word was that any day they would enter the city. No one believed that they would be merciful to us.

Olga told us that the composer Shostakovich had left Leningrad. “When there was no electricity, he worked by candlelight on his symphony. He didn't want to leave, but Moscow ordered it. They came and told him to pack up, that it was too dangerous in Leningrad. He says he will be back and that the new symphony will be for our city.”

The air-raid shelters were finished, and Dmitry and I had a new assignment. We were given buckets of paint and told to paint over all the street signs in the city. “If the Germans come,” we were told, “they won't know where to go.”

Dmitry and I looked at each other.

Under his breath Dmitry said, “If the Germans are strolling down our streets, what does it matter whether they know whether to turn left at the Nevsky Prospekt and right at the Ligovsky Prospekt?”

Still, it was an order, and we took the black paint and splashed it about, leaving as much on ourselves as on the signposts. We joked about the signs, but still it was not pleasant to think that General Zhukov expected German soldiers in the city. Worse was to come. We were ordered to the sewers.

We weren't volunteers any longer, but workers in the city's brigades. The officer who commanded our sector of workers told us our job would be crucial in saving the city, which made us feel better until our brigade was marched to one of the entrances of the sewer system. It had never occurred to me that you could actually go where what you flushed down the toilet went. We were all prepared to hold our noses, but as we climbed down the steel ladder into the darkened tunnel beneath, it wasn't so bad.

“It's mostly rainwater from the storm sewers,” the officer reassured us. Still we hugged the sides of the walkways. “This far down,” the officer said, “it is safe from the German bombs. What we want to do is
establish a whole system of communications. Up above you painted out the street signs. Down here we are going to put up street signs. If the city is threatened, we can move guns and ammunition to wherever they are needed.”

All that week, armed with maps of the sewer system, we explored the little byways and turnings, working our way slowly from one manhole to another and from one entrance to another and marking them all. It was like a game of hide-and-seek.

At the same time, we discovered, men were wiring all the bridges of the city so that they could be blown up if the Germans marched in. And not only the bridges, but the city's docks, the railway that circled the city, St. Isaac's Cathedral, the General Staff Building, and even the Winter Palace. There was a rumor that the whole Russian navy was to be scuttled, completely destroyed to keep it out of the hands of the Germans. Even the newspaper finally admitted our danger. The headline in
Leningradskaya Pravda
said
LENINGRAD—TO BE OR NOT TO BE?

“Mama,” I said, “the whole city will disappear.” I knew how much she loved the city.

Usually she managed a smile, no matter how bad the news. Now her face was cold. “Would you have the Germans marching down the prospekt and Hitler giving a speech at Palace Square with the angel looking down? Never.”

“Mama, the French let the Germans march down the Champs-Elysées, their main street, rather than destroy the whole city.”

“The French have their own priorities and may do as they please,” Mama said, and would not say another word.

I remembered the watercolors of St. Petersburg Marya had made for Mama and Papa when we were in Siberia, but this was not the same city. The early-fall weather was mild and the sun like gold, yet the city was ugly. After supper one evening Yelena and I walked along the prospekt. We could hear guns in
the distance. To stop the German tanks, there were machine-gun posts and concrete blocks and cruel-looking steel contraptions called hedgehogs because of their bristly steel teeth. Lumber was piled every which way. Everything that could be done to stop the German army from rolling through the city had been done.

“It's as if some witch had put a curse on the city,” Yelena said. “I can't even remember what it used to be like.”

The Summer Garden where we had had our picnic was nothing but muddy earthworks to protect the air-raid shelters under the garden. The city's buildings were covered with nets; even the sky over our heads was full of ugly barrage balloons like so many buzzards. Only when we stood at the edge of the seawall and looked down at the Neva could we forget the war for a moment.

Yelena said, “Rivers are beautiful, but they are cruel as well. The Neva flows on as it has for thousands
of years and will keep flowing on to the sea. It doesn't care one way or the other what happens to the city.” She sounded discouraged.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“I feel so helpless, Georgi. All I do is sit all day long in the library.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “It's the same for me.”

“Georgi, you have been out every day. You helped to save the paintings, you dug the air-raid shelters, you are a member of the volunteers, you even risked your life to get food from the farms.”

“All that is nothing,” I said. I felt as useless as Yelena did.

On the night of September 17 there was a high alert. All of us in the guard were summoned to our posts and told that we would not go home. We were to sleep right there. Dmitry and I were stationed near Palace Square. We were supposed to be armed, but there were not enough guns to go around. Ancient
guns were yanked from the walls of the Russian Museum. People brought shovels and brooms.

“The Germans are going to break into the city tonight,” Dmitry said. “I feel it in my bones.”

It was hard to know what to be most afraid of, the Germans or the whole city going up in one terrible explosion from the dynamite we had set ourselves. There were rumors everywhere: the town of Pushkin had fallen, the railroad that circled the city had been taken by the Germans, the Baltic fleet at the Kronstadt naval base had been scuttled. No one knew the truth. We knew only that in the morning, after sleeping at our posts, we were still alive and Leningrad was still there.

The next day we heard the Germans were within ten miles of Palace Square and only two miles from the great Kirov plant where munitions and tanks were being made. The laborers at the plant worked sixteen hours a day turning out munitions, and then at night they armed themselves and slept at the plant to protect
it from the Germans. It was known that if the Germans got any closer, the plant would be blown up.

General Zhukov threatened to kill any soldier who retreated an inch. No one knew where the front was, because where it was a minute ago was not where it was now.

Little by little we learned the truth. The great ship
Marat
had been sunk, but most of the rest of the fleet survived at Kronstadt, their guns aimed at the Germans on the Finnish shore. Pushkin, only fifteen miles away from Leningrad, had been taken by the Germans. This news was terrible for Mama. Pushkin was the name given to Tsar's Village, where Mama had lived in the Alexander Palace, and nearby was the magnificent Catherine Palace, which had been turned into a hospital during the Great War. It was said the Germans were using the Catherine Palace as a stable for their horses.

When she first heard what had happened, Mama said, “Show me, Georgi, what they taught you of hand-to-hand fighting.” Mama had a furious look in
her eye. “I have a mind to go to Tsar's Village myself and strangle those barbarians.”

There was an air raid nearly every evening now. The raids were especially dangerous because the Germans were so close to Leningrad, there was little time to get to the shelters. One minute things were peaceful, and the next moment the planes were dropping their bombs on us. You had to decide if you wanted to take the trouble to go to a shelter. It was miserable squeezed in with a lot of other people. It was too dark to read and too noisy to sleep. Just as the all clear was sounded and you climbed out of the shelter, there was another air-raid warning and back you went.

After a while I just kept on with what I was doing. It was the same with others. If you had been standing for an hour in the bread line at a bakery, you wouldn't want to lose your place. Yet all around you buildings were going up in flames. Walking was always accompanied by a sickening crunch of broken glass.

One day a government building was bombed and all the official papers burned. There was so much
paper that the fine ashes drifted over the city for hours, shutting out the sun. Viktor laughed. “I always said the government was all paperwork.”

Mama was more serious. “Let's hope they were the records of the next wave of poor unfortunates about to be arrested by the government.”

One evening in late September Dmitry pounded on the door. “Come at once—there's a huge bomb near the Erisman Hospital. They're defusing it.”

My heart was in my throat. Mama was working late at the hospital that night. I ran after Dmitry, sprinting across the bridge to the Petrograd side, where the hospital was located. When I saw how near to the hospital the bomb was, I could scarcely get my breath. Though I knew the danger, I could not keep from drawing close to watch the men defusing the bomb. Dmitry and I climbed under the rope meant to keep people away. The huge bomb was fifteen feet into the ground.

Someone said, “There's a soldiers' barracks next
to the hospital, full of ammunition. If the bomb goes off, the hospital and everyone in it will go with it.” He looked around and smiled. “And ourselves as well.”

Dmitry kept pulling on my shirt and urging me to move away, but I was too wrapped up in watching the men to pay attention. When he gave a tug so hard I nearly fell over, I looked up.

“Over there,” he said, pointing to the hospital entrance. The hospital was being evacuated. Nurses and orderlies dressed in white were helping patients to leave. I ran over, looking for Mama. When I couldn't find her, I went up to one of the nurses. “I'm looking for Ekaterina Ivanova Gnedich.”

The nurse pushed me out of her way, saying over her shoulder, “Ekaterina Ivanova is staying in the hospital with the patients who are too ill to move.”

It was nearly time for the curfew, and Dmitry tried to get me to leave.

“No,” I said. “Not as long as my mother is in the hospital.”

He shook his head and left along with the others.

I was the only onlooker when an officer strode over and grabbed me by the shoulder. “Don't you know there's a curfew on? I'm taking you to the station.”

I shook loose. “My mother is a nurse in the hospital, and she's staying there with the sick people. I'm not leaving here until I see the bomb is defused.” I didn't care what the officer said.

He looked at me for a long time, and then he took an official piece of paper out of his pocket. “This is a pass,” he said. “It will allow you to remain here, but just for the night.” With that he turned on his heel and left.

The bomb squad worked all night; the dark hole in which they worked was lit by lanterns, which made the workers' long shadows move with them. By early morning the bomb was defused and the men climbed out of the crater, wiping the dirt and sweat from their faces. The ambulances returned with the evacuated
patients and hospital staff. After a half hour or so I saw Mama with two other nurses leaving the hospital. At first I was going to run up to her, but I didn't want her to know I had been there all night, right next to the bomb. Racing down the backstreets, I got to the apartment and pulled the covers over my head before she walked through the apartment door.

At our breakfast of a small hunk of dry bread and a mug of hot water, I asked Mama, “Why did you get home so late?”

“We were shorthanded last night,” she said. “What did you do while I was at the hospital?”

“Dmitry and I just did a little sightseeing.”

“You shouldn't be on the streets, Georgi. It can be dangerous, what with the bombs.”

“What about you, Mama?”

“Oh, you needn't worry about me. The hospital is safe.”

October brought the first snow and more bad news. The city of Kiev had fallen, and Moscow was in
danger. For us the bombing was worse than ever. Thousands of bombs fell. Our apartment shook as if we were in the midst of an earthquake. All night long you could hear the fire engines racing from one fire to the next. There were burned-out houses and stores on every street. People lost what little they had, and the worst thing you could lose was your ration book. Without it you could get no food. At first the lost ration books were replaced, but people cheated and said they had lost their books when they hadn't, so the government refused to replace them. The unfortunate people who had lost their houses now had no food.

We thought about food all day long. We were allowed only a little over two ounces of bread a day. And what bread it was! Everything they could find went into its making: flaxseed, cottonseed, sawdust, cellulose, and moldy flour. It was all we could do to swallow it. Sometimes we got a morsel of fish, and when there was no more food for the horses remaining in the city, the horses were slaughtered and we had
a bit of delicious meat.

Inside the houses there was no heat, for there was no kerosene nor wood, and only an hour of electricity each day. Now Mama proudly brought out her little
burzhuika
, which was so small it could be heated with the pieces of wood she had gathered from the barges. It did not warm us, but its flame was cheering and we could still boil water and warm our hands on the hot glasses that held the water.