by JV Love
The street was quiet and empty now, as was the case everywhere in the city these days. The usual traffic had been replaced by soldiers and policemen and barricades. A thick wall of sandbags erected by citizens of her block stood at the far end of the street - a crude reminder that there was nothing to fall back on, nowhere to retreat to.
"Petya told me this morning the Germans have been dropping flyers giving an ultimatum to the city to surrender by September 9th," Katya began.
"Tomorrow?"
"Yes, they . . ."
She was interrupted by wailing air raid sirens.
They both looked to the sky but saw nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual deep blue sky of autumn with an occasional pale, borderless cloud.
"Should we go down to the shelter?" Katya asked.
"Let's wait a few minutes," Felix said. "It might be a false alarm."
Katya thought she saw a shiny object in the sky, but then it disappeared. A few minutes later they heard anti-aircraft guns firing and then tremendous explosions. Massive clouds of dust erupted into the distant sky. The explosions were far away but seemed to get closer and louder with each passing second.
In the street below was a woman hunched rigidly over her cane shuffling from one building to the next asking to be let in before the bombs came. Felix and Katya both recognized her; everyone in this neighborhood knew her. She was Evgenia Pitskova, once a feared informant for the secret police, personally responsible for sending twenty-three people from this block to gulags, torture chambers, or early graves through her insinuations and, sometimes, outright lies. She was bitter and old and despised by everyone in the neighborhood. Since she had fallen from favor with both the secret police and the Party, people now hated her openly, unafraid of her threats of reprisals.
"Hurry!" Katya yelled to her. "They're coming this way. You have to get off the street."
"Don't you tell me what to do!" she hollered back, shaking her cane at Katya.
Across the street two teen-aged boys and their mother were hurrying into their apartment building. Evgenia tried to squeeze in with them only to be kicked out the door and pushed to the ground by the boys. She fell hard and didn't get back up. "You won't get away with this!" she shouted. "All you kikes won't get away with this!"
The thunderous explosions and massive clouds of dust and debris were like an angry tidal wave forcing its way further and further inland. Katya watched it moving toward them at ever increasing rates of speed.
"I'm going to go get her," Felix said. "Meet me in the basement."
"No, it's too late," Katya said, grabbing him by the arm. "The bombs are already falling."
"We can't just leave her out there to die," Felix said, tearing himself away and hurrying out of the apartment.
Katya ran to the kitchen and shut off the stove, grabbed her diary from her room, and fled to the stairwell. Before she reached the next floor down, she ran back to the apartment to close the curtains. If the explosions shattered the windows, she didn't want tiny shards of glass all over the floor.
As she pulled the first curtain closed, she saw Felix emerge from the building into the street below. As she pulled the second curtain closed, she felt the building tremble and saw the end of her street disappear in a thick fog of grey that gradually swallowed the old woman lying in the street and the brave young man running to save her.
Katya was frantic. She ran out of the apartment, down the two flights of stairs, and opened the door to the outside. The dust was so thick she couldn't see the other side of the street. She called out Felix's name. Another explosion shook the earth, and she stumbled a bit as she made her way toward the street.
She heard Evgenia's voice, though she couldn't see her. "What are you doing? Put me down! You'll pay for this." And then Felix appeared out of the dust. He was carrying Evgenia in his arms, and she was struggling against him. Relieved, Katya held the door open. They went down to the basement, Evgenia uttering threats and curses all the while.
The shelter was dimly lit and cramped, the air cool and smelling of tobacco smoke. A small baby near the entrance let out a high-pitched scream. Katya winced and her ears rang for a few seconds afterwards.
"Make some room please," Felix said and set Evgenia down on one of the long benches that lined the walls. Evgenia cursed Felix a few more times, then demanded he go back out and get her cane.
"Why did you bring her here?" Katya's neighbor Oksana Petrovna said roughly, spraying spittle all over Katya's arm.
"You should have left her where you found her," another woman said. "She deserves to suffer."
The air in the shelter was tense as people jostled for space, and the woman's comments only made it worse. Children outnumbered adults two to one. Babies and toddlers screamed and cried as they clung to their mothers. Anti-aircraft guns pounded relentlessly, and the ground continued to tremble with each explosion outside. It was the first time Katya had been in the shelter, and she thought it little safer than her apartment. She looked around for a place she and Felix could sit, but all the seats were taken. Evgenia quieted down and didn't appear to be greatly injured. She hummed to herself now and rocked slowly back and forth.
"Hello, Katya," a voice said from the darkness.
She turned and saw Petya and Igor sitting in the corner. Igor was hugging his knees to his chest with his eyes tightly closed. Petya, looking calm and relaxed, was smoking a cigarette.
"This is quite the revelry, isn't it?" Petya said.
"Oh, hi Petya," Katya said. "I'm glad to see you two are all right."
"You and Felix certainly took your time getting down here," Petya said, blowing smoke over his left shoulder above Igor's head. "You must have been busy, huh?"
"Petya!" Oksana yelled. "I'm warning you for the last time. You better put that damn cigarette out!"
Petya took one last long drag and snubbed out the cigarette on the wall. Then he tucked the butt in the crease of his rolled-up left pant leg. "Hey Felix," he said. "How's the clerical work for the army going?" He smiled smugly, dropping his head forward and revealing his double chin. "That is what you do, isn't it?"
"I've been reassigned," Felix said. "I'll be going back to the front tomorrow."
"No, you don't say," Petya said. "What a shame."
A large explosion rattled the entire building, shaking dust from the ceiling of the shelter.
"This is hell!" Oksana shouted. "Damn those Germans! I swear if I ever get a chance to pay them back, I'll make damn sure they suffer twice as much as we are now."
Katya saw many of the women cross themselves and recite prayers, even the ones she knew to be members of the Communist Party. It didn't surprise her that in such situations Party ideology and antireligious propaganda paled in comparison to the comfort of an omnipotent God and eternal life in heaven. She felt pleased to see their gestures and felt closer to them.
"They kept telling us Leningrad was impregnable," a woman mourned.
"They were all lies," Oksana responded. "They told us our anti-aircraft defenses were a giant wall. They said our borders were secure, that the Red Army was unbeatable. Then they said the Nazi soldiers would revolt against their commanders. Lies, lies, lies!"
Katya waited for someone to argue or reproach her, but nobody did.
It seemed like an eternity before the All Clear sounded and everyone left the shelter. Felix and Katya went out into the street to see how bad the damage was.
The word 'shalom' kept going through Katya's mind. It was a Hebrew word that her grandmother said was how one should one live one's life: in a good relationship to God, to yourself and your body, with your neighbors and other people, and with the earth as a whole. To live a life in shalom meant to be in balance and relate to the world around you with a peaceful spirit.
Katya so desperately wanted to live her life in shalom, but looking at the wreckage the German bombers had inflicted on her block, she felt nothing but rage. One apartment building near the end of the block had been obliterate
d. Usually there would be a wall or two left standing, something to remind you that people once lived there, people once ate and slept and argued and made love there. But there was nothing. Just a pile of bricks.
* * *
Felix lit a small candle and poured vodka into two yellow teacups. The cup with a chip in it was Katya's favorite, and he reserved it for her. The insides of both cups were stained brown from many years of holding scalding black tea.
It was nearly 10:30 p.m., and he went over to Katya's bedroom window to look outside. Hers was the only apartment on the floor whose windows hadn't been shattered by the earlier bombing, and that was an extremely lucky break. There was no glass available to replace broken windows and the other apartments would have to have plywood installed.
All the windows in the building had been taped for some time to try to prevent them from shattering. Felix found it curious that Katya's windows had been the only ones with tape in the form of a cross, rather than the usual, safely secular, X.
Every once in a while, Felix could see a vague blue light on one of the streets below signifying a moving military vehicle. In the apartment buildings across the street, everything was dark. It seemed the city was deserted, but Felix knew better. There were people behind those dark walls - people who were tired and scared and filled with fear about what tomorrow would bring. Those same people were also brave and resilient and intensely protective of their beloved city. He knew they would rather see it wiped from the face of the earth than let Nazis occupy it.
Felix reflected on how strange it was to feel so calm and serene. Not long ago, a quiet like this might have driven him into a bout of melancholy. Now, he found it comforting. There was no where to go, nothing to do. He didn't have to be in a hurry. He could just enjoy what was alive in him here and now. And what was alive in him was a feeling of peace. He didn't have to be anywhere other than where he was or be anybody other than who he was.
He took a sip of the vodka and savored the burn as it coated the inside of his throat, then took a deep breath to extend the feeling. And then he let it go. The bathroom door opened and closed, and he knew Katya would be back in a moment. He heard her laughing at something and smiled to himself. He was quite fond of the way she laughed so suddenly and unexpectedly at little things, the way a child does. When she did that, it brought out the kid in him as well. That's what he appreciated about her - her wonderful ability to take them both back to the basic goodness of childhood, to feel the joy that is always there inside, but so often in adulthood imprisoned by anger, jealousy, and fear. He never imagined loving someone so much. Nor had he ever thought it possible to be so afraid of losing someone.
Katya returned with a mischievous grin on her face. She was wearing his favorite dress, the yellow one with the purple flowers. Felix liked how nicely it conformed to the seductive curves of her body. She opened her hand to Felix, revealing two small dark chocolates. "My father was hiding these in the tea jar for a month. I think he must have forgotten about them," she said. She started to say something else, but the air raid sirens interrupted her. Felix looked outside and saw the sky crisscrossed by searchlights.
"Should we go back down to the . . ."
Felix didn't let Katya finish her sentence. He wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips to hers. He kissed her for a long time, running his hands gently from her hips up past her waist, then back down again. When he was finished, he held her close and whispered in her ear, "I love you, Katerina Selenaya."
Her big brown eyes shined and then she kissed Felix for a long time. When she stopped, she jumped on him and wrapped her legs around his waist, laughing contagiously.
"And do you love me?" Felix asked half-jokingly. He frowned and did his best to look like a sad little puppy.
"Comrade, you should be ashamed of yourself," Katya said, doing her best imitation of a pretentious Dima. "That's sentimentality masquerading as logic."
Felix laughed. "You know, somehow I'm not mad at him," he said. "Despite what happened and what he said at lunch that day. It's strange. I think he's wrong and even though my head can't make any sense of what he says, I think in my heart I understand what he's after."
"My grandmother always said that's the most important place to have an understanding of anything," Katya said. "To have an understanding in your head means nothing. It won't get you any closer to God - no matter how much stuff you cram in there."
Felix kissed the underside of her wrist. "Seems like you've got everything figured out," he said. They could hear explosions now, but they were muted and distant.
"Oh definitely," she answered, "I know everything. Go ahead, ask me anything."
She had a playful smirk on her face and Felix felt so incredibly fond of her and her ability to be light and fun.
"What's the square root of 143?" he said.
"Oh that's too easy," she said. "You sure you don't want to know something a little harder, like, 'What's the meaning of life?'"
"Who cares about the meaning of life when we have chocolate and vodka," he said.
He turned her hand over and kissed her fingers. "Promise me you won't change," he said. "Promise me you'll stay forever young and beautiful and happy. That's all I want."
Katya laughed. "That's your problem, you want too much. You need to want what you have."
"I do want what I have. I have you," Felix said, pulling her closer to him, "and I want you." He kissed her softly below the ear, and she bent her head to the side so he could kiss more of her neck. She imitated the sound of a cat purring, and he whispered "nice kitty" in her ear.
"I remember," Katya said, "when we first met you said you weren't sure you believed in love."
"Yes," he said, "but I was a boy then. Now I'm a man."
Katya pinched him playfully. "Don't be in such a hurry to grow up."
"Ok, I won't grow up," he said, caressing her shoulders. "Just for you, I'll defy the laws of science."
She laughed, and Felix gave her the yellow tea cup with vodka. "Let's stay kids forever," she said, grinning from ear to ear. "How about it? The first one to grow up has to eat a raw worm."
Felix grasped her hand and shook it. "Deal," he said. Then he fed the chocolate to her and she chased it with a drink of vodka.
The light from the candle cast shadows against the playful designs on the yellow wallpaper, and through the thin walls they could hear Guzman's piano. Shostakovich must be over there, and they too must have decided not to go down to the shelter.
Shostakovich was playing something new. Perhaps he was writing another of his popular marches. Or perhaps it was part of the new seventh symphony he was working on. Whatever it was, it was strange. Felix couldn't decide if it was a melancholy concession or profound righteousness. It was hypnotic in its sudden key changes, its mounting tension, and unexpected pauses. It was uplifting and sorrowful all at the same time. The distant explosions and anti-aircraft fire provided a kind of perverse percussion to the piece.
Felix sat down on the edge of the bed, pulling Katya onto his lap. He brushed his lips across the tiny hairs on the back of her neck and wished he could stay in this moment forever. Let the candle flicker but keep burning. Let the piano pause but keep playing. Let time come to a stop right now, and he would be eternally happy.
The lovers kissed and embraced and trembled with each touch. Outside, air raid sirens echoed endlessly and German planes dropped payloads of death and destruction on a besieged city - a city with people who refused to give up. A city with some who even refused to stop loving.
Felix awoke early, before the sun had risen. Katya's arm was draped across his chest, and he gently lifted it and placed it by her side. He dressed in the dark, careful not to wake her.
Before he left, he watched her for a while as she slept: curled up on her side, right hand under her head, bangs hanging over her face, chest rhythmically rising and falling. He preferred to remember her this way, rather than wake her and confuse things with a bunch of useless words.
He kissed her softly on the forehead, then slipped out the door and down the hallway.
He climbed the stairs to the roof where he and Katya had spent many a cool spring and summer morning watching the sun rise. The city was shrouded in darkness now, but Felix could still see a great deal because of his exceptional nighttime vision, and also because of the light from a great fire in the distance. The air was chilly. He could see his breath when he exhaled. There was a faint scent of caramelized sugar in the air that puzzled him. He stared at the bright orange fire, wondering what the Germans could have bombed that would burn for so long.
For the first time in his life, he craved a cigarette, but he let the sensation pass through as quickly as it had come. In the river of thoughts that flowed through one's mind, Felix had learned it best not to pull them to shore but to let them just keep flowing. He left the rooftop and went out into the street. The light was low and crept surreptitiously around the buildings and dark figures walking to and fro. Shadows were indistinguishable from one another, all blending together to create an impossibly inky collage. He pulled his collar up and walked down the sidewalk. People and buildings appeared and disappeared like ghosts - images of a time and place he'd seen many times before but might never again.
When he reached the Neva, the sun started peeking over the horizon. The waters of the familiar river were calm. On the other side he could see the golden spire of the Admiralty glittering in the early light of dawn. He wondered if Lenin ever appreciated what a beautiful city it was. Or had he been so caught up in his politics that all he ever saw were "repressed masses" and "Bourgeois excess." Felix studied the far shore of Vasilevski Island. The buildings there were black and murky and it looked more like a giant castle of a foreign kingdom than another sector of Leningrad.
Blue-gray clouds hovered just above the rooftops and over the river. The sky was vast and without edges, extending forever in every direction. Leningrad was endless, and that was what Felix loved most about the city. He felt boundless and free walking along the wide avenues, catching the scent of the sea, watching the ripples of the Neva make their way from one distant side to the other. The sweeping vistas reminded him of the countryside in Ukraine, only he wasn't in the country but in the middle of a large cosmopolitan city. It was the best of both worlds.
