The End of Sorrow: A Novel of the Siege of Leningrad in WWII

by JV Love

  He kept a knife under his mattress and deliberated whether or not to get it out. One of the voices had returned to speak to him and was even more persistent than the last time. "You feel how weak you are?" it said. "That's because Igor is stealing your strength. You can't let him do this to you. You can't let him win. Kill him now while you have the chance."

  Petya reached under his mattress, felt the cold knife in his hand, and decided the voice was right. Oksana and Katya were both at work, and now was the perfect time to kill him. All day long, the boy had been delirious and talking nonsense from his fever. It would be no surprise if he died. He was sound asleep in Katya's bed and it would be easy to do - probably easier than strangling Oksana's cat.

  "Don't use the knife, you fool," the voice hissed. "Suffocate him with a pillow!"

  Petya picked up one of his pillows and looked around the room suspiciously. He saw Guzman's corpse laying in the same position as it had been that morning and cursed himself for not taking care of it earlier in the day. That's where the voice was coming from, he decided. It was Guzman seeking his revenge.

  "What are you waiting for?" the voice demanded. "Kill him now and stop him from stealing your strength!"

  "Shut up!" Petya shouted. "Just leave me be!"

  Igor opened his eyes and turned his head toward Petya. "What?" he asked weakly.

  Petya put the pillow back down and saw the clock out of the corner of his eye. It was going on six p.m. already. Oksana would be home from work soon. "I said, help me get rid of Guzman before Katya and Oksana get home."

  Igor groaned and pulled the covers over his head.

  "Stop your whining," Petya said. "I can't get him down the stairs alone."

  Igor protested again, but eventually got out of bed and helped. Together they dragged Guzman's body down the stairs and outside. It was snowing and the sun had long since set. Petya sent Igor back upstairs for the sled so they could load Guzman's corpse on it and pull it to the morgue.

  Petya leaned against the building and lit a cigarette as he waited for Igor to return. He didn't dare sit down because it was too much of a struggle to get back up. Just hauling Guzman's body down the stairs felt like a marathon. Nothing was easy these days. Even getting out of bed was a chore.

  He heard crunching snow and thought someone might be approaching, but when he squinted into the darkness he couldn't see anything. Then the sounds stopped. He tried to focus on his cigarette and enjoy every second of it, because he only had a couple left. He inhaled deeply and looked at Guzman's body lying on the icy sidewalk, his blue legs protruding from the blanket they'd wrapped him in. Petya didn't like being alone with the corpse and hoped Igor would be back soon.

  "You should have killed Igor when you had the chance," a voice said to Petya.

  Petya kicked Guzman's body. "Shut up," he said. "I'm not falling for any of your tricks. I didn't kill you."

  "Whose ration card is that in your pocket?" the voice asked.

  "It wouldn't have made a bit of difference if I hadn't taken your ration card," Petya said. "You were going to die anyway and you know it."

  Petya heard the snow crunch again and then Oksana rounded the corner of the building and walked toward him. She had a smug little grin on her face, and Petya wondered how much she'd overheard. She glanced at Guzman's corpse, then at Petya, then went in the building without saying a word.

  "She knows! Oksana knows. You've got to get rid of her!" the voice screamed to Petya.

  "Damn you," Petya said and kicked Guzman's corpse even harder. "Just shut the hell up and leave me alone!"

  Someone else was approaching and called out Petya's name. He recognized Katya's voice and watched the small chin and high cheekbones of her face come into view from out of the darkness.

  "Who are you talking to?" she asked.

  "The Nazis of course," he replied. "Who else would I be talking to?"

  Before Katya could say anything more, Igor emerged from the stairwell with the sled. Her eyes opened wide. "What on earth are you doing up?" she asked.

  "Petya made me help him."

  "Petya!" she said, glaring at him. "He's sick. He needs to be in bed." She took her mittens off and felt Igor's forehead with the back of her hand. "You're burning up," she said.

  Petya watched her take Igor by the arm and lead him back upstairs. Every week she seemed to grow more affectionate toward the boy.

  After they left, Petya loaded the body on the sled, but decided he didn't have the energy to haul it to the morgue. Instead, he pulled it to the courtyard and buried it under a few feet of snow. It was no big deal, he told himself. There were corpses everywhere these days. At least he'd buried the body, unlike those lazy bastards who just left them lying on the street or sidewalk.

  When he made it back to the apartment, he saw Katya and Oksana conversing quietly around Igor's bed. Katya put her hat and mittens back on and prepared to head out. If Oksana had said anything to her, she didn't reveal it. Katya only asked Petya one thing - how he'd made the trip to the morgue so quickly.

  "I ran," he said straight-faced.

  Katya gave him a little look of disgust, but pursued the point no further. "Igor has a fever of 104," she said.

  Petya felt a twinge of guilt for forcing the poor boy out of bed. He didn't know his fever was that high.

  "Are you going straight to the hospital now?" Oksana asked Katya.

  "No, I need to go to the office first," she answered. "I have to deliver some information to my director."

  "Whatever it is, it can wait," Oksana said as she put the tea kettle on the stove. "The boy needs to see a doctor. He's been sweating terribly. You see how his sheets are soaked?"

  Igor sat up and let loose with a dry, hacking cough.

  "You hear that?" Oksana said.

  "I know," Katya said, "but what can I do. My director has threatened to call in my commissar if I don't deliver the information by six p.m.. I already took a big risk is coming here. I don't have much time left now." She buttoned her coat up and pulled her scarf tight. "It's only an extra forty minutes," she said. "That's not going to make a difference."

  Petya climbed back into bed and pulled the covers up tight to his neck. Katya hurried out the door and Oksana shook her head as she watched her go.

  The apartment loudspeaker was broadcasting inspiring words from a poet who was in the infantry: "Comrades, we fight for our freedom! We fight for our honor. We fight on behalf of every man, woman, and child who has been crushed by the fist of tyranny throughout history. Our cause is just. This battle must not be lost . . ."

  After the water boiled, Oksana made two cups of herbal tea. She set a blue cup down, presumably for herself, on the small table where the lamp was and gave the orange cup to Igor. The soldier-poet ended his patriotic exhortation and an announcer reminded listeners that Stalin would be making an address the next evening at ten o'clock. One of the numerous marches Shostakovich had written then began playing. Oksana hummed along to it.

  Igor took a few small sips from his tea, decided it was cool enough, then gulped down the rest of the cup. He fell asleep a few minutes after that.

  The voice in Petya's head had started up again, telling him all sorts of things about Oksana. "That bitch is planning something for you," it said. "She knows you killed her cat and now she knows you stole Guzman's ration card. She'll probably tell Katya as soon as she gets the chance."

  Petya decided he needed to act pre-emptively. Before Oksana said anything to Katya, he had to discredit her testimony - make Katya believe the woman had lost her senses and was talking nonsense.

  He opened his eyes part way and saw Oksana walk to the kitchen. He got out of bed quietly and poured the tea from Oksana's blue cup into Igor's orange cup. Then he put the orange cup back in the same exact place she'd set the blue cup on the table.

  He pretended to be asleep when Oksana came back in the room. He peeked at her from under his blankets, watching the puzzled expression on her face as she picked up t
he orange tea cup and examined it. She looked at Igor's empty blue cup, shook her head, mumbled a few curse words, then went back to the kitchen.

  Petya fell asleep after that and didn't wake up until Katya returned home a couple hours later. The music from the loudspeaker was gone. It had been replaced by the metronome-like ticking that played when no program was being broadcast.

  He overheard Katya and Oksana having a heated conversation near the front door.

  "They gave me some more aspirin and a can of condensed milk," Katya said. "They said it's probably just a cold, that he'll be all right if he gets some rest."

  "You don't get a fever of 104 from a cold," Oksana said, obviously struggling to keep her voice down. "He needs to see a doctor."

  "Oksana, I tried," Katya said defensively. "All the doctors were busy or resting."

  "You should have insisted," Oksana said. "You've done enough for them with all your volunteer work that they could certainly do this one little favor for you. You let people walk all over you."

  "Oksana, you don't understand. They work so hard and get so little time to rest."

  "And what about you?"

  "Me?"

  "Yes, you," Oksana said. "Don't you work hard? Don't you help others all the time? Why is it you don't deserve some help once in a while?"

  Petya waited to hear what Katya's answer would be, but there wasn't one - only the never-ending ticking from the loudspeaker.

  * * *

  The wind was ice-cold and whipped over the top of the snow, stinging Felix's cheeks and stabbing into his lungs. He ducked down and tried to settle into his foxhole to better protect himself, but it was pointless - as was his being there on the side of the road in the first place.

  Olga had ordered him to watch for German activity along the road and then report back at the end of the day. It was a stupid assignment. Felix knew it. Olga knew it. Everyone in camp knew it. There was no German activity on the road, and there wasn't going to be. All their tanks and trucks and cars were frozen solid. When the Germans launched their invasion, they'd expected victory before winter set in. As a result, neither their armies nor their vehicles were prepared for cold weather, especially weather this cold.

  Five hours had crawled by and Felix was now almost completely indistinguishable from the snowdrifts around him. Even his recently grown beard was covered white with snow. It was the sixth day in a row that he'd been assigned this ridiculous order, and in all that time, he hadn't seen a single thing come down the road - unless you counted squirrels.

  Perhaps he should start reporting them back to Olga, as Misha had suggested: Three brown furry rodents were seen traveling south in loose formation. Looked nervous and seemed to be searching for something. Unable to ascertain if they were advanced scouts, Nazi Sympathizers, or lost troops.

  Felix stretched his head out and looked up the road to the north. The wind had been building a snowdrift there since he left yesterday, and it now stretched completely across the road - six feet high and at least twelve feet in width. Felix remembered when he was a kid how excited he would be seeing snowdrifts like that. He and Dima would tunnel into them and make snow forts and pretend to battle Napoleon's armies. It was always great fun and they'd stay out there for hours, until Dima's mother called them in for hot cocoa.

  The memory made him bitter. He couldn't think about Dima anymore without a pain in his heart. Why did he have to die? Why was Felix allowed to live when his friend's life was cut short? None of it made any sense, and Felix was sick of the way things were. He couldn't accept that the world could be so ugly and unfair.

  He looked at the giant snow drift once again. The road was completely impassable to anything but a snowplow. He was supposed to stay until sundown - still another hour away - but he didn't care. He was numb with cold and he'd had enough. He got up and went back to camp.

  Life as a partisan under Olga's command had become more about fighting boredom than the enemy. They rarely ventured out, and when they did, it was to do what Olga referred to as "intelligence gathering missions." Felix mockingly referred to these trips to the neighboring areas as "gossip crusades," and joked that no other military outfit in all of Russia had more rumors in their arsenal than they did. "We've got enough rumors to kill a dozen old widows in one shot," he liked to say. Misha loved that one and always laughed.

  The partisans had fled their former camp a few weeks back after Felix had run in shouting that two German platoons were approaching. At first, Olga had accused him of lying and threatened to have him shot on the spot, but it wasn't long before it became clear that he was telling the truth.

  Everyone knew that Olga didn't want to leave that camp. She'd made herself a nice, cozy shelter and wanted to stay there through the winter.

  They'd set up camp again ten miles farther north, and Olga had quickly seized materials from a nearby village and conscripted several partisans to build her a new shelter against the bitter winter cold. When they finished erecting it, she snuggled into it like a bear and rarely came out. It had a little stove that provided lots of heat and, in short, was a comfortable place to wait out the winter.

  Felix hated it. He hated all the comfortableness they had. He hated sitting around the campfire all day long listening to people gossip and trade rumors.

  He, Misha, and Yuri shared a hut together now. It was made out of mud, straw, and ice, and a little stove kept it nice and warm on the inside. When they'd first lit the stove, Felix had expected the structure to melt and collapse after a few hours, but he came to understand what the Eskimoes had known for so long - a little melted snow will freeze again and act as cement between the blocks of ice. The inside of the hut might melt a little, but the frost on the outside would counteract it.

  The entrance to the hut was waist-high and Felix struggled to crawl through it now with his bulky clothing and frigid muscles. Misha was sitting on his homemade bed smoking a cigarette. "Welcome home, sweetheart," he said, and blew him a mock kiss.

  Misha had long since run out of booze and was in general quite miserable. Olga had repeatedly denied his requests to venture to Lestovo (now considerably farther away) - no matter what fantastical reasons he came up with. The worst of his withdrawal symptoms had passed, but he wasn't quite so easy going as he used to be, and his tongue had grown considerably more caustic.

  Felix took his coat off and Yuri helped him hang it by the stove to dry. Misha offered him a puff from his cigarette and Felix accepted it. He'd started smoking, for the first time in his life, shortly after Dima had been killed.

  The tobacco was harsh and Felix struggled to keep from coughing. He sat down on his own homemade bed, which consisted of several inches of bark and a foot of straw. The bark covered the frozen ground, and the straw served as a mattress. Felix found it annoyingly comfortable and considered getting rid of it.

  "Misha picked up an extra week of guard duty today," Yuri announced.

  "How the hell did you know?" Misha said. "It just happened an hour ago."

  Felix wasn't surprised that Yuri had found out already. "An hour is an eternity around here," he said. "It's ridiculous how fast gossip spreads through this camp." He held out the cigarette for Misha to take back, but he waved it away. "What did you do this time?"

  "What does it matter?" Misha said irritably. "She just makes shit up if she really wants to get you." He wrapped his arms around his knees and pulled them close to his chest. "I think it's about time someone challenged that bitch's authority."

  Yuri's long bushy eyebrows arched in surprise across his forehead, then he frowned and nodded his head in agreement.

  "How about it, Yuri?" Misha said. "You used to be a captain in the army. How about we stage a coup and make you the leader?"

  Felix wasn't sure if Misha was serious or if he was just trying to entertain himself again.

  "It's not that I wouldn't mind," Yuri said, "I'm tired of sitting around here doing nothing. But leaders can only be leaders if others will follow them. I've been
around long enough to know that people won't follow me."

  "People won't follow you?" Misha said in mock amazement. "But why? You're such an honest man. And you're certainly no coward. Don't people know that?"

  Now Felix knew for sure that Misha was trying to amuse himself.

  "They should know that by now," Yuri said, leaning forward and studying the dirt floor.

  "Certainly they should," Misha agreed. "Perhaps you should tell them outright so they know for sure. Stop beating around the bush."

  "Yes, you may have something there," Yuri said. "Perhaps I've been too subtle." He crossed his massive arms in front of his chest and held his hand to his chin.

  The wind picked up outside and blew some snow flurries through the entrance of their hut. Felix adjusted the blanket that served as a door in a vain attempt to keep them out.

  "What about you, Felix?" Misha said.

  "What about me?"

  "How about you lead our coup."

  "Why me?"

  "Because you have everyone's respect," Yuri said, cracking the knuckles of his enormous hands. "Olga has only their fear."

  Felix didn't have a chance to reply because Olga's voice shouted his name from outside their hut. "Varilensky! Come out here!"

  "What does that witch want now?" Misha said.

  Felix shrugged his shoulders as he got his coat on. "I don't know," he said, "but I'm sick of it."

  Over the past several weeks, Olga had taken every opportunity she could find to punish Felix for something - trivial infractions of rules she often made up on the spot. Felix learned not to argue with her, to just perform whatever ridiculous task it was that she ordered. He knew she had it out for him and didn't want to give her anything she could use to accuse him of insubordination.

  "I heard her complaining earlier that the stew we had for lunch had too much salt," Yuri said.