The Siege

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘I’ve been looking for you.’ Pavel Nikolayevich is a chunky man with spatulate fingers. He looks more like a tram-driver than anyone’s idea of a surgeon. But Andrei’s seen those fingers at work, and knows the skills built into each of them. Pavel Nikolayevich takes a small packet out of his coat. ‘Here. Something for you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Andrei reaches out and takes the packet, which is squashy and heavy for its size. He doesn’t ask what it is. These days, you say your thanks and don’t ask questions.

  The professor leans close. ‘Guinea-pig,’ he whispers. ‘Incredibly enough, Tamara was still keeping a few of the lab animals alive. Giving them hay and so on. So there you are. The South Americans regard guinea-pig as a great delicacy, I believe.’

  ‘I can’t thank you enough…’

  ‘Rubbish. If we don’t keep you young doctors going, who’ll look after us when we’re old men? Besides, you know, I have no dependants. These days that’s a blessing. Now, put that away before anyone sees it. They’ll all be wanting some.’

  He pats Andrei’s shoulder and walks on.

  ‘What’s that, Andryusha?’

  ‘Meat.’

  ‘Meat! What meat? Where did you get it?’

  ‘Someone gave it to me.’

  ‘But what is it? Dog? Cat?’

  ‘No, better than that, wait a minute – ‘

  He’s already unwrapped the packet once, in the hospital, and seen the little stiff, furred corpse.

  ‘Let me see it! Andrei!’

  ‘No, not yet – why don’t I cook it first?’

  Her face blanches. She steps back from him. ‘What kind of meat is it?’ she whispers hoarsely. Her face is stiff with horror. At once he knows what she suspects.

  ‘No, Anna, no, I swear, it’s not that. It’s nothing bad. It’s a guinea-pig.’

  ‘A guinea-pig!’ She puts her hand over her mouth. ‘You’re sure, Andrei? Who gave it to you? You hear such things.’

  He has heard them too. In the market, and in the bread queue. Even among the doctors. Andrei believes in what he’s seen, not in rumours. People whisper of corpses with missing limbs, and of children who disappear. They say there are cannibals trading in the Sennaya market now, hawking unidentifiable meat pâté. Quickly, he turns his mind away.

  ‘Of course it’s a guinea-pig. Look at it. Fur and all.’

  ‘Oh yes-’

  ‘But we’ll have to skin it.’

  ‘You can do that. You’re used to dissecting things. I’ll work out how to cook it. We haven’t lit the burzhuika yet, because there’s only one bookshelf left’

  The room is icy. Kolya, swathed in blankets, is perched on Marina’s knee. She must have been reading him a story, but she has fallen into the sudden sleep that keeps overtaking all of them. Anna’s father, under his mound of blankets, is also sleeping.

  Kolya’s sharp little face turns to Anna. ‘Marina’s been asleep for a long time, but I didn’t wake her up.’

  ‘Good boy. Guess what, Kolya, we’re going to have meat! Andrei’s brought it. You can help me get the stove ready.’

  ‘Meat,’ says the child, as if he doesn’t quite remember what it is.

  ‘Yes, and then I’m going to make soup from the bones, like we do. When Daddy and Marina smell soup, they’ll soon wake up.’

  But Marina is already struggling out of sleep. ‘Soup? Let me make it. You and Andrei must rest. You both look exhausted.’

  As she crosses to the kitchen she checks Mikhail, as she always does, and pulls the blankets closer around him. Anna won’t believe it, she says, but her father was awake for a quite a long time, earlier. While you were in the bread queue, Anna. He even talked, didn’t he, Kolya? Your father was talking to us, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Kolya, but uncertainly.

  Anna massages Andrei’s legs while the meat cooks. They’ve decided to make a stew, so as not to lose any of the meat’s goodness. They can eat strips of meat today, then the soup tomorrow. The rare, savoury smell of cooking meat fills the apartment. The next moment, there’s a knock on the door.

  ‘Someone smells meat,’ says Marina.

  ‘I’ll go.’ And whoever it is, I’ll stop them at the door. They mustn’t come in. If word gets out that we’ve got meat… What if it’s Zina? I can’t give her any more – I promised Marina –

  It is Zina, with the baby in her arms. She stands in the doorway and holds him out to Anna, as she did before.

  ‘I think he’s ill. Do you think it’s a cold, or maybe an ear infection?’

  The baby has been dead for at least three days, Anna judges, as she takes him into her own arms. The icy cold of Zina’s room has preserved him, but he is dry and blue and his half-open eyes show slits of white.

  ‘Zina…’

  ‘He’s cold. I wondered if we could come in. You said it was warm by your stove.’

  ‘Zina, where’s your Fedya? Has he seen the baby?’

  ‘He hasn’t been home since last week. You know he’s on the Defence Committee at work. My Fedya never stops – he’s practically a Stakhanovite.’

  ‘Zina, you know, don’t you, that the baby –’

  Zina reaches up, and puts her hand over Anna’s mouth. ‘Don’t say anything, Anna. It brings bad luck.’ She takes back her baby and rocks him gently. ‘He’s so beautiful, isn’t he? And we haven’t even got a photograph of him. My mother’s never seen him, you know. So I came to ask you, Anna Mikhailovna. You know that drawing you did, the one you showed me, of your little Kolya when he was a baby? I wondered if you would draw my baby, so I can send the picture to my mother.’

  The smell of meat floats into the tiny hallway.

  ‘Wait here a moment, Zina.’ Anna goes back into the apartment, snatches up paper and pencil, whispers in Marina’s ear, and returns to Zina, who still stands in exactly the same position, her face peacefully bent over the baby.

  ‘We’ll do the drawing in your apartment. It’s quieter there.’

  In their coats, boots and hats, the two women sit opposite one another. Zina cradles her baby. From time to time she bends and whispers to him.

  For the first time in her life, Anna doesn’t attempt to draw what she sees. She draws the baby as she remembers him in his early weeks, before the siege began. A breast-fed baby, already rounding out nicely, with a few feathers of damp, dark hair. One plump hand clutches the edge of his shawl. His eyes are open, and they find his mother’s gaze. She draws quickly, because Zina is beginning to tremble.

  ‘There you are. I can do a copy later on, if you like, so you’ve got one to keep and one to send to your mother.’

  Zina stares at the drawing.

  ‘It’s just like him. That’s exactly the way he looks at me. And his hands, look. That’s just the way they hold the shawl.’

  Anna does not look at the baby’s purple claw, curled over the edge of the blanket in which Zina has wrapped him.

  ‘My mum’s going to be so thrilled when she sees this.’

  Zina shifts the baby into her right arm, takes the drawing and puts it carefully away under the bed.

  ‘My Fedya’ll frame it. He can do anything like that.’ Then she returns and faces Anna.

  ‘I know he isn’t –’ she swallows, ‘looking his best just now.’

  ‘No, because he’s –’

  ‘I know. Don’t think I don’t know. It’s just I don’t want to talk about it. And when my Fedya comes home he’ll do everything that should be done.’

  ‘Of course he will.’

  Anna, Andrei and Kolya eat the tender, savoury meat, while Marina spoons broth into Mikhail’s mouth.

  ‘This is funny meat,’ says Kolya. ‘I’ve never tasted it before.’

  ‘It’s a special kind of meat they’ve brought in over the ice road.’

  ‘Can we have it again?’

  ‘Tomorrow, you’ll have meat soup with your bread. I don’t want my last bit, Kolya. You have it.’

  Later, after the others have
gone to sleep, there are just the two of them again. They lie face to face, whispering, feeling each other’s dry lips move. His breath smells of meat, and she knows her own must, too.

  ‘We stink,’ she says. Now the pipes are frozen there’s no running water in the apartment. For some reason a tap in the courtyard is still working, although water is so heavy that they carry only the bare minimum upstairs. But they’re lucky, not like Tanya. Every day she sees more people on their way down to the Neva, stumbling with their buckets, clambering down to the ice. God knows what’s in that water now.

  Anna dreams of a steam-bath, her naked flesh red with heat, her sweat trickling down breasts and thighs and prickling at the roots of her hair. Women wade through clouds of steam, their heads small above mountains of breast, belly, buttock and thigh. They sit on wooden benches and snort with content. Every particle of dirt is steamed out of their pores.

  Anna’s skin itches. It’s days now since she has taken off her clothes. She disgusts herself.

  ‘I’m so dirty,’ she says.

  ‘I love you more and more.’

  ‘Don’t go to sleep yet. I’m afraid.’

  ‘What are you afraid of?’

  ‘My father’s going to die soon. Marina says he wakes up, but I don’t think he does. Only in her mind. I feel as if we’re somewhere else, not here on earth at all.’

  Andrei shifts his swollen legs. ‘That’s because it’s night. But tomorrow I’ll see if I can get a spoonful of cod-liver oil for Kolya. Masha at the dispensary said they might have some. A few drops a day will make all the difference. And you’ll go for the bread ration, and we’ll come home and eat. We’ll get through another day. We’ll still be on earth. As long as you’re alive, I’ll stay alive.’

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘Yes, I promise.’

  ‘But my father will die.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think he will.’

  Frost and snow gather, thickening centimetre by centimetre on windows, roofs, parks, railways, and the bodies of the dead. Slowly, the city sinks down, like a great ship sinking in an ice-field. Its lights have gone out. Its water no longer flows. Production in factories has all but stopped. The ship is poised, ready to dive into the blackness of death. Only its people keep on stubbornly living, as if they don’t know that it’s all over for them.

  The next morning, Anna finds a small onion which must have rolled off the store-cupboard shelf and hidden itself among the bristles of her broom. She grabs Andrei’s arm with a cry of joy. Sobbing, she says to him, ‘You were right, you knew all the time. We’re going to be all right, I know it. This is a sign, that’s what it is. A sign.’

  He looks at her dry, swollen lips, her sharp cheekbones and sunken eyes. He looks at the little onion which she is holding out in triumph.

  ‘Yes,’ he agrees. ‘It’s a sign.’

  She slices the onion finely, and adds it to the meat broth which she has saved for Kolya, with a pinch of salt and a cup of water.

  ‘The vitamins will do him so much good.’

  She lights the stove with kindling from the last bookshelf. Soon the soup is simmering. Marina, Andrei and Anna gather round to watch Kolya swallow his meat soup with onion. Anna spoons it into his mouth. ‘There you are. It’s good, isn’t it? Now you’ll grow up to be a big boy.’

  After eating, the child goes back into a fuddled drowse. Sometimes he whimpers. Anna notes that Marina has not even suggested keeping back any of the broth for her father.

  ‘I was listening to the radio,’ says Marina. ‘There was a nutritional expert on last night. She said there’s nourishment in wallpaper paste.’

  ‘But we haven’t got any.’

  ‘We have. Kolya’s fort. We used wallpaper paste to make the papier-maché. If I strip off the painted layer, we could cook the rest of it. There’s bound to be some calories in it.’

  ‘But what will Kolya say? He got so upset when I said we might have to use it for fuel for the burzhuika?

  ‘Yes, but if it’s for food, that’s different.’

  While Kolya sleeps, Marina works for hours, peeling off the thinnest possible layer of painted papier-maché from the fort, and putting the rest to soak in water.

  ‘The paper will float to the top, and the goodness of the paste will remain in the water. We can make it into a kind of soup for him.’

  ‘Don’t tell him.’

  ‘No. We’ll say we’ve put the fort away for safety, until the blockade is lifted.’

  ‘Yes, let’s say that.’

  22

  Again, it’s the dead of night, but this time she’s alone. The others are in the room, of course. Kolya, on the mattress next to her, pressed against her. Marina, on the other side of Kolya, sleeping. They lie like this, the adults sandwiching the child, so that their body-heat will keep him warm. But Andrei’s not here, and without Andrei she feels cold and fearful. She’s restless, thinking of him at work. He’s sleeping at the hospital tonight. She made him promise. Outside it’s minus twenty, and she’s afraid that on a night like this he could collapse on the way home and freeze to death.

  There is typhus in one of the nearby children’s homes, he says, where orphans are crammed together. What if Andrei gets typhus? In his starved state, he’d have no resistance. What if he simply didn’t come home from the hospital one night? Would anyone there think to inform her if he was taken ill? Of course not. They don’t even know that she exists, let alone that Andrei’s living here –

  A voice stirs beside her. It’s Marina.

  ‘Let’s talk. It’ll pass the time.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re awake, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m awake. What time is it?’

  ‘Half past eleven.’

  ‘Only half past eleven.’

  ‘You’ve been asleep.’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘Yes. You were asleep when I got up.’

  ‘Marina, you’ve lit the burzhuika!’

  ‘I had to make tea for your father.’

  ‘What did you use?’

  ‘The encyclopaedia.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I thought it was the one he’d miss least.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And there are twelve volumes.’

  They speak quietly, although they lie on the same mattress, because Kolya is between them. But he is deeply asleep, with the flaps of his fur cap muffling his ears. And then the cold space on Anna’s other side, where Andrei should be.

  ‘So many hours, before it gets light,’ says Anna.

  ‘Your father’s been awake too. He only went back to sleep about half an hour ago. We’ve been talking for a long time.’

  ‘It’s strange, how he only talks when no one but you can hear him,’ says Anna. Her heart beats fast as she waits for Marina’s answer.

  ‘You think he doesn’t talk to me? You think I’m lying?’

  ‘No, not that-’

  ‘You think I invent it?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Why should I do that?’

  ‘Because you want him to talk to you.’

  ‘There are a lot of things you don’t know, Anna.’ Her voice is sharp in the darkness.

  ‘I know,’ says Anna. ‘People have been telling me that all my life. I never had time to finish my education.’

  ‘Shall we talk properly, then?’ asks Marina, her voice changing. ‘Shall we stop all this? I could tell you a story.’

  It’s still only half past eleven. Six and a half hours before the bakeries open. The night hangs like lead.

  ‘All right,’ says Anna.

  ‘You know the people in my story. You’ll have your own version. But let me tell you mine, and then you can tell me yours.’

  Anna draws up her knees and pulls Kolya more deeply into the bony cradle of her body, under the layers of blankets. She tucks his hands into her armpits, where they’ll be warm. He sleeps on.

  ‘You realize that your father and I have kno
wn each other for a long time?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I was thirty-two when I first met him. He was a couple of years older, with a wife and a four-year-old daughter. Your father was very interested in Tairov’s work – you’ll have heard of Tairov. He was in Moscow, directing at the Kamerny theatre, which he’d founded just before the war. Misha had been reading Tairov’s book, Notes of a Director. It wasn’t long after he’d staged Phèdre. I remember that the first time we met, we argued about that production. We’d both been to Moscow to see it. Your father was still hoping to write for the stage then.’

  ‘But he never did.’

  ‘No. So, we argued. He told me straight away that he was married, and about you. He used to tell me how clever you were, because you could already read when you were only four. But from what I could see he wasn’t at home very much. Those were such different times, and although it’s only twenty years ago it’s passed away so completely you can’t guess what it was like unless you remember it.’

  ‘There’s nothing so very different,’ says Anna, ‘about men who get married and have babies and then find that they don’t want to be at home very much.’

  ‘It was a new world,’ says Marina. ‘That’s what we believed. Everything had changed so fast, and it was still changing. The theatre was right in the heart of it. It was 1922. For the first time ever we had a mass audience, we had soldiers and factory workers coming in with free tickets they’d been given. Theatre was going to be for everyone. They came to everything, they listened to everything, they talked about everything. They ate and drank as if they were in their own homes and they didn’t dress up. They just poured in, in their boots and overcoats. They wanted theatre, because they’d never had it before. Everybody wanted it. Everybody wanted us. Ensembles sprang up, actors flung ideas at the audience, there were experiments going on everywhere. Some of them worked and some of them didn’t. The whole of theatre turned into a giant stage where you were always in danger of being pushed back into the wings if artistic politics left you behind. The spotlight might suddenly shine on you, or it would go off and you’d be alone.

  ‘And yet there was so much freedom. We didn’t live in a fog, stumbling with one arm in front of our faces to ward off what was coming next. We knew the future was rushing towards us and we raced to embrace it. I sleep a lot now, but in those years I hardly went to bed. I’d go to sleep at two in the morning, and at seven I’d snap out of bed wide awake and run to rehearsals. And everyone else would be up too. Imagine actors getting up before ten. And yet they didn’t look worn out and grey. Everyone looked beautiful, even those who were ugly.