The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

Suddenly, with a careless gesture, I knocked the bottle over. The oil gushed out. I screamed in horror and froze. It seemed that it wasn’t oil but my blood pouring to the floor. Dima rushed to scoop up the oil from the floor. He managed to save some twenty to twenty-five grams. I stood all red, fearing even to glance at him.

“It’s OK. Don’t get upset,” he said abruptly. It was a chivalrous and noble thing to do. I shall never forget it.

24February 1942. Only now have I understood the deep wounds inflicted on

my city by the Germans.

In many places, instead of buildings remembered in flashes from my childhood, there now towered ruins. A huge granite building on the corner of Kras-noarmeiskaia Street and Moscow Concourse was ripped apart down to its very foundation. There used to be a boutique here. I would often pop into it in the winter to warm up and buy some trifle.

25February 1942. Today I wandered into one of the streets next to the

Moscow Railway Terminal [i.e., from which trains departed for Moscow].

Elena I. Kochina, Blockade Diary

247

The destruction which I saw there shook me deeply. All the buildings had been bombed out. An occasional wall would rise here and there. A [tile] stove was suspended from one of them like a pale blue absurdity. It gently reminded me of recently known warmth and coziness. A pure, dreamy, iridescent, blue snow covered everything. It was unmarked by tracks: neither human, nor beast, nor bird.

A tomb-like silence, like the smell of strong wine, permeated the ruins. Iron beds, twisted into spirals, were strewn about, resembling strange skeletons of ancient unearthed animals. I stood there awhile, lost in thought, then crossed the Terminal Square. It lay before me—an icy, snowbound desert. Only the wind whirled about and, like a homeless dog, licked at my legs.

26 February 1942. I left the apartment and stopped on the street, not having a sense of where to go. . . . After a while I found myself before the Technological Institute. It stood alone, huge amidst the deserted streets. I was a student here once. Its enormous doors once swallowed young people like a hungry mouth. They scattered throughout its numerous corridors, filling the building with full-blooded, boiling life. Now the doors were sternly locked.

Suddenly someone’s halting call reached me. “Elena, is that you?” A middle-aged woman stood before me. Her puffy face seemed familiar.

“You don’t recognize me?” she asked, her unfamiliar expression vanishing with a blink of her long lashes.

“Irina, you?”

“Me, of course. Have I changed a lot?”

“You? Well . . . no. But yes, of course. Like the rest of us,” I mumbled.

Before the war she and I worked together. She was a charming young woman; now you could have given her fifty.

“Ira [diminutive of Irina], are you thinking about evacuation,” I asked, changing the subject.

“Yes.”

“But how?”

“With the Meteorological Institute. I work there now.”

“Could I possibly go with you?”

“Can’t say.” She pensively rubbed the whitish tip of her nose. “I’m on my way to the institute. Come with me, if you like. It’s very near.”

Of course, “I liked.” On the way Irina told me about herself. In January she had given birth to a premature seven-month infant. The baby died after five days. The only food in the hospital was water and vitamins. She spent twenty days there tossing in bed, tormented by hunger and fever. They brought her home nearly dead. And then salvation came: her grandmother died leaving two kilograms of fish-base glue and ration cards as inheritance.

“And where’s your husband?”

248

Chapter Twenty-Four

Irina gave a long whistle. “He fled on a plane to Moscow.”

“And what about you?”

“As you see, I’m here. When he took off, I was in the maternity ward.”

“He left you all alone?”

“Yes. And to hell with him. If he were here, I would have dropped dead long ago. He ate everything I had. You know what I mean by ‘everything.’”

Yes, I knew very well. In the entryway I pushed my passport through the small window [to get a building pass], but a dirty hand threw it back at me.

“What about the pass?”

“There’ll be no pass,” came the brief answer.

“Why?”

“Give me a piece of bread, I’ll give you a pass.”

“You’re crazy! Where would I get bread,” I exploded.

“A tiny, little piece, at least,” wailed the doorkeeper with the voice of a beggar.

“Give her a pass immediately, or I’ll complain to the director,” shouted Irina.

A shaggy head protruded from the window and peered sideways at Irina. A pass was flung out shortly after that.

Irina wasn’t very long at the director’s. Coming out she said, “Everything is in order. The director does not object.”

I looked at her like an idiot.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing… you said, the director does not object?”

“Yes.”

Tears welled up in my eyes.