Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944 by Anna Reid Page B

radio!”’ Two weeks into the war the couple had their first serious quarrel, over whether or not Yelena should leave for Saratov with her institute. Yelena decided not to evacuate, and the closure of the siege ring trapped the whole family in Leningrad. Through September, Dima had hardly any sleep, firewatching with the local civil defence team at night and digging potatoes in an abandoned vegetable patch after work. Every morning, Yelena walked along the Neva embankment to the paediatric hospital which distributed the infant ration of soya milk:
     
    The maples burn a feverish red, like dying embers. The leaves fall slowly, dropping straight into my hands. I take them home and put them on the windowsill, new ones every morning. These may be the last leaves of my life. A downpour of artillery shells whips along the embankment, landing on the Academy of Arts and the University. Sometimes shells land quite close and we see people fall.
    At the hospital, Lena immediately drinks up her milk. When it is finished she cries bitterly, stretching out her little hands towards the white baby bottles . . . But they don’t give her any more: three and a half ounces is the ration.
     
    Dima, having been transferred to a defence factory where he worked as a lathe operator, received the manual worker’s ration. ‘During the midday break,’ wrote Yelena,
    he brings me his lunch: a small meat patty and two spoons of mashed potato. Despite my protests he forces me to eat it all – ‘Eat, please, you have to feed Lena. Don’t worry about me, I’m full.’ But I can see that this isn’t true; all he’s eating is soup. He can’t keep going like this for long, and anyway I have less milk every day.
     
     
    In early October, though the couple had already broken into their emergency reserves of potatoes and sukhari , Yelena’s milk dried up. ‘At night I drink a whole pot of water but it doesn’t help. Lena screams and tears at my breast like a small wild animal (poor thing!). Now we give her all the butter and sugar we get on our ration cards.’ On the 10th Yelena first recorded her suspicion that Dima was secretly eating sukhari in her absence. The rusks ran out four weeks later, leaving only fourteen ounces of millet with which to feed the baby (‘Now I curse myself for buying only four and a half pounds at the commercial store. What a fool I was!’). No longer trusting her husband, Yelena started hiding the millet every time she left the apartment – ‘up the chimney, under the bed, under the mattress. But he finds it everywhere.’ On 26 November, returning home unexpectedly, she caught him in the act:
     
    ‘Don’t you dare!’ I yelled, losing control of myself.
    ‘Shut up, I can’t help myself.’
    He looked at me despairingly. He didn’t even avoid my eyes as he’s been doing these last few days. I shut up and my anger passed . . . After all, by giving me his lunches, he started going hungry before I did.
     
    The millet ran out on 2 December. Two days later, the kindness of a stranger allowed Yelena to exchange coupons for macaroni. Roaming the streets in search of food for sale, she had spotted a horse-drawn cart laden with boxes:
     
    A crowd dragged along behind the cart as if following a coffin. I joined this peculiar ‘funeral procession’. It turned out that there was macaroni in the boxes, but nobody knew where it was being delivered. The driver remained stubbornly silent. Catching sight of a shop ahead we raced one another there and formed a line, exchanging abuse. We could have been trained animals. But the horse, squinting in our direction with his kind eyes, pulled the cart on past. Breaking away from our places, we ran after it. This happened five times . . .
    At last the cart stopped at a shop. There was a long queue outside, looping round the corner . . . Gatekeeper to paradise, the shop manager counted off the ‘faithful souls’, letting them in ten at a time. I stood and gazed mindlessly.