Burying the Sun by Gloria Whelan Page B

was seeing the ruined Leningrad for the first time. “Why is that man selling dirt?” She was horrified.
    â€œIt isn’t exactly dirt. When the warehouses burned, the sugar burned as well. It melted into the earth. They have dug up the earth with its bit of sugar.”
    The Gostiny Dvor, the market where we had loved to shop as children, had been bombed and was nowonly a blackened shell. Hundreds of starving people stood in lines at the stores, waiting for their rations. There were women dragging sleds with grown men too weak to walk. We passed the cemetery with its stacks of bodies that could not be buried in the frozen ground, and I had to tell Marya how we had taken Viktor there. Crater holes from the German shelling were everywhere, stores were boarded up, the trolley cars stood like silent ghosts. Everything was dark and blacked out, as if the city were not there at all.
    â€œMama used to say our city was safe as long as the angel still stands on the column in Palace Square, but how can our poor city survive this?” Marya began to cry; in the cold the tears froze on her cheeks as if all the warmth had gone out of the world.
    When at last we were seated in our apartment with Olga and Yelena, drinking the real tea Marya had brought, Marya was more cheerful. “I’m glad I came back. Things are sure to get better—they can’t be worse.”
    Yelena said, “I hope so, but things at the library are certainly getting worse. The ink is frozen in the inkwells. All the pencils have been burned for fuel in peoples’ burzhuika s. What is even worse, more and more books are being stolen to burn for fuel. I can’t blame people, but they are carrying off some of my favorites. Yesterday I saw a man put a book under his coat, and I was sure it was our last copy of Lermontov’s poems. Before I could stop myself, I ran up to him with a copy of The Collected Works of Stalin and said to him, ‘Surely this will make better reading for you,’ and I snatched away the poems, saying nothing about the theft. He seemed satisfied, since the Works was much fatter than the poems. Now I am putting out government books and hiding the poets.”
    The next day Marya hurried to the Hermitage to see her old friends and came back with her own sad story.
    â€œGeorgi! There are hundreds and hundreds ofpeople living in the museum. They are down in the cellars in the bomb shelters. Their own homes have been destroyed by German shells. They are commandeering all the building material Comrade Orbeli ordered so that he could restore the damaged museum when the war is over. And what are they commandeering it for? For coffins, Georgi!”
    That evening Yelena, Olga, Marya, and I, along with all those who were strong enough to be out in the cold, went to St. Isaac’s Square to listen to the news over the loudspeakers, followed by poets reading their poems. When Marya heard the poet Simonov’s poem “Wait for Me,” with its sad words, “Wait for me, and I’ll return, wait for me in snow, wait for me in rain, only please wait,” cold tears once again ran down her cheeks, and I knew she was thinking of Andrei.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
FYODOR
    February 1942
    Typhus had broken out in the city. I urged Yelena to stay at home.
    â€œWhat! Leave the library and let people come in and take all my favorite books?”
    It was not only the typhus that was making the city dangerous. It was a murderous city. Desperate people were willing to do whatever was necessary to stay alive. People stole and murdered for food or ration cards. Now that a ration card could not be replaced, a stolen card spelled your doom.
    Dmitry and I were walking down the prospektwhen we saw a man push an old woman down and steal her purse. Though we hardly had the strength to walk, we found ourselves running after the man. Dmitry tackled him and I sat on top of him. We found the ration card.
    â€œDon’t turn me in.