Chapter 1(part 1)
You have never been so hungry; you have never been so cold.
When we slept, if we slept, we dreamed of the feasts we had
carelessly eaten seven months earlier-all that buttered bread,
the potato dumplings, the sausages-eaten with disregard,swal-
lowing without tasting, leaving great crumbs on our plates, scraps
of fat. In June of 1941, before the Germans came, we tought we
were poor. But June seemed like paradise by winter.
At night the wind blew so loud and long it startled you when it
stopped; the shutter hinges of the burned-out cafe on the corner
would quit creaking for a few ominous seconds, as if a predator
neared and the smaller animals hushed in terror. The shudders them-
selves had been torn down for firewood in November. There was no
more scrap wood in Leningrad. Every eood sign, the slats of the
park benches, the floorboards of the shattered buildings-all gone and
burning in someone's stove. The pigeons were missing, too, caught
and stewed in melted ice from the Neva. No one minded slaughter-
ing pigeons. It was the dogs and cats that caused trouble. You would
hear a rumor in October that someone had rosted the family mutt
and split it four ways for supper; we'd laugh and shake our heads,
not believing it, and also wondering if dog tasted good enough
salt-there was still plenty of salt, even when everything else ran
out we had salt. By January the rumors had become plain fact. No
one but the best connected could still feed a pet, so the pets fed us.
Thu Oct 22, 2009 1:38 pm
