Read Online Burying the Sun by Gloria Whelan - Free Book Online Page B

to leave.
    â€œNo,” I said. “Not as long as my mother is in the hospital.”
    He shook his head and left along with the others.
    I was the only onlooker when an officer strode over and grabbed me by the shoulder. “Don’t you know there’s a curfew on? I’m taking you to the station.”
    I shook loose. “My mother is a nurse in the hospital, and she’s staying there with the sick people. I’m not leaving here until I see the bomb is defused.” I didn’t care what the officer said.
    He looked at me for a long time, and then he took an official piece of paper out of his pocket. “This is a pass,” he said. “It will allow you to remain here, but just for the night.” With that he turned on his heel and left.
    The bomb squad worked all night; the dark hole in which they worked was lit by lanterns, which made the workers’ long shadows move with them. By early morning the bomb was defused and the men climbed out of the crater, wiping the dirt and sweat from their faces. The ambulances returned with the evacuatedpatients and hospital staff. After a half hour or so I saw Mama with two other nurses leaving the hospital. At first I was going to run up to her, but I didn’t want her to know I had been there all night, right next to the bomb. Racing down the backstreets, I got to the apartment and pulled the covers over my head before she walked through the apartment door.
    At our breakfast of a small hunk of dry bread and a mug of hot water, I asked Mama, “Why did you get home so late?”
    â€œWe were shorthanded last night,” she said. “What did you do while I was at the hospital?”
    â€œDmitry and I just did a little sightseeing.”
    â€œYou shouldn’t be on the streets, Georgi. It can be dangerous, what with the bombs.”
    â€œWhat about you, Mama?”
    â€œOh, you needn’t worry about me. The hospital is safe.”
    October brought the first snow and more bad news. The city of Kiev had fallen, and Moscow was indanger. For us the bombing was worse than ever. Thousands of bombs fell. Our apartment shook as if we were in the midst of an earthquake. All night long you could hear the fire engines racing from one fire to the next. There were burned-out houses and stores on every street. People lost what little they had, and the worst thing you could lose was your ration book. Without it you could get no food. At first the lost ration books were replaced, but people cheated and said they had lost their books when they hadn’t, so the government refused to replace them. The unfortunate people who had lost their houses now had no food.
    We thought about food all day long. We were allowed only a little over two ounces of bread a day. And what bread it was! Everything they could find went into its making: flaxseed, cottonseed, sawdust, cellulose, and moldy flour. It was all we could do to swallow it. Sometimes we got a morsel of fish, and when there was no more food for the horses remaining in the city, the horses were slaughtered and we hada bit of delicious meat.
    Inside the houses there was no heat, for there was no kerosene nor wood, and only an hour of electricity each day. Now Mama proudly brought out her little burzhuika , which was so small it could be heated with the pieces of wood she had gathered from the barges. It did not warm us, but its flame was cheering and we could still boil water and warm our hands on the hot glasses that held the water.
    There was one bit of good news. Many German tanks had been called away from Leningrad to the outskirts of Moscow, where a battle was going on. For the moment the danger of invading Leningrad was over. General Zhukov was needed in Moscow and left our city to darkness and hunger, but he left it free of Germans.
    The new enemy was hunger. It raged about the city like a savage wolf. It was all any of us could think about. We awakened hungry, went to bed hungry.