Read Online Metronome, The by D. R. Bell - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: D. R. Bell
Tags: Historical fiction, Historical, Literature & Fiction, Thrillers, Genre Fiction, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Political, Conspiracies, Thrillers & Suspense, Spies & Politics, russian, Financial
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can burn, as all of ours is gone. The other good news is that we find two boxes of candles. I light one up. Our shadows sneak along the walls. And the best news is that the apartment has a radio. I crank it up and we sit around the little wooden box, listening to the news of our victories near Moscow. It is strange to be in someone else’s home. But home is not a physical place any longer; it’s where the three of us, the burzhuika , and the radio are. Like this candle, it’s a flicker of life in the sea of death.
So that’s how we ended up in our apartment on Malaya Sadovaya. They had to move after their place was hit in bombardment. Sixty plus years ago, and now I am talking to Evgeny Zorkin about selling the place.
20 December, 1941
I killed a man today. It was at the end of our patrol. We heard a woman screaming and ran to the sound. She rushed out of a dark alley, collided with Makar; they both fell. A man charged after her, big, well-fed, carrying an axe. Seeing us, he turned around and ran back into the alley. Without thinking, I pulled the rifle of my shoulder and shot at him. He staggered, dropped his axe, but continued moving. I ran after him and shot him again, this time for good. The woman explained that she took a shortcut trying to get home before dark and the man jumped out of a door, tried to grab her, missed and then went after her. Another cannibal…the city is now full of them.
I felt sick when I got home, my teeth were chattering. I told Nastya what happened; she held me and cried. “He was no longer human,” she said. “Hunger took his mind.”
Was it really like this? Did people turn into cannibals? I was walking these streets just a couple of days ago; it’s hard to imagine someone coming at you with an axe to kill and eat you.
24 December, 1941
For the last three days, Makar and I were on a new kind of patrol: going through apartments. We would go into freezing caves that were rooms, check who is alive. In many places, the whole families were dead in their beds. Sometimes, we would find places where parents died but children were still alive. We would take them to a hospital, for evacuation out of the city over the frozen Ladoga Lake.
One of the days, we check buildings along the frozen Fontanka River. There are signs of artillery bombardment everywhere. The Horse Tamers statues are gone from the bridge, Makar says they’ve been buried in the nearby Anichkov Palace. The ice of the river is covered with people. When I look closer, I realize that these are corpses, left there by the relatives that had not strength to get them all the way to a cemetery. Most are wrapped in shrouds, but some have been stripped from warm clothing.
In our new apartment with its supply of candles, I started reading Andrei one of my favorite books, The Count of Monte Cristo . He listens, transfixed, as poor innocent Edmund Dantes is condemned to life imprisonment. Andrei asks how big the food portions were in the Château d'If prison; I reply they are similar to our rations.
The book takes our minds off hunger. Our little extra supply from the cinema has run out. We live on the mattress by the burzhuika stove, swathed in blankets. Getting up in the morning is so hard. Sometimes I just want to stay on that mattress, not move, slip into nothingness. I force myself to get up for Nastya and Andrei. The three of us, bound by an invisible bond.
We try to keep the radio on; Nastya winds it up with whatever little energy she has. There is still a daily reading of poetry or occasional music, but mostly it’s the metronome ticking. I feel a mystical connection to it – as long as the metronome is beating, we are alive. It’s like a tiny beam of light in the midst of darkness.
Supply from the cinema? More pages are gone. Where are they? Were they used to light the burzhuika in 1941?
31 December, 1941
At the end of our patrol, Makar gives me a box of cookies
So that’s how we ended up in our apartment on Malaya Sadovaya. They had to move after their place was hit in bombardment. Sixty plus years ago, and now I am talking to Evgeny Zorkin about selling the place.
20 December, 1941
I killed a man today. It was at the end of our patrol. We heard a woman screaming and ran to the sound. She rushed out of a dark alley, collided with Makar; they both fell. A man charged after her, big, well-fed, carrying an axe. Seeing us, he turned around and ran back into the alley. Without thinking, I pulled the rifle of my shoulder and shot at him. He staggered, dropped his axe, but continued moving. I ran after him and shot him again, this time for good. The woman explained that she took a shortcut trying to get home before dark and the man jumped out of a door, tried to grab her, missed and then went after her. Another cannibal…the city is now full of them.
I felt sick when I got home, my teeth were chattering. I told Nastya what happened; she held me and cried. “He was no longer human,” she said. “Hunger took his mind.”
Was it really like this? Did people turn into cannibals? I was walking these streets just a couple of days ago; it’s hard to imagine someone coming at you with an axe to kill and eat you.
24 December, 1941
For the last three days, Makar and I were on a new kind of patrol: going through apartments. We would go into freezing caves that were rooms, check who is alive. In many places, the whole families were dead in their beds. Sometimes, we would find places where parents died but children were still alive. We would take them to a hospital, for evacuation out of the city over the frozen Ladoga Lake.
One of the days, we check buildings along the frozen Fontanka River. There are signs of artillery bombardment everywhere. The Horse Tamers statues are gone from the bridge, Makar says they’ve been buried in the nearby Anichkov Palace. The ice of the river is covered with people. When I look closer, I realize that these are corpses, left there by the relatives that had not strength to get them all the way to a cemetery. Most are wrapped in shrouds, but some have been stripped from warm clothing.
In our new apartment with its supply of candles, I started reading Andrei one of my favorite books, The Count of Monte Cristo . He listens, transfixed, as poor innocent Edmund Dantes is condemned to life imprisonment. Andrei asks how big the food portions were in the Château d'If prison; I reply they are similar to our rations.
The book takes our minds off hunger. Our little extra supply from the cinema has run out. We live on the mattress by the burzhuika stove, swathed in blankets. Getting up in the morning is so hard. Sometimes I just want to stay on that mattress, not move, slip into nothingness. I force myself to get up for Nastya and Andrei. The three of us, bound by an invisible bond.
We try to keep the radio on; Nastya winds it up with whatever little energy she has. There is still a daily reading of poetry or occasional music, but mostly it’s the metronome ticking. I feel a mystical connection to it – as long as the metronome is beating, we are alive. It’s like a tiny beam of light in the midst of darkness.
Supply from the cinema? More pages are gone. Where are they? Were they used to light the burzhuika in 1941?
31 December, 1941
At the end of our patrol, Makar gives me a box of cookies
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