Free Burying the Sun by Gloria Whelan

There was no hour of the day when you did not longfor food. Yelena and I argued. “Better to eat every crumb of your ration all at once,” I insisted, “and be a little satisfied at least once a day.”
    â€œNo, no,” Yelena said. “Better to dole the bread out a little at a time—then there will be something to look forward to.”
    We tried to outdo each other with imagined meals.
    â€œFirst,” I said, “a fish soup, with big lumps of codfish and potatoes.”
    â€œNo, Georgi, chicken soup with carrots and leeks and tender little dumplings.”
    â€œBoiled beef with pickles.”
    â€œPork paprikash with sour cream.”
    We always agreed on the dessert—ice cream made with plenty of thick cream and fresh strawberries. After our game we would settle down to our single slice of bread that tasted of sawdust, or there would be a thin soup made from a bit of cabbage and a bone with no meat.
    â€œThey had better give me a little more,” Olga said,“or I won’t be able to lift my violin.”
    It was true. Olga, who had been plump, was now thin and drawn. Even the music we heard through the walls of the apartment was weak and, for the first time, sad.
    Yelena’s dresses hung on her as if she were wearing the hand-me-downs of a much larger sister. Most frightening of all was Viktor. His face had been carved away by hunger. His eyes were sunken and there were craters where his cheeks had been. Mama ate at the hospital canteen, but she couldn’t have eaten much, for she brought home bits of bread and lumps of potato concealed in her purse. I would not eat her hoardings but passed them on to Olga and Yelena.
    Yelena was still working in the library. “Hundreds of thousands of our rarest books have been sent away for safekeeping. “The people are coming to us with such sad questions. They want to know how to make jelly from glue and how to make a soup from a leather belt.”
    â€œDoesn’t anyone come in to read?”
    â€œYes, more than ever. There’s no heat, but they come wrapped in their coats and look for a table where a bit of warm sunshine comes in through the window. They read books about faraway places where the sun shines and food hangs from trees, but we have to be careful about lending books or there would be none left. People take them home and burn them as fuel for their stoves.” She looked truly horrified.
    Cold was added to hunger. When you went to bed at night, you wore as many clothes as you did in the daytime—and, though Mama protested, sometimes the same clothes.
    During the hour of electricity in the evening, Yelena and I sat together listening to the radio, but we no longer heard Anna Akhmatova. For her survival Akhmatova, like Shostakovich, had been urged to leave Leningrad. A plane carried her away, and a spark went from the city. Still, we listened to the symphony orchestra with Olga on her violin. The poetswho had stayed in the city read their latest works on the blockade. If there was no news, no readings, and no music on the radio, a metronome was set in motion so that all would know that Leningrad was still there. It was surprising how you would just sit and listen to its sound. Yelena wrote a poem about the metronome.
    Silent trolley cars
    silent ruined houses
    a mute woman at the window
    speechless with hunger
    only the sound of the bombs
    and the city’s heartbeat
    At the end of October the electricity stopped altogether: no more light, no more heat, and no more radio. To hear the radio you had to go to the loudspeakers on St. Isaac’s Square. In spite of the cold, many people went, some to hear the latest news, or the music, or the sound of the metronome. Many went, asYelena and I often did, just for the comfort of being with others.
    Though there was no heat, still everyone was praying for cold weather. Barges had been bringing food into Leningrad across Lake Ladoga, but the barges