Free Burying the Sun by Gloria Whelan Page B

Mama complained.
    â€œGeorgi, no one knows better than you how hard it is to get a bit of soap or a drop of water. Surely your hands are clean now.”
    I couldn’t bring myself to tell even Mama the sad story.
    In the dark mornings the ugliness and cheerlessness of the city was even more depressing. On my way to work I had to stumble along dark, filthy streets. Our brigade had finished its work in the sewers and had now joined a brigade stripping bark from all the pine and fir trees in the city parks. The bark was collected and ground up, to be added to the flour and all the other odds and ends that went into the making of our bread.
    It was hard work, because the knives that were given to us were dull and we had no strength in our hands to tear at the bark. It was sad work; each time I wrenched a bit of the bark from a tree, I winced, forI knew it meant a great old tree would die, but Dmitry said, “Better the trees than us.” One afternoon I found a cocoon on one of the tree branches. I was about to toss it away when something stopped my hand. I broke off the twig to which it was fastened and put it carefully in my pocket. That evening I gave it to Yelena.
    She was delighted. Her thin face broke into a smile. “Oh, Georgi, a perfect gift. I didn’t think I could get through the winter, but now I have something to look forward to.”
    How I envied that little chrysalis, all wrapped up warmly in its cocoon with no need for food and no duty but to sleep and wait to become a butterfly. How I wished I could wrap myself up and fall asleep until the war ended. Each day it was easier and easier to lie in bed. It was such an effort to get up. I hated the thought of pushing off the blankets and coats that made a warm nest. I hated the thought of stumbling up and down the icy stairway for a pail of cold water.I hated the thought of standing out in the cold and snow hacking away at the helpless trees.
    Still, Mama found a way to lure me out of bed. “A rusk this morning, Georgi, and a half teaspoonful of jelly to sweeten your hot water. And tonight when I come home, we’ll have Viktor and Olga and Yelena over to share a rusk or two. We’ll act out another scene from Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard .”
    All at once the day did not seem so terrible. I threw off the blankets and struggled into my coat. I had slept in my hat and gloves. As I struggled down the icy stairway and out into the cold street with the water pail, the darkness seemed punishment for summer’s long days of daylight. It stayed dark now until ten o’clock in the morning, and darkness fell again by afternoon. On the streets no one looked at anyone else, afraid to see a reflection of their own miserable condition. Everyone went silently about their sad business. I saw a woman pulling her sickly husband along behind her on a sled. Another woman was carrying a small girlwho must have been five or six but looked no larger than a doll. I trained myself to look straight ahead.
    Rations had been cut for the third time, even for the soldiers, and everyone was so weak, work was almost impossible. Yet we had to work.
    Mama came home with stories from the hospital of people brought in because of what they ate. “They are eating soap for the fat it contains and even motor oil.”
    One day Yelena said, “Mama told me, ‘I have a special treat for you. I fried your bread in a bit of fat.’
    â€œI asked, ‘Mama, where did you get fat? And why is the bread all red?’ Georgi, my mama used all that was left of her last stick of lipstick for the grease!”
    Yelena had lost a third of her weight. With her thin arms and sharp collarbones she looked like a fledgling bird. We all seemed shadows of ourselves, as if someone had painted our portraits and now was painting out parts of them.
    One day there was an argument between Olga andYelena. Yelena had called us to share a treat with them. She had come home from