being burned. Kiev was covered by black snow: droplets of soot and flakes of charred paper spun in the air and spread over the ground.
I stopped by the university; the scene was the same there. In a heap of documents on the floor I accidentally found my own file. Luckily, I had already received documentation of having passed my Master of Arts exams. The classrooms and offices stood starkly open. Here and there newly cobbled-to-gether crates gave off an aroma of pine. The dean’s office, always crowded and noisy, was totally empty. Not quite, a stove was blazing in the corner and the young, fashion-plate associate dean was carefully feeding it neat file-folders from his desk.
“Oh, Tat’iana Pavlovna,” he said. “There’s nothing new I can tell you. We weren’t assigned any railroad cars, unfortunately. All the students, graduate students, and some of the faculty are evacuating on foot to Poltava, and then we’ll see . . .”
He pressed my hand firmly, and I left through the echoing, empty corridors and stairwells. What was I to do? Neither mother nor I could go on foot. We both had weak hearts, and I was just recovering from surgery. We both were born and had lived all our lives in Kiev, and we had no one outside the city. And most importantly, there was father. Maybe he was here somewhere, nearby. How could we leave him? For there was nothing to fear from the enemy anymore; the greatest wound had been inflicted by our own people.
It was unbearable at home, especially at night. One neighbor, a major, was somewhere at the front. Another neighbor was stranded somewhere on an official trip. Mother asked Andrei to move into one of our empty rooms. Troops were occupying the university dormitories anyway, and it felt safer with a man in the house. Everybody was queuing up around the clock, lugging home candy, cooking oil, pearl barley. We had no money and could not stock up on anything. I tried selling a thing or two, but goods were worthless now, with hardly any takers. As always, Shura came to our aid, forcing some money on us until “better times.”
Everywhere in and out of town people were digging trenches and tank traps. At first, we also took part, conscientiously hauling dirt, helping to camouflage the pits. But then, like everyone else convinced of the hopelessness of the task, we tried to avoid the zealous police. At that point, they began rounding people up everywhere—in movie houses, in food queues, right on the street. Many men began to grow the notorious “trench” beards to look older and visibly prove that they were past the established age for digging trenches.
The parks and gardens of Kiev seemed turned up by giant moles. People hurriedly dug slits in the soil and hid there the moment they heard the drone of airplanes and waited for death from the implacable German bombs. But the
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bombs did not fall. Every day flocks of enemy birds would appear over the city. They drew incomprehensible smoke signs in the sky and occasionally dumped a rain of white leaflets. People would watch with trepidation as these white moths circled languidly earthward. Then they would send children to gather the messages from the enemy (or was it friend?) and would avidly read the meager information. “Not a single bomb will fall on your beautiful city” they read, and fear would leave them, and fewer of them would crawl into the raw earth and more and more would watch the powerful silver birds float by in the sky, occasionally engaging the Soviet fighter planes. The results were always the same: smoky balls of explosions would dance near the silvery wings, but they, rocking gently, would calmly disappear in the distance, invulnerable.
At night people would come out to stand watch. Two or three figures with gas masks tied to their waists would stand before every house. But nothing was occurring in the city, and standing watch was as useless as the sand-bag barricades thrown up on all the streets. The summer rain fell on the tough fibers, the hot Ukrainian sun withered them, the sand bags rotted, ruptured, and golden streams of sand flowed to the pavement for children to carry to their yards. At night silver stars would arc across the velvet sky and heat lightning would blaze in the distance. These were stifling and moonless nights in which the rumble of distant artillery would fuse with the dull roll of thunder. In the gardens linden blossoms, tobacco, and petunias gave off their heady aroma. These were nights for singing, loving, laughing, slipping in a boat along the wide ribbon of the Dnieper, and for dreaming till dawn on St. Vladimir’s hill. But instead, quite close, there was fighting. The Germans had occupied the Goloseev forest and buses with large red crosses painted on them constantly raced along the streets of Kiev. Sometimes they drove very slowly and then people looked at them with anguish because only the mortally wounded were transported so slowly.
But, more frequently, other vehicles would race by. One-and-a-half and three-ton trucks packed with all sorts of bag and baggage. Occasionally amidst bedsprings, mirrored chiffoniers, and rolled-up carpets there would be nestled rubber tree plants and palms—the VIP’s of the city were prudently sending their families out of harm’s way. But not everyone was able to leave the besieged city in such comfort. People being evacuated with their institutions and offices would sit for days at junctions and railroad yards vainly expecting departure. And those who did manage to get on the treasured trains sent desperate messages to their loved ones describing chaos, disorder, congestion and filth at the evacuation centers and the panic which had engulfed the rear.
Troops retreated through the city. First from the districts of Western Ukraine—Lvov and Tarnopol—and later from familiar, near-by places where
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Kievans would go on vacation, buy strawberries and drink frothy, whole milk straight from the dairy. Unshaven, hungry, and sullen Red Army soldiers would march by, brusquely answering questions and sometimes caustically cursing their officers and political commissars who had taken off in their staff cars leaving the troops behind.
In contrast to the soldiers, the “warriors” of the newly-formed defensive battalions would proudly posture in their brand-new uniforms. They were given the noble task of fighting mighty German tanks with bottles of combustible fluid. Of course, it never came to that. Having strutted in their uniforms, the youths in a timely fashion changed into civvies and dispersed to their homes. Many of them later, under German occupation, filled the ranks of the collaborationist police, which was largely made up of the more unprincipled and brutal elements, thoroughly despised by the populace. Or else they became black marketeers who would scour villages for flour and cooking oil for resale to starving city-dwellers at incredible prices.
But in the meantime these “warriors” did not foresee the pitiful end of their military careers and did their utmost to fan the flames of spy-phobia sweeping the city. Every fair-haired and blue-eyed person, every young woman who “suspiciously” asked for directions in an unfamiliar part of the city was taken for a spy. All the police precincts were overflowing with such “fascist agents” who spent anguished hours in filthy cells, finally returning home only after establishing their identity.
The Germans were coming closer and closer. Once in the evening a dented and dirty automobile pulled up to our house. It was “uncle Andy,” as the young folks called him in jest, a calm and handsome forty-five-year-old major, a family friend. He had long worn the glistening medal denoting twenty years service in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army [1921–1946], but that evening this man who had fought in all the battles of the Soviet Union hardly resembled a sober and disciplined officer. He was drunk and his eyes revealed alarm and despair. His jokes were flat, and his lips were distorted in a forced smile. He looked at the old linden tree, the growth of jasmine by the window, and our small, cozy house with a glance of farewell. Then, tightening his fancy, yellow Sam Browne belt, he said simply, “Things are bad, things are very bad with us.” The motor snorted, and his car shot out of our narrow yard. One friend less . . .
