10 December 1941. Almost all Leningraders have become dystrophic. They have swelled up and gleam as if covered with lacquer—this is first stage dystrophy. Others have become desiccated—second stage. Women walk about in pants. Men in women’s scarves. Everyone looks the same. Leningraders have lost all signs of gender and age.
12December 1941. Today I felt that something strange is happening to my
face. I brought a shard of a mirror from the kitchen and peered into it with cu
riosity. My face resembled that end of a pig where its tail grows.
“What a mug,” I spat into the mirror. Dima’s gaze slid down my face like a dead fish. He himself had bloated up long ago.
13December 1941. Lena is ill. Dima’s on sick call. He no longer helps me.
He doesn’t ever look after Lena. But he goes eagerly to the bakery and prob
ably eats the small pieces added to make the weight. We cook “soup” from
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the soft center of the bread. We eat it with tiny crusts. I pour Dima four serving spoons and two for myself. But for this I have the right to lick out the pot, though the soup is so thin, there is, in fact, nothing to lick.
Dima eats his “soup” with a teaspoon to prolong the eating. But today he ate his portion quicker than I. There was a hard crust in my soup which I chewed with pleasure. I sensed the hatred with which he watched my slowly moving jaws. “You’re eating slowly on purpose,” he suddenly exclaimed malevolently. “You want to torment me.”
“Oh, no! Why would I do that?” I blurted, startled.
“Don’t justify yourself. I see everything.” He glared at me, his eyes glistening white with rage. I was terrified. Had he gone crazy? I quickly swallowed the crust and cleared the table. He kept grumbling, but I was silent. He wouldn’t believe me anyway. Lately, he has become very suspicious and irritable.
15 December 1941. As I was returning from the bakery, I saw a worker running toward me, his small fox-like head pushed forward. I began to move aside as he ran by, but he snatched the loaf of bread from me. I screamed and looked around, but he was gone. I looked at my empty hands with horror, slowly comprehending what had occurred. There wasn’t a crumb to eat at home. That meant that today and tomorrow, until we get our next ration of bread, we’d go hungry, and worst of all, there was no food for Lena.
My legs suddenly become heavy as irons, and I barely made it home. In the hallway I bumped into Dima and immediately told him everything. He gave me a wild look from underneath his sooty eyelashes, but said nothing.
17 December 1941. Our sense of smell has become very sharp: we now know the smell of sugar, of pearl- barley, of dried peas, and other “non-odorous” groceries. Dima hardly gets out of bed. He doesn’t even go for bread. This disturbs me—those who lie about die sooner.
“Don’t lie in bed all the time.” I sat down next to him and cautiously touched his sleeve. He threw me a cross glance.
“What would you have me do?”
“Go up into the attic. Maybe you’ll catch a cat up there?”
“So that’s it,” he said sarcastically.
The stupidity of what I had said suddenly struck me. All the cats had been eaten long ago. I furrowed my brow trying to think of something else.
“Maybe we ought to buy a mousetrap,” I said indecisively.
“What would that do?”
“We’d eat mice.”
“That’s an idea,” he exclaimed, sitting up.
“I think the mice would taste no worse than the cats,” said I, encouraged.
“Not a bit.”
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“Everyday we would have meat.” “That would be terrific,” he murmured indistinctly.
His animation was gone. He lay down again, his back to me, and pulled his hat over his ears. I understood that he had no faith in my plan.
19December 1941. Having gotten up before me, Dima circled the room re
peatedly, bumping into furniture and cursing. Finally he left, slamming the
door. He was gone the whole day.
“Where have you been?” I asked when he returned.
“Walking around,” he said vaguely. Suddenly, he winked and said, rapid-fire: “Looking for a little loaf of bread.”
“What are you saying?” I was frightened. He looked at me with curiosity.
“You seem to think that I’ve lost my mind.”
“No, no. But, after all . . .”
“Cut it out. I know that bread doesn’t lie in the streets. That’s not the point.”
“What is the point, then?”
He didn’t respond. I stood staring at him. Then he began to talk. At first slowly, then faster and faster. Suddenly he was seized by an incomprehensible agitation. He had encountered a child’s sled loaded with bread. A convoy of five men was escorting the sled. A crowd followed, fixedly staring at the bread. Dima fell in with the rest. The sled was unloaded at a bakery. The crowd attacked the empty cases, fighting for crumbs. He found a large crust trampled into the snow. But some urchin grabbed the crust from Dima’s hands. This vile snot-nose began to chew it, drooling and chomping. An insane rage seized Dima. Grabbing the kid by the scruff of the neck, he began to shake him convulsively. The kid’s head on its thin neck began to flail back and forth like that of a Petrushka doll. But he continued chewing hastily, his eyes closed.
“It’s all gone, all gone, uncle! Look!” he shouted suddenly, opening his mouth wide. Dima threw the kid on the ground. He was ready to kill him. But fortunately, a clerk rolled out of the store like a breakfast bun.
“Kish! Kish!” he shouted, waving his arms.
“As if humans were sparrows,” noted Dima with offense, “and the most amazing thing is that no one pasted that scoundrel in the face.” He became painfully pensive and stared at one spot.
Sensing that he was holding something back, I looked at him quizzically. But Dima sat disconnected from everything, seeing nothing and hearing nothing. This would happen to him more and more.
20December 1941. Dima was gone again, having sharpened the stick which
served him as a walking cane. He was back in about an hour. His appearance
was strange. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked inadvertently.
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