That evening those who could get up arranged themselves around the fire to “eat” some, as Mandarin had taught them. He himself, huddled in a corner, kept giving little coughs, as if he were trying to speak and could not manage it. She sat beside him, adjusted a woolen cap that had slipped off his head. He opened his eyes, at first with a glazed look, then recognized her, tried to smile. “Don’t worry, Mandarin. Tomorrow I’ll go to the city. I’ll bring some bread and maybe even some flour…” She broke off, for he was screwing up his eyes like someone who wants to save another person from telling a white lie. It was an adult’s expression and it was also in a very adult voice that he whispered, “Auntie Mila, I’m going to die tonight. You can give my bread to the children…” The dissonance between this little body and the grave voice gave her a start. She began scolding the boy, shaking him: “What nonsense! Tomorrow I’ll make some proper soup for you…” Seeing that he had closed his eyes to spare her these useless words of encouragement, she fell silent…
Half an hour later she was at her lookout post beside a bend in the road that led to the front.
There was a limpid, dark sky, swept clean by the great north wind. The frozen road crunched beneath her feet like broken glass. She knew that in cold like this a starving person does not live long. The notion came to her of going right to the soldiers’ camp and stealing bread from them. The notion of a madwoman. Or else it was the world that was mad, for there was this child who had just calmly said, “I’m going to die tonight…” She felt ready to do anything to snatch a bit of food from this world. The instinct of a she-wolf that will get killed to save its young. She even thought herself capable of crossing the front line to go and ask the Germans for bread. A vision of a trade-off passed through her mind, herself taking food for the children and then returning to the enemy soldiers to be beaten, violated, killed, happy that her own body, her own life, were utterly unimportant.
After walking for twenty minutes she stopped, having stumbled several times. If she fell she would not be able to get up again and the cold was already making her movements stiff. Without her the children were doomed. She had to go back. The star-studded sky was magnificent, funereal. She paused for a few seconds, her gaze lost in its dark splendor, and in lieu of a prayer, made this vow: bread for the children and no matter what suffering for me.
The headlights of a jeep blinded her just as she was opening the door to the hostel. An army officer called out to her, but before noticing his huge frame and his greatcoat, unbuttoned despite the cold, she was struck, to the point of being made giddy, by the aroma of food emanating from his mouth, as well as a strong smell of alcohol. “Would you have a glass of water for me, darling? My soul’s on fire!” He bent over and the breath of this man who had just eaten well caught her by the throat. She led him into the kitchen, offered him water, spoke about the children. “Oh, that can be fixed. I’ve got sausage and bread in the van. I’m the most important man in the city. I supply Smolny.” He got her to give him another glass of water, snorted contentedly, and began describing the foodstuffs he delivered to the city’s top brass.
Mila was hardly listening to him, picturing a large pot on the fire, slices of sausage in a broth thickened with flour, and the happy clatter of spoons.
“Maybe I could have a little flour as well,” she murmured, overcome with giddiness from inhaling the smell of meat given off by this man.
“Oh yes. You can have it all, darling, thanks to your pretty face!” He grasped her arm, pulled her toward him. “But I’ve got sixteen kids here, and several of them are ill…,” she tried to explain, breaking free.
“Oh, so you don’t trust me. Me, a general staff officer!” He was on the brink of losing his temper, then, overcome by lust, he changed his tactics. “Hold on, you can see it with your own eyes!”
He went out to the vehicle and came back carrying a canvas sack. With a salesman’s gesture he opened it in front of Mila: two large cans of food, a packet of meal, a round loaf…
“There you are, darling. It’s just as I said. If you’re nice to me…” He embraced her, breathing words into her face that reeked of stale food and alcohol. A tremulous, inaudible protest formed within her as the man pushed her over to a bedframe. “One of the children told me he’s going to die tonight. You should be ashamed…”
No, she must explain nothing, simply contrive to be nonexistent. To repress the nausea brought on by this mouth stinking of satiety, not to feel this hand brutally burrowing into her body… She managed to be no longer herself right up to the last gasp of pleasure from the man taking her. Until he left in a flurry of guffaws and promises.
She remained in this nonexistent state as she prepared the meal. The children came running, ate in silence, went back to bed. In the sack left by the army man she found a bottle of vodka, drank straight from the bottle, and when drunkenness came, finally allowed herself to weep.
Two days later Mandarin appeared beside the fire, as merry as before. No, not as before. Now his eyes were smiling through the veil of death.
One evening the soldier returned. And everything was repeated: food against a few minutes of nonexistence. And the vodka afterward, which quickly settled the argument between shame and the spirit of sacrifice.
There were other visits, other men, and always this extremely simple barter: the children’s survival assured by a moment of anonymous pleasure. During the March snowstorms and the thaw she would not, in any case, have been able to get to her lookout post or to reach the city, where there were fewer and fewer people left alive.
She did not know when she was driven out of her own life. Possibly that day in May in front of a mirror when she did not recognize herself. Or else during the following winter: the taste of vodka became essential to her without there being any nocturnal visit.
At all events, when peace returned, she became that other woman (“a loose woman,” the neighbors called her) living in a room in a hostel, a building occupied by new arrivals. Her children were put into an orphanage; she remained alone, buried in a past where everything reminded her of the blockade, in an alcoholic stupor that made her indifferent to the coarseness of the men who called on her.
One evening (the whole building was celebrating the victory over Germany), she was sitting outside her window and suddenly into her memory overcome by drunkenness came words from a life now destroyed: “To you, my beloved, I shall confide my dream…” She sobbed so violently that even the hubbub of a celebration party broke off. One woman exclaimed in indignant tones: “Just listen to that! Everyone’s singing for joy and all that tramp can do is howl her head off…”
This was doubtless the moment when she turned into what people now saw her as. Shortly after that she bleached her dark hair and even had this comforting thought: “If I die now no one will recognize me.” She realized that what she dreaded most was encountering once more the man who had sung: “To you, my beloved…”
A moth hurtled toward the flame of the stove, Volsky waved his hand to drive it away, to save it, and this gesture broke the stillness that Mila’s words had imposed on them.
“That’s how it was, my life,” she said in a toneless voice. “I hoped you wouldn’t find me again… There are lots of women on their own now. Soldiers coming back have plenty of choice…”