1941

Misha, take me away from here… When people ask me if I feel hungry, I answer: "With every stone of paving stone on the palace square." While we could, Moskovsky and I sent letters to each other. On the eighth of September, nineteen forty—one, I found myself completely cut off from the outside world. The blockade began. I suffered a lot from bombing and shelling. My heart bled when the shells turned architectural works of art into ruins. The German bastards didn't spare anyone or anything — they wanted to wipe me off the face of the earth. I was a nuisance. I watched people die one by one. It's an eerie sight. They were dying of hunger because the Germans had cut off all routes to the city. They died under shelling and debris. They ate my cats. But what should be noted is that the Soviet people, surprisingly, turned out to be stronger than I thought. The city was cut off from all types of communication for a long time. Probably, someone had them, but in Soviet times I had almost no weight. In all, unfortunately, senses. I couldn't know what was going on in the rest of Russia. How is Misha? I could only hope. If they get to him, it will be the end — the end of everything. And wars, unfortunately, are not in our favor. But I didn't know. I've been waiting for a letter for almost three years. And it feels like there haven't been any letters for ten years. I am surprised that such an exhausted body could even have dreams. Not often, of course. Sleep, in principle, was a little permissible luxury. I wanted to sleep often, but it was not always possible to do this because of the frequent bombings and other worries. Sometimes I just blacked out, no matter what, rather falling into a state of suspended animation. In that case, I didn't really dream about anything. And when I dreamed, the dreams were simple, everyday, the same gray — a queue for bread, shelling and death. There are a lot of deaths. I also dreamed about Misha. In a full-dress officer's doublet. He was as handsome as ever, and the gilded buttons shimmered in the candlelight of the throne room. He held out his hand to me and told me that everything was fine. But most of the time I dreamed that I was walking along Nevsky Prospekt, and happy people were meeting me. And everyone is shouting about victory, and for some reason the flags are imperial. And then you wake up. Imperial flags are not surprising. I often dreamed of my imperial past, sometimes so lost in my thoughts that it seemed like I would open my eyes, and that's how it was then, as before. But I came back to reality every time. After the revolution, my relations with many people deteriorated. Misha regained the title of the capital, as he always wanted, but I didn't mind — I was happy for him. Still, I probably didn't have the right ambitions, since my position was taken away from me at every opportunity. But I also did not become a second-class city, to be fair. After the revolution, it seemed to me that everyone had betrayed me, but as it turned out, there were plenty of people willing to lend me a helping hand. In January of the forty-fourth, the blockade ended. It took me a while to recover a little bit. I went to Moscow. For the first time in a long time, I saw him on the platform of the Leningrad railway station. He had short hair, wore a cap and a greatcoat, and his eyes shone strangely unusually. He wasn't at all the way I remembered him—he looked too cold. But it was still warm in his arms. It was warmer in Moscow than in Leningrad, but the February frosts still did not pass by. There was no smell of spring. I walked from the train station, wrapping my nose in a wool shawl. The war was not over at that time — it ended only a year later, but it was quieter in the city. Misha asked me to eat. I wanted to, but the food wouldn't go into my mouth. I could sit for a long time and stare at my plate with hungry eyes, not daring to eat anything. I could hardly do anything at first, so I was very grateful to Misha for having discharged me from Leningrad and helped me in every possible way. I don't know how I would have coped alone. It wasn't easy for him either, and then there was me. Therefore, I felt very guilty that he had to put up with me then, even though he explained to me, with regular intervals, that it was certainly not my fault. It didn't help much, but I tried to convince myself of it mentally. At some point, it let go, and I more or less straightened out. Most of the time I just lay in bed. I didn't even sleep, but just lay with my eyes closed. Misha brought me tea. And the damn metronome kept ticking in my head. I still hear it in my nightmares.