—— Duel ——67I remembered Tambov, the days of celebration, and my mother,
pottering away before dawn over her simple cakes. How was
she managing there now without me? It was difficult, no doubt,
but she would not admit it, or complain. I recalled our room on
International Street, which was always cold, with hoar frost on the
door and ice growing on the window. Brrr! How cold home was in
winter! And now I was freezing as well... The door of the room
opened directly onto the street. No porch, no corridor. Mother
covered the door with a wadded blanket, but slept herself under a
flannelette one, with an overcoat thrown over her feet. I wouldn’t
mind a wadded blanket here now, to warm myself... I wonder
how she’s doing for firewood? Is she buying it at the market again?
And the way we walked to school in winter! Each of us had to
bring a stick of firewood every day. This was the beginning of the
1930s. But what’s it like for kids in Leningrad now? My school...
Where are you, my first school, named in honour of Alexander
Pushkin? I remembered the teachers, the kids who were friends.
Now all fighting! Where are they now, my ‘musketeers’ – Igor
Petrov, Mishka Laptyev, Kolya Balykov and Vaska Budantsev?
There’d been no letter from them. I remembered our classroom –
a corner room looking out onto two streets at once, Soviet Street
and International Street. I could see myself sitting by the window
and spending the whole six lessons observing the bored traffic
policeman who had nothing to regulate but a couple of buses and a
few trucks and cars passing him at intervals. But what technology!
And now? And on the German side? They have more than enough
of it. And how did I manage to knock out that whole tank crew
back then? That heap of scrap iron was left there by the school
near Uritsk, until our fellows grabbed it and dragged it into the
divisional yard...
‘Hände hoch!’ – that was what our ‘German lass’ at the school,
Varvara Afanasyevna Belyaeva, said when she asked us all a
question. Our dear form teacher, ‘Varvarushka’, we called her
affectionately... And what didn’t we learn about the German
language! What a lot of useful things she taught us! If it wasn’t