The Baker

Elena Timokhina

Petr Kirillovich shuddered and woke up abruptly. He observed the dark ceiling with his gaping eyes, trying to recall from his memory the maze of cracks and wrinkles. Had the previous night contributed something new to its decaying plaster? He didn’t notice any fresh additions, but he couldn’t see much at all. He met every morning with this level of scrutiny, but it had become more and more complicated the further the autumn diminished light. Unless it wasn’t autumn’s fault; his eyes were responsible for his shrinking capability to see anything in the three-metre-high ceiling for his eyesight had grown ten times worse in just one year.

  No, there definitely hadn’t been an explosion. A sound had not awoken him; it was the cold. It had put its brazen hand just under his clothes and just under his skin. How could it have happened? Petr Kirillovich slept in all the remaining ragged underwear, two colourless shirts, one pair of long johns, one pair of trousers, his father’s oversized jumper and a cherished woollen pea coat he’d inherited from his uncle, a submarine captain. 

  Petr Kirillovich located the hole in the wall where the window had been. Shock waves had destroyed the glass the day before yesterday. He got up from the floor and reached the windowsill, shuffling his stiff, frozen legs. 

  The world was deafeningly still, swallowed by an ash-coloured dawn. The man noticed a shy pale-pink stroke of light toward the east and a predatory smiling moon stuck in the pitch-black hopeless sky of Leningrad*. 

  Petr Kirillovich groped for a piece of chalk and turned on his old-fashioned lantern, which cast a feeble light on the bare wall marked with lines and crosses. 

  ‘God-damned cave painting’ He coughed and spat on the floor. He paused, pondering something, counted the knuckles of his unsteady, wiry hands and drew one vertical line and a cross. It was the 1st of October. The second month of the second siege year had commenced**.

  Once upon a time a lovely calendar had hung on this noughts and crosses wall. It had been his first and only, his beloved Sonya, not him, who used to cross out the days. She had always spent her time in anticipation, waiting for summers, Christmas sales in Elisseeff*** and their son’s visits. ‘It is so silly, my darling! Stop this nonsense!’ he had snapped occasionally, not in an angry way, but in an pretend-annoying one. ‘You are too mature for such trivialities.’      

  She had stopped all her trivialities after her pivotal encounter with the Major. Petr had detected those changes too late. First, Sonya had stopped counting days; then, reading in her rocking chair in the evenings; and then, showing up for dinners. One morning in May 1938, she had left their flat forever for the Major, her biggest and only true love (Sonya’s words had torn his heart). For the first time in his life, Petr Kirillovich had bought the calendar all by himself that December. 

  Petr put his chalk back, sighed and went outside. He had nothing to do in this place anyway. He had sold or burned everything he had loved and valued: his books, the scarlet rocking chair, his grandfather's sofa, the kitchen table. Soundless emptiness was his last and only roommate, and only it witnessed his departure, waiting, as usual, for his return. 

  Petr was a baker. He had to walk 384 steps to his bakery which operated in the middle of noisy and crowded Liteyny Avenue. 384 steps to work and 384 steps back from work. A whole year had passed since he had kneaded the dough, had touched sand-coloured eggs, had felt the finely ground flour between his fingers, and had smelled the freshly baked bread. The Nazis had surrounded Leningrad last September; that day he had made a delicious birthday cake for Galina, the nice grocery hostess, who had lived nearby. The cake had been a masterpiece: almond custard, chocolate sponge, decorated with pink and white creamy roses. Dozens of always hungry boys in the neighbourhood had gravitated to his bakery by the mouth-watering smell that had wafted across the whole street. Petr had generously shared leftovers with them. Where are these boys now? He doesn’t want to know. Can’t stand this awareness. Two weeks after Galina’s birthday a food crisis had occurred, and his bakery was shut shortly afterward.  

  Petr still went to work daily, stubbornly. He did so every morning, whether it was a boiling hot or a fiercely cold day, whether it was snow or window glass that crunched under his feet. Thirty years ago, when she had been at university, Sonya had finally capitulated to him because of his stubbornness; he had gone to her dormitory every day for a whole month, and eventually, she, the brand-new student, had agreed to go out with him. They married six months later. He was twenty-seven; she was eighteen. Even now, after the collapse of their marriage, he was committed to her blue-eyed face devotedly and irrevocably. Stubbornly.

  He didn’t comprehend why he had been so committed to his bakery too, why he had kept going there. Maybe his stubbornness was the issue. Most likely, it was his private rebellion. He clung to the feeling of still being in charge of something, if only those 384 steps. The Nazis had stolen his food and his profession, they had destroyed his home, they had forced him to burn his books and the scarlet rocking chair, but they had failed to uproot his determination. They had failed to uproot Liteyny’s inhabitants’ determination too. They watched the severe, grey-bearded man who marched through chilly north winds, through icy rain, through the roar of military aircraft. He continued to resist, and so did they.   

Step number seventy-eight marked Sonya’s favourite grocery. She had visited it daily to buy everything for dinner, or fresh newspapers or just for a little chat with the owner. Petr used to know this owner’s name; he used to bake cakes for her birthdays. She had died a year ago and he had opted for erasing her name from his memory. A shrapnel wound for her and a bomb for her grocery – that was what the universe had had in store for them. There were only memories, hollowing gapes of broken windows and a bunch of dusty bricks instead of that grocery on step seventy-eight. Even the rats had gone ages ago, either frozen or dead.         

Suddenly, Petr spotted a shapeless shadow, fleeing along the houses. This shadow was definitely underdressed in a light jacket too weak to defeat the cold, overstretched hand-me-down trousers, and completely missing a hat and gloves. Its jittery, unstable movements jogged his memory slightly. 

That’s the Ryazanov boy… again, realised Petr, not reducing his speed. Petr knew that Ryazanov's younger brother was being eaten by consumption: the kid was going to die today, or maybe tomorrow. It made  no difference anyway. He would not survive this winter. It seemed that the older brother Ryasanov was too hungry or too frozen to stay at home. Petr realised now that he had already seen him yesterday and the day before. Was it this redhead who had materialised through the bakery window at the weekend? Not that it made any difference. 

Step two hundred-fifty-three. This had been his schoolmate Pahom’s house once. Petr stared at the burned windows of his second floor apartment. They had drunk a river of vodka at this kitchen; they had shared a mountain of problems silently there. 

Pahom, you were a decent man; rest in peace, brother. 

There was one more torn, eradicated house nearby. It had been built here no more than thirty years ago, half Petr’s age. He must not waste his pity on this house. It was just stone and wood, after all. Definitely he must not, but he did. He clenched his fists and bit his cheeks unwillingly while looking to the right on his two hundred-eighty-fourth step. He clenched every one of his limbs for this broken house stronger than for the grocery woman, or for the red rocking chair, or for Pahom. More than anything this house stood for his beloved Liteyny Avenue, his beloved Leningrad. He should have protected this house or rendered himself killed with it. How would he face God after this?   

Absorbed in his restless thoughts, Petr distinguished the heavy steps behind him too late. Just an instant later, he felt pain in the nape of his neck as he was hurled down. He was struck fiercely. He fell. A piercing, overwhelming crunch tore his inner world.  

‘Take off your coat, old man!’ he heard a cracked voice say and smelled alcohol breath on his cheek. Someone pulled his treasured pea coat off him. When this mission had been completed, his assailant turned him on his back. Standing over him, he saw a red-haired, shabbily dressed, hollow-cheeked teenager. 

That’s the Ryazanov-boy! Petr recognised him immediately, glancing at his newbie weak moustache that covered his upper lip. His face was so young, almost childish, and mutilated by navy circles beneath his eyes, pointy cheekbones and a haunted animal look.   

‘Don’t be mad, old man! You’ve outlived your time, and I need to survive,’ uttered the robber and melted into the metal Leningrad morning. 

  Old man.

These words scrabbled his chest painfully. Why did Ryazanov call him that? Had he already forgotten his name? Or was he trying to do so?

‘Petrusha, Do you like other people suffering?’ his mother had asked him once. He didn’t know precisely how many years ago. He failed to remember. He had no more power, no more passion; he was so exhausted. He had felt himself collected and solid until he had sprawled to the ground. He needed some rest now, just a bit; he suddenly became so tired, old and fragile. He gave himself up to daydreaming. 

Was it possible that he had been a seven-year-old, barefoot boy once? Was it possible that his mum had been alive once? Was it possible that he really had started fights with friends and neighbours, laughed at them, misbehaved, rolled on the grass? 

  ‘Get up, old man! Don’t lie there too long. You will freeze to death.’ It was the voice of this brazen redhead boy. But who was he? What was his name? Rostovtsev or Kostromin… No, no, neither of those. He had opted for not remembering it anymore.

He gathered all his strength and looked at the teenager, standing beside the nearest gateway, wringing his wrists. Petr waved his trembling hand and lay still. The boy shifted awkwardly and ran away.

Petr exhaled weakly and looked at the square of sky above. The surrounding houses bent closer and stared at him like curious bystanders. ‘Why are you lying there, old man?’ inquired one of them, silently. 

  ‘He was right. I have had a long life,’ Petr sighed. He had truly outlived his time. He had outlived his father, who had never returned from World War I; he had outlived his consumptive infant son, Arseny; and he had outlived his beautiful young mother. If only Sonya had escaped from this city before the blockade had sealed it; if only Vanya, his only remaining son, would come back alive and have his own son, then he would have done well. Then his fifty-nine years of life wouldn’t have been completely in vain. 

  Don’t be angry, all you prisoners of Liteyny Avenue – the baker won’t go to work today. Now it’s your rebellion, not his.    

* The historical name of Saint-Petersburg, the second biggest and most important city in Russia.

** The longest and most destructive siege in history – the siege of Leningrad that had lasted for 2 years 4 months 19 days. 1.5 million people died.

*** Elisseeff Emporium in Saint Petersburg is a large retail and entertainment complex