From the Editor: a story for 18+ readers. Not recommended for impressionable people and those with heart disease.
I was born in the early spring of 1937 into a poor family. She was the fourth child, unwanted, and even with problems: she was born a seven-month-old weighing about two kilograms. We lived in the center of Leningrad, not far from St. Isaac's Cathedral, in the sixth house on Yakubovich Street. When the war began, I was only four years old. But I will remember those terrible days, hungry and cold, for the rest of my life.
The city was bombed endlessly. Tens of thousands of leaflets flew into the streets from enemy planes, in which the Germans, for example, wrote (an older friend read one of them to me): "Leningrad nesting dolls, eat beans, prepare coffins." I remember there was such an order: those who have children under the age of five should not be called in to clean the city in the spring. But at the beginning of April 1942 they came to us from the accounting department. The mother was told that she should help clean up the city. True, she no longer got out of bed - she was so exhausted from hunger.
And my father, who had received a disability by that time, was engaged in the funeral of the dead and perished at the Piskarevskoye cemetery. One day, I remember, my father came home with his colleague. They brought a bottle of Moskovskaya vodka with a green sticker and a neck sealed with sealing wax, a head of fresh cabbage, a small pack of mustard and two large onions. They were given all this wealth by one of the relatives of the deceased, whom they buried in a separate grave. When the bottle was opened, it turned out that it contained not alcohol, but water. It was also not possible to brew mustard: instead of it, ordinary earth was poured into the pack.
In our two-story house there were military personnel, they had a water supply system. We civilians took their water. We did not go to the Neva for her. For all my life I will remember the 24th anniversary of the Great October Revolution. We got a very tasty soup on the table. Parents said - chicken. After the war, they discovered the secret - they made soup from Vaska's cat, who lived in our communal apartment. And once I was almost eaten (I think so) by a woman who was walking from St. Isaac's Square past our house. Then already in the city there were rumors about cannibals, there was a pile of sand near the house - incendiary bombs were extinguished in it. I played with a baby bucket and iron molds in this sand. A terribly emaciated woman came up to me, bent down and quietly asked:
- Do you bake pies?
- Yes.
Promotional video:
- Do you want to eat?
- Really want to.
Stretching out both hands and putting them in a ring, the woman showed what a large bowl of soup she would pour me if I went with her. Having buried the toys in the sand, I happily gave her my hand, and we walked down the street. They began to cross Podbelsky Lane (now - Pochtamtsky). The woman held my hand very tightly. I don't know what made me turn around … I saw our housekeeper, aunt Dusya Koshkina, and shouted to her:
- Tell your mom, we'll eat some soup and come!
- What kind of soup ?! - Aunt Dusya shouted loudly.
The woman let go of my hand and ran away.
Aunt Dusya brought me home. Seeing the jelly welded from carpentry glue on the window, she, crying, asked her mother to give her some, said that her daughter Dunya was dying of hunger. Mom could not refuse and gave her a small bowl - after all, the janitor's wife saved me from a terrible death.
In the evening, when my father came home from work, my parents told me that even some parents eat their children, and you can't go anywhere with strangers. I was no longer allowed out into the street. But now, after these stories, I was even afraid of my parents. Even when the mother, who never got out of bed, once asked for some water, I pretended not to hear. She sat in the corner of the room, opposite the door, ready to jump up if something happened and run away. In the evening, my father tried to take me to my mother, explaining that this should not be done. But I, having decided that they were going to eat me, yelled so that the neighbors came running.
After the war, I graduated from seven classes and entered the school of trade apprenticeship. She received a passport at the age of 16 and worked in a bakery on Herzen Street, and then on Nevsky Prospect. The memory of the horrors of the blockade remained with me forever.