Burying the Sun by Gloria Whelan Read Free Book Online

done, Papa,” Vladimir said. “What good does it do to talk about who is to blame? If you had seen what I saw, none of that would matter to you.” Vladimir was unshaven, his hair long, his clothes a mixture of army and navy castoffs.
    â€œVladimir was on the Virona ,” Dmitry said proudly.
    â€œWe never had a chance,” Vladimir said. “The Germans guns were only a few miles away, and their shells came one after another. Overhead, German Junkers were dropping bombs on us. There must have been nearly two hundred boats there, all of them sitting ducks. Before they sailed away, the ships were supposed to take on board all the Russians from Estonia who were trying to leave the country to escape the Germans. On the Virona we had the Russian navy families who had been stationed there.
    â€œIt wasn’t just the the shelling and the bombing,” Vladimir went on. “A terrible storm blew up, and once we were under way, we had to make our paththrough the German mines.”
    I knew all about mines. “They’re magnetic, aren’t they? They’re drawn to the metal in the ships.”
    â€œEverybody knows that,” Dmitry said.
    â€œThose mines made us inch along. Still, we sat down to dinner as if we were in Mama’s kitchen. Afterward I went up on deck to watch the shelling and the bombs. It was like a great fireworks display, the German shells and bombs and our own antiaircraft guns on the ship booming away at the planes. All at once the ship exploded under me. In one second I was in the air, and then I was in the cold bathtub. People were swimming all around me, calling out for help. I kicked off my shoes and treaded water until I spotted a plank from the ship. I hung on for dear life.”
    Mrs. Trushin was wiping tears from her eyes with one hand and making the sign of the cross with the other. She urged more egg bread and tea on Vladimir. “You must eat, my darling, to get your strength back.”
    â€œA cutter picked me and several others up, but many were drowned. Of the twenty-nine Russian transports that set sail, twenty-three were lost.”
    â€œThe fleet should never have been cooped up there in reach of the Germans,” Mr. Trushin said. “What were the commanders thinking?”
    â€œIn this country,” Vladimir said with a shrug, “if you think for yourself, they shoot you.”
    â€œVladimir!” Mrs. Trushin said. “How can you say such a thing?”
    â€œI say it to you because I can say it to no one else.”
    â€œBut what does it mean?” I wanted to know.
    â€œIt means,” Vladimir said, “that the Germans are drawing the noose more tightly around Leningrad.”
    I had to hurry through the streets to reach home, for a ten-o’clock curfew was now in effect. There had been almost no bombing in Leningrad. Still, listening to Vladimir, I worried more than ever about Yelena sitting up on the roof of the palace. I needn’t have worried, for when I got home, I found Yelena andOlga looking out for me.
    â€œWonderful news!” Olga greeted me from the top of the stairway. “They have put antiaircraft guns on the roof of the palace, and the soldiers are on guard there. Yelena was sent home.”
    â€œGeorgi, come inside our apartment and listen,” Yelena said. “Anna Akhmatova is going to be on the radio. Your mother is already in our kitchen.”
    Viktor had recovered and was now on air-raid duty, so we were only four sitting around the table. Akhmatova was Leningrad’s most famous poet. One by one she had seen poets silenced. Her dearest friend, the great poet Osip Mandelstam, had been arrested right before her eyes. He had died in a prison camp. Akhmatova’s husband had been executed by the Bolsheviks. After that, her poetry was banned in the Soviet Union. Now here she was, reading her poems on the radio.
    I knew all about Akhmatova because she was Yelena’s hero. I