Leningrad 1943: Inside a City Under Siege by Alexander Werth Read Free Book Online

in Red Army style: ‘Major Lozak, representative of the Command of the Leningrad Front.’ And, turning to the driver, he said: ‘To the Astoria.’ We drove up the Nevsky and took the first turning to the right. ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘Gogol Street.’ ‘Quite correct,’ said the major. ‘Wonderful,’ said little Dangulov, with the tone of an impresario showing off an infant prodigy. Of course I remembered Gogol Street; it had a wonderful shop for sweets and chocolates which belonged to a Frenchman or a Swiss called Berrin. The sweets were wrapped in paper with Berrin, Confiseur, rue Gogol, Saint-Pétersbourg printed on them. On Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve there used to be crowds of cars and smart horse sleighs outside Berrin’s, and luscious displays of sweets and fruits confits and chocolates in his brightly lit-up windows. Now Gogol Street was completely dark. Then the car turned a corner and we got out. We were at the Astoria. Turning round, I could see the enormous black outline of the dome of St. Isaac’s. The weather had improved; there were a few stars in the sky. Major Lozak said something to a shadowy shape in the doorway and we entered the large marble-lined hall of the hotel. Oh, irony! The first thing I saw was a large notice-board: ‘Ausflúge: Leningrad und seine Umgebung,’ with a whole long list of excursions to Pushkin, with ‘Tsarskoie Selo’ added in brackets, Peterhof, Pavlovsk, etc. On the other side of the square marble pillar was a similar notice-board in English: ‘Leningrad – this week’s entertainments.’ But opposite the names of the theatres there were now only blanks. In the far end of the hall, half-lit by green-shaded lamps, came the friendly click of billiard balls. There were some officers there, playing and commenting loudly on the shots. We were escorted by a woman up the stairs to the third floor. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘but we haven’t got the lift working yet.’ The corridors were white and beautifully clean. It was a thoroughly modern hotel, built around 1912 by Lidvall, I think, the most fashionable architect of his day, whom the Petersburg of the ‘capitalist’ period had to thank for many useful, well-proportioned and never displeasing innovations. To build a modern hotel in one of St. Petersburg’s most famous squares, almost beside St. Isaac’s Cathedral, required great tact, and Lidvall had it – infinitely more than the Hun who built opposite it the factory-like red sandstone building of the German Embassy – that very German Embassy from whose roof in August 1914 an angry Russian crowd hurled the aggressively virile bronze Teutons and their horses into the street below. Later the crowd dragged the naked Huns across the square to the nearby Moika River, and threw them plunk into the water. At school, we liked to recall that incident in which one or two of us claimed to have taken part. But that is by the way.
    It all seemed unreal. We were shown to our rooms. A supper with wine and vodka bottles had been spread out in the sitting-room. In the double bedroom I shared with Dangulov there was very good bedlinen, and a bathroom and lavatory attached, though with cold water only. The colonel took the room next to ours. An amiable old dame, wearing pince-nez and a little purple tartar cap, took charge of us. ‘Let’s have supper,’ said Major Lozak. I could now see him clearly at last. He was young and pale, and very slim, with a regular Roman nose, his fair hair brushed back, and very pale greenish-grey eyes like the Baltic on a rainy day. He had gone right through the Leningrad blockade, and wore on his tunic the order of the Red Star and the Leningrad Defence medal with its pale-green ribbon. Later he told me a lot about himself. We started supper, and were soon joined by a new arrival, Major Likharev, with a pale, rough-hewn face and a heavy jaw. He turned out to be the president of the Leningrad Writers’ Union, and had written ten books of