L. Kosmodemyanskaya

The Story of Zoya and Shura


The Twenty-Second of June

How every minute of that day has remained fixed in my memory! On Sunday, June 22, I was to supervise the final examinations at a military school. It was a clear sunny morning when I hurried out to catch the tram. Zoya was seeing me off. She walked alongside, quite a grown-up girl, tall and slender, her cheeks a tender pink. And she had a fine sparkling smile. She was smiling at the sun, the freshness all round, the scent of the lime tree in full bloom.

I stepped into the tram. Zoya waved to me, stood for a second at the tram stop, then turned back home.

It was almost an hour's run to the military school. I used to read in the tram, but it was such a fine morning that I went out onto the platform so as to breathe in more of the soft summer breeze. Heedless of all passenger rules it burst into the moving tram and ruffled the hair of the cheerful boys and girls crowding together on the platform. My fellow travellers kept changing. At the Timiryazev Academy the students got off and made for their various departments: the rush of the exams knows no Sundays. By the statue of Timiryazev I caught a glimpse of boys and girls sitting in groups on the benches amid the colourful flower beds. Preparing for the exams, most likely. And perhaps, among them there are a few lucky ones who have already passed theirs. At the next stop both the platform and the car were filled with school children in their best clothes and red ties. A very young and stern woman teacher with spectacles was seeing that the children did not make too much noise, did not stand on the steps, did not poke their heads out of the windows.

"Maria Vasilyevna," a broad-shouldered young lad implored her, "what's the idea: keep quiet in class and don't talk here? But we're on holiday now!"

The teacher did not deign to reply. Instead she gave the lad a look which made him lower his eyes with a sigh and subside.

For a little while after that a solemn hush reigned in the car. Then a girl with flaming-red hair, mischievous eyes and merry freckles all over her face elbowed her friend, whispered something in her ear, and the next moment they were all whispering and giggling, and the car buzzed and hummed from end to end like a beehive.

I got off the tram. There was half an hour to go before the exams were due to begin, and I walked slowly down the broad street, inspecting the windows of the bookshops. I must tell Shura to come here and buy the textbooks and the geographical maps for the tenth grade. Let us be ready in advance for this, the last and decisive school year. And here was the art show which we were planning to visit..

I reached the school and went up to the second floor. It was not like examination time at all, so empty and deserted did everything look. In the teachers' room I met the head. "The exams have been called off for today, Lyubov Timofeyevna," he said. "The students have not turned up. We do not know the reason yet."

Still not suspecting anything I felt something grow cold inside me. My students were soldiers, highly-disciplined people. What could have delayed them on the day of their exams? What had happened? No one knew yet.

It seemed to have got stuffy when I went out into the street again, and everyone seemed to wear a disturbed, tense expression on his face. What had become of the morning's freshness, the carefree noisy gaiety of a Moscow holiday crowd? Everyone appeared to be waiting for something, and the expectation was difficult to bear, just as it is before a storm.

The trams rumbled past, overflowing. I walked nearly all the way back. Near home I got on a tram and thus missed hearing Comrade Molotov's speech. But the first word which greeted me at home was the one which shattered the stormy stuffiness of that memorable morning for all of us.

"War, Mummy! War!" shouted the children rushing towards me. They both started speaking at once, "It's war! Germany has attacked us! Without a declaration of war! They just crossed the border and opened fire!"

Zoya's face was angry and she spoke fiercely, giving free rein to her wrath. Shura was doing his best to appear calm and collected.

"This was to be expected," he said thoughtfully. "We knew what fascist Germany was all along."

There was a short silence.

"Yes, life will be quite different now," said Zoya between her teeth, as if she were talking to herself.

Shura swung round at her, "Don't tell me you are thinking of going to the front?"

"I mean to do just that," Zoya retorted almost angrily and, as before, not addressing anyone in particular. Then, abruptly, she spun round and left the room.

We knew that the war would bring death to millions of people, that it meant destruction, misery and grief.

But on that now far-off day we had no clear picture of its full scope of horrors. We knew nothing of air raids, we did not know what a trench or an air-raid shelter was— soon we were to make them ourselves. We had not yet heard the screeching and exploding of bombs. We did not know that a blast could smash windowpanes to smithereens and make locked doors fly off their hinges. We knew nothing of evacuation and trains crowded with children, trains which the enemy would calmly and methodically strafe. We had not yet heard of villages burnt to the ground and towns reduced to rubble. We had no knowledge of gallows, inquisitions and tortures, the terrible ditches and pits where thousands would be done to death—the infirm and the very old, women and babes in their mothers' arms. We knew nothing of the furnaces where thousands, nay, millions of people would be burnt. We did not know about the death vans, about nets made of human hair, about book covers made of human skin. There was much that we still did not know. We had grown used to respecting human dignity, to loving children and regarding them as our future. We still did not know that beasts, no different in appearance from men, could throw a suckling child into the fire. We did not know how long this war would last ....

Yes, there was much that we still did not know.

 


Next: War Days