Zoya and I are sitting at the table. Before us lies a green coarse cloth. We are making kitbags out of it for the front. And we are also making soldiers' collar straps. It may be simple work, it may not be such a very important task, but it is for the front. These straps are for a soldier, for someone who is defending us from the enemy. The kitbag is also for a soldier. He will put his things in it, the kitbag will come in handy, it will be of use on the march…
We work in silence, almost without a break. Occasionally I put down my sewing and straighten my back—it hurts me a little. And I look at Zoya. Her narrow sun-burnt hands are deft and tireless. They just eat up the work. If the knowledge that she is doing her bit has not completely freed her from tormenting thoughts, it has at least helped her to gain some kind of internal balance. Even outwardly she has changed: her eyes are not so dark and gloomy now, and sometimes a smile plays about her lips.
One day when we were sitting over our sewing the door opened and in came Shura. He entered with an air of emphasized calm, as if he had just come home from school. It was only after he had thrown his rucksack off his shoulders, that he said hello.
We knew already that he had been at the labour front. But even now that he was back, just as in parting, he did not tell us a thing.
"What matters is that I am with you again," he said with finality when we tried to ask him questions.
"And there's nothing to talk about really. We just did a lot of work, that's all." And screwing up his eyes cunningly, he added, "I've come back to celebrate my birthday at home. I hope you haven't forgotten July 27? After all, I'll be sixteen."
And when he had washed and was sitting at the table, he said to Zoya, "I know what you and I can do. Let's go to the Berets Works as turner's apprentices. What about it?"
Zoya put down her sewing and looked at her brother. Then taking up her work again she said, "Good! That will he a real job."
Shura came back on July 22, and that evening enemy aircraft broke through to Moscow for the first time. For the first time German bombs fell on the capital. Shura kept quite cool, acted confidently, and made sure that all the women and children went down into the shelter. "Only I just can't get my own women to go there," he complained. He himself was in the street all through the air raid. Zoya did not leave his side for a moment.
We had no sleep that night. And towards morning the news went round our house that a bomb had hit the school. "Number 201?" shouted Zoya and Shura in one voice.
Before I could say a word they jumped up and made for the school. I too could not stay at home. We walked last, in silence. I could hardly keep up with the children. Only when we caught sight of the school building did we breathe a sigh of relief. It stood whole and undamaged.
But as we came closer we saw that the bomb had fallen across the street, and the blast had blown out all the windows: there was glass all over the place .... It glinted coldly everywhere and crunched under our feet. A kind of helplessness breathed from this huge building: it was just as if a big strong man had suddenly been blinded. Involuntarily, we stopped; then walked up the steps and along the corridors which I had last seen a month ago, on the evening of the school leaving ball. Then they had echoed with music and laughter; youth and gaiety had reigned everywhere. Now the doors were torn off their hinges, underfoot there was glass and plaster.
We met a few others from the senior grades, and Shura ran off with them—to the cellar, I think. Mechanically I followed Zoya to the door of the library. Empty shelves were ranged along the walls: like a huge vicious paw the blast had swept the books off and flung them wildly over the floor and tables. Books were lying about everywhere. Amid the chaos one could pick out the light-yellow binding of the Academia edition of Pushkin, the blue covers of Chekhov's Collected Works .... I almost trod on a crumpled volume of Turgenev, bent down to pick it tip and noticed beside me, beneath a layer of plaster and dust, a volume of Schiller. And looking at me from the open pages of a huge book—in surprise, it seemed—was a portrait of Don Quixote.
On the floor amid the wreckage sat an elderly woman. She was weeping bitterly. Zoya bent down to her.
"Get up, Maria Grigoryevna, don't cry!" she said, her lips pale.
More than once, coming home with a new interesting book, Zoya had told me about the school librarian. This woman loved and knew books, she had devoted all her life to books. And now she was sitting on the floor among the scattered, torn, crumpled volumes, the books she used to take in her hands so carefully and lovingly.
"Let's pick them up and put everything in order," repeated Zoya insistently, helping Maria Grigoryevna to her feet.
I bent down again and began to pick up the books.
"Mama, look!" I heard suddenly.
I turned my head in surprise, and the tearful Maria Grigoryevna, stepping carefully through the books, also came up to us. Zoya's voice had sounded so strange, almost triumphant. She held out an open volume of Pushkin.
"Look!" said Zoya, still with the same strange note of joy and triumph in her voice.
With a sharp wave of her hand she brushed the dust off the lines, and I read:
Thou sacred sun burn on!
Just as yon lamp doth flicker and fade
In the limpid light of dawn,
Thus is wisdom false decayed
If in the sun of thought 'tis tried.
All hail the sun, all darkness hide!
Next: “What Have You Done for the Front?”