Burying the Sun by Gloria Whelan

as bread.”
    At the end of November the weather turned warm. People breathed a sigh of relief, thinking they would be saved from freezing to death, but on the lake it was a disaster. The ice began to thaw. One day on the way back we came to a soft spot. Sasha did not pause but gunned the engine, and we roared across, almost flying over the ice. When I looked behind me, I saw the truck that had tried to follow us sink into the water and disappear. I covered my eyes with my hands and groaned.
    â€œ Nichevo , never mind,” Sasha said, as he said to everything.
    â€œWe have to go back,” I shouted. I was shaking at our narrow escape and horrified at what I had seen.
    Sasha said, “We would fall through ourselves. Besides, the food we are carrying will save a thousand lives.”
    I knew he was right, but it was terrible to me that people were dying in the city from hunger and dying on the lake to end the hunger.

CHAPTER TEN
RETURN
    December 1941
    We had our first good news from the front. The town of Tikhvin had been recaptured from the Germans, and our soldiers had retaken the railroad as far as the crucial Mga station. Along with all the food our trucks were bringing into the city, small amounts of food were also beginning to arrive by train.
    The temperature the day before Christmas was below zero with a heavy snow. There was no electricity and so no radio for an official announcement; nevertheless, the word spread from house to house and person to person. Rations were going to be increased. It did notmatter that the increase was only a very little—the movement for the first time was upward. People in the streets were slapping one another on the backs, tears were flowing.
    At the bakery the women behind the counters, who were usually sullen and unhappy over having to say the word no all the time, were now smiling. It was only a little more, but what a Christmas surprise!
    The people of Kobona provided tea and food, bread with butter, and farm cheese as a Christmas treat for the truck drivers. I kept a knapsack with me, and into the knapsack went most of my food. In the freezing cold everything would keep. Sasha saw what I was doing and scolded me. “You need your strength to heave those boxes and barrels in and out of the truck.”
    On Christmas morning I prepared a feast of real tea with sugar, thick slices of bread—dried but, still, with the taste of butter on them, and slices of cheese. Olga and Yelena were speechless.
    At last Olga said, “Where have you stolen thefood from? Let’s hurry and eat the evidence before we are all dragged off to prison.”
    Yelena said, “It’s a dream. If we touch it, it will disappear.”
    The government discouraged the celebration of Christmas. But Yelena was in great spirits after our feast. Laughing, she let a candle drop its melting wax over a bowl of water. It was an old superstition that a girl would find some sign of her future husband if at Christmas she dropped wax into water.
    â€œLet’s see what we have.” She stared at the puddle of wax. “It looks like four wheels. Why, it’s a truck!” She smiled. “Who can that be?”
    Olga got into the spirit of the day, and taking up her violin, she played while Yelena and I sang Christmas hymns. It was the first time I had seen her smile since Viktor’s death. That night we wished one another S Rozhdestvom Khristovom , Merry Christmas, and went off to our beds with, miracle of miracles, full stomachs. If only Mama and Marya hadbeen there, I thought, the day would have been perfect.
    On Lake Ladoga the Germans never stopped shelling our trucks or dropping bombs on us, so the only time it was safe to be on the ice was at night, which was when we made most of our runs. The trucks had begun to break down. I would tell Sasha what was needed, and he would scrounge parts from old trucks in the city that could no longer run because there was no gasoline for