Lord, she’s screaming again. It’s been three nights already…”
“Quiet, dear, quiet. They’ll hear us.”
The old apartment greeted me with the smell of lavender and antiquities. A typical museum of the Soviet era—carpets on the walls, crystal in the cabinet, and photographs, photographs, photographs. Honestly, I was a bit nervous stepping inside. After the cozy provincial town, Petersburg seemed like an impregnable fortress, and this apartment—an independent principality with its own laws.
“Come in, don’t stand in the doorway,” a hoarse voice called out.
Yelizaveta Sergeyevna sat in her chair like a queen on a throne. Straight back, gray hair neatly done, a piercing look from behind her glasses. Clearly not one of those grandmothers who bake pies and knit socks.
“Alena,” I introduced myself, trying to speak confidently. “We spoke on the phone…”
“I remember, I remember,” she waved her hand dismissively. “Let’s get straight to business. Can you cook?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And borscht?”
“Borscht too.”
“Hmm,” she squinted. “Because you know, the last girl claimed that borscht was just soup with cabbage and beetroot. Can you imagine?”
I couldn’t help but smile. Maybe she wasn’t so intimidating after all?
“My grandmother would have chased someone with a frying pan for such a definition of borscht.”
“Exactly!” Yelizaveta Sergeyevna’s eyes twinkled with approval. “Well then, the schedule is simple…”
The first evening passed peacefully. I cooked dinner, helped Yelizaveta Sergeyevna with her medication. She sat by the window for a long time, staring into the distance. I noticed a stack of notebooks on the table, but as soon as I approached, they quickly disappeared into a desk drawer.
But at night…
A scream tore through the silence like a gunshot. I jumped out of bed, not immediately realizing where I was. Another scream, and some whispers.
In Yelizaveta Sergeyevna’s room, a night light was on. She was thrashing in bed, clutching the sheets.
“Bread… hide the bread! The children… they will find it…”
“Yelizaveta Sergeyevna!” I gently touched her shoulder.
She sat up abruptly, her eyes wide open, but looking through me.
“Quiet…” her voice dropped to a whisper. “They are walking nearby. Can you hear? In the snow… crunch-crunch…”
I turned on the light, and she blinked, returning to reality.
“What? Oh, it’s you…” she touched her face. “Sorry. Old age…”
“Should I get some water?”
“No,” she cut off sharply. “Go to sleep. And turn off the light.”
I returned to my room but couldn’t fall asleep. Something was very wrong here. And those notebooks… What was she hiding? What ghosts visit her at night?
And most importantly—why did her scream still send shivers down my spine?
In the morning, I decided to clean the living room. Behind the old cabinet, I found a treasure—dozens of black and white photographs scattered like autumn leaves. On one of them—a young girl with braids, in a simple dress. On the back, faded ink: “Leningrad, 1942.”
“What are you rummaging through?” Yelizaveta Sergeyevna’s voice made me jump.
“Sorry, just dusting and…”
“Ah, found the photographs?” she approached, leaning on her cane. “Curious one, aren’t you?”
“Is this you?” I handed her the photo.
“Me,” she took the photograph, and her fingers trembled slightly. “But that was a long time ago. In another life.”
I continued cleaning, but out of the corner of my eye, I noticed her sitting in the chair, still holding the photo. Her lips silently moved.
The night repeated itself.
“Anya, hold on! Just a little longer…” Yelizaveta Sergeyevna’s voice broke into a rasp. “Dogs… Lord, not the dogs!”
I burst into the room. She sat on the bed, gripping the blanket.
“Yelizaveta Sergeyevna, wake up! It’s a dream!”
“What?” she blinked, focusing her gaze. “Oh, it’s you… Was I screaming again?”
“Yes. You were talking about some Anya and…”
“No need,” she shook her head. “Just bring some water.”
When I returned with a glass, she suddenly spoke:
“Do you know what real hunger is? Not when you ‘oh, I forgot to have dinner,’ but when you last ate three days ago?”
I silently shook my head.
“And God forbid you ever find out,” she took a sip of water. “Go to sleep. We have to get up early tomorrow.”
The next day, I found a diary. It lay in an old candy box, hidden under a stack of yellowed newspapers. I know it’s not nice to read someone else’s writings, but… I couldn’t resist.
“February 14, 1942.
Today we buried Aunt Masha. More accurately, we didn’t bury her—no strength to dig a grave. Just laid her in a snowdrift. They’ll find her in the spring… if they find her. No bread for the fourth day. The children barely cry—no strength. Anya is still holding on, but her eyes… Lord, those eyes…”
“What are you doing?”
I jumped at the surprise. Yelizaveta Sergeyevna stood in the doorway, leaning on her cane.
“Sorry, I…” I stammered. “I just wanted to understand.”
“Understand what?” her voice sounded tired. “How people turn into animals? How a mother can eat the last piece while her children die from hunger? Or how human shells on the streets become a common landscape?”
She approached, took the diary from my hands.
“I was sixteen. Just as foolish as you are now. I thought these battles were like in the movies: beautiful feats, fluttering flags…” she bitterly smiled. “Turns out, it’s when you cook soup from leather belts. When you walk across Lake Ladoga, and the ice cracks under your feet. And you know—under the ice, there are hundreds more like you…”
She fell silent, examining the diary.
“Anya was two years younger than me. I found her in a destroyed house. Her parents had died, she was alone… I took her in. Thought it would be easier together. But then…”
“What happened?”
“Evacuation. We were walking across the ice. She could barely stand. I was carrying her on my back, telling her—just don’t sleep, just hold on…” her voice trembled. “There were only a hundred meters to the shore. Just a hundred meters…”
Silence hung in the room, so thick it seemed you could touch it.
“Do you know what’s the scariest part?” she suddenly looked me in the eye. “Not the hunger. Not the cold. But that you get used to it. To people on the streets. To eating cats. To your friend being alive yesterday, and today…” she waved her hand. “And you talk about ‘understanding’…”
I looked at this tiny, frail woman and tried to imagine her as a young girl, dragging her friend across the ice of Lake Ladoga. How much strength must be in that fragile body?
“Yelizaveta Sergeyevna, may I… may I make us some tea? And you tell me more? If you want, of course.”
She was silent for a long time, then nodded:
“Not tea. Coffee. And fetch the brandy from the cabinet. These stories aren’t told dry.”
We sat until morning. She spoke, I listened. About how they divided the last crust of bread among eight. How they collected swan down and boiled ‘soup’. How they hid while sirens wailed above. And with each word, I began to understand more clearly why she screams at night.
Some wounds do not heal. Even after many years.
“Quiet, grandma. It’s just a dream.”
“No, girl. It’s not a dream. It’s memory.”
The morning was sunny. I was frying pancakes, and Yelizaveta Sergeyevna sat at the table, sorting through old photographs.
“You know, Alena,” she suddenly smiled, “after all this, I never got married.”
“Why?”
“There were suitors. But how do you explain to someone why you hide bread under the pillow? Why you wake up at every noise? Why you cry when you see someone throwing away food?”
I placed a plate of pancakes in front of her:
“And now? Do you still hide it?”
“Why don’t you look under the pillow,” she winked and suddenly laughed. “Lord, it’s been eighty years, and I still… You know what’s the most surprising thing?”
“What?”
“That I’m alive. That I’m sitting here, eating your pancakes, looking out the window. And Anya… Masha… they all stayed there. Back in ’42.”
She took a pancake, carefully bit into it:
“Delicious. But you know what? Let’s call the neighbor. She’s lonely. And we have a feast here…”
I watched as she divided the pancakes into three parts, meticulously, almost pedantically, and thought—there it is, what didn’t break. Didn’t freeze there, on the Lake Ladoga. Humanity.
In the evening, she took out a box. Inside— the “Defense of Leningrad” medal, some documents, photographs.
“Take it,” she handed me the medal.
“What are you! I can’t…”
“Silly. Do you think I need it up there?” she nodded somewhere upwards. “But you’re alive. Young. Maybe, show it to your children, tell them…”
“About what?”
“About how a person is stronger than hunger. Stronger than fear. That even in hell, you can remain human. Just…” she paused, searching for words. “Just don’t forget us. Me, Anya, everyone who stayed there. Because as long as they remember—we are alive.”
I carefully took the medal. It was heavy, this little bronze memory of those who survived. And those who did not.
Even after I found another job, I often visit her. We drink tea, talk about life. Sometimes she tells about those times—not about feats and victories, but about little miracles. About how an orphanage boy shared a crust of bread. How a skinny, bald dog brought a freezing girl a mitten.
And at night… At night she still screams. But now I know—it’s not old age. It’s memory that doesn’t let go. And when she calls for Anya, I just sit next to her, hold her hand, and say:
“It’s alright, grandma. It’s all good now. We made it.”
And she quiets down, smiles in her sleep. And I look at the photograph of a young girl with braids and think—what a blessing it is, to just live. Just breathe. Just be human.
And the medal… The medal now lies on my table. And every time I start complaining about life, I look at it and remember: there are things more serious than a broken heel or a bad date.
There’s memory that needs to be carried.
And people we must not forget.
Let me start with a story. About how I became a caretaker for an elderly woman, with whom something strange happened at night…
The assembly hall of School No. 237 was full. I stood before the high school students, clutching the worn medal “For the Defense of Leningrad.” The very one that Yelizaveta Sergeyevna gave me a year ago.
“You know,” I began, “sometimes the most important meetings happen by accident. I had just moved to Petersburg, looking for a job. And here was a vacancy for a caretaker…”
I told them everything. About the screams at night. About the hidden diaries. About the girl Anya, who didn’t make it just a hundred meters to safety. About the bread under the pillow. And I saw their faces change—from bored to shocked.
“Yelizaveta Sergeyevna died three months ago,” I paused. “But before her death, she took a promise from me. ‘Tell them,’ she asked. ‘Tell them to remember.'”
There was such silence in the hall that you could hear the sparrows chirping outside.
“Do you know what 125 grams of bread is?” I took out a black loaf, wrapped in paper, from my bag. “Here. This was the daily ration. For a day.”
A girl in the first row sobbed.
“But I came to talk not about death. About life. About how people shared the last. How they saved strangers’ children. How…”
The bell interrupted my speech. But no one moved from their seats.
“May I continue?” asked a boy from the back row. “Tell us more.”
And I continued. About the feat that wasn’t on the battlefield—in every home, in every apartment. About the unbroken city. About memory that cannot be lost.
In the evening, returning home, I visited the cemetery. I laid a bouquet of carnations on Yelizaveta Sergeyevna’s grave:
“I’m keeping the promise,” I whispered. “They will remember. I’ll make sure they do.”
The wind swayed the branches of a birch tree, and I thought I heard her voice: “Well done, girl. Well done…”
Over the year, I conducted more than thirty such meetings. In schools, libraries, even shopping centers. And every time, I started with the story of the caretaker and her strange ward. About the nighttime screams and hidden diaries. About memory that’s stronger than death.
Because sometimes the most important stories start with accidents. You just need to be able to hear them.
The day after the presentation at School No. 237, the history teacher called me:
“Alena, I have an unusual request for you. Remember Sasha from the back row? The one who asked for more stories?”
How could I forget—a skinny boy with serious eyes, who after the lecture came up and said, “My great-grandmother was also a siege survivor. But she never talks. Not at all.”
“Well,” continued the teacher, “he wrote an amazing essay. About your Yelizaveta Sergeyevna. And now he wants to do a project. To collect stories of all the siege survivors in our area. Can you help?”
We met with Sasha at the library. He brought a thick notebook, filled with small handwriting.
“I found fifteen addresses,” he said, opening the entries. “But they… they don’t want to talk.”
“Of course, they don’t,” I sighed. “Do you know why Yelizaveta Sergeyevna was silent for so many years? Because some wounds do not heal. You can only hide them deeper.”
“But how then?”
“We won’t ask about the siege. We’ll just visit them. With a pie.”
The first on our list was Anna Petrovna. She lived alone, on the first floor of an old house on Petrogradskaya.
“Hello!” Sasha handed her a bag with a pie. “We’re from a school project…”
“No need,” she tried to close the door. “I don’t want to remember anything.”
“We’re not about that,” I smiled. “Just to have tea. You see, I had a friend, Yelizaveta Sergeyevna. She also didn’t want to talk at first…”
Yelizaveta Sergeyevna’s name worked like a password. The door cracked open:
“Liza? Lizka Voronova?”
“Did you know her?”
“Lord…” Anna Petrovna pressed her hand to her chest. “We were together… in ’42… Is she alive?”
“She died three months ago.”
“Oh…” she paused. “Well, come in. Since you brought pie.”
Over tea, she suddenly began to talk. Not about hunger and deaths—about how they and “Lizka” used to run to dances at the hospital. How they hid gramophone records under the pillow. How they dreamed of a peaceful life.
“And remember,” she said, looking through the wall as if addressing the ghost of her friend, “how you sang ‘Blue Handkerchief’? You did it so well…”
Sasha scribbled in his notebook, and I looked at this tiny, frail woman and saw in her the girl who danced in the hospital under the gramophone. Who believed that everything would end, and everything would be okay.
“You know,” Anna Petrovna suddenly said, “I never told anyone either. Thought—why remember? But now… Maybe it really is necessary? While we are still here.”
She got up, went to another room. Returned with an album:
“Here. This is us with Liza. And this—our hospital…”
In a month, we visited everyone on the list. Some threw us out immediately. Some, like Anna Petrovna, let us in for tea. Some cried, remembering. But the main thing—they began to talk.
Then Sasha suggested:
“What if we gather them all together? Those who agree? Organize a memory evening?”
I thought maybe five people would come. Many more came. They sat in the school assembly hall—gray-haired, wrinkled, with walking sticks. And they talked. For the first time in so many years—they talked.
“Do you remember..?”
“How could I not!”
“Lord, was that really us?”
Anna Petrovna brought a gramophone, well, someone carried it for her. A real one, from old times. And a record—”Blue Handkerchief.”
“For Lizka,” she said, placing the needle. “For all of ours…”
They cried. Laughed. Remembered. And Sasha and I sat in the corner, and I saw tears streaming down his cheeks.
“You know,” he whispered, “I thought—it’s just a project. But this… this is…”
“It’s memory,” I squeezed his hand. “Alive memory. What’s stronger than death.”
In the evening, I went to the cemetery again:
“Can you hear, Yelizaveta Sergeyevna? They are talking. Now they all are…”
A week later, a museum opened at the school. Small, just one room. But there were their photographs. Their stories. Their life.
And of course, there was the medal. The very one that Yelizaveta Sergeyevna gave me. Because such things shouldn’t lie in drawers. They should live and remind.
So we remember. So we know. So it never happens again…
The museum grew. First, it was one room at the school, then—three, and now in a separate building. People brought photographs, letters, diaries. I barely managed to systematize the materials.
“Imagine,” Sasha, now a freshman student, told me one day, “we started with your story about the caretaker and her strange ward, and now we have here…”
“A whole life,” I finished, examining new exhibits.
But the main event happened on the day when Anna Petrovna’s granddaughter came:
“Grandma died yesterday,” she said. “And do you know what she asked to pass on? ‘Thank you for making me remember’.”
That evening, I sat in the museum for a long time. Sorting through photographs, reading diaries. Of the fifteen siege survivors we started with, only three were still alive. Time is relentless.
And then I decided.
“Today we will open a time capsule,” I said, standing before the new exhibits in the museum. “Yelizaveta Sergeyevna left it to me before her death. ‘Open it when you realize that people are ready to hear,’ she said.”
It was a simple cardboard box. Inside—letters. Dozens of letters that she wrote to Anya all these years. Every year, on the day of her death.
“Dear Anya, I made it. For both of us. I have a garden now, can you imagine? I grow flowers—those same ones you dreamed of…”
“My dear girl, today I saw children in the park. They were feeding pigeons with bread, and I couldn’t stand it—I approached, took that bread. They looked at me like I was crazy. And I… I just can’t see bread being thrown away. Forgive me…”
“You know, Anya, a girl came to me. Just as naive as we once were. Alena. She doesn’t understand, of course. But she listens. And maybe… maybe through her I can tell. About all of us. About you…”
The last letter was dated the day of her death:
“Dear Anya, I’ll be coming to you soon. But you know what? I’m no longer afraid. Because now someone will remember. Someone will tell. About how we lived. How we loved. How we believed.
I never learned how to live without you. But I learned to live for you. For the memory of those days when humanity was stronger than hunger and fear.
I’m sorry I couldn’t save you then. But maybe, I saved someone else? With my stories, my memory…
See you soon, my girl. It’s almost time.”
I closed the box. The room was silent—alive, when you can hear the heartbeats.
“That’s the story,” I said quietly. “A story about how memory becomes salvation. How love lives longer than death. How one person can preserve an entire world. Cherish the time now, cherish the warmth and food.”
Now our museum has a special room. There’s Yelizaveta Sergeyevna’s old chair, her glasses and an unfinished book on a small table. And on the wall—a photograph: a young girl with braids hugging another, slightly younger. They are smiling. They still don’t know what awaits them.
But we know. And we remember. And we will always remember.
Because memory is not just a duty. It’s love that’s stronger than death.
And as long as we are capable of loving—we are alive.