Burying the Sun by Gloria Whelan
When the music ended and Eliasberg put down his baton, and the members of the orchestra put down their instruments, there was complete silence in the hall. We were all in a trance, bewitched, we couldn’t move. Someone in the audience stood up and began to clap, someone else followed. Soon everyone was standing, and the hall was shaking with the sound of applause. The audience could not get enough. They kept calling Eliasberg back. A little girl ran up onto the stage with a bouquet of flowers as big as she was—they must have been all the flowers blooming in Leningrad. We clapped one another on the shoulders, and wiping away our tears, we finally made our way out into the park.
The sound of a shell falling somewhere in the city startled me. “It was amazing,” I said. “There was no sound of artillery during the symphony.”
Andrei smiled his knowing smile. “That was no accident. All the shelling you heard last night, that was our soldiers giving the Germans everything we had. We wanted to knock them back on their heels so that we would not have to put up with their bombs tonight.”
Later we heard that the German army had listened to the symphony on their radios. So much power must have had them shaking in their boots.
Early in September we dug up the first turnips. They were still small, but the days were growing shorter and we were already having frosts. The beans were used up and the tomato vines were turning brown. Blooms on the morning glories were scarce and frazzled. On September sixth Mama harvested the last of the vegetables, a fat squash that she cooked to celebrate my sixteenth birthday.
The next day I joined the Russian army.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
On the night of January 18, 1943, the troops on the Russian front joined forces. After 526 days the blockade of Leningrad was partially broken. January 27, 1944, marked the true end of the blockade. The Siege of Leningrad had lasted 880 days. On May 8, 1945, World War II in Europe came to an end.
GLOSSARY
blini: a pancake filled with fruit or cheese
burzhuika: small stove
gastronom: grocery store
Gostiny Dvor: combination marketplace and flea market
krendeli: little heart-shaped cookies
makivneki: sweet rolls with poppy seeds
nichevo: never mind
ostanovka: halt
piroshki: meat pies
prastitye: pardon me
S Rozhdestvom Khristovom: Merry Christmas
unimaniye: attention
voina: war
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ginzburg, Lidiya. Blockade Diary. Trans. by Alan Myers. London: Harvill Press, 1995.
Likhachev, Dmitry S. Reflections on the Russian Soul: A Memoir. New York: Central European University Press, 2000.
Lincoln, W. Bruce. Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. Boulder, Colo.: Basic Books, 2001.
Salisbury, Harrison E. The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad. New York: Harper & Row, 1969.
About the Author
Gloria Whelan is the bestselling author of many novels for young readers, including HOMELESS BIRD, winner of the National Book Award; FRUITLANDS: Louisa May Alcott Made Perfect; ANGEL ON THE SQUARE; ONCE ON THIS ISLAND, winner of the Great Lakes Book Award; FAREWELL TO THE ISLAND; and RETURN TO THE ISLAND. She lives in the woods of northern Michigan. You can visit her online at www.gloriawhelan.com.
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ALSO BY GLORIA WHELAN
CHU JU’S HOUSE
THE IMPOSSIBLE JOURNEY
FRUITLANDS
ANGEL ON THE SQUARE
HOMELESS BIRD
MIRANDA’S LAST STAND
THE INDIAN SCHOOL
The Island Trilogy:
ONCE ON THIS ISLAND
FAREWELL TO THE ISLAND
RETURN TO THE ISLAND
Credits
Cover art © 2004 by Peter Malone
Copyright
BURYING THE SUN. Copyright © 2004 by Gloria Whelan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition NOVEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780061975790
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Gloria Whelan, Burying the Sun