Status Updates From The Siege

And you’ll go for the bread ration, and we’ll come home and eat. We’ll get through another day. We’ll still be on earth. As long as you’re alive, I'll stay alive.
You promise?
Yes l promise.

Tatyana will go on walking, the snow will fall, and Onegin will go on failing to love her until it is much too late. Suddenly he’ll recognize her for what she really 1s, and she'll explain to him why nothing more can happen between them. Everything that seems arbitrary has been laid down since time began. Soon the brown, earth-coloured landscape will be covered by snow.

Onegin, do you remember that hour Picked by fate for our meeting In the alley, in the garden .. .

“You don’t even notice the people who love you. To you, they are nothing. You don’t value yourself, and that belittles everyone who loves you.’

Here I am back in Leningrad, worse off than when I was eighteen. But Misha, for God’s sake, let’s stop making such a tragedy out of it. We’ve done far too much of that. Other people have lives, but we just keep on having emotions. We think things have been so terrible for us, but we’re alive. We’re not even in prison.

A man appears, thrusting a baby at him. ‘My wife can’t walk any farther. He’s only two weeks old, he won’t take up any space.’
‘I've got to tend these men. Your baby’s safer with you.’

'If they drop a shell on the barn you'll be fine,' goes on Evgenia, 'as long as you've got your blanket round your head. It's just a question of having the correct attitude.'

A tiny gasp. Can she really have meant to mock Party talk like that? Jokes are the worst thing, everyone knows. Nothing gets you disappeared faster than a joke overheard by the wrong person.

The wind breathes softly. Water laps under the midnight bridges. And suddenly you know that there's no greater possible happiness than to be here, even when you're so old you're beyond walking. You lean out of your apartment window, with stiff joints and fading strength, over the city that will outlive you.