Protecting Literature

Martin White

Kateryna waits until daylight. It is the only time she can venture outside; there is a curfew at night. The city has been under martial law for over a week. Seven days ago, the Russians surrounded the city, and the constant bombardment is now part of her everyday life.

The sirens are muted this morning as Kateryna picks her way through the rubble – the remains of a library. She has acquired an abandoned shopping trolley left in the stairwell of her apartment block. She remembers wiping the blood off the handle, unsure whose it was or if they lived.

The air is tainted, and she can taste sulphur on her tongue. It is hard to tell if it is the smoke left over from the night of shelling, or thick cloud; maybe it is both. It seems darker today.

The trolley is almost full of books. Kateryna picks them out from the bricks and the twisted iron beams. Dogs bark somewhere in the distance, and three people pass her by in a hurry, carrying loads on their backs. They do not acknowledge her, and she is grateful; she was never one for idle chat, even before the invasion.

Kateryna only collects novels – works of fiction. She has always been a book hoarder; she takes advantage of the situation. She did feel guilty at first, but she now tells herself she is playing her part. Preserving the library. She may return them once the war is over; she is not sure.

I might be dead soon anyway.

The trolley full, she manoeuvres down the road, zigzagging between smouldering craters and burning cars. The pavements are far too hazardous. Bombed-out buildings lean leprously over her and force her to keep to the centre of the street. A clapped-out Skoda passes by, coughing and spluttering. Five or six young men squeezed into the vehicle carry machine guns and head toward the city’s outskirts to defend what is left of it. She prays for their safety and wonders about joining the militia again, but she knows they wouldn’t want her.

Kateryna was born with missing fingers on her right hand and a clubfoot that hinders her movement. She will do her bit by saving as much of the library as possible.

Thankfully, the elevators in her apartment block still work, and she pushes the overloaded trolley out into the corridor and towards her apartment door. She does not bother to lock her door; it is easier for her to leave it ajar. Then the sirens begin to sound out again, like a wailing child. She hurries into the marginal safety of her hallway. Already it is lined from the floor to the ceiling with books, and she can only just squeeze the trolley down the passage. Once inside her one-room studio, she looks around. The single bed unmade reveals the stack of books kept underneath. Empty tins of meatballs with spoons still in them sit on the kitchen counter, nestled on more books. She has almost run out of space. The walls are lined with Zabuzhko, Zhadan, Matios, Kostenko and even translated works by Dickens, Trollope, and Orwell.

As she wonders where to place her latest collections, the ground shakes with a massive explosion. Dust comes raining down from the ceiling, and she hits the floor, covering her head. There is the distant rattle of gunfire and another explosion; she sees the window bow from the blast. Quickly she rises and begins to stack the books from the trolley in front of the window. When the trolley is empty, the window is almost shut off from the outside world. Working at speed, she gathers more books from the hallway and stacks them up until the light no longer comes in.

Kateryna sits in the darkened room. A single candle lights up an area of her bed, and she reads Anna Karenina in the dim light as the bombs fall around her. She blocks them out, her mind in Tolstoy’s world. Another colossal blast shakes the room; the candle flickers and dies. The window smashes behind the book wall. She holds her breath for what seems like hours. The shelling eventually ceases, and the sirens sleep.

The next day, Kateryna begins collecting every book she can find. She will fill every apartment, every house that still stands, and when peace returns, she hopes and dreams of building a new library – bigger and better than before.