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and the trams with the dim little blue lights were still running. It was about ten o’clock. The curfew wasn’t till eleven.
    Kirochnaya Street, then the Liteiny Avenue – all familiar places. In the Liteiny I distinguished the tall outline of what was once the Army and Navy Club. In 1916, I had come here to hear Skriabin’s Extase conducted by Kussevitzky. We all went frantic over it then. Tastes change. Recently in Moscow, with the Poème de l’Extase in the second part of the programme, I had heard an old lady say in the interval to another old lady, ‘My dear, let’s get away from the Extase!’
    We turned into the Nevsky. The dim outline of the Alexandrinka was on the left, and of the Public Library, and the Gostiny Dvor, and then of the Kazan Cathedral, with its colonnade modelled after St. Peter’s in Rome. And in front of us was the tall needle spire of the Admiralty.
    Just before reaching the Admiralty the car stopped and our colonel stepped out and asked us to wait. He disappeared into a dimly lit doorway, with two soldiers with bayonets outside. Dangulov and I stepped out of the car and walked up and down the smooth clean pavement. We were right in the heart of Leningrad. Before us were trees, and above them, the graceful shape of the Admiralty with its needle spire. All was quiet except for an occasional tramcar that rattled past, usually quite empty, with two dim coloured lights in front, and for the sound of an occasional motor horn. Then, through the stillness of the Leningrad night a loud-speaker began to talk along the Nevsky Prospect: ‘This is tonight’s communiqué. …’ More successes in all directions. The houses on either side of the Nevsky looked dark and enormously strange, it felt like being in a great European city.
    I still couldn’t make out the driver’s face, but his voice sounded younger than I had thought at first. ‘Bad business, driving at night,’ he said. ‘I stick strictly to the regulations, but the militia still make a row about the headlights every time they have a chance. Them militia girls are very funny.’ ‘Have you been in Leningrad these last two years?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘since the start. It’s good to be heroes, but we could all do with a spot of ordinary quiet living. Yes, I’ve been through it all, me and the wife and the kid. Nearly died of hunger myself in ’41. It’s a lot better now; I get 600 grammes of bread. Not enough, really, considering what we Leningrad people have gone through.’ ‘Have you had much shelling lately?’ ‘Yesterday we had twenty minutes of it – the Moscow district got it. Nothing much today, though. But, my God, it used to be bad – especially a few weeks ago. They kept at it for ten days – non-stop; the damn thing went on from dawn till dusk. They’re slick sons of bitches – hit the bloody tramcar stop right at the corner of the Nevsky and the Sadovaya – busiest damned street corner in the whole of Leningrad. Everybody was killed or wounded – real nightmare when you see what it looks like. Another day they hit a crowded tramcar. But it’s better now than it used to be. They say it’s the air force that’s keeping them under control. It’s easy now, and after what we have stuck, we can manage to stick the rest. It mayn’t be long now.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘if Smolensk and Vitebsk are taken by the Red Army, they may soon have to pull out.’ ‘If it happened tomorrow it would suit me all right,’ he said. ‘From what I’ve seen of Leningrad – and it isn’t much – ‘ I said, ‘there isn’t as much damage as I thought. Kharkov certainly looks ten times worse.’ ‘Oh!’ he said, sounding very sceptical, ‘you’ll see plenty of damage tomorrow.’
    At last the dark door between the two sentries opened, letting out a faint ray of light and Colonel Studyonov came out, together with another officer. With a salute, and in very good English, he introduced himself formally,