“Oh, Evochka, the smell of their porridge and meat!” Dad rolled his eyes in rapture. “Not like that gruel you and Mum made.” Children bearing mugs and bowls converged at the source of the scent. Soldiers would chase them away, other times they’d hoot and throw them a spoonful or two. The city grew quiet and empty. People only went out to the market or to fetch water, always keeping their backs to the wall on the way. Raids and military police haunted their fears. Cats, dogs, and pigeons disappeared—they were eaten in the first few months. His mother shed forty kilos and complained of stomach pain—her internal organs were shrinking. Only after the war did Dad realise that she was giving him all her food.

Half a year later, when winter came, famine swooped. Grandma brought home small lumps of brown bread—you could keep them in your pocket and suck on them for three days, like they were a delicacy—and ground potato peel patties fried in rank dog fat. She traded the last remaining household items and her clothes for them. Anything worth selling had gone. Only the women who slept with the Germans had money. They bought clothes—they needed to look decent. When the Germans retreated, they got it even worse than the wives of the missing. Every one of them was turned in by their neighbours. Every one of them ended up in the camps.

“A nation of snitches, Evochka.” He shook his head. “Always was, always will be. A nation of snitches.”

The returning evacuees called those who had stayed behind “German dogs” and took their flats. He and his mother had to move into communal housing, huddling in the corner and fighting for survival all over again. But that came later. The day the Soviet tanks rolled in, they joyfully raced out onto the street, clamouring with the others to touch the soldiers. A hem at least, or a tank’s steel skin. Army units bore westward across the city, and it seemed like everything would be fine. A long-forgotten sensation of hope gripped the city; hungry, exhausted people came out to the square in the evening, erected wooden stages, brought out musical instruments and danced, danced, danced in bliss as if it were their last day on earth. Or the first.

There were another twenty people in the communal dwelling. A long corridor ran past ten doors, a kitchen, and a shared toilet and shower. They had installed a small wardrobe and one bed, which he shared with his mother, at the end of the corridor. The house was endless shouting and slammed doors. There was no running water or power. Dad did his homework between the lines of old newspapers. Paper was in short supply. It got worse in winter: his fingers grew numb from frostbite, lice flourished, bedbugs bred.

These oft-told stories now play out before my eyes—especially now. Sitting in our . . . well, not our flat, their flat, in the cold, and without power or heating, as it was then, nothing but endless hours for wrapping up in a blanket and remembering every detail of those reminiscences.