Lev and Kolya then join the partisans to hunt for Abendroth, the notorious Einsatz officer responsible for Zoya’s death. They are shocked to discover that the expert shooter is a girl named Vika Lev is immediately smitten by this redheaded tomboy. Before they have a chance to attack, however, the Germans are shot and killed by a group of Russian partisans who were waiting outside. Kolya is angry as he realizes the girls are being kept as prostitutes for German officers, but the girls defend themselves by telling the story of their friend Zoya, who attempted to run away but was captured, tortured, and killed in front of them.Īt Kolya’s insistence, they lie in wait for the German officers. Realizing they are lost, they come across a farmhouse inhabited by four well-fed Russian girls.
After a failed attempt to obtain a chicken-which turns out to be a rooster-they set off on a 50-kilometer walk to Mga, behind German lines, where Sonya’s uncle has a poultry collective. Kolya takes them to stay with his friend Sonya. Intending to spend the night at Lev’s apartment, they discover, to Lev’s horror, that the building was destroyed in the previous night’s bombings. From this point on, their friendship and respect for each other grows, though Lev continues to be exasperated by Kolya’s provocative manner he is also jealous of Kolya’s popularity with women. During the struggle to escape, Kolya, an experienced soldier, saves Lev’s life, and Lev realizes that the man is more than the irritating and boastful charmer he appears to be. Their first of many terrifying encounters is with a cannibal who lures them into his apartment with the promise of eggs. Lev, a shy teenager, and Kolya, an outspoken extrovert, embark on their strange quest and spend the next five days searching Leningrad and the surrounding area for eggs, though the market sellers tell them no one has had such a luxury for months. The next morning Lev and Kolya are taken to Colonel Grechko of the NKVD, who offers them a bizarre “gift.” His daughter is about to be married, and if Lev and Kolya can find a dozen eggs for the wedding cake by the following Thursday, they will walk free. In his prison cell he is joined by Kolya, a handsome, charming, talkative soldier who was arrested for desertion-something he fiercely denies.
Lev is surprised that he is not immediately executed. A few minutes later, Lev is caught and arrested for looting, but his friends manage to escape. Abandoning their posts, they run to find the body, helping themselves to the dead man’s possessions, including a knife. One night, while he and his friends guard the roofs of their apartment block, they see a German parachutist fall from the sky.
Seventeen-year-old Lev Beniov has remained in his beloved city, determined to defend it even though he is too young to join the army. Leningrad, nicknamed Piter, is under siege and its people are starving.
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