David Benioff: City of Thieves

I did not look up from the page at the first knock on the door. The boy who lived a few apartments over entertained himself most evenings running up and down the hallway, banging on each door. Everyone I knew would let himself in, anyway—the lock was broken and we had few visitors. The third knock broke London’s spell. A little annoyed, I dropped the book on the kitchen table and went to scold the boy.

A young woman stood in the hallway, a suitcase at her feet, a cardboard carton in her hands. She wore a yellow cotton dress with a white flower print. The silver dragonfly on her necklace hung in the hollow of her collarbone and her thick red hair cascaded past her sunburned shoulders. She will tell you that she hadn’t chosen that dress with any care, or the necklace, that she hadn’t washed her hair or scrubbed her face, put a little red on her lips. Don’t believe it. No one looks that good by accident.

She grinned at me, that infuriating curl of the lips that seemed more smirk than smile, her blue eyes watching mine to see if I recognized her. If I were a little better at playing the game, I might have pretended not to, I might have said, “Hello, are you looking for someone?”

“You’re not as skinny as before,” she said. “But you’re still too skinny.”

“You have hair,” I replied, and immediately wished I could take it back. For three and a half years I had dreamed of her—literally, she had marched in her oversize coveralls through half the dreams I remembered—and all I could think to say when she finally arrived was, “You have hair”?

“I brought you a gift,” she said. “Look what they’ve invented now.”

She flipped open the lid of the cardboard carton. Inside twelve eggs nestled in their snug compartments. White eggs, brown eggs, and one that was speckled like an old man’s hand. She closed the lid and opened it again, pleased with its functional simplicity.

“Much better than packing them in straw,” she added.

“We could make an omelet,” I suggested.

“We?” She smiled, handing me the carton, picking up her suitcase, waiting for me to open the door wide and let her inside. “One thing you should know about me, Lyova. I don’t cook.”

Harrison Salisbury’s masterpiece, The 900 Days , remains the best English-language book on the siege of Leningrad. It was my constant companion while writing City of Thieves and I recommend it to anyone wishing to learn more about Piter and its inhabitants during the Great Patriotic War. I am equally indebted to Curzio Malaparte’s work of strange genius, Kaputt , which provides an entirely different perspective on the conflict. His descriptions of German antipartisan tactics, along with much else, proved essential in composing this narrative. I’d like to thank both of these late gentlemen for their books. If I got the details right, they deserve much of the credit.

When the Nines Roll Over

The 25th Hour

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First published in 2008 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright © David Benioff, 2008

All rights reserved

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Benioff, David

City of thieves: a novel / David Benioff.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-0-670-01870-3

1. Grandparent and child—Fiction. 2. Reminiscing in old age—Fiction. 3. Russians—United States—Fiction. 4. Saint Petersburg (Russia)—History—Siege, 1941-1944. 5. Domestic fiction. [1. Survival—Fiction.] I. Title.

PS3552.E54425C58 2008

813’ .54—dc22 2007042784

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