The Siege by Helen Dunmore
Chapter 10 Summary
Chapter 10 begins with us still being told in Andrei’s point of view. Andrei finds himself imagining his Petersburg apartment as he is alone leading to his apartment for the days have been turned upside down. He has a flashback of his father telling him “How I envy you” before he left his home town Irkutsk. He tells of his mother being from Siberia and taking him camping out in the mountains when he was four years old. Siberia was his mother’s blood and life that she’d never separate from even though she was married to Andrei’s father. He remembers his love of seeing the wind flow over the grass and summer moss. He’d imagine the earth was turning as he lay on the grass looking up at the sun and clouds. He is presently in Leningrad which is the opposite of his childhood home. As he walks through Leningrad on the way to Anna’s apartment he describes as the people of Leningrad would boldly stare and watch him as if he was a stranger or looked different. He describes how Siberia was always told as being cold but, it’s a place where you can breathe and have space to yourself peacefully. As he finds Anna’s apartment he makes sure to knock even though he is being watched by the neighbor across. Once he tells of himself being a friend of Mikhail Anna opens the door causing him to fall onto her by accident. He couldn’t help but feel the warm and curve of her body. (Little bit of a pervert at that moment) he tells Anna of her father being wounded and having been treated. I actually thought Mikhail was dead but I was wrong. Anna begins rambling of how she shouldn’t have let him go and stops to invite Andrei inside the apartment quietly. Andrei then gives Anna Mikhail’s diary and is offered by Anna a piece of bread and tea. He is tired and feels so much better as he eats the bread and tea for it’s just as he likes it reminding him of his dream of being in a kitchen doing the exact action but with a woman in the...