No, no… I am not going anywhere from Leningrad… No way! Besides, how am I going to leave without my books? No, no — it is impossible.

Ivan Yakovlevich came to visit. He was carrying a small package”. Brodsky writes what Bilibin told him: “My dear, we will probably part soon… forever. You’ll outlive me. This Leica is a great camera, no worse than the French ones, I assure you. You, as a scientific secretary, should become our chronicler. But keep in mind that in a hundred years from now humanity will not have time to read… But the photos, I’m sure, will always be observed with interest… Shoot everything, everything you can… Everything around us, all this hell… it is incredibly interesting! This must be done! At least for the artists of the future. To make sure no one lies…

…What fools we were that despite the longest queues, we did not prepare supplies for ourselves. After all, there were still a lot of products: sausages, cheeses and various canned goods, cereals, vegetable oil, and so on. We did buy it, but too little, just for a few days. Now, when you are painfully hungry, when you pick up every bread crumb with your fingers, when apart from a meager card, there is absolutely nowhere and nothing to buy, I am ready to tear my last hair out that we have not, in fact, stocked up on anything. And the war was raging. And the Germans went on and on. We, in fact, did not know anything, as we still know very little or almost nothing. We thought…

When I came to him on February 6, I saw him lying on the bed. He greeted me warmly like a friend. I brought him something to eat and some wine, I wanted to put it on the nightstand. But he told me that he had everything, there was even a bottle of port wine, but he had no appetite and a very dry mouth. Pavel Alexandrovich Shillingovsky was with me. We helped him out of bed, and he talked to us, but he was very sleepy. Gathering his strength, Ivan Yakovlevich tried to question me about the military situation. Before I left, he said that he would definitely come to me, as agreed, on February 9, hoping that his condition would improve. On February 8, I received a call ‘Ivan Yakovlevich has passed away…’ from the Academy of Arts.