Life And Fate

1

A few days before the beginning of the Stalingrad offensive Krymov arrived at the underground command-post of the 64th Army. Abramov's aide was eating a pie and some chicken soup.

He put down his spoon; you could tell from his sigh that it was good soup. Krymov's eyes went moist; he desperately wanted a bite of cabbage-pie.

Behind the partition, the aide announced his arrival. After a moment's silence Krymov heard a familiar voice; it was too quiet for him to make out the words.

The aide came out and announced:

'The member of the Military Soviet is unable to receive you.'

Krymov was taken aback.

'But I never asked to see him. Comrade Abramov summoned me himself.'

The aide just looked at his soup.

'So it's been cancelled, has it? I can't make head or tail of all this,' said Krymov.

He went back up to the surface and plodded along the gully towards the bank of the Volga. He had to call at the editorial office of the Army newspaper.

He felt annoyed by the senseless summons and by his sudden greed for someone else's pie. At the same time he listened attentively to the intermittent gunfire coming from the Kuporosnaya ravine.

A girl walked past on her way to the Operations Section. She was wearing a forage cap and a greatcoat. Krymov looked her up and down and said to himself: 'She's not bad at all.'

The memory of Yevgenia came back to him, and as always his heart sank. As always he immediately reproved himself: 'Forget her! Forget her!' He tried to call to mind a young Cossack girl he had spent the night with in a village they had passed through. Then he thought of Spiridonov: 'He's a fine fellow-even if he isn't a Spinoza!'

For a long time afterwards Krymov was to remember these thoughts with piercing clarity – together with the gunfire, the autumn sky and his irritation with Abramov.

A staff officer with a captain's green stripes on his greatcoat called out his name. He had followed him from the command-post.

Krymov gave him a puzzled look.

'This way please,' the captain said quietly, pointing towards the door of a hut.

Krymov walked past the sentry and through the doorway. They entered a room with a large desk and a portrait of Stalin on the plank wall.

Krymov expected the captain to say something like this: 'Excuse me, comrade Battalion Commissar, but would you mind taking this report to comrade Toshcheev on the left bank?' Instead, he said:

'Hand over your weapon and your personal documents.'

Krymov's reply was confused and meaningless.

'But what right…? Show me your own documents first…!'

There could be no doubt about what had happened – absurd and senseless though it might be. Krymov came out with the words that had been muttered before by many thousands of people in similar circumstances:

'It's crazy. I don't understand. It must be a misunderstanding.'

These words were no longer those of a free man.

2

'You're playing the fool. I want to know who recruited you when your unit was surrounded.'

He was now on the left bank, being interrogated in the Special Section at Front HQ.

The painted floor, the pots of flowers by the window, the pendulum-clock on the wall, all seemed calm and provincial. The rattling of the window-panes and the rumble of bombs from Stalingrad seemed pleasantly humdrum.

How little this lieutenant-colonel behind the wooden kitchen-table corresponded to the pale-lipped interrogator of his imagination.

But the lieutenant-colonel, one of his shoulders smudged with whitewash from the stove, walked up to the man sitting on the wooden stool – an expert on the workers' movement in the colonies of the Far East, a man with a commissar's star on the sleeves of his uniform, a man who had been brought up by a sweet, good-natured mother – and punched him in the face.

Krymov ran his hand over his lips and nose, looked at his palm and saw a mixture of blood and spittle. He tried to move his jaw. His lips had gone numb and his tongue was like stone. He looked at the painted floor – yes, it had just been washed – and swallowed his blood.

Only during the night did he begin to feel hatred for his interrogator. At first he had felt neither hatred nor physical pain. The blow on the face was the outward sign of a moral catastrophe. He could respond only with dumbfounded amazement.

The lieutenant-colonel looked at the clock. It was time for lunch in the canteen for heads-of-departments.

Krymov was taken across the dirty, frozen snow that covered the yard towards a rough log building that served as a lock-up. The sound of the bombs falling on Stalingrad was very clear.

His first thought as he came to his senses was that the lock-up might be destroyed by a German bomb… He felt disgusted with himself.

In the stifling, log-walled cell he was overwhelmed by despair and fury: he was losing himself. He was the man who had shouted hoarsely as he ran to the aeroplane to meet his friend Georgiy Dimitrov, he was the man who had borne Clara Zetkin's coffin – and just now he had given a furtive glance to see whether or not a security officer would hit him a second time. He had led his men out of encirclement; they had called him 'Comrade Commissar'. And now a peasant with a tommy-gun had looked at him – a Communist being beaten up and interrogated by another Communist – with squeamish contempt.

He had not yet taken in the full meaning of the words 'loss of freedom'… He had become another being. Everything in him had to change. He had lost his freedom…

He felt giddy… He would appeal to Shcherbakov, to the Central Committee! He would appeal to Molotov! He wouldn't rest until that scoundrel of a lieutenant-colonel had been shot. 'Yes – pick up that phone! Ring up Krasin! Stalin has heard my name. He knows who I am. Comrade Stalin once asked comrade Zhdanov: "Is that the same Krymov who used to work in the Comintern?" '

Then Krymov felt the quagmire beneath his feet: a dark, gluey, bottomless swamp was sucking him in. He had come up against something insuperable, something more powerful than the German Panzer divisions. He had lost his freedom.

Zhenya! Zhenya! Can you see me? Zhenya! Look at me – I'm in trouble, terrible trouble! I'm alone and abandoned. You too have abandoned me.

A degenerate had been beating him. His head span; his fingers were almost in spasm: he wanted to throw himself at the security officer.

Never had he felt such hatred towards the Tsarist police, the Mensheviks or even towards the SS officer he had once interrogated.

No, the man now trampling over him was not someone alien. Krymov could see himself in this officer, could recognize in him the same Krymov who as a boy had wept with happiness over those astonishing words of the Communist Manifesto: 'Workers of the World Unite!' And this feeling of recognition was appalling.

3

Darkness fell. Intermittently, the rumble of Stalingrad boomed through the close, evil air of the prison. Perhaps the Germans were going for Batyuk and Rodimtsev.

From time to time there were movements out in the corridor. The doors of the general cell – for deserters, traitors to the Motherland, looters and rapists – opened and closed. When the prisoners asked to go to the lavatory, the sentry would argue for a long time before opening the door.

Krymov himself had been put in the general cell after being brought over from Stalingrad. No one had paid any attention to the commissar with the red star still sewn on his sleeve: all the men cared about was whether he had any paper for rolling their dusty tobacco.

All they wanted was to be able to eat, smoke and carry out their natural functions.

Who had denounced him? What a torment it was: to know that he was innocent and yet to suffer from this chilling sense of irreparable guilt. Rodimtsev's conduit, the ruins of house 6/1, the White-Russian bogs, the Voronezh winter, the rivers they'd had to ford – everything light and joyful was lost for ever.

How he wanted simply to go out onto the street, stroll around, crane his neck and look up at the sky… And then buy a newspaper, have a shave, write a letter to his brother. He wanted a cup of tea. He had to return a book he'd borrowed for the evening. He wanted to look at his watch, go to the bath-house, take a handkerchief out of his suitcase. But he couldn't do anything. He had lost his freedom.

Then he had been taken out into the corridor. The commandant had shouted at the guard:

'I told you in plain Russian! Why the hell did you go and put him in the general cell? And don't just stand there gaping! Do you want to be sent to the front line?'

When the commandant had gone, the guard had complained:

'It's always the same. The solitary cell's occupied. He told us to keep it for people sentenced to death. If I put you there, what can I do with the fellow who's already there?'

Soon Krymov saw the firing-squad taking the man out to be executed. His fair hair clung to the narrow, scrawny nape of his neck. He could have been anything from twenty years old to thirty-five.

Krymov was then transferred to the solitary cell. In the semi-darkness he made out a pot on the table. Next to it he could feel a hare moulded from the soft inside of a loaf of bread. The condemned man must have just put it down – it was still soft. Only the hare's ears had had time to grow stale.

Krymov, his mouth hanging open, sat down on the plank-bed. He had too much on his mind to be able to sleep. Nor could he think. His temples were throbbing. He felt deafened. Everything was whirling around in his head. There was nothing he could catch hold of, no firm point from which to begin a line of thought.

During the night there was a commotion in the corridor. The guards called the corporal. There was a tramping of boots. The commandant – Krymov recognized his voice – said: 'To hell with that battalion commissar. Put him in the guard-room.' Then he added: 'What a story! I bet it'll get to the CO.'

The door of his cell opened and a soldier shouted: 'Out!'

Krymov went out. In the corridor stood a bare-footed man in his underwear.

Krymov had seen many terrible things in his life, but nothing so terrible as this small, dirty yellow face. Its lips, wrinkles, and trembling cheeks were all crying; everything was crying except for the eyes; and so terrible was the expression in those eyes, it would have been better never even to have glimpsed them.

'Come on, come on!' said the guard.

When Krymov was in the guard-room, he learned what had happened.

'They keep threatening to send me to the front, but this place is a thousand times worse. Your nerves get worn to a frazzle… A soldier's to be executed for self-mutilation – he'd shot himself in the left hand through a loaf of bread. They shoot him, cover him over with earth – and during the night he comes to life again and finds his way back!'

The guard avoided addressing Krymov directly – so as not to have to choose between the polite and impolite forms of the second person.

'They make a hash of everything they set their hands to. It wears your nerves to a frazzle. Even a pig gets slaughtered better than that! What a mess! The ground's frozen – so they rake up some weeds, sprinkle them over him and off they go. And then he gets up. What do you expect? He couldn't have done that if he'd been buried according to the rule-book.'

Krymov – who had always answered questions, given explanations, set people back on the true path – was bewildered.

'But why did he come back here?'

The guard laughed.

'And now the sergeant-major wants him to be given some bread and tea while they sort out his papers. The head of the catering section's raising hell. How can they give him tea when they've already written him off? And why should the sergeant-major be allowed to bungle everything and then expect the catering department to bail him out?'

'What did you do before the war?' Krymov asked suddenly.

'I was a beekeeper on a State farm.'

'I see,' said Krymov. At that moment everything – both inside him and outside him – was equally incomprehensible.

At dawn Krymov was taken back to the solitary cell. The hare was still standing beside the pot; its skin was now hard and rough. Krymov could hear a wheedling voice in the general cell:

'Come on, comrade guard! Take me along for a piss.'

A reddish-brown sun was rising over the steppe. It was like a frozen beetroot with lumps of earth still clinging to it.

Soon afterwards Krymov was taken out and put in the back of a truck. A young lieutenant sat down beside him, the sergeant-major handed over his suitcase and the truck set off for the airfield, grinding and jolting over the frozen mud.

Krymov took a deep breath of cool, damp air. His heart filled with faith and light. The nightmare seemed to be over.

4

Krymov got out of the car and looked round at the narrow grey passage leading into the Lubyanka. His head was buzzing, full of the roar of aeroplane engines, of glimpses of streams, forests and fields, of moments of despair, doubt and self-assurance.

The door opened. He entered an X-ray world of stifling official air and glaring official light. It was a world that existed quite independently of the war, outside it and above it.

He was taken to an empty, stifling room and ordered to strip. The light was as dazzling as a searchlight. A man in a doctor's smock ran his fingers thoughtfully over Krymov's body. Krymov twitched; it was clear that the war and all its thunder could never disturb the methodical work of these shameless fingers…

A dead soldier, a note in his gas-mask that he'd written before the attack: 'I died for the Soviet way of life, leaving behind a wife and six children…' A member of a tank-crew who had burned to death – he had been quite black, with tufts of hair still clinging to his young head… A people's army, many millions strong, marching through bogs and forests, firing artillery and machine-guns…

Calmly and confidently, the fingers went on with their work… They were under enemy fire. Commissar Krymov was shouting: 'Comrade Generalov, do you not want to defend the Soviet Motherland?'

'Turn round! Bend down! Legs apart!'

He was photographed in a soldier's tunic with its collar unbuttoned, full-face and in profile. With almost indecent diligence he pressed his fingerprints onto a sheet of paper. Someone bustled up, removed his belt and cut off his trouser buttons.

He went up in a brightly lit lift and walked down a long carpeted corridor, past a row of doors with round spy holes. They were like the wards of a cancer clinic. The air was warm. It was government air, lit by a mad electric light. This was a Radiological Institute for the Diagnosis of Society…

'Who had me arrested?'

He could hardly even think in this blind, stifling air. Reality and delirium, past and future, were wrestling with each other. He had lost his sense of identity… Did I ever have a mother? Maybe not, maybe I never had one. Zhenya no longer mattered. Stars caught in the tops of pine-trees, the ford over the Don, a green German flare, Workers of the World Unite, there must be people behind each door, I'll remain a Communist to my death, my head's buzzing, did Grekov really fire at me? Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev, the President of the Comintern, walked down this same corridor, what close, suffocating air, damn this blinding light… Grekov fired at me, the man from the Special Section punched me in the jaw, the Germans fired at me, what will happen tomorrow, I swear I'm not guilty, I need a piss, the old men singing songs at Spiridonov's were quite splendid, the Cheka, the Cheka, the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky had been the first master of this house, then Heinrich Yagoda, then Menzhinsky, then that little proletarian from Petersburg, Nikolay Ivanovich Yezhov with the green eyes – and now kind, intelligent Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria… Yes, we've already met – greetings to you! What was it we sang? 'Stand up, proletarian, and fight for your cause!' But I'm not guilty, I need a piss, they're not really going to shoot me, are they…?

How strange it was to walk down this long, straight corridor. Life itself was so confusing – with all its winding paths, its bogs, streams and ravines, its dust-covered steppes, its unharvested corn… You squeezed your way through or made long detours – but fate ran straight as an arrow. Just corridors and corridors and doors in corridors.

Krymov walked at an even pace, neither quick nor slow – as though the guard was walking in front of him, not behind him.

Something had happened. Something had changed the moment he set foot in this building.

'A geometrical arrangement of points,' he had said to himself as he had his fingerprints taken. He hadn't understood these words, but they expressed what had happened.

He was losing himself. If he had asked for water, he would have been given something to drink. If he had collapsed with a heart attack, a doctor would have given him the appropriate injection. But he was no longer Krymov; he didn't understand this yet, but he could feel it. He was no longer the comrade Krymov who could dress, eat lunch, buy a cinema ticket, think, go to bed – and remain the same person. What distinguished him from everyone else was his soul, his mind, his articles in The Communist International, the fact that he had joined the Party before the Revolution, his various personal habits, the different tones of voice he adopted when he talked to Komsomol members, secretaries of Moscow raykoms, workers, old Party members, friends of his and petitioners. His body was still like any other body; his thoughts and movements were still like anyone else's thoughts and movements; but his essence, his freedom and dignity had disappeared.

He was taken into a cell – a rectangle with a clean parquet floor and four bunks. The blankets on the bunks had been pulled tight and there were no creases. He at once felt that three human beings were looking with human interest at a fourth human being.

They were people. He didn't know whether they were good or bad, whether they would be hostile, indifferent or welcoming. All he knew was that their feelings were human feelings.

He sat down on the empty bunk. The three men watched him in silence. They were sitting on their bunks with open books on their knees. Everything he had lost came back to him.

One of the men was quite massive. He had a craggy face and a mass of Beethoven-like curls – some of them quite grey – that swept down over his low, bulging forehead. The second was an old man. His hands were as white as paper, his skull was bald and gaunt, and his face was like a metal bas-relief. What flowed in his veins and arteries might have been snow rather than blood. The third, Krymov's neighbour, had just taken off his spectacles and had a red mark on the bridge of his nose. He looked kind, friendly and unhappy. He pointed at the door, gave a faint smile and shook his head. Krymov understood: the guard was still looking through the spy-hole and they should keep quiet.

The man with the dishevelled hair spoke first.

'Well,' he said in a good-natured drawl, 'on behalf of our community let me welcome the armed forces. Where have you just come from, comrade?'

' Stalingrad,' said Krymov with an embarrassed smile.

'Oh! I'm glad to meet someone who's taken part in our heroic resistance. Welcome to our hut!'

'Do you smoke?' the white-faced old man asked hurriedly.

'Yes.'

The old man nodded and stared at his book.

'It's because I let the two of them down,' Krymov's kindly neighbour explained. 'I said I didn't smoke. Otherwise they could have had my ration themselves. But tell me – how long is it since you left Stalingrad?'

'I was there this morning.'

'I see,' said the giant. 'You were brought here by Douglas?'

'That's right.'

'Tell us about Stalingrad. We haven't managed to get any papers yet.'

'You must be hungry,' said Krymov's neighbour. 'We've already had supper here.'

'I don't want anything to eat,' replied Krymov. 'And the Germans aren't going to take Stalingrad. That's quite clear.'

'That always was clear,' said the giant. 'The synagogue stands and will continue to stand.'

The old man closed his book with a bang.

'You must be a member of the Communist Party?'

'Yes, I am a Communist.'

'Sh! Sh! You must always whisper,' said Krymov's neighbour.

'Even about being a Party member,' added the giant.

The giant's face seemed familiar. Finally Krymov remembered him. He was a famous Moscow compere. He and Zhenya had once seen him on stage during a concert in the Hall of Columns.

The door opened. A guard looked in.

'Anyone whose name begins with K?'

'Yes,' answered the giant. 'Katsenelenbogen.'

He got up, brushed back his dishevelled hair with one hand and walked unhurriedly to the door.

'He's being interrogated,' whispered Krymov's neighbour.

'Why "Anyone whose name begins with K"?'

'It's a rule of theirs. Yesterday the guard called out, "Any Katsenelenbogen whose name begins with K?" It was quite funny. He's a bit cracked.'

'Yes, we had a good laugh,' said the old man.

'I wonder what they put you inside for,' thought Krymov. And then: 'My name begins with  too.'

The prisoners got ready to go to sleep. The light continued to glare down; Krymov could feel someone watching through the spy-hole as he unwound his foot-cloths, pulled up his pants and scratched his chest. It was a very special light; it was there not so that they could see, but so that they could be seen. If it had been found more convenient to observe them in darkness, they would have been kept in darkness.

The old man – Krymov imagined him to be an accountant – was lying with his face to the wall. Krymov and his neighbour were talking in whispers; they didn't look at one another and they kept their hands over their mouths. Now and again they glanced at the empty bunk. Was the compere still cracking jokes?

'We've all become as timid as hares,' whispered Krymov's neighbour. 'It's like in a fairy-tale. A sorcerer touches someone – and suddenly he grows the ears of a hare.'

He told Krymov about the other two men in the cell. The old man, Dreling, turned out to be either a Social Revolutionary, a Social Democrat or a Menshevik. Krymov had come across his name before. He had spent over twenty years in prisons and camps; soon he'd have done longer than the prisoners in the Schlusselburg in the last century. He was back in Moscow because of a new charge that had been brought against him: he'd taken it into his head to give lectures on the agrarian question to the kulaks in his camp.

The compere's experience of the Lubyanka was equally impressive. Over twenty years before, he'd begun working in Dzerzhinsky's Cheka. He had then worked under Yagoda in the OGPU, under Yezhov in the NKVD and under Beria in the MGB. Part of the time he had worked in the central apparatus; part of the time he had been at the camps, in charge of huge construction projects.

Krymov's neighbour was called Bogoleev. Krymov had imagined him to be a minor official; in fact he was an art historian who worked in the reserve collection of a museum. He also wrote poetry that was considered out of key with the times and had never been published.

'But that's all finished with,' whispered Bogoleev. 'Now I'm just a timid little hare.'

How strange it all was. Once there had been nothing except the crossing of the Bug and the Dnieper, the encirclement of Piryatinsk, the Ovruch marshes, Mamayev Kurgan, house number 6/1, political reports, shortages of ammunition, wounded political instructors, night attacks, political work on the march and in battle, the registration of guns, tank raids, mortars, General Staffs, heavy machine-guns…

And at the same time there had been nothing but night interrogations, inspections, reveilles, visits to the lavatory under escort, carefully rationed cigarettes, searches, personal confrontations with witnesses, investigators, sentences decreed by a Special Commission…

These two realities had co-existed.

But why did it seem natural, even inevitable, that his neighbours should be confined within a cell in the Lubyanka? And why did it seem senseless, quite inconceivable that he should be confined in the same cell, that he should now be sitting on this bunk?

Krymov wanted desperately to talk about himself. In the end he gave in and said:

'My wife's left me. No one's going to send me any parcels.'

The bunk belonging to the enormous Chekist remained empty till morning.

5

One night before the war, Krymov had walked past the Lubyanka and tried to guess what was going on inside that sleepless building. After being arrested, people would be kept there for eight months, a year, a year and a half – until the investigation had been completed. Their relatives would then receive letters from camps and see the words Komi, Salekhard, Norilsk, Kotlas, Magadan, Vorkuta, Kolyma, Kuznetsk, Krasnoyarsk, Karaganda, Bukhta Nagaevo…

But many thousands would disappear for ever after their spell in the Lubyanka. The Public Prosecutor's office would inform their relatives that they had been sentenced to 'ten years without right of correspondence'. But no one in the camps ever met anyone who had received this sentence. What it meant was: 'shot'.

When a man wrote to his relatives from a camp, he would say that he was feeling well, that it was nice and warm, and could they, if possible, send him some garlic and onions. His relatives would understand that this was in order to prevent scurvy. Never did anyone write so much as a word about his time in the Lubyanka.

It had been especially terrible to walk down Komsomolskiy Alley and Lubyanka Street during the summer nights of 1937…

The dark, stifling streets were deserted. For all the thousands of people inside, the buildings seemed quite dead; they were dark and the windows were wide open. The silence was anything but peaceful. A few windows were lit up; you could glimpse faint shadows through the white curtains. From the main entrance came the glare of headlights and the sound of car-doors being slammed. The whole city seemed to be pinned down, fascinated by the glassy stare of the Lubyanka. Krymov had thought about various people he knew. Their distance from him was something that couldn't even be measured in space -they existed in another dimension. No power on earth or in heaven could bridge this abyss, an abyss as profound as death itself. But these people weren't yet lying under a nailed-down coffin-lid – they were here beside him, alive and breathing, thinking, weeping.

The cars continued to bring in more prisoners. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of prisoners disappeared into the Inner Prisons, behind the doors of the Lubyanka, the Butyrka and the Lefortovo.

New people came forward to replace those who had been arrested – in raykoms, Peoples' Commissariats, War Departments, the office of the Public Prosecutor, industrial enterprises, surgeries, trade-union committees, land departments, bacteriological laboratories, theatre managements, aircraft-design offices, institutes designing vast chemical and metallurgical factories.

Sometimes the people who had replaced the arrested terrorists, saboteurs and enemies of the people were arrested as enemies of the people themselves. Sometimes the third wave of appointments was arrested in its turn.

A Party member from Leningrad had told Krymov in a whisper how he had once shared a cell with three ex-secretaries of the same Leningrad raykom; each had unmasked his predecessor as a terrorist and enemy of the people. They had lain side by side, apparently without the least ill-feeling.

Dmitry Shaposhnikov, Yevgenia Nikolaevna's brother, had once entered this building. He had carried under his arm a small white bundle put together for him by his wife: a towel, some soap, two changes of underwear, a toothbrush, socks and three handkerchiefs. He had walked through these doors, remembering the five-figure number of his Party card, his writing-desk at the trade delegation in Paris and the first-class coach bound for the Crimea where he had had things out with his wife, drunk a bottle of mineral water and yawned as he flipped through the pages of The Golden Ass.

Mitya certainly hadn't been guilty of anything. Still, it wasn't as though Krymov had been put in prison himself.

Abarchuk, Lyudmila Nikolaevna's first husband, had once walked down the brightly-lit corridor leading from freedom to confinement. He had gone to be interrogated, anxious to clear up an absurd misunderstanding… Five months had passed, seven months, eight months – and then he had written: 'The idea of assassinating comrade Stalin was first suggested to me by a member of the German Military Intelligence Service, a man I was first put in touch with by one of the underground leaders… The conversation took place after the May Day demonstration, on Yauzsky Boulevard. I promised to give a final answer within five days and we agreed on a further meeting…'

The work carried out behind these windows was truly fantastic. During the Civil War, Abarchuk hadn't so much as flinched when one of Kolchak's officers had fired at him.

Of course Abarchuk had been coerced into making a false confession. Of course he was a true Communist, a Communist whose strength had been tested under Lenin. Of course he hadn't been guilty of anything. But still, he had been arrested and he had confessed… And Krymov had not been arrested and had not confessed…

Krymov had heard one or two things about how these cases were fabricated. He had learned a few things from people who had told him in a whisper: 'But remember! If you pass this on to anyone – even your wife or your mother – then I'm done for.'

He had learned a little from people who had had too much to drink. Infuriated by someone's glib stupidity, they had let slip a few careless words and suddenly fallen silent. The following day they had yawned and said in the most casual of tones: 'By the way, I seem to remember coming out with all kinds of nonsense yesterday. You don't remember? Well, so much the better.'

He had learned a little from wives of friends who had travelled to camps in order to visit their husbands… But all this had been gossip, mere tittle-tattle. Nothing like this had ever happened to Krymov…

And now it had. He was in prison. It was absurd, crazy, unbelievable – but it was true.

When Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries, officers in the White Guard, priests and kulak agitators had been arrested, he had never, for one moment, wondered what it must be like to be awaiting sentence. Nor had he thought about the families of these men.

Of course he had felt less indifferent when the shells had begun to fall closer, when people like himself- true Soviet citizens and members of the Party – had been arrested. And he had been very shaken when several close friends, people of his own generation whom he looked on as true Leninists, had been arrested. He had been unable to sleep; he had questioned Stalin's right to deprive people of freedom, to torment them and shoot them. He had thought deeply about the sufferings of these men and their families. After all, they weren't just kulaks or White officers; they were Old Bolsheviks.

But he had managed to reassure himself. It wasn't as though he had been imprisoned or exiled. He hadn't signed anything; he hadn't pleaded guilty to false charges.

But now it had happened. He, an Old Bolshevik, was in prison. And he had no explanation for it, no interpretation, no way of reassuring himself.

He was learning already. The principal focus of a search was a naked man's teeth, ears, nostrils and groin. A pitiful, ridiculous figure, he would have to hold up his now buttonless trousers and underpants as he walked down the corridor. If he wore spectacles, they would be taken away from him; he would be anxiously screwing up his eyes and rubbing them. He then entered a cell where he was transformed into a laboratory rat. New reflexes were conditioned into him. He spoke only in a whisper. He got up from his bunk, lay down on his bunk, relieved himself, slept and dreamed under incessant observation. It was all monstrously cruel. It was absurd and inhuman. Now he realized what terrible things were done in the Lubyanka. They were tormenting an Old Bolshevik, a Leninist. They were tormenting Comrade Krymov.

6

The days passed. Krymov still hadn't been called for interrogation.

He already knew what they were fed and when, what time they had their walk, what days they were taken to the bath-house. He knew the times of inspections, the smell of prison tobacco and the titles of the books in the library. He would wait anxiously for his cell-mates to return from interrogations. It was Katsenelenbogen who was called most often. And Bogoleev was always summoned in the afternoon.

Life without freedom! It was an illness. Losing one's freedom was like losing one's health. There was still light, water still flowed from the tap, you still got a bowl of soup – but all these things were different, they were merely something allocated to you. Sometimes, in the interests of the investigation, it was necessary to deprive a prisoner of light, food and sleep. And if you were allowed them, that was also in the interests of the investigation.

Once, as he returned from an interrogation, the bony old man announced haughtily:

'After three hours of silence, the investigator finally accepted that my surname was Dreling.'

Bogoleev was very friendly and gentle. He always spoke respectfully to his cell-mates, asking how they were feeling and whether they had slept well. Once he began reading some poems to Krymov, but then broke off and said: 'I'm sorry. You're probably not in the least interested.'

Krymov grinned. 'To be quite honest, I couldn't understand a word of it. But I read all of Hegel once – and I could understand that.'

Bogoleev was very frightened of interrogations. He got quite flustered when the guard came in and asked: 'Anyone whose name begins with B?' When he came back, he looked smaller, thinner and older.

His accounts of his interrogations were always very confused. It was impossible to make out whether he was being charged with an attempt on Stalin's life or a dislike of socialist-realist literature.

Once the giant Chekist advised him:

'You should help the man formulate the charge. How about this? "Feeling a wild hatred for everything new, I groundlessly criticized works of art that had been awarded a Stalin Prize." You'll get ten years for that. And don't denounce too many people you know – that doesn't help at all. On the contrary – you'll be charged with conspiracy and sent to a strict-regime camp.'

'What do you mean?' asked Bogoleev. 'They know everything. How can I help?'

He often extemporized in whispers on his favourite theme: that they were all of them characters in a fairy-tale… 'Whoever we are – fierce divisional commanders, parachutists, admirers of Matisse and Pissarro, Party members, pilots, designers of vast factories, creators of five-year plans – and however self-assured, however arrogant we may seem, we only have to cross the threshold of an enchanted house, to be touched by a magic wand – and we're transformed into piglets and squirrels, into little dicky-birds… We should be fed on midges and ants' eggs.'

Bogoleev's mind was unusual, clearly capable of profound thoughts, but he was obsessed with petty, everyday matters. He was always worrying that he'd been given less to eat than other people, that what he had been given wasn't as good, that his walk had been cut short, that someone had eaten his rusks while he was out…

Their life in the cell seemed to be full of events and at the same time an empty sham. They were living in a dried-up river-bed. The investigator studied the pebbles, the clefts, the unevenness of the bank. But the water that had once shaped the bed was no longer there.

Dreling rarely spoke. If he did, it was usually to Bogoleev -obviously because he wasn't a member of the Party. But he often got irritated even with him.

'You're an odd one,' he said once. 'First of all, you're friendly and respectful towards people you despise. Secondly, you ask after my health every day – though it's a matter of complete indifference to you whether I live or die.'

Bogoleev looked up at the ceiling and gave a helpless shrug of the shoulders. He then recited in a sing-song voice:

' "What's your shell made out of, mister tortoise?" I said and looked him in the eye. "Just from the lessons fear has taught us." Were the words of his reply.'

'Did you make up that doggerel yourself?' asked Dreling.

Bogoleev just gave another shrug of the shoulders.

'The man's afraid. He's learnt his lessons well,' said Katsene-lenbogen.

After breakfast Dreling showed Bogoleev the cover of a book.

'Do you like it?'

'To be quite honest- no.'

'I'm no admirer of the work myself,' said Dreling with a nod of the head. 'Georgiy Valentinovich Plekhanov once said: "The image of mother created by Gorky is an ikon. The working class doesn't need ikons."'

'What's all this about ikons?' said Krymov. 'Generation after generation reads Mother.'

Sounding like a schoolmistress, Dreling replied:

'You only need ikons if you wish to enslave the working class. In your Communist ikon-case you have ikons of Lenin and ikons of the revered Stalin. Nekrasov didn't need ikons.'

Not only his forehead, but his whole skull, his nose, his hands looked as if they had been carved from white bone. Even his words had a bony ring to them.

Bogoleev suddenly flared up – Krymov had never seen this meek, gentle, depressed man in such a state – and said:

'You've still only got as far as Nekrasov in your understanding of poetry. Since then we've had Blok. We've had Mandelstam. We've had Khlebnikov.'

'I've never read Mandelstam,' said Dreling. 'But as for Khlebnikov – that's just decadence!'

'To hell with you!' said Bogoleev, raising his voice for the first time. 'I've had enough of you and your maxims from Plekhanov. Everyone in this cell's a Marxist of one persuasion or another. What you all have in common is that you're deaf to poetry. You don't know a thing about it.'

It was a strange business. It especially upset Krymov to think that- as far as the sentries and duty officers were concerned – there was no difference between a sick old man like Dreling and a Bolshevik, a commissar, like himself.

At this moment – though he had always loved Nekrasov and hated the Symbolists and the Decadents – he was ready to side with Bogoleev. And if the bony old man had said a word against Yezhov, he would without hesitation have defended everything – the execution of Bukharin, the banishment of wives who had failed to denounce their husbands, the terrible sentences, the terrible interrogations…

Dreling didn't say anything. Just then a guard appeared, to take him to the lavatory. Katsenelenbogen turned to Krymov and said:

'For ten whole days there were just the two of us in here. He was as silent as the grave. Once I said: "It's enough to make a cat laugh – two middle-aged Jews in the Lubyanka whiling away their evenings without exchanging a single word!" And he didn't say a word. No, not one word! Why? Why's he so scornful? Why won't he speak to me? Is it some way of getting his revenge?'

'He's an enemy,' said Krymov.

Dreling really seemed to have got under the Chekist's skin. 'It's quite unbelievable,' he went on. 'It's certainly not for nothing that he's inside. He's got the camp behind him, the grave ahead – and he's as firm as a rock. I envy him. The guard calls out: "Anyone whose name begins with D?" And what do you think he does? He just sits there, he doesn't say a word. Now he's got them to call him by name. And even if they had him shot then and there, he still wouldn't stand up when the authorities come into the cell.'

After Dreling had come back, Krymov said to Katsenelenbogen:

'You know, all this will seem insignificant before the judgment of history. Here in prison both you and I continue to hate the enemies of Communism.'

Dreling glanced at Krymov with amused curiosity.

'The judgment of history!' he said to no one in particular. 'You mean its summary proceedings.'

Katsenelenbogen was wrong to envy Dreling his strength. It was no longer a human strength. What warmed his empty, desolate heart was the chemical warmth of a blind, inhuman fanaticism.

He seemed uninterested in the war or anything to do with it. He never asked about the situation in Stalingrad or on any of the other fronts. He knew nothing of the new cities and the power of the new heavy industry. He no longer lived a human life; he was merely playing an abstract, never-ending game of prison draughts, a game that concerned no one but himself.

Krymov was intrigued by Katsenelenbogen. He joked and chattered away, but his eyes – for all their intelligence – were tired and lazy. They were the eyes of someone who knows too much, who is tired of life and unafraid of death.

Once, when he was talking about the construction of the railway line along the shores of the Arctic, he said:

'A strikingly beautiful project! True, it did cost ten thousand lives.'

'Isn't that rather terrible?' said Krymov.

Katsenelenbogen shrugged his shoulders.

'You should have seen the columns of zeks marching to work. In dead silence. The blue and green of the Northern Lights above them, ice and snow all around them, and the roar of the dark ocean. There's power for you.'

Sometimes he gave Krymov advice.

'You should help your interrogator. He's a recent appointment. It's hard work for him too. And if you just prompt him a little, you'll be helping yourself. At least you'll avoid the "conveyor-belts" – the five-day interrogations. And it will all be the same in the end – the Special Commission will just give you the usual.'

Krymov tried to argue, but Katsenelenbogen answered:

'The concept of personal innocence is a hangover from the Middle Ages. Pure superstition! Tolstoy declared that no one in the world is guilty. We Chekists have put forward a more advanced thesis: "No one in the world is innocent." Everyone is subject to our jurisdiction. If a warrant has been issued for your arrest, you are guilty – and a warrant can be issued for everyone. Yes, everyone has the right to a warrant. Even if he has spent his whole life issuing warrants for others. The Moor has ta'en his pay and may depart.'

He had met a number of Krymov's friends – several of them when they were being interrogated in 1937. He had a strange way of talking about the people whose cases he had supervised. Without the least hint of emotion he would say: 'He was a nice guy…'; 'An interesting fellow…'; 'A real eccentric…'

He often alluded to Anatole France and Shevchenko's 'Ballad of Opanas', he loved quoting Babel 's Benya Krik and he referred to the singers and ballerinas of the Bolshoy Theatre by first name and patronymic. He was a collector of rare books; he told Krymov about a precious volume of Radishchev he had acquired not long before he was arrested.

'I'd like my collection to be donated to the Lenin Library,' he once said. 'Otherwise it will just be split up by fools who've got no idea what it's worth.'

He was married to a ballerina, but he seemed less concerned about her than about the fate of his volume of Radishchev. When Krymov said as much, he replied:

'My Angelina's no fool. She knows how to look after herself.'

He seemed to understand everything but feel nothing. Simple things like parting, suffering, freedom, love, grief, the fidelity of a woman, were mysteries to him. It was only when he spoke about his early years in the Cheka that you could sense any emotion in his voice. 'What a time that was! What people!' He dismissed Krymov's own beliefs as mere propaganda. He once said about Stalin:

'I admire him even more than I admire Lenin. He's the one man I truly love.'

But how could this man – someone who had taken part in the preparations for the trial of the leaders of the Opposition, someone whom Beria had put in charge of a colossal camp construction project inside the Arctic Circle – feel so unperturbed about having to hold up his buttonless trousers as he was taken along at night to be interrogated in his own home? And why, on the other hand, was he so upset by the punishment of silence inflicted on him by the old Menshevik?

Sometimes Krymov himself began to doubt. Why did he turn hot and cold, why did he break out in sweat as he composed a letter to Stalin? The Moor has ta'en his pay and may depart. All this had happened to tens of thousands of Party members in 1937 – men as good as him or better than him. The Moor has ta'en his pay and may depart. Why was he so appalled now by the word 'denunciation'? Just because he himself was in prison as a result of a denunciation? He himself had received political reports from his informers in the ranks. The usual thing. The usual denunciations. 'Soldier Ryaboshtan wears a cross next to the skin and refers to Communists as atheists.' Did he survive long after being transferred to a penal battalion? 'Soldier Gordeev doesn't believe in the strength of the Soviet armed forces and considers Hitler's final victory to be inevitable.' Did he survive long in a penal company? 'Soldier Markeevich said: "The Communists are just thieves. One day we'll prong the whole lot of them on our bayonets and the people will be free."' He had been sent to a firing squad by a military tribunal. And he had denounced people himself. He had denounced Grekov to the Political Administration of the Front. If it hadn't been for the German bombs, Grekov would have been shot in front of the other officers. What had all these people felt, what had they thought when they had been transferred to penal companies, sentenced by military tribunals, interrogated in Special Departments?

And how many times before the war had he done exactly the same? How many times had he listened calmly while a friend said: 'I informed the Party Committee about my conversation with Peter'; 'Like an honest man he summarized the content of Ivan's letter to the Party meeting'; 'He was sent for. As a Communist he had to tell all. He said how the lads felt and he mentioned Volodyas's letters'?

Yes, yes, yes.

And had any of his written or oral explanations ever got anyone out of prison? Their only purpose had been to help him keep his distance, to save him from the quagmire.

Yes, Krymov had been a poor defender of his friends – even if he had hated these affairs, even if he had been afraid of them, even if he had done all he could not to get entangled in them. What was he getting so worked up about now? What did he want? Did he want the duty-officers in the Lubyanka to know about his loneliness? Did he want his investigators to commiserate with him about being abandoned by the woman he loved? Did he expect them to take into consideration that he called out for her at night, that he had bitten his hand, that his mother had called him Nikolenka?

Krymov woke up during the night, opened his eyes and saw Dreling standing beside Katsenelenbogen's bunk. The glaring electric light shone down on the old jailbird's back. Bogoleev had woken up too; he was sitting on his bunk with a blanket round his legs.

Dreling rushed to the door and banged on it with his bony fists. He shouted in his bony voice:

'Quick! Send us a doctor! One of the prisoners has had a heart attack.'

'Quiet there! Cut it out at once!' shouted the duty-officer who had come running to the spy-hole.

'What do you mean?' yelled Krymov. 'There's a man dying.'

He jumped up from his bunk, ran to the door and banged at it with his fists. He noticed that Bogoleev was now lying down again under the blankets, evidently afraid of playing an active role in this sudden emergency.

Soon the door was flung open and several men came in.

Katsenelenbogen was unconscious. It took the men a long time to lift his vast body onto the stretcher.

In the morning Dreling suddenly asked Krymov:

'Tell me, did you, as a Communist commissar, often hear expressions of discontent at the front?'

'What do you mean?' demanded Krymov. 'Discontent with what?'

'With the collectivization policy of the Bolsheviks, with the military leadership – any expression of political discontent.'

'Not once. I never came across the least hint of any such attitude.'

'Yes, yes, I see. Just as I thought,' said Dreling with a satisfied nod of the head.

7

Two hammers, one to the north and one to the south, each composed of millions of tons of metal and flesh, awaited the signal to advance.

It was the forces to the north-west of Stalingrad that launched the attack. On 19 November, 1942, at 7.30 a.m., a massive artillery bombardment began along the entire length of the South-Western and Don Fronts; it lasted for eighty minutes. A wall of fire came down over the positions held by the 3rd Rumanian Army.

The tanks and infantry went into the attack at 8.50 a.m. The morale of the Soviet troops was exceptionally high. The 76th Division went into the attack to the strains of a march played by its brass band.

By the afternoon they had broken through the enemy front line. Fighting was taking place over an enormous area.

The 4th Rumanian Army Corps had been smashed. The 1st Rumanian Cavalry Division near Krainyaya had been isolated from the remaining units of the Army.

The 5 th Tank Army advanced from the heights thirty kilometres to the south-west of Serafimovich and broke through the positions held by the 2nd Rumanian Army Corps. Moving quickly towards the south, it had taken the heights north of Perelasovskaya by midday. The Soviet Tank and Cavalry Corps then turned to the south-west; by evening they had reached Gusynka and Kalmykov, sixty kilometres to the rear of the 3rd Rumanian Army.

The forces concentrated to the south of Stalingrad, in the Kalmyk steppes, went into the attack twenty-four hours later, at dawn on 20 November.

8

Novikov woke up long before dawn. His excitement was so great he was no longer aware of it.

'Do you want some tea, comrade Colonel?' asked Vershkov solemnly.

'Yes,' said Novikov. 'And you can tell the cook to do me some eggs.'

'How would you like them, comrade Colonel?'

Novikov didn't answer for a moment. Vershkov imagined he was lost in thought and hadn't even heard the question.

'Fried,' said Novikov. He looked at his watch and added: 'Go and see if Getmanov's up yet. We'll be starting in half an hour.'

He wasn't thinking – or so at least it seemed to him – about the artillery barrage that would be starting in an hour and a half, about the bombers and ground-support aircraft that would be filling the sky with the roar of their engines, about the sappers who would creep forward to clear the barbed wire and the minefields, about the infantry who would soon be dragging their machine-guns up the misty hills he had looked at so often through his binoculars. He was no longer conscious of any link with Byelov, Makarov and Karpov. He seemed to have forgotten the tanks to the north-west of Stalingrad that had already penetrated the breach in the enemy front opened up by the infantry and artillery, that were already advancing rapidly towards Kalach; he seemed to have forgotten that soon his own tanks would advance from the south to meet them and surround Paulus's army.

He wasn't thinking about Yeremenko, about the fact that Stalin might cite his name in tomorrow's order of the day. He seemed to have forgotten Yevgenia Nikolaevna, to have forgotten that dawn in Brest-Litovsk when he had run towards the airfield and seen the first flames of war in the sky.

He wasn't thinking about any of these things, but they were all of them inside him.

He was thinking simply about whether he should wear his old boots or his new ones; that he mustn't forget his cigarette-case; that his swine of an orderly had yet again given him cold tea. He sat there, eating his fried eggs and mopping up the butter still left in the pan with a piece of bread.

'Your orders have been carried out,' reported Vershkov. He went on in confiding disapproval: 'I asked the soldier if the commissar was there and he said: "Where d'you think he is? He's with that woman of his.'"

The soldier had used a more expressive word than 'woman', but Vershkov preferred not to repeat this to the corps commander's face.

Novikov didn't say anything; he went on gathering up the crumbs of bread on the table, squeezing them together with one finger.

Soon Getmanov arrived.

'Tea?' asked Novikov.

'It's time we were off, Pyotr Pavlovich,' said Getmanov abruptly. 'We've had enough tea and enough sugar. Now it's time to deal with the Germans.'

'Oh,' Vershkov said to himself, 'we are tough today!'

Novikov went into the part of the house that served as their headquarters, glanced at the map and had a word with Nyeudobnov about various matters of liaison.

The deceptive silence and darkness reminded Novikov of his childhood in the Donbass. Everything had seemed just as calm, just as sleepy, only a few minutes before the whistles and hooters started up and the men went out to the mines and factories. But Petya Novikov had known that hundreds of hands were already groping for foot-cloths and boots, that women were already walking about in bare feet, rattling pokers and crockery.

'Vershkov,' he said, 'you can take my tank to the observation post. I'll be needing it today.'

'Yes, comrade Colonel, said Vershkov. 'And I'll put your gear in -and the commissar's.'

'Don't forget the cocoa,' said Getmanov.

Nyeudobnov came out onto the porch, his greatcoat thrown over his shoulders.

'Lieutenant-General Tolbukhin just phoned. He wanted to know whether the corps commander had set off for the observation post yet.'

Novikov nodded, tapped his driver on the shoulder and said: 'Let's be off, Kharitonov.'

The road left the last house behind, turned sharply to the right, to the left and then ran due west, between patches of snow and dry grass.

They passed the dip in the ground where the 1st Brigade was waiting. Novikov suddenly told Kharitonov to stop, jumped out and walked towards the tanks. They showed up as black shapes surrounded by semi-darkness. Novikov looked at the men's faces as he passed by, but he didn't say a word to anyone.

He remembered the young recruits he had seen the other day on the village square. They really were just children, and the whole world had conspired to expose these children to enemy fire: the plans of the General Staff, the orders given by Yeremenko, the order he himself would give to his brigade commanders in an hour's time, what they heard from their political instructors, what they read in poems and articles in the newspapers. Into battle! Into battle! And to the west men were waiting to blow them up, to cut them apart, to crush them under the treads of their tanks.

'Yes, there is going to be a wedding!' he thought. But with no harmonicas, no sweet port wine. Novikov would shout 'Bitter! Bitter!' [50] – and the nineteen-year-old bridegrooms would dutifully kiss their brides.

Novikov felt as though he were walking among his own brothers and nephews, among the sons of his own neighbours, and that thousands of invisible girls and women were watching him.

Mothers contest a man's right to send another man to his death. But, even in war, you find men who join the mothers' clandestine resistance. Men who say, 'Stay here a moment. Can't you hear the firing outside? They can wait for my report. You just put the kettle on.' Men who say on the telephone to their superior officer, 'Yes, Colonel, we're to advance the machine-gun,' but then hang up and say, 'There's no point in moving it forward, and it will just mean the death of a good soldier.'

Novikov strode back to his jeep. His face looked harsh and grim, as though it had absorbed some of the raw darkness of this November dawn. The jeep started up again. Getmanov looked sympathetically at Novikov.

'You know what I want to say to you right now, Pyotr Pavlovich? I love you, yes, and I believe in you.'

9

The silence was dense and unbroken; it was as though there were no steppe, no mist, no Volga, nothing in the world but silence. And then the clouds grew lighter, the grey mist began to turn crimson – and the earth and sky suddenly filled with thunder.

The nearby guns joined those in the distance; the echoes reinforced this link, and the whole battlefield was covered by a dense pattern of sound.

In the steppe villages the mud walls of the houses began to shake; pieces of clay fell silently to the floor and doors started to open and close of their own accord. The thin ice on the lakes began to crack.

A fox took flight, waving its thick silky tail in the air; a hare for once ran after it rather than away from it. Birds of prey of both day and night flew heavily up into the sky, brought together for the first time. A few field mice leapt sleepily out of their holes – like startled, dishevelled old men running out of a hut that had just caught fire.

The damp morning air over the artillery batteries probably grew a degree or two warmer from the hundreds of burning-hot gun barrels.

You could see the shell-bursts very clearly from the observation post, together with the oily black and yellow smoke twisting into the air, the fountains of earth and muddy snow and the milky whiteness of steely fire.

The artillery fell silent. The clouds of hot smoke slowly mingled with the cold, clammy mist.

Then the sky filled with another sound, a broad, rumbling sound. Soviet planes were flying towards the West. The hum and roar of the planes made tangible the true height of the sky: the fighters and ground-support aircraft flew beneath the low clouds, almost at ground level, while in and above the clouds you could hear the bass note of the invisible bombers.

The Germans in the sky over Brest-Litovsk, the Russians over the steppe… Novikov didn't make this comparison. What he felt then went deeper than any thoughts, memories or comparisons.

The silence returned. The silence was quite suffocating, both for the men who had been waiting to launch the attack on the Rumanian lines and for the men who were to make that attack.

This silence was like the mute, turbid, primeval sea… How joyful, how splendid, to fight in a battle that would decide the fate of your motherland. How appalling, how terrifying, to stand up and face death, to run towards death rather than away from it. How terrible to die young… You want to stay alive. There is nothing stronger in the world than the desire to preserve a young life, a life that has lived so little. This desire is stronger than any thought; it lies in the breath, in the nostrils, in the eyes, in the muscles, in the haemoglobin and its greed for oxygen. This desire is so vast that nothing can be compared to it; it cannot be measured… It's terrible. The moment before an attack is terrible.

Getmanov gave a loud, deep sigh. He looked in turn at Novikov, at the telephone and at the radio.

He was surprised at the expression on Novikov's face. During the last months he had seen it take on many different expressions – anger, worry, anxiety, gaiety, sullenness – but it had never looked anything like this.

One by one, the Rumanian batteries that hadn't yet been neutralized returned to life. From their emplacements in the rear, they were firing on the Russian front line. The powerful anti-aircraft guns were now being used against targets on the ground.

'Pyotr Pavlovich!' said Getmanov anxiously. 'It's time! You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.'

To him, the necessity of sacrificing men to the cause had always seemed natural and incontestible – in peace as well as in war.

But Novikov held back. He ordered his telephonist to get Lopatin, the commander of the heavy artillery regiment that had been clearing the path for his tanks.

'Take care, Pyotr Pavlovich!' said Getmanov, looking at his watch. ' Tolbukhin will eat you alive.'

Novikov was reluctant to admit his deepest feelings even to himself, let alone to Getmanov; they were ridiculous, almost shameful.

'I'm worried about the tanks,' he said. 'We could lose a large number of them. It's only a matter of a few minutes and the T-34S are such splendid machines. We've got those anti-tank and anti-aircraft batteries in the palm of our hand.'

The steppe was still smoking. The men beside him in the observation post were staring at him, wide-eyed. The brigade commanders were waiting for their orders over the radio.

He was a colonel and a true craftsman; he was in the grip of his passion for war. But Getmanov was pushing him on, he was afraid of his superiors, and his pride and ambition were at stake. He knew very well that the words he had said to Lopatin would never be studied by the General Staff or enter the history books. No, they wouldn't win him any words of praise from Zhukov or Stalin; they wouldn't bring any nearer the Order of Suvorov he coveted.

There is one right even more important than the right to send men to their death without thinking: the right to think twice before you send men to their death. Novikov carried out this responsibility to the full.

10

In the Kremlin Stalin was waiting for a report from Yeremenko. He looked at his watch; the artillery barrage had just finished, the infantry had gone forward and the mobile units were about to enter the breach cleared by the artillery. The aeroplanes would now be bombing the German rear, the roads and airfields.

Ten minutes before, he had spoken to Vatutin. The tank and cavalry units to the north of Stalingrad were advancing even more rapidly than planned.

He picked up his pencil and glanced at the silent telephone. He wanted very much to mark the movement of the southern claw of the pincer on his map. But a superstitious anxiety made him put down the pencil. At that moment he could feel very clearly that Hitler – conscious of Stalin's thoughts – was thinking about him.

Churchill and Roosevelt trusted him; but he knew that their trust was by no means unconditional. What annoyed him most was the way, although they were only too willing to confer with him, they always first discussed everything between themselves. They knew very well that wars came and went, but politics remained politics. They admired his logic, his knowledge, the clarity of his reasoning; but he knew they saw him as an Asiatic potentate, not as a European leader.

He suddenly remembered Trotsky's piercing eyes, their merciless intelligence, the contempt in the narrowed lids. For the first time he regretted that Trotsky was no longer alive; he would have liked him to know of this day.

Stalin felt happy, full of strength; he no longer had that taste of lead in his mouth, that ache in his heart. To him, the sense of life itself was inseparable from a sense of strength. Since the first days of the war he had felt a constant weariness. It hadn't left him even when he'd seen his marshals freeze with fear at his anger, even when thousands of people stood up to greet him as he entered the Bolshoy Theatre. He always had the impression that people were laughing at him behind his back, that they remembered his confusion during the summer of 1941.

Once, in Molotov's presence, he had seized his head in his hands and muttered: 'What can we do… what can we do?' And during a meeting of the State Defence Committee his voice had suddenly broken; everyone had looked the other way. He had several times given absurd orders and realized that everyone was aware of their absurdity. On 3 July, he had nervously sipped mineral water as he gave his speech on the radio; his nervousness had gone out over the waves. Once, at the end of June, Zhukov had contradicted him to his face. He had felt quite taken aback; all he had been able to say was: 'All right, do as you think best.' Sometimes he wished he could yield his responsibilities to the men he had shot in 1937, that Rykov, Kamenev and Bukharin could take over the running of the army and the country.

Sometimes a strange and terrifying feeling came over him: that it wasn't only his current enemy who had defeated him on the battlefield. Behind Hitler's tanks, in a cloud of dust and smoke, he could see all those he thought he had brought low, chastised and destroyed. They were climbing out of the tundra, breaking through the layer of permafrost that had closed over them, forcing their way through the entanglements of barbed wire. Trainloads of the condemned, newly returned to life, were on their way from Kolyma and the Komi republic. Old peasant women and children were crawling out of the earth with terrifying, emaciated, sorrowful faces. They were coming towards him, looking for him; there was no anger in their eyes, only sadness. Yes, Stalin knew better than anyone that not only history condemns the defeated.

Beria's presence was sometimes quite unbearable: he seemed to understand what Stalin was going through.

This weakness didn't last long – just a few days, to return only at odd moments. But his feeling of depression was constant. He was troubled by indigestion. He had an aching feeling at the back of his neck and there were moments when he felt dizzy.

He looked at the telephone again. By now Yeremenko should have reported that the tanks had gone into the attack.

This was his hour of strength. What was being decided now, what was at stake, was the fate of the State Lenin had founded: now the rational, centralized force of the Party would be able to realize itself in the construction of huge factories, atomic power stations, jetplanes, intercontinental missiles, space rockets, immense buildings and palaces of culture, new canals and seas, new roads and cities north of the Arctic Circle.

What was at stake was the fate of France, Belgium, Italy and the countries Hitler had occupied in Scandinavia and the Balkans. It was now that the death sentence was passed on Auschwitz, Buchenwald and the nine hundred other German labour camps and concentration camps.

What was at stake was the fate of the German prisoners-of-war who were to be sent to Siberia; what was at stake was the fate of the Soviet prisoners-of-war in Hitler's camps who were also to be sent to Siberia.

What was at stake was the fate of the Kalmyks and Crimean Tartars, the Balkars and Chechens who were to be deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan, who were to lose the right to remember their history or teach their own children to speak their mother-tongue.

What was at stake was the fate of the actors Mikhoels and Zuskin, the writers Bergelson, Markish, Fefer, Kvitko and Nusinov, whose execution was to precede the sinister trial of Professor Vovsi and the Jewish doctors. What was at stake was the fate of the Jews saved by the Red Army: on the tenth anniversary of this victory Stalin was to raise over their heads the very sword of annihilation he had wrested from the hands of Hitler.

What was at stake was the fate of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Rumania.

What was at stake was the fate of the Russian peasants and workers, the freedom of Russian thought, literature and science.

Stalin was moved. At this moment the future power of the State had merged with his will.

His greatness and genius did not exist independently of the greatness of the State and the armed forces. Only if the State was victorious would his scientific and philosophical works remain an object of study and admiration for millions of people.

He was connected to Yeremenko.

'What's up then?' said Stalin abruptly. 'Have the tanks gone in yet?'

Sensing the irritation in Stalin's voice, Yeremenko quickly put out his cigarette.

'No, comrade Stalin. Tolbukhin 's just finishing the softening-up barrage. The infantry have cleaned up the front line, but the tanks haven't yet entered the breach.'

Stalin cursed loudly and put down the receiver. Yeremenko relit his cigarette and telephoned the commander of the 51st Army.

'Why haven't the tanks gone in yet?'

Holding the receiver in one hand, Tolbukhin was mopping the sweat from his chest with the other. His jacket was unbuttoned; under the open collar of his immaculately white shirt you could see the heavy folds of fat at the base of his neck. A little short of breath, he answered with the unhurried calm of an overweight man who understands in every cell of his body that too much exertion is bad for him.

'The commander of the tank corps has just reported to me: there are enemy batteries on his path that are still operational. He asked for a few minutes' delay to neutralize them with artillery fire.'

'Send the tanks in at once,' said Yeremenko curtly. 'And report back in three minutes.'

'Yes, comrade Colonel-General.'

Yeremenko wanted to curse Tolbukhin. Instead, he asked suddenly:

'How come you're breathing so heavily? Is something the matter with you?'

'No, no. I'm fine, Andrey Ivanovich. I've only just had breakfast.'

'Get on with it then,' said Yeremenko and put down the receiver. 'He's just had breakfast – he's out of breath. I ask you!' He launched into a volley of expressive and imaginative curses.

The phone rang at the observation post. You could barely hear it over the artillery fire. Novikov knew it was the army commander and that he would order him to send in his tanks at once.

He heard Tolbukhin through, thought, 'Just as I guessed,' and said: 'Yes, comrade Lieutenant-General. Immediately.'

Then he smiled in the direction of Getmanov. 'All the same, we do just need another four minutes.'

Three minutes later, Tolbukhin phoned again. Now he was no longer gasping for breath.

'Is this a joke, comrade Colonel? Why is it I can still hear artillery fire? Carry out my orders at once!'

Novikov ordered his telephonist to connect him to Lopatin, the commander of the artillery regiment. He heard Lopatin's voice, but remained silent himself; watching the second-hand of his watch, he waited for the four minutes to elapse.

'What a man!' exclaimed Getmanov with unfeigned admiration.

A minute later, when the artillery fire had died down, Novikov put on his headphones and called the commander of the leading brigade.

'Byelov?'

'Yes, comrade Corps Commander.'

Twisting his mouth into a furious, drunken cry, Novikov screamed:

'Byelov! Attack!'

The mist thickened with blue smoke. The air was alive with the rumble of motors as the tank corps entered the breach in the enemy front.

11

The aims of the Russian offensive became evident to the German commanders when, at dawn on zo November, the artillery opened fire in the Kalmyk steppe and the shock units disposed to the south of Stalingrad attacked the 4th Rumanian Army on Paulus's right flank.

The tank corps on the extreme left of the Soviet grouping entered the breach in the front between Lakes Tsatsa and Barmantsak, turned to the north-west, and advanced towards Kalach where it was to link up with the tank and cavalry corps from the Don and South-Western Fronts.

On the afternoon of 20 November, the Soviet units advancing from Serafimovich reached a point slightly to the north of Surovikino, threatening Paulus's lines of communication.

Paulus's 6th Army was, however, still unaware that it was threatened with encirclement. At six o'clock that evening Paulus's headquarters informed Baron von Weichs, the commanding officer of Army Group B, that they were intending to continue reconnaissance activities in Stalingrad on the following day.

Later that evening Paulus received an order from von Weichs to break off offensive operations in Stalingrad. He was to concentrate tank units, infantry units and anti-tank weapons along his left flank, disposing them in depth in order to withstand an attack from the north-west.

This order, received by Paulus at 9.00 p.m., marked the end of the German offensive in Stalingrad. It was, however, rendered meaningless by the speed of events.

On 21 November the Soviet units advancing from Serafimovich and Kletskaya effected a ninety-degree turn, joined together, and moved towards the Don to the north of Kalach, directly in Paulus's rear.

That same day, forty Soviet tanks appeared on the high west bank of the Don, only a few kilometres from Paulus's command-post at Golubinskaya. Another group of tanks seized a bridge over the Don without firing a shot: the German defenders mistook them for a training detachment equipped with captured Soviet tanks that often used this bridge. Soviet tanks then entered Kalach itself. And so the first lines of the encirclement of the two German armies in Stalingrad, Paulus's 6th Army and Hoth's 4th Tank Army, were sketched in. One of Paulus's finest units, the 384th Infantry Division, was disposed to the north-west to defend Paulus's rear.

Meanwhile, Yeremenko's forces were advancing from the south. They had crushed the 29th German Motorized Division, smashed the 6th Rumanian Army Corps, and were now advancing, between the Chervlennaya and Donskaya Tsaritsa rivers, on the Stalingrad-Kalach railway line.

At dusk, Novikov's tanks reached a strongly fortified Rumanian outpost. This time Novikov did not delay. He chose not to make use of the darkness in order to concentrate his forces before attacking.

At Novikov's orders, the tanks, self-propelled guns, armoured transports and troop-carriers all simultaneously switched on their headlights. Hundreds of dazzling lights tore through the darkness. A vast mass of vehicles appeared out of the steppes, deafening the Rumanian defences with the rumble of engines, the chatter of machine-gun fire and the roar of guns, blinding them with stabbing light, paralysing them with panic.

After a few brief skirmishes, the tanks continued their advance.

On the morning of 22 November, they reached Buzinovka. That same evening, east of Kalach, in the rear of the two German armies, the vanguard linked up with the tanks that had broken through from the north. By 23 November Soviet infantry units had taken up position on the rivers Shir and Aksay, securing the flanks of the shock units.

The objective defined by the Supreme Command had been attained: the German armies had been encircled within 100 hours.

What then determined the final outcome of these manoeuvres? What human will became the instrument of destiny?

At 6.00 p.m. on 22 November Paulus radioed the following message to the Headquarters of Army Group B:

'The army has been encircled. Despite heroic resistance, the whole Tsaritsa valley, the railway line from Sovietskaya to Kalach, the bridge across the Don and the high ground on the west bank are now in Russian hands… The ammunition situation is acute. We have six days' rations. I request a free hand in case we should fail to establish a perimeter defence. The situation may compel me to abandon Stalingrad itself together with the northern sector of the front…'

On the night of 22-23 November Paulus received orders from Hitler to name the zone occupied by his troops 'Fortress Stalingrad'. The preceeding order had read: 'The Army Commander will transfer his headquarters to Stalingrad itself. The 6th Army will establish a perimeter defence and await further orders.'

After a conference between Paulus and his corps commanders, Baron von Weichs telegraphed the Supreme Command: 'In spite of the terrible weight of responsibility I feel in taking this decision, I have to inform you that I fully support General Paulus's request to withdraw the 6th Army.'

General Zeitzler, the Chief of the General Staff of the German land forces, who had been in constant liaison with von Weichs, fully shared the views of Paulus and von Weichs. He considered it quite impossible to supply such vast numbers of troops by air.

At 2.00 a.m. on 24 November, Zeitzler informed von Weichs that he had finally succeeded in persuading Hitler to abandon Stalingrad. The order for the 6th Army to break out would be given by Hitler later that morning.

The only telephone link between Army Group  and the 6th Army was cut soon after 10.00 a.m.

They were expecting to receive Hitler's order to withdraw at any minute. As it was essential to act quickly, von Weichs decided to take the responsibility upon himself.

As the radio message was being prepared, the director of the signals centre heard the following message addressed to Paulus by the Fuhrer himself:

'The 6th Army has been temporarily encircled by Russian troops. I have decided to concentrate the Army in the following zone: North Stalingrad, Kotluban, heights 137 and 135, Marinovka, Tsybenko, South Stalingrad. The Army can be assured that I shall do everything in my power both to keep it supplied and to break the encirclement. I know the bravery of the 6th Army and its commanding officer and I am confident that it will do its duty.'

The will of Hitler was the instrument of destiny for both Paulus's Army and the Third Reich itself. At his command, a new page of German military history was written by Paulus, von Weichs and Zeitzler, by the commanding officers of corps and battalions, by the German soldiers themselves, by all those who, albeit reluctantly, executed his orders.

12

After a hundred hours of combat, units from the South-Western Front, the Don Front and the Stalingrad Front had linked up.

The Soviet tanks met under a dark winter sky on the outskirts of Kalach. The snow-covered steppes were scorched by shell-bursts and ploughed up by the treads of hundreds of vehicles. The heavy machines tore on through clouds of snow, sending up a white veil into the air. Where they turned particularly sharply, the veil was dotted with fragments of frozen dirt.

The fighters and ground-support aircraft from the other side of the Volga flew low over the steppe. You could hear the thunder of heavy artillery from the north-east; the dark, cloudy sky was lit by flashes of dim lightning.

Two T-34S stopped next to one another beside a small wooden house. Excited by their success and the nearness of death, the dirty soldiers greedily gulped in the frosty air; after the stench of oil and fumes in their tanks this was a great joy. Pushing back their black leather helmets, they entered the house. The commander of the tank that had come from Lake Tsatsa took a half-litre bottle of vodka out of his pocket. A woman in huge felt boots and a padded jacket put some glasses on the table. Her hands were trembling.

'Oy, oy! We never thought we'd come out alive,' she sobbed. 'How the guns fired and fired! I spent two days and one night in the cellar.'

Two more soldiers came into the room. They were squat and broad-shouldered – like pegtops.

' Valera! See what they've brought? Well, I think we've got something to go with it,' said the commander of the tank that had come from the north.

Valera plunged his hand into a deep pocket in his overalls and pulled out a piece of smoked sausage wrapped up in a dirty page from an army newspaper. He began to divide it up, carefully picking up the pieces of white fat that fell out and pressing them back into place with his dirty fingers.

The soldiers happily began drinking. One of them, his mouth full of sausage, smiled and said: 'Your vodka and our sausage – we've linked up!'

This joke went down well. Full of warmth and comradeliness, the soldiers repeated it to one another and laughed.

13

The commander of the tank from the south reported by radio to his squadron commander that the link-up had been effected near Kalach. He added that the crew of the other tank were splendid fellows and that they'd drunk a bottle of vodka together.

This report was rapidly passed back. Three minutes later Karpov repeated it to Novikov.

Novikov could sense the love and admiration that now surrounded him at headquarters. They had carried out their task according to schedule, and they had sustained almost no casualties.

After reporting to Yeremenko, Nyeudobnov gave Novikov a long squeeze of the hand. His usually bilious and irritable eyes looked bright and gentle.

'You see what miracles our lads can accomplish when we've eliminated the hidden enemies and saboteurs,' he said.

Getmanov embraced Novikov. He looked round at all the officers, orderlies, drivers, radio operators and cypher clerks, gave a sob and said in a loud voice:

'Thank you, Pyotr Pavlovich! A Russian thank-you, a Soviet thank-you! I thank you as a Communist. I take off my hat to you.'

Once again he embraced and kissed a deeply-moved Novikov.

'You prepared everything. Your foresaw everything. You studied your men. And this is the fruit of your labour.'

Novikov felt both overjoyed and embarrassed. He waved a file of reports at Getmanov.

'I'll tell you what I foresaw! The man I counted on was Makarov. But Makarov dawdled, deviated from his assigned route and wasted an hour and a half in an unnecessary skirmish on his flank. As for Byelov, I was quite certain that he would just forge straight ahead without paying the least attention to his flanks and rear. And what did he do? On the second day, instead of outflanking a centre of enemy resistance, he got bogged down in an operation he undertook against some artillery and infantry units and even went over to the defensive. He wasted eleven hours. It was Karpov who was the first to arrive in Kalach. He went flat out! He didn't once look back. He didn't give a damn what was happening on his flanks. He was the one who broke through the Germans' lines of communication. So much for my study of men! So much for what I foresaw! I thought he'd be so busy securing his flanks that I'd have to drive him on with a cudgel.'

Getmanov smiled.

'All right, all right. We all know the value of modesty. That's something Stalin's taught us.'

Novikov was happy. He thought he really must love Yevgenia Nikolaevna if he thought of her so much on a day like this. He kept looking round as if she might appear any moment.

'And what I'll never forget, Pyotr Pavlovich,' Getmanov went on, his voice lowered to a whisper, 'is the way you hung fire for eight minutes at the beginning. The army commander was waiting. Yeremenko was waiting. I've heard that Stalin himself phoned to ask why the tanks hadn't gone in yet. You made Stalin wait. And then you breached the enemy front without losing one tank, without losing one man. That's something I'll never forget.'

That night, when Novikov was in his tank on the way to Kalach, Getmanov called to see Nyeudobnov.

'Comrade General, I've written a letter about the way the corps commander delayed for eight minutes at the start of a crucial operation, the operation to decide the outcome of the Great Patriotic War. I'd like you to take a look at this document.'

14

Stalin's secretary, Poskrebyshev, was present when Vasilevsky reported by radio that the encirclement of the German armies had been completed. For a few moments Stalin just sat there, his eyes half-closed as though he were going to sleep. Poskrebyshev held his breath and tried not to move.

This was his hour of triumph. He had not only defeated his current enemy; he had defeated the past. In the village the grass would grow thicker over the tombs of 1930. The snow and ice of the Arctic Circle would remain dumb and silent.

He knew better than anyone that no one condemns a victor.

He wished he had his children beside him. He wished he could see his little granddaughter, the daughter of the wretched Yakov. He would have just stroked her quietly on the head, not so much as glancing at the world that stretched out beyond the threshold of the hut. His beloved daughter; his quiet, sickly granddaughter; memories of childhood; the cool of a garden; the distant sound of a river. What did anything else matter? His strength existed independently of the Soviet State, independently of his great divisions.

Very slowly and gently, his eyes still closed, he repeated the words of a song:

'You're caught in the net, my pretty little bird, I won't let you go for anything in the world.'

Poskrebyshev looked at Stalin, at his grey, thinning hair, his pock-marked face, his closed eyes; suddenly he felt the ends of his fingers grow cold.

15

The success of the Stalingrad offensive filled in a number of gaps in the Soviet line of defence: between the Stalingrad Front and the Don Front; between Chuykov's army and the divisions disposed to the north of it; between the companies and platoons ensconced in the buildings of Stalingrad and the forces in the rear from which they had been cut off. At the same time this success altered people's consciousness: a feeling of being cut off, of being wholly or partially surrounded, was replaced by a feeling of wholeness, of unity. It is precisely this sense of fusion between the individual and the mass which engenders the morale that leads to victory.

The exact opposite, of course, took place in the hearts and minds of the encircled German soldiers. A huge piece of flesh, composed of hundreds of thousands of sensitive, intelligent cells, had been torn from the main body of the German armed forces.

Tolstoy claimed that it was impossible fully to encircle an army. This claim was borne out by the experience of his time.

The years 1941-1945 proved that it is indeed possible to encircle an entire army, to nail it to the ground, to fetter it in a hoop of iron. A large number of armies, Soviet and German alike, were encircled during these years.

Tolstoy's claim was indisputably true for his time. But, like most of the thoughts of great men about war and politics, it was by no means an eternal truth.

What made encirclements possible was the combination of the extraordinary mobility of shock troops and the vast, unwieldy rears on which they depended. The encircling forces have all the advantages of mobility on their side. The encircled forces entirely lose this mobility: it is impossible for an encircled army to organize its vast, complex and factory-like rear. The encircled forces are paralysed; the encircling forces have motors and wings.

An encircled army loses more than just mobility and technical resources. Its soldiers and officers are somehow excluded from the contemporary world, thrust back into the past. They begin to reappraise not only the strength of the enemy and the likely development of the war; they also begin to reappraise the politics of their own country, the appeal of their political leaders, their laws and constitution, their characteristics as a nation, their past and their future. The encircling forces go through a similar reappraisal – but inversely.

The victory of Stalingrad determined the outcome of the war, but the silent quarrel between the victorious people and the victorious State was not yet over. On the outcome of this quarrel depended the destiny, the freedom, of Man.

16

A gentle drizzle was falling in the forest of Gôrlitz, on the frontier between Eastern Prussia and Lithuania. A man of average height, wearing a grey raincoat, was walking down a path between the tall trees. As the sentries caught sight of him, they held their breath, freezing into perfect immobility, allowing the raindrops to run down their cheeks.

Hitler had wanted to be alone for a moment, to have a breath of fresh air. The fine, gentle drizzle was very pleasant. He loved the silent trees. And he enjoyed walking over the soft carpet of fallen leaves.

All day he had found the staff of his field headquarters quite unbearable… He had never felt any respect for Stalin. His actions before the war had always seemed crude and stupid. There was a peasant simplicity even in his cunning and treachery. His Soviet State was absurd. One day Churchill would understand the tragic role played by the Reich – with its own body it had defended Europe from Stalin's Asiatic Bolshevism… He thought of the men on his staff who had insisted on the withdrawal of the 6th Army from Stalingrad; they would now be particularly reserved and respectful. He was equally irritated by those whose faith in him was unconditional; they would use eloquent words to assure him of their fidelity. He kept trying to think scornfully of Stalin. He wanted somehow to despise him, and he knew this was because he no longer had a sense of his own superiority over him… that cruel, vengeful little shopkeeper from the Caucasus. Anyway, this one success of his changed very little… Had he sensed a veiled mockery today in the eyes of that old gelding Zeitzler? He was annoyed at the thought that Goebbels would probably report the witticisms of the English prime minister about his gifts as a military leader. 'You've got to admit it – he is quite witty!' Goebbels would laugh. At the bottom of his intelligent, handsome eyes he would glimpse the envious light of a triumphant rival – something he had thought extinguished for ever.

This trouble over the 6th Army somehow prevented him from feeling fully himself. What mattered was not the loss of Stalingrad or the encirclement of the Army; what mattered was that Stalin had gained the upper hand.

Well, he would soon see to that.

Hitler had always had ordinary thoughts and ordinary, endearing weaknesses. But while he had seemed great and omnipotent, they had evoked only love and admiration. He had embodied the national élan of the German people. But if the power of the armed forces and the Reich wavered for even a moment, then his wisdom began to seem tarnished, his genius vanished.

He had never envied Napoleon. He couldn't bear people whose greatness endured even in solitude, poverty and impotence, people who were able to remain strong even in a dark cellar or attic.

He had found it impossible during this solitary walk in the forest to rise above everyday trivia and find the true, just solution that was beyond the plodders of the General Staff and the Party leadership. He found it unbearably depressing to be reduced again to the level of ordinary men.

It had been beyond the capacities of a mere man to found the New Germany, to kindle the war and the ovens of Auschwitz, to create the Gestapo. To be the founder of the New Germany and its Fuhrer, one had to be a superman. His thoughts and feelings, his everyday life, had to exist outside and above those of ordinary men.

The Russian tanks had brought him back to his starting-point. His thoughts, decisions and passions were no longer directed towards God and the destiny of the world. The Russian tanks had brought him back among men.

At first he had found it soothing to be alone in the forest, but now he began to feel frightened. Without his bodyguards and aides, he felt like a little boy in a fairy-tale lost in a dark, enchanted forest.

Yes, he was like Tom Thumb; he was like the goat who had wandered into the forest, unaware that the wolf had stolen up on him through a thicket. His childhood fears had re-emerged through the thick darkness of decades. He could see the picture in his old book of fairy-tales: a goat in the middle of a glade and, between the damp, dark trees, the red eyes and white teeth of the wolf.

He wanted to scream, to call for his mother, to close his eyes, to run.

This forest, however, hid only the regiment of his personal guard: thousands of strong, highly-trained men whose reflexes were instantaneous. Their sole aim in life was to stop the least breath disturbing a single hair on his head. The telephones buzzed discreetly, passing on from zone to zone, from sector to sector, each movement of the Fuhrer who had decided to go for a walk on his own in the woods.

He turned round. Restraining his desire to run, he began to walk back towards the dark-green buildings of his field headquarters.

The guards noticed he was hurrying and thought he must have urgent matters to attend to. How could they have imagined that the gathering twilight had reminded the Fuhrer of a wolf in a fairy-tale?

Through the trees he could see the lights of the buildings. For the first time, he felt a sense of horror, human horror, at the thought of the crematoria in the camps.

17

The men in the bunkers and command-posts of the 62nd Army felt very strange indeed; they wanted to touch their faces, feel their clothes, wiggle their toes in their boots. The Germans weren't shooting. It was quiet.

The silence made their heads whirl. They felt as though they had grown empty, as though their hearts had gone numb, as though their arms and legs moved in a different way from usual. It felt very odd, even inconceivable, to eat kasha in silence, to write a letter in silence, to wake up at night and hear silence. This silence then gave birth to many different sounds that seemed new and strange: the clink of a knife, the rustle of a page being turned in a book, the creak of a floorboard, the sound of bare feet, the scratching of a pen, the click of a safety-catch on a pistol, the ticking of the clock on the wall of the bunker.

Krylov, the chief of staff, entered Chuykov's bunker; Chuykov himself was sitting on a bed and Gurov was sitting opposite him at the table. He had hurried in to tell them the latest news: the Stalingrad Front had gone over to the offensive and it would be only a matter of hours before Paulus was surrounded. Instead, he looked at Chuykov and Gurov and then sat down without saying a word. What he had seen on his comrades' faces must have been very special – his news was far from unimportant.

The three men sat there in silence. The silence had already given birth to sounds that had seemed erased for ever. Soon it would give birth to new thoughts, new anxieties and passions that had been uncalled-for during the fighting itself.

But they were not yet aware of these new thoughts. Their anxieties, ambitions, resentments and jealousies had yet to emerge from under the crushing weight of the fighting. They were still unaware that their names would be forever linked with a glorious page of Russian military history.

These minutes of silence were the finest of their lives. During these minutes they felt only human feelings; none of them could understand afterwards why it was they had known such happiness and such sorrow, such love and such humility.

Is there any need to continue this story? Is there any need to describe the pitiful spectacle many of these generals then made of themselves? The constant drunkenness, the bitter disputes over the sharing-out of the glory? How a drunken Chuykov leapt on Rodimtsev and tried to strangle him at a victory celebration – merely because Nikita Khrushchev had thrown his arms round Rodimtsev and kissed him without so much as a glance at Chuykov?

Is there any need to say that Chuykov and his staff first left the right bank in order to attend the celebrations of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Cheka? And that the following morning, blind drunk, he and his comrades nearly drowned in the Volga and had to be fished out by soldiers from a hole in the ice? Is there any need to describe the subsequent curses, reproaches and suspicions?

There is only one truth. There cannot be two truths. It's hard to live with no truth, with scraps of truth, with a half-truth. A partial truth is no truth at all. Let the wonderful silence of this night be the truth, the whole truth… Let us remember the good in these men; let us remember their great achievements.

Chuykov left the bunker and climbed slowly up to the top of the slope; the wooden steps creaked under his boots. It was dark. Both the east and the west were quiet. The silhouettes of factories, the ruined buildings, the trenches and dug-outs all merged into the calm, silent darkness of the earth, the sky and the Volga.

This was the true expression of the people's victory. Not the ceremonial marches and orchestras, not the fireworks and artillery salutes, but this quietness – the quietness of a damp night in the country…

Chuykov was very moved; he could hear his heart thumping in his breast. Then he realized the silence was not total. From Banniy Ovrag and the 'Red October' factory came the sound of men singing. Below, on the banks of the Volga, he could hear quiet voices and the sound of a guitar.

He went back to the bunker. Gurov was waiting for him so they could have supper.

'What silence, Nikolay Ivanovich!' said Gurov. 'I can't believe it.'

Chuykov sniffed and didn't answer.

They sat down at table. Gurov said:

'Well, comrade, you must have had a hard time if a happy song makes you cry.'

Chuykov looked at him in astonishment.

18

In a dug-out on the slope leading down to the Volga, a few soldiers were sitting around a table fashioned from a few planks. The sergeant-major was pouring out mugs of vodka by the light of an oil-lamp; the soldiers watched as the precious liquid slowly mounted to the level indicated by his horny fingernail.

They drank and then reached out for some bread.

One of the soldiers finished chewing his piece of bread and said:

'Yes, he gave us a hard time. But we were too much for him in the end.'

'He's certainly quietened down now. You can't hear a sound.'

'He's had enough.'

'The epic of Stalingrad is over.'

'He's done a lot of damage, though. He's set half of Russia on fire. '

They chewed their bread very slowly. It was as though they were breaking off for a meal, after a long and difficult job of work.

Their heads grew hazy, but somehow this haziness left them clear-headed. The taste of bread, the crunch of onion, the weapons piled beside the mud wall, the Volga, this victory over a powerful enemy, a victory won by the same hands that had stroked the hair of their children, fondled their women, broken bread and rolled tobacco in scraps of newspaper – they experienced all this with extraordinary clarity.

19

The Muscovites who were now preparing to return home were probably rejoicing more at the thought of escaping their life as evacuees than at the thought of seeing Moscow again. Everything in Sverdlovsk, Omsk, Tashkent and Krasnoyarsk had become unbearable: the streets and houses, the stars in the autumn sky, even the taste of bread.

If there was a hopeful Soviet Information Bureau bulletin, they said: 'Well, it won't be much longer now.'

If the news was bad, they said: 'Oh, that means they'll interrupt the re-evacuation of families.'

Countless stories sprang up about people who'd managed to get back to Moscow without a pass – you had to change trains several times, using local and suburban trains where there were no inspectors.

People had forgotten that only a year before, in October 1941, every extra day spent in Moscow had seemed a torment. How enviously they had looked at their fellow citizens who were about to exchange the dangerous skies of their birthplace for the peace and safety of Tartary and Uzbekhistan…

They had forgotten how some of the men and women not included on the lists of evacuees had abandoned their bundles and suitcases and walked to Zagorsk on foot – anything to get out of Moscow. Now people were ready to abandon their work and belongings, abandon their ordered lives, and walk back to Moscow.

In the second half of November the Soviet Information Bureau announced first that a blow had been struck against the German Fascist forces in the region of Vladikavkaz, and then that a successful offensive had been launched in the Stalingrad area. There were nine announcements in the course of two weeks: 'The offensive continues… A new blow struck against the enemy… Our forces near Stalingrad, overcoming enemy resistance, have broken through his new line of defence on the east bank of the Don… Our forces, continuing their offensive, have advanced another twenty kilometres… Our troops in the Central Don region have now taken the offensive against the German Fascist forces… The offensive launched by our forces in the Central Don region continues… The offensive launched by our forces in the Northern Caucasus… A new blow struck by our forces to the south-west of Stalingrad… The offensive launched by our forces to the south of Stalingrad…'

On New Year's eve, the Soviet Information Bureau published a report entitled 'A Summary of the Past Six Weeks of the Stalingrad Offensive'. This finally announced the encirclement of the German armies in Stalingrad.

A change in popular consciousness was about to become manifest; the first stirrings of this had taken place subconsciously; as secretly as the preparations for the offensive itself. For all the apparent similarities, this change in consciousness was to prove very different indeed from that which had followed the earlier victories near Moscow.

The Moscow victory had served chiefly to change people's attitudes towards the Germans. After December 1941, the mystical fear aroused by the German Army disappeared.

The Stalingrad victory, on the other hand, served mainly to change people's attitudes towards themselves, to develop a new form of self-consciousness in the army and in the population as a whole. Soviet Russians began to think of themselves differently, to adopt a different manner towards other nationalities. The history of Russia was no longer the history of the sufferings and humiliations undergone by the workers and peasantry; it was the history of Russian national glory.

People's way of thinking at the time of the Moscow victory was still fundamentally the same as it had been before the war. The reinterpretation of the events of the war, the new consciousness of the power of the Russian armed forces, of the power of the Russian State, was part of a long and complex process. This process had begun long before the war, but only on an unconscious level.

Three major events formed the basis for this new vision of human relationships and of life itself: collectivization, industrialization and the year 1937. These events, like the October Revolution itself, involved the displacement of vast sections of the population, displacements accompanied by the physical extermination of numbers of people far greater than had accompanied the liquidation of the Russian aristocracy and the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie.

These events, presided over by Stalin himself, marked the economic triumph of the builders of the new Soviet State, the builders of 'Socialism in One Country'. At the same time, these events were the logical result of the October Revolution itself.

This new social order – this order which had triumphed during the period of collectivization, industrialization and the year 1937 with its almost complete change of leading cadres – had preferred not to renounce the old ideological concepts and formulae. The fundamental characteristic of the new order was State nationalism, but it still made use of a phraseology that went back to the beginning of the twentieth century and the formation of the Bolshevik wing of the Social Democratic Party.

The war accelerated a previously unconscious process, allowing the birth of an overtly national consciousness. The word 'Russian' once again had meaning.

To begin with, during the retreat, the connotations of this word were mainly negative: the hopelessness of Russian roads, Russian backwardness, Russian confusion, Russian fatalism… But a national self-consciousness had been born; it was waiting only for a military victory.

National consciousness is a powerful and splendid force at a time of disaster. It is splendid not because it is nationalist, but because it is human. It is a manifestation of human dignity, human love of freedom, human faith in what is good. But this consciousness can develop in a variety of ways.

No one can deny that the head of a personnel department protecting his Institute from 'cosmopolitans' and 'bourgeois nationalists' is expressing his national consciousness in a different manner to a Red Army soldier defending Stalingrad.

This awakening of national consciousness can be related to the tasks facing the State during the war and the years after the war: the struggle for national sovereignty and the affirmation of what is truly Russian, truly Soviet, in every area of life. These tasks, however, were not suddenly imposed on the State; they appeared when the events in the countryside, the creation of a national heavy industry and the complete change in the ruling cadres marked the triumph of a social order defined by Stalin as 'Socialism in One Country'.

The birthmarks of Russian social democracy were finally erased.

And this process finally became manifest at a time when Stalingrad was the only beacon of freedom in the kingdom of darkness.

A people's war reached its greatest pathos at the time of the defence of Stalingrad; the logic of events was such that Stalin chose this moment to proclaim openly his ideology of State nationalism.

20

A new article, 'Always with the People', appeared on the wall-newspaper in the hall of the Physics Institute.

This article said that the Soviet Union – under the leadership of the great Stalin, who was guiding the country through the tempest of war – attached immense significance to science; that the Party and Government honoured and respected scientists as nowhere else in the world; and that even during the current difficult times the Soviet state was providing scientists with all the conditions necessary for normal, productive work.

It went on to list the great tasks now facing the Institute: the new building work, the expansion of the old laboratories, the bringing together of theory and practice, and the importance of scientific research for the armaments industry.

Mention was made of the patriotic élan that had seized the collective of scientists; the collective was determined to justify the concern and trust of the Party and of comrade Stalin himself, determined not to disappoint the hope with which the people looked on this glorious vanguard of the Soviet intelligentsia.

The final part of the article was about the unfortunate fact that there were certain individuals in this healthy and fraternal collective who lacked a sense of responsibility to the People and the Party -individuals who were isolated from the great Soviet family. These individuals were opposed to the collective and considered their personal interests of greater importance than the tasks entrusted to them by the Party; they tended to exaggerate their own scientific achievements, real or imaginary. Deliberately or not, some of these individuals became mouthpieces for alien, anti-Soviet views and attitudes; the ideas they spread were politically dangerous. These individuals often called for an 'objective attitude' towards the idealist, reactionary and obscurantist theories of foreign idealists. They even boasted of their links with these idealists, thus belittling the achievements of Soviet science and offending the patriotic pride of Russian scientists.

Sometimes these individuals posed as defenders of a supposedly flouted justice, trying to win a cheap popularity among the shortsighted, the gullible and the naive; in fact they were sowing seeds of discord, seeds of a lack of faith in Russian science, of a lack of respect for its splendid past and great names. The article called on scientists to liquidate every sign of decadence, everything alien and hostile, everything that might hinder the fulfilment of the tasks with which, during the Great Patriotic War, they had been entrusted by the Party and the People. The article ended: 'Forward, towards new peaks of science, following the splendid path lit by the searchlight of Marxist philosophy, the path we have been shown by the great Party of Lenin and Stalin.'

No names were mentioned, but the article was obviously about Viktor. It was Savostyanov who first told him about it. At that moment Viktor was with a group of colleagues putting the last touches to the new apparatus. Instead of going to read it immediately, he threw his arms round Nozdrin's shoulders and said: 'Come what may, this giant will do its work.'

Nozdrin responded with a volley of curses. For a moment Viktor wasn't sure who they were aimed at.

Towards the end of the afternoon Sokolov came up to Viktor.

'Viktor Pavlovich, I admire you. You've been working all day as though nothing had happened. You're a real Socrates.'

'If a man's born blond, his hair won't turn brown just because he's been abused on a wall-newspaper,' said Viktor.

He was by now so accustomed to his feeling of resentment towards Sokolov as to be almost unconscious of it. He no longer reproached him for his excessive caution. Sometimes he said to himself, 'He does have many good qualities – and, besides, we all have our failings.'

'Yes,' said Sokolov, 'but there are articles and articles. Anna Stepanovna felt quite ill after reading it. First she went to the first-aid post and then she was sent home.'

'What on earth have they written?' thought Viktor. He preferred not to ask Sokolov, and no one else mentioned it to him. He might just as well have had terminal cancer.

That evening Viktor was the last to leave the laboratory. Alexey Mikhailovich, the old caretaker now working as a cloakroom attendant, said:

'That's how it is, Viktor Pavlovich. There's no peace in this world for an honest man.'

Viktor put on his coat, went back up the stairs and stopped in front of the board.

When he had read the article, he looked round in confusion. For a moment he thought he was going to be arrested then and there – but the hall was quiet and empty.

He could feel quite tangibly the difference in weight between the fragile human body and the colossus of the State. He could feel the State's bright eyes gazing into his face; any moment now the State would crash down on him; there would be a crack, a squeal – and he would be gone.

The street was full of people, but there seemed to be a strip of no man's land between them and Viktor.

In the trolleybus a man in a soldier's winter cap turned excitedly to his companion. 'Have you heard the latest news?'

' Stalingrad!' someone else shouted from one of the front seats. 'The enemy's been crushed.'

A middle-aged woman stared at Viktor. She seemed to be reproaching him for his silence.

Viktor thought about Sokolov almost tenderly now. 'Yes, we all of us have our failings.'

But no one ever sincerely believes his own failings to be equal to those of other people. Soon Viktor was thinking: 'Yes, but his views depend on his success, on the love shown him by the State. Now the tide's turning, now it looks like victory, he won't utter a word of criticism. But I'm not like that: whether the State's strong or weak, whether it beats me or caresses me, my convictions remain the same.'

When he got home, he would tell Lyudmila all about the article. Yes, they really did have it in for him now. 'So much for the Stalin Prize, Lyudochka', he would say. 'An article like that means you're going to be arrested.'

'We share one destiny,' he thought. 'She'd accompany me if I was invited to lecture at the Sorbonne – and she'll accompany me to a camp in Kolyma.'

'Well, you can't say you haven't brought it on yourself,' Lyudmila would say.

He would reply coolly: 'I don't need criticism. I've had enough of that at the Institute. I need understanding and affection.'

Nadya opened the door. She flung her arms round him and buried her face in his breast.

'What's the matter? Let me take my coat off. I'm cold and wet.'

'Haven't you heard yet? Stalingrad! There's been a tremendous victory! The Germans have been surrounded! Come on, come on!'

She helped him off with his coat, took him by the hand and dragged him down the corridor.

'This way. Mama's in Tolya's room.'

She opened the door. Lyudmila was sitting at Tolya's desk. Slowly she turned her head and gave Viktor a sad, solemn smile.

He couldn't bring himself to talk about what had happened at the Institute. Instead, they all sat down at Tolya's desk; Lyudmila drew a diagram showing how the Germans had been encircled and explained her plan of operations to Nadya.

That night, when Viktor was alone in his room, he thought:

'Oh God! Why don't I write a letter of repentance? That's what everyone else does in a situation like this.'

21

It was several days since the article had first appeared. Work in the laboratory was going on as usual. Sometimes Viktor sank into depression; sometimes his spirits revived and he paced animatedly up and down the laboratory, tapping out his favourite tunes on the windowsill and the metal pipes.

He said jokingly that an epidemic of shortsightedness had broken out in the Institute; people he knew looked straight through him and passed by without so much as a word. Once, on the street, Gurevich caught sight of Viktor in the distance; he looked thoughtful, crossed to the other side and started reading a notice. Viktor had seen all this; he and Gurevich then looked round at the same moment and their eyes met. Gurevich waved at him, pretending to look pleased and surprised. All this was far from amusing.

Svechin said hello when they met. He even made an effort to walk more slowly. But from the look on his face he might have been greeting the ambassador of a hostile power. Viktor kept count of who turned away, who just nodded and who shook hands with him.

As soon as he got home, he would ask his wife: 'Has anyone rung?'

And Lyudmila would nearly always answer: 'Only Marya Ivanovna.'

Knowing what he usually asked next, she would add: 'And there's still no letter from Madyarov.'

'Do you see?' said Viktor. 'The people who used to ring up every day now only ring occasionally – and the people who used to ring occasionally have stopped altogether.'

He even thought he was being treated differently at home. On one occasion he was drinking tea and Nadya walked past without saying anything.

'You might say hello,' he called out. 'Do you think I'm an inanimate object?'

He looked quite pathetic. Instead of coming out with some harsh retort, Nadya said hurriedly: 'Dear Papa, I'm very sorry!'

That same day he asked: 'Listen, Nadya, are you still seeing your great strategist?'

She simply shrugged her shoulders.

'I just wanted to warn you. Please don't talk politics with him. All I need is to be criticized on that count too.'

Again, instead of replying sarcastically, Nadya said: 'You don't need to worry, Papa.'

On his way to the Institute in the morning, Viktor tried to avoid meeting people; he would look round to assess the situation, then walk either more quickly or more slowly. When he arrived he would make sure the corridor was empty and then rush down it as quickly as he could, his head bowed. If one of the doors opened, his heart almost stopped beating. As he reached the laboratory, he would heave a sigh of relief – like a soldier regaining his trench under enemy fire.

One day Savostyanov came into Viktor's office and pleaded with him.

'Viktor Pavlovich, I entreat you, we all of us entreat you: write a letter, say you repent! I can assure you that will help. Just think: you're throwing away everything – and at a time when an important – no, a truly great – work lies before you, a time when all that is genuine in our science looks to you with hope. Write a letter, admit your errors.'

'What errors? What do you want me to repent of?'

'Who cares? It's what everyone does – writers, scientists, political leaders, even your beloved Shostakovich. He admits his errors, writes letters of repentance – and then returns to work. It's like water off a duck's back.'

'But what do you want me to repent of? And who to?'

'The director, the Central Committee… It doesn't matter – as long as you repent! Something like this: "I have committed errors and I admit my guilt. I am now conscious of this and I promise to mend my ways." That sort of thing – you know what's expected. That's bound to help; it always helps.'

Savostyanov's bright, laughing eyes were for once quite serious. They even seemed to be a different colour.

'Thank you, thank you, my friend,' said Viktor. 'I'm grateful to you for your concern.'

An hour later Sokolov said:

'Viktor Pavlovich, there's going to be an open meeting of the Scientific Council next week. I think you should say something.'

'What about?'

'I think you need to make some explanations. To be more precise, you must make a confession of error.'

Viktor paced up and down the room. Suddenly he stopped by the window, his eyes on the door.

'What if I write a letter, Pyotr Lavrentyevich? That would be easier than spitting at myself in public.'

'No, I think you need to make a speech. I spoke to Svechin yesterday. He led me to understand that they…' Sokolov made a vague gesture in the direction of the cornice above the door, 'require a speech rather than a letter.'

Viktor turned round to face Sokolov.

'No, I'm not going to make a speech and I'm not going to write a letter.'

In the patient voice of a psychiatrist talking to someone mentally ill, Sokolov said:

'Viktor Pavlovich, for you to remain silent is the equivalent of suicide. There are political accusations hanging over your head.'

'You know what torments me most of all?' said Viktor. 'Why does all this have to happen at a moment of victory, a moment of general rejoicing? Now any son of a bitch can say that I openly attacked the foundations of Leninism at a time when I imagined the Soviet regime was about to collapse. As though I attacked people when they were down.'

'I have heard that opinion expressed.'

'No,' said Viktor. 'To hell with it. I'm not going to repent.'

That night he locked himself in his room and began to write the letter. Suddenly overwhelmed with shame, he tore it up – and began writing the text of his speech to the Scientific Council. He then read it over, thumped his elbow on the table, and tore that up too.

'Well that's it!' he said out loud. 'If they want to arrest me, they can.'

He sat there for a while without moving, mulling over the import of this decision. Then he had the idea of writing a rough draft of the letter he would have sent if he had repented. There was nothing humiliating about that. No one would ever see it. No one.

He was alone, the door was locked, everyone in the house was asleep, and it was quiet outside. There was no traffic, no car horns.

But an invisible force was crushing him. He could feel its weight, its hypnotic power; it was forcing him to think as it wanted, to write as it dictated. This force was inside him; it could dissolve his will and cause his heart to stop beating; it came between him and his family; it insinuated itself into his past, into his childhood memories. He began to feel that he really was untalented and boring, someone who wore out the people around him with dull chatter. Even his work seemed to have grown dull, to be covered with a layer of dust; the thought of it no longer filled him with light and joy.

Only people who have never felt such a force themselves can be surprised that others submit to it. Those who have felt it, on the other hand, feel astonished that a man can rebel against it even for a moment – with one sudden word of anger, one timid gesture of protest.

It was for himself that Viktor wrote this letter. He intended to hide it away and never show it to anyone. Deep down, though, he knew that it might come in useful. He would hang on to it.

Next morning, as he drank his tea, he kept looking at the clock; it was time to go to the laboratory. He felt a chilling sense of isolation. It was as though no one would ever come round to see him again. And it wasn't simply fear that stopped people from ringing him up; it was the fact that he was so dull, so boring and talentless.

'I don't suppose anyone asked for me yesterday,' he said to Lyudmila. Then he quoted the lines: 'I'm alone at the window, I don't expect guests or friends.'

'Oh yes, I forgot to say. Chepyzhin's back. He phoned and said he wants to see you.'

'How could you forget to tell me?' He began to tap out a solemn tune on the table-top.

Lyudmila went over to the window. Viktor was walking unhurriedly down the road – tall, bent forward, giving his briefcase an occasional swing. She could tell that he was thinking about his coming meeting with Chepyzhin. In his imagination, they had already exchanged greetings and were now deep in conversation.

She felt very sorry for Viktor, very anxious about him, but she couldn't forget his faults, least of all his egotism. How could he declaim, 'I'm alone at the window' – and then go off to a laboratory where he had real work to do, where he was surrounded by people? In the evening he'd go and see Chepyzhin; he probably wouldn't be back before midnight. And would he give her a moment's thought? Would it occur to him that she would be alone all day, that she would be standing by the window in an empty flat, that she was the one who wasn't expecting friends or guests?

She went into the kitchen to do the washing-up. She felt more depressed than ever. Marya Ivanovna wouldn't be phoning; she had gone to see her elder sister in Shabolovka.

How anxious she felt about Nadya! She still went out every evening, even though it had been forbidden. And of course she didn't say a word about it. As for Viktor, he was wrapped up in his own troubles. He didn't have time to think of Nadya.

Suddenly the bell rang. It must be the carpenter she had spoken to yesterday. He was coming to repair the door of Tolya's room. Human company – how wonderful!

Lyudmila opened the door. A woman in a grey fur hat was standing in the half-lit corridor, suitcase in hand.

'Zhenya!' she cried.

Her voice was so loud and so tragic that it took even her aback. She kissed her sister, flinging her arms round her shoulders and sobbing: 'He's dead, he's dead. My Tolya's dead.'

22

A thin stream of hot water dribbled into the bath; if you turned the tap any further, the water became cold. The bath was filling very slowly, but the two sisters felt as though they'd hardly had time to exchange a word.

While Yevgenia was in the bath, Lyudmila kept coming to the door and asking: 'Are you all right in there? Do you want me to rub your back for you? Keep an eye on the gas – it might go out.'

A few minutes later she'd be back, banging on the door and asking impatiently: 'What's going on in there? Have you gone to sleep or something?'

Yevgenia came out of the bathroom in her sister's towelling dressing-gown.

'You look like a witch,' said Lyudmila.

Yevgenia remembered how Sofya Osipovna had once called her a witch – on the night of Novikov's visit to Stalingrad.

'It's strange,' she said. 'After two days in a crowded train I've at last had a bath. I feel as though I should be in ecstasy, and yet…'

'What's brought you here so suddenly? Is something wrong?'

'I'll tell you in a moment,' said Yevgenia with a wave of the hand.

Lyudmila told her sister about Viktor's troubles and about Nadya's unexpected and amusing romance; she told her about their friends who no longer rang up and pretended not to recognize Viktor on the street. Yevgenia in turn told Lyudmila about Spiridonov; he was now in Kuibyshev and he wouldn't be offered a new job until the commission had completed its report. Somehow he seemed both noble and pathetic. Vera and her son were in Leninsk; Spiridonov couldn't so much as mention his little grandson without crying. Yevgenia went on to tell how Jenny Gerikhovna had been exiled, how Limonov had helped her to get a residence permit and what a sweet old man Shargorodsky was.

Her head was still full of tobacco smoke, conversations from the journey and the rumble of wheels; it was strange to be looking into her sister's face, to feel the soft dressing-gown against her newly-washed body, to be in a room with a carpet and a piano.

In every word the two sisters said, in all the sad, joyful, absurd or touching events they related, they could sense the presence of friends and family who had died but who would always be bound to them. Whatever they said about Viktor evoked the shade of his mother Anna Semyonovna; Dmitry and his wife, who had both died in camps, loomed behind any mention of their son Seryozha; and Lyudmila herself was always accompanied by the steps of a shy young man with broad shoulders and full lips. But neither of them mentioned any of this out loud.

'I haven't heard any news of Sofya Osipovna. She seems to have vanished into thin air,' said Yevgenia.

'The Levinton woman?'

'Yes, of course.'

'I never did like her… Are you doing any drawing?'

'I did in Stalingrad. But not since I moved to Kuibyshev.'

'Viktor took two of your pictures when we were evacuated. You should be flattered.'

'I am,' said Yevgenia with a smile.

'Well, madam general, you haven't said a word about what matters most of all. Are you happy? Do you love him?'

Fingering her dressing-gown, Yevgenia replied:

'Yes, I am happy. I'm fine. We love each other…'

She glanced quickly at Lyudmila.

'Shall I tell you why I came to Moscow? Nikolay Grigorevich has been arrested. He's in the Lubyanka.'

'Good Lord! What on earth for? He's such a hundred-per-cent Communist.'

'What about our Dmitry? Or your Abarchuk? He was a two-hundred-per-cent Communist.'

'But your Nikolay was so harsh. He was quite ruthless at the time of general collectivization. I remember asking what on earth was happening. And he just said: "The kulaks can go to the devil for all I care." He had a lot of influence on Viktor.'

'Lyuda,' said Yevgenia, a reproachful note in her voice, 'you remember only the worst about people and you always bring it up at the wrong moment.'

'What do you expect of me? I've always been one to call a spade a spade.'

'Fine,' said Yevgenia, 'but don't imagine that's always a virtue.'

She lowered her voice to a whisper.

'Lyuda, I was summoned for interrogation.'

She took her sister's scarf and draped it over the telephone. 'Apparently the mouthpieces can be bugged. Yes, I've had to make a statement.'

'You and Nikolay were never officially married, were you?'

'No, but what of it? They interrogated me as though I were his wife. Let me start from the beginning. I was sent a summons to appear at the office and to bring my passport. I went through hundreds of names – Dmitry, Ida, Abarchuk, everyone I knew who'd ever been arrested – but I can tell you I didn't once think of Nikolay. I was told to come at five o'clock. It was just an ordinary office with huge portraits of Stalin and Beria on the wall. The investigator was a very ordinary-looking young man, but he looked straight through me as if he knew everything and said: "Are you aware of the counter-revolutionary activities of Nikolay Grigorevich Krymov?" Several times I thought I'd never be allowed out of the building. Once – can you imagine it? – he even hinted that Novikov… that I had become involved with Novikov in order to elicit information from him, and report it to Krymov. I felt quite paralysed. I said: "But Krymov's such a fanatical Communist. Just to be in his company was like attending a Party meeting." The investigator replied: "If I understand you correctly, you're implying that Novikov himself isn't a true Soviet citizen." I said: "You are strange. At the front people are fighting the Fascists, while you, young man, sit in the rear and sling mud at them.' I thought I'd get a slap in the face, but he actually blushed and looked embarrassed. So, Nikolay's been arrested. The accusations are quite crazy: Trotskyism and links with the Gestapo.'

'How appalling!' said Lyudmila, thinking to herself: 'What if Tolya's unit had got surrounded? Then he'd have had the same accusations levelled against him.'

'Vitya will take this very badly,' she said. 'He's incredibly nervous at present. He thinks he's about to be arrested. He keeps going back over everything he's ever said, who he said it to and when. Especially during that unfortunate time in Kazan.'

Yevgenia stared at her sister for a while. Finally she said:

'Shall I tell you the most terrible thing of all? This investigator said to me: "How can you claim to be ignorant of your husband's Trotskyism when he himself told you Trotsky's verdict on one of his articles: 'Splendid, that's pure marble'?" On my way home I remembered Nikolay saying to me, "You're the only person who knows those words." That night it suddenly hit me – I told that story to Novikov when he came to Kuibyshev in the autumn. I was horrified. I thought I was going out of my mind…'

'You poor woman. But then that's the sort of thing that would happen to you.'

'What do you mean?' asked Yevgenia. 'It could just as well have happened to you.'

'No. You left one man for another. Then you told the second man about the first. What do you expect?'

'You've probably done the same. You left Tolya's father. I'm sure you've talked about him to Viktor Pavlovich.'

'You're wrong,' said Lyudmila emphatically. 'Anyway that's different.'

'Why's it different?' asked Yevgenia, feeling suddenly irritated. 'What you're saying now is just plain stupid.'

'Maybe it is,' answered Lyudmila calmly.

'Have you got the time?' asked Yevgenia. 'I've got to go to 24 Kuznetsky Most.'

Giving vent to her anger, she went on:

'You've got a difficult character, Lyuda. I can understand why Mama lives like a gypsy in Kazan instead of staying with you in your four-room flat.'

Yevgenia immediately regretted these harsh words. Wanting Lyudmila to understand that the trust between them was stronger than any chance misunderstanding, she said:

'I do want to trust Novikov. But still… Who else could have told the security organs? It's terrible. It's like being lost in a fog.'

Yevgenia would have given so much to have her mother beside her. She would have leant her head on her shoulder and said: 'Dearest, I'm so tired.'

'You know what might have happened?' said Lyudmila. 'Your general might have mentioned this conversation to someone else who then reported it.'

'Yes,' said Yevgenia, 'of course! How strange I never thought of something as simple as that.'

In the quiet calm of Lyudmila's home, Yevgenia felt even more conscious of the confusion inside her… The thoughts and feelings she had repressed, the secret pain and anxiety from the time she and Krymov had separated, the tenderness she still felt for him, the way she still felt somehow accustomed to him – everything had flared up with renewed intensity during these last weeks.

She thought of Krymov when she was at work, when she was in a tram, when she was queuing for food. She dreamed of him almost every night, moaning, crying out in her sleep, waking up repeatedly.

She had terrible nightmares, full of fires and scenes of war. There was always some danger threatening Nikolay Grigorevich – and she was always powerless to protect him.

And when she got washed and dressed in the morning, afraid of being late for work, she would still be thinking of him.

She didn't think she loved him. But is it possible to think so incessantly of someone you don't love? And if she didn't love him, how could she feel such distress over the tragedy that had overtaken him? And why – when Limonov and Shargorodsky made fun of the supposed non-entities who were his favourite artists and poets – did she always want to see Nikolay, to run her fingers through his hair, to comfort and fondle him?

She no longer remembered his fanaticism, his lack of concern over people who had been arrested, the anger and hatred in his voice when he had talked about the kulaks. Now she only remembered his good side; she only remembered what was sad, touching and romantic about him. It was his weakness that gave him power over her. There had always been something helpless in the way he smiled, his movements were awkward and his eyes were those of a child.

She saw him sitting there with his shoulder-tabs torn off and his face covered in grey stubble; she saw him lying on a plank bed at night; she saw his back as he walked up and down the prison yard… He must be thinking she had had a premonition of his fate and that was why she had left him. All night he was thinking about her. Madam general…

She had no idea whether these thoughts sprang from love, pity, a guilty conscience or a sense of duty.

Novikov had sent her a pass and arranged by radio for a pilot he knew to take her by Douglas to Front HQ. Her superiors had given her three weeks' leave to visit him.

She tried to reassure herself, telling herself over and over again, 'He'll understand. He's sure to understand. There just wasn't anything else I could do.'

She knew very well how badly she had behaved towards Novikov. There he was, still waiting for her.

She had written him a mercilessly truthful letter. After sending it off, she had realized that the letter would be read by the military censors. All this could make terrible problems for him.

'No, no, he'll understand,' she repeated to herself.

Yes, of course he would understand – and leave her for ever.

Did she really love him, or was it just his love for her that she loved?

When she thought about the inevitable break with him, she was overwhelmed by fear, melancholy and a sense of horror at the thought of being left on her own. It was unbearable to think that she had destroyed her happiness with her own hands. It was equally unbearable, on the other hand, to think that there was nothing she could do about it, that it was now up to Novikov whether or not they finally separated.

When the thought of Novikov became unbearable, she tried to imagine Nikolay Grigorevich. Perhaps she would be summoned for a confrontation… Hello, my poor darling…

Novikov was tall, strong, broad-shouldered and in a position of power. He didn't need her support; he could take care of himself. She thought of him sometimes as her knight in armour. She would never forget his handsome, charming face. She would always grieve for him, always grieve for the happiness she had destroyed. But what of it? She wasn't sorry for herself. She wasn't afraid of suffering.

But then she knew that Novikov wasn't really so very strong. Sometimes she had glimpsed a timid, almost helpless look on his face… Nor was she really so pitiless towards herself, so indifferent to her own sufferings.

As though she had just read her sister's thoughts, Lyudmila asked:

'So what's going to happen about this general of yours?'

'I can't bear to think.'

'What you need is a good hiding.'

'But there just wasn't anything else I could do,' pleaded Yevgenia.

'I don't like your continual wavering. If you leave someone, you should make a clean break of it.'

'Oh yes,' said Yevgenia. 'Take good care of yourself and keep out of trouble. I'm afraid I can't live like that.'

'That's not what I mean. I don't like Krymov, but I respect him. And I haven't even set eyes on your general. But now you've decided to be his wife, you do have a certain responsibility towards him. And you're not behaving responsibly at all. An important officer with a wife sending parcels to someone in camp? You know how that could end.'

'I do.'

'Do you love him or not?'

'Leave me alone!' said Yevgenia, sounding as though she were about to cry. At the same time she asked herself, 'But which of them do I love?'

'No, I want you to answer.'

'There was nothing else I could do. People don't cross the threshold of the Lubyanka just for the fun of it.'

'You shouldn't think only of yourself.'

'I'm not thinking only of myself.'

'Viktor agrees with me. Really, it's just pure egotism.'

'You do have the most extraordinary sense of logic. It's amazed me ever since I was a child. Is this what you call egotism?'

'But what can you do to help? You can't change his sentence.'

'If you ever get arrested, then you'll learn what someone who loves you can do to help.'

To change the subject, Lyudmila asked:

'Have you got any photographs of Marusya?'

'Just one. Do you remember? It was taken when we were in Sokolniki.'

Yevgenia put her head on Lyudmila's shoulder. 'I'm so tired,' she said plaintively.

'Go and lie down for a while. You need a rest. You shouldn't go anywhere today. I've made up the bed.'

Yevgenia shook her head. Her eyes were still half-closed.

'No, no. There's no point. I'm just tired of living.'

Lyudmila went to fetch a large envelope and emptied a heap of photographs onto her sister's lap. Yevgenia went through them, exclaiming:

'My God, my God… yes, I remember that, it was when we were at the dacha… How funny little Nadya looks… That was after Papa had come back from exile… There's Dmitry as a schoolboy, Seryozha looks so like him, especially the upper part of his face… And there's Mama with Marusya in her arms, that was before I was even born…'

She noticed that there weren't any photographs of Tolya, but didn't say anything.

'Well, Madam,' said Lyudmila, 'I must give you something to eat.'

'Yes, I've got a good appetite. Nothing affects that. It was the same when I was a child.'

'I'm glad to hear it,' said Lyudmila, giving her sister a kiss.

23

Yevgenia got off the trolleybus by the Bolshoy Theatre, now covered in camouflage, and walked up Kuznetsky Most. Without even noticing them, she went past the exhibition rooms of the Artists' Foundation; friends of hers had exhibited there before the war and her own paintings had once been shown there.

It was very strange. Her life was like a pack of cards shuffled by a gypsy. Now she had drawn ' Moscow '.

She was still a long way away when she recognized the towering granite wall of the Lubyanka. 'Hello, Kolya,' she thought. Perhaps Nikolay Grigorevich would sense her presence. Without knowing why, he would feel disturbed and excited.

Her old fate was now her new fate. What had seemed lost for ever had become her future.

The spacious new reception-room, whose polished windows looked out onto the street, had been closed; visitors now had to go to the old room. She walked into a dirty courtyard, past a dilapidated wall, and came to a half-open door. Everything inside looked surprisingly normal – tables covered in ink-stains, wooden benches along the walls, little information-windows with wooden sills.

There seemed to be no connection between this ordinary waiting-room and the vast, many-storeyed stone building that looked out over Lubyanka Square, Stretenka, Furkasovsky Lane and Malaya Lubyanka Street.

There were lots of people there; the visitors, mostly women, were standing in line in front of the windows. A few were sitting on the benches, and there was one old man, wearing glasses with thick lenses, who was filling in a form at a table. Looking at these faces – young and old, male and female – Yevgenia noticed that the expression in their eyes and the set of their mouths all spoke of one thing. If she had met any of these people on the street or in a tram, she could have guessed that they frequented 24 Kuznetsky Most.

She turned to the young man by the door. He was dressed in an army greatcoat, but for some reason he looked very unlike a soldier. 'Your first time?' he asked, and pointed to one of the windows. Yevgenia took her place in the queue, passport in hand, her fingers and palms damp with sweat. A woman in a beret who was standing in front of her said quietly:

'If he's not here in the Inner Prison, you must go to Matrosskaya Tishina and then to the Butyrka – but that's only open on certain days and they see people in alphabetical order. If he's not there, you must go to the Lefortovo military prison, and then back here again. I've been looking for my son for six weeks now. Have you been to the military prosecutor yet?'

The queue was moving very quickly. That seemed a bad sign – the answers people were getting must be vague and laconic. Then it was the turn of a smart, middle-aged woman and there was a delay; the word went round that the man on duty had gone to check something in person – a mere telephone call hadn't been enough. The woman had turned round and was half-facing the queue; her slightly narrowed eyes seemed to be saying that she had no intention of letting herself be treated in the same manner as this miserable crowd of relatives of the repressed.

Soon the queue began to move again; a young woman who had just left the window said quietly: 'Everyone's getting the same answer: 'Parcel not accepted.'

'That means the investigation's still not completed,' explained the woman in front of Yevgenia.

'What about visits?'

'Visits?' The woman smiled at Yevgenia's naivety.

Yevgenia had never realized that the human back could be so expressive, could so vividly reflect a person's state of mind. People had a particular way of craning their necks as they came up to the window; their backs, with their raised, tensed shoulders, seemed to be crying, to be sobbing and screaming.

When Yevgenia was seventh in the queue, the window slammed shut and a twenty-minute break was announced. Everyone sat down on the chairs and benches.

There were wives and mothers; there was a middle-aged engineer whose wife – an interpreter in the All Union Society for Cultural Relations – had been arrested; there was a girl in her last year at school whose mother had been arrested and whose father had been sentenced in 1937 to 'ten years without right of correspondence'; there was an old blind woman who had been brought here by a neighbour to enquire after her son; there was a foreigner, the wife of a German Communist, who spoke very poor Russian. She wore a foreign-looking checked coat and carried a brightly-coloured cloth handbag, but her eyes were the eyes of an old Russian woman.

There were Russian women, Armenian women, Ukrainian women and Jewish women. There was a woman who worked on a kolkhoz near Moscow. The old man who had been filling in the form turned out to be a lecturer at the Timiryazev Academy; his grandson, a schoolboy, had been arrested – apparently for talking too much at a party.

Yevgenia learnt a great deal during those twenty minutes.

The man on duty today was one of the good ones… They don't accept tinned food in the Butyrka… You really must bring onion and garlic, they're good for scurvy… There was a man here last Wednesday who'd come to pick up his documents, he'd been three years in the Butyrka without once being interrogated and had then been released… Usually people are sent to a camp about a year after they've been arrested… You mustn't bring anything too good – at the transit prison in Krasnaya Presnaya the 'politicals' are put together with the common criminals and everything gets stolen… There was a woman here the other day whose elderly husband, an important engineer and designer, had been arrested. Apparently he'd had a brief affair in his youth and gone on sending the woman alimony for a son he'd never even set eyes on. The son, now adult, had deserted to the Germans. And the old man had got ten years for fathering a traitor to the Motherland… Most people were sentenced under article 58-10: Counter-Revolutionary Agitation, or not keeping their mouths shut… There had been arrests just before the first of May, there were always a lot just before public holidays… There was one woman who'd been phoned at home by the investigator and had suddenly heard her husband's voice…

How strange it all was. Here, in the waiting-room of the NKVD, Yevgenia somehow felt calmer, less depressed, than after her bath in Lyudmila's house.

What wonderful good fortune to have a parcel accepted!

One of the people near her said in a stifled whisper: 'When it comes to people who were arrested in 1937, they just say whatever comes into their head. One woman was told: "He's alive and working." She came back a second time and the same person gave her a certificate saying that her husband had died in 1939.'

Now it was Yevgenia's turn. The man behind the window looked up at her. His face was like that of any other clerk; yesterday he might have been working on the desk at a fire station, and tomorrow, if he was ordered to, he might be filling in forms for military decorations.

'I want to enquire about someone who's been arrested – Krymov, Nikolay Grigorevich,' said Yevgenia. She had the feeling that even people who didn't know her would be able to tell that she wasn't speaking in her normal voice.

'When was he arrested?'

'November.'

The man took out a form. 'Fill this in. You don't need to queue again – just hand it straight in. And come back tomorrow for the answer.'

As he handed her the form, the man looked at her again. This time his rapid glance was not that of an ordinary clerk at all – it was the glance of a Chekist, an intelligent glance that remembers everything.

She filled in the form with trembling fingers – just like the old man from the Timiryazev Academy who not long before had been sitting on the same chair. When she came to the question about her relationship to the person arrested, she wrote 'Wife', underlining the word heavily.

She handed the form in, sat down on the bench and put her passport back in her bag. She kept moving it from one part of the bag to another; finally she realized this was because she didn't want to leave the people in the queue.

At that moment she wanted only one thing: to let Krymov know that she was here, that she had given up everything for him, that she had come to him.

If only he could find out that she was here, so near him!

She walked down the street. It was already evening. Most of her life had been spent in this city. But that life – with its theatres, art exhibitions, orchestral concerts, dinners in restaurants and visits to dachas – was now so distant as to be no longer her own. Stalingrad and Kuibyshev had disappeared – as had the handsome, sometimes divinely handsome, face of Novikov himself. All that was left was 24 Kuznetsky Most. It was as though she was walking down the unfamiliar streets of a city she had never seen before.

24

Viktor took off his galoshes in the hall and said hello to the old housekeeper. At the same time, he glanced at the half-open door of Chepyzhin's study.

'Go on then,' said old Natalya Ivanovna helping him off with his coat, 'he's waiting for you.'

'Is Nadezhda Fyodorovna at home?'

'No, she went to the dacha yesterday with her nieces. Viktor Pavlovich, do you know if the war will soon be over?'

'There's a story going round,' Viktor answered, 'that some people told Zhukov's driver to ask him when the war would be over. And then Zhukov got into his car and said, "Can you tell me when the war will be over?'"

'What are you doing – taking my guests away from me like that?' Chepyzhin came out to meet Viktor. 'Invite your own friends, my dear.'

Viktor nearly always felt happier when he saw Chepyzhin. Now he felt a lightness of heart he had quite forgotten. And when he saw the rows of books in Chepyzhin's study, he did as he had always done and quoted a line from War and Peace: 'Yes, they didn't just waste their time, they wrote.'

The apparent chaos of the bookshelves was similar to that of the workshops in the factory at Chelyabinsk.

'Have you heard from your sons?' he asked Chepyzhin.

'I had a letter from the older one, but the young one's in the Far East.'

He took Viktor's hand and pressed it silently, saying what could never be said in words. Old Natalya Ivanovna came over to Viktor and kissed him on the shoulder.

'What news have you got, Viktor Pavlovich?' asked Chepyzhin.

'The same as everyone – Stalingrad. There's no doubt about it now. Hitler's kaput. But as for my own life, well, that's a mess.'

He began to tell Chepyzhin about his troubles. 'My friends and my wife are all telling me to repent. To repent my Tightness.'

Viktor talked about himself greedily and at length. He was like an invalid who thinks of his illness day and night.

Then he grimaced and shrugged his shoulders.

'I keep remembering that conversation of ours about a mixing-tub and all the scum that comes up to the surface… Never in my life have I been surrounded by so much filth. And what's particularly painful, almost unbearable, is that for some reason all this has to coincide with the Russian victories.'

He looked Chepyzhin in the eye.

'What do you think? Is that just coincidence?'

Chepyzhin had an extraordinary face. It was simple, coarse, with high cheekbones and a snub nose, the face of a peasant – yet at the same time so fine and intelligent as to be the envy of any Englishman, even Lord Kelvin.

'Wait till the war's over,' he answered gloomily. 'Then we'll know what's coincidence and what isn't.'

'The swine may have finished me off by then. Tomorrow my fate's being decided by the Scientific Council. That is, it's already been decided by the Institute authorities and the Party Committee. The Scientific Council's just a formality. You know – the voice of the people, the demands of the community.'

It was strange talking to Chepyzhin – the things they were discussing were very painful, but somehow it wasn't in the least depressing.

'And I thought they'd be offering you everything you wanted on a silver platter – on a golden platter,' said Chepyzhin.

'Why? I've been "dragging science into the swamp of Talmudic abstraction", cutting it off from reality.'

'Yes, I know,' said Chepyzhin. 'It's amazing. You know, sometimes a man loves a woman. She's what gives his life meaning, she's his happiness, his joy, his passion. But for some reason all this is considered almost indecent; he has to pretend he sleeps with her simply because she prepares his meals, darns his socks and washes his clothes.'

He held up his hands, the fingers spread, in front of his face. They too were extraordinary – powerful, worker's hands, like claws and yet somehow aristocratic.

'But I don't feel ashamed,' he cried angrily. 'And it isn't just so I can have my meals prepared that I need her. The value of science lies in the happiness it brings to people. Our fine Academicians think that science is the domestic servant of practice, that it can be put to work according to Shchedrin's principle: "Your wish is my command." That's the only reason why science is tolerated at all. No! Scientific discoveries have an intrinsic value! They do more for the perfection of man than steam-engines, turbines, aeroplanes or the whole of metallurgy from Noah to the present day. They perfect the soul! The human soul!'

'I quite agree with you, Dmitry Petrovich, but I'm afraid comrade Stalin thinks differently.'

'Yes, but he's wrong. Besides, there's another side to all this. Maxwell's abstract idea can be tomorrow's military radio signal.

Einstein's theory of gravitational fields, Schrôdinger's quantum mechanics and the conceptions of Bohr can all yield very concrete applications. That is what these people don't realize. And yet it's so simple you'd think even a goose could understand.'

'Yes,' said Viktor, 'of course today's theory is tomorrow's practice. But I don't need to tell you how reluctant our authorities are to accept that.'

'No,' said Chepyzhin, 'it was the other way round for me. It was because I know that today's theories are tomorrow's practice that I didn't want to be director of the Institute. But there's one thing I don't understand. I was quite sure that Shishakov had been appointed to carry out research into nuclear reactions. And in that field they can't get by without you… In fact I still do feel sure of that.'

'I don't understand your reasons for leaving the Institute,' said Viktor. 'I can't make out what you're saying. I understand that the authorities set the Institute various tasks which you find disturbing. That's clear enough. But the authorities have made mistakes in less esoteric realms than ours. Look at the way the boss was always strengthening our ties of friendship with the Germans; only a few days before the outbreak of war he was sending Hitler whole trainloads of rubber and other raw materials of strategic importance. And in our field – well, even a great politician can be pardoned for failing to understand what's going on there… As for my life – everything's been back to front. My work before the war was closely linked to practice. In Chelyabinsk I used to go to the factory and help set up the electronic apparatus. But since the war began…'

He waved his hand in mock despair.

'I'm lost in a labyrinth. Sometimes I feel awkward, sometimes I feel quite terrified. Heavens…! All I wanted was to establish the physics of nuclear reactions. What's happened is that time, mass and gravity have collapsed and space has become two different things; it no longer really exists and has no meaning except in terms of magnetism. There's a clever young man in my laboratory called Savostyanov. Well, once I got talking to him about my work. He asked lots of questions; I replied that all this wasn't yet a theory – just a few ideas and a general direction of research. Parallel space is merely an exponent in an equation, not a physical reality. The only symmetry so far is in a mathematical equation; I don't yet know if there's a corresponding

symmetry of particles. Mathematics has left physics behind; I don't know whether or not the physics of particles will ever fit into my equations. Savostyanov listened for a long time and then said: "All this reminds me of a fellow-student of mine. He got hopelessly muddled with some equation and said: 'You know, this isn't science – it's a blind couple trying to screw in a patch of nettles.' " '

Chepyzhin burst out laughing.

'It's odd that even you can't see the significance to physics of your own mathematics,' he said. 'It's like the cat in Alice in Wonderland – first you see the smile, then the cat itself.'

'Dear God…!' said Viktor.'But deep down I know that this is the central axis of human life. No, I'm not going to give in. I'm not going to betray the faith.'

'I can appreciate what a sacrifice it must be to part with the laboratory at the very moment when the link between physics and your mathematics is about to emerge,' said Chepyzhin. 'It must be hard for you, but I'm very glad: honesty is never just wiped off the slate and forgotten.'

'I just hope I'm not wiped off the slate myself,' said Viktor.

Natalya Ivanovna brought in the tea and shifted the books to make room on the table.

'Ah! Lemon!' said Viktor.

'You're an honoured guest,' said Natalya Ivanovna.

'A nonentity,' said Viktor.

'Come on!' protested Chepyzhin. 'What do you mean by that?'

'Dmitry Petrovich, tomorrow my fate's being decided. I'm sure of it. Where will I be the day after tomorrow?'

He moved his glass of tea closer. Beating out the rhythm of his despair with a teaspoon, he said absent-mindedly, 'Ah! Lemon!', then felt embarrassed at having repeated the same words in exactly the same intonation.

For a while neither of them spoke. Then Chepyzhin said: 'I've got some thoughts I'd like to share with you.'

'Of course,' said Viktor as absent-mindedly as before.

'Nothing special,' said Chepyzhin, 'just a few whimsical notions… As you know, the idea of an infinite universe is already a truism. A metagalaxy will one day seem like a sugar-lump that some thrifty Lilliputian takes with his tea. While an electron or a neutron will seem like a whole world populated by Gullivers. Even schoolboys understand this.'

Viktor nodded and thought to himself: 'Yes, this isn't anything special. The old man's not on form today.' His thoughts turned to Shishakov and tomorrow's meeting: 'No, I'm not going. If I do go, then I have to either repent or argue about politics – and that's the equivalent of suicide.' He gave a slight yawn and thought: 'A weak heart. That's what makes people yawn.'

'One might think that only God was able to limit Infinity,' Chepyzhin went on. 'Beyond a cosmic boundary, we have to admit the presence of a divine power. Right?'

'Of course,' said Viktor, thinking to himself: 'I may be arrested any day, Dmitry Petrovich. I'm not in the mood for philosophy. Yes, I'm probably done for. I talked too much when I was in Kazan. I said things I shouldn't have said to a fellow called Madyarov. Either he's an informer, or else he's been arrested and they've made him talk. It's a mess, a terrible mess.'

He looked at Chepyzhin. Aware that Viktor was only pretending to pay attention, Chepyzhin continued:

'I think there is a boundary limiting the infinity of the universe – life itself. This boundary's nothing to do with Einstein's curvature of space; it lies in the opposition between life and inanimate matter. In my opinion, life can be defined as freedom. Life is freedom. Freedom is the fundamental principle of life. That is the boundary – between freedom and slavery, between inanimate matter and life.

'Now, as soon as freedom first appeared, it began to evolve. It evolved along two lines. First: man has more freedom than protozoa. The whole evolution of the living world has been a movement from a lesser to a greater degree of freedom. This is the very essence of evolution – the highest being is the one which has the most freedom.'

Viktor was now watching Chepyzhin thoughtfully. Chepyzhin nodded as though approving of his attentiveness.

'And then there's a second, quantitative, line of evolution. If we assume the weight of an average man to be fifty kilos, then humanity now weighs 100 million tons. That's a great deal more than, say, a thousand years ago. The mass of animate matter will constantly increase at the expense of that of inanimate matter. The terrestrial globe will gradually come to life. After settling the Arctic and the deserts, man will burrow under the earth, continually pushing back the horizons of his underworld cities and fields. Eventually there will be a predominance of animate matter on earth. Then the other planets will come to life. If we try to imagine the evolution of life over infinity, then the animation of inanimate matter will take place on a galactic scale. Inanimate matter will be transformed into free, living matter. The universe will come to life. Everything in the world will become alive and thus free. Freedom – life itself – will overcome slavery.'

'Yes,' said Viktor with a smile. 'You can even take the integral.'

'Listen now,' said Chepyzhin. 'I used to study the evolution of stars, but now I've come to understand the importance of the slightest movement of a spot of living mucus. Take the first line of evolution -from the lowest to the highest form of life. One day man will be endowed with all the attributes of the deity – omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience. The coming century will bring a solution to the problem of the transformation of matter into energy and the creation of life itself. There will be a parallel development towards the attainment of extreme speeds and the conquest of space. More distant millennia will see progress towards the harnessing of the very highest form of energy – psychic energy.'

Suddenly Viktor realized that this wasn't just idle chatter and that he strongly disagreed with it.

'Man will learn to materialize in his laboratory the content and rhythm of the psychic activity of rational beings throughout the metagalaxy. Psychic energy will cross millions of light-years of space instantaneously. Omnipresence – formerly an attribute of God – will have become one more conquest of reason. But man won't just stop there. After attaining equality with God, he will begin to solve the problems that were beyond God. He will establish communication with rational beings from the highest level of evolution, beings from another space and another time to whom the whole history of humanity seems merely a dim flicker. He will establish communication with the life of the microcosm whose whole evolution occurs within the twinkling of a man's eye. The abyss of time and space will be overcome. Man will finally be able to look down on God.'

Viktor shook his head.

'Dmitry Petrovich,' he said, 'when you began, I was thinking that I might be arrested any day and that I wasn't in the mood for philosophy. Suddenly I quite forgot about Kovchenko, Shishakov and comrade Beria; I forgot that I might be thrown out of my laboratory tomorrow and into prison on the following day. But what I felt as I listened to you was not joy, but utter despair. We think we're so wise -to us Hercules seems like a child with rickets. And yet on this very day the Germans are slaughtering Jewish children and old women as though they were mad dogs. And we ourselves have endured 1937 and the horrors of collectivization – famine, cannibalism and the deportation of millions of unfortunate peasants… Once, everything seemed simple and clear. But these terrible losses and tragedies have confused everything. You say man will be able to look down on God – but what if he also becomes able to look down on the Devil? What if he eventually surpasses him? You say life is freedom. Is that what people in the camps think? What if the life expanding through the universe should use its power to create a slavery still more terrible than your slavery of inanimate matter? Do you think this man of the future will surpass Christ in his goodness? That's the real question. How will the power of this omnipresent and omniscient being benefit the world if he is still endowed with our own fatuous self-assurance and animal egotism? Our class egotism, our race egotism, our State egotism and our personal egotism? What if he transforms the whole world into a galactic concentration cam? What I want to know is – do you believe in the evolution of kindness, morality, mercy? Is man capable of evolving in that way?'

He gave Chepyzhin a rueful look.

'Forgive me for throwing a question like that at you. It seems even more abstract than the equations we were just talking about.'

'No,' said Chepyzhin. 'It's not so very abstract. It's a question that's had a very real effect on my life. I took a decision not to take part in any research relating to nuclear fission. You said yourself that man isn't yet kind enough or wise enough to lead a rational life. Just think what would happen now if he was presented with the power within the atom! Man's spiritual energy is still at a lamentable level. But I do believe in the future. I believe that it is not only man's power that will evolve, but also his soul, his capacity for love.'

Chepyzhin fell silent, troubled by the expression on Viktor's face.

'I have thought about all this,' said Viktor. 'And I ended up feeling quite appalled. You and I are concerned about the imperfection of

man. But take my laboratory – who else there has ever thought about these questions? Sokolov? He's very clever – but very timid. He prostrates himself before the State and believes that there is no power except that of God. Markov? Markov hasn't the slightest inkling of questions of good and evil, of love and morality. His is a strictly practical talent. His attitude to scientific problems is that of a chessplayer. Savostyanov – the man I was just talking about? He's charming and witty and a splendid physicist. But at the same time he's just a gay young fellow without a thought in his head. When we were evacuated, he took with him a whole pile of photos of young women in bathing costumes. He likes playing the dandy, he likes dancing and getting drunk. He sees science as another kind of sport – understanding some particular phenomenon, solving a particular problem is the same as setting a new athletic record. All he cares about is getting there first. And I'm no better. I've never thought seriously about these matters myself. Science today should be entrusted to men of spiritual understanding, to prophets and saints. But instead it's been left to chessplayers and scientists. They don't know what they're doing. You do. But there's only one of you. If there's a Chepyzhin in Berlin, he won't refuse to do research on neutrons. What then? And what about me? What's going to happen to me? Once everything seemed quite simple, but now, now… You know that Tolstoy considered his works of genius to be just a trivial game. Well, we physicists are no geniuses but we aren't half pleased with ourselves.'

Viktor's eyelids had started to twitch.

'Where can I find faith, strength, determination?'

He was speaking very quickly and with a strong Jewish accent.

'What can I say? You know what's happened – and now I'm being persecuted just because…'

He jumped up without finishing the sentence; his teaspoon fell to the floor. His hands were trembling; his whole body was trembling.

'Calm down, Viktor Pavlovich! Please calm down!' said Chepyzhin. 'Let's talk about something else.'

'No, no, I must go now. I'm sorry. Something's the matter with my head. Forgive me.'

He thanked Chepyzhin and took his leave. Afraid he could no longer control himself, he avoided looking him in the face. There were tears on his cheeks as he went down the stairs.

25

The others were already asleep when Viktor got back. He had the feeling he'd be sitting at his desk until morning, rewriting his letter of repentance and reading it over yet again, trying for the hundredth time to decide whether or not to go into the Institute.

He hadn't been able to think during the long walk home – not even about his tears on the staircase or his abruptly terminated conversation with Chepyzhin; not even about what might happen on the following day or about the letter from his mother in the side-pocket of his jacket. He was under the spell of the silent darkness of the streets; his mind was as vacant and windswept as the deserted alleys of Moscow at night. He felt no emotion: neither shame at his tears nor dread of what was to come, nor even hope that everything would come right in the end.

In the morning, when he wanted to go to the bathroom, he found the door locked from the inside.

'Is that you, Lyudmila?' he called.

He was astonished to hear Yevgenia's voice.

'Heavens! Zhenechka! What's brought you here?' He was so taken aback that he asked stupidly: 'Does Lyuda know that you're here?'

Yevgenia came out. They kissed each other.

'You don't look well,' said Viktor. 'That's what's called a Jewish compliment.'

There and then she told him about Krymov's arrest and the reason for her visit. Viktor was shocked. But after news like that, her visit seemed all the more precious. A bright happy Yevgenia, full of thoughts of her new life, would have seemed less close to him, less dear.

Viktor talked away, asking lots of questions, but continually looking at his watch.

'How senseless and absurd it all is,' he said. 'Just think of all the times I've argued with Nikolay, all the times he's tried to put me right. Now he's in prison – and I'm still at large.'

'Viktor,' interrupted Lyudmila, 'don't forget – the clock in the dining-room's ten minutes slow.'

Viktor muttered something and went off to his room. He looked at his watch twice as he walked down the corridor.

The meeting of the Scientific Council was due to begin at eleven o'clock. Surrounded by his books and other belongings, Viktor had an intensified, almost hallucinatory awareness of the bustle and tension there must be in the Institute. It was half-past ten. Sokolov was taking off his jacket. Savostyanov was whispering to Markov: 'Well, it seems our madman's decided not to show up.' Gurevich was scratching his stout behind and looking out of the window. A limousine was drawing up outside; Shishakov, wearing a hat and a long fur coat, was just getting out. Another car drew up and Badin got out. Kovchenko was going down the corridor. There were already about fifteen people in the hall, all of them looking through newspapers. They'd known it would be crowded and had come early to get a good place. Svechin and Ramskov, the secretary of the Institute Party Committee 'with the stamp of secrecy on his brow', were standing by the door of the Committee office. Old Academician Prasolov was gazing into the air as he floated down the corridor; he always made unbelievably vile speeches at meetings like this. The junior research assistants had formed a large noisy group of their own.

Viktor looked at his watch, took his statement out of the drawer, stuffed it into his pocket, and looked at his watch again.

He could go to the meeting and not say anything… No… If he did go, it would be wrong not to speak – and if he did speak, he would have to repent. But if he didn't go at all, if he just burnt his boats…

Yes, he knew what people would say – 'He didn't have the courage… openly defying the collective… a political challenge… after this we must adopt a different language in dealing with him…' Once again Viktor took his statement out of his pocket and put it back without reading it. He had read these lines dozens of times: 'I have realized that in expressing a lack of confidence in the Party leadership I have behaved in a manner incompatible with what is expected of a Soviet citizen, and therefore… Also, without realizing it, I have deviated in my researches from the central tenets of Soviet science and involuntarily opposed myself…'

Viktor kept wanting to reread his statement, but as soon as he picked it up, every letter of it seemed hatefully familiar… Krymov was in the Lubyanka and he was a Communist. As for Viktor – with his doubts, with his horror of Stalin's cruelty, with all he had said about freedom and bureaucracy, with his lurid political history – he should have been packed off to Kolyma long ago…

These last few days, Viktor had felt more and more frightened: he was sure they were coming to arrest him. There was usually more to an affair like this than just being fired from one's job. First you're taught a lesson, then you're fired – and then you're arrested.

Viktor looked at his watch again. The hall was already full. People were sitting there, looking at the door and whispering: 'Still no Shtrum…' One person said: 'It's already midday and Viktor's still not here.' Shishakov sat down in the chairman's place and put his briefcase on the table. A secretary was standing beside Kovchenko; she had brought him some urgent papers to sign.

Viktor felt crushed by the impatience and irritation of the dozens of people waiting in the hall. There was probably someone waiting in the Lubyanka too; the man in charge of his case was saying to himself: 'Is he really not going to come?' Viktor could see the grim figure from the Central Committee saying: 'So he's chosen not to show up, has he?' He could see people he knew talking to their wives and calling him a lunatic. He knew that Lyudmila resented what he had done: the State that Viktor had challenged was the one that Tolya had given his life for.

Previously, when he had counted the number of his and Lyudmila's relatives who had been arrested and deported, he had reassured himself with the thought: 'At least I can tell them not all my friends are like that. Look at Krymov – he's a close friend and he's an Old Bolshevik who worked in the underground.'

So much for Krymov. Maybe they'd interrogate him in the Lubyanka and he'd tell them all Viktor's heresies. But then Krymov wasn't that close to him – Zhenya and he had divorced. And his conversations with Krymov hadn't been that dangerous – it was only since the beginning of the war that Viktor's doubts had been so pressing. If they spoke to Madyarov, though…

The cumulative force of dozens of pushes and blows, dozens of fierce struggles, seemed to have bent his ribs, to be unstitching the bones of his skull.

As for those senseless words of Doctor Stockmann's: 'He who is alone is strong…!' Was he strong? Looking furtively over his shoulder with the pathetic grimaces of someone from a shtetl, Viktor hurriedly put on his tie, transferred his papers to the pockets of his new jacket and put on his new yellow shoes.

Just then, as he was standing fully-dressed by the table, Lyudmila looked into the room. She walked up to him silently, kissed him and went out again.

No, he wasn't going to recite these stereotyped formulae! He would tell the truth, he would say what came from his heart: 'My friends, my comrades, I have listened to you with pain; I have asked myself with pain how it is that at this joyful time, the time of this great and hard-won breakthrough at Stalingrad, I find myself alone, listening to the angry reproaches of my comrades, my brothers, my friends… I swear to you – with my blood, with my brain, with all my strength…' Yes, yes, now he knew what he would say… Quick, quick, there was still time… 'Comrades… Comrade Stalin, I have lived falsely, I have had to reach the edge of the abyss to see my mistakes in their full horror…' Yes, what he said would come from the depths of his soul. 'Comrades, my own son died at Stalingrad…'

He went to the door.

Everything had been resolved. All that remained was to get to the Institute as quickly as possible, leave his coat in the cloakroom, enter the hall, hear the excited whispering of dozens of people, look round the familiar faces and say: 'A word if you please. Comrades, I wish to share with you my thoughts and feelings of the last few days…'

But at the same moment, Viktor slowly took off his jacket and hung it on the back of a chair. He took off his tie, folded it and placed it on the edge of the table. He then sat down and began unlacing his shoes.

He felt a sense of lightness and purity. He felt calm and thoughtful. He didn't believe in God, but somehow it was as though God were looking at him. Never in his life had he felt such happiness, such humility. Nothing on earth could take away his sense of rightness now.

He thought of his mother. Perhaps she had been standing beside him when he had so unaccountably changed his mind. Only a minute before he had sincerely wanted to make a hysterical confession. Neither God nor his mother had been in his mind when he had come to that last unshakeable decision. Nevertheless, they had been there beside him.

'How good, how happy I feel,' he thought.

Once again he imagined the meeting, the faces, the speakers' voices.

'How good, how light everything is,' he said to himself once again.

He seemed never to have thought so deeply about life, about his family, about himself and his fate.

Lyudmila and Yevgenia came into the room. Seeing him there without his shoes and his jacket, with an open collar, Lyudmila said: 'Good God! You're still here. What will become of us now?' She sounded like an old woman.

'I've no idea.'

'Maybe it's still not too late.' She looked at him again and added: 'I don't know – you're a grown man. But when it comes to matters like this, there are other things to think about than your principles.'

Viktor just sighed.

'Lyudmila!' said Yevgenia.

'All right, all right,' said Lyudmila. 'Whatever will be, will be.'

'Yes, Lyudochka,' said Viktor. 'One way or another, we'll get by.'

He put his hand to his neck and smiled. 'Forgive me, Zhenya. I haven't got a tie on.'

Viktor looked at Lyudmila and Yevgenia. It was as though he had only now, for the first time, fully understood the difficulty and seriousness of life on earth, the true importance of close relationships. At the same time he knew that life would go on in its usual way, that he would still get upset over trifles, that he would still be infuriated by his wife and daughter.

'That's enough about me,' he said. 'Let's have a game of chess, Zhenya. Remember how you checkmated me twice running?'

They set out the pieces. Viktor was white. He opened with the king's pawn. Yevgenia said:

'Nikolay always opened with the king's pawn when he was white. What do you think they'll say to me today at Kuznetsky Most?'

Lyudmila bent down and put Viktor's slippers beside his feet. He tried to slip his feet into them without looking; Lyudmila gave a querulous sigh, knelt down on the floor and put them on for him. Viktor kissed her on the head and said absent-mindedly:

'Thank you, Lyudochka. Thank you!'

Yevgenia still hadn't made her first move. She shook her head and said: 'No, I just don't understand. Trotskyism's old hat. Something must have happened – but what?'

Lyudmila straightened the white pawns. 'I hardly slept last night. Such a right-thinking, devoted Communist!'

'You slept very well last night,' said Yevgenia. 'I woke up several times and you were always snoring.'

'That's not true,' said Lyudmila angrily. 'I literally didn't close my eyes.'

Then, answering the question that was troubling her, she said to her husband: 'As long as they don't arrest you! I'm not afraid of anything else. We can sell our possessions, we can move to the dacha. I can teach chemistry in a school.'

'You won't be able to keep your dacha,' said Yevgenia.

'But don't you understand that Nikolay's quite innocent?' said Viktor. 'It's a different way of thinking, another generation.'

They sat there talking over the chess-board, glancing now and again at the pieces and the solitary pawn that had made one move.

'Zhenya, my dear,' said Viktor, 'you've acted according to your conscience. Believe me – that's the highest thing a man can do. I don't know what life has in store for you, but I'm sure of one thing: you listened to your conscience – and the greatest tragedy of our age is that we don't listen to our consciences. We don't say what we think. We feel one thing and do another. Remember Tolstoy's words about capital punishment? "I can't remain silent." But we remained silent in 1937 when thousands of innocent people were executed. Or rather some of us – the best of us – remained silent. Others applauded noisily. And we remained silent during the horrors of general collectivization… Yes, we spoke too soon about Socialism – it's not just a matter of heavy industry. Socialism, first of all, is the right to a conscience. To deprive a man of his conscience is a terrible crime. And if a man has the strength to listen to his conscience and then act on it, he feels a surge of happiness. I'm glad for you – you've acted according to your conscience.'

'That's enough sermonizing, Vitya,' said Lyudmila. 'Stop confusing the poor girl. You're not the Buddha… What's conscience got to do with it anyway? She's ruining her life, tormenting a good man – and what good will it do Krymov? He won't be happy even if they do set him free. And he was doing fine when they separated – she's got nothing to feel guilty about.'

Yevgenia picked up one of the kings, twirled it around, examined the felt on its base, then put it back again.

'Who's talking of happiness, Lyuda?' she asked. 'I'm not thinking of happiness.'

Viktor looked at the clock. The dial now looked peaceful, the hands calm and sleepy.

'The discussion must be in full swing now. They're abusing me for all they're worth – but I'm not in the least upset or angry.'

'I'd punch the whole lot of them in the snout,' said Lyudmila. 'They're quite shameless. First you're the bright hope of Soviet science, then they're spitting in your face… Zhenya, when are you going to Kuznetsky Most?'

'About four o'clock.'

'Well, you must have something to eat first.'

'What's for lunch today?' asked Viktor. He smiled. 'Ladies, you know what I'd like to ask you?'

'I know, I know. You want to go and work,' said Lyudmila as she got up.

'Anyone else would be banging his head against the wall on a day like this,' said Yevgenia.

'It's not a strength, but a weakness,' said Viktor. 'Yesterday I had a long talk about science with Chepyzhin. But I don't agree with him. Tolstoy was the same. He was tormented by doubts. He didn't know whether people needed literature. He didn't know whether people needed the books he wrote.'

'You know something?' said Lyudmila. 'Before talking like that, you should write the War and Peace of physics.'

Viktor felt horribly embarrassed.

'Yes, Lyuda, yes, you're quite right. I let my tongue run away with me,' he muttered. At the same time he gave his wife a look of reproach: 'Even at a time like this she has to pounce on every slip I make.'

Once again Viktor was left alone. He reread the notes he had made yesterday; at the same time he pondered what had just happened.

Why did he feel more comfortable now that Yevgenia and Lyudmila had left the room? Somehow he had been behaving unnaturally. There had been something false in the way he'd asked Yevgenia for a game of chess, in the way he'd said he wanted to do some work. And Lyudmila must have sensed it; that was the reason for her remark about the Buddha. He himself had been conscious of something wooden in his voice as he made his speech about conscience. He had tried to talk about everyday matters so as not to be thought smug, but that had seemed equally forced and unnatural.

He felt a vague sense of anxiety; something was missing, but he didn't know what. He kept getting up and walking over to the door to eavesdrop on Lyudmila and Yevgenia.

He hadn't the slightest wish to know what had been said at the meeting, who had made the most vicious or intolerant speech, what resolution had finally been passed. He would just write a short note to Shishakov, saying that he was ill and wouldn't be able to come to the Institute for the next few days. After that, things would sort themselves out. He was always ready to be of service in any way that was required…

Why, recently, had he felt so afraid of being arrested? He hadn't done anything that awful. He had talked too much. But not so very much.

Viktor still felt anxious. He kept looking impatiently at the door. Was it that he wanted something to eat? Yes, he'd have to say goodbye to the special store. And to the famous canteen.

There was a quiet ring at the door. Viktor rushed out into the corridor, shouting in the direction of the kitchen, 'I'll go, Lyudmila.'

He flung open the door. Marya Ivanovna peered anxiously at him through the gloom.

'So you're still here,' she said quietly. 'I knew you wouldn't go.'

Viktor began helping her off with her coat. As his fingers touched the collar, as he felt the warmth from the back of her head and neck, he suddenly realized that he had been waiting for her. That was why he had been watching the door and listening so anxiously.

He knew this from the sense of joy and ease he had felt as soon as he saw her. It must have been her he wanted to meet all the times he had walked back gloomily from the Institute, staring anxiously at the passers-by, studying women's faces behind the windows of trams and trolley-buses. And when he had got back and asked Lyudmila, 'Has anyone been round?', what he had really wanted to know was whether she had been round. Yes, it had been like this for a long time. She had come round, they had talked and joked, she had gone away and he seemed to have forgotten her. She had only come to mind when he was talking to Sokolov or when Lyudmila had passed on her greetings. She seemed to have existed only when he was with her or when he was talking about how charming she was. Sometimes, when he was teasing Lyudmila, he had said that she hadn't even read Pushkin and Turgenev.

He had been for a walk with her in the park; he had enjoyed looking at her and had liked the way she understood him so quickly and so perfectly. He had been very touched by her childlike attentive-ness. Then they had said goodbye and he had stopped thinking about her. He had thought of her again on his way back – only to forget her once more.

Now Viktor felt that she had been with him all the time; that she had only appeared to be absent. She had been with him even when he wasn't thinking of her. Even when he hadn't seen her or thought of her, she had still been with him. He had been aware of her absence without realizing it; he hadn't known that he had constantly and unwittingly been upset by it. Today he understood himself and the people close to him very deeply; now he understood his feelings towards her. He had been glad to see her because this had brought to an end the constant ache of her absence. Now that she was with him, he felt at ease. He had felt lonely talking to his daughter, talking to his friends, to Chepyzhin, to his wife… Seeing Marya Ivanovna had been enough to bring this sense of loneliness to an end.

There was nothing surprising about this discovery; it seemed natural and self-evident. How was it he had failed to understand this a month ago, two months ago, while they were still in Kazan? And of course today, when he had felt her absence particularly strongly, this feeling had broken through to the surface and become conscious.

As it was impossible to hide anything from her, he frowned and said to her there and then: 'I thought I must be as hungry as a wolf. I kept looking at the door to see if they'd call me for lunch. But what I was really waiting for was Marya Ivanovna.'

Marya Ivanovna didn't say anything; she just walked straight through as though she hadn't heard what he said.

They introduced her to Yevgenia and she sat down next to her on the sofa. Viktor looked from Yevgenia to Marya Ivanovna, and then at Lyudmila.

How beautiful the two sisters were! There was something particularly attractive about Lyudmila today. Her face had none of the harshness that often disfigured it. Her large bright eyes looked sad and gentle.

Sensing that Marya Ivanovna was looking at her, Yevgenia straightened her hair.

'Forgive me saying this, Yevgenia Nikolaevna, but I never imagined that a woman could be so beautiful. I've never seen a face like yours.' Marya Ivanovna blushed as she said this.

'But look at her hands, Mashenka!' said Lyudmila. 'And her neck and her hair!'

'And her nostrils!' said Viktor. 'Her nostrils!'

'Do you think I'm a horse or something?' said Yevgenia. 'As if all that mattered to me.'

'The horse is off its food,' said Viktor. It was far from clear what this meant, but they all laughed.

'Do you want to eat, Vitya?' asked Lyudmila.

'No, no,' he answered. He saw Marya Ivanovna blush. So she bad heard what he'd said to her in the hall.

Marya Ivanovna sat there, as thin and grey as a little sparrow. Her forehead was slightly protuberant, she had a hairdo like a village schoolteacher's, and she wore a woollen dress patched at the elbows. To Viktor every word she spoke seemed full of intelligence, kindness and sensitivity; every movement she made was an embodiment of sweetness and grace.

Instead of talking about the meeting of the Scientific Council, she asked after Nadya. She asked Lyudmila if she could borrow The Magic Mountain. She asked Yevgenia about Vera and her little boy and what news she'd heard from Alexandra Vladimirovna in Kazan.

It took a while for Viktor to realize how unerringly Marya Ivanovna had chosen the right subjects to talk about. It was as though she were affirming that no power in the world could stop people from being people; that even the most powerful State was unable to intrude on a circle of parents, sisters and children; and that her admiration for the people she was sitting with gave her the right to talk not about what had been imposed on them from outside, but about their own inner concerns.

Marya Ivanovna had indeed chosen correctly. The women talked about Nadya and Vera's little boy and Viktor sat there in silence. He could sense the light inside him burning warmly and evenly, never flickering or growing dim.

Viktor thought Yevgenia had been conquered by Marya Ivanovna's charm. When Lyudmila and Marya Ivanovna went off to the kitchen, he said thoughtfully: 'What a charming woman!'

'Vitka! Vitka!' said Yevgenia teasingly.

He was quite taken aback. It was over twelve years since anyone had called him that.

'The young lady's head over heels in love with you.'

'Don't be stupid,' he said. 'And what do you mean – the young lady} That's the last thing one can say of her. And she's Lyudmila's only friend. She and Marya Ivanovna are very close.'

'What about you and Marya Ivanovna?' enquired Yevgenia, her eyes twinkling.

'I'm being serious,' said Viktor.

Realizing that he was angry, she looked straight at him, her eyes still full of laughter.

'You know what, Zhenechka?' said Viktor. 'You can go to hell!'

Just then Nadya came in. Still in the hall, she asked quickly: 'Has Papa gone off to repent?'

She came into the room. Viktor hugged her and gave her a kiss.

Yevgenia looked her up and down; her eyes were quite moist.

'Well,' she said, 'there isn't a single drop of Slav blood in you. You're a true Hebrew maiden.'

'Papa's genes,' said Nadya.

'You know, Nadya, I've a weakness for you,' said Yevgenia. 'Like Grandmama has for Seryozha.'

'Don't worry, Papa, we won't let you die of hunger,' said Nadya.

'What do you mean - we} You and your lieutenant?' said Viktor. 'And don't forget to wash your hands when you come back from school.'

'Who's Mama talking to?'

'Marya Ivanovna.'

'Do you like Marya Ivanovna?' asked Yevgenia.

'I think she's the best person in the whole world,' said Nadya. 'I'd like to marry her.'

'Very kind, quite angelic?' asked Yevgenia in the same mocking tone.

'Don't you like her, Aunt Zhenya?'

'I don't like saints. There's usually some kind of hysteria underneath,' said Yevgenia. 'I'd rather have an outright bitch.'

'Hysteria?' repeated Viktor.

'I was just talking in general, Viktor. I don't mean her in particular.'

Nadya went out to the kitchen. Yevgenia said to Viktor: 'Vera had a lieutenant when I was in Stalingrad. And now Nadya's got one too. Here today and gone tomorrow. They die so easily, Viktor. It's so sad.'

'Zhenechka, Zhenevyeva, do you really not like Marya Ivanovna?'

'I don't know,' she said hurriedly. 'Some women seem so accommodating, so ready to sacrifice themselves. They never say, "I'm going to bed with this man because I want to." Instead they say, "It's my duty, I pity him, I'm sacrificing myself for him." It's of her own free will that a woman like that goes to bed with a man, lives with him, or decides to leave him. But the way she explains it is very different: "I had to, it was my duty, I acted according to my conscience, I made a sacrifice, I renounced him…" And she hasn't made any sacrifice at all – she's done just as she pleased. The worst of it is that she sincerely believes in this willingness of hers to make sacrifices. I can't stand women like that. And do you know why…? Because I sometimes think I'm like that myself.'

While they were eating, Marya Ivanovna said to Yevgenia:

'Let me go with you, Yevgenia Nikolaevna. I have, sadly, got some experience of these matters. And it's always easier with someone else.'

Yevgenia looked very embarrassed.

'No, no,' she said, 'but thank you very much. There are things one has to do on one's own, burdens one can never share.'

Lyudmila looked at her sister out of the corner of her eye. As though to prove that she and Marya Ivanovna had no secrets from one another, she said: 'Mashenka's got it into her head that you don't like her.'

Yevgenia didn't answer.

'Yes,' said Marya Ivanovna, 'I can feel it. But you must forgive me for saying that. It's stupid of me. What does it matter to you, anyway? Lyudmila should have kept quiet. Now it looks as though I'm forcing myself on you, trying to make you change your mind. Really I just said it without thinking. And anyway…'

To her surprise, Yevgenia found herself saying quite sincerely:

'No, my dear. No. It's just that I'm very upset. Please forgive me. You're very kind.'

Then she got up and said: 'Now, my children – as Mama used to say – it's time.'

26

There were a lot of people on the street.

'Are you in a hurry?' Viktor asked Marya Ivanovna. 'We could go to the park again.'

'But people are already coming home from work. I must be back before Pyotr Lavrentyevich.'

Viktor was expecting her to ask him round. Then Sokolov could tell him about the meeting. But she didn't say anything. He began to wonder if Sokolov was afraid to meet him.

He felt hurt that Marya Ivanovna was in such a hurry. But of course it was only natural. They passed a little square not far from the road leading to the Donskoy Monastery. Suddenly Marya Ivanovna stopped and said: 'Let's sit down for a minute. Then I can get the trolleybus.'

They sat there in silence. Viktor could sense that she was very troubled. Her head slightly bent, she looked straight into his eyes.

They remained silent. Her lips were tightly closed, but he seemed able to hear her voice. Everything was quite clear – as though it had already been said. What difference could words make?

Viktor knew that something very serious was happening, that a new imprint lay on his life, that he was entering a time of deep and painful confusion. He didn't want to make anyone suffer. It would be better if no one knew of their love; perhaps they shouldn't talk of it even to one another. Or perhaps… But they couldn't conceal what was happening now, they couldn't hide their present joy and sorrow – and this alone would have deep and inevitable consequences. What was happening depended only on them, but it seemed like a fate they were powerless to oppose. What lay between them was true and natural, they were no more responsible for it than a man is responsible for the light of day – and yet this truth inevitably engendered insincerity, deceit and cruelty towards those dearest to them. It was in their power to avoid deceit and cruelty; all they had to do was renounce this clear and natural light.

One thing was plain: he had lost his peace of mind for ever. Whatever happened, he would never know peace. Whether he hid his love for the woman beside him or whether it became his destiny, he would not know peace. Whether he was with her, feeling guilty, or whether he was apart from her, aching for her, he would have no peace.

She was still staring at him. Viktor found her look of mingled happiness and despair almost unbearable.

He hadn't given in, he had stood firm against a vast and merciless force – but how weak, how helpless he felt now…

'Viktor Pavlovich,' she said. 'It's time for me to go. Pyotr Lavrentyevich will be waiting.'

She took him by the hand. 'We won't be able to see each other any more. I gave Pyotr Lavrentyevich my word not to see you.'

Viktor felt like someone dying of a heart attack. His heart, whose beating had never depended on his will, was stopping; the universe was swaying, turning upside down; the air and the earth were disappearing.

'But why, Marya Ivanovna?'

'Pyotr Lavrentyevich made me promise to stop seeing you. I gave him my word. I know that's terrible, but he's in such a state, he's quite ill, I'm afraid he might die.'

'Masha,' said Viktor.

There was an invincible power in her voice and her face – the same power that he had been struggling against everywhere.

'Masha,' he repeated.

'Dear God, you can see everything, you understand all too well.

I'm not hiding anything – but why talk about it all? I can't, I just can't. Pyotr Lavrentyevich has been through so much. You know that yourself. And think of Lyudmila's sufferings. It's impossible.'

'Yes, yes, we have no right,' said Viktor.

'My dearest, my unhappy friend, my light,' said Marya Ivanovna.

Viktor's hat fell to the ground. People were probably looking at them.

'Yes, yes, we have no right,' he repeated.

He kissed her hands. As he held her small cold fingers, he felt that the unshakeable strength of her resolve went hand in hand with weakness, submissiveness, helplessness…

She got up from the bench and walked away without looking back. He sat there, thinking that for the first time in his life he had seen happiness, light – and now it had left him. This woman whose fingers he had just kissed could have replaced everything he had ever wanted, everything he had dreamed of – science, fame, the joy of recognition…

27

The following day Savostyanov phoned Viktor and asked after his and Lyudmila's health.

When Viktor asked about the meeting, Savostyanov answered: 'I don't want to upset you, Viktor Pavlovich, but there are more nonentities around than even I ever imagined.'

'Surely Sokolov can't have spoken?' thought Viktor. 'Was a resolution passed?' he asked.

'Yes, a harsh one. That certain things were considered incompatible… That the directors should be asked to reassess…'

'I see,' said Viktor. He had known very well that such a resolution would be adopted, but now it seemed somehow unexpected. He felt quite taken aback.

'I'm innocent,' he thought, 'but still, I'm sure to be arrested. They knew very well that Krymov was innocent, and he was arrested.'

'Did anyone vote against?' he asked. In reply he heard an embarrassed silence.

'No. Viktor Pavlovich, I think it was unanimous. You did yourself a lot of harm by not attending.' Savostyanov's voice was barely audible; he must have rung from a call-box.

The same day, Anna Stepanovna telephoned. She had already been dismissed and no longer went in to the Institute; she didn't know about the meeting. She said she was going to stay with her sister in Murom for two months and invited him to join them. Viktor felt touched.

'Thank you, thank you,' he said. 'But if I go to Murom, it won't be for a rest; it will be to teach physics in a technical college.'

'Heavens, Viktor Pavlovich!' said Anna Stepanovna. 'What made you do all that just for me? You make me despair. I'm not worth it.'

She had obviously taken what he had said about the technical college as a reproach. Her voice was also very faint; she too must be ringing from a call-box.

'Did Sokolov really speak?' Viktor asked himself.

Late that night, Chepyzhin rang. All day Viktor had been like an invalid who came to life only when people spoke about his disease. Chepyzhin obviously sensed this.

'Did Sokolov speak? Can he really have done so?' Viktor asked Lyudmila. But she, of course, knew no more than he did.

A veil seemed to have fallen between him and everyone close to him.

Savostyanov had been afraid to talk about what most concerned Viktor. He hadn't wanted to be the one who told him. He was probably worried that Viktor would meet people from the Institute and say: 'I know everything already. Savostyanov's given me a detailed report.'

Anna Stepanovna had been very affectionate, but she should have done more than just phone him; at a time like this she should have called at his home. And as for Chepyzhin, he should have offered Viktor a job at the Astro-Physics Institute, or at least mentioned it as a possibility.

'They all upset me, and I upset them,' thought Viktor. 'It would be better if they didn't phone at all.'

He felt still more offended, however, with the people who hadn't phoned. He waited all day long for calls from Gurevich, Markov and Pimenov. He even felt a sudden burst of anger at the electricians and technicians who were setting up the new apparatus. 'The swine!' he said to himself. 'They've got nothing to fear. The workers are all right.'

As for Sokolov – Viktor couldn't bear even to think about him. He had told Marya Ivanovna never to phone! Viktor could pardon everyone else – colleagues, old acquaintances, relatives. But his friend! He felt so angry when he thought about Sokolov, so deeply and painfully upset, that he could hardly breathe. Without realizing it, however, he was pleased to find in Sokolov's betrayal a justification for his own betrayal of Sokolov.

Viktor was so nervous that he wrote a quite unnecessary letter to Shishakov asking to be informed of the decision taken by the directors of the Institute; he himself was ill and would be unable to come to work for several days.

The phone didn't ring once during the whole of the following day.

'What does it matter? I'm going to be arrested anyway.' By now, this thought was more of a consolation than a torment. Invalids console themselves in the same way, saying: 'Illness or no illness, we all die in the end.'

'The only person we hear any news from is Zhenya,' Viktor said to Lyudmila. 'But then that's from the NKVD – straight from the horse's mouth.'

'I'm sure of it now,' said Lyudmila. 'Sokolov must have spoken at the Scientific Council. That's the only way I can explain Marya Ivanovna's silence. She feels ashamed. In that case, I'll phone her myself – while he's out at work.'

'No!' shouted Viktor. 'You mustn't do that. You absolutely mustn't.'

'Your relations with Sokolov have nothing to do with me,' said Lyudmila. 'I'm friends with Masha.'

Viktor couldn't explain why she must not phone Marya Ivanovna, but he felt ashamed at the idea of Lyudmila unwittingly becoming a link between them.

'Lyuda, from now on our contact with people has to be one-sided. If a man's been arrested, his wife can only visit people who've invited her. She doesn't have the right to say: "I want to come round." That would be humiliating for both her and her husband. You and I have entered a new epoch. We can no longer write to anyone ourselves; we can only reply to letters. We can no longer phone anyone; we can only pick up the receiver when it rings. We don't even have the right to greet acquaintances – they may prefer not to notice us. And if someone does greet me, I don't have the right to speak first. He might consider it possible to give me a nod of the head, but not to talk to me. I can only answer if he speaks first. You and I are pariahs.'

He paused for a moment. 'Fortunately for the pariahs, however, there are exceptions. There are one or two people – I'm not talking about family, about Zhenya or your mother – whom a pariah can trust. He can contact these people without first waiting for a sign. People like Chepyzhin.'

'Yes, Vitya,' answered Lyudmila, 'you're absolutely right.'

Viktor was amazed. It was a long time since Lyudmila had agreed with anything he said.

'And I have a friend like that myself – Marya Ivanovna,' she went on.

'Lyuda!' said Viktor. 'Do you realize that Marya Ivanovna's given her word to Sokolov not to go on seeing us? Now phone her! Go on! Phone her after that!'

He snatched up the receiver and held it out to Lyudmila. As he did so, a small part of him was hoping: 'Perhaps she will phone. Then at least one of us will hear Marya Ivanovna's voice.'

'So it's like that, is it?' said Lyudmila, putting down the receiver.

'What can have happened to Zhenevyeva?' said Viktor. 'Our troubles have brought us together. I've never felt such tenderness towards her as I do now.'

When his daughter came in, Viktor said: 'Nadya, I've had a talk with Mama. She'll tell you about it in detail herself. Now I'm a pariah, you must stop going to the Postoevs'.'

[…]

28

Darensky felt a strange mixture of feelings as he looked at the German tanks and lorries that had been abandoned in the snow, at the frozen corpses, at the column of men being marched under escort to the East.

This was retribution indeed.

He remembered stories about how the Germans had made fun of the poverty of the peasant huts, how they had gazed in surprise and disgust at the simple cradles, the crude stoves, the earthenware pots, the pictures on the walls, the wooden tubs, the painted clay cocks, at the beloved and wonderful world in which the boys then fleeing from their tanks had been born and brought up.

'Look, comrade Lieutenant-Colonel!' said his driver.

Four Germans were carrying one of their comrades on a greatcoat. You could tell from their faces, from their straining necks, that soon they too would fall to the ground. They swayed from side to side. They tripped over the tangled rags wound round their feet. The dry snow lashed their mindless eyes. Their frozen fingers gripped the corners of the greatcoat like hooks.

'So much for the Fritzes,' said the driver.

'We never asked them to come here,' said Darensky.

Suddenly he felt a wave of happiness. Straight through the steppe, in a cloud of mist and snow, Soviet tanks were making their way to the West. They looked quick and fierce, strong and muscular…

Soldiers were standing up in the hatches. He could see their faces and shoulders, their black helmets and their black sheepskins. There they were, tearing through the ocean-like steppe, leaving behind them a foaming wake of dirty snow. Darensky caught his breath in pride and happiness.

Terrible and sombre, a steel-clad Russia had turned her face to the West.

There was a hold-up as they came to a village. Darensky got out of his jeep and walked past two rows of trucks and some tarpaulin-covered Katyushas. A group of prisoners was being herded across the road. A full colonel who had just got out of his car was watching; he was wearing a cap made from silver Astrakhan fur, the kind you can only obtain if you are in command of an army or if you have a quartermaster as a close friend. The guards waved their machine-guns at the prisoners and shouted: 'Come on, come on! Look lively there!'

An invisible wall separated these prisoners from the soldiers and lorry-drivers. A cold still more extreme than the cold of the steppes prevented their eyes from meeting.

'Look at that!' said a laughing voice. 'One of them's got a tail.'

A German soldier was crawling across the road on all fours. A scrap of torn quilt trailed along behind him. The soldier was crawling as quickly as he could, moving his arms and legs like a dog, his head to the ground as though he were following a scent. He was making straight for the colonel. The driver standing beside the colonel said: 'Watch out, comrade Colonel. He's going to bite you.'

The colonel stepped to one side. As the German came up to him, he gave him a push with his boot. The feeble blow was enough to break him. He collapsed on the ground, his arms and legs splayed out on either side.

The German looked up at the man who had just kicked him. His eyes were like those of a dying sheep; there was no reproach or suffering in them, nothing at all except humility.

'A fine warrior that shit makes!' said the colonel, wiping the sole of his boot on the snow. There was a ripple of laughter among the onlookers.

Everything went dark. Darensky was no longer his own master; another man, someone who was at once very familiar to him and yet utterly alien, someone who never hesitated, was directing his actions.

'Comrade Colonel,' he said, 'Russians don't kick a man when he's down.'

'What do you think I am then?' asked the colonel. 'Do you think I'm not a Russian?'

'You're a scoundrel,' said Darensky. He saw the colonel take a step towards him. Forestalling the man's angry threats, he shouted: 'My surname's Darensky. Lieutenant-Colonel Darensky – inspector of the Operations Section of Stalingrad Front Headquarters. I'm ready to repeat what I said to you before the commander of the Front and before a military tribunal.'

In a voice full of hatred, the colonel said: 'Very well, Lieutenant-Colonel Darensky. You will be hearing from me.'

He stalked away. Some prisoners came up and dragged their comrade to one side. After that, wherever Darensky turned, he kept meeting the eyes of the prisoners. It was as though something attracted them to him.

As he walked slowly back to his jeep, he heard a mocking voice say: 'So the Fritzes have found a defender!'

Soon Darensky was on his way again. But they were held up by another column of prisoners being marched towards them, the Germans in grey uniforms, the Rumanians in green.

Darensky's fingers were trembling as he lit a cigarette. The driver noticed this out of the corner of his eye and said: 'I don't feel any pity for them. I could shoot any one of them just like that.'

'Fine,' said Darensky. 'But you should have shot them in 1941 instead of taking to your heels like I did.'

He said nothing more for the rest of the journey.

This incident, however, didn't open his heart. On the contrary, it was as though he'd quite exhausted his store of kindness.

What an abyss lay between the road he was following today and the road he had taken to Yashkul through the Kalmyk steppe. Was he really the same man who, beneath an enormous moon, had stood on what seemed to be the last corner of Russian earth? Who had watched the fleeing soldiers and the snake-like necks of the camels, tenderly making room in his heart for the poor, for the weak, for everyone whom he loved?

29

____________________ _m ____________________

The command-post of the tank corps lay on the outskirts of the village. Darensky drove up to the hut. It was already dark. They'd obviously only recently moved in: soldiers were unloading suitcases and mattresses from a truck and signallers were installing telephones.

The soldier on sentry-duty reluctantly went inside and called for the duty-officer. He came reluctantly out onto the porch. Like all duty-officers, he looked at the new arrival's epaulettes rather than his face.

'Comrade Lieutenant-Colonel, the corps commander's only just got back from visiting one of the brigades. He's having a rest. He can see you later.'

'Report to the corps commander that Lieutenant-Colonel Darensky has arrived. Is that clear?'

The officer sighed and went back into the hut.

A minute later he came out again and called: 'This way please, comrade Lieutenant-Colonel.'

Darensky climbed the steps up onto the porch and saw Novikov coming to meet him. For a few moments they just looked at one another, laughing.

'So we meet again,' said Novikov.

It was a good meeting.

Two intelligent heads bent over the map, just as they had in the old days.

'I'm advancing as fast as I once retreated,' said Novikov. 'Even faster on this bit of the course.'

'And this is winter,' said Darensky. 'Just wait till the summer!'

'I know.'

It was wonderful to study the map with Darensky. He grasped things immediately and he was interested in details that no one except Novikov ever seemed to notice.

Lowering his voice, as though he were about to come out with some personal confidence, Novikov said: 'Of course we have scouts in the zone of operations. Of course we have a co-ordinated system of reference points for the terrain. Of course we liaise with other arms of the service. But the operations of every other arm are subordinated to one god – the T-34. She's the queen!'

Darensky was familiar with the maps of the other military operations then in progress. He told Novikov about the campaign in the Caucasus, the contents of the intercepted conversations between Hitler and Paulus, and about the movement of General Fretter-Piko's artillery units.

'You can already see the Ukraine through the window,' said Novikov. He pointed to the map. 'I think I'm nearer than anyone else. But Rodin's corps is right on my heels.'

Then he pushed the map aside and said: 'Well, that's enough tactics and strategy for one day.'

'How's everything else?' asked Darensky. 'Still the same?'

'No,' said Novikov, 'very different indeed.'

'You haven't got married, have you?'

'I'm expecting to any day. She should be here soon.'

'Well, well,' said Darensky. 'Another good man gone. But I congratulate you with all my heart! As for me, I'm still single.'

'How's Bykov?' asked Novikov abruptly.

'Bykov? He's surfaced with Vatutin. Doing the same job.'

'He's a tough bastard, isn't he?'

'A rock.'

'To hell with him,' said Novikov. He shouted in the direction of the other room: 'What's up, Vershkov? Have you decided to starve us to death? And you can call the commissar. We'll all eat together.'

There was no need to call Getmanov. He opened the door, looked sadly at Novikov and said: 'What's all this, Pyotr Pavlovich? Rodin seems to have overtaken us. You watch it – he'll beat us to the Ukraine yet!'

He turned to Darensky.

'See what a pass things have come to, Lieutenant-Colonel? Now we're more afraid of our neighbours than of the enemy. You're not a neighbour, are you? No, I can see – you're an old comrade.'

'You seem to be obsessed with the Ukrainian question,' said Novikov.

Getmanov reached out for a tin of food and said in a tone of mock threat:

'Very well, Pyotr Pavlovich. But remember this! I won't marry you and your Yevgenia Nikolaevna till we're on Ukrainian soil. The Lieutenant-Colonel's my witness.'

He held out his glass towards Novikov. 'Anyway, let's drink to his Russian heart!'

'That's a good toast,' said Darensky in all sincerity.

Remembering Darensky's dislike of commissars, Novikov said: 'Yes, comrade Lieutenant-Colonel, it's a long time since we last met.'

Getmanov glanced at the table. 'We've got nothing to offer our guest – only a few tins. The cook barely has time to light the stove before we move our command-post. We're on the go day and night. You should have come round before the offensive began. Now we only stop for one hour in every twenty-four. We'll soon be overtaking ourselves.'

'You might at least give us a fork,' said Novikov to his orderly.

'You told us not to unload all that,' he replied.

Getmanov began giving his impressions of the newly-liberated territory.

'The Russians and the Kalmyks are like day and night,' he began.

'The Kalmyks danced to the Germans' tune. They even got issued with green uniforms. They roamed over the steppes, rounding up our men. And just think of what they've been given by Soviet power! They were just a crowd of ragged, illiterate, syphilitic nomads. But it's no good -you can't change a leopard's spots. Even during the Civil War the vast majority were on the side of the Whites. And just think how much money we spent on all those weeks dedicated to the friendship of nations. We'd have done better to spend it on building another tank factory in Siberia. I met one young woman, a Don Cossack, who told me what she went through during these months. No, there's no doubt about it – the Kalmyks have betrayed the confidence of the Russians. That's what I'm going to say in my report to the Military Soviet.'

He turned to Novikov.

'Do you remember what I said about Basangov? My intuition as a Communist didn't let me down. But don't you be offended, Pyotr Pavlovich. That's not meant as a reproach. Do you think I've never made mistakes in my life? But you can't overestimate the importance of nationality. That's what we've been taught by the experience of the war. And you know the name of a Bolshevik's best teacher? Experience.'

'As for what you say about the Kalmyks,' said Darensky, 'I couldn't agree more. I've just been in the Kalmyk steppe myself. I can tell you – I've had enough of driving through all these Shebeners and Kicheners.'

What made him say that? He had spent a long time in the steppes and never once felt the least antipathy toward the Kalmyks. On the contrary, he had felt a genuine interest in their customs and way of life.

It was as if the commissar was endowed with some magnetic power. Darensky felt a need to agree with everything he said. Novikov looked at him with a mocking smile; he knew Getmanov's power only too well.

'I know you've suffered injustice in your time,' said Getmanov to Darensky unexpectedly. 'But don't you go nursing a grudge against us Bolsheviks. What we want is the good of the people.'

Darensky, who had always thought that military commissars did nothing but spread confusion, said: 'But of course. How could I fail to understand that?'

'Certainly there have been times when we've gone too far,' Getmanov continued. 'But the people will pardon us. They will! We're good fellows. And we mean well. Isn't that so?'

Novikov gave the two men a friendly look and said: 'Don't you think we've got a fine commissar?'

'You have indeed,' said Darensky.

'That's right,' said Getmanov. They all three began to laugh.

As though reading the thoughts of the two officers, Getmanov looked at his watch and said: 'Well, I'm going to go and lie down. I should be able to get a decent night's sleep for once. We're like gypsies – always on the road. It's ten days since I've taken off my boots. Where's the chief of staff? Is he asleep?'

'Asleep!' said Novikov. 'He's already taking a look at our new quarters. We'll be off again in the morning.'

Novikov and Darensky were left on their own.

'You know,' said Darensky, 'there's one thing I've never quite managed to understand… Not long ago I was in the sands near the Caspian. I felt very depressed. I felt it was the end of everything. And then what? I find we've achieved this. What power! What does anything else matter beside this?'

'As for me,' said Novikov, 'I'm really beginning to understand what we Russians can do. We're a fierce breed. We're real wolves.'

'What power!' repeated Darensky. 'And the important thing is this: under the leadership of the Bolsheviks we Russians are the vanguard of humanity. Everything else is just an insignificant detail.'

'I'll tell you what,' said Novikov. 'Would you like me to ask again to have you transferred here? You could be the deputy chief of staff. We'd be fighting shoulder to shoulder again. How about it?'

'Thank you,' said Darensky. 'Who would I be deputy to?'

'General Nyeudobnov. That's as it should be – a lieutenant-colonel as deputy to a general.'

'Nyeudobnov? The one who was abroad just before the war? In Italy?'

'That's right. He's no Suvorov, but it's possible to work with him.'

Darensky didn't say anything. Novikov looked at him. 'Well?'

Darensky put his hand up to his mouth and pulled up his upper lip.

'See these crowns?' he said. 'That's Nyeudobnov's work. He knocked out two teeth of mine when he was interrogating me in 1937.'

They looked at each other, didn't say anything, and looked at each other again.

'A very competent man,' said Darensky. 'Certainly.'

'Of course,' said Novikov with an ironic smile. 'After all, he's not one of those Kalmyks. He's a Russian!'

'And now let's have a real drink,' he bellowed. 'Let's drink like Russians!'

Darensky had never drunk so much in his life. Nevertheless, but for the two empty bottles on the table, no one would have guessed quite how much the two men had accounted for. They were now addressing each other as 'ty'.

As he refilled the glasses for the hundredth time, Novikov said: 'Come on! Don't hold back now!'

For once, Darensky didn't hold back.

They talked about the first days of the war and the retreat, about Blucher and Tukhachevsky, about Zhukov. Darensky spoke about his interrogation.

Novikov told Darensky how he'd delayed for a few minutes at the very beginning of the offensive. He didn't tell him how very mistaken he'd been concerning his brigade commanders. Their talk turned to the Germans. Novikov said how he'd thought the summer of 1941 would have hardened him for ever. But, as soon as he'd seen the first columns of prisoners, he'd given orders to improve their rations and to have anyone wounded or frostbitten taken to the rear by truck.

'Just now your commissar and I were abusing the Kalmyks,' said Darensky. 'And we were quite right. But it's a pity your Nyeudobnov isn't here. I'd like to have a few words with him. Yes, I certainly would.'

'And were there no collaborators among the Russians in Kursk and Orel?' asked Novikov. 'What about General Vlasov? He's hardly a Kalmyk. As for my Basangov – he's a fine soldier. And Nyeudobnov's a Chekist. He's not a soldier at all. My commissar told me that. But we Russians are going to conquer. Yes, I'll get to Berlin myself. The Germans will never be able to stop us now.'

'I know about Nyeudobnov and Yezhov and all that,' said Darensky. 'But there's only one Russia now – Soviet Russia. And even if they knock out every one of my teeth, that won't change my love for Russia. I'll love Russia till my dying day. But I won't be deputy to a prostitute like that. No, comrade, you must be joking!'

Novikov poured out some more vodka. 'Come on! Don't hold back!'

Then he said: 'But who knows what else will happen? One day I'll be in disgrace myself.'

Changing the subject again, he said:

'A horrible thing happened the other day. A driver had his head blown off but he still had his foot on the accelerator. The tank drove on. Forward! Forward!'

'Your commissar and I were abusing the Kalmyks,' said Darensky. 'But there's one old Kalmyk I just can't get out of my head. How old's that Nyeudobnov? How about driving to your new quarters and paying him a visit?'

'I've been granted a great happiness.' said Novikov in a thick, drawling voice. 'The greatest of all happinesses.'

He took a photograph out of his pocket and passed it to Darensky. Darensky looked at it for a long time. 'Yes, she's a real beauty.'

'Beauty?' said Novikov. 'Who cares about beauty? No one could love a woman like I do just for her beauty.'

Vershkov appeared in the doorway. He looked at Novikov questioningly.

'Get the hell out of here!' said Novikov very slowly.

'Why treat him like that?' said Darensky. 'He just wanted to know if you needed him for anything.'

'All right, all right… But I can be a swine too. And I don't need you to tell me how to behave. And why are you calling me "ty" anyway? You're just a lieutenant-colonel.'

'So it's like that, is it?'

'Don't you know how to take a joke?' said Novikov, thinking to himself that it was a good thing Zhenya hadn't yet seen him drunk.

'I don't know how to take stupid jokes,' said Darensky.

They went on wrangling for a long time. They only made peace when Novikov suggested driving to their new quarters and giving Nyeudobnov a good whipping. Needless to say, they didn't drive anywhere at all but just went on drinking.

30

Alexandra Vladimirovna received three letters all on the same day: one from each of her two daughters and one from her granddaughter Vera. She guessed by the handwriting who these letters were from, and sensed immediately that they contained bad news. Many years of experience had taught her that children don't write to their mothers just to share their joys.

Each letter contained an invitation to come and stay: with Lyudmila in Moscow, with Zhenya in Kuibyshev, with Vera in Leninsk. This made Alexandra Vladimirovna still more certain that the three women were in trouble.

Vera wrote mostly about her father. His difficulties with the Party had brought him to the end of his tether. He had been summoned to Kuibyshev by the People's Commissariat and had only returned a few days ago. This journey had exhausted him more than all the months in Stalingrad. His case still awaited a decision. He had been ordered to return to Stalingrad and make a start on rebuilding the power station; it was uncertain, however, whether he would be allowed to remain in the employ of the Commissariat.

Vera herself had decided to go back to Stalingrad with her father. The centre of the city hadn't yet been liberated, but the Germans were no longer shooting. Apparently the house where Alexandra Vladimirovna had lived was just an empty shell with a caved-in roof. Stepan Fyodorovich's flat was still there – undamaged save that the windows were broken and the plaster had come off the walls. He and Vera were intending to move back in, together with her son.

Alexandra Vladimirovna found it very strange that her little granddaughter Vera should now sound so adult, so like a woman. The letter was full of information about the baby's rashes, about his stomach-upsets and disturbed nights. These were all things she should have been writing about to her husband or her mother, but she no longer had either.

She also wrote about old Andreyev and his daughter-in-law Natalya, and about Aunt Zhenya, whom Stepan Fyodorovich had seen in Kuibyshev. She said almost nothing about herself – as though her own life were of no interest to Alexandra Vladimirovna. In the margin of the last page, however, was a note saying: 'Grandmama, we've got a large flat in Stalingrad and there's plenty of room. Please, I beg you to come.' This sudden appeal expressed everything Vera hadn't written in the rest of the letter.

Lyudmila's letter was very brief indeed. At one point she said: 'My life seems quite meaningless. Tolya's dead. And as for Viktor and Nadya – they don't need me at all, they can get on fine without me.'

Lyudmila had never written her mother a letter like this before. Alexandra Vladimirovna realized she must be getting on very badly indeed with her husband. After inviting her to stay, Lyudmila went on: 'Vitya's in trouble – and he always talks more readily to you about his troubles than he does to me.' A little further on she wrote: 'Nadya's become very secretive. She doesn't tell me anything at all. That seems to be the norm in this family.'

The last letter, from Zhenya, was quite incomprehensible. It was full of vague hints at various difficulties and tragedies. She invited her mother to Kuibyshev – and then said she would have to go to Moscow almost immediately. She wrote about Limonov and how highly he always spoke of Alexandra Vladimirovna. He was an interesting and intelligent man and Alexandra Vladimirovna would enjoy meeting him. She then wrote that he had gone to Samarkand. Alexandra Vladimirovna found it hard to understand how she was to meet him in Kuibyshev.

There was one thing she could understand. As she came to the end of the letter, she said to herself: 'My poor little girl!'

Alexandra Vladimirovna was very upset by these letters.

All three women had asked after her own health and whether her room wasn't too cold. She was touched by their concern, but realized that none of them had wondered whether she herself might not be in need of them.

They needed her. But it could very well have been the other way round. Why wasn't she asking for her daughters' help? Why was it her daughters who were asking her for help? After all, she was alone. She had no real home. She was an old woman. She had lost her son and daughter. She didn't know anything about Seryozha.

And she was finding her work increasingly difficult. She had a constant pain around her heart and she always felt dizzy. She had even asked the technical director to have her transferred from the shop-floor to the laboratory. She found it very difficult to spend the whole day taking control samples from one machine after another.

In the evening she stood in the food queues, went home, lit the stove and prepared something to eat.

Life was so bare, so harsh! It wasn't standing in a queue that was difficult. It was worse when the shop was empty and there was no queue. It was worse when she went home and lay down in her cold, damp bed without lighting the stove, without preparing anything to eat.

Everyone around her was suffering. A woman doctor from Leningrad told her how she'd spent the winter with two children in a village a hundred kilometres from Ufa. They'd lived in a hut that had once belonged to a kulak; there were no windows and the roof had been partly dismantled. To get to work she had had to walk six kilometres through the forest; at dawn she had sometimes glimpsed the green eyes of wolves through the trees. It had been a very poor village. The kolkhoz had failed to fulfil the plan; the peasants said that however hard they worked, they'd still have their grain taken away from them. Her neighbour's husband had gone to the war, leaving her alone with her hungry children; she had one pair of torn felt boots for all six of them.

The doctor told Alexandra Vladimirovna how she'd bought a goat. Late at night she used to walk through the deep snow to a distant field; there she would steal buckwheat and dig up the rotten hay that had never been gathered in. Listening to the villagers, her children had learnt to swear. The teacher in Kazan had said to her: 'It's the first time I've heard seven-year-olds swearing like drunks. And you say you're from Leningrad!'

Alexandra Vladimirovna lived in the small room that had once been Viktor Pavlovich's. The official tenants, who had moved to an annexe while the Shtrums had been there, now lived in the main room. They were tense, irritable people, always quarrelling over trivia.

What Alexandra Vladimirovna resented was not the noise or the quarrels, but the fact that they should demand two hundred roubles a month – more than a third of her salary – from a woman whose own home had been burnt down by the Germans. And the room was minute. Sometimes she thought their hearts must be made out of tin and plywood. All day long they talked about potatoes, salt beef, what you could buy and sell at the flea-market. During the night they talked in whispers. The landlady would tell her husband that honey had been very cheap that day in the market, or that their neighbour, a foreman in a factory, had been to a village and brought back a whole sack of sunflower seeds and half a sack of hulled maize.

The landlady, Nina Matveyevna, was very good-looking – tall and slim, with grey eyes. Before getting married, she had worked in a factory, sung in a choir and taken part in amateur theatricals. Her husband, Semyon Ivanovich, worked as a blacksmith's striker in a military factory. In his youth he had served on a destroyer and been the middleweight boxing champion of the Pacific fleet. The distant past of this couple now seemed very improbable.

Before going to work in the morning, Semyon Ivanovich fed the ducks and prepared some swill for the piglet. When he came back in the evening, he pottered about the kitchen, cleaning millet, repairing shoes, sharpening knives, washing out bottles, and talking about drivers at work who had managed to get hold of flour, eggs and goat-meat from distant kolkhozes. Nina Matveyevna would interrupt him with stories of her countless illnesses and visits to famous doctors; then she would talk about lard and margarine, about how she had exchanged a towel for some beans, how a neighbour had bought a pony-skin jacket and five china saucers from an evacuee.

They weren't bad people, but they never said one word to Alexandra Vladimirovna about the war, about Stalingrad, or about the bulletins of the Soviet Information Bureau.

They both pitied and despised Alexandra Vladimirovna for living in such penury. Since the Shtrums had left, she had no sugar or butter, she drank hot water instead of tea, and ate the soup in the public canteen that even the piglet had refused. She had no money for firewood and no personal belongings to sell. Her poverty was a nuisance to them. Once she heard Nina Matveyevna say to her husband: 'Yesterday I had to give the old woman a biscuit. I don't like eating when she's sitting there watching me with her hungry eyes.'

Alexandra Vladimirovna no longer slept well. Why was there still no news from Seryozha? She slept on the iron bed that had once been Lyudmila's; it was as though her daughter's anxieties had now been transferred to her.

How easily death annihilated people. How hard it was to go on living. She thought of Vera. Her child's father had either forgotten her or been killed. Stepan Fyodorovich was constantly depressed and anxious. As for Lyudmila and Viktor, all their griefs and losses had done nothing to bring them together.

Alexandra Vladimirovna wrote to Zhenya that evening. 'My dearest daughter…' She kept thinking of her during the night. What sort of mess was she in? What lay in store for her?

Anya Shtrum, Sonya Levinton, Seryozha… What had become of them all?

Next door she could hear two hushed voices.

'We should kill the duck for the October anniversary,' said Semyon Ivanovich.

'Do you think I've been feeding it on potatoes just to have it killed?' snapped Nina Matveyevna. 'Oh yes, once the old woman's out of the way I'd like to paint the floors. Otherwise the boards will start rotting.'

All they ever spoke of was food and material things; the world they lived in had room only for objects. There were no human feelings in this world – nothing but boards, paint, millet, buckwheat, thirty-rouble notes. They were hard-working, honest people; the neighbours all said that neither of them would ever take a penny that didn't belong to them. But somehow they were quite untouched by the wounded in hospital, by blind veterans, by homeless children on the streets, by the Volga famine of 1921.

In this they were quite the opposite of Alexandra Vladimirovna. She herself could get upset, overjoyed or angry over matters that had nothing to do with her or anyone close to her. The period of general collectivization, the events of 1937, the fate of women who had been sent to camps because of their husbands, the children who had been put in orphanages after their parents had been sent to camps, the summary execution of Russian prisoners-of-war, the many tragedies of the war – all these troubled her as deeply as the sufferings of her own family.

This wasn't something she had learnt from books, from the populist and revolutionary traditions of her family, from her friends, from her husband, or even from life itself. It was something she couldn't help; it was just the way she was. She always ran out of money six days before pay-day. She was always hungry. Everything she owned could be wrapped up in a handkerchief. But not once in Kazan had she thought of her belongings that had been burnt in Stalingrad -her furniture, her piano, her tea-service, her spoons and forks. She didn't even think about her books.

It was very strange that she should now be so far from the people who needed her, living under one roof with people who were so alien to her.

Two days after she had received the letters, Karimov came round. Alexandra Vladimirovna was glad to see him and offered him some rose-hip tea.

'How long since you last heard from Moscow?' he asked.

'Two days.'

'Really?' said Karimov with a smile. 'Tell me, how long does a letter take?'

'Have a look at the postmark,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna.

Karimov examined the envelope for some time. 'Nine days,' he said in a preoccupied tone of voice. He sat there thoughtfully – as though the slowness of the postal service was a matter of great importance to him.

'They say it's the censors,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'They're quite snowed under.'

Karimov looked at her with his beautiful dark eyes.

'So they're all right, are they? They're not having any problems?'

'You don't look at all well,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'Are you ill?'

'What do you mean? I'm fine!' he replied hurriedly, as though denying some accusation.

They began to talk about the war.

'We've come to a real turning-point now,' said Karimov. 'Even a child can see that.'

'Yes, and last summer it was just as obvious that the Germans were going to win,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna sarcastically.

'Is it very difficult for you on your own?' Karimov asked abruptly. 'I see you have to light the stove yourself.'

Alexandra Vladimirovna frowned – as though this were a question she could only answer after deep thought. Finally she said: 'Akhmet Usmanovich, have you really called on me just to ask if I find it difficult to light the stove?'

Karimov looked down at his hands. He waited for a long time before replying.

'The other day I was summoned to you-know-where. I was questioned about the meetings and conversations we had.'

'Why didn't you tell me that at the beginning?' asked Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'Why did you have to start asking about the stove?'

Trying to catch her eye, Karimov went on:

'Naturally, I was unable to deny that we had talked about politics and the war. It would have been absurd to try and make out that four adults had spoken exclusively about the cinema. Naturally I said that we had always talked like true Soviet patriots. I said we were all of us certain that, under the leadership of comrade Stalin and the Party, the Soviet people would be victorious. In general, the questions weren't particularly hostile. But after a few days I began to worry. I couldn't sleep at all. I began thinking that something must have happened to Viktor Pavlovich. And then there's this strange business with Madyarov. He went off for ten days to the Pedagogical Institute in Kazan. And he still hasn't come back. His students are waiting for him. The dean's sent him a telegram. And not a word. Well, you can imagine what goes through my head at night.'

Alexandra Vladimirovna said nothing.

'Just think,' he went on in a quiet voice, 'you only have to get talking over a glass of tea and everyone's full of suspicion, you get summoned you know where…'

Alexandra Vladimirovna said nothing. Karimov looked at her questioningly, as though inviting her to speak. He realized that she was waiting for him to tell her the rest.

'So there we are,' he said.

Alexandra Vladimirovna still didn't say anything.

'Oh yes,' he said. 'There's one thing I forgot. This comrade asked if we'd ever talked about the freedom of the press. We had indeed. Yes, and then they asked if I knew Lyudmila Nikolaevna's younger sister and her ex-husband… Krymov or something? I've never set eyes on them in my life and Viktor Pavlovich has never so much as mentioned them to me. And that's what I told them. Yes, and then they asked if Viktor Pavlovich had ever talked to me personally about the situation of the Jews. I asked why he should have talked about that to me. They answered: "You understand. You're a Tartar and he's a Jew…"'

Later, after Karimov had put on his hat and coat and was standing in the doorway, tapping the letter-box where Lyudmila had once found the letter telling her that Tolya had been wounded, Alexandra Vladimirovna said: 'It's strange. Why should they ask about Zhenya?'

But neither she nor Karimov had any idea why a Chekist in Kazan should suddenly take an interest in Zhenya, who lived in Kuibyshev, or in her ex-husband, who was now at the front.

People trusted Alexandra Vladimirovna and she had heard many similar stories and confessions. She had grown all too used to feeling that something important had been left unsaid. She didn't see any point in warning Viktor; it would merely cause him fruitless anxiety. Nor was there any point in trying to guess which of the group had talked carelessly or had informed. In situations like this it nearly always turned out to be the person you least suspected. And very often the matter had come to the attention of the NKVD in some quite unexpected manner: through a veiled hint in a letter, a joke, a few careless words in the communal kitchen… But why should the investigator have asked Karimov about Zhenya and Nikolay Gri-gorevich?

That night she was unable to sleep. She wanted something to eat. She could smell food in the kitchen. They must be frying potato-cakes – she could hear the clatter of tin plates and the calm voice of Semyon Ivanovich. God, how hungry she felt! What awful soup they'd served for lunch in the canteen! Now, though, she very much regretted not having finished it. She couldn't even think clearly; her desire for food kept interrupting her train of thought.

On her way in to work next morning she met the director's secretary, a middle-aged woman with an unpleasantly masculine face.

'Comrade Shaposhnikova,' she said, 'come round to my office during the lunch-break.'

Alexandra Vladimirovna felt surprised. Surely the director couldn't already have answered her request for a transfer? She walked through the yard. Suddenly she said out loud:

'I've had enough of Kazan. It's time to go home, to Stalingrad.'

31

Chalb, the head of the military police, had called company commander Lenard to the Headquarters of the 6th Army.

Lenard arrived late. A new order of Paulus's had forbidden the use of petrol for personal transport. All their supplies of fuel were now at the disposition of General Schmidt, the chief of staff. And he'd rather see you die ten deaths than sign you an order for five litres of petrol. There wasn't enough fuel for the officers' cars, let alone for the soldiers' cigarette-lighters.

Lenard had to wait till evening, when he could get a lift with the courier. The small car drove slowly over the frost-covered asphalt. The air was still and frosty; thin wisps of almost transparent smoke rose from the dug-outs and trenches of the front line. There were wounded soldiers walking along the road with towels and bandages round their heads. And then there were other soldiers, also with bandages round their heads and rags round their feet, who were being transferred to the area round the factories.

The driver stopped the car near the corpse of a dead horse and began digging about inside the engine. Lenard watched the anxious, unshaven men hewing off slabs of frozen horsemeat with hatchets. One soldier, standing between the horse's exposed ribs, looked like a carpenter up in the rafters of an unfinished roof. A few yards away, in the middle of a ruined building, was a fire with a black cauldron hanging down from a tripod. Round it stood a group of soldiers wrapped up in shawls and blankets, helmets and forage caps on their heads, tommy-guns and hand-grenades hanging from their shoulders and belts. The cook prodded with his bayonet at the pieces of meat that came to the surface. A soldier sitting on the roof of a dug-out was gnawing at a large bone; it looked for all the world like an improbably vast harmonica.

Suddenly the road and the ruined house were caught in the rays of the setting sun. The empty eye-sockets of the burnt-out building seemed to fill with frozen blood. The ploughed-up, soot-covered snow turned golden. The dark red cave of the horse's innards was lit up. The snow eddying across the road turned into a whirl of bronze.

The light of evening can reveal the essence of a moment. It can bring out its emotional and historical significance, transforming a mere impression into a powerful image. The evening sun can endow patches of soot and mud with thousands of voices; with aching hearts we sense past joys, the irrevocability of loss, the bitterness of mistakes and the eternal appeal of hope.

It was like a scene from the Stone Age. The grenadiers, the glory of the nation, the builders of the New Germany, were no longer travelling the road to victory. Lenard looked at these men bandaged up in rags. With a poetic intuition he understood that this twilight was the end of a dream.

Life must indeed conceal some strangely obtuse inertial force. How was it that the dazzling energy of Hitler and the terrible power of a people moved by the most progressive of philosophies had led to the quiet banks of a frozen Volga, to these ruins, to this dirty snow, to these windows filled with the blood of the setting sun, to the quiet humility of these creatures watching over a steaming cauldron of horsemeat?

32

Paulus's headquarters were now in the cellar of a burnt-out department store. The established routine continued as usual: superior officers came and went; orderlies prepared reports of any change in the situation or any action undertaken by the enemy.

Telephones rang and typewriters clattered. Behind the partition you could hear the deep laughter of General Schenk, the head of the second section. The boots of the staff officers still squeaked on the stone floors. As he walked down the corridor to his office, the monocled commanding officer of the tank units still left behind him a smell of French perfume – a smell that blended with the more usual smells of tobacco, shoe-polish and damp, and yet somehow remained distinct from them. Voices and typewriters still suddenly fell silent as Paulus walked down the narrow corridor in his long, fur-collared greatcoat; dozens of eyes still stared at his thoughtful face and aquiline nose. Paulus himself still kept to the same habits, still allowed the same amount of time after meals for a cigar and a talk with his chief of staff. The junior radio-officer still burst into Paulus's office with the same plebeian insolence, walking straight past Colonel Adam with a radio message from Hitler marked: 'To be delivered personally.'

This continuity, of course, was illusory; a vast number of changes had imposed themselves since the beginning of the encirclement. You could see these changes in the colour of the coffee, in the lines of communication stretching out to new sectors of the front, in the new instructions regarding the expenditure of ammunition, in the cruel, now daily spectacle of burning cargo-planes that had been shot down as they tried to break the blockade. And a new name was now on everyone's lips – the name of Manstein.

There is no need to list all these changes; they are obvious enough. Those who had previously had plenty to eat now went hungry. As for those who had previously gone hungry – their faces were now ashen. And there were changes in attitude: pride and arrogance softened, there was less boasting, even the most determined optimists had now started to curse the Fuhrer and question his policies.

But there were also the beginnings of other, deeper changes, in the hearts and minds of the soldiers who until now had been spellbound by the inhuman power of the nation-state. These changes took place in the subsoil of human life and mostly went unnoticed.

This process was as difficult to pin down as the work of time itself. The torments of fear and hunger, the awareness of impending disaster slowly and gradually humanized men, liberating their core of freedom.

The December days grew still shorter, the icy seventeen-hour nights still longer. The encircling forces pressed still closer; the fire of their guns and machine-guns grew still fiercer. And then there was the pitiless cold – a cold that was unbearable even for those who were used to it, even for the Russians in their felt boots and sheepskins.

Over their heads hung a terrible frozen abyss. Frosted tin stars stood out against a frostbound sky.

Who among these doomed men could have understood that for millions of Germans these were the first hours, after ten years of complete inhumanity, of a slow return to human life?

33

Lenard approached Army Headquarters. He felt his heart beat faster as he saw the ashen face of the sentry standing beside the grey wall. And as he made his way down the underground corridor, everything he saw filled him with tenderness and sorrow.

He read the Gothic script on the door-plates: '2nd Section', 'ADCs' Office', 'General Koch', 'Major Traurig'. He heard voices and the clatter of typewriters. All this brought home to him the strength of his filial, fraternal bond with his brothers-in-arms, his Party comrades, his colleagues in the SS. But it was twilight and their life was fading away.

He had no idea what Chalb wanted to talk about, whether or not he would wish to confide his personal anxieties. As was often the case with people who had been brought together by their work in the Party before the war, they paid little attention to their difference in rank and talked with comradely straightforwardness. Their meetings were usually a mixture of serious discussion and friendly chat.

Lenard had a gift for laying bare the essence of a complicated matter with the utmost concision. His words were sometimes relayed from one report to another right up to the most important offices in Berlin.

He entered Chalb's office. It took him a moment to recognize him. And he had to look hard at his still plump face before he realized that all that had changed was the look in his dark, intelligent eyes.

A map of Stalingrad hung on the wall. The 6th Army was encircled by a merciless band of flaming crimson.

'We're on an island, Lenard,' said Chalb, 'surrounded not by water, but by the hatred of brutes.'

They talked about the Russian frost, about Russian felt boots, about Russian bacon fat and the treacherous nature of Russian vodka – how it first warmed you up only to freeze you later.

Chalb asked if there had been any changes in the relations between officers and soldiers in the front line.

'When it comes down to it,' said Lenard, 'I can't really see much difference between the thoughts of a colonel and the thoughts of the privates. There's precious little optimism in either.'

'It's the same story at HQ,' said Chalb. He paused to give his words greater effect and then added: 'And the Commander-in-Chief's the worst of all.'

'Nevertheless,' said Lenard, 'there have been no deserters.'

'I've got a question for you,' said Chalb. 'It has a bearing on something very important. Hitler wants the 6th Army to stand firm, while Paulus, Weichs and Zeitzler are in favour of capitulating in order to save the lives of the soldiers and officers. My task is to make discreet soundings as to the possibility of disobedience on the part of the encircled troops.'

Aware of the gravity of this question, Lenard thought for a moment in silence. He then said he'd like to begin with a particular example and said a few words about a certain Lieutenant Bach.

'There's one rather doubtful character in Bach's company. He used to be a general laughing-stock, but now everyone's trying to get in with him… That made me start thinking about the company and its commanding officer. When things were going well, this Lieutenant Bach was wholeheartedly in agreement with the policies of the Party. But I've got a feeling he's begun to think differently. And I've been wondering what it is that draws the soldiers in his company to someone they used to look on as a cross between a clown and a madman. How would that character behave at a critical moment? What would he say to the other soldiers? How would their commanding officer react…? There are no easy answers to these questions. But there's one thing I can say: the soldiers won't mutiny.'

'Now we can see the wisdom of the Party more clearly than ever,' said Chalb. 'We never hesitated not only to cut out infected tissue from the body of the people, but also to cut out apparently healthy tissue that might become infected at a critical moment. Rebellious spirits and hostile ideologues were purged from the Army, from the Church, from the cities, from the villages. There may be any amount of grumbling and anonymous letters, but there will never be a rebellion – not even if the enemy encircles us in Berlin itself. For that we can thank Hitler. We should give thanks to heaven for sending us such a man at this time.'

He stopped for a moment and listened to the slow rumbling over their heads. In the deep cellar it was impossible to tell whether this was the German artillery or the explosion of Soviet bombs. After the rumbling had gradually subsided, Chalb said: 'It's quite unthinkable that you should merely be receiving the rations of an ordinary officer. I've entered you on a list of security officers and especially valued friends of the Party. You will receive regular parcels by courier at your divisional headquarters.'

'Thank you,' said Lenard. 'But I'd prefer to eat what everyone else does.'

Chalb spread his hands in helpless surprise.

'What about Manstein?' asked Lenard. 'I've heard he's received some new weapons.'

'I don't believe in Manstein,' said Chalb. 'On that subject I share the views of our commander-in-chief.'

In the hushed voice of a man who for years on end has dealt mainly with classified information, he went on:

'There's another list, also in my keeping, of security officers and valued friends who will be allowed a place on a plane in the event of a catastrophe. I've included your name. In the event of my absence, Colonel Osten will be in possession of the instructions.'

Noticing the questioning look in Lenard's eyes, he explained: 'I may have to fly to Germany – in connection with a matter too confidential to be entrusted either to paper or to a radio code.

'I can tell you one thing,' he said with a wink, 'I'll have a few stiff drinks before we take off. Not to celebrate, but because I'll be frightened. A very large number of our planes are being shot down.'

'Comrade Chalb,' said Lenard, 'I don't want a seat in the plane. I'd be ashamed to abandon men whom I myself have urged to fight to the bitter end.'

Chalb sat a little straighter in his chair. 'I have no right to attempt to dissuade you.'

Wanting to lighten the over-solemn atmosphere, Lenard asked: 'If it's possible, I'd be very grateful if you could help me return to my regiment. I've no car.'

'There's nothing I can do,' said Chalb. 'For the first time in my life I'm quite powerless. The petrol's in the hands of that dog Schmidt. I can't get a single litre out of him. Do you understand? I'm powerless.' His face had resumed the helpless expression that had made him unrecognizable when Lenard first came in. It was quite unlike him. Or did it perhaps reveal his true self?

34

It got warmer towards evening and a fresh snowfall covered the soot and dirt of the war. Bach was doing the rounds of the front-line fortifications. The white snow of Christmas glittered in the flashes of gunfire, turning pink or green in the light of the signal-flares.

The stone ridges, the caves, the mounds of brick, the fresh hare-tracks that covered the ground where people ate, relieved themselves, went in search of shells and cartridges, carried away their wounded, buried their dead – all this looked very strange in the brief flashes of light. And at the same time it looked all too familiar.

Bach reached a spot that was covered by the Russian guns installed in the ruins of a three-storey building. He could hear the sound of a harmonica and their slow, wailing singing. Through a gap in the wall he could see the Soviet front line, the silhouettes of factories and the frozen Volga.

Bach called out to the sentry, but his answer was drowned by a sudden explosion followed by the drumming of clods of frozen earth against the wall. A low-flying Russian plane, its engine cut out, had just dropped a bomb.

'Another lame Russian crow,' said the sentry, pointing up at the dark winter sky.

Bach squatted down, leaning his elbows on the familiar stone ledge, and looked round. A faint pink shadow trembled against the high wall – the Russians had lit their stove and the chimney was now white-hot. It seemed they had nothing to do all day except eat, eat, eat and slurp down huge mouthfuls of hot coffee.

Further to the right, where the Russian and German trenches were closest together, he could hear the quiet, unhurried sound of metal striking frozen earth.

Very slowly, without ever coming up to the surface, the Russians were bringing their trench forward. This slow movement through the frozen, stony earth bore witness to a fierce, obtuse passion; it was as though the earth itself were advancing.

That afternoon Sergeant Eisenaug had reported that a grenade from a Russian trench had smashed the chimney pipe of the company stove and filled the dug-out with dirt. Later on a Russian soldier wearing a white sheepskin and a new fur hat had leapt out from his trench, cursing and shaking his fist.

Realizing instinctively that this was a spontaneous act, none of the Germans had opened fire.

'Hey! Chicken, eggs, Russian glug-glug?' the soldier had shouted. A German had then jumped up and, in a quiet voice that wouldn't be heard in the officers' trench, called out:

'Hey! Russian! Don't shoot! Must see Mother again. You have my tommy-gun, I have your hat.'

The reply from the Russian trench had been curt and monosyllabic. Its sense had been unmistakeable and had enraged the Germans.

Still later a hand-grenade had exploded in the communication trench. But no one had been bothered by this.

All this had been reported by Sergeant Eisenaug. Bach had said: 'Let them shout if that's what they want. As long as no one deserts…'

Eisenaug, his breath stinking of raw beetroot, had gone on to report that Private Petenkoffer had somehow managed to do a deal with the enemy: some Russian bread and lump sugar had been found in his knapsack. He had promised to exchange a friend's razor for a chunk of fat bacon and two packets of buckwheat. For this he had demanded a commission of 150 grams of fat bacon.

'That's simple enough,' Bach had replied. 'Order him to report to me at once!'

It had then emerged that Petenkoffer had been killed that morning while carrying out a dangerous mission.

'What do you expect me to do about it?' Bach had said in exasperation. 'In any case, Russians and Germans have always been trading partners.'

Eisenaug, however, had been in no mood for pleasantries. He had been wounded in France in May 1940 and his wound still hadn't healed. He had then served in a police battalion in South Germany. He had been flown to Stalingrad only two months before. Hungry, frozen, eaten up by lice and by fear, he had lost whatever sense of humour he might once have had.

It was over there, where he could just make out the lacework of ruined buildings, that Bach had begun his life in Stalingrad. The black September sky and its huge stars, the turbid waves of the Volga, the huge walls that were still hot from the fire – and then the steppes of the South-East, the frontier of Asia…

The buildings to the west were buried in darkness. He could only make out the outlines of a few snow-covered ruins.

Why had he written that letter to his mother from hospital? She'd almost certainly have shown it to Hubert. Why had he had those conversations with Lenard?

Why do people have memories? It would be easier to die-anything to stop remembering. How could he have taken that moment of drunken folly for the deepest truth of his life? Why had he finally given in after holding back for all those long, difficult years?

He had never killed a child; he had never arrested anyone. But he had broken the fragile dyke that had protected the purity of his soul from the seething darkness around him. The blood of the camps and ghettos had gushed over him and carried him away… There was no longer any divide between him and the darkness; he himself was a part of the darkness.

What had happened to him? Was it folly, chance? Or was it the deepest law of his soul?

35

It was warm inside the bunker. A few of the soldiers were asleep, their bare yellow feet sticking out from under the overcoats they had pulled up over their heads; the rest were sprawled on the floor.

'Do you remember?' asked one particularly thin soldier, pulling his shirt across his chest and examining the seam with the fierce look characteristic of soldiers the world over as they inspect their shirts and underclothes. 'Do you remember that wonderful cellar where we were quartered in September?'

A second soldier, lying on his back, said: 'You were already here when I joined you.'

'That was a splendid cellar,' several other voices confirmed. 'You can take our word for it. It was a real home, with proper beds…'

'Some of the fellows were beginning to despair when we were outside Moscow. And look what happened: we reached the Volga!'

Another soldier split a board with his bayonet and opened the door of the stove to throw in a few bits of wood. The flames lit up his large, grey, unshaven face, turning it a reddish copper.

'And a lot of good that's done us!' he said. 'We've swapped a hole near Moscow for an even worse hole near the Volga.'

A gay voice rang out from the dark corner where the soldiers' packs were piled. 'Horsemeat! You couldn't think of a better Christmas dinner if you tried!'

The talk turned to food and everyone grew more animated. First they discussed the best way of getting rid of the smell of sweat in boiled horsemeat. Some said you just needed to scoop the black scum off the top of the boiling water. Others said it was important to simmer the broth very gently; still others said you should only use the meat from the hind-quarters and put it straight into the boiling water while it was still frozen.

'It's the scouts who really have a good time of it,' said one young soldier. 'They steal provisions from the Russians and then share them with their women in the cellars. And people wonder why the scouts always get off with the youngest and prettiest ones!'

'That's one thing I no longer think about,' said the soldier stoking the stove. 'I don't know whether it's just my mood, or not having anything to eat. But what I would like is to see my children before I die. Just for one hour!'

'The officers think about it, though. I met the lieutenant himself in one of their cellars. He was quite at home, almost one of the family.'

'What were you doing there?'

'I'd gone to get my washing done.'

'You know, I was once a guard in a camp. I saw prisoners-of-war picking up bits of potato-peel, fighting over a few rotten cabbage leaves. I said to myself: "They're not human beings – they're beasts." And now we've become beasts ourselves.'

Suddenly the door was flung open. The mist swirled in and a loud, ringing voice shouted: 'On your feet! Attention!'

These words of command sounded the same as ever, calm and unhurried.

The men in the bunker made out the face of Lieutenant Bach through the mist. Then there was an unfamiliar squeak of boots and they caught sight of the light blue greatcoat of the general in command of the division. He was screwing up his myopic eyes and wiping his monocle with a dirty piece of chamois. There was a gold wedding-ring on his white hand.

A voice accustomed to ringing out over vast parade-grounds said:

'Good evening! Stand at ease!'

The soldiers answered in a ragged chorus. The general sat down on a crate; the yellow light from the stove flickered over the black Iron Cross on his chest.

'I wish you a happy Christmas Eve,' he said.

The soldiers who were accompanying him dragged another crate up to the stove, prised open the lid with their bayonets and began taking out tiny Christmas trees wrappped in cellophane. Each tree, only a few inches long, was decorated with gold tinsel, beads and tiny fruit-drops.

The general watched as the soldiers unwrapped the cellophane, then beckoned the lieutenant towards him and mumbled a few words in his ear. The lieutenant announced in a loud voice:

'The lieutenant-general would like you to know that this Christmas present from Germany was flown in by a pilot who was mortally wounded over Stalingrad itself. The plane landed in Pitomnik and he was found dead in the cabin.'

36

The soldiers were holding the trees in the palms of their hands. As they warmed up, a fine dew appeared on the needles and the bunker was filled with the smell of resin. The usual smell of the front line – a cross between that of a morgue and that of a blacksmith's – was quite blotted out. To the soldiers it was as if this smell of Christmas emanated from the grey-haired general sitting beside the stove.

Bach felt the beauty and sadness of the moment. These men who defied the power of the Russian heavy artillery, these coarse, hardened soldiers who were dispirited by their lack of ammunition and tormented by vermin and hunger had all understood at once that what they needed more than anything in the world was not bread, not bandages, not ammunition, but these tiny branches twined with useless tinsel, these orphanage toys.

The soldiers sat in a circle round the old man on the crate. Only that summer he had led the vanguard of the motorized infantry to the Volga. Everywhere, all his life, this man had been an actor. He had played a role not only in front of the soldiers or during conversations with a superior officer, but also when he was at home, when he was with his wife, his daughter-in-law or his grandson, when he went for a walk in the garden. He had played a role when he lay alone in bed at night, his general's uniform spread out on the chair beside him. And of course he had been playing a role when he had asked the soldiers about their mothers, when he had made coarse jokes about their affairs with women, when he had looked inside their cooking-pots and tasted their soup with exaggerated seriousness, when he had bowed his head austerely before still uncovered graves, when he had given heartfelt, fatherly speeches to the new recruits. And all this hadn't been a pose; it had been a part of his inner nature, infused into all his thoughts. He was quite unconscious of it; it could no more be separated from him than salt can be filtered out of sea-water. It had been there as he entered the bunker, as he flung open his greatcoat, as he sat down on the crate in front of the stove, as he looked calmly and sorrowfully at the soldiers and wished them a happy Christmas Eve. But now, for the first time in his life, he became conscious of this theatricality; and – just as salt crystallizes when water freezes – it deserted him, leaving him to his melancholy, to his sense of pity for these hungry, exhausted men. Now he was just a weak, helpless old man sitting with a group of other men who were equally helpless, equally unhappy.

One soldier quietly began to sing.

'O, Tannenbaum, O, Tannenbaum, wie grtin sind deine Blatter.'

Two or three more voices joined in. The scent of pine-needles was enough to make you feel dizzy; the words of the children's song were like fanfares of heavenly trumpets.

'O, Tannenbaum, O, Tannenbaum .. .'

Out of the cold darkness of oblivion, as though from the depths of the sea, long-dead thoughts and feelings rose slowly up to the surface. They brought no joy, no relief, but their strength was a human strength, the greatest strength in the world…

One after another came the explosions of large-calibre Soviet shells. Ivan must have been annoyed about something – perhaps he had guessed that the besieged soldiers were celebrating Christmas. None of these soldiers, however, paid the least attention to the plaster falling from the ceiling or to the clouds of red sparks belched out by the stove.

Then there was a burst of furious, metallic hammering; the earth seemed to be screaming. That was Ivan playing with his beloved Katyushas. Then came a crackle of machine-gun fire.

The old man sat there with his head bowed; he looked like thousands of other men who have been exhausted by a long life. The footlights had faded; the actors had taken off their make-up and gone out into the grey light of day. Now they all looked the same: the legendary general, an insignificant corporal, even Private Schmidt who had been suspected of harbouring dissident thoughts… Bach suddenly thought of Lenard. A man like him would never have surrendered to the charm of this moment. There was too much in him that was German, that was dedicated only to the State; now it was too late for that to be made human.

Bach looked up towards the door and caught sight of Lenard.

37

Stumpfe, once the finest soldier in the company, a man the new recruits had regarded with frightened admiration, was now unrecognizable. His large, blue-eyed face was thin and sunken. His uniform and greatcoat were just crumpled rags that barely kept out the wind and frost. He had lost his sharp intelligence and his jokes no longer made anyone laugh.

An enormous man with a vast appetite, he suffered more acutely from hunger than anyone else in the company. His constant hunger drove him out foraging early in the morning. He dug about in the ruins, begged, gathered up crumbs, hung around outside the kitchen. Bach had grown used to his tense, watchful face. Stumpfe thought about food incessantly; he searched for it even when they were fighting.

As he made his way back to the bunker, Bach caught sight of the huge back and shoulders of this eternally hungry soldier. He was digging in a patch of wasteland where the kitchens and supply-depot had once stood. Here and there he found old cabbage leaves and tiny acorn-sized potatoes that had escaped the pot. Then an old woman appeared from behind a stone wall. She was very tall and was wearing a ragged man's coat, tied with a piece of string, and a pair of down-at-heel hobnailed boots.

She walked towards the soldier, staring down at the ground as she stirred around in the snow with a hook made from a thick piece of twisted wire.

Their two shadows met on the snow; otherwise they would have been unaware of each other's presence.

Finally the vast German looked up at the old woman. Trustingly holding out a cabbage leaf that was stone-hard and full of holes, he said slowly and solemnly: 'Good day, madam.'

The old woman pushed back the piece of rag that had fallen forward onto her forehead, looked at him with dark eyes that were full of kindness and intelligence, and said equally slowly and majestically: 'Good day, sir.'

It was a summit meeting between the representatives of two great peoples. Bach was the only witness; the soldier and the old woman forgot the meeting immediately.

As it grew warmer, big flakes of snow settled on the ground, on the red brick-dust, on the crosses of graves, on the turrets of abandoned tanks, in the ears of dead men waiting to be buried.

The snow filled the air with a soft grey-blue mist, softening the wind and gunfire, bringing the earth and sky together into one swaying blur.

The snow fell on Bach's shoulders; it was as though flakes of silence were falling on the still Volga, on the dead city, on the skeletons of horses. It was snowing everywhere, on earth and on the stars; the whole universe was full of snow. Everything was disappearing beneath it: guns, the bodies of the dead, filthy dressings, rubble, scraps of twisted iron.

This soft, white snow settling over the carnage of the city was time itself; the present was turning into the past, and there was no future.

38

____________________^____________________

Bach was lying on a bunk behind a cotton curtain that screened off a small corner of the cellar. A woman was sleeping beside him, her head on his shoulder. Her face was very thin and looked somehow both childish and withered. Bach looked at her thin neck and at the outline of her breasts under her dirty grey blouse. Very gently, so as not to disturb her, he lifted an untidy tress of hair to his lips. It was springy and smelt of life and warmth.

The woman opened her eyes.

On the whole she was a sensible, practical woman. At different moments she could be tender, sly, patient, calculating, submissive, quick-tempered. Sometimes she seemed morose and stupid – as though something had broken her; sometimes she sang arias from Faust and Carmen in Russian.

Bach had never tried to find out what she had done before the war. He had come to see her when he felt like sleeping with her; otherwise he had never given her a thought. He had never worried about whether she had enough to eat, whether she might have been killed by a Russian sniper. Once he had given her a biscuit he happened to find in his pocket; she had seemed grateful and had then offered the biscuit to her elderly neighbour. At the time he had been touched, but he had seldom remembered to bring her anything to eat.

She had a strange, very un-European name – Zina.

Until the war, Zina seemed not to have known the woman who lived with her. She was an unpleasant old woman, amazingly hypocritical, full of insincere flattery, and obsessed with food. At this moment, with a wooden pestle and mortar, she was methodically grinding some mouldy grains of wheat that smelt of petrol.

Until the encirclement, the Germans had quite ignored the Russian civilians; now they visited their cellars frequently and got the old women to help with all kinds of tasks: washing clothes – with cinders instead of soap – cooking up bits of garbage, darning uniforms… The most important people in the cellars were the old women, but the soldiers did call on the younger women as well.

Bach had always thought that no one knew of his visits to this cellar. One day, however, he had been sitting on the bunk, holding Zina's hand between his own, when he had suddenly heard German being spoken behind the curtain. A voice that seemed familiar was saying: 'No, no, don't go behind that curtain. That's the lieutenant's Fraiilein.'

They lay there, side by side, without saying a word. His friends, his books, his romance with Maria, his childhood, his ties with his birthplace, his school, his university, the Russian campaign itself- his whole life had become insignificant… All that was simply the path he had followed on his way to this bunk fashioned from the remains of a charred door… The thought that he might lose this woman was appalling. He had found her, he had come to her; everything that had happened in Germany, in the whole of Europe, had been merely a prelude to this meeting. Until now he had failed to understand this. He had often forgotten her. He had enjoyed seeing her simply because he had thought there was nothing serious between them. But now she was all that remained of the world. Everything else lay buried under the snow… There was only this wonderful face, these slightly dilated nostrils, these strange eyes, the tired, helpless, childish look on her face that drove him so crazy. In October she had visited him in hospital; she had found out where he was and had come all the way on foot. And he hadn't even got out of bed to see her.

She knew he wasn't drunk. But he was on his knees, kissing her hands, kissing her feet, pressing his forehead and cheeks against her knees; he was talking quickly, passionately, but she couldn't understand, he knew she couldn't understand, she didn't know that terrible language of his.

Soon the wave which had carried him to this woman would tear him away from her, would separate them for ever. Still on his knees, he threw his arms round her legs and looked into her eyes. She listened, trying to guess what he was saying, trying to understand what had happened to him.

She had never seen such an expression on the face of a German. She had thought that only the eyes of a Russian could look so tender, so imploring, so mad, so full of suffering.

He was telling her that here, in this cellar, as he kissed her feet, he had understood love for the first time – not just from other people's words, but in his heart, in his blood. She was dearer to him than all his past, dearer to him than his mother, than Germany, than his future with Maria… He had fallen in love with her. Great walls raised up by States, racist fury, the heavy artillery and its curtain of fire were all equally insignificant, equally powerless in the face of love… He gave thanks to Fate for having allowed him to understand this before he died.

She couldn't understand what he was saying. All she knew, all she had ever heard was 'Halt, komm, bring, schneller, kaputt, brot, zucker'. But she could see how moved he was; she could guess what he was feeling. The German officer's hungry, frivolous mistress sensed his helplessness and felt both tender and indulgent. She knew Fate would separate them and she was reconciled to this. But now, seeing his despair, she sensed that their liaison was developing into something unexpectedly deep and powerful. She could hear it in his voice, she could see it in his eyes, in the way he kissed her.

As she played dreamily with his hair, she felt a sudden fear that this obscure force might seize hold of her too, might cause her to stumble, might be her ruin… Her heart was throbbing; it didn't want to listen to the cynical voice of warning.

39

Yevgenia got to know a new circle of people – people from the prison queues. On seeing her, they would ask: 'Well? Any news yet?' By now she had become quite experienced; instead of listening to advice, she gave it to others: 'Don't worry. Maybe he's in hospital. The conditions in hospital are very good. Everyone in the cells dreams of being sent there.'

She had managed to find out that Krymov was in the Lubyanka. None of her parcels had been accepted, but she hadn't lost hope: at Kuznetsky Most they would often refuse a parcel the first time, even the second time, and then suddenly say: 'Come on then, give us your parcel.'

Yevgenia went to Krymov's flat. A neighbour said that the house-manager had come round two months before with two soldiers; they had gone into Krymov's room, taken a lot of books and papers, put a seal on the door and left. Yevgenia looked at the wax seals and the bits of string; the neighbour, who was standing beside her, said: 'But for the love of God – I never told you anything.'

Then, as she showed Yevgenia to the door, she plucked up courage and whispered: 'What a fine man he was! He even volunteered to go to the front.'

Yevgenia didn't once write to Novikov.

How confused she was! She felt pity, love, repentance, joy at the Russian victories, guilt about Novikov, anxiety on his behalf, fear that she would lose him forever, an aching feeling of having surrendered all her rights…

Only a little while ago she had been living in Kuibyshev. She had been about to go to the front to visit Novikov; the bond between them seemed as necessary, as inevitable, as Fate itself. Yevgenia had been horrified at the idea that she was bound to him for ever, separated for ever from Krymov… There had been moments when everything about Novikov had seemed alien to her. His hopes, his worries, his circle of friends had nothing whatsoever in common with hers. There was something absurd about the idea of her pouring out tea at his table, receiving his friends, talking to the wives of colonels and generals.

She remembered Novikov's indifference towards Chekhov's 'The Bishop' and 'A Boring Story'. He preferred the tendentious novels of a Dreiser or a Feuchtwanger. But now that she knew her separation from Novikov was final, she felt a surge of tenderness; she thought many times of his obedient readiness to agree with everything she said. Then she felt overwhelmed by grief – would his hands never again touch her shoulders, would she really never see his face again?

Never before had she met such an unusual combination of shy kindness and rough strength. She was so drawn to him – he was so free of harshness and fanaticism, there was such a special, wise, peasant kindness in him. But as soon as she thought this, Yevgenia felt the presence of something dark and unclean. How had the NKVD found out what Krymov had said about Trotsky? Everything that tied her to Krymov was so desperately serious; it had been impossible to draw a line through their life together.

She would follow Krymov. What did it matter if he didn't forgive her – she deserved his never-ending reproaches. She knew that he needed her, that in prison he thought of her all the time.

Novikov would find the inner strength to get over their separation. But she had no idea what she needed for her own peace of mind. The knowledge that he no longer loved her, that he had calmly forgiven her? The knowledge that he was quite inconsolable, that he still loved her and would never forgive her? And was it easier to believe they had separated for ever, or to trust that one day they would be reunited?

What suffering she had caused everyone close to her. Could she really have done all this not for other people, but for herself, to gratify her own whims? Was she just a neurotic intellectual?

That evening, when they were all sitting at table, Yevgenia suddenly looked at her sister and asked: 'Do you know what I am?'

'You?' asked Lyudmila in surprise.

'Yes, me,' said Yevgenia. Then she explained: 'I'm a small dog of female gender.'

'A bitch?' said Nadya gaily.

'Precisely,' said Yevgenia.

They all burst out laughing – though they knew very well that Yevgenia was not joking.

'You know,' said Yevgenia, 'an admirer of mine in Kuibyshev, Limonov, once gave me a definition of middle-aged love. He said it was a spiritual vitamin deficiency. A man lives for a long time with his wife and develops a kind of spiritual hunger – he's like a cow deprived of salt, or an Arctic explorer who's gone without vegetables for years on end. A man with a forceful, strong-willed wife begins to long for a meek, gentle soul, someone timid and submissive.'

'This Limonov of yours sounds a fool,' said Lyudmila.

'What if a man needs several different vitamins – , ,  and D?' asked Nadya.

Later, as they were about to go to bed, Viktor said:

'Zhenevyeva, we often make fun of intellectuals for their doubts, their split personalities, their Hamlet-like indecisiveness. When I was young I despised that side of myself. Now, though, I've changed my mind: humanity owes many great books and great discoveries to people who were indecisive and full of doubts; they have achieved at least as much as the simpletons who never hesitate. And when it comes to the crunch, they too are prepared to go to the stake; they stand just as firm under fire as the people who are always strong-willed and resolute.'

'Thank you, Vitenka,' said Yevgenia. 'Are you thinking of the small female dog?'

'Precisely,' said Viktor.

He wanted to say something that would please Yevgenia.

'I was looking again at your painting, Zhenechka. I like it because of the feeling in it. Avant-garde art is nothing but novelty and audacity; there's no God in any of it.'

'You can say that again!' said Lyudmila. 'Green men, blue huts… It's totally cut off from reality.'

'Listen, Milka,' said Yevgenia. 'Matisse once said, "If I use green, that doesn't mean I'm about to paint some grass; if I use blue, that doesn't mean I'm painting a sky." Colour is simply an expression of the inner world of the artist.'

Viktor had wanted to please Yevgenia, but he couldn't help adding mockingly:

'Eckerman, on the other hand, said: "If Goethe were God, if he had created the world, he too would have made the grass green and the sky blue." Those words mean a lot to me. After all, I'm not entirely a stranger to the material God formed the world from… Though of course I also know that there are no paints or colours, only atoms and the void between them.'

Such conversations were rare, however. Usually they talked either about the war or about the Public Prosecutor.

It was a difficult time. Yevgenia's leave was coming to an end; soon she would have to return to Kuibyshev.

She dreaded having to explain herself to her boss. She had gone off to Moscow without saying a word; day after day she had hung around prisons and written petitions to the Public Prosecutor and the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs.

Yevgenia had always been terrified of official institutions and of having to write official requests; even the need to renew her passport had been enough to give her insomnia. Recently, though, her whole life seemed to have been made up of meetings with policemen, difficulties with passports and residence permits, statements and petitions addressed to the Public Prosecutor…

There was a deathly calm in Lyudmila's house. Viktor no longer went out to work; he just sat in his room for hours on end. Lyudmila came back from the special store looking angry and upset – the other wives no longer even said hello to her.

Yevgenia was very conscious of Viktor's nervousness. If the phone rang, he shuddered and rushed to pick up the receiver. While they were talking during meals, he often interrupted with a sudden: 'Sh! Sh! I think there's someone at the door.' He would go out into the hall and come back again with an embarrassed smile. The two sisters were well aware of the reason for this constant anxiety.

'That's how you develop persecution mania,' said Lyudmila. 'The psychiatric hospitals were full of people like that in 1937.'

In view of Viktor's constant apprehension, Yevgenia was particularly touched by the way he treated her. Once he even said: 'Remember, Zhenevyeva, I don't care in the least what anyone thinks of the fact that someone living in my house is trying to help a person who's been arrested. Do you understand? You must look on this as your own home.'

Yevgenia enjoyed talking to Nadya in the evenings.

'You're too clever for your own good,' she said once. 'You don't sound a bit like a young girl; you sound more like a member of a society for former political prisoners.'

'Future political prisoners,' said Viktor. 'I suppose you talk politics with your lieutenant too.'

'And what of it?' asked Nadya.

'You should stick to kissing,' said Yevgenia.

'That's what I was going to say myself,' said Viktor. 'It's less dangerous.'

Nadya was drawn to dangerous subjects; one moment she'd suddenly ask about Bukharin, the next she'd ask whether it was true that Lenin had thought highly of Trotsky and hadn't wanted to see Stalin during the last months of his life. Had he really written a testament that Stalin had kept secret?

When they were alone together, Yevgenia avoided asking Nadya about Lieutenant Lomov. Nevertheless, she soon knew more about him and Nadya's relationship with him than Lyudmila did – from listening to Nadya talk about politics, about the war, about conversations she'd had with her friends, about the poetry of Mandelstam and Akhmatova.

Lomov was obviously sharp-witted and difficult; his attitude towards everything generally accepted was one of cynicism. He wrote poetry himself; it was from him that Nadya had learnt her indifference towards Sholokhov and Nikolay Ostrovsky and her contempt for Demyan Byedniy and Tvardovsky. And Nadya was obviously parroting him when she said with a shrug of the shoulders: 'Revolutionaries are either stupid or dishonest – how can one sacrifice the life of a whole generation for some imaginary future happiness?'

Once Nadya said to Yevgenia:

'Why is it that the older generation always has to believe in something? Krymov believes in Lenin and Communism, Papa believes in freedom, Grandmother believes in the people and the workers… But to us, to the younger generation, all that just seems stupid. It's stupid to believe in things. One should live without beliefs.'

'The lieutenant's philosophy?' Yevgenia interrupted.

She was taken aback by Nadya's answer:

'In three weeks he'll be at the front. There's philosophy for you: alive today, dead tomorrow.'

Talking to Nadya, Yevgenia often remembered Stalingrad. Vera had also talked to her; Vera had also fallen in love. But what a difference between the clear simplicity of Vera's feelings and the confusion of Nadya's! And how her own life had changed! What a difference between her view of the war then and her view of it now, in these days of victory. Nevertheless, the war went on, and what Nadya had said was still true: 'Alive today, dead tomorrow.' What did the war care whether a lieutenant played the guitar and sang, whether he believed in the bright future of Communism and volunteered for work on the great construction sites, or whether he read the poetry of Annensky and had no faith whatsoever in the imaginary happiness of future generations?

Once Nadya showed Yevgenia a handwritten copy of a song written in one of the camps. It was about the freezing holds of the transport ships, the roar of the ocean, the way 'the zeks, suffering from seasickness, embraced like blood-brothers,' and how Magadan, the capital of Kolyma, rose up out of the mist.

When they first got back to Moscow, Viktor had lost his temper if Nadya so much as mentioned these subjects. Now, however, he had changed completely. Unable to restrain himself, he would complain in Nadya's presence how impossible it was to read these unctuous letters addressed to 'the great teacher, the best friend of all gymnasts, the wise father, the powerful coryphaeus, the brilliant genius,' a man who in addition to all this was kind, compassionate and modest. It began to seem as though Stalin himself ploughed fields, forged metal, fed babies in their cradles and handled a machine-gun – while the workers, students and scientists did nothing but pray to him. But for Stalin, a whole great nation would have perished long ago like helpless cattle.

One day Viktor counted eighty-six mentions of Stalin's name in one issue of Pravda; the following day he counted eighteen mentions in one editorial. He railed against the illegal arrests, the absence of freedom, and the way semi-literate Party members had the right to give orders to scientists and writers, to correct them and tick them off.

Something had indeed changed in Viktor. His growing horror at the destructive fury of the State, his increasing isolation and helplessness, his sense of doom – all this sometimes engendered fits of recklessness, a contempt for the dictates of prudence.

One morning Viktor ran into Lyudmila's room. She felt quite taken aback by his unaccustomed look of excitement and joy.

'Lyuda, Zhenya! I've just heard on the radio. We've set foot once more in the Ukraine!'

That afternoon, when Yevgenia came back from Kuznetsky Most, Viktor saw the expression on her face and asked – just as Lyudmila had asked him in the morning: 'What's happened?'

'They've taken my parcel! They've taken my parcel!' said Yevgenia.

Even Lyudmila could understand how much a parcel from Yevgenia would mean to Krymov.

'A resurrection from the dead,' she said, and added: 'I think you really must still love him. I've never seen you with eyes like that before.'

'Probably I really am mad,' Yevgenia whispered to her sister. 'I'm happy first because Nikolay will get my parcel, and secondly because I've realized today that there's absolutely no question of Novikov having informed. Do you understand?'

'You're not just mad,' said Lyudmila angrily. 'You're worse than mad.'

'Vitya, darling, do play us something on the piano,' said Yevgenia.

Viktor hadn't sat down at the piano for a long time. But now, instead of making excuses, he fetched some music, showed it to Yevgenia and asked: 'Is that all right?' Lyudmila and Nadya both disliked music; they went out into the kitchen. Viktor began, and Yevgenia listened. He played for a long time. When he'd finished, he just sat there without saying a word or even looking at Yevgenia; then he began another piece. There were moments when Yevgenia had the impression that Viktor was sobbing, but she couldn't see his face. Suddenly Nadya flung open the door and shouted:

'Turn on the radio! That's an order!'

The music stopped and was replaced by the metallic roar of Levitan's voice; at that moment he was announcing: 'The town was taken by storm, together with an important railway junction…'

Then he listed the generals and units which had distinguished themselves in combat, beginning with General Tolbukhin. Suddenly he said in an exultant voice: 'And also the tank corps commanded by Colonel Novikov.'

Yevgenia gave a quiet sigh. Then, as the announcer went on in his powerful, measured voice, 'Eternal glory to the heroes who have died for the freedom and independence of the Motherland,' she began to cry.

40

Yevgenia left. Now there was nothing to lighten the gloom in the house.

Viktor just sat at his writing desk for hours on end; often whole days went by without him even leaving the house. He was frightened: he felt sure he would meet people who had it in for him; he would be unable to avoid their merciless eyes.

The telephone was now absolutely silent. If it did ring – once every two or three days – Lyudmila would say: 'That's for Nadya.' And she would be right.

Viktor hadn't immediately understood the gravity of what had happened. At first he had even felt relieved to be sitting among his beloved books, in silence, far away from those morose, hostile faces. Soon, however, the silence at home began to oppress him; it made him feel anxious and gloomy. What was happening in the laboratory? How was the work going? What was Markov doing? He grew quite feverish at the thought that he was just sitting at home doing nothing at a time when he might be needed. But it was equally unbearable to imagine them getting on fine without him.

Lyudmila bumped into a friend of hers on the street – Stoinikova, who had a secretarial job in the Academy. She told Lyudmila every detail of the meeting of the Scientific Council; she had taken it down in shorthand from beginning to end.

The most important thing was that Sokolov hadn't spoken. Shisha-kov had said: 'We'd like to hear what you think, Pyotr Lavrentyevich.

You've been a colleague of Shtrum's for a long time.' Sokolov had answered that he had had heart trouble during the night and found it difficult to speak.

Strangely, this news brought Viktor no joy whatsoever.

Markov had spoken on behalf of the laboratory. He had been more measured than anyone else, avoiding political accusations and dwelling instead on Shtrum's unpleasant personality. He even mentioned his talent.

'He's a Party member. He had to speak,' said Viktor. 'He's not to blame.'

Most of the speeches, however, were terrible. Kovchenko had called him a cheat and a rogue. 'And now this Shtrum hasn't even deigned to appear,' he had said. 'He really has gone too far now. We'll have to speak to him in a different language. He's asking for it, after all.'

Grey-haired Prasolov, who used to compare Viktor's researches with those of Lebedev, had said: 'Certain people have managed to draw a quite indecent amount of attention to Shtrum's dubious theorizings.'

Doctor Gurevich had delivered a particularly unpleasant speech. After admitting his own grave mistake in overestimating Shtrum's work, he had remarked on his racial intolerance and said that a man who goes astray in politics must also go astray in the realm of science.

Svechin had spoken of 'the worthy Shtrum' and had quoted words of his to the effect that physics was a unity, that there was no German physics, American physics or Soviet physics.

'I did say something of the sort,' said Viktor. 'But to quote from a private conversation at that kind of meeting is a form of denunciation. '

Viktor was surprised that Pimenov had spoken: he wasn't directly connected with the Institute and no one had compelled him to speak. He confessed to having attached excessive importance to Shtrum's research and to overlooking its faults. It was quite extraordinary. Pimenov had once said that he bowed down before Viktor's work and that it was a joy to be able to assist in its realization.

Shishakov had spoken only briefly. A resolution had been proposed by Ramskov, the Secretary of the Institute Party Committee. It was a harsh one, asking the Administration to amputate the decaying limbs from a healthy collective. What was most hurtful was that the resolution didn't so much as mention Viktor's scientific achievements.

'So Sokolov behaved quite impeccably,' said Lyudmila. 'Where's Marya Ivanovna then? Surely he can't be that frightened?'

Viktor didn't answer.

How peculiar it was. Although the Christian notion of forgiveness was quite alien to him, Viktor didn't feel in the least angry with Shishakov or Pimenov. Nor did he feel resentful towards Svechin, Gurevich or Kovchenko. But one person made him speechless with fury; as soon as he thought of him, he felt such an oppressive rage that he could hardly breathe. It was as though Sokolov were to blame for all the injustice, all the cruelty, that Viktor had suffered. How could Pyotr Lavrentyevich forbid his wife to visit the Shtrums! What base cowardice! What vile cruelty!

What Viktor was unable to admit was that this fury stemmed as much from his own secret guilt concerning Sokolov, as from Sokolov's behaviour towards him.

Lyudmila talked more and more about material matters. Their excess living space, ration cards, salary attestations for the house management committee, the need to transfer to a different store, a ration book for the coming quarter, Viktor's out-of-date passport, the fact that he needed a certificate of employment in order to renew it- all these questions weighed on her day and night. How could they get enough money to live on?

At first Viktor had pooh-poohed all this, saying, 'I'll stay at home and concentrate on theory. I'll build my own laboratory hut.' Now, though, it was no longer a laughing matter. The money Viktor received as a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences was barely enough to pay for the flat, the dacha and the communal expenses. And he was weighed down by his sense of isolation.

But they had to live!

The idea that he could teach in an Institute of Higher Education now seemed impossible. There was no question of a politically dubious individual having contact with the young.

What could he do?

His position as a well-known scientist made it difficult for him to obtain a more modest post. No personnel officer would be willing to appoint a Doctor of Science as a technical editor or a secondary-school physics teacher. They would just gasp in astonishment.

When the thought of the work he had lost, the humiliations he had undergone and his state of dependency and need became quite unbearable, he thought: 'If only they'd arrest me right now!' But then what about Lyudmila and Nadya? They would still need something to live on.

As for selling strawberries from the dacha… They only had the dacha until May – then the lease had to be renewed. The dacha went with his job, not with being a member of the Academy. And out of pure negligence he'd forgotten to pay the rent; he'd meant to settle his arrears at the same time as he paid for the first six months of the next year. But sums of money that had then seemed trivial now seemed horrifyingly vast.

How could he get some money? Nadya needed a new coat.

By borrowing? But one can't borrow unless one has some hope of repaying. By selling off their belongings? But who'd want to buy china or a piano in the middle of a war? And anyway, he didn't want to do that. Lyudmila loved her collection of porcelain; even now, after Tolya's death, she sometimes took it out and admired it.

He often thought of going to the Military Commissariat, renouncing the exemption he was entitled to as an Academician, and volunteering to serve in the ranks. This thought somehow made him feel calmer.

But then he would feel anxious and tormented again. How would Lyudmila and Nadya make a living without him? By teaching? By renting out a room? But that would immediately bring in the house management committee and the police. There'd be interrogations, fines, searches at night…

How wise, how powerful, how threatening all these officials suddenly appeared – these house managers, district police-inspectors, housing inspectors, secretaries of personnel departments! To a man with no place in the world, even a slip of a girl at a desk in a rations office seems endowed with a vast, unshakeable power.

A sense of fear, indecisiveness and helplessness hung over Viktor all day long. But this feeling was by no means unchanging and uniform; on the contrary, each part of the day had its own particular melancholy, its own particular terror. Early in the morning, after the warmth of his bed, when the windows were still veiled by a cold, opaque semi-darkness, he felt like a helpless child faced with some awesome power that was about to crush him; he wanted to burrow under the blankets, curl up, screw up his eyes and keep absolutely still.

Later on in the morning he would think sadly about his work, longing to go into the Institute again. He felt then that he was someone useless, stupid and talentless.

It was as though the State, in its fury, was able to take away not only his freedom and peace of mind, but even his intelligence, his talent and his belief in himself. It had transformed him into a grey, stupid, miserable bourgeois.

Before lunch he would come to life for a while and even feel quite cheerful. But immediately afterwards his melancholy would return -as empty, thoughtless and tedious as ever.

The worst moments of terror came as twilight set in. Viktor had become terrified of the dark, as terrified as Stone Age man caught at dusk in the middle of a forest. His terror grew as he sat there and mulled over his memories. Out there in the darkness beyond the window a cruel and inevitable fate was watching. Any moment now he would hear a car in the street, a ring at the door, and then the scraping and squeaking of boots here in the room. There was nowhere he could escape to… And then suddenly, with a flash of joy and anger, Viktor no longer cared…

'It was all very well for those nobles who criticized the Tsarist regime,' he told Lyudmila. 'If one of them fell into disfavour, he just got into his carriage and left the capital for his estate in Penza. Everything was waiting for him – his neighbours, the park, all the joys of the country. He could go out hunting or sit down and write his memoirs. I wonder how those Voltairians would have got on with two weeks' redundancy pay and a reference in a sealed envelope that wouldn't even get them a job as a janitor.'

'Don't worry, Vitya,' said Lyudmila. 'We'll survive. I'll work at home. I'll do embroidery and make painted scarves. Or I might work as a laboratory assistant. I'll find a way of feeding you.'

Viktor kissed her hands. She couldn't understand why his face had taken on such a guilty, martyred expression, why a look of such pitiful entreaty should suddenly have come into his eyes.

Viktor paced up and down the room, singing the words of an old romance under his breath: '… he lies forgotten, quite alone…'

When Nadya heard about Viktor's idea of volunteering for the front, she said: 'There's one girl I know, Tonya Kogan, whose father volunteered. He was a specialist in Ancient Greek. He ended up in a reserve regiment near Penza, cleaning latrines. He was very shortsighted; once the captain came in and he swept some rubbish straight at him. The captain gave him a punch that burst his ear-drum.'

'Very well,' said Viktor. 'I won't sweep rubbish at captains.'

These days, Viktor talked to Nadya as though she were an adult. Never before, it seemed, had he got on so well with her. She had taken to coming home straight after school; Viktor thought it was because she didn't want to cause him anxiety and felt very moved. When she talked to him now, she no longer had that mocking look in her eyes; instead, they took on an expression of warmth and seriousness.

One evening Viktor got dressed and set off for the Institute; he wanted to look in through the windows. Perhaps the lights would be on for the second shift? Perhaps Markov had already finished installing the new apparatus?

Suddenly he felt afraid of meeting someone he knew and turned into a side-street. It was dark and deserted. He felt strangely happy. The snow, the night sky, the cool fresh air, the trees and their dark branches, the narrow strip of light escaping through the black-out curtain of a one-storey wooden house – everything was so beautiful. He was breathing in the night air, he was walking down a quiet side-street and no one was looking at him. He was alive, he was free. What more did he need? What more could he want? Then Viktor returned home and his happiness evaporated.

At first he had waited anxiously for Marya Ivanovna to get in touch. The days passed and she still didn't ring. Everything had been taken away from him – his work, his honour, his peace of mind, his belief in himself. Could they really have taken away the last refuge of all-love?

There were moments when he would sit there in despair, his head in his hands, thinking that it was impossible for him to go on living without her. Sometimes he would mutter: 'Well then, well then.' Or he would ask himself: 'Does anyone need me?'

There was, however, one glimmer of brightness at the bottom of his despair – he and Marya Ivanovna had behaved honourably. They had suffered themselves, but they hadn't tormented anyone else. But Viktor knew very well that these thoughts – whether resentful, resigned or philosophical – had very little to do with his deepest feelings. His anger with Marya Ivanovna, his self-mockery, his sorrowful acceptance of the inevitable, his thoughts about his conscience and his duty to Lyudmila – all these were simply a way of combating despair. When he remembered her eyes and her voice, he was overwhelmed by longing for her. Would he never see her again?

When he could no longer bear his sense of loss, his sense of the finality of their separation, he turned to Lyudmila, feeling quite ashamed of himself as he did so, and said: 'You know, I keep worrying about Madyarov. Do you think he's all right? Does anyone know what's happened to him? Maybe you ought to phone Marya Ivanovna after all. What do you think?'

What was most surprising of all was that Viktor went on working. This didn't, however, diminish his anxiety, his grief, or his longing for Marya Ivanovna. His work didn't help him combat grief and terror; he didn't turn to it for relief from his gloom and despair. His work was more to him than just a psychological prop: he worked simply because he was unable not to.

41

Lyudmila told Viktor that she had met the house-manager; he wanted Viktor to call on him in his office.

They tried to guess what he might want. Was it about their excess living space? Viktor's out-of-date passport? Or was it a check-up by the Military Commissariat? Or perhaps some informer had told them that Yevgenia had been living there without being registered?

'You should have asked,' said Viktor. 'Then we wouldn't be sitting here racking our brains like this.'

'Of course I should,' agreed Lyudmila. 'But I was quite taken aback. All he said was: "Ask your husband to come round. He can come in the morning now he no longer goes to work." '

'Heavens! They already know everything.'

'Of course they do. They're all spying on us – the janitors, the lift attendants, the neighbours' daily helps… What's there to be surprised about?'

'Yes, you're right. Do you remember the young man with a Party membership card who came round before the war? The one who asked you to keep an eye open and tell him who visited the neighbours?'

'I certainly do! I gave him such a dressing-down that he was already out in the passage before he had time to say, "But I thought you were socially conscious." '

Lyudmila had told this story hundreds of times. In the past Viktor had always tried to hurry her on; now, though, he kept asking her to tell him more details.

'You know what?' said Lyudmila. 'It might be something to do with the two tablecloths I sold in the market.'

'I don't think so,' said Viktor. 'Then it would be you they wanted to see.'

'Maybe there's something they want you to sign,' said Lyudmila uncertainly.

Viktor sank into the depths of depression. He kept remembering everything he had come out with during his conversations with Shishakov and Kovchenko. Then he thought back to his student days. How he had talked! He had argued with Dmitry. He had argued – though he had also sometimes agreed – with Krymov. But he had never, for even one minute, been an enemy of the Party, an enemy of Soviet power. Suddenly he remembered some particularly outspoken remark he had once made; he went quite cold at the mere thought of it. And then what about Krymov? He was as pure and dedicated a Communist as anyone. He certainly hadn't had any doubts – he was a fanatic. Yet even he had been arrested. And then there had been those terrible evenings with Karimov and Madyarov.

How strange everything was! Usually, as twilight set in, Viktor was haunted by the thought that he was about to be arrested. His feeling of terror grew more and more oppressive. But when at last the end seemed quite inevitable, he would feel a sense of joy and relief. No, he couldn't make head or tail of it.

And sometimes, thinking about the unjust reception his work had met with, he felt as though he were about to go out of his mind. But when the thought that he himself was stupid and talentless and that his work was nothing more than an obtuse, colourless mockery of reality – when this thought ceased to be a mere thought and became instead a fact of life, then he would all of a sudden feel happy.

He no longer even played with the idea of confessing his faults in public. He was a pitiful ignoramus and, even if he did repent, it wouldn't change anything. He was of no use to anyone. Whether he repented or not, he was of equally little significance to the furious State.

How Lyudmila had changed over these last weeks. She no longer phoned up the house-manager to say: 'I need a locksmith at once.' She no longer initiated a public inquiry on the staircase, demanding: 'Who's emptied their rubbish on the floor again?' Even the way she dressed was somehow nervous. One day she put on an expensive fur coat just to go and buy some oil; another day she wrapped herself up in an old grey dress and put on a coat she had meant to give to the lift attendant long before the war had even begun.

Viktor looked at his wife, wondering what the two of them would be like in ten or fifteen years.

'Do you remember Chekhov's story "The Bishop"? The mother used to take her cow out to graze and tell the other women how her son had once been a bishop. No one believed her.'

'No, I don't remember', said Lyudmila. 'I read it when I was a little girl.'

'Well, read it again,' said Viktor irritably. He had always resented Lyudmila's indifference towards Chekhov; he suspected she hadn't even read most of his stories.

How very strange! The weaker and more helpless he became, the nearer he seemed to a state of complete entropy, the more of a nonentity he felt he had become in the eyes of the caretaker and the girls in the rations office, in the eyes of passport inspectors, personnel managers, laboratory assistants, scientists and friends, even in the eyes of his family, perhaps even in the eyes of Chepyzhin and Lyudmila -then the more certain he felt that Masha loved and treasured him. They didn't see one another, but he knew this for sure. After each new humiliation, after each new blow of fate, he would say, 'Can you see me, Masha?'

And so there he was, sitting next to his wife, talking to her, and all the time thinking his own secret thoughts.

The telephone rang. Its ringing now made Viktor as anxious as if it were the middle of the night and a telegram had arrived with news of some tragedy.

'I know what it is,' said Lyudmila. 'Someone promised to phone me about a job in a co-operative.'

She picked up the receiver. Raising her eyebrows, she said: 'He's just coming.'

'It's for you,' she said to Viktor.

Viktor looked at her questioningly.

She covered the receiver with the palm of her hand and said: 'It's a voice I don't know. I can't think…'

He took the receiver from her.

'Certainly,' he said. 'I'll hold on.'

Now it was Lyudmila's turn to look questioningly at him. He groped on the table for a pencil and scrawled a few letters on a scrap of paper. Very slowly, not knowing what she was doing, Lyudmila made the sign of the cross first over herself and then over Viktor. Neither of them said a word.

'This is a bulletin from all the radio services of the Soviet Union.'

A voice unbelievably similar to the voice that had addressed the nation, the army, the entire world on 3 July, 1941, now addressed a solitary individual holding a telephone receiver.

'Good day, comrade Shtrum.'

At that moment everything came together in a jumble of half-formed thoughts and feelings – triumph, a sense of weakness, fear that all this might just be some maniac playing a trick on him, pages of closely written manuscript, that endless questionnaire, the Lubyanka…

Viktor knew that his fate was now being settled. He also had a vague sense of loss, as though he had lost something peculiarly dear to him, something good and touching.

'Good day, Iosif Vissarionovich,' he said, astonished to hear himself pronouncing such unimaginable words on the telephone.

The conversation lasted two or three minutes.

'I think you're working in a very interesting field,' said Stalin.

His voice was slow and guttural and he placed a particularly heavy stress on certain syllables; it was so similar to the voice Viktor had heard on the radio that it sounded almost like an impersonation. It was like Viktor's imitation of Stalin when he was playing the fool at home. It was just as everyone who had ever heard Stalin speak – at a conference or during a private interview – had always described it.

Perhaps it really was a hoax after all?

'I believe in my work,' said Viktor.

Stalin was silent for a moment. He seemed to be thinking over what Viktor had said.

'Has the war made it difficult for you to obtain foreign research reports?' asked Stalin. 'And do you have all the necessary laboratory equipment?'

With a sincerity that he himself found astonishing, Viktor said: 'Thank you very much, Iosif Vissarionovich. My working conditions are perfectly satisfactory.'

Lyudmila was still standing up, as though Stalin could see her. Viktor motioned to her to sit down. Stalin was silent again, thinking over what Viktor had said.

'Goodbye, comrade Shtrum, I wish you success in your work.'

'Goodbye, comrade Stalin.'

He put down the phone.

There they both were, still sitting opposite each other – just as when they had been talking, a few minutes before, about the tablecloths Lyudmila had sold at the Tishinsky market.

'I wish you success in your work,' said Viktor with a strong Georgian accent.

There was something extraordinary about the way nothing in the room had changed. The sideboard, the piano, the chairs, the two unwashed plates on the table, were exactly the same as when Viktor and Lyudmila had been talking about the house-manager. It was enough to drive one insane. Hadn't their whole lives been turned upside down? Wasn't a new destiny now awaiting them?

'What did he say to you?'

'Nothing special. He just asked if I was having difficulty in obtaining foreign research literature,' said Viktor, trying to sound calm and unconcerned.

For a moment he felt almost embarrassed at his sudden feeling of happiness.

'Lyuda, Lyuda,' he said. 'Just think! I didn't repent. I didn't bow down. I didn't write to him. He phoned me himself.'

The impossible had happened. Its significance was incalculable. Was this really the same Viktor Pavlovich who had tossed about in bed and been unable to sleep, who had lost his head over some questionnaire, who had scratched himself as he wondered anxiously what had been said about him at the Scientific Council, who had gone over his sins one by one, who had repented – at least in thought – and begged for forgiveness, who had expected to be arrested or to live the rest of his life in poverty, who had trembled at the thought of talking to a girl at the passport office or the rations desk?

'My God, my God!' said Lyudmila. 'And to think that Tolya will never know!' She went to Tolya's room and opened the door.

Viktor picked up the telephone receiver and put it down again.

'But what if the whole thing was a hoax?' he said, going over to the window.

The street was deserted. A woman went by, dressed in a quilted coat.

He returned to the telephone and drummed on the receiver with his finger. 'How did my voice sound?'

'You spoke very slowly. You know, I've no idea what made me suddenly stand up like that.'

'Stalin himself!'

'Perhaps it really was just a hoax?'

'No one would dare. You'd get ten years for a joke like that.'

It was only an hour since Viktor had been pacing up and down the room, humming the old romance by Golenishchev-Kutuzov:

'… he lies forgotten, quite alone…'

Stalin and his telephone calls! Rumours would go round Moscow once or twice every year: 'Stalin's phoned Dovzhenko, the film director! Stalin's phoned Ilya Ehrenburg!'

There was no need for Stalin to give direct orders – to ask that a prize be awarded to X, a flat be allocated to Y, or an Institute be set up for Z. Stalin was above such matters; they were dealt with by subordinates who divined Stalin's will through his tone of voice and the look in his eyes. If Stalin gave a man a quick smile, his life would be transformed overnight; he would suddenly rise up out of the outer darkness to be greeted with power, fame and showers of honours. Dozens of notables would bow down before him – Stalin had smiled at him, Stalin had joked with him on the phone.

People repeated these conversations to one another in detail; every word of Stalin's seemed astonishing. And the more banal his words, the more astonishing they seemed. It was as if Stalin was incapable of saying anything ordinary.

Apparently he had phoned a famous sculptor and said, laughing:

'Hello, you old drunkard!'

He had rung a famous writer, a very decent man, and asked about a comrade of his who had been arrested. Taken aback, the writer had mumbled something quite inaudible in reply. Stalin had then said: 'You don't know how to defend your friends.' [51]

He had phoned up a newspaper for the young. The deputy editor had said: 'Bubyekin speaking.'

'And who is Bubyekin?' Stalin had asked.

'You should know,' Bubyekin had answered. He had then slammed down the receiver.

Stalin had called back and said: 'Comrade Bubyekin, this is Stalin speaking. Please explain who you are.'

After this, Bubyekin had apparently spent two weeks in hospital recovering from shock.

One word of his could annihilate thousands, tens of thousands, of people. A Marshal, a People's Commissar, a member of the Central Committee, a secretary of an obkom - people who had been in command of armies and fronts, who had held sway over vast factories, entire regions, whole Republics – could be reduced to nothing by one angry word. They would become labour-camp dust, rattling their tin bowls as they waited outside the kitchen for their ration of gruel.

One night Stalin and Beria had visited an Old Bolshevik from Georgia who had recently been released from the Lubyanka; they had stayed till morning. The other tenants hadn't dared use the toilet and hadn't even gone out to work in the morning. The door had been opened by a midwife, the senior tenant. She was wearing a nightdress and holding a pug-dog in her arms; she was very angry that the visitors hadn't rung the bell the correct number of times. As she put it herself: 'I opened the door and saw a portrait. Then the portrait started walking towards me.' Apparently Stalin had gone out into the corridor and looked for a long time at the sheet of paper by the phone where the tenants noted how many calls they had made.

It was the very banality of all these incidents that people found so amusing – and so unbelievable. Just imagine! Stalin himself had walked down the corridor of a communal flat.

It was unbelievable. It needed only one word from Stalin for vast buildings to rise up, for columns of people to march out into the taiga and fell trees, for hundreds of thousands of men and women to dig canals, build towns and lay down roads in a land of permafrost and polar darkness. He was the embodiment of a great State. The Sun of the Stalinist Constitution… The Party of Stalin… Stalin's five-year plans… Stalin's construction works… Stalin's strategy… Stalin's aviation… A great State was embodied in him, in his character, in his mannerisms.

'I wish you success in your work…,' Viktor kept repeating. 'You're working in a very interesting field…'

One thing was quite clear: Stalin knew about the importance attributed to nuclear physics in other countries.

Viktor was aware of the strange tension that was beginning to surround this area of research. He could sense this tension between the lines of articles by English and American physicists; he could sense it in the odd hiatuses that sometimes interrupted their chains of reasoning. He had noticed that the names of certain frequently-published researchers had disappeared from the pages of physics journals. Everyone studying the fission of heavy nuclei seemed to have vanished into thin air; no one even cited their work any longer. This silence, this tension, grew still more palpable when it came to anything relating to the fission of uranium nuclei.

Chepyzhin, Sokolov and Markov had discussed this more than once. Only the other day Chepyzhin had talked about the shortsightedness of people who couldn't see the practical application of the reactions of heavy nuclei to bombardment by neutrons. He himself had chosen not to work in this field…

The air was still full of the fire and smoke of battle, the rumble of tanks and the tramping of boots, but a new, still silent tension had appeared in the world. The most powerful of all hands had picked up a telephone receiver; a theoretical physicist had heard a slow voice say: 'I wish you success in your work.'

A new shadow, still faint and mute, barely perceptible, now hung over the ravaged earth, over the heads of children and old men. No one knew of it yet, no one was aware of the birth of a power that belonged to the future.

It was a long way from the desks of a few dozen physicists, from sheets of paper covered with alphas, betas, gammas, ksis and sigmas, from laboratories and library shelves to the cosmic and satanic force that was to become the sceptre of State power. Nevertheless, the journey had been begun; the mute shadow was thickening, slowly turning into a darkness that could envelop both Moscow and New York.

Viktor didn't think at this moment about the success of his work -work that had seemed abandoned for ever in the drawer of his writing-desk, but which would now once again see the light and be incorporated into lectures and scientific papers. Nor did he think about the triumph of scientific truth; nor about how he could once again help the progress of science, have his own students, be mentioned in the pages of textbooks and journals, wait anxiously to see whether his theory corresponded to the truth revealed by calculating machines and photographic emulsions.

No, what Viktor felt was a sense of pride – pride that he had been victorious over his persecutors. Not long ago he had felt quite free of resentment. Even now, he had no desire to occasion these people harm, to get his revenge. But he did take great joy in remembering their acts of dishonesty, cowardice and cruelty. The worse someone had behaved, the sweeter it was to think of him now.

When Nadya arrived back from school, Lyudmila shouted out:

'Nadya, Stalin's just telephoned Papa!'

Nadya rushed into the room, her scarf trailing on the floor, her coat half on and half off. Seeing her reaction made it easier for Viktor to imagine everyone's consternation when, later today or tomorrow, they heard what had happened.

They sat down to lunch. Viktor suddenly pushed his spoon away and said: 'I really don't want anything to eat.'

'It's a complete rout for all your detractors and persecutors,' said Lyudmila. 'Just think what must be going on now in the Institute and the Academy!'

'Yes, yes.'

'And the other women in the special store will say hello to you again, Mama, and smile at you,' said Nadya.

'That's right,' replied Lyudmila with a little laugh.

Viktor had always detested bootlickers. Still, it pleased him to think how obsequiously Shishakov would smile at him now.

There was just one thing he didn't understand. Mixed with his joy and his feeling of triumph was a sadness that seemed to well up from somewhere deep underground, a sense of regret for something sacred and cherished that seemed to be slipping away from him. For some reason he felt guilty, but he had no idea what of or before whom.

He sat there, eating his favourite buckwheat-and-potato soup and remembering a spring night in Kiev when he was a child; he had watched the stars looking down at him between the chestnut blossoms and wept. The world had seemed splendid then, the future quite vast, full of goodness and radiant light. Today his fate had been decided. It was as though he were saying goodbye to that pure, childish, almost religious love of science and its magic, saying goodbye to what he had felt a few weeks before as he overcame his terror and refused to lie to himself.

There was only one person he could have talked to about all this; but she wasn't there.

There was one other strange thing. He felt impatient and greedy; he wanted the whole world to know what had happened. He wanted it to be known in the Institute, in the auditoriums of the University, in the Central Committee, in the Academy, in the house management office, in the dacha office, in the different scientific societies. But Viktor felt quite indifferent as to whether or not Sokolov knew. And deep down, quite unconsciously, he would have preferred Marya Ivanovna not to know. He had the feeling it was better for their love that he should be persecuted and unhappy.

He told Nadya and Lyudmila a story they had all known even before the war. One night Stalin appeared in the metro, slightly drunk, sat down beside a young woman, and asked: 'What can I do for you?'

'I'd love to look round the Kremlin,' the woman replied.

Stalin thought for a moment and said: 'Yes, I can certainly arrange that for you.'

'See!' exclaimed Nadya. 'You're such a great man now that Mama let you finish the story without interrupting. She's already heard it a hundred and ten times.'

Once again, for the hundred and eleventh time, they all laughed at the simple-minded woman in the metro.

'Vitya,' said Lyudmila. 'Maybe we should have something to drink to celebrate the occasion?' She went to fetch a box of sweets that had been set aside for Nadya's birthday. 'There,' she said. 'But calm down, Nadya. There's no need to throw yourself on them like a starving wolf!'

'Papa,' said Nadya, 'what right have we got to laugh at the woman in the metro? After all, you could have asked Stalin about Krymov and Uncle Dmitry.'

'What do you mean? How could I?'

'I think you could. Grandmother would have said something straight away. That's for sure.'

'Maybe,' said Viktor. 'Maybe.'

'Don't be silly,' said Lyudmila.

'We're not being silly,' said Nadya. 'We're talking about the life of your own brother.'

'Vitya,' said Lyudmila. 'You must phone Shishakov.'

'I don't think you've quite taken in what's happened,' said Viktor. 'There's no need for me to phone anyone.'

'You should phone Shishakov,' said Lyudmila obstinately.

'Me phone Shishakov? When Stalin's wished me success in my work?'

Something had changed in Viktor. Until now he had always felt indignant at the way Stalin was idolized, the way his name appeared again and again in every column of every newspaper. And then there were all the portraits, busts, statues, oratorios, poems, hymns… And the way he was called a genius, the father of the people…

What had made Viktor particularly indignant was the way even Lenin's name had been eclipsed; Stalin's military genius was often contrasted with Lenin's more civic genius. There was a play of Aleksey Tolstoy's where Lenin obligingly lit a match so Stalin could have a puff at his pipe. One artist had portrayed Stalin striding up the steps of the Smolny with Lenin darting along behind him like a bantam cock. And if Lenin and Stalin were portrayed together in public, then the children and old people would be gazing tenderly at Lenin while a procession of armed giants – workers and sailors festooned with machine-gun belts – marched towards Stalin. Historians describing critical moments in the life of the Soviet State made it seem as though Lenin were constantly asking Stalin for advice – during the Kronstadt rebellion, during the defence of Tsaritsyn, even during the invasion of Poland. The strike at Baku, which Stalin had participated in, and the newspaper Bdzola, which he had edited, seemed more important in the history of the Party than the whole of the revolutionary movement that had gone before.

'Bdzola, Bdzola,' Viktor had repeated angrily. 'What about Zhelayabov, Plekhanov and Kropotkin? What about the Decembrists? All we ever hear about now is Bdzola.'

For a thousand years Russia had been governed by an absolute autocracy, by Tsars and their favourites. But never had anyone held such power as Stalin.

Now, though, Viktor no longer felt angry or horrified. The greater Stalin's power, the more deafening the hymns and trumpets, the thicker the clouds of incense at the feet of the living idol, the happier Viktor felt.

It was getting dark and Viktor didn't feel afraid.

Stalin had spoken to him. Stalin had said: 'I wish you success in your work.'

When it was fully dark, Viktor went out for a walk. He no longer felt helpless and doomed. No, he felt calm. The people who counted already knew everything. He found it strange even to think about Krymov, Abarchuk and Dmitry, about Madyarov and Chetverikov. Their fate was not his fate. He felt sad for them, but he felt no empathy.

Viktor was happy in his triumph: his intelligence, his moral strength had brought him victory. It didn't matter that this happiness was so different from what he had felt when he had been on trial, when he had felt his mother standing there beside him. He no longer cared whether Madyarov had been arrested or whether Krymov had informed on him. For the first time in his life he was free of anxiety about his careless talk and seditious jokes.

Late at night, when Lyudmila and Nadya were already in bed, the telephone rang.

'Hello,' said a quiet voice. Viktor felt an even greater excitement than he had earlier in the day.

'Hello,' he answered.

'I need to hear your voice. Say something to me.'

'Masha, Mashenka,' Viktor began. Then he fell silent.

'Viktor, darling,' she said. 'I can't lie to Pyotr Lavrentyevich. I told him I love you. I promised never to see you.'

The following morning Lyudmila came into the room, ruffled his hair, kissed him on the forehead and said: 'Did you phone someone last night? I thought I heard you in my sleep.'

'No, you must have been dreaming,' said Viktor, looking her straight in the eye.

'Don't forget. You have to go and see the house-manager.'

42

The investigator's jacket looked strange to Krymov, accustomed as he was to a world of soldiers' tunics and military uniforms. His face, however, was quite ordinary; Krymov had seen any number of political officers whose faces had the same sallow colour.

The first questions were easy enough; it began to seem as though the whole thing would be as straightforward as his first name, patronymic and surname.

The prisoner answered the investigator's questions quickly, as though anxious to assist him. After all, the investigator didn't know anything about him. The official-looking table that stood between them in no way divided them. They had both paid their Party membership dues, both watched the film Chapayev and both listened to briefings by the Central Committee; they had both been sent to make speeches in the factories during the week before May Day.

There were a number of preliminary questions and Krymov began to feel more at ease. Soon they would get to the heart of the matter and he would explain how he had led his men out of encirclement.

Finally it was established beyond doubt that the unshaven creature sitting at the desk in a soldier's open-collared tunic and a pair of trousers with the buttons torn off had a first name, patronymic and surname, had been born in the autumn, was of Russian nationality, had fought in two World Wars and one Civil War, had not been a member of any White Army bands, had not been involved in any court cases, had been a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) for twenty-five years, had been chosen as a delegate to a Comintern Congress and to the Pacific Ocean Trade Union Congress, and had not been awarded any orders or medals.

Krymov's main anxiety was centred on his time in encirclement, on the men he had led across the bogs of Byelorussia and the fields of the Ukraine.

Which of them had been arrested? Which of them had broken down under interrogation, had lost all sense of conscience? Krymov was taken aback by a sudden question concerning other, more distant, years.

'Tell me, when did you first become acquainted with Fritz Hacken?'

After a long silence, he replied:

'If I'm not mistaken, it was at the Central Trade Union Headquarters, in Tomsky's office. In spring 1927, if I'm not mistaken.'

The investigator nodded as though he had already known about this far-distant event. He sighed, opened a file inscribed 'To be kept in perpetuity', slowly loosened the white tapes and began leafing through pages covered in writing. Krymov caught a glimpse of different colours of ink, single- and double-spaced typescript and occasional appended notes in red and blue crayon and ordinary pencil.

The investigator turned the pages over slowly; he was like a prize-winning student glancing through a textbook, already certain he knows it from cover to cover. Sometimes he glanced at Krymov. At these moments he was like an artist checking his sketch against the model: the physical characteristics, the moral characteristics, even the window of the soul – the eyes…

But how evil he looked now. His very ordinary face – since 1937 Krymov had seen many such faces in raykoms, obkoms, district police stations, libraries and publishing houses – suddenly lost its ordinariness. He seemed to be made up of distinct cubes that had yet to be gathered into the unity of a human being. His eyes were on one cube, his slow hands on another; his mouth that kept opening to ask questions was on a third. Sometimes the cubes got mixed up and out of proportion. His mouth became vast, his eyes were set in his wrinkled forehead and his forehead was in the place that should have been occupied by his chin.

'So that's what happened,' said the investigator. His face became human again. He closed the file, but without tying up the curling tapes.

'Like a shoe with the laces undone,' thought the creature with no buttons on his trousers.

Very slowly and solemnly the investigator pronounced the words, 'The Communist International.' Then, in his usual voice: 'Nikolay Krymov, Comintern official.' And then, slowly, solemnly: 'The Third Communist International.' After that he remained silent for some time, apparently lost in thought.

Then, with sudden animation, in a frank, man-to-man voice, he said:

'That Muska Grinberg's a dangerous woman, isn't she?'

Krymov blushed, surprised and deeply embarrassed.

Yes! But what a long time ago that had been – even if he was still embarrassed. He must have already been in love with Zhenya. He had dropped in on an old friend after work. It must have been to return some money he had borrowed to go on a journey. After that he could remember everything clearly, without any 'must have's'. His friend Konstantin had been out… But he had never really liked her – a woman with the hoarse voice of a chain-smoker, whose judgments were always sweeping and assured. She was the Deputy Party Secretary in the Institute of Philosophy. She was, admittedly, beautiful -'a fine figure of a woman'. Yes, he had indeed pawed Kostya's wife on the couch. They'd even met a couple of times afterwards…

An hour before, he had thought that his investigator knew nothing about him, that he had recently been promoted from some village. But time passed and the investigator kept on asking questions about the foreign Communists who had been Krymov's comrades; he knew the familiar forms of their forenames, their nicknames, the names of their wives and lovers. There was something sinister in the extent of his knowledge. Even if Krymov had been a very great man, whose every word was important to history, it would still not have been worth gathering so many trifles, so much junk, into this great file.

But nothing was considered trifling.

Wherever he had been, he had left footprints behind him: a whole retinue had followed on his heels, committing his life to memory.

A mocking remark he had made about one of his comrades, a word or two about a book he had read, a comic toast he had made on someone's birthday, a three-minute telephone conversation, an angry note he had addressed to the platform at a conference – everything had been gathered together into the file.

A great State had busied itself over his affair with Muska Grinberg. Meaningless trifles and empty, careless words had become intertwined with his deepest convictions; his love for Yevgenia Nikolaevna didn't mean anything – what mattered were his most casual, shallow affairs. He himself could no longer distinguish between what was important and what was trivial. One disrespectful remark he had made about Stalin's knowledge of philosophy appeared to mean more than ten years of ceaseless work on behalf of the Party. Had he really, in 1932, in Lozovsky's office, told a visiting comrade from Germany that the Soviet Trade Union Movement represented the State more than the proletariat? A visiting comrade who had informed on him?

Heavens, what a tissue of lies it all was! A cobweb that was gumming up his mouth and nostrils.

'Please understand, comrade investigator…'

'Citizen investigator.'

'Yes, of course – citizen. Please – this is just a lie, a fabrication. I've been a Party member for more than twenty-five years. I incited soldiers to mutiny in 1917. I was four years in China. I worked day and night. Hundreds of people know me… In the present war I volunteered for the front. Even at the worst moments, people trusted me and followed me… I…'

'Do you think you're here to receive a testimonial?' asked the investigator. 'Are you applying for a citation?' He shook his head. 'And he even has the nerve to complain that his wife doesn't bring him any parcels. What a husband!'

That was something he had mentioned to Bogoleev in their cell. Oh God! He remembered that Katsenelenbogen had once joked: 'A certain Greek once said, "All things flow"; we say, "All people inform".'

Inside the file, his life had somehow lost its proportions, lost its true scale. The whole of his life had coagulated into grey, sticky vermicelli and he no longer knew what mattered: his four exhausting years of underground work in the sultry heat of Shanghai, the river-crossing at Stalingrad, his faith in the Revolution – or a few exasperated words he had said at 'The Pines' sanatorium, to a journalist he didn't know very well, about the wretchedness of Soviet newspapers.

And then, in a quiet, good-natured tone of voice, the investigator said:

'And now tell me how the Fascist Hacken inveigled you into sabotage and espionage.'

'You don't mean that seriously, do you?'

'Don't play the fool, Krymov. You've already seen that we know every step of your life.'

'But, that's just why…'

'Cut it out, Krymov. You can't fool the security organs.'

'But the whole thing's a lie.'

'Listen, Krymov. We've got Hacken's own confession. He repented of his crime and told us of his criminal association with you.'

'You can show me ten of Hacken's confessions. They're all forgeries. It's madness! And if you have got this confession of Hacken's, then why was I, a spy and a saboteur, trusted to act as a military commissar, to lead people into battle? What were you doing then, where were you looking?'

'So you think you've been called here to teach us how to do our work, do you? You want to supervise the work of the organs?'

'What's all that got to do with it? It's just a matter of logic. I know Hacken. He couldn't have said he recruited me. It's not possible.'

'Why not?'

'He's a Communist, a fighter for the Revolution.'

'Have you always been certain of that?'

'Yes,' answered Krymov. 'Always.'

Nodding his head, the investigator leafed through the file, repeating to himself in apparent confusion: 'Well, that does change things, that does change things…'

Then he held out a sheet of paper to Krymov, covering part of it with the palm of his hand. 'Read through that.'

Krymov read what was written and shrugged his shoulders.

'It's pretty poor stuff,' he said, raising his eyes from the page.

'Why?'

'The man's neither brave enough to declare firmly that Hacken's an honest Communist, nor is he cowardly enough to level accusations against him. So he worms his way out of saying anything.'

The investigator took his hand away and showed Krymov his own signature next to the date, February 1938.

They both fell silent. Then the investigator asked sternly:

'Perhaps you were being beaten then and that's why you gave such testimony.'

'No, no one beat me.'

The investigator's face broke up into separate cubes: his eyes watched Krymov with exasperated contempt, while his mouth said:

'And so, during the time you were encircled, you left your unit for two days. You were taken by air to the German Army HQ where you handed over important information and received your new instructions.'

'Raving nonsense,' muttered the creature in the soldier's tunic with the unbuttoned collar.

The investigator carried on. Now Krymov no longer saw himself as a man of high principles, strong, clear-minded, ready to go to the scaffold for the sake of the Revolution. Instead he felt weak and indecisive; he had said things he shouldn't; he had allowed himself to mock the reverence of the Soviet people for comrade Stalin. He had been undiscriminating in his associates: many of his friends had been victims of repression. His theoretical views were totally confused. He had slept with his friend's wife. He had given cowardly, dishonest testimony about Hacken.

Was it really him sitting here? Was all this really happening to him? It was a dream, a midsummer nightmare…

'Before the war you supplied an émigré Trotskyist centre with information about the thinking of leading figures in the international revolutionary movement.'

You didn't have to be a scoundrel or an idiot to suspect such a filthy, pathetic creature of treachery. If Krymov had been in the investigator's shoes, he certainly wouldn't have trusted such a creature… He knew the new type of Party official very well – those who had replaced the Old Bolsheviks liquidated or dismissed from their posts in 1937. They were people of a very different stamp. They read new books and they read them in a different way: they didn't read them, they 'mugged them up'. They loved and valued material comforts: revolutionary asceticism was alien to them, or, at the very least, not central to their character. They knew no foreign languages, were infatuated with their own Russian-ness – and spoke Russian ungrammatically. Some of them were by no means stupid, but their power seemed to lie not so much in their ideas or intelligence, as in their practical competence and the bourgeois sobriety of all their opinions.

Krymov could understand that both the new and the old cadres were bound together by a great common goal, that this gave rise to many similarities, and that it was unity that mattered, not differences. Nevertheless, he had always been conscious of his own superiority over these new people, the superiority that was his as an Old Bolshevik.

What he hadn't noticed was that it was no longer a matter of his own willingness to accept the investigator, to recognize him as a fellow Party member. Now his longing to be one with his investigator was really a pathetic hope that the latter would accept him, would accept Nikolay Grigorevich Krymov, or would at least admit that not everything about him was wretched, dishonest and insignificant.

Krymov hadn't noticed how it had happened, but now it was his investigator's self-assurance that was the assurance of a true Communist.

'If you are genuinely capable of sincere repentance, if you still feel any love at all for the Party, then help the Party with your confession.'

Suddenly, shaking off the terrible impotence that was eating into his cerebral cortex, Krymov shouted: 'No, you won't get anything out of me! I'm not going to give false testimony! Do you hear? I won't sign even if you torture me!'

'Think about it for a while,' said the investigator.

He began leafing through some papers. He didn't once look at Krymov. The minutes went by. He moved Krymov's file to one side and took a sheet of paper out of a drawer. He seemed to have forgotten about Krymov. He was writing calmly, unhurriedly, screwing up his eyes as he collected his thoughts. Then he read through what he had written, thought about it, took an envelope out of a drawer and started writing an address on it. It was possible that this wasn't an official letter at all. He read through the address and underlined the surname twice. He filled his fountain-pen, spending a long time wiping off the drops of ink. He began sharpening pencils over an ashtray. The lead in one of the pencils kept breaking. Without showing the least sign of irritation, the investigator began sharpening it again. Then he tried the point on his finger.

Meanwhile the creature thought. It had a lot to think about.

How can there have been so many informers? I must remember everything. I must work out who can have denounced me. But why bother? Muska Grinberg… The investigator will come to Zhenya in time… But it is strange that he hasn't asked about her at all, that he hasn't said a word… Surely Vasya didn't inform on me? But what, just what am I supposed to confess…? What's hidden will remain hidden, but here I am. Tell me what all this is for, Party. Iosif, Koba, Soso. What can have made him kill so many fine, strong people? Katsenelenbogen's right – it's not the investigator's questions I should be afraid of, but his silences, the things he keeps silent about. Yes, soon he'll come to Zhenya. She must have been arrested too. Where had all this started, how had it begun? Can it really be me sitting here? How awful. What a lot of shit there is in my life. Forgive me, comrade Stalin! Just say one word to me, Iosif Vissarionovich! I'm guilty, I've been confused, I've said things I shouldn't, I've doubted, the Party knows everything, the Party sees everything. Why, why did I ever talk to that literary critic? What does it matter anyway? But how does my time in encirclement fit into all this? The whole thing's quite mad. It's a lie, a slander, a provocation. Why on earth didn't I say about Hacken, 'My brother, my friend, I have no doubt at all of your purity…'? Hacken had averted his unhappy eyes.

Suddenly the investigator asked: 'Well, have you remembered yet?'

Krymov threw up his hands helplessly. 'There isn't anything for me to remember.'

The telephone rang.

'Hello.' The investigator glanced cursorily at Krymov. 'Yes, you can get everything ready. It will soon be time.' For a moment Krymov thought the conversation was about him.

The investigator put down the receiver and picked it up again. The ensuing conversation was extraordinary: it was as though the creature sitting next to the investigator were not a man, but some quadruped.

He was obviously talking to his wife. First of all they discussed household matters: 'At the special store? Goose – that's fine. But they should have given it to you on your first coupon. Sergey's wife rang the department. She got a leg of lamb on her first coupon. They've asked us… By the way I got some cottage cheese in the canteen. Eight hundred grams. No, it's not sour… How's the gas been today? And don't forget about the suit.'

After this he said: 'Well then, take care, don't miss me too much. Did you dream about me? What did I look like? In my underpants again? Pity! Well, I'll teach you a thing or two when I get home. Now you be careful – housework's all very well, but you mustn't lift anything heavy.'

There was something improbable about how very bourgeois and ordinary it all was: the more normal, the more human the conversation, the less the speaker seemed like a human being. There's something ghastly about a monkey imitating the ways of a man… At the same time Krymov had a clear sense that he himself was no longer a human being – when had people ever had conversations like this in front of a third person…? 'Want a big fat kiss? No? Oh well…'

Of course, if Bogoleev's theory was correct, if Krymov was a Persian cat, a frog, a goldfinch or a beetle on a stick, then there wasn't anything in the least surprising about this conversation.

Towards the end, the investigator said: 'Something burning? Run then, run. So long.'

Then he took out a book and a writing pad and began to read. From time to time he noted something down in pencil. He might be preparing for a meeting of some study-group, or perhaps he was going to give a lecture…

Suddenly, in extreme exasperation, he said: 'Why do you keep tapping your feet like that? This isn't a gymnastics exhibition.'

'I've got pins and needles, citizen investigator.'

But the investigator had already buried himself again in his book.

After another ten minutes he asked absent-mindedly: 'Well? Have you remembered?'

'Citizen investigator, I need to go to the lavatory.'

The investigator sighed, walked to the door and gave a quiet call. His face was just like that of a dog-owner whose dog asks to go out for a walk at the wrong time. A young soldier in battledress walked in. Krymov looked him up and down with a practised eye: everything was in order – his belt was properly tucked in, his collar was clean and his forage cap was tilted at the right angle. It was only his work that was not that of a soldier.

Krymov got up. His feet were numb from sitting so long on the chair; at his first steps they almost gave way under him. He thought hurriedly, both while he was in the lavatory with the soldier watching him, and on his way back. He had a lot to think about.

When he got back the investigator was no longer there. A young man was sitting in his place. He had a captain's blue epaulettes on his uniform, bordered with red braid. He looked sullenly at Krymov as though he had known and hated him all his life.

'What are you standing up for?' he barked. 'Go on, sit down. And sit up straight, you sod. You'll catch it in the guts if you keep on slouching like that. That'll straighten you out.'

'So now we've introduced ourselves,' thought Krymov. He felt terrified, more terrified than he had ever felt during the war.

'Now it's going to begin in earnest,' he thought.

The captain let out a cloud of tobacco smoke. Through the haze, his voice continued: 'Here's a pen and some paper. Do you think I'm going to do your writing for you?'

The captain obviously enjoyed insulting him. Or was he just doing his duty? Perhaps he was like an artillery officer ordered to keep on firing day and night simply to fray the enemy's nerves.

'Don't slouch like that! Do you think you're here to have a good sleep?'

A few minutes later the captain shouted: 'Didn't you hear what I said? Have you gone deaf?'

He went up to the window, raised the black-out blind and switched off the light. A grey morning looked gloomily into Krymov's eyes. It was the first time he had seen daylight since he had arrived in the Lubyanka.

'So we've whiled the whole night away,' he thought.

Had he ever known a worse morning? Had he really, only a few weeks ago, been lying in a bomb-crater, happy and free, while friendly pieces of iron whistled over his head?

Time had become confused: it was only very recently that he had left Stalingrad, yet he had been sitting here in this office for an interminable length of time.

What a grey, stony light it was. The windows looked out onto the central pit of the Inner Prison. It wasn't light at all – it was just dirty water. Objects looked still more hostile, still more sullen and official than they had under the electric light.

No, it wasn't that his boots were too small; it was simply that his feet had swollen.

How had his past life and work become linked to the time he had been surrounded in 1941? Whose fingers had joined together things that could never be joined? And what was this for? Who needed all this? Why?

His thoughts burned so fiercely that there were moments when he quite forgot the aching pain in his spine and the small of his back. He no longer even felt how his swollen legs were bursting open the tops of his boots.

Fritz Hacken… How could he forget that in 1938 he had been sitting in a room just like this? Yes, but there was something very different in the way he had been sitting then – inside his pocket he had had a pass. What was worst of all was the way he had been so anxious to please everyone – the official in charge of issuing passes, the janitors, the lift attendant in military uniform. The investigator had said: 'Comrade Krymov, please assist us.'

No, there was something still more vile – his desire to be sincere! Yes, now he did remember. All that had been required of him was sincerity. And he had indeed been sincere: he had remembered Hack-en's mistaken appraisal of the Spartakist movement, the ill-will he had felt towards Thalman, the way he had wanted royalties for his book, the way he had divorced Else when Else was pregnant… He had, of course, remembered good things as well… The investigator had noted down the sentence: 'On the basis of many years' acquaintance I consider it improbable that he should have been involved in any direct sabotage against the Party; nevertheless, I am not able totally to exclude the possibility that he is a double agent…'

Yes. He had informed… Yes, and all the information about him in this file – this file that was to be kept in perpetuity – had been gathered from comrades of his who had also no doubt wished to be sincere. Why had he wanted to be sincere? His duty towards the Party? Nonsense! The really sincere thing to do would have been to bang his fist furiously on the table and shout: 'Hacken's my brother, my friend. He's innocent!' But instead he had fumbled about in odd corners of his memory, catching fleas, remembering all kinds of trifles, playing up to the man without whose signature his permit to leave the large grey building would remain invalid. He could remember very well his happy, greedy feeling when the investigator had said to him: 'Just a minute, comrade Krymov, let me sign your pass for you.' He himself had helped to pull the noose round Hacken's neck. And where had the seeker after truth gone when his exit-pass had been signed and validated? Hadn't it been to see Muska Grinberg, the wife of his friend? But then everything he had said about Hacken was true. Maybe, but then so was everything that had been said about him. He really had told Fedya Yevseev that Stalin had an inferiority complex about his ignorance of philosophy. Even the mere list of people he had associated with was quite terrifying: Nikolay Ivanovich Bukharin, Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev, Lomov, Shatskin, Pyatnitsky, Lomi-nadze, Ryutin, Shlyapnikov with the red hair; he'd been to the Institute to see Lev Borisovich Deborin in the 'Academy'; Lashevich, Yan Gamarnik, Luppol; he'd been to the Institute to see Ryazanov when he was an old man; he'd twice stayed with his old friend Ekhe when he was in Siberia; and then in their day he'd seen Skrypnik in Kiev, Stanislav Kossior in Kharkhov, and Ruth Fischer; and yes… Well, thank God the investigator hadn't mentioned the most important thing of all: Trotsky himself had thought well of him…

He was rotten all the way through. Why though? And were they any more guilty than he was? But he hadn't signed any confessions. Just wait, Nikolay, you will! Just like they did! Probably the real horrors are kept till later. They keep you for three days without sleep and then start beating you up. None of this seems much like Socialism, does it? Why does my Party need to destroy me? We were the ones who made the Revolution – not Malenkov, Zhdanov and Shcherbakov. We were merciless towards the enemies of the Revolution. Why has the Revolution been so merciless towards us? Perhaps for that very reason. Or maybe it hasn't got anything to do with the Revolution. What's this captain got to do with the Revolution? He's just a thug, a member of the Black Hundreds.

There he had been, just milling the wind, while time had been passing.

He was exhausted. The pain in his back and legs was crushing him… All he wanted was to lie down on his bunk, stick his legs in the air, flex his bare toes, scratch his calves.

'Stay awake!' shouted the captain, for all the world as though he were shouting out orders in battle.

It was as though the Front would break and the whole Soviet State collapse if Krymov were to close his eyes for one moment.

Krymov had never in all his life heard so many swear-words.

His friends, his closest associates, his secretaries, the people he had had the most intimate conversations with, had gathered together his every word and action. He was appalled when he remembered, 'Ivan was the only person I told about that'; 'That was when I was talking to Grishka – I've known him since 1920'; 'That was when I was talking to Mashka Kheltser, oh Mashka, Mashka!'

Suddenly he remembered the investigator saying that he shouldn't expect any parcels from Yevgenia Nikolaevna… That was a reference to a conversation in his cell with Bogoleev. People had been adding to the Krymov collection as recently as that.

In the afternoon someone brought him some soup. His hand was trembling so badly that he had to bend forward and sip from the rim of the bowl, leaving the spoon tapping away by itself.

'You eat like a pig,' said the captain sadly.

After that, one other thing happened: Krymov asked to go to the lavatory. This time he walked down the corridor without thinking anything at all, but he did have one thought as he stood over the lavatory-pan: it was a good thing his buttons had been ripped off- his fingers were far too shaky to be able to cope with fly-buttons.

Time passed, slowly doing its work. The State – the captain and his epaulettes – was victorious. A dense grey fog filled Krymov's head. It was probably the same fog that filled the brain of a monkey. Past and future had disappeared; even the file with its curling tapes had disappeared. There was only one thing left in the world – his need to take off his boots, have a good scratch and go to sleep.

The investigator came back.

'Did you sleep?' asked the captain.

'Your superior officer doesn't sleep,' replied the investigator in a schoolmasterly tone of voice. 'He takes a rest.' This was a very old chestnut.

'Of course,' agreed the captain.

The investigator was just like a worker coming on shift who looks over his bench and exchanges a few businesslike words with the man he is relieving; he glanced first at Krymov, then at his writing-desk, and said: 'Very well, comrade Captain.'

He looked at his watch, took the file out of his drawer, and said, in a voice full of animation: 'Now then, Krymov, let's continue.'

They got down to work.

Today, it was the war that most concerned the investigator. Once again he turned out to have a vast fund of knowledge: he knew about Krymov's different postings; he knew the numbers of the regiments and armies concerned; he mentioned the names of people who had fought beside him; he quoted remarks Krymov had made at the Political Section, together with his comments on an illiterate memorandum of the general's.

All Krymov's work at the front, the speeches he had made under fire, the faith he had been able to impart to his soldiers through the constant hardships of the retreat-all this had suddenly ceased to exist.

He was a miserable chatterbox who had demoralized his comrades, destroying their faith and infecting them with a feeling of hopelessness. How could it be doubted that German Intelligence had helped him to cross the lines in order to continue his work as a saboteur and spy?

During the first few minutes of the new session the investigator's lively enthusiasm communicated itself to Krymov too.

'Say what you like,' he said, 'but I'll never admit to being a spy.'

The investigator glanced out through the window. It was getting dark; he could no longer clearly make out the papers on his desk.

He turned on his desk-lamp and let down the blue black-out blind.

From outside the door came a sullen, animal-like howl. It broke off as suddenly as it had begun.

'Now then, Krymov,' he said as he sat down again at his desk.

He asked Krymov if he knew why he had never been promoted. Krymov's answer was somewhat confused.

'You just stayed on as a battalion commissar, when you should have been the Member of the Military Soviet for an Army or even a Front.'

For a moment he just stared at Krymov in silence. It was perhaps the first time he had really gazed at him as an investigator should. Then, very solemnly, he announced: 'Trotsky himself said, "That's pure marble!" about one of your works. If that reptile had seized power, you'd be doing well for yourself. "Pure marble" indeed!'

'Now he's playing trumps,' thought Krymov. 'The ace itself!'

All right then, he'd describe the whole incident – when and where it had taken place – but one could just as well put the same questions to comrade Stalin himself: Krymov had never had the least connection with Trotskyism; he had always, without exception, voted against any Trotskyist resolutions.

All he really wanted was to take off his boots, lie down, put up his bare feet, and scratch himself in his sleep.

Quietly, almost affectionately, the investigator said:

'Why won't you help us? Do you really think it's just a matter of whether or not you committed crimes before the war, whether or not you renewed contacts and agreed on rendezvous during the time you were surrounded? It's something more serious and deep-rooted than that. It's a matter of the new direction of the Party. You must help the Party in this new stage of its struggle. To do that, you must first renounce your past opinions. Only a Bolshevik is capable of such a task. That's why I'm talking to you now.'

'Very well,' Krymov said slowly and sleepily. 'I can allow that, in spite of myself, I may have given expression to views hostile to the Party. My own internationalism may have contradicted the policies of a sovereign Socialist State. I may have been out of touch with the way things were going after 1937, out of touch with the new people. Yes, I can admit all this. But espionage, sabotage…'

'Why that "but"? Can't you see that you're already on the way towards realizing your hostility to the cause of the Party? What does the mere form matter? Why that "but", when you've already admitted what's most important?'

'No, I deny that I'm a spy.'

'So you don't want to help the Party? Just when we get to the point, you try and hide. It's like that, is it? You're shit, real dogshit!'

Krymov jumped up, grabbed the investigator's tie, and banged his fist on the table. Something inside the telephone clicked and tinkled.

'You son of a bitch, you swine,' he cried out in a piercing howl, 'where were you when I led people into battle in the Ukraine and the Bryansk forests? Where were you during the winter I was fighting outside Voronezh? Were you ever in Stalingrad, you bastard? Who are you to say I never did anything for the Party? I suppose you were defending our Motherland here in the Lubyanka, you… you Tsarist gendarme! And you don't believe I fought for Socialism in Stalingrad! Were you ever nearly executed in Shanghai? Were you shot in the left shoulder by one of Kolchak's soldiers in 1917?'

After that he was beaten up. He wasn't just beaten up any old how; he wasn't just punched in the face like in the Special Section at the front; he was beaten up carefully, intelligently, by two young men in new uniforms who had an understanding of anatomy and physiology. As they beat him up, he shouted:

'You swine, you should be sent to a penal detachment… You should be sent to face a tank-attack with nothing but rifles… Deserters…'

They carried on with their work, quite without anger and leaving nothing to chance. They didn't seem to be hitting him at all hard, to be putting any force behind their punches; nevertheless, there was something terrible about each blow, just as there is in a wounding remark delivered with icy calm.

They hadn't once hit Krymov in the teeth, but blood was pouring out of his mouth. The blood hadn't come from his nose or his jaw; it wasn't that he had bitten his tongue like in Akhtuba… This was blood from deep inside him, blood from his lungs. He could no longer remember where he was or what was happening to him… Then he caught sight of the investigator's face looming over him; he was pointing at the portrait of Gorky above the desk and asking: 'What was it the great proletarian writer Maxim Gorky once said?'

He answered his question himself, sounding like a schoolmaster again: 'If an enemy won't yield, he must be destroyed.'

After that Krymov saw a light on the ceiling and a man with narrow epaulettes.

'Very well,' said the investigator. 'You don't need any more rest, thanks to medical science.'

Soon Krymov was back at the desk, listening to the investigator's wise exhortations.

'We can sit like this for a week, a month, a whole year… Let me put things very simply for you. You may not be guilty but you can still sign what I tell you to. Then you won't be beaten up any more. Is that clear? You may be sentenced by the Special Commission but you won't be beaten up again – and that's quite something! Do you think I enjoy seeing you being beaten up? And we'll let you sleep. Do you understand?'

Time passed; the interrogation dragged on. It seemed as though nothing would be able to shock Krymov out of his stupor now. Nevertheless, the investigator did once make him jerk back his head and gape at him in astonishment.

'These are all things that happened a long time ago,' said the investigator, pointing at Krymov's file. 'We can forget about them. But what we cannot forget is your base treachery towards the Motherland during the battle for Stalingrad. Our witnesses and documents all say the same thing. You tried to weaken the political consciousness of the soldiers in the surrounded house 6/1. You incited Grekov, a true patriot, to treachery: you tried to make him go over to the enemy. You betrayed the trust shown in you both by the Party and by your commanding officers when they chose to send you to this house as a military commissar. How did you behave when you got there? Like an enemy agent!'

Krymov was beaten up again in the small hours. He seemed to be drowning in warm black milk. Once again the man with the narrow epaulettes nodded as he wiped the needle of his syringe. Once again the investigator said: 'Well then, thanks to medical science…'

They were sitting opposite one another again. Krymov looked at the investigator's tired face and felt surprised at his own lack of anger. Could he really have seized this same man by the tie and tried to strangle him? Now he was beginning to feel quite close to his investigator again. The desk no longer separated them from one another: they were two comrades, two disappointed men.

Suddenly Krymov remembered how the man in bloodstained underwear who hadn't been shot properly had come back from the steppe at night, back to the Front Special Section.

'That's my fate too,' he thought. 'I've got nowhere to go. It's too late.'

Later he asked to go to the lavatory. The captain from the previous day appeared again. He raised the blind, turned out the light and lit a cigarette.

Once again Krymov saw the light of day, a sullen light that seemed to come not from the sun, or even the sky, but from the grey brick of the Inner Prison.

43

The other bunks were all empty: his neighbours must have been transferred to another cell, or else they were being interrogated.

He lay there, frayed. He was quite lost; his whole life had been smeared with filth. He had a terrible pain in the small of his back; they must have injured his kidneys.

At this bitter moment, his whole life shattered, he understood the power of a woman's love. A wife! No one else could love a man who had been trampled on by iron feet. She would wash his feet after he had been spat on; she would comb his tangled hair; she would look into his embittered eyes. The more they lacerated his soul, the more revolting and contemptible he became to the world, the more she would love him. She would run after a truck; she would wait in the queues on Kuznetsky Most, or even by the camp boundary-fence, desperate to hand over a few sweets or an onion; she would bake shortbread for him on an oil-stove; she would give whole years of her life just to be able to see him for half an hour…

Not every woman you sleep with can be called a wife.

The despair that cut into him like a knife made him want to reduce someone else to despair.

He composed several lines of a letter to her: 'Doubtless you were glad to hear what has happened, not because I have been crushed, but because you managed to run away from me in time; you must be blessing your rat's instinct that made you desert a sinking ship… I am alone…'

He glimpsed the telephone on the investigator's desk… a great lout was punching him in the side, under his ribs… the captain was raising the blind, turning out the light… he could hear the rustling of the pages of his file…

He was just falling asleep with that sound in his ears when someone drove a crooked, red-hot cobbler's awl into his skull. His brain seemed to smell of burning. Yevgenia Nikolaevna had denounced him!

'Marble! Pure marble!' The words spoken to him one morning in the Znamenka, in the office of the chairman of the Revolutionary War Soviet of the Republic… The man with the pointed beard and sparkling pince-nez had read through Krymov's article and talked to him in a quiet, friendly voice. He remembered it all: that night he had told Zhenya how the Central Committee had recalled him from the Comintern in order to edit booklets for Politizdat. 'Once he was a human being,' he had said of Trotsky as he described how the latter had read his article 'Revolution and Reform – China and India ', how he had said, 'That's pure marble.'

These words had been spoken tête-à-tête and he had never repeated them to anyone except Zhenya. The investigator must have heard them from her lips. She had denounced him.

He no longer even felt his seventy hours without sleep; he was already quite recovered. Perhaps she had been coerced? What if she had? Comrades, Mikhail Sidorovich Mostovskoy, I am dead! I've been killed. Not by a bullet from a pistol, not by someone's fist, not even by being deprived of sleep. Zhenya has killed me. I'll testify and confess to anything. But on one condition: you must confirm that it was she who denounced me.

He got out of bed and started to bang on the door with his fist. The sentry immediately looked in through the spy-hole and Krymov shouted: 'Take me to the investigator! I'll sign everything!'

The duty-officer appeared and said: 'Stop that noise. You can give your testimony when you're called.'

He couldn't just stay here alone. It was easier to be beaten up and lose consciousness. That was much better. Thanks to medical science…

He hobbled to his bed. Just as it seemed he was unable to endure another moment of this torment, just as his brain seemed on the point of bursting open and sending out thousands of splinters into his heart, throat and eyes, he understood: it was quite impossible that Zhenechka had denounced him. He coughed and began to shake.

'Forgive me, forgive me. I wasn't destined to be happy with you. That's my fault, not yours.'

He was gripped by a wonderful feeling, the kind of feeling that had probably never been experienced by anyone in this building since Dzerzhinsky had first set foot in it.

He woke up. Opposite him sat the vast bulk of Katsenelenbogen, crowned by his mop of dishevelled curls.

Krymov smiled and a frown appeared on his neighbour's low, fleshy forehead. Krymov understood that Katsenelenbogen had seen his smile as a symptom of madness.

'I see they gave you a hard time,' said Katsenelenbogen, pointing at Krymov's bloodstained shirt.

'They did.' Krymov grimaced. 'What about you?'

'I was having a rest in hospital. Our neighbours have left. The Special Commission has given Dreling another ten years, which makes thirty in all. And Bogoleev's been transferred to another cell.'

'I…'

'Go on, say what you want to say.'

'I think that under Communism the MGB will secretly gather together everything good about people, every kind word they ever say. Their agents will listen in on telephone cells, read through letters, get people to speak their minds – but only in order to elicit everything to do with faithfulness, honesty and kindness. All this will be reported to the Lubyanka and gathered into a dossier. But only good things! This will be a place where faith in humanity is strengthened, not where it is destroyed. I've already laid the first stone… I believe. Yes, I have conquered in spite of every denunciation and lie; I believe, I believe…'

Katsenelenbogen listened to him absent-mindedly.

'That's all very true. That's how it will be. All you need add is that once this radiant dossier has been gathered together, you'll be brought here, to the big house, and beaten up the same as always.'

He looked searchingly at Krymov. He couldn't understand how a man with Krymov's yellow, sallow face, a man with hollow sunken eyes and clots of black blood on his chin, could possibly be smiling so calmly and happily.

44

Paulus's adjutant, Colonel Adam, was standing in front of an open suitcase. His batman, Ritter, was squatting on the floor and sorting through piles of underwear that had been spread out on newspapers. They had spent the night burning papers in the field-marshal's office. They had even burnt Paulus's own large map, something Adam looked on as a sacred relic of the war.

Paulus hadn't slept at all that night. He had refused his morning coffee and had watched Adam's comings and goings with complete indifference. From time to time he got up and walked about the room, picking his way through the files of papers awaiting cremation. The canvas-backed maps proved hard to burn; they choked up the grate and had to be cleared out with a poker.

Each time Ritter opened the door of the stove, Paulus stretched out his hands to the fire. Adam had thrown a greatcoat over Paulus's shoulders, but he had shaken it off irritably. Adam had had to hang it up again on the peg.

Did Paulus imagine he was already in Siberia, warming his hands at the fire together with all the other soldiers, wilderness ahead of him, wilderness behind?

'I ordered Ritter to put plenty of warm underclothes in your suitcase,' said Adam. 'When we were children and we tried to imagine the Last Judgment, we were wrong. It's got nothing to do with fire and blazing coals.'

General Schmidt had called round twice during the night. The cables had all been cut and the telephones had fallen silent.

From the moment they had first been encircled, Paulus had seen very clearly that his forces would be unable to fight. All the conditions – tactical, psychological, meteorological and technical – that had determined his success during the summer were now absent; the pluses had turned into minuses. He had reported to Hitler that, in his opinion, the 6th Army should break through the encircling forces to the South-West, in liaison with Manstein, and form a corridor for the evacuation of the troops; they would have to reconcile themselves to the loss of a large part of their heavy armaments.

On 24 December Yeremenko had defeated Manstein's forces near the Myshovka River; from that moment it had been obvious to anyone that further resistance in Stalingrad was impossible. Only one man had disputed this. He had begun referring to the 6th Army as the advance post of a front that stretched from the White Sea to the Terek; he had renamed it 'Fortress Stalingrad'. Meanwhile the staff at Army Headquarters had begun referring to it as a camp for armed prisoners-of-war.

Paulus had sent another coded message to the effect that there was still some possibility of a break-out. He had expected a terrible outburst of fury: no one had ever dared contradict the Supreme Commander twice. He had heard the story of how Hitler, in a rage, had once torn the Knight's Cross from Field-Marshal Rundstedt's chest; Brauchitsch, who witnessed this scene, had apparently had a heart attack. The Fuhrer was not someone to trifle with.

On 31 January Paulus had finally received an answer: the announcement of his promotion to the rank of Field-Marshal. He had made one more attempt to prove his point – and been awarded the highest decoration of the Reich: the Knight's Cross with oak leaves.

It gradually dawned on him that Hitler was treating him as a dead man: it had been a posthumous promotion, a posthumous award of the Knight's Cross. His existence now served only one purpose: to create a heroic image of the defender of Stalingrad. The official propaganda had made saints and martyrs of the hundreds of thousands of men under his command. They were alive, boiling their horsemeat, hunting down the last Stalingrad dogs, catching magpies in the steppes, crushing lice, smoking cigarettes made from nothing but twists of paper; meanwhile the State radio stations played solemn funeral music in honour of these still living heroes.

They were alive, blowing on their red fingers, wiping the snot from their noses, thinking about the chances of stealing something to eat, shamming illness, surrendering to the enemy or warming themselves on a Russian woman in a cellar; meanwhile, over the airwaves, choirs of little boys and girls were singing, 'They died so that Germany could live.' Only if the State should perish could these men be reborn to the sins and wonders of everyday life.

Everything had happened precisely as Paulus had predicted. This sense of his own rightness, confirmed by the absolute destruction of his army, was painful to live with. At the same time, in spite of himself, it gave him a kind of tired satisfaction, a reinforced sense of his own worth.

Thoughts he had suppressed during his days of glory now came back to him.

Keitel and Jodl had called Hitler the divine Fuhrer. Goebbels had declared that Hitler's tragedy was that the war offered him no opponent worthy of his own genius. Zeitzler, on the other hand, had told him how Hitler had once asked him to straighten the line of the front on the grounds that its curves offended his aesthetic sensibilities. And what about his mad, neurotic, refusal to advance on Moscow? And the sudden failure of will that had led him to call a halt to the advance on Leningrad? It was only a fear of losing face that made him insist so fanatically on the defence of Stalingrad.

Now everything was as clear as daylight.

But clarity can be very terrifying. He could have refused to obey the order. Hitler would have had him executed, but he would have saved the lives of his men. Yes, he had seen many people look at him with reproach.

He could have saved his army!

But he was afraid of Hitler, afraid for his own skin!

Chalb, the chief of the SD at Headquarters, had flown to Berlin the other day. He had made some confused remark to the effect that the Fiihrer had revealed himself to be too great even for the German people. Yes… Yes… Of course…

Demagogy, nothing but demagogy…

Adam turned on the radio. The initial crackle of interference was succeeded by music: Germany was lamenting the dead of Stalingrad. The music had a strange power. Maybe the myth created by the Fiihrer would mean more for the people and for battles to come than the lives of the lice-ridden, frostbitten wrecks that had once been his men? Maybe the Fuhrer's logic was not a logic that could be understood merely from reading orders, poring over maps and drawing up schedules?

Perhaps the aura of martyrdom to which Hitler had condemned the 6th Army would bestow a new existence on Paulus and his soldiers, allowing them to participate in the future of Germany?

It wasn't a matter of pencils, calculating-machines and slide-rules. This Quartermaster-General worked according to a different logic, different criteria.

Adam, dear, faithful Adam: the purest souls are constantly and inevitably a prey to doubt. The world is always dominated by limited men, men with an unshakeable conviction of their own Tightness. The purest souls never take great decisions or hold sway over States.

'They're coming!' shouted Adam. He ordered Ritter to put the open suitcase out of the way and then straightened his uniform.

There were holes in the heels of the socks Ritter had just thrown into the case. What troubled Ritter was not that a careless and anxious Paulus might wear these socks, but that the holes might be glimpsed by hostile Russian eyes.

Adam adopted what he considered to be the correct pose for an adjutant to a field-marshal: he stood quite still, his hands resting on the back of a chair, his back turned to the door that any moment now would be flung open, his eyes gazing calmly, attentively and affectionately at Paulus himself.

Paulus leant back, away from the table, compressing his lips. If the Fuhrer wanted play-acting, then he was ready to comply.

Any minute now the door would open; this room in a dark cellar would be scrutinized by men who lived on the earth's surface. The pain and bitterness had passed, what remained was fear: fear that the door would be opened, not by representatives of the Soviet High Command who had prepared their role in this solemn scene, but by wild, trigger-happy soldiers. And fear of the unknown: once this final scene had been played out, life would begin again. But what kind of life and where? Siberia, a Moscow prison, a barrack-hut in a labour camp?

45

That night the people on the left bank had seen multi-coloured flares light up the sky over Stalingrad. The German army had surrendered.

People had immediately begun crossing the Volga into the city itself. They had heard that the remaining inhabitants of Stalingrad had endured terrible hunger during these last weeks; the officers, soldiers and sailors from the Volga fleet all carried little bundles of tinned food and loaves of bread. A few of them also brought some vodka or an accordion.

These unarmed soldiers who entered Stalingrad during the night, who handed out bread and kissed and embraced the inhabitants, seemed almost sad; there was little singing or rejoicing.

The morning of z February, 1943, was very misty. The mist rose up from the holes pierced in the ice and from the few patches of unfrozen water. The sun rose, as harsh now in the winter winds as during the blazing heat of August. The dry snow drifted about over the level ground, forming milky spirals and columns, then suddenly lost its will and settled again. Everywhere you could see traces of the east wind: collars of snow round the stems of thorn-bushes, congealed ripples on the slopes of the gullies, small mounds and patches of bare clay…

From the Stalingrad bank it looked as though the people crossing the Volga were being formed out of the mist itself, as though they had been sculpted by the wind and frost. They had no mission to accomplish in Stalingrad; the war here was over and no one had sent them. They came spontaneously, of their own accord – soldiers and road-layers, drivers and gunners, army tailors, mechanics and electricians. Together with old men wrapped in shawls, old women wearing soldiers' trousers and little boys and girls dragging sledges laden with bundles and blankets, they crossed the Volga and scrambled up the slopes of the right bank.

Something very strange had happened to the city. You could hear the sound of car-horns and tractor engines; people were playing harmonicas, soldiers were shouting and laughing, dancers were stamping down the snow with their felt boots. But, for all this, the city felt dead.

The normal life of Stalingrad had come to an end several months before: schools, factories, women's dressmakers, amateur choirs and theatre groups, crèches, cinemas, the city police had all ceased to function. A new city – wartime Stalingrad – had been born out of the flames. This city had its own layout of streets and squares, its own underground buildings, its own traffic laws, its own commerce, factories and artisans, its own cemeteries, concerts and drinking parties.

Every epoch has its own capital city, a city that embodies its will and soul. For several months of the Second World War this city was Stalingrad. The thoughts and passions of humanity were centred on Stalingrad. Factories and printing presses functioned for the sake of Stalingrad. Parliamentary leaders rose to their feet to speak of Stalingrad. But when thousands of people poured in from the steppes to fill the empty streets, when the first car engines started up, this world capital ceased to exist.

On that day newspapers all over the world reported the details of the German surrender. People in Europe, America and India were able to read how Field-Marshal Paulus had left his underground headquarters, how the German generals had undergone a preliminary interrogation at the headquarters of Shumilov's 64th Army, and about what General Schmidt, Paulus's chief of staff, had been wearing.

By then Hitler, Roosevelt and Churchill were looking for new crisis points in the war. Stalin was tapping the table with his finger and asking the Chief of the General Staff if arrangements had been completed to transfer the troops from Stalingrad to other Fronts. The capital of the world war, full as it was of generals, experts in street-fighting, strategic maps, armaments and well-kept communication trenches, had ceased to exist. Or rather, it had begun a new existence, similar to that of present-day Athens or Rome. Historians, museum guides, teachers and eternally bored schoolchildren, though not yet visible, had become its new masters.

At the same time, an everyday, working city was coming into being – with schools, factories, maternity homes, police, an opera and a prison.

A light dusting of snow had fallen on the paths along which men had carried shells, loaves of bread and pots of kasha to gun emplacements, along which they had dragged machine-guns, along which snipers and artillery observers had crept to their stone hiding-places.

Snow had fallen on the paths along which messengers had run between companies and battalions, the paths leading from Batyuk's division to Banniy Ovrag, to the slaughterhouse and the water-towers. Snow had fallen on the paths where the inhabitants of the wartime city had gone for a smoke, to celebrate a comrade's name-day with a few drinks, to have a wash in a cellar, to play a game of dominoes, to have a taste of a neighbour's sauerkraut. Snow had fallen on the paths leading to dear Manya and the beautiful Vera, to menders of watches and cigarette-lighters, to tailors, accordion-players and storekeepers.

A whole network of capricious, winding paths was being covered by snow; not one fresh footprint could be seen on all these thousands of kilometres. This first snowfall was soon followed by a second. The paths blurred and faded.

Meanwhile thousands of people were making new paths, ordinary paths that didn't wind about in great loops or hug the walls of ruins.

The old inhabitants of the city felt both happy and empty. After defending Stalingrad for so long, the soldiers felt strangely depressed.

The whole city was suddenly empty and everyone could feel it – from army commanders and commanders of infantry divisions to ordinary soldiers like Polyakov and Glushkov. This feeling was absurd. Why should a victorious end to the slaughter make one feel sad?

The telephone on the commanding officer's desk was silent in its yellow case. A collar of snow had settled round the housing of the machine-gun. Battery-commanders' telescopes and embrasures had clouded over. Well-thumbed maps and plans were transferred from map-cases to pouches, and sometimes to the kitbags and suitcases of commanders of platoons, companies and battalions…

At the same time crowds of people were wandering among the dead houses, shouting loud 'hurray's' and embracing one another. They looked at each other and thought: 'What fine brave lads you are! Just like us in your winter hats and your jackets! But what we've achieved doesn't even bear thinking about. We've lifted the heaviest burden in the world. We've raised up Truth over Lies. We've just accomplished what most people only read of in fairy-tales.'

All these people belonged to the same city: some of them came from Kuporosnaya Balka, others from Banniy Ovrag, others from the water-towers or from 'Red October', still others from Mamayev Kurgan. And the people who had lived in the centre, on the banks of the Tsaritsa, near the wharves, behind the oil-tanks, came out to meet them. The soldiers were both hosts and guests. The wind roared as they showered one another with congratulations. From time to time they fired a few shots into the air or let off a hand-grenade. They clapped each other on the back, threw their arms round each other, kissed with cold lips and then broke into light-hearted curses… They had all risen up from under the earth: metal-workers, turners, ploughmen, carpenters, navvies… They had ploughed up stone, iron and clay; together they had fought off the enemy.

A world capital is unique not only because it is linked with the fields and factories of the whole world. A world capital is unique because it has a soul. The soul of wartime Stalingrad was freedom.

The capital of the war against the Fascists was now no more than the icy ruins of what had once been a provincial industrial city and port.

Here, ten years later, was constructed a vast dam, one of the largest hydro-electric power stations in the world – the product of the forced labour of thousands of prisoners.

46

The German officer had only just woken up and hadn't yet heard the news of the surrender. He had fired a shot at Sergeant Zadnyepruk and slightly wounded him. This had aroused the wrath of the Russians in charge of the operation: the German soldiers were filing out of their vast bunkers and throwing down their arms, with a loud clatter, onto the steadily growing pile of tommy-guns and rifles.

The prisoners tried to look straight ahead – as a sign that even their gaze was now captive. Private Schmidt was the only exception: he had smiled as he came out into the daylight and then looked up and down the Russian ranks as though he were sure of glimpsing a familiar face.

Colonel Filimonov, who was slightly drunk after arriving from Moscow the day before, was standing beside his interpreter and watching General Wegler's division surrender their arms. His greatcoat with its new gold epaulettes, its red tabs and black edging, stood out among the filthy, scorched jackets and crumpled caps of the Russian officers and the equally filthy, scorched, crumpled clothes of the German prisoners. He had said yesterday in the Military Soviet canteen that the central commissariat in Moscow still contained supplies of gold braid that had been used for epaulettes in pre-revolutionary days; it was the done thing among his circle of friends to have one's epaulettes sewn from this fine old braid.

When he heard the shot and Zadnyepruk's wounded cry, Filimonov shouted: 'What was that? Who's shooting?'

'Some fool of a German,' several voices answered. 'They're bringing him along… he says he didn't know.'

'Didn't know?' shouted Filimonov. 'Hasn't the swine spilt enough of our blood?'

He turned to his interpreter, a tall Jewish political instructor.

'Bring me that officer straight away. I'll make him pay for that shot with his life!'

Just then Filimonov caught sight of Schmidt's large, smiling face and shouted: 'So it makes you laugh, does it, to know that another of our men's been crippled? I'll teach you, you swine!'

Schmidt was unable to understand why his well-meaning smile should have made this Russian officer scream at him with such fury. Then he heard a pistol shot, seemingly quite unconnected with these shouts. No longer understanding anything at all, he stumbled and fell beneath the feet of the soldiers behind. His body was dragged out of the way; it lay there on one side while the other soldiers marched past. After that, a group of young boys, who were certainly not afraid of a mere corpse, climbed down into the bunkers and began probing about under the plank-beds.

Colonel Filimonov, meanwhile, was inspecting the battalion commander's underground quarters and admiring their comfort and solidity. A soldier brought in a young German officer with calm clear eyes.

'Comrade Colonel,' said the interpreter, 'this is the man you asked to have brought to you – Lieutenant Lenard.'

'This one?' asked Filimonov in surprise. He liked the look of the officer's face and he was upset at having been involved, for the first time in his life, in a murder. 'Take him to the assembly point. And no mucking about! I want him alive and I shall hold you responsible.'

The day of judgment was drawing to an end; it was already impossible to make out the smile on the face of the dead soldier.

47

Lieutenant-Colonel Mikhailov, the chief interpreter of the 7th section of the Political Administration of the Front, was accompanying Field-Marshal Paulus to the Headquarters of the 64th Army.

Paulus had left his cellar without so much as glancing at the Soviet officers and soldiers. They had stared at him with greedy curiosity, admiring his grey rabbit-fur hat and his field-marshal's greatcoat with its band of green leather running from the shoulder to the waist. He had strode past towards the waiting jeep, head erect, not looking at the ruined city.

Mikhailov had often attended diplomatic receptions before the war and he felt confident and at ease with Paulus. He was never over-solicitous, but always cool and respectful.

He was sitting beside Paulus, watching his face and waiting for him to break the silence. He had already been present at the preliminary interrogation of the other generals; they had behaved very differently.

The chief of staff of the 6th Army had declared in a slow, lazy voice that it was the Italians and Rumanians who were to blame for the catastrophe. The hook-nosed Lieutenant-General Sixt von Armin, his medals tinkling gloomily, had added: 'And it wasn't only Garibaldi and that 8th Army of his. It was the Russian cold, the lack of supplies and munitions…'

Schlemmer, the grey-haired commander of a tank corps, wearing a Knight's Cross together with a medal he had been awarded for having received five wounds, had interrupted this conversation to ask if they would look after his suitcase. After that everyone had begun talking at once: General Rinaldo, a man with a gentle smile who was head of the medical service; Colonel Ludwig, the morose commander of a tank division, whose face had been hideously scarred by a sabre cut… Colonel Adam, Paulus's adjutant, had made the worst fuss of all. He had lost his toilet-case and he kept throwing his hands up into the air and shaking his head in despair; the flaps of his leopard-skin cap had flapped about like the ears of a pedigree dog just out of the water.

These officers had indeed become human again, but not in the most admirable manner.

The driver was wearing a smart white sheepskin coat. Mikhailov told him to drive more slowly.

'Certainly, comrade Lieutenant-Colonel,' he answered quietly.

The driver was very much looking forward to telling his comrades about Paulus, to going home at the end of the war and saying: 'Now, when I was driving Field-Marshal Paulus…' He was also determined to drive outstandingly well, to make Paulus say: 'So that's what a Soviet driver's like! A true professional!'

It was hard for a soldier's eye to take in this spectacle, to get used to seeing Russians and Germans in such close proximity. Cheerful squads of infantrymen were searching through cellars, climbing down into the mouths of sewers, herding the Germans up to the frozen surface.

On patches of wasteland and empty streets, with much prodding and shouting, these infantrymen then re-formed the German army, throwing men from quite different arms of the service into the same column.

The Germans trudged on, trying not to stumble, looking round now and again at the Russian soldiers and their guns. They were submissive not only because it would be so easy for the Russian soldiers to shoot them; they were submissive because of the hypnotic aura of power that surrounded them.

The field-marshal was being driven south; the columns of prisoners were being marched in the opposite direction. A powerful loudspeaker was roaring out a well-known song:

'I left yesterday for distant lands,

My love waved her handkerchief beside the gate.'

A wounded prisoner was being carried along by two comrades; his pale, dirty arms hung round their necks. The heads of his two bearers drew closer together, his deathly pale face and burning eyes between them. Another wounded prisoner was being dragged out of a bunker on a blanket.

The snow was dotted with blue-grey stacks of weapons. They were like ricks of steel straw that had just been threshed.

A Russian soldier was being lowered into his tomb to a salute of gunfire. A few yards away lay heaps of dead Germans who had just been hauled up from the hospital cellars. A crowd of Rumanian soldiers went past, guffawing, waving their arms about, making fun of the Germans – both living and dead.

Prisoners were being herded along from the Nursery, from the Tsaritsa, from the House of Specialists… They walked with a very particular gait, the gait adopted by humans and animals who have lost their freedom. The lightly wounded and frostbitten were leaning on sticks or pieces of charred planks. On they marched; it seemed that all of them had the same greyish face, the same eyes, the same expression of suffering.

It was surprising how many of these men were very short, with large noses and low foreheads, with small hare-like mouths and bird-like heads. What a lot of Aryans there were whose dark skin was covered with freckles, boils and pimples.

They were weak, ugly men. None of them seemed to have strong chins, arrogant mouths, blonde hair, clear eyes or granite chests. How extraordinarily similar they were to the equally weak, ugly, unfortunate men who, in the autumn of 1941, had been prodded and beaten by the Germans towards prisoner-of-war camps in the West.

Now and then you could hear pistol-shots in the cellars and bunkers. The crowds of prisoners, still drifting along towards the Volga, understood the meaning of these shots only too well.

Lieutenant-Colonel Mikhailov continued to glance now and then at the Field-Marshal; meanwhile the driver studied his face in the mirror. Mikhailov could see a long, thin cheek; the driver could see his forehead, his eyes and his tight silent lips.

They drove past guns with barrels pointing up at the sky, past tanks painted with swastikas, past trucks whose tarpaulin covers were flapping about in the wind, past armoured troop-carriers and self-propelled guns.

The iron body, the muscles, of the 6th Army, were freezing solid, freezing into the ground. The men themselves were still marching slowly past; it seemed as if at any moment they too might come to a halt, might freeze into stillness.

Mikhailov, the driver and, the armed guard were all waiting for Paulus to say something, to call out to someone or at least to look round. But he remained silent; they had no idea where his eyes were looking or what messages they were bringing him.

Was he afraid of being seen by his soldiers? Or was that the very thing he wanted? Suddenly Paulus turned to Mikhailov and asked:

'Sagen Sie bitte, was ist es, Makhorka?' [52]

This unexpected question did not help Mikhailov to understand Paulus's thoughts. In fact he was wondering anxiously whether or not he would have soup every day, whether he would have somewhere warm to sleep, whether he would be able to obtain tobacco.

48

Some German prisoners were carrying out Russian corpses from the cellar of a two-storey building that had once been the headquarters of the Gestapo.

In spite of the cold, a group of women, boys and old men were standing beside the sentry and watching the Germans lay out the corpses on the frozen earth.

Most of the prisoners wore an expression of complete indifference, they dragged their feet as they walked and breathed in the smell of death without flinching. There was just one, a young man in an officer's greatcoat, who had tied a handkerchief round his mouth and nose and was shaking his head convulsively like a horse stung by gadflies. The expression of torment in his eyes seemed close to madness.

Sometimes the prisoners put a stretcher down on the ground and stood over it for a while: some of the corpses were missing an arm or leg and the prisoners were wondering which of the spare limbs belonged to which corpse. Most of the corpses were half-naked or in their underclothes; a few were wearing trousers. One was quite naked: his mouth was wide open in a last cry; his stomach had sunk right into his backbone; he had reddish pubic hair and pitifully thin legs.

It was impossible to imagine that these corpses with their sunken mouths and eye-sockets had, until not long ago, been living beings with names and homes; that they had smoked cigarettes, longed for a mug of beer and said: 'My darling, my beautiful, give me a kiss – and don't forget me!'

The officer with the handkerchief round his mouth seemed to be the only person able to imagine all this. But for some reason he was the one who appeared to attract the anger of the women standing beside the entrance; they kept their eyes fixed on him and ignored the remaining prisoners – despite the fact that two of them had light patches on their overcoats where their SS insignia had once been.

'So you're trying to look away, are you?' muttered a squat woman who was holding a little boy by the hand.

The officer could sense the weight of emotion in the woman's slow, penetrating look. The air was full of a hatred that needed to be discharged; it was like the electrical energy in a storm-cloud that strikes blindly and with consuming power at one of the trees in a forest.

The officer's fellow-worker was a short soldier with a thin towel round his neck and some sacking tied with telephone cable round his legs.

The Russians standing in silence by the door looked so hostile that the prisoners felt relieved to go back down again into the dark cellar. They stayed there as long as they could, preferring the stench and darkness to the fresh air and daylight.

The prisoners were on their way back to the cellar with empty stretchers when they heard the familiar sound of Russian swearwords. They carried on at the same pace, sensing instinctively that one sudden movement would be enough to make the crowd turn on them.

The officer suddenly let out a cry and the guard said irritably: 'Hey, you brat! What's the use of throwing stones? Are you going to take over if the Fritz comes a cropper?'

Back down in the cellar the prisoners had a few words together.

'For the time being, they've only got it in for the lieutenant.'

'Did you see the way that woman looked at him?'

'You stay in the cellar this time, Lieutenant,' said a voice out of the darkness. 'If they start on you, then we'll be next.'

'No, no, it's no good hiding,' the officer murmured sleepily. 'This is the day of judgment.' He turned to his fellow-worker. 'Come on now, let's be off!'

This time their burden was lighter and they walked faster than usual as they came out of the cellar. On the stretcher lay the corpse of an adolescent girl. Her body was shrivelled and dried up; only her blonde hair still kept its warm life and colour, falling in disorder round the terrible, blackened face of a dead bird. The crowd gave a quiet gasp.

The squat woman let out a shrill cry. Her voice cut through the cold air like a blade. 'My child! My child! My golden child!'

The crowd was shaken by the way the woman had cried out for a child who wasn't even her own. The woman began tidying the girl's hair; it looked as though it had only recently been curled. She gazed at her face, at her forever twisted mouth, at her terrible features; in them she could see what only a mother could have seen – the adorable face of the baby who had once smiled at her out of its swaddling clothes.

The woman got to her feet and strode towards the officer. Everyone was struck by the way she kept her eyes fixed on him and yet at the same time managed to find a brick that wasn't part of a great frozen heap – a brick that even her poor hand could pick up, her poor weak hand that had been deformed by years of labour, that had been scalded by boiling water, icy water and lye.

The guard sensed what was about to happen and knew there was nothing he could do to stop the woman; she was stronger than his tommy-gun. The prisoners couldn't take their eyes off her; the children watched her avidly and impatiently.

The woman could no longer see anything at all except the face of the German with the handkerchief round his mouth. Not understanding what was happening to her, governed by a power she had just now seemed to control, she felt in the pocket of her jacket for a piece of bread that had been given to her the evening before by a soldier. She held it out to the German officer and said: 'There, have something to eat.'

Afterwards, she was unable to understand what had happened to her, why she had done this. Her life was to be full of moments of humiliation, helplessness and anger, full of petty cruelties that made her lie awake at night, full of brooding resentment. There was the time she quarrelled with her neighbour who had accused her of stealing a bottle of oil; the time the chairman of the district soviet, not interested in her complaints about life in a communal flat, had her thrown out of his office; the time when her son began manoeuvring to get her out of the room they shared, when his pregnant wife called her an old whore… At one such moment, lying on her bed, full of bitterness, she was to remember that winter morning outside the cellar and think: T was a fool then, and I'm still a fool now.'

49

Alarming reports were reaching Novikov's headquarters from his brigade commanders. Their scouts had located German tank and artillery units that hadn't yet taken part in the fighting. The enemy was evidently bringing up his reserves.

Novikov found this information very disturbing: his forward units were advancing without securing their flanks; if the enemy should succeed in cutting the small number of passable roads, his tanks would be left with no infantry support and no fuel.

Novikov discussed the situation with Getmanov; he considered it essential to call a temporary halt to the tanks' advance and allow the forces in the rear to catch up. Getmanov was still obsessed by the idea that their corps must be the first to enter the Ukraine. In the end they agreed that Getmanov should bring up the rear while Novikov investigated the situation to the west.

Before setting off for the brigades, Novikov phoned Yeremenko's second-in-command and informed him of the situation. He knew in advance what answer he would receive; the second-in-command would never take the responsibility either of calling a halt to their advance, or of ordering them to continue.

The second-in-command said that he would alert Yeremenko and that he would request information from the intelligence service at Front HQ.

Novikov then phoned Molokov, the commander of the infantry corps next door. Molokov was a difficult, bad-tempered man who constantly suspected his neighbours of making unfavourable reports about him to Yeremenko. He and Novikov ended up arguing and even exchanging curses – not, admittedly, directed at each other, but at the widening gap opening up between the tanks and the infantry.

After that, Novikov phoned his neighbour on the left, the commander of an artillery division. He said he didn't intend to advance any further unless he received orders from Front Headquarters. Novikov could understand his point of view: he didn't want merely to play a supporting role to the tanks.

As Novikov was hanging up, Nyeudobnov came in. Novikov had never seen him looking so flustered and anxious.

'Comrade Colonel,' he said, 'I've just had a call from the chief of staff of the air army. They're about to transfer our support aircraft to the left flank.'

'What do you mean?' shouted Novikov. 'They must be out of their minds!'

'There's no mystery about it,' said Nyeudobnov. 'Some people would prefer us not to be the first to enter the Ukraine. There are more than enough men who've got their eyes on the Orders of Suvorov and Bogdan Khmelnitsky. Without air support we have no choice but to call a halt.'

'I'll phone Yeremenko straight away.'

Yeremenko, however, had left for Tolbukhin 's army. His second-in-command, whom Novikov had only just phoned, again preferred not to take any decision. He merely expressed surprise that Novikov hadn't yet moved up to his brigades.

'Comrade Lieutenant-General,' said Novikov, 'I fail to understand how you can possibly, without warning, remove all air cover from the corps that has advanced furthest towards the West.'

'Your superiors are better placed than you to decide how best to make use of the support aircraft,' came the angry reply. 'Yours isn't the only corps taking part in this offensive.'

'What am I going to say to my soldiers when the Germans start pounding them?' demanded Novikov. 'How am I going to cover them? With your instructions?'

Instead of losing his temper, the second-in-command adopted a conciliatory tone.

'I'll report the situation to the commander. You set off for your brigades.'

Then Getmanov came in; he had already put on his cap and overcoat. When he saw Novikov, he threw up his hands in astonishment. 'Pyotr Pavlovich, I thought you'd already left.'

His next words were more gentle. 'You say the rear's lagging behind. Well, the officer responsible says we shouldn't be wasting trucks and precious petrol on wounded Germans.' He gave Novikov a meaningful look. 'After all, we're not a section of the Comintern. We're a fighting unit.'

'What on earth's the Comintern got to do with it?'

'Comrade Colonel,' said Nyeudobnov entreatingly, 'it's time you left. Every moment's precious. I'll do everything in my power to sort things out with Headquarters.'

Since his conversation with Darensky, Novikov had been watching Nyeudobnov constantly, following his every movement. 'Not with that very hand? I can't believe it!' he would think to himself as Nyeudobnov took hold of a spoon, speared a piece of pickled cucumber on a fork or picked up the telephone.

Now, though, Novikov had forgotten about all that. He had never seen Nyeudobnov so friendly, so concerned – so likeable even.

Getmanov and Nyeudobnov were ready to sell their souls to the devil if only they could be the first to enter the Ukraine, if only the brigades could continue their advance without delay. But there was one risk they wouldn't run: that of taking responsibility themselves for an action that might lead to a setback.

In spite of himself, Novikov had succumbed to this fever. He too wanted to be able to radio to HQ that his advance units had been the first to cross the frontier. In military terms this meant very little and certainly would not occasion the enemy any particular harm. But Novikov wanted it none the less – for the glory of it, for the Order of Suvorov, for the rank of general it would certainly assure him. He wanted to be thanked by Yeremenko, to be praised by Vasilevsky, to hear his name over the radio on Stalin's order of the day. He even wanted his neighbours to be jealous of him. Such thoughts and feelings had never governed his acts before; it was perhaps for this very reason that they were now so intense.

There was nothing reprehensible in this ambition of his… Everything was the same as in Stalingrad and during 1941: the cold was just as pitiless, the soldiers were still half-dead with exhaustion, death was still as terrifying. And yet the whole spirit of the war was changing.

And Novikov, who hadn't yet understood this, was surprised to find himself in agreement for once with Getmanov and Nyeudobnov. He no longer felt irritated or resentful; he seemed quite naturally to want the same things as they did.

If his tanks advanced faster, the invaders would indeed be driven out of a few Ukrainian villages a few hours sooner. It would make him happy to see the joy on the faces of the children and old men. Some old peasant woman would fling her arms round him as though he were her own son; his eyes would fill with tears.

But, at the same time, new passions were ripening; the spirit of the war was changing. What had been crucial in Stalingrad and during 1941 was coming to be of merely secondary importance. The first person to understand this change was the man who on 3 June, 1941, had said: 'My brothers and sisters, my friends…'

Getmanov and Nyeudobnov were egging Novikov on; he shared their excitement, but for some strange reason kept putting off his departure. It was only as he got into his jeep that he realized it was because he was expecting Zhenya.

It was over three weeks since he had heard from her. Each time he made his way back to HQ, he hoped to find Zhenya waiting for him on the steps. She had come to share in his life. She was with him when he talked to his brigade commanders, when he was called to the telephone by Front Headquarters, when he drove up to the front line and felt his tank trembling at the shell-bursts like a young horse. Once, telling Getmanov the story of his childhood, he had felt as though he were telling it to her. He would say to himself: 'God, I really stink of vodka. Zhenya would notice in no time.' Or: 'Now, if only she could see that!'

He had wondered anxiously what she would think if she knew that he had sent a major before the military tribunal. Among the clouds of tobacco smoke and the voices of telephonists in an observation post on the front line, among the gunfire and the exploding bombs, he would be thinking of her…

Sometimes he felt jealous of her past. Sometimes he dreamed of her; he would wake up and be unable to get back to sleep. At times he felt sure their love would last for ever; at others he was afraid of being left on his own again.

As he got into his jeep, he glanced round at the road leading back to the Volga; it was deserted. He suddenly thought angrily that she should have arrived long ago. Perhaps she had fallen ill? Once again he remembered the day in 1939 when he had heard the news of her marriage and almost shot himself. Why did he love her? He had had other women who were just as good. Was it a joy or a kind of sickness to think so obsessively about one person? It was a good thing he hadn't got involved with any of the girls on his staff. Yes, he had a clean slate. Though there had been one night three weeks ago… What if she stopped on the way and spent the night in that hut? The young woman might start talking to Zhenya. She might describe him and say: 'Yes, that colonel's a splendid fellow!' What nonsense goes through one's head, what nonsense!

50

Novikov returned to his headquarters at noon on the following day. He was aching all over – in the small of his back, in his neck and spine, – after being shaken about on icy, pot-holed roads that had been ploughed up by the treads of tanks. It was as though the soldiers had infected him with their own exhaustion, with the stupefaction they felt after so many days without sleep.

As they drew up, he saw a group of people standing on the porch. There was Yevgenia Nikolaevna standing beside Getmanov, watching the approaching jeep. He felt a flame burning into him, he gasped with a mad joy that was close to pain. He was about to leap out of the still-moving jeep when Vershkov, who was sitting behind him, said:

'So the commissar's taking the air with that doctor of his. We should take a photo of them. That would make his wife happy.'

Novikov went inside. He took the letter held out to him by Getmanov, turned it over, recognized Zhenya's handwriting, and stuffed it into his pocket.

'All right,' he said to Getmanov. 'I'll tell you how I see the situation.'

'But what about the letter? Don't you love her any longer?'

'Thank you. That can wait.'

Nyeudobnov came in and Novikov began.

'The only problem is with the men themselves. They're falling asleep in their tanks during combat. They're worn out. The brigade commanders included. Karpov's not too bad, but Byelov fell asleep while he was talking to me – he hasn't stopped for five days. The drivers and mechanics are falling asleep on the move. They're too exhausted even to eat.'

'But Pyotr Pavlovich,' Getmanov broke in, 'how do you see the general situation?'

'There's no risk of a counter-offensive in our sector. The Germans have lost their nerve. They're taking to their heels as fast as they can.'

As he spoke, he could feel the envelope between his fingers. He let it go for a moment and then quickly grasped it again; he was afraid it might escape from his pocket.

'Very well,' said Getmanov. 'That seems clear enough. Now listen to what I've got to say. The general and I have been right to the top. I spoke to Nikita Sergeyevich himself. He gave his word that we would not lose our air support.'

'But Khrushchev has no direct military authority,' said Novikov.

'Yes and no,' said Getmanov. 'The general's just received confirmation from Air Army Headquarters. The aircraft are staying with us.'

'And the roads aren't bad at all,' said Nyeudobnov hurriedly. 'The forces in the rear will catch up with us in no time. The main thing, comrade Lieutenant-Colonel, is that it's your own decision.'

'Now he's demoting me,' thought Novikov. 'He really must be worried.'

'Yes, gentlemen,' said Getmanov. 'It seems more and more as though we really will be the ones to begin the liberation of Mother Ukraine. I told Nikita Sergeyevich that our men are besieging their officers, that their greatest dream is to be called "The Ukrainian Corps".'

Novikov felt irritated by this falsehood. 'There's only one thing they're dreaming of,' he said, 'and that's having a few hours' sleep. Do you understand? They've been on the move for five days and five nights.'

'So it's been decided, has it?' said Getmanov. 'We're pressing on. Right?'

Novikov half-opened the envelope, stuck two fingers inside and felt the letter itself. His whole body ached to look again at the familiar handwriting.

'What I've decided,' said Novikov, 'is to call a halt for ten hours. The men need to recover their strength. They need a rest.'

'Ten hours!' said Nyeudobnov. 'We'll throw away everything if we lose ten hours.'

'Wait a moment,' said Getmanov. 'Let's just think about it a little.' His cheeks, his ears, even his neck were slowly turning red.

'I already have thought about it,' said Novikov with a slight laugh.

Getmanov exploded:

'To hell with them all! So what if they haven't had enough sleep! There'll be time enough for them to sleep… And you want to call a halt just because of that! You're dithering, Pyotr Pavlovich, and I protest! First you delay the beginning of the offensive. Now you want to put your men to bed. It's becoming quite a habit. I intend to report this to the Military Soviet. Do you think you're in charge of a kindergarten?'

'Wait a moment,' said Novikov. 'Wasn't it you who kissed me for not sending in the tanks until I'd knocked out the enemy artillery? You should put that in your report too.'

'You say I kissed you for that?' said Getmanov in astonishment. 'You must be mad!… Let me be quite frank. As a Communist, I feel disturbed that you, a man of the purest proletarian origin, should repeatedly allow yourself to be influenced by alien elements.'

'So it's like that, is it?' said Novikov, raising his voice. 'Very well then.'

He got to his feet, threw back his shoulders and shouted furiously:

'I'm in command here. And what I say goes. As for you, comrade Getmanov, for all I care you can write reports, stories and whole novels about me! And you can send them to whoever you please – even comrade Stalin himself.'

He went through into the adjoining room…

Novikov put down the letter he had just read and gave a whistle. He used to whistle like that when he was a little boy. He would stand under his friend's window and whistle to him to come out and play. It was probably a good thirty years since he had whistled like that…

Then he looked out through the window. No, it was still light… In sudden, hysterical joy he cried out: 'Thank you, thank you, thank you for everything!'

For a moment he thought he was about to fall down dead. He walked up and down the room. He looked again at the letter on his desk. It was like a white, sloughed-off skin that a viper had just crawled out of. He put his hands to his chest and his sides. The viper wasn't there. It must have crawled inside him already. It must be burning his heart with poison.

He stood for a moment by the window. The drivers were laughing as they watched Marusya the telephonist walk past to the lavatory. The driver of the staff tank was carrying a bucket from the well. Sparrows were busying themselves in the straw beside the entrance to the cow-shed. Zhenya had once said that sparrows were her favourite bird… And now he was on fire – just like a house. The beams had given way. The ceiling was falling in. Cups and plates were crashing to the floor. Cupboards were toppling over. Books and pillows were tumbling about, flying through the smoke and the sparks like birds… 'I shall be grateful all my life for everything pure and noble that you have given me. But what can I do? The past is stronger than I am. I can't kill it, I can't forget it… Don't blame me – not because I'm not guilty, but because neither of us know quite what I am guilty of… Forgive me, forgive me, I'm crying for us both.'

So she was crying, was she! Novikov felt a sudden fury. The filthy bitch! The snake! He wanted to punch her on the jaw, in the eyes. He wanted to crack that whore's nose of hers with the butt of his revolver…

Suddenly, unbearably suddenly, he felt helpless. There was nothing in the whole world that could help him, only Zhenya, and she had destroyed him…

He looked in the direction she should have been coming from and said: 'What have you done to me, Zhenechka? Can you hear me? Look at me, Zhenechka! Look what you've done to me!'

He stretched out his hands to her. Then he thought: 'All this is a waste of time.' Yes, he had waited all those years, but now she had made up her mind. She wasn't a little girl. She had dragged it out for years, but now she had made up her mind. She had made up her mind -he must try to understand that.

A few minutes later he was again trying to find refuge in hatred: 'No, no, of course you didn't want me when I was an acting major in Nikolsk-Ussuriysk. But it was another story when I was promoted. You wanted to be the wife of a general. Well, women are all the same…' He soon realized what nonsense this was. She had left him for a man who was on his way to a camp, to Kolyma. What would she get out of that…? '"Russian women" – a poem by Nekrasov. [53] She doesn't love me, she loves him. No, she doesn't love him, she pities him. It's just that she pities him. But doesn't she have any pity for me? No one in the Lubyanka, no one in the camps, no one in hospital with a missing arm or leg can be more unhappy than I am. Very well, I'll go to a camp myself. Which of us will you choose then? Him! You two are the same breed, but I'm a stranger. That's what you called me – a stranger. Yes, I'll always be a peasant, a miner. Even if I become a marshal, I'll still never be an intellectual. I'll still never be able to make head or tail of all that painting of yours…'

In a loud hate-filled voice he asked: 'But why? Why?'

He took his pistol out of his back pocket and weighed it in the palm of his hand. 'I'm going to shoot myself. And not because I can't live without you – but to torment you with guilt. You whore!'

He put his pistol back in its place.

'She'll have forgotten me in a week.'

No, he was the one who needed to forget. He mustn't look back. He mustn't give her another thought.

He went up to the table and began to read the letter again. 'My dearest, my poor darling…' It wasn't the cruel words that hurt, it was the ones that were full of pity, full of affectionate, humiliating pity. He felt as though he could hardly breathe.

He could see her breasts, her shoulders, her knees. There she was – on her way to that wretched Krymov. 'But what can I do?' She was travelling in a crowded, airless wagon. Someone asked her a question and she answered: 'To join my husband.' She had the sad, docile eyes of a dog.

And he had looked out of this very window to see if she was on her way to him. His shoulders shook. He sniffed and gave a kind of bark; he was choking back his terrible sobs. He remembered how he'd ordered some chocolate and nougat from the Front Commissariat. 'Don't you dare touch them,' he'd said to Vershkov, 'or it'll be the end of you!'

Once again he muttered: 'See what you've done to me, my Zhenechka, my little one! You might have some pity!'

He suddenly dragged his suitcase out from under the bed. He took out Zhenya's letters and photos – the ones he'd been carrying around for years, the one she'd sent in her last letter, and the very first, cellophane-wrapped passport photo – and began tearing them to shreds with his large, powerful fingers. On tiny shreds of paper he recognized words he had read hundreds of times, words that had made his head spin. He watched her face, her neck, her eyes, her lips, all slowly disappear. He was working as fast as he could. When it was done he felt better; he felt as though he had eradicated her, as though he had stamped out the last trace of her, as though he had freed himself from a witch.

He had lived without her before. He could get over it! In a year or so he'd be able to walk straight past her without his heart so much as missing a beat. He needed her as much as a drunk needs a cork! But he understood all too quickly how vain these thoughts were. How can you tear something out of your heart? Your heart isn't made out of paper and your life isn't written down in ink. You can't erase the imprint of years.

He had allowed her to share in his thoughts, in his work, in his troubles. He had allowed her to witness his strengths and his weaknesses…

And the torn-up letters hadn't disappeared. The words he had read hundreds of times were still in his memory. Her eyes were still gazing at him from the photographs.

He opened the cupboard door and poured out a large glass of vodka. He drank it down and lit a cigarette. He lit it a second time -though it hadn't gone out. His head was full of clamouring grief; his insides were on fire.

'Zhenechka, my dearest, my little one, what have you done, what have you done, how could you?'

He stuffed the torn shreds of paper back into the suitcase, put the bottle back in the cupboard and thought: 'Well, that's a little better.'

Soon his tanks would reach the Donbass. He would visit the village where he had been born and the spot where his old people had been buried. His father would be proud of his Petya now; his mother would be full of pity for her unfortunate little son. When the war came to an end, he would go and live with his brother's family. His little niece would say: 'Uncle Petya, why are you so quiet?'

He suddenly remembered a moment from his childhood. The dog had gone off after a bitch on heat and had come back all chewed up. He had a torn ear, his mouth was crooked, one eye was half-closed because of a swelling, and tufts of his long hair had been torn out. He had stood there by the porch, his tail between his legs. Petya's father had looked at him and said good-naturedly: 'So you were just the best man, were you?'

Vershkov came in.

'Are you having a rest, comrade Colonel?'

'Just for a few minutes.'

He looked at his watch and thought: 'All brigades to halt until seven o'clock tomorrow morning. To be transmitted in code.'

'I'm going to visit the brigades again,' he told Vershkov.

A fast drive was a welcome distraction. They were going at eighty kilometres an hour on an appalling road. The jeep swayed wildly as it careered over the pot-holes. The driver kept looking at Novikov pathetically, begging to be allowed to drive more slowly.

They reached the headquarters of the 1st brigade. How everything had changed in only a few hours! How Makarov had changed – it was as though they hadn't seen each other for years.

Quite forgetting the usual formalities, Makarov threw up his hands in bewilderment and said: 'Comrade Colonel, Getmanov has just transmitted an order direct from Yeremenko. Your own order has been rescinded and we're to press on with the offensive immediately.'

51

Three weeks later Novikov's tank corps was withdrawn from the front line and placed in reserve. It was time to overhaul the tanks and bring the brigades up to their full strength. Both men and tanks were exhausted after covering four hundred kilometres, fighting all the way.

At the same time Novikov received a summons from Moscow. He was to report to the General Staff and to the Central Administration for Senior Field Ranks. It was uncertain whether or not he would be returning to his command.

During his absence General Nyeudobnov was to take over the command. A few days before this Getmanov heard that the Central Committee had decided to retire him from active service. He was to be appointed secretary of the obkom in a newly-liberated part of the Donbass; this was a post to which the Central Committee attached particular importance.

Novikov's summons provoked considerable discussion both at Front Headquarters and at the Armoured Forces Administration. Some people made out that it was of no great import, that Novikov would soon resume his command. Others argued that it had to do with Novikov's delay at the beginning of the offensive and his unfortunate decision, at the very climax of the offensive, to call a ten-hour halt in order to rest his men. Still others claimed that it was the result of his failure to establish good relations with his commissar and his chief of staff – both of whom had excellent records.

The secretary of the Front Military Soviet, a man who was usually well-informed, said it had to do with compromising ties of a personal nature. At one time he too had thought that Novikov's misfortunes stemmed from his disagreements with his commissar. But this was not the case: he had seen with his own eyes a letter of Getmanov's addressed to the very highest authorities. In this letter Getmanov protested strongly against Novikov's removal from the command. He said that Novikov was a commanding officer of outstanding abilities and a man who was both morally and politically above reproach.

The strangest thing of all was that, when he received this summons, Novikov had his first good night's sleep after weeks of painful insomnia.

52

Viktor felt as though he were being carried along at great speed by a roaring train; he found it difficult even to remember the quiet of his own house. Time had become quite dense, full of people, events and telephone calls. It already seemed ten years since Shishakov had called round. He had been attentive and friendly, full of questions about Viktor's health and all kinds of explanations. He had hinted gently that the events of the past weeks were best forgotten.

Viktor had imagined that the people who had tried to destroy him would now be too ashamed even to look at him. Instead, they greeted him joyfully on his return to the Institute, looking him straight in the eye as they expressed their heartfelt goodwill. The most extraordinary thing of all was that these people were quite sincere; now, they really did wish Viktor well.

Once again Viktor heard his work praised. Malenkov called him for an interview, looked straight at him with his quick black eyes and talked to him for the best part of an hour. Viktor was surprised at how familiar Malenkov was with his work and how easily he handled technical terms.

If this was surprising, Malenkov's last words were astonishing: 'We would be deeply regretful if anything at all were to hinder you in your work. We understand very well that there can be no practice without theory.'

Viktor really hadn't expected that.

He found it very strange, on the following day, to see the anxious, questioning look with which Shishakov greeted him and at the same time remember the anger and humiliation he had felt when Shishakov had failed to invite him to the meeting held in his house.

Markov was warm and friendly, Savostyanov as witty as ever. Gurevich came into the laboratory and embraced him, saying: 'I am glad to see you! I really am! You must be Benjamin the Fortunate!'

Yes, Viktor was still on the train.

He was asked whether he considered it necessary to expand his laboratory into an independent research institute. He was flown to the Urals by special plane, together with a Deputy People's Commissar. He was allocated a special car which Lyudmila used to go to the store, giving lifts to women who had previously pretended not to recognize her.

Everything that had once seemed impossibly complicated and confusing now happened all by itself.

Young Landesman was deeply moved. Kovchenko phoned him at home and within an hour Dubyonkov had arranged for him to be taken onto the staff of Viktor's laboratory.

On her return from Kazan, Anna Naumovna Weisspapier told Viktor that all her documentation had been arranged within two days and that Kovchenko had even arranged for a car to meet her at the station in Moscow. Anna Stepanovna had been informed by Dubyonkov in writing that she had been reinstated in her former post and that the deputy director had decided she should be paid in full for the weeks she was absent.

The new employees were constantly being fed. They said jokingly that their work was simply a matter of letting themselves be ferried, all day long, from one special canteen to another. Needless to say, this was far from the truth.

The new apparatus in Viktor's laboratory no longer seemed quite so perfect. He had the feeling that in a year's time it might seem slightly comic, like Stephenson's 'Rocket'.

What had happened in Viktor's life seemed at once both natural and unnatural. His work really was interesting and important – why shouldn't it be praised? Landesman had a talent for research – why shouldn't he work in the Institute? Anna Naumovna was indeed irreplaceable – why should she have to hang around in Kazan?

Still, Viktor knew very well that, but for Stalin's telephone call, his research – for all its excellence – would have been forgotten; and Landesman – for all his talent – would still be unemployed. But then Stalin's telephone call was no accident; it was no mere whim or caprice. Stalin was the embodiment of the State – and the State has no whims or caprices.

Viktor had been afraid that all his time would be taken up with administrative matters – plans, conferences, taking on new staff, placing orders for new equipment… But the cars he travelled in were fast, the meetings he attended began punctually and moved swiftly to a conclusion, and all his wishes were immediately granted. As a result, Viktor was able to spend the entire morning – the time when he did his best work – in perfect freedom in his laboratory. No one disturbed him; he was able to concentrate exclusively on his own interests. His work still belonged to him. It was all a far cry from what happened to the artist in Gogol's 'The Portrait'.

He had been even more afraid that other people might encroach on his own field. This fear also proved groundless. 'I really am absolutely free,' he said to himself in surprise.

He thought once of what Artelev had said in Kazan about military factories: how well-provided they were with raw materials, energy and machine-tools, and how free from bureaucratic interference.

'Yes,' thought Viktor. 'It is in its own absence that bureaucracy reveals itself most clearly. Whatever serves the principal aims of the State is rushed along at great speed. Bureaucracy can have two opposite effects: it can halt any movement or it can speed it up to an incredible degree – as though freeing it from the constraints of gravity.'

Not that Viktor thought often about those long conversations in that small room in Kazan. He no longer thought of Madyarov as someone remarkably intelligent and altogether exceptional. He no longer felt a constant anxiety over his fate. He was no longer obsessed by the terrible mutual suspicions harboured by him and Karimov.

Without his realizing it, everything that had happened to him began to seem quite normal, quite natural. His new life was the rule; he had begun to get used to it. It was his past life that had been the exception, and slowly he began to forget what it had been like. Was there really any truth in those reflections of Artelev's?

In the past Viktor had felt nervous and irritated as soon as he crossed the threshold of the personnel department, as soon as he felt Dubyonkov even look at him. In fact, Dubyonkov was very decent and obliging. When he phoned Viktor, he said: 'Dubyonkov speaking. I hope I'm not disturbing you, Viktor Pavlovich?'

Viktor had always regarded Kovchenko as a sinister and treacherous intriguer who would happily annihilate anyone who stood in his way; he had seemed to come from another world – a world of mysterious unwritten instructions – and to be profoundly indifferent to science itself. In fact he was not like this at all. He came round to Viktor's laboratory every day; he was a true democrat and he didn't stand on his dignity at all. He joked with Anna Naumovna, shook everyone by the hand and chatted with the technicians and metalworkers; it turned out that he had operated a lathe himself in his youth.

Shishakov was someone Viktor had disliked for years. Then one day he had lunch at his house and discovered that Shishakov was witty, hospitable, a gourmet and a fine raconteur; he enjoyed good cognac and he collected engravings. And – most important of all – he appreciated the importance of Viktor's theory.

'I've triumphed!' thought Viktor. But he knew very well that it was not an absolute victory: if the people around him now treated him differently, if they now helped rather than hindered him, it certainly wasn't because he had won their hearts with his great charm, intelligence and talent.

Nevertheless, Viktor rejoiced. He had triumphed!

There were special news bulletins on the radio nearly every evening. The Soviet offensive was still continuing. To Viktor, it seemed quite natural to link the course of his own life with that of the war, with the victory of the people and the army, the victory of the State. At the same time he knew that it wasn't really quite so simple. He was quite capable of laughing at his childish habit of always wanting to see everything in black and white: 'Stalin's done this, Stalin's done that, glory to Stalin!'

He had thought that important administrators and Party officials never talked about anything, even with their families, except the ideological purity of their cadres. He had thought they did nothing except sign papers in red pencil, read A Short Course in the History of the Party out loud to their wives, and dream of temporary rulings and obligatory instructions. Now he had unexpectedly discovered that they had a human side too.

Ramskov, the Secretary of the Institute Party Committee, turned out to be a keen fisherman. Before the war he had gone on a boating holiday in the Urals, together with his wife and his sons.

'What more can one ask for, Viktor Pavlovich?' he would say. 'You get up at dawn. Everything's glittering with dew, and the sand on the bank's still cold. Then you cast your lines. The water's black. It's not giving anything away, but it's full of promises… Wait till the war's over – then you can become one of us yourself!'

Kovchenko once talked to Viktor about childhood illnesses. Viktor was surprised how much he knew about the different treatments for rickets and tonsillitis. He had two children of his own and had also adopted a little Spanish boy. This boy was always falling ill and Kovchenko looked after him himself.

Even dry old Svechin talked to him about his collection of cacti and how he'd managed to save them from the terrible frosts during the winter of 1941.

'They're really not such bad people after all,' he thought. 'I suppose everyone has something human about them.'

Deep down, of course, Viktor understood that nothing had really changed. He was neither a fool nor a cynic; he could think for himself.

He remembered a story of Krymov's about an old comrade of his, Bagryanov, a senior investigator in the Military Prosecutor's Office. Bagryanov had been arrested in 1937 and then, during the brief spell of liberalism under Beria in 1939, had been released from the camp and allowed to return to Moscow.

Krymov had described how, one night, Bagryanov had turned up on his doorstep; he had come straight from the station and his trousers and shirt were in tatters. In his pocket was his certificate of release from the camp.

That night, Bagryanov had been full of seditious speeches and sympathy for the other prisoners; he had intended to set up as a gardener and a bee-keeper. But as he was allowed to return to his former life, his speeches gradually began to change.

Krymov had laughed as he described the slow evolution of Bagryanov's ideology. First he was given back his military uniform; at that time his views were still liberal, but he was no longer a raging Danton. Then, in exchange for his certificate of release, he was given a passport allowing him to live in Moscow. He immediately began to take up the Hegelian position: 'AH that is real, is rational.' Then he was given back his flat – and began making out that most of the prisoners in the camps really were enemies of the people. Then his medals were returned to him. Finally he was reinstated in the Party without loss of seniority.

It was just then that Krymov's own difficulties had begun. Bagryanov stopped ringing him up. Krymov had met him by chance one day; he had two decorations on his tunic collar and he was getting out of a special car by the entrance to the Public Prosecutor's Office. This was only eight months after the night when a man in a torn shirt, with a certificate from a labour camp in his pocket, had sat in Krymov's room holding forth about innocent victims and blind violence.

'I thought then that he was lost to the Public Prosecutor's Office for ever,' Krymov had said with a wry smile.

It wasn't for nothing that Viktor remembered this story and recounted it to Nadya and Lyudmila. Nothing had changed in his attitude towards the victims of 1937. He was still as appalled as ever at the cruelty of Stalin. He knew very well that life hadn't changed for other people simply because he was now Fortune's pet instead of her stepson. Nothing would ever bring back to life the victims of collectivization or the people who had been shot in 1937; it made no difference to them whether or not prizes and medals were awarded to a certain Shtrum, whether he was called to see Malenkov or was pointedly not invited to a gathering at Shishakov's.

And yet something had changed, both in his understanding and in his actual memory of things.

[…]

Often Viktor would make little speeches to his wife.

'What a lot of nonentities there are everywhere! How afraid people are to defend their honour! How easily they give in! What miserable compromises they make!'

On one occasion he even attacked Chepyzhin: 'His passion for travelling and mountaineering conceals an unconscious fear of the complexity of life. And his resignation from the Institute reveals a conscious fear of confronting the most important question of our time.'

Yes, something was changing in him. He could feel it, but he didn't know what it was.

53

On his return to work, Viktor found Sokolov absent from the laboratory. He had caught pneumonia two days before.

Viktor learnt that before his illness he and Shishakov had agreed that he should be transferred to a different post. In the end he had been appointed director of another laboratory that was currently being reorganized. Evidently he was doing well.

Even the omniscient Markov was ignorant of the true reasons behind Sokolov's request to be transferred. Viktor felt no regret: he found it painful to think of meeting Sokolov, let alone working with him.

Who knows what Sokolov would have read in Viktor's eyes? Certainly Viktor had no right to think as he did about the wife of his friend. He had no right to be longing for her. He had no right to meet her in secret. If he'd heard a similar story about someone else, he'd have felt quite indignant. Deceiving one's wife! Deceiving a friend! But he did long for her. He did dream of meeting her.

Lyudmila and Marya Ivanovna were now seeing each other again. They had had a long telephone conversation and then met. They had both cried, each accusing herself of meanness, suspiciousness and lack of faith in their friendship.

How complicated life was! Marya Ivanovna, pure honest Marya Ivanovna, had been insincere and deceitful with Lyudmila. But only because of her love for him!

Viktor very seldom saw Marya Ivanovna now. Most of what he knew about her came from Lyudmila.

He learnt that Sokolov had been proposed for a Stalin Prize on the strength of some papers he had published before the war; that he had received an enthusiastic letter from some young physicists in England; that he might be chosen as a corresponding member of the Academy at the next elections. All this was what Marya Ivanovna told Lyudmila.

During his own brief meetings with her he never so much as mentioned Pyotr Lavrentyevich.

His work in the laboratory, his journeys and meetings were never enough to take his mind off her; he wanted to see her the whole time.

Lyudmila said several times: 'You know, I just don't understand what Sokolov's got against you now. Even Masha can't explain it.'

The explanation, of course, was simple enough, but it was impossible for Marya Ivanovna to share it with Lyudmila. It was quite enough that she had told her husband of her feelings for Viktor.

This confession had destroyed the friendship between Viktor and Sokolov for ever. She had promised her husband not to go on seeing Viktor. If she were to say one word to Lyudmila, she would be cut off from Viktor completely; he wouldn't know where she was or what she was doing. They met so seldom as it was. And their meetings were so brief. They spoke very little even when they did meet; they just walked down the street arm in arm or sat in silence on a park bench.

At the time of Viktor's troubles she had understood his feelings with a quite extraordinary sensitivity. She had been able to guess what he would think and what he would do; she had seemed able to anticipate all that was about to happen to him. The gloomier he had felt, the more passionately he had longed to see her. This perfect understanding of hers had seemed to him to be his only happiness. He had felt that with her beside him he could easily bear all his sufferings. With her he could be happy.

They had talked together one night in Kazan, they had gone for a walk in a Moscow park, they had sat together for a few moments in a square off Kaluga Street – and that was all. And then there was the present: a few telephone calls and a few brief meetings he hadn't told Lyudmila about.

Viktor knew, however, that his sin and her sin couldn't be measured by the number of minutes they had sat together on a bench. His was no mean sin: he loved her. How had she come to occupy such an important place in his life?

Every word he said to his wife was partly a lie. He couldn't help it; there was something deceitful in his every movement, in every look he gave her.

With affected indifference, he would ask her: 'Well, did your friend ring today? How is she? And is Pyotr Lavrentyevich well?'

He felt glad at Sokolov's successes, but not because he felt any goodwill towards him. No, it was because he felt it gave Marya Ivanovna the right not to feel guilty.

He found it unbearable to hear about Sokolov and Marya Ivanovna only through Lyudmila. It was humiliating for Lyudmila, for Marya Ivanovna, and for himself. He was conscious of something false even when he talked to Lyudmila about Nadya, Tolya and Alexandra Vladimirovna. There were lies everywhere. Why was this? How had it happened? His love for Marya Ivanovna was the deepest truth of his soul. How could it have given birth to so many lies?

It was only by renouncing his love that he could deliver himself, Lyudmila and Marya Ivanovna from these lies. But when he realized this was what he had to do, he was dissuaded by a treacherous fear that clouded his judgement: 'This lie isn't so very terrible. What harm does it do anyone? Suffering is more terrible than lying.'

And when he felt he was strong and ruthless enough to break with Lyudmila and ruin Sokolov's life, this same treacherous fear egged him on with a contradictory argument: 'Nothing can be worse than deceit. It would be better to break with Lyudmila altogether than to go on lying to her all the time. And making Marya Ivanovna lie to her. Deceit is more terrible than suffering.'

Viktor wasn't aware that his intelligence was now merely the obedient servant of his emotions and that there was only one way of escaping from this circle of confusion – by using the knife, by sacrificing himself rather than others.

The more he thought about it all, the less he understood. How could he unravel this tangle? How could his love for Marya Ivanovna be the truth of his life and at the same time be its greatest lie? Only last summer he had had an affair with the beautiful Nina. And they had done more than just walk round the square like schoolchildren who had fallen in love. But it was only now that he felt a sense of guilt and betrayal, a sense of having done wrong to his family.

All this consumed an incalculable amount of emotional and intellectual energy, probably as much as Planck had expended in elaborating his quantum theory.

He had once thought that his love had been born only of sorrow and tragedy… But now he was on the crest of the wave – and he needed Marya Ivanovna as much as ever.

She was unlike everyone else; she wasn't attracted in the least by power, riches and fame. She had wanted to share his grief, anxiety and deprivation… Would she turn away from him now?

He knew that Marya Ivanovna worshipped Pyotr Lavrentyevich. Sometimes this drove him almost insane.

Yevgenia was probably right. This second love, born after years of married life, must be the result of a vitamin deficiency of the soul. He was like a cow licking salt after searching for it for years in grass, hay and the leaves of trees. This hunger of the soul grew very slowly, but in the end it was irresistible. Yes, that's what it was. A hunger of the soul… Marya Ivanovna was indeed startlingly different from Lyudmila.

Was all this really so? Viktor didn't realize that these thoughts had nothing to do with his reason; that their truth or falsehood had nothing to do with how he acted. If he didn't see Marya Ivanovna, he was unhappy; if he knew he was going to see her, he was happy. And when he imagined a future in which they were inseparably together, he felt still more happy.

Why didn't he feel a twinge of guilt about Sokolov? Why did he feel no shame?

But what was there to be ashamed of? All they had done was walk through a park and sit down for a while on a bench.

No, it wasn't just a matter of sitting on a bench. He was ready to break with Lyudmila. He was ready to tell Sokolov that he loved his wife and wanted to take her from him.

He remembered everything that had gone wrong between him and Lyudmila: how badly she had treated his mother; how she had refused to let his cousin stay the night after his release from camp; how rude and callous, how cruel and obstinate she had sometimes been.

All this made him feel callous himself. And that was what he needed to feel, if he was to be ruthless. But Lyudmila had spent her life with him; she had shared all his troubles and difficulties. Her hair was going grey; she had suffered. Was there really nothing good in her? He had been proud of her in the past; he had loved her strength and honesty. Yes, he was simply nerving himself to be ruthless.

As he was getting ready to go out in the morning, Viktor remembered Yevgenia's visit and thought: 'All the same, it's a good thing she's back in Kuibyshev.'

Just then, as Viktor was feeling ashamed at being so mean, Lyudmila said: 'So now Nikolay's been arrested as well. How many of our family does that make? At least Yevgenia's not in Moscow any more.'

Viktor wanted to reproach her, but stopped himself in time – that would have been too dishonest.

'Oh yes, Chepyzhin phoned,' said Lyudmila.

Viktor looked at his watch.

'I'll be back early this evening. I'll ring him then. By the way, I'm probably going to the Urals again.'

'Will you be there long?'

'No. Just two or three days.'

He was in a hurry. Today was an important day.

His work was important – even to the State – but his private thoughts were mean, petty and trivial. It was as though they were in inverse proportion.

As she was leaving, Yevgenia had asked Lyudmila to go to Kuznetsky Most and hand over two hundred roubles for Krymov.

'Lyudmila,' said Viktor. 'Don't forget the money Zhenya gave you. I think you've left it too late already.'

He didn't say this because he was worried on behalf of Krymov or Yevgenia; he said it because he was afraid that Lyudmila's negligence might bring Yevgenia back to Moscow again. Then she would start making telephone calls, sending off petitions and statements… In the end his flat would be nothing but a centre for agitation on behalf of political prisoners.

Viktor knew he was being both petty and cowardly. Feeling ashamed of himself, he said hurriedly: 'You must write to Zhenya. Invite her to stay in my name. Maybe she needs to come to Moscow but feels awkward about asking. Yes, Lyuda. Write to her straight away.'

He felt better after that, but then he knew it was only for his own peace of mind that he'd said it… How strange everything was… When he'd just sat in his room all day, a pariah afraid even of the house-manager and the girl at the rations desk, his head had been full of thoughts about life, truth and freedom, thoughts about God… That was when no one had wanted him, when the telephone had been silent for weeks on end and people had ignored him if they passed him on the street. But now, when dozens of people waited on him, phoning him up and writing to him, when a Zis-101 came to pick him up and hooted discreetly beneath the window, now he found it impossible to shed himself of petty anxieties, trivial irritations and thoughts that were emptier than the husks of sunflower seeds. He'd said the wrong thing then, he'd laughed at the wrong moment there – yes, he was obsessed by trivia.

For a while after Stalin's telephone call, he had thought that he need never know fear again. But it was still there; only its outer trappings had changed. Now it was simply a more aristocratic fear, a fear that travelled by car and was allowed to use the Kremlin telephone switchboard.

And what had once been unimaginable – an attitude of envious rivalry towards the achievements and theories of other scientists – had begun to seem quite normal. He was like an athlete – afraid of being overtaken, afraid that someone might beat his record.

He didn't really want to talk to Chepyzhin now; he didn't have the strength for what would be a long and difficult conversation. He and Chepyzhin had oversimplified when they talked about the dependence of science on the State. He himself was quite free; no one any longer thought of his theories as absurdities straight out of the Talmud. No one dared attack them now. The State needed theoretical physics; Badin and Shishakov understood that now. For Markov to show his true talent for setting up experiments, for Kochkurov to show his talent for seeing their practical applications, you needed a theoretician. Now, after Stalin's telephone call, that was generally understood. But how could he explain to Dmitry Petrovich that this telephone call had brought him freedom? Why had he suddenly become so intolerant of Lyudmila's failings? And why was he now so well-disposed towards Shishakov?

He had grown particularly fond of Markov – perhaps because he had now become genuinely interested in the personal lives of his bosses, in everything secret or half-secret, in every act of harmless cunning or outright treachery, in all the various humiliations arising from invitations or absence of invitations to the Presidium, in who figured on a special list or who merely heard the fateful words: 'You're not on the list.' Yes, he would much sooner spend a free evening chatting with Markov than be arguing with Madyarov at one of their Kazan gatherings.

Markov had an extraordinarily sharp eye for people's absurdities; he could make fun of their weaknesses lethally but without malice. His mind was very elegant and he was a first-class scientist. He was possibly the most talented experimental physicist in the country.

Viktor already had his coat on when Lyudmila said: 'Marya Ivanovna phoned yesterday.'

'Yes?' said Viktor immediately.

His face must have changed.

'What's the matter?' asked Lyudmila.

'Nothing. Nothing at all,' he said, coming back into the room.

'I didn't quite understand. Some unpleasantness at the Institute. I think Kovchenko phoned them. Anyway it's the usual story. She's worried about you. She's afraid you're going to put your foot in it again.'

'How?' asked Viktor impatiently. 'I don't understand.'

'I don't understand myself. I've already told you. She evidently didn't want to go into it at length on the phone.'

'Tell me all that again,' said Viktor. He unbuttoned his coat and sat down on a chair by the door.

Lyudmila looked at him, shaking her head from side to side. He thought her eyes seemed sad and reproachful. As though to confirm this, Lyudmila said: 'Vitya, Vitya… You didn't have time to phone Chepyzhin, but you're always ready to hear about dear Masha, aren't you? I thought you were late.'

Viktor gave her an odd, sideways look and said: 'Yes, I am late.'

He went up to her, took her hand and kissed it. She patted him on the head and ruffled his hair.

'You see how interesting and important Masha's become,' said Lyudmila quietly. She gave a wry smile and added: 'The same Masha who couldn't tell the difference between Balzac and Flaubert.'

Viktor looked at her: her eyes were moist, her lips almost trembling.

He shrugged his shoulders helplessly and walked out. In the doorway he turned round again.

He felt quite shaken by the look on Lyudmila's face. It was a look of utter exhaustion, touching helplessness, and shame – both on his behalf and on her own. On his way down the stairs, he thought that, if he were to break with Lyudmila and never see her again, he would remember that look until his dying day. He realized that something very important had just happened: his wife had informed him that she knew of his love for Marya Ivanovna and he had confirmed it.

All he knew for sure was that, if he saw Masha, he felt happy, and if he promised himself never to see her again, he felt he could hardly breathe.

As Viktor's car arrived at the Institute, Shishakov's drew up alongside it. The two cars stopped by the door almost simultaneously.

Viktor and Shishakov then walked side by side down the corridor. Shishakov took Viktor by the arm. 'Are you going to the Urals then?'

'I think so.'

'Soon we'll be saying goodbye for good. You'll become an independent sovereign,' said Shishakov with a smile.

'What if I ask if he's ever been in love with someone else's wife?' thought Viktor suddenly.

'Viktor Pavlovich,' said Shishakov, 'can you come round to my office about two o'clock?'

'Certainly. I'll be free by then.'

Viktor found it hard to concentrate on his work that morning.

In the laboratory Markov came up to him in his shirt-sleeves and said excitedly: 'If you'll allow me, Viktor Pavlovich, I'll come and see you a bit later. I've got something interesting to tell you.'

'I'm seeing Shishakov at two,' said Viktor. 'Come round after that. I've got something to tell you myself.'

'You're seeing Aleksey Alekseyevich,' said Markov thoughtfully. 'I think I know what about.'

54

Seeing Viktor come in, Shishakov said: 'I was just going to phone and remind you of our metting.'

Viktor looked at his watch. 'I'm not late, am I?'

Shishakov looked quite enormous as he stood there in his grey suit, his huge head covered in silvery hair. But his eyes no longer seemed cold and arrogant; they were more like the eyes of a little boy brought up on Dumas and Mayne Reid.

'My dear Viktor Pavlovich, I've got something important to discuss with you,' said Shishakov with a smile. He took Viktor by the arm and led him towards an easy chair.

'It's something very serious and rather unpleasant.'

'Well,' said Viktor, looking mournfully round the office, 'let's get down to it then.'

'What's happened,' Shishakov began, 'is that a disgusting campaign's been started up abroad, mainly in England. In spite of the fact that we're bearing nearly the whole weight of the war on our own shoulders, certain English scientists – instead of demanding the immediate opening of a Second Front – have begun an extraordinary campaign with the aim of arousing hostility towards the Soviet Union.'

He looked Viktor straight in the eye. Viktor knew this open, frank look; it was characteristic of people who were doing something dishonest.

'I see, I see,' he said. 'But what exactly is this campaign?'

'A campaign of slanders,' said Shishakov. 'They've published a list of Soviet writers and scientists they allege to have been shot. They're making out that some quite fantastic number of people have been imprisoned for political reasons. With extraordinary – and really very suspicious – vehemence, they contest the verdict – established by due process of law – on Doctors Pletnyov and Levin, the assassins of Aleksey Maximovich Gorky. All this has been published in a newspaper close to government circles.'

'I see, I see,' said Viktor. 'And is that it?'

'More or less. There's also something about the geneticist Chet-verikov. A committee's been established for his defence.'

'But my dear Aleksey Alekseyevich, Chetverikov has been arrested.'

Shishakov shrugged his shoulders.

'As I'm sure you're aware, Viktor Pavlovich, I know nothing about the workings of the security organs. But if, as you say, he has been arrested, then it must be with good reason. You and I haven't been arrested, have we?'

Just then Badin and Kovchenko came in. Shishakov was evidently expecting them; Viktor realized they must have arranged this beforehand. Without stopping to put them in the picture, Shishakov just said: 'Sit down comrades, sit down!' and turned back to Viktor.

'So, Viktor Pavlovich, these slanders have now reached America and been published in the pages of the New York Times. This, naturally, has aroused indignation among the Soviet intelligentsia.'

'Of course,' said Kovchenko. 'What else could one expect?'

He looked directly at Viktor. His own brown eyes seemed so warm and friendly that Viktor was unable to come out with the thought that had immediately occurred to him: 'How can the Soviet intelligentsia be so indignant if they've never once set eyes on the New York Times?'

He grunted and shrugged his shoulders. This, he was aware, could be taken as a sign of agreement.

'Naturally,' Shishakov went on, 'a desire has arisen to refute these calumnies. And so we have drawn up a document.'

'You haven't done anything of the sort,' thought Viktor. 'You weren't even present when it was drawn up.'

'This document is in the form of a letter.'

'I've read it myself,' added Badin in a quiet voice. 'It's just what's needed. We want to have it signed by a small number of our most important scientists, people who are known in Europe and America.'

Viktor had known right from the beginning what all this was leading up to. What he hadn't known was the precise form Shishakov's request would take; whether he'd be asked to write an article, to make a speech at the Scientific Council, to vote… Now it was clear: they wanted his signature at the foot of a letter.

He began to feel sick. It was just like when they'd wanted him to make a public confession; he suddenly felt miserable, base, pathetic.

Once again, millions of tons of granite were about to come down on his shoulders… Professor Pletnyov! Viktor remembered an article in Pravda, written by some hysterical woman, full of wild accusations against the old doctor. To begin with, as so often, he had believed it all. Gogol, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Korolenko appeared to have instilled in Russians an almost religious reverence for the printed word. Finally, however, Viktor had realized that it was a calumny.

Pletnyov had then been arrested, together with Levin – another famous doctor from the Kremlin hospital. The two of them confessed to having murdered Aleksey Maximovich Gorky.

The three men were all looking at Viktor. Their eyes were warm, friendly and trusting. They accepted him as one of them. Shishakov looked on him as a brother; he understood the immense significance of Viktor's work. Kovchenko looked up to him. Badin's eyes said: 'Yes, everything you did and said seemed alien to me. But I was wrong. I didn't understand. The Party corrected me.'

Kovchenko opened a red file and handed Viktor a typewritten letter.

'Let me say one thing, Viktor Pavlovich. This Anglo-American campaign plays straight into the hands of the Fascists. It's probably the work of those swine in the Fifth Column.'

'There's no need to go on at Viktor Pavlovich,' Badin interrupted. 'He's as much a patriot as any of us. He's a Russian. A true Soviet citizen!'

'Precisely,' said Shishakov.

'No one's ever doubted it,' said Kovchenko.

'I see, I see,' said Viktor.

Only a little while ago these people had treated him with suspicion and contempt, but now these professions of trust and friendship came quite naturally to them. And Viktor, though he had not forgotten the past, accepted their friendship with the same ease and naturalness.

He felt paralysed by their trust and their kindness. He had no strength. If only they had shouted at him, kicked him, beaten him… Then he would have got angry and recovered his strength.

Stalin had spoken to him. They all knew this.

But the letter they wanted him to sign was terrible.

Nothing could make him believe that Doctor Levin and Professor Pletnyov had killed the great writer. His mother had seen Doctor Levin during one of her visits to Moscow. Lyudmila had been treated by him. He was a kind man, gentle and sensitive. Only a monster could slander these two doctors so appallingly.

There was something medieval about these accusations. Assassin-doctors! The murderers of a great writer, the last Russian classic! What was the purpose of such slanders? The Inquisition and its bonfires, the execution of heretics, witch-trials, boiling pitch, the stench of smoke… What did all this have to do with Lenin, with the construction of Socialism and the great war against Fascism?

Viktor began to read the first sheet. Shishakov asked whether he was comfortable and had enough light. Wouldn't he rather sit in the armchair? No, thank you, he was quite comfortable as he was.

Viktor read very slowly. The characters pressed against his mind without penetrating it; they were like sand on the skin of an apple.

'Your defence of Pletnyov and Levin – degenerates who are a disgrace not only to medicine, but to the human race as a whole – is grist to the mill of the anti-human ideology of Fascism… The Soviet nation stands alone in its struggle against Fascism, the ideology that has brought back medieval witch-trials, pogroms, torture-chambers and the bonfires of the Inquisition.'

How could one read this and not go insane?

'The blood of our sons shed at Stalingrad marks a turning-point in the war with Hitlerism; but you, in coming to the defence of these degenerates, have unwittingly…'

I see, I see… 'Nowhere in the world do scientists enjoy the affection of the people and the protective care of the State to the same degree as in the Soviet Union…'

'Viktor Pavlovich, will it disturb you if we go on talking?'

'No, no. Not at all,' said Viktor. At the same time he was thinking: 'Some lucky people manage to get out of this kind of thing. They fall ill, or they're at their dachas, or…'

'I've heard that Iosif Vissarionovich knows about this letter,' said Kovchenko. 'Apparently he approves of this initiative of our scientists.'

'That's why the signature of Viktor Pavlovich…' began Badin.

Viktor felt overwhelmed by disgust at his own submissiveness. The great State was breathing on him tenderly; he didn't have the strength to cast himself out into the freezing darkness… He had no strength today, no strength at all. He was paralysed, not by fear, but by something quite different – a strange, agonizing sense of his own passivity.

How strange man is. Viktor had found the strength to renounce life itself- and now he seemed unable to refuse candies and cookies.

But how can one just push off an omnipotent hand when it strokes your hair and pats you on the back?

Nonsense! Why was he slandering himself like this? It was nothing to do with candies and cookies. He had always been indifferent to comfort and material well-being. His thoughts, his work, all that was most precious to him, had turned out to be necessary and valuable in the struggle against Fascism. That was a true joy.

What was all this anyway? The doctors had confessed during the preliminary investigation. They had confessed during the trial itself. How could he believe in their innocence when they themselves had confessed to having murdered a great writer?

To refuse to sign the letter would be to show approval of the murder of Gorky! That was unthinkable. Did he doubt that their confessions were genuine? Had they been coerced into making them, then? But there was only one way of forcing an honourable and intelligent man to confess to being a hired assassin, thereby making himself liable to an infamous execution – and that was torture. And it would be insane even to hint at that.

But it was repugnant, quite repugnant, to think of signing this vile letter. All kinds of excuses came to mind, together with the inevitable answers… 'Comrades, I feel ill, I'm suffering cardiac spasms.' 'Nonsense, you look fine. You're just making excuses.' 'Why do you need my signature, comrades? I'm only known to a very narrow circle of specialists. Very few people outside this country know my name.' 'Nonsense.' (How pleasant to hear that this was nonsense.) 'People abroad do know your name. In any case, it's quite unthinkable to show this letter to comrade Stalin without your signature on it. He might ask: "But why hasn't Shtrum signed?" '

'Comrades, let me say quite frankly, there are certain phrases that seem rather unfortunate. They almost bring into disrepute our whole scientific intelligentsia.' 'Please, Viktor Pavlovich, give us your suggestions. We'll be only too delighted to alter any phrases that you consider unfortunate.'

'Please understand, comrades. Here it says: "the writer Babel, an enemy of the people; the writer Pilnyak, an enemy of the people; the director Meyerhold, an enemy of the people; Academician Vavilov, an enemy of the people…" I'm a theoretical physicist, a mathematician. Some people consider me schizophrenic, my field of study's so abstract. I'm really not competent to judge these other matters. It's best to leave people like me in peace.' 'Nonsense, Viktor Pavlovich. You have a logical mind and you understand politics extremely well. You know yourself how often you talk about politics and how apt your remarks always are.'

'For the love of God! Please understand that I have a conscience. I feel ill, I find all this very painful. I'm under no obligation… Why should I have to sign this letter? I'm exhausted. You must allow me the right to a clear conscience.'

But he couldn't get away from a sense of impotence, a sense that he had somehow been hypnotized. He was as obedient as a well-cared-for animal. And then there was fear – fear of ruining his life once again, fear of living in fear.

Could he really oppose himself to the collective again? Go back to his former solitude? It was time he took the world seriously. He had obtained things he had never even dreamed of. He could work in complete freedom; he was treated with solicitous attentiveness. And he hadn't had to beg for any of this; he hadn't repented. He had been victorious. What more could he ask for? Stalin had telephoned him.

'Comrades, this is a very serious matter. I need to think about it. Allow me to put off my decision until tomorrow.'

Viktor immediately imagined all the torment of a sleepless night: doubts, indecision, sudden decisiveness followed by terror, more doubts, another decision. All that was so exhausting. It was worse than malaria. Did he really want to prolong such torture? No, he had no strength. It was better to get it over and done with.

He took out his pen. As he did so, he saw a look of amazement on Shishakov's face. How docile this rebel had now become!

Viktor did no work that day. There were no distractions, no telephone calls. He was simply unable to work. His work seemed dull, empty, pointless.

Who else had signed the letter? Chepyzhin? Ioffe had, but Krylov? And Mandelstam? He wanted to hide behind someone's back. But it had been impossible for him to refuse. It would have been suicide. Nonsense, he could easily have refused. No, he had done the right thing. But then, no one had threatened him. It would have been all right if he had signed out of a feeling of animal fear. But he hadn't signed out of fear. He had signed out of an obscure, almost nauseous, feeling of submissiveness.

Viktor called Anna Stepanovna to his office and asked her to develop a film for tomorrow. It was a control film of experiments carried out with the new apparatus.

She finished noting everything down, but didn't move. Viktor looked at her questioningly.

'Viktor Pavlovich,' she began, 'I once thought this was impossible to put into words, but I feel I have to say it: do you realize how much you have done for me and for others? What you've done for us is more important than any great discovery. I feel better just knowing that you exist. Do you know what the mechanics, cleaners and caretakers say about you? They say that you're an upright man. I often wanted to call at your home, but I was afraid. Do you understand? Even during the most difficult days I had only to think of you and everything seemed easier. Thank you for being the man you are!'

Before Viktor had time to say anything, she had left the office.

He wanted to run down the street and scream… Anything, anything at all rather than this shame, this torment. But this was only the beginning.

Late in the afternoon his telephone rang.

'Do you know who it is?'

He did indeed. Even his cold fingers on the receiver seemed to recognize the voice. Once again Marya Ivanovna had appeared at a critical moment.

'I'm speaking from a call-box. I can hardly hear you,' said Marya Ivanovna. 'Pyotr Lavrentyevich is feeling better. I've got more time now. If you can, come to the square at eight o'clock tomorrow.'

Suddenly her voice changed.

'My love, my dearest, my light, I'm afraid for you. Someone came round about a letter – you know the one I mean? I'm sure it was you, your strength, that helped Pyotr Lavrentyevich stand his ground. Anyway, it went all right. But I immediately began thinking how much harm you've probably done yourself. You're so awkward and angular. You always come out bleeding, while everyone else just gets a slight knock.'

Viktor put down the receiver and buried his face in his hands. He now understood the position he was in. It wasn't his enemies who were going to punish him, but his friends, the people who loved him. It was their very faith in him that would wound him.

As soon as he got home he phoned Chepyzhin; he didn't even take his coat off. As he dialled his number, he felt certain that he would be wounded yet again – by his dear friend, by his loving teacher.

Lyudmila was standing right there, but he was in too much of a hurry even to tell her what he had done. God, how quickly she was going grey! That's right, that's right, have a go at someone when their hair turns grey!

'All right, I've just heard the bulletin on the radio,' said Chepyzhin. 'But I haven't got much to say about myself. Oh yes, I quarrelled yesterday with certain prominent officials. Have you heard about this letter yet?'

Viktor's lips were quite dry. He licked them and said: 'Yes, vaguely.'

'Yes, yes, it's not something to talk about on the phone. We can discuss it when we next meet – after your trip,' said Chepyzhin.

But all this was nothing. Soon Nadya would be back. Heavens, what had he done?

55

Viktor didn't sleep that night. His heart ached. He felt weighed down by an unimaginable gloom. A conquering hero indeed!

Even when he had been afraid of the woman in the house-manager's office, he had felt stronger and freer than he did now. Now he no longer dared to take part in a discussion, to express the slightest doubt about anything. He had sacrificed his inner freedom. How could he look Chepyzhin in the eye? Or perhaps he would find it no more difficult than all the people who had greeted him so brightly and warmly on his return to the Institute?

Everything he remembered only added to the torture. There was no peace anywhere. Everything he did, even his smiles and gestures, no longer seemed a part of him; they were alien, hostile. Nadya had looked at him that evening with an expression of pitying disgust.

Only Lyudmila – who in the past had annoyed him and ticked him off more than anyone – had been of any comfort. She had simply said: 'Don't torture yourself, Viktor. To me you're the most intelligent and honourable man in the world. If that's what you did, then it's what you had to do.'

Why did he always want to approve of everything? Why had he become so accepting of things he had never been able to tolerate before? Why, whatever people were talking about, did he always have to be the optimist?

The recent military victories had corresponded to a change in his own life. He could see the power of the army, the grandeur of the State; there was light at the end of the tunnel. Why had Madyarov's thoughts come to seem so banal?

He had refused to repent when they threw him out of the Institute. How happy, how full of light he had felt. And what joy he had felt then in the people he loved! Lyudmila, Nadya, Chepyzhin, Zhenya… But what would he say now to Marya Ivanovna? He had always been so arrogant about Pyotr Lavrentyevich and his timid submissiveness. And now! As for his mother, he was afraid even to think of her. He had sinned against her too. He was afraid even to touch that last letter of hers. He realized with sorrow and horror how incapable he was of protecting his own soul. The power that had reduced him to slavery lay inside him.

How base he had been! Throwing stones at pitiful, defenceless people who were already spattered with blood!

All this was so painful. He could feel it in his heart. And there were beads of sweat on his forehead.

How could he have been so arrogant? Who had given him the right to boast of his purity and courage, to set himself up as a merciless judge of the weaknesses of others?

Good men and bad men alike are capable of weakness. The difference is simply that a bad man will be proud all his life of one good deed – while an honest man is hardly aware of his good acts, but remembers a single sin for years on end.

Viktor had been so proud of his courage and uprightness; he had laughed at anyone who had shown signs of weakness or fear. And now he too had betrayed people. He was ashamed of himself; he despised himself. The house he lived in, its light and warmth, had crumbled away; nothing was left but dry quicksand.

His friendship with Chepyzhin, his affection for his daughter, his devotion to his wife, his hopeless love for Marya Ivanovna, his human sins and his human happiness, his work, his beloved science, his love for his mother, his grief for her – everything had vanished.

Why had he committed this terrible sin? Everything in the world was insignificant compared to what he had lost. Everything in the world is insignificant compared to the truth and purity of one small man – even the empire stretching from the Black Sea to the Pacific Ocean, even science itself.

Then he realized that it still wasn't too late. He still had the strength to lift up his head, to remain his mother's son.

And he wasn't going to try to console himself or justify what he had done. He wanted this mean, cowardly act to stand all his life as a reproach; day and night it would be something to bring him back to himself. No, no, no! He didn't want to strive to be a hero – and then preen himself over his courage.

Every hour, every day, year in, year out, he must struggle to be a man, struggle for his right to be pure and kind. He must do this with humility. And if it came to it, he mustn't be afraid even of death; even then he must remain a man.

'Well then, we'll see,' he said to himself. 'Maybe I do have enough strength. Your strength, Mother…'

56

Evenings in a hut near the Lubyanka…

Krymov was lying on his bunk after being interrogated – groaning, thinking and talking to Katsenelenbogen.

The amazing confessions of Bukharin and Rykov, of Kamenev and Zinoviev, the trials of the Trotskyists, of the Right Opposition and the Left Opposition, the fate of Bubnov, Muralov and Shlyapnikov – all these things no longer seemed quite so hard to understand. The hide was being flayed off the still living body of the Revolution so that a new age could slip into it; as for the red, bloody meat, the steaming innards – they were being thrown onto the scrapheap. The new age needed only the hide of the Revolution – and this was being flayed off people who were still alive. Those who then slipped into it spoke the language of the Revolution and mimicked its gestures, but their brains, lungs, livers and eyes were utterly different.

Stalin! The great Stalin! Perhaps this man with the iron will had less will than any of them. He was a slave of his time and circumstances, a dutiful, submissive servant of the present day, flinging open the doors before the new age.

Yes, yes, yes… And those who didn't bow down before the new age were thrown on the scrapheap.

He knew now how a man could be split apart. After you've been searched, after you've had your buttons ripped off and your spectacles confiscated, you look on yourself as a physical nonentity. And then in the investigator's office you realize that the role you played in the Revolution and the Civil War means nothing, that all your work and all your knowledge is just so much rubbish. You are indeed a nonentity – and not just physically.

The unity of man's physical and spiritual being was the key to the investigators' almost uninterrupted run of successes. Soul and body are two complementary vessels; after crushing and destroying a man's physical defences, the invading party nearly always succeeded in sending its mobile detachments into the breach in time to triumph over a man's soul, to force him into unconditional capitulation.

He didn't have the strength to think about all this; neither did he have the strength not to think about it.

Who had betrayed him? Who had informed on him? Who had slandered him? Somehow these questions no longer interested him.

He had always been proud of his ability to subordinate his life to logic. But now it was different. Logic said that Yevgenia Nikolaevna had supplied the information about his conversation with Trotsky. But the whole of his present life – his struggle with the investigator, his ability to breathe and to remain himself, to remain comrade Krymov -was founded on one thing: his faith that she could not have done this. He was astonished that he could have lost this certainty for even a few minutes. Nothing on earth could have made him lose faith in Zhenya. He believed in her, even though he knew very well that no one else had known of his conversation with Trotsky, that women are weak and treacherous, and that she had abandoned him at a critical period in his life.

He described his interrogation to Katsenelenbogen, but without making any mention of this incident.

Now Katsenelenbogen no longer clowned and made jokes.

Krymov had been right about him. He was intelligent. But what he said was often both strange and terrible. Sometimes Krymov thought it quite just that the old Chekist should now himself be in a cell in the Lubyanka. He couldn't imagine it otherwise. Sometimes he thought Katsenelenbogen was mad.

Katsenelenbogen was a poet, the laureate of the State security organs.

He recounted with admiration how, during a break at the last Party Congress, Stalin had asked Yezhov why he had carried punitive measures to such extremes; Yezhov, confused, had replied that he had been obeying Stalin's own orders. Stalin had turned to the delegates around him and said, 'And he's a Party member.'

He talked about the horror Yagoda had felt…

He reminisced about the great Chekists, connoisseurs of Voltaire, experts on Rabelais, admirers of Verlaine, who had once directed the work of this vast, sleepless building.

He talked about a quiet, kind, old Lett who had worked for years as an executioner; how he always used to ask permission to give the clothes of the man he had just executed to an orphanage. The next moment he would start talking about another executioner who drank day and night and was miserable if he didn't have any work to do; after his dismissal he began visiting State farms around Moscow and slaughtering pigs; he used to carry bottles of pig's blood around with him, saying it had been prescribed by a doctor as a cure for anaemia.

He told of how, in 1937, they had executed people sentenced without right of correspondence every night. The chimneys of the Moscow crematoria had sent up clouds of smoke into the night, and the members of the Communist youth organization enlisted to help with the executions and subsequent disposal of the bodies had gone mad.

He told Krymov about the interrogation of Bukharin, about how obstinate Kamenev had been. Once, when he was developing a theory of his, trying to generalize, the two of them talked all through the night.

He began by telling Krymov about the extraordinary fate of Frankel, an engineer who had been a successful businessman during the NEP period. [54] At the very beginning of NEP, he had built a car-factory in Odessa. In the mid-twenties he had been arrested and sent to Solovki. From there, he had sent Stalin the outlines of a project that, in the words of the old Chekist, 'bore the mark of true genius'.

In considerable detail, with full economic and scientific substantiation, he had laid out the most efficient manner of exploiting the vast mass of prisoners in order to construct roads, dams, hydroelectric power stations and artificial reservoirs.

The imprisoned 'Nepman' became a lieutenant-general in the MGB – the boss appreciated the importance of his ideas.

The twentieth century finally intruded upon the sacred simplicity of penal servitude, the simplicity of spade, pick, axe, saw and gangs of convicts. The world of the camps was now able to absorb progress; electric locomotives, conveyor belts, bulldozers, electric saws, turbines, coal-cutters, and a vast car- and tractor-park, were all drawn into its orbit. It was able to assimilate cargo and passenger aircraft, radio communications, machine-tools, and the most up-to-date systems for dressing ores. The world of the camps planned and gave birth to mines, factories, reservoirs and giant power stations. The headlong pace of its development made old-fashioned penal servitude seem as touching and absurd as the toy bricks of a child.

Nevertheless, in Katsenelenbogen's view, the camp still lagged behind the world that fed it. There were still all too many scholars and scientists whose talents remained unexploited…

The Gulag system had yet to find a use for world-famous historians, mathematicians, astronomers, literary critics, geographers, experts on world painting, linguists with a knowledge of Sanskrit and ancient Celtic dialects. The camp had not yet matured to the stage when it could make use of these people's specialized skills. They worked as manual labourers, or as trusties in clerical jobs or in the Culture and Education Section; or else they wasted away, unable to find any practical application for their vast knowledge – knowledge that often would have been of value not only to Russia, but to the whole world.

Krymov listened. To him, Katsenelenbogen was like a scholar talking about the most important task of his life. He wasn't merely glorifying the camps and singing their praises. He was a genuine researcher, constantly making comparisons, exposing shortcomings and contradictions, revealing similarities and contrasts…

Of course there were also shortcomings on the other side of the wire, although in an incomparably less gross form. There were many people – in universities, in publishing houses, in the research institutes of the Academy – who were neither engaged in the tasks for which they were most suited, nor working to their full capacity.

In the camps, Katsenelenbogen went on, the criminals wielded power over the political prisoners. Unruly, ignorant, lazy and corrupt, all too ready to engage in murderous fights and robberies, they were a hindrance both to the productivity of the camps and to their cultural development. But then, even on the other side of the wire, the work of scholars and important cultural figures was often supervised by people of poor education and limited vision.

Life inside the camps could be seen as an exaggerated, magnified reflection of life outside. Far from being contradictory, these two realities were symmetrical.

Now Katsenelenbogen spoke not like a poet, not like a philosopher, but like a prophet.

If one were to develop the system of camps boldly and systematically, eliminating all hindrances and shortcomings, the boundaries would finally be erased. The camp would merge with the world outside. And this fusion would signal the maturity and triumph of great principles. For all its inadequacies, the system of camps had one decisive point in its favour: only there was the principle of personal freedom subordinated, clearly and absolutely, to the higher principle of reason. This principle would raise the camp to such a degree of perfection that finally it would be able to do away with itself and merge with the life of the surrounding towns and villages.

Katsenelenbogen had himself supervised the work of a camp design office; he was convinced that, in the camps, scientists and engineers were capable of solving the most complicated problems of contemporary science or technology. All that was necessary was to provide intelligent supervision and decent living conditions. The old saying about there being no science without freedom was simply nonsense.

'When the levels become equal,' he said, 'when we can place an equals sign between life on either side of the wire, repression will become unnecessary and we shall cease to issue arrest warrants. Prisons and solitary-confinement blocks will be razed to the ground. Any anomalies will be handled by the Culture and Education Section. Mahomed and the mountain will go to meet each other.

'The abolition of the camps will be a triumph of humanitarianism, but this will in no way mean the resurgence of the chaotic, primeval, cave-man principle of personal freedom. On the contrary, that will have become completely redundant.'

After a long silence he added that after hundreds of years this system might do away with itself too, and, in doing so, give birth to democracy and personal freedom.

'There is nothing eternal under the moon,' he said, 'but I'd rather not be alive then myself.'

'You're mad,' said Krymov. 'That's not the heart of the Revolution. That's not its soul. People say that if you work for a long time in a psychiatric clinic you finally go mad yourself. Forgive me for saying this, but it's not for nothing you've been put inside. You, comrade Katsenelenbogen, ascribe to the security organs all the attributes of the deity. It really was time you were replaced.'

Katsenelenbogen nodded good-humouredly.

'Yes, I believe in God. I'm an ignorant, credulous old man. Every age creates the deity in its own image. The security organs are wise and powerful; they are what holds sway over twentieth-century man. Once this power was held by earthquakes, forest-fires, thunder and lightning – and they too were worshipped. And if I've been put inside – well, so have you. It was time to replace you too. Only the future will show which of us is right.'

'Old Dreling's going back home today, back to his camp,' said Krymov, knowing that his words would not be wasted.

'Sometimes that vile old man disturbs my faith,' Katsenelenbogen replied.

57

Krymov heard a quiet voice saying: 'It's just been announced that we've routed the German forces at Stalingrad. I think Paulus has been captured, but I couldn't quite make it out.'

He let out a scream. He was struggling, kicking at the floor. He wanted to talk to that crowd of people in padded jackets and felt boots… The sound of their voices was drowning the quiet conversation that was going on beside him. He was in Stalingrad… Grekov was making his way towards him over piles of rubble…

The doctor was holding him by the hand and saying: 'You must break off for a while… repeated injections of camphor…'

Krymov swallowed down a ball of salty saliva. 'No, I'm quite all right, thanks to the medicine. You can carry on. But you won't get me to sign anything.'

'You will sign, in the end,' said the investigator, with the good-natured assurance of a factory foreman. 'We've had people more difficult than you.'

This second interrogation session lasted three days. At the end of it Krymov returned to his cell.

The soldier on duty placed a parcel wrapped in white cloth beside him.

'You must sign for this parcel, citizen prisoner.'

Krymov read through the list of contents: onion, garlic, sugar, white rusks. The handwriting was familiar. At the end of the list was written: 'Your Zhenya'.

'Oh God, oh God.' He began to cry.

58

On 1 April, 1943 Stepan Fyodorovich Spiridonov received an extract from the resolution passed by the college of the People's Commissariat of Power Stations. He was to leave Stalingrad and become the director of a small, peat-burning power station in the Urals. It wasn't such a very terrible punishment; he could well have been put on trial. Spiridonov didn't say anything about this at home, preferring to wait till the bureau of the obkom had come to their decision. On 4 April, 1943 he received a severe reprimand from the bureau of the obkom for abandoning his post without leave at a critical time. This too was a lenient decision; he could well have been expelled from the Party. But to Stepan Fyodorovich it seemed cruelly unjust; his colleagues in the obkom knew very well that he had remained at his post until the last day of the defence of Stalingrad; that the Soviet offensive had already begun when he crossed to the left bank to see his daughter who had just given birth in a barge. He had tried to protest during the meeting, but Pryakhin had replied sternly:

'You have the right to appeal against this decision to the Central Control Commission. For my part, I think that comrade Shkiryatov will consider this decision over-lenient.'

'I am certain that the Commission will annul this decision,' Stepan Fyodorovich had insisted, but he had heard stories about Shkiryatov. In the event, he preferred not to appeal.

In any case, he was afraid that there were other reasons for Pryakhin's severity. Pryakhin knew of the family ties between Spiridonov, Yevgenia Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova and Krymov; he was hardly likely to be well-disposed towards a man who knew that he himself was an old friend of Krymov's.

Even if he had wanted to, it would have been quite impossible for Pryakhin to support Spiridonov. If he had done, his enemies – and there are always more than enough of them around a man in a position of power – would have immediately informed the appropriate authorities that, out of sympathy for Krymov, an enemy of the people, Pryakhin was supporting the cowardly deserter, Spiridonov.

It seemed, however, that Pryakhin hadn't even wanted to support Spiridonov. He evidently knew that Krymov's mother-in-law was now living in Spiridonov's flat. He probably also knew that Yevgenia Nikolaevna was in correspondence with her, that she had recently sent her a copy of her letter to Stalin.

After the meeting was over, Spiridonov had gone down to the buffet to buy some sausage and some soft cheese. There he had bumped into Voronin, the head of the oblast MGB. Voronin had looked him up and down and said mockingly: 'Doing your shopping just after you've incurred a severe reprimand! You are a good little housekeeper, Spiridonov.'

Spiridonov had given him a pathetic, guilty smile. 'It's for the family. I'm a grandfather now.'

Voronin had smiled back and said: 'And there was I, thinking you were preparing a food-parcel.'

'Well, thank God I'm being sent to the Urals,' Spiridonov had thought. 'I wouldn't last long if I stayed here. But what's going to become of Vera and her little boy?'

He had been driven back to the power station in the cab of a truck. He had sat there in silence, looking through the misted-over glass at the ruined city he would soon be leaving. He remembered how his wife had once gone to work along this pavement now covered in bricks. He thought how the new cables from Sverdlovsk would soon arrive at the station and he himself would no longer be there. He thought about the pimples his grandson was getting on his hands and chest from malnutrition. He thought that a reprimand really wasn't as bad as all that. And then he thought that he wouldn't be awarded the medal 'For the defenders of Stalingrad '. For some reason this last thought upset him more than everything else; more than the imminent parting from the city he was tied to by his work, by his memories of Marusya, by his whole life. He started to swear out loud.

'Who've you got it in for now, Stepan Fyodorovich?' asked the driver. 'Or did you forget something at the obkom?'

'Yes, yes,' said Stepan Fyodorovich. 'But it hasn't forgotten me.'

Spiridonov's flat was cold and damp. The empty windows had been boarded over and there were large areas where the plaster had fallen from the walls. The rooms were heated only by paraffin stoves made from tin. Water had to be carried in buckets, right up to the third floor. One of the rooms had been closed off and the kitchen was used as a storeroom for wood and potatoes.

Stepan Fyodorovich, Vera and her baby, and Alexandra Vladimirovna all lived in the large room that had previously been the dining-room. The small room next to the kitchen, formerly Vera's, was now occupied by Andreyev.

Spiridonov could easily have installed some brick stoves and had the ceilings and walls replastered; he had the necessary materials and there were workmen at hand. He had always been a practical and energetic man; now, though, he seemed uninterested in such matters. As for Vera and Alexandra Vladimirovna, they seemed almost to prefer living amid this destruction. Their lives had fallen apart; if they restored the flat, it would only remind them of all they had lost.

Andreyev's daughter-in-law, Natalya, arrived from Leninsk only a few days after Alexandra Vladimirovna had arrived from Kazan. Having quarrelled with the sister of her late mother-in-law in Leninsk, she had left her son with her and come to stay for a while with her father-in-law.

Andreyev lost his temper with her and said:

'You didn't get on with my wife. And now you're not getting on with her sister. How could you leave little Volodya behind?'

Her life in Leninsk must have been very difficult indeed. As she went into Andreyev's room for the first time, she looked at the walls and ceiling and said: 'Isn't this nice?'

It was hard to see what was nice about the twisted stovepipe, the mound of plaster in the corner and the debris hanging from the ceiling.

The only light came through a small piece of glass set into the boards nailed over the window. This little porthole looked out onto a view that was far from cheerful: a buckled iron roof and some ruined inner walls that were painted blue and pink in alternate storeys.

Soon after her arrival, Alexandra Vladimirovna fell ill. Because of this she had to postpone her visit to the city centre; she had intended to go and look at the ruins of her own house. To begin with, in spite of her illness, she tried to help Vera. She lit the stove, washed nappies, hung them up to dry, and carried some of the rubble out onto the landing; she even tried to bring up the water. But her illness kept getting worse; she shivered even when it was very hot and would suddenly begin to sweat in the freezing kitchen.

She was determined not to go to bed and she didn't let on how bad she was feeling. And then one morning, going to get some wood from the kitchen, she fainted; she fell to the floor and cut her head. Vera and Spiridonov had to put her to bed.

When she had recovered a little, she called Vera into the room.

'You know, I found it harder to live with Lyudmila in Kazan than to live with you here. I came here for my own sake, not just to help you. But I'm afraid I'm going to cause you a lot of trouble before I'm back on my feet.'

'Grandma, I'm very happy to have you here,' said Vera.

But Vera's life really was very difficult. Wood, milk, water -everything was difficult to obtain. It was mild outside, but the rooms themselves were cold and damp; they needed a lot of heating.

Little Mitya had a constant stomach-ache and cried at night; he wasn't getting enough milk from his mother. Vera was busy all day – going out to get milk and bread, doing the laundry, washing the dishes, dragging up buckets of water. Her hands were red and her face was raw from the wind and covered in spots. She felt crushed by the constant work, by her constant feeling of exhaustion. She never did her hair or looked in the mirror and she seldom washed. She was always longing to sleep. By evening she was aching all over; her arms, legs and shoulders were all crying out for rest. She would lie down – and then Mitya would begin to cry. She would get up, change his nappies, feed him and walk about the room with him for a while. An hour later he would start crying again and she would have to get up. At dawn he would wake up for good; her head aching, still dazed with sleep, she would get up in the half-darkness, fetch some wood from the kitchen, light the fire, put some water on to boil for everyone's tea, and start doing the laundry. Surprisingly, she was no longer irritable; she had become meek and patient.

Everything was much easier for her after Natalya arrived.

Andreyev had gone away for a few days soon after her arrival. He wanted to see his factory and his old home in the northern part of Stalingrad. Alternatively, he may have been angry with Natalya for leaving her son in Leninsk – or perhaps he wanted to leave her his ration-card so she wouldn't eat the Spiridonovs' bread.

Natalya had got down to work almost the minute she arrived. She put her heart into the work and everything came easily to her. Sacks of coal, heavy buckets of water, tubs of washing – all this was nothing to her.

Now Vera was able to take Mitya outside for half an hour. She would sit down on a stone and gaze at the mist on the steppe, at the water sparkling in the spring sunshine.

Everything was quiet and the war was now hundreds of kilometres away. Somehow things had seemed easier when the air had been filled with the whine of German planes and the crash of shell-bursts, when life had been full of flames, full of fear and hope. Vera looked at the oozing pimples on her son's face and felt overwhelmed with pity. She felt a similar pity for Viktorov. Poor, poor Vanya! What a miserable, sickly, whining little son he had!

Then she climbed up the three flights of stairs, still covered in litter and rubbish, and returned to work. Her melancholy dissolved in the soapy water, in the smoke from the stove, in the damp that streamed down the walls.

Sometimes her grandmother would call her over and stroke her hair. Her usually calm, clear eyes would take on an expression of unbearable tenderness and sorrow.

Vera never talked to anyone – her father, her grandmother, or even five-month-old Mitya – about Viktorov.

After Natalya's arrival the flat was transformed. She scraped the mould off the walls, whitewashed the dark corners, and scrubbed off the dirt that seemed by then to have become a part of the floorboards. She even got down to the immense task of cleaning the rubbish, flight by flight, from the staircase – a job that Vera had been putting off till it got warm.

She spent half a day repairing the black, snake-like stovepipe. It was sagging horribly and a thick tarry liquid was oozing from the joints and collecting in puddles on the floor. She gave it a coat of whitewash, straightened it out, fastened it with wire and hung empty jam-jars under the dripping joints.

She and Alexandra Vladimirovna became firm friends from the first day – even though one might have expected the old woman to take a dislike to this brash young girl and her constant stream of risqué anecdotes. Natalya also made friends with dozens of other people – the electrician, the mechanic from the turbine room, the lorry-drivers.

Once, when she came back from queuing for food, Alexandra Vladimirovna said to her: 'Someone was asking for you just now – a soldier.'

'A Georgian I suppose?' said Natalya. 'Send him packing if he shows his face here again! The fool's got it into his head he wants to marry me.'

'Already?' asked Alexandra Vladimirovna in astonishment.

'They don't need long. He wants me to go to Georgia with him after the war. He probably thinks I washed the stairs just for him.'

That evening she said to Vera: 'Let's go out tonight. There's a film on in town. Misha can take us in his truck. You and the boy can go in the cab, and I'll go in the back.'

Vera shook her head.

'Go on!' said Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'I'd go myself if only I were a bit stronger.'

'No. It's the last thing I feel like.'

'We've got to go on living, you know. Here we're all widows and widowers.'

'You sit at home all day,' Natalya chided. 'You never go out. And you don't even take proper care of your father. Yesterday I did his washing myself – his socks are all in holes.'

Vera picked up her baby and went out to the kitchen. Holding her son in her arms, she said: 'Mityenka, your mama isn't a widow, is she?'

Spiridonov was always very attentive towards Alexandra Vladimirovna. He helped Vera with the cupping glasses and he twice brought a doctor from the city. Sometimes he pressed a candy into her hand, saying: 'Now don't you go giving that to Vera. That's for you -she's already had one. They're from the canteen.'

Alexandra Vladimirovna knew very well that Spiridonov was in trouble. Sometimes she asked him if he'd heard from the obkom yet, but he always shook his head and began talking about something else. One evening, though, after he'd been told that his affair was about to be settled, he came home, sat down on the bed beside her and said: 'What a mess I've got myself into! Marusya would be out of her mind if she knew.'

'What are they accusing you of?'

'Everything.'

Then Natalya and Vera came in and they broke off the conversation.

Looking at Natalya, Alexandra Vladimirovna realized that there is a particular type of strong, stubborn beauty that no amount of hardship can injure. Everything about Natalya was beautiful – her neck, her firm breasts, her legs, her slim arms that she bared almost up to the shoulder. 'A philosopher without philosophy,' she thought to herself. She had noticed before how women used to a life of ease began to fade, to stop taking care of themselves, as soon as they were confronted with hardship; this was what had happened to Vera. She admired women who worked as traffic-controllers for the army, women who laboured in factories or did seasonal work on the land, women who worked in filthy, dusty conditions – and still found time to look in the mirror, to curl their hair, to powder their peeling noses. Yes, she admired the obstinate birds who went on singing no matter how bad the weather.

Spiridonov was also looking at Natalya. He suddenly took Vera by the hand and pulled her towards him. As though begging forgiveness for something, he kissed her.

Apparently quite irrelevantly, Alexandra Vladimirovna said:

'Come on, Stepan! We're neither of us going to die yet. I'm an old woman – and I'm going to get better. I'm good for a few more years.'

He glanced at her and smiled. Natalya filled a basin with warm water and placed it beside the bed. Kneeling down on the floor, she said: 'Alexandra Vladimirovna! It's nice and warm in the room. I'm going to wash your feet for you.'

'You idiot – you must be out of your mind! Get up at once!' shouted Alexandra Vladimirovna.

59

During the afternoon Andreyev came back from the workers' settlement around the factory.

First he went in to see Alexandra Vladimirovna. His sullen face broke into a smile: she had got up that day for the first time. There she was, sitting at the table, her spectacles on her nose, reading a book.

He said it had taken him a long time to find the place where his house had once stood. The whole area was nothing but trenches, craters and debris. Lots of workers had already gone back to the factory, and more were appearing every day. They even had policemen there. He hadn't been able to find out anything about the men who had served in the people's militia. They were burying bodies every day, and they were still finding more in the trenches and cellars. And everywhere you looked there were pieces of twisted metal.

Alexandra Vladimirovna kept on asking questions. She wanted to know where he'd spent the night, whether it had been a difficult journey, what he'd had to eat, how badly the open-hearth furnaces were damaged, what the workers themselves were getting to eat, whether he'd seen the director…

That very morning Alexandra Vladimirovna had said to Vera:

'You know I've always made fun of people's superstitions and premonitions. But for once in my life I feel quite certain of something: Pavel Andreyevich is going to bring news from Seryozha.'

She was wrong, but what Andreyev did have to say was still important. The workers had told him that they were getting nothing to eat, no wages, and that the dug-outs and cellars they lived in were cold and damp. The director had become a different person. While the Germans were attacking, he had been everyone's best mate. But now he didn't so much as say hello to anyone. And he'd had a new house built for him, a new car delivered from Saratov…

'No one could say things are easy at the power station,' said Andreyev. 'But the workers haven't got it in for Stepan Fyodorovich. They know he's on their side.'

'That's a sad story,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'But what are you going to do yourself, Pavel Andreyevich?'

'I've come back to say goodbye. I'm going home – even if I haven't got a home. I've found myself a place in a cellar with some of the other workers.'

'You're doing the right thing,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'It may not be much of a life there, but it's all you have.'

'Here's something I dug up for you,' he said, taking a rusty thimble out of his pocket and handing it to her.

'I'll soon be going into town myself,' she told him. 'I want to see my own home on Gogol Street. I want to dig up bits of metal and glass too.'

'Are you sure you haven't got out of bed too soon? You look pale.'

'No. I'm just a bit upset by what you've told me. I'd like things on this earth of ours to be different.'

Andreyev gave a little cough. 'You remember Stalin's words the year before last? "My brothers and sisters…" But now that the Germans have been defeated, the director builds himself a villa, you can only speak to him with an appointment, and we brothers and sisters are still in our dug-outs.'

'Yes,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna, 'it's a sad story. And still no news of Seryozha – he's just vanished into thin air.'

In the evening Spiridonov came back from Stalingrad. He'd gone out in the morning without telling anyone that his case was to be settled that day.

'Is Andreyev back yet?' he asked in a brusque, authoritative tone. 'Any news of Seryozha?'

Alexandra Vladimirovna shook her head.

Vera could see at once that her father had had too much to drink. She could tell by the way he opened the door and took off his coat, by the way he put down the little presents of food he'd brought, by the tone of his questions and the strange glitter in his unhappy eyes.

He went up to Mitya, who was asleep in the laundry basket, and bent over him.

'Don't you go breathing all over him,' said Vera.

'He'll be all right,' said Spiridonov. 'He'll get used to it.'

'Sit down and have some supper! You've been drinking – and you haven't had a bite to eat with it. Do you know what? Grandmama's just got up for the first time.'

'Now that really is good news!' said Spiridonov. He dropped his spoon into the plate and splashed soup all over his jacket.

'Oh dear, you really have had a few too many,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'What's happened, Stepan? Have you been celebrating?'

Spiridonov pushed away his plate of soup.

'You eat that up!' said Vera.

'Well,' said Spiridonov, 'I've got some news for you all. I've incurred a severe reprimand from the Party, and the Commissariat are transferring me to a small peat-burning generating station in the Sverdlovsk oblast. In a word, I'm a has-been. I get two months' salary in advance and they provide me with somewhere to live. I begin handing over tomorrow. We'll be given enough ration-cards for the journey.'

Alexandra Vladimirovna exchanged glances with Vera.

'Well that's certainly something to celebrate!'

'You can have your own room – the best room,' said Spiridonov.

'There will probably only be one room,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna.

'Well, that will be yours, Mama.'

It was the first time in his life that Spiridonov had called her Mama. There were tears in his eyes – no doubt because he'd been drinking.

Natalya came in and Spiridonov changed the subject. 'So what does the old man have to say about the factories?'

'Pavel Andreyevich was waiting for you,' said Natalya, 'but he's just gone to sleep.' She sat down at the table, resting her cheeks on her fists. 'He said the workers hardly have anything to eat at all – just a few handfuls of seeds.

'Stepan Fyodorovich,' she asked suddenly, 'is it true that you're leaving?'

'Yes,' he replied gaily. 'I've heard the news too.'

'The workers are very sorry.'

'They'll be all right. I was at college with Tishka Batrov. He'll make a splendid boss.'

'But who will you find to darn your socks with such artistry?' asked Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'Vera will never manage.'

'Now that really will be a problem,' said Spiridonov.

'It looks like we'll have to send Natalya off to the Urals too,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna.

'Sure!' said Natalya. 'I'll go any time.'

They all laughed. Then there was a strained, uncomfortable silence.

60

Alexandra Vladimirovna decided to accompany Spiridonov and Vera as far as Kuibyshev; she was intending to stay for a while with Yevgenia Nikolaevna.

The day before their departure the new director lent her a car. She set off to visit the ruins of her old home.

On the way she kept asking the driver: 'Now what's this? And what was here before?'

'Before what?' asked the driver irritably.

Three different strata of life lay exposed in the ruins: life before the war, life during the fighting, and life today. One building had started out as a tailor's and dry cleaner's; then the windows had been bricked up, leaving small loopholes where German machine-guns had been mounted; now women queued at these loopholes to receive their bread ration.

Dug-outs and bunkers had sprung up among the ruined houses. These had provided shelter for soldiers, radio-operators and command-posts. Reports had been drawn up and machine-guns had been re-loaded. And now children were playing outside them. Washing was hanging up to dry. The smoke rising up from the chimneys had nothing to do with the war.

The war had given way to peace – a poor, miserable peace that was hardly any easier than the war.

Prisoners-of-war were clearing away heaps of rubble from the main streets. Queues of people with empty milk-cans were waiting outside cellars that now housed food-stores. Rumanian prisoners were lazily digging dead bodies out of some ruins. There were groups of sailors here and there, but no soldiers at all; the driver explained that the Volga fleet was still sweeping for mines. In some places lay sacks of cement and heaps of new beams and planks. Here and there the roads had been newly asphalted.

In one empty square she saw a woman harnessed to a two-wheeled cart loaded with bundles. Two children were helping, pulling on ropes tied to the shafts.

Everybody wanted to go back into Stalingrad, back to their homes, but Alexandra Vladimirovna was about to leave.

'Are you sorry that Spiridonov's leaving?' she asked the driver.

'What does it matter to me? Spiridonov worked me hard, and so will the new man. They just sign their instructions – and off I go.'

'What's this?' she asked, pointing to a thick, blackened wall with gaping windows.

'Just various offices. What they should do is let people live here.'

'And what was it before?'

'This was the headquarters of Paulus himself. It was here he was taken prisoner.'

'And before that?'

'The department store. Don't you recognize it?'

The wartime city seemed to have overshadowed the old Stalingrad. It was all too easy to imagine the German officers coming up from the cellars, to see the German field-marshal walking past this blackened wall while the sentries all stood to attention. But was it really here that she had bought a length of material for a coat or a watch as a birthday present for Marusya? Had she really come here with Seryozha and got him a pair of skates in the sports department on the first floor?

People who visit Verdun, the battlefield of Borodino or Malakhov Kurgan at Sebastopol must find it equally strange to find children playing, women doing their washing, carts full of hay and old men carrying rakes. Columns of French soldiers and trucks covered in tarpaulins once passed over fields that are now full of vines; now there is only a hut, a few apple trees and some kolkhoz sheep where Murat's cavalry advanced, where Kutuzov sat in his armchair and ordered the Russian infantry to counter-attack with a wave of his tired hand. Nakhimov stood on a mound where now there are only chickens and a few goats searching for blades of grass between the stones; this is where the flash-bombs described by Tolstoy were launched, where English bullets whistled and wounded soldiers screamed.

Alexandra Vladimirovna found something equally incongruous in these queues of women, these small huts, these old men unloading planks, these shirts hanging up to dry, these patched sheets, these stockings twirling about like snakes, these notices pasted over lifeless façades.

She had realized how flat everything now seemed to Spiridonov when he had talked about the arguments in the district committee over the allocation of cement, planks and manpower. She had sensed how bored he was by the endless articles in Stalingradskaya Pravda about the clearing away of rubble, the cleaning up of streets, the construction of new public baths and workers' canteens. He had only come to life when he talked about the bombing, the fires, the visits of General Shumilov, the German tanks advancing from the hill-tops, the counter-fire of the Soviet artillery.

It was on these streets that the war had been decided. The outcome of this battle was to determine the map of the post-war world, to determine the greatness of Stalin or the terrible power of Adolf Hitler. For ninety days one word had filled both the Kremlin and the Berchtesgaden – Stalingrad.

Stalingrad was to determine future social systems and philosophies of history. The shadow of all this had blinded people to the provincial city that had once led a commonplace, ordered life.

Alexandra Vladimirovna asked the driver to stop, then got out of the car and picked her way with some difficulty through the debris that still littered the deserted street. She stared at the ruins, half-recognizing the remains of houses.

When she came to her own home, she found that the wall facing the street was still there. Through the gaping windows, her farsighted eyes could make out the light blue and green walls of her flat. But the rooms had no floors or ceilings and there was nothing left of the staircase. The bricks had been darkened by flames; here and there they had been scarred by splinters.

With a terrible clarity, she was aware of all that life had been for her: her daughters, her unfortunate son, Seryozha, her many irrevocable losses, her present homelessness. There she was, looking at the ruins of her home – an old, sick woman in an old coat and trodden-down shoes.

What was in store for her? Although she was seventy years old, she had no idea. What was in store for the people she loved? Again she had no idea. Through the empty windows of her house she could see the spring sky looking down at her.

The lives of those close to her were unsettled, confused, full of doubts and mistakes, full of grief. What would happen to Lyudmila? What would be the outcome of her family troubles? Where was Seryozha? Was he even alive? How hard things were for Viktor Shtrum! What would happen to Vera and Stepan Fyodorovich? Would Stepan be able to rebuild his life again and find peace? What path would Nadya follow – that clever little girl who was so difficult and so kind-hearted? And Vera? Would she be broken by the hardships and loneliness she had to endure? And Zhenya? Would she follow Krymov to Siberia? Would she end up in a camp herself and die the same death as Dmitry? Would Seryozha forgive the State for the deaths of his innocent mother and father?

Why were their destinies so confused, so obscure?

As for those who had been killed or executed, they were still alive in her memory. She could remember their smiles, their jokes, their laughter, their sad lost eyes, their hopes and despairs.

Mitya had embraced her and said: 'It doesn't matter, Mama. Please don't worry yourself about me. There are good people even in camp.' And there was young Sonya Levinton with her dark hair and the down over her upper lip. She was declaiming poems with a fierce gaiety. There was Anya Shtrum, as pale and sad as ever, as intelligent and full of mockery. And young Tolya, stuffing down his macaroni cheese – she had got quite annoyed with him for eating so noisily and for never helping Lyudmila: 'Is it too much to ask for a glass of water?' 'All right, all right, but why ask me? Why don't you ask Nadya?' And Marusya. Marusya! Zhenya always made fun of your preaching. And you tried so hard to make Stepan into a good, right-thinking Communist… And then you drowned in the Volga with little Slava Byerozkin and old Varvara Alexandrovna… And Mostovskoy. Please explain to me, Mikhail Sidorovich… Heavens, what could he explain now?

All of them had been unsettled; all of them had doubts and secret griefs. All of them had hoped for happiness. Some of them had come to visit her and others had just written letters. And all the time, in spite of the closeness of her large family, she had had a deep sense of her own isolation.

And here she was, an old woman now, living and hoping, keeping faith, afraid of evil, full of anxiety for the living and an equal concern for the dead; here she was, looking at the ruins of her home, admiring the spring sky without knowing that she was admiring it, wondering why the future of those she loved was so obscure and the past so full of mistakes, not realizing that this very obscurity and unhappiness concealed a strange hope and clarity, not realizing that in the depths of her soul she already knew the meaning of both her own life and the lives of her nearest and dearest, not realizing that even though neither she herself nor any of them could tell what was in store, even though they all knew only too well that at times like these no man can forge his own happiness and that fate alone has the power to pardon and chastise, to raise up to glory and to plunge into need, to reduce a man to labour-camp dust, nevertheless neither fate, nor history, nor the anger of the State, nor the glory or infamy of battle has any power to affect those who call themselves human beings. No, whatever life holds in store – hard-won glory, poverty and despair, or death in a labour camp – they will live as human beings and die as human beings, the same as those who have already perished; and in this alone lies man's eternal and bitter victory over all the grandiose and inhuman forces that ever have been or will be…

Vera and Alexandra Vladimirovna were in a state of feverish anxiety during the whole of the last day. As for Spiridonov, he had been drinking since early in the morning. Workers were continually coming round and demanding to see him, but he was always out. He was sorting out his remaining affairs, calling at the raykom, ringing up friends, having his papers stamped at the military commissariat, talking and joking as he walked round the workshops; once, when he found himself alone for a moment in the turbine-room, he pressed his cheek against a cold fly-wheel and closed his eyes in exhaustion.

Meanwhile Vera was packing up belongings, drying nappies over the stove, preparing bottles of boiled milk for Mitya and stuffing bread into a bag. She was about to part for ever with both Viktorov and her mother. They would remain for ever alone; no one here would ask after them or spare them so much as a thought.

She was steadied by the thought that she was now the oldest in her family. She was calmer now, more reconciled to hardship than anyone else.

Looking at her granddaughter's tired, inflamed eye-lids, Alexandra Vladimirovna said: 'That's the way things are, Vera.

There's nothing more difficult than saying goodbye to a house where you've suffered.'

Natalya had promised to bake some pies for the journey. She had gone off that morning, laden with wood and provisions, to a woman she knew who still possessed a proper Russian stove. There she began preparing the filling and rolling out the dough. Her face turned bright red as she stood over the oven; it looked young and extremely beautiful. She glanced at herself in the mirror, laughed and began to powder her nose and cheeks with flour. But when her friend went out of the room, she wept into the dough.

In the end her friend noticed her tears. 'What's the matter, Natalya? Why are you crying?'

'I've grown used to them. She's a splendid old woman. And I feel sorry for Vera and her little boy.'

Her friend listened attentively and said: 'Nonsense. You're not crying because of the old woman.'

'I am,' said Natalya.

The new director promised to release Andreyev, but he wanted him to stay on for another five days. Natalya announced that she'd stay till then and then go back to her son in Leninsk. 'And then,' she said, 'we'll see how things go.'

'What will you see?' asked Andreyev.

She didn't answer. Most likely, she had been crying because she couldn't see anything at all. Andreyev didn't like his daughter-in-law to show too much concern over him; she had the feeling that he still hadn't forgiven her for the quarrels she'd had with his wife.

Spiridonov came back towards lunchtime. He told them all how the workers in the machine-room had said goodbye to him.

'Well, there's been a real pilgrimage here,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'At least five or six people have come to see you.'

'Well, is everything ready, then? The truck will be here at five sharp.' He gave a little smile. 'We can thank Batrov for that.'

His affairs were all in order and his belongings were packed, but Spiridonov still felt a sense of nervous, drunken excitement. He began redoing the bundles, moving the suitcases from one place to another; it was as though he couldn't wait to be off. Then Andreyev came in from the office and asked:

'How are things? Has there been a telegram from Moscow yet about the cables?'

'There haven't been any telegrams at all.'

'The swine! They're sabotaging the whole thing. We could have had the first installations ready for May Day.'

Andreyev turned to Alexandra Vladimirovna and said: 'You really are foolish. Setting off on a journey like this at your age!'

'Don't you worry yourself! I've got nine lives. Anyway, what else can I do? Go back to my flat on Gogol Street? And the painters have already been round here. They're about to start the repairs for the new director.'

'The lout! He could have waited one more day!' said Vera.

'Why's he a lout?' asked Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'Life has to go on.'

'Well? Is lunch ready? What are we waiting for? ' asked Spiridonov.

'We're waiting for Natalya and her pies.'

'We're going to miss the train waiting for those pies,' he grumbled.

He didn't feel like eating, but he'd put some vodka aside for their final meal and he did feel like a good drink. He also very much wanted just to go and sit in his office for a few minutes, but it would have been too awkward – Batrov was having a meeting with the heads of the different shops. The bitterness he felt made him still more desperate for a drink. He kept shaking his head and saying: 'We're going to be late, we're going to be late.'

There was something agreeable about this fear of being late, this anxious waiting for Natalya. He didn't realize that it was because it reminded him of times before the war when he'd gone to the theatre with his wife. Then too he had looked constantly at his watch and repeated anxiously: 'We're going to be late.'

He very much wanted to hear something nice about himself. This need made him still more depressed.

'Why should anyone pity me?' he moaned. 'I'm a coward and a deserter. Who knows? I might even have had the cheek to expect a medal "For the defenders of Stalingrad ".'

'All right then, let's have lunch!' said Alexandra Vladimirovna. She could see that Spiridonov was in a bad way.

Vera brought in a saucepan of soup and Spiridonov got out the bottle of vodka. Alexandra Vladimirovna and Vera both said they didn't want any.

'So only the men are drinking,' said Spiridonov. 'But maybe we should wait for Natalya.'

At that moment Natalya came in with a large bag and began spreading her pies out on the table. Spiridonov poured out full glasses for Andreyev and himself and half a glass for Natalya.

'Last summer,' said Andreyev, 'we were all eating pies at Alexandra Vladimirovna's home on Gogol Street.'

'Well, I'm sure these will be every bit as delicious,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna.

'What a lot of us there were on that day,' said Vera. 'And now there's just you, Grandmama, and me and Papa.'

'We certainly routed the Germans,' said Andreyev.

'It was a great victory – but we paid a price for it,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'Have some more soup! We'll be eating nothing but dry food on the journey. It will be days before we see anything hot.'

'No, it's not an easy journey,' said Andreyev. 'And it will be difficult getting on the train. It's a train from the Caucasus that stops here on its way to Balashov. It's always crammed with soldiers. But they will have brought some white bread with them.'

'The Germans bore down on us like a storm-cloud,' said Spiridonov. 'But where are they now? Soviet Russia has vanquished them.'

He remembered how not long ago they could hear German tanks from the power station. And now those tanks were hundreds of kilometres away. Now the main fighting was around Belgorod, Chuguyev and Kuban.

But he was unable to forget his wound for more than a moment. 'All right, so I'm a deserter,' he muttered. 'But what about the men who reprimanded me? Who are they? I demand to be judged by the soldiers of Stalingrad. I'm ready to confess all my faults before them.'

'And Mostovskoy was sitting right next to you, Pavel Andreyevich.'

But Spiridonov wouldn't be diverted. His resentment welled up again. He turned to his daughter and said: 'I phoned the first secretary of the obkom to say goodbye. After all, I am the only director who stayed on the right bank through the whole of the battle. But his assistant, Barulin, just said: "Comrade Pryakhin's unable to speak to you. He's engaged."'

As though she hadn't even heard her father, Vera said: 'And there was a young lieutenant, a comrade of Tolya's, sitting next to Seryozha. I wonder where he is now.'

She wanted so much to hear someone say: 'Who knows? Maybe he's alive and well, still at the front.' Even that would have consoled her a little. But Stepan Fyodorovich just went on with his own thoughts.

'So I said to him: "I'm leaving today. You know that very well." "All right then," he said, "you can address him in writing." To hell with them all! Let's have another drink! We'll never sit at this table again.'

He turned to Andreyev and raised his glass. 'Don't think badly of me when I'm gone!'

'What do you mean, Stepan Fyodorovich? We workers are on your side.'

Spiridonov downed his vodka, sat quite still for a moment – as though he'd just surfaced from under the sea – and then attacked his soup. It was very quiet; the only sound was Spiridonov munching his pie and tapping away with his spoon. Then little Mitya started screaming. Vera got to her feet, walked over to him and took him in her arms.

'You must eat your pie, Alexandra Vladimirvna!' said Natalya in a very quiet voice, as though it were a matter of life and death.

'Certainly!' said Alexandra Vladimirovna.

With drunken, joyous solemnity, Spiridonov announced:

'Natalya, let me say this is everyone's presence! There's absolutely nothing to keep you here. Go back to Leninsk for your son – and then come and join us in the Urals! It's not good to be on one's own.'

He tried to catch her eyes, but she lowered her head. All he could see was her forehead and her dark, handsome eye-brows.

'And you too, Pavel Andreyevich! Things will be easier for us if we stick together.'

'What do you mean? Do you think I'm going to begin a new life at my age?'

Spiridonov glanced at Vera. She was standing by the table with Mitya in her arms, crying. For the first time that day he saw the walls of the room he was about to leave. Everything else became suddenly of no importance: the pain of dismissal, the loss of the work he loved, his loss of standing, the burning shame and resentment that had prevented him from sharing in the joy of victory.

The old woman sitting next to him, the mother of the wife he had loved and now lost for ever, kissed him on the head and said: 'It doesn't matter, Stepan my dear. It doesn't matter. It's life.'

61

The stove had been lit the previous evening and the hut had felt stuffy all night. The tenant and her husband, a wounded soldier who'd only just come out of hospital, didn't go to sleep until it was nearly morning. They were talking in whispers – so as not to wake up the old landlady or the little girl who was sleeping on top of a trunk.

The old woman was unable to sleep. She was annoyed by all this whispering. She couldn't help but listen. She couldn't help but try to link together the odd phrases she overheard. If only they'd talk normally! Then she'd just listen to them for a little while and fall fast asleep. She wanted to bang on the wall and say: 'What's all this whispering about? Do you really think what you're saying is that interesting?'

She kept making out odd phrases here and there:

'I came straight from hospital. I couldn't get you any candies. It would have been another story if I'd been at the front.'

'And all I had to give you was potatoes fried in oil.'

Then the whispering became inaudible again. Probably the woman was crying.

Then she heard the words:

'It's my love that kept you alive.'

'I bet he's a real breaker of hearts!' thought the old woman.

She dozed off for a few minutes. She must have been snoring -when she woke up, the voices were louder.

'Pivovarov wrote to me in hospital. I'd only just been made a lieutenant-colonel. And now they're putting me forward for promotion again. It's the general's doing – he put me in command of a division. And I've been awarded the Order of Lenin. And all for that day when I was buried under the ground! When I had lost touch with my battalions and all I could do was sing stupid songs. I keep feeling as though I'm an impostor. I can't tell you how awkward I feel.'

Then they began whispering again. They must have noticed that the old woman was no longer snoring.

The old woman lived on her own. Her husband had died before the war and her one daughter lived in Sverdlovsk. She didn't have anyone at the front herself and she couldn't understand why she had been so upset by this soldier's arrival.

She didn't much like her tenant; she thought of her as a stupid, empty woman who couldn't cope on her own. She always got up late and she didn't look after her daughter – the girl went around in torn clothes and never ate proper meals. Most of the time her tenant seemed just to sit at the table, looking out of the window and not saying a word. Now and then, when the mood took her, she did get down to work – and then it turned out she could do everything. She sewed, washed the floors and made excellent soup; she knew how to milk a cow – even though she was from the city. Something was obviously wrong in her life. As for the girl, she was a strange little brat. She loved messing about with grasshoppers, cockroaches and beetles. And she didn't play with them like ordinary children – she was always kissing them and telling them stories. Then she would let them go and start crying, calling for them to come back. Last autumn the old woman had brought her a hedgehog from the forest. The girl had followed him wherever he went. He only had to give a little grunt and she was beside herself with joy. And if he went under the chest of drawers, she'd just sit there on the floor and wait for him. She'd say to her mother: 'Sh! Can't you see he's asleep?' Then the hedgehog had gone back to the forest and the little girl hadn't eaten for two whole days.

The old woman had lived in constant fear that her tenant was going to hang herself- and that she'd be left with the little girl. The last thing she wanted at her age were new anxieties.

'I don't owe anyone anything,' she would say. She couldn't rid herself of this anxiety. One morning she was going to wake up and find the woman hanging there from the ceiling. What on earth would she do with the little girl?

She'd been quite certain that the tenant's husband had abandoned her. Probably he'd found another, younger, woman at the front. That was why her tenant was always so sad. She got very few letters from him, and those she did get didn't seem to make her any happier. And she was a real clam – it was impossible to get a word out of her. Even the neighbours had noticed how peculiar she was.

The old woman had had a hard time with her husband. He was a drunkard – and a very quarrelsome one at that. And instead of just beating her like anyone else, he used to go for her with a stick or a poker. He used to beat their daughter too. And he wasn't much joy even when he was sober. He was always fussing, poking his nose into her saucepans, complaining about this and that. Everything she did was wrong – the way she milked the cow, the way she made the bed, the way she cooked. It was impossible for her to put a foot right. He was a miser, too. And he cursed and swore the whole time. In the end she'd become just as bad herself. She even swore at her beloved cow. She hadn't shed one tear over her husband when he died. He hadn't left her alone even when he was an old man, and he was quite impossible when he was drunk. He might at least have tried to behave in front of his own daughter. She felt ashamed to think of it. And how he'd snored! That had been even worse when he was drunk. And as for that cow of hers! The obstinate beast was always running away from the herd. How could an old woman ever keep up with her?

She listened to the whispering behind the partition and remembered her own difficult life with her husband. She felt pity as well as resentment. He had worked hard and earned little. They'd never have got by without the cow. And it was the dust from his mine that had killed him. But she hadn't died – she was still going strong. Once he'd brought her some beads from Yekaterinburg. She'd passed them on to her daughter…

Early next morning, before the little girl had woken up, the tenant and her husband set off for the next village. There they'd be able to buy some white bread with his army ration-card.

They walked along hand in hand, without saying a word. They had to go one and a half kilometres through the forest, climb down the slope and then walk along the shore of the lake.

The snow here hadn't thawed. Its large, rough crystals were filled with the blue of the lake-water. But on the sunny side of the hill the snow was just beginning to melt. The ditch beside the path was full of gurgling water. The glitter of the snow, the water and the ice on the puddles was quite blinding. There was so much light, it was so intense, that they seemed almost to have to force their way through it. It disturbed them and got in their way; when they stepped on the thin film of ice over the puddles, it seemed to be light that was crunching under their feet, breaking up into thin, splinter-like rays. And it was light that was flowing down the ditch beside the path; where the path was blocked by stones, the light swelled up, foaming and gurgling. The spring sun seemed to be closer to the earth than ever. The air was cool and warm at the same time.

The officer felt as though his throat, which had been scorched by frost and vodka, which had been blackened by tobacco, dust, fumes and swear-words, had suddenly been rinsed clean by this blue light. Then they went into the forest, into the shade of the young pine trees. Here the snow hadn't melted at all. There were squirrels hard at work in the branches above; the icy surface of the snow was littered with gnawed fir-cones and flakes of wood.

The forest seemed silent. The many layers of branches kept off the light; instead of tinkling and gurgling, it was like a soft cloak swathed round the earth.

They walked on in silence. They were together – and that was enough to make everything round about seem beautiful. And it was spring.

Still without saying anything, they came to a stop. Two fat bullfinches were sitting on the branch of a fir tree. Their red breasts seemed like flowers that had suddenly blossomed on enchanted snow. The silence was very strange.

This silence contained the memory of last year's leaves and rains, of abandoned nests, of childhood, of the joyless labour of ants, of the treachery of foxes and kites, of the war of all against all, of good and evil born together in one heart and dying with this heart, of storms and thunderbolts that had set young hares and huge tree-trunks trembling. It was the past that slept under the snow, beneath this cool half-light -the joy of lovers' meetings, the hesitant chatter of April birds, people's first meetings with neighbours who had seemed strange at first and then become a part of their lives.

Everyone was asleep – the strong and the weak, the brave and the timid, the happy and the unhappy. This was a last parting, in an empty and abandoned house, with the dead who had now left it for ever.

Somehow you could sense spring more vividly in this cool forest than on the sunlit plain. And there was a deeper sadness in this silence than in the silence of autumn. In it you could hear both a lament for the dead and the furious joy of life itself.

It was still cold and dark, but soon the doors and shutters would be flung open. Soon the house would be filled with the tears and laughter of children, with the hurried steps of a loved woman and the measured gait of the master of the house.

They stood there, holding their bags, in silence.

1960