Having finished his conversation he gave Ivan a nasty look and intoned: "We shall be addressing a request to the higher authorities, Comrade Demidov, to seek the revocation of your award as Hero of the Soviet Union. That's all. This interview is at an end. I shall detain you no further."
"It wasn't you that gave me that award and it won't be you that takes it away from me," muttered Ivan dully.
"Precisely. It's not my responsibility It's within the competence of the Supreme Soviet. That's where they'll review whether a depraved alcoholic has the moral right to wear the Gold Star."
Ivan greeted these words with a heavy shout of laughter.
"No. Not the Star. You won't take that away from me, you bunch of bastards. Even the Fritzes at the camp never found it on me. Though they searched me enough times! I screwed it into the palm of my hand. They shouted: 'Hands up!' And I spread my fingers but it stayed in place. Look! Like this!"
And with a bitter smile Ivan showed the Secretary the five points of the Star embedded in his palm. The Secretary was silent.
"That's how it is, Citizen Chief," repeated Ivan, who was no longer smiling. "What? You didn't know I'd been a prisoner of war? Well, no one knew. If it had come out I'd have been rotting in a camp at Kolyma long ago. Go ahead! Call the Military Committee. Let those rats do a bit of research. They might find a little two-month gap in '44. And as for the Star, you'll never take it from me. You'll have to rob my corpse for it…"
Ivan could not bring himself to go home. He dreaded seeing again the empty coat stand in the corridor, the gray pile of dirty linen, the washbasin yellow with rust. For a long time he walked around in the muddy spring streets, and when he noticed someone coming toward him turned aside. Then he made his way around the furniture factory, beyond which there was already an expanse of open country, and emerged in a wasteland that smelled of damp snow. Close by, beneath a layer of spongy ice, a stream murmured softly On the sloping verge the snow had already melted in places, uncovering dark, swollen earth. This earth gave way underfoot in a soft and supple manner. And once more it seemed to Ivan not frightening but warm and tender, like river clay.
"I've lasted too long," thought Ivan. "I should have gone sooner. They'd have buried me with full honors." He realized that throughout that time he had been hoping for a brutal and unexpected end, an end that would have happened of itself and would have swept everything into the void, the dead apartment, the dark entrance where drunkards lingered, himself. That was why he was destroying himself with such abandon, almost joyfully. But the end did not come.
When dusk was beginning to fall Ivan went back into the town, walked along the streets once more – the "Progress" Cinema, the District Committee, the militia. Beside the Gastronom store there was a long, serpentine line. One of the men at the end of the line dropped a bag full of empty bottles. He started picking up the pieces, cut his fingers, and swore in a weary, monotonous voice. "If only I could buy half a liter and down it first… otherwise I don't think I'll have the courage," thought Ivan. But he had nothing to pay with. "Okay, I'll try to find the sleeping pills. But it'll have to be done later, or else the neighbors will suspect something."
And he continued wandering. When night came the cold made the stars glitter. The icebound snow crackled underfoot. But there was already a smell of spring on the wind. Close to his home Ivan lifted his head – almost all the windows were already dark. It was dark, too, in the courtyard beside the apartment building. Dark and silent. In the silence Ivan heard the light crunch of the snow beneath the feet of a stray dog. Happy at the thought of being able to stroke it and look into its anxious, tender eyes, he turned around. The night wind was causing a ball of crumpled newspaper to roll along the ground…
Ivan went in through the main door and was preparing to climb up to his apartment on the third floor but remembered he should look at the mail. He hardly ever opened his box for weeks at a time, knowing that if something was dropped in it, it was almost certainly by mistake. His daughter sent him three cards a year: on Soviet Army Day, his birthday, and Victory Day. The first two dates were already past, the third was still a long way off. This time he found a letter. Only the upper floors were lit, and where the box was almost total darkness reigned. " Moscow," Ivan made out on the envelope. "It must be the bill from the sobering-up station. Hell's bells! They don't waste any time. That's the capital for you…"
In the course of his wanderings through the town he had had time to gather his thoughts. He had been thinking about it all with surprising detachment, as if it concerned someone else. He recalled where there was a razor amid the chaos in the kitchen, and in which of the drawers in the chest the pills were kept. He was no longer on good terms with his neighbors on the same floor. Which is why he decided to slip the note asking for someone to come and see him under the door of the apartment below, where Zhora, a robust warehouseman lived. He got on well with him and occa-sionally they had a drink together. "It's all right, he's tough. He's not one to be scared," thought Ivan. "That's important. Someone else might have a heart attack…"
As he climbed up the stairs he was fingering his neck, trying to find where the blood throbbed most strongly. "That must be it, the carotid. Oh! It's really pounding away there. The main thing's to hit it first time off. Otherwise you're going to be running around like a chicken with its throat half cut!"
In the apartment he took out the razor and found the sleeping pills. On a piece of paper he wrote: "Zhora, come to number 84. It's important." Then he went and slipped the note under the door.
Back at home, he made a tour of the apartment, glanced at a photo in the wooden frame: Tatyana and himself, still very young, and in the background palm trees and the misty outline of the mountains. Then, he filled a glass with water from the tap and began to swallow the pills one after the other.
Soon Ivan felt a thick fog that muffled all sounds revolving slowly in his head. He opened the razor and, as if to shave himself, lifted his chin.
At that moment he remembered he had slammed the door shut and that he needed to leave it unlocked, otherwise Zhora would not be able to get in. His mind was still functioning and this afforded him an absurd satisfaction. In the entrance hall he took the medals, wrapped in an old piece of newspaper, out of his coat pocket, together with the letter from the Moscow sobering-up station. He tossed the medals into the drawer and, holding the letter up to the light, opened the envelope unhurriedly. There was nothing official there. The page, covered in regular feminine handwriting, began with these words: "Dear Dad! It's been a long time since I last wrote you, but you've no idea what life is like in Moscow…"
Ivan picked up the envelope and read the sender's address with difficulty: " Moscow, 16 Litovsky Avenue, Flat 37, Demidova 0.I." Feverishly, muddling up lines of text that were already growing blurred, his eye seized upon fragments of sentences: "I've got to know a nice young man… We're thinking of getting married in July… His parents would like to meet you. Come for the May celebrations… You can stay with us for a week or two…"
Ivan could never recall the very last sentence in the letter, even though he saw it absolutely clearly, even repeated it, as it seemed to him, whispering, "The bells are ringing in Moscow… The bells are ringing… And who's going to hear them?"
It was not until the afternoon that Ivan came to. He opened his eyes, then screwed them up against the blinding sunlight beating on the window panes. He was lying on the floor. Above him crouched Zhora, shaking him by the shoulder.
"Dmitrich, Dmitrich! Wake up now, you goddamned veteran! You've sure been boozing it up! Where did you get plastered like that? No, don't shut your eyes, you'll nod off again. Why did you send for me? What's this urgent business, then? To wake you up? Eh? D'you think I've got nothing better to do than come and sober you up?"