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.'