Viktor suddenly wanted Lyudmila, who was in the cab with the driver, to have the benefit of his reflections too. He leant over the side of the truck and asked through the half-open window:
'Are you comfortable, Lyuda?'
'What's all this about the death of cultures?' asked Nadya. 'It's just that the janitors haven't been clearing away the snow.'
'Don't be silly!' said Viktor. 'Just look at that ice!'
The truck gave a sudden jolt. The bundles and suitcases flew up into the air, together with Nadya and Viktor. They looked at each other and burst out laughing.
How strange it all was. How could he ever have guessed that he would do his most important work in Kazan, during a war, with all the suffering and homelessness that entailed?
He had expected them to feel only a solemn excitement as they drew near to Moscow. He had expected their sorrow over Tolya, Marusya and Anna Semyonovna, their thoughts of the victims claimed from almost every family, to blend with the joy of homecoming and fill their souls.
But it hadn't been like that at all. On the train Viktor had been upset by all kinds of trivia. He had even been annoyed with Lyudmila for sleeping so much instead of looking out over the earth that her own son had defended. She had snored very loudly; a wounded soldier passing in the corridor had heard her and exclaimed: 'There's a true soldier of the guard!'
He had been equally annoyed with Nadya: she had chosen all the most delicious-looking biscuits out of the bag and left her mother to clear up the remains of her meal. She had put on an absurd, mocking tone of voice whenever she spoke to him; he had overheard her in the next compartment saying: 'My father's a great admirer of music. Sometimes he even tinkles on the piano himself.'
The people they had shared the compartment with talked about such matters as central heating and the Moscow sewers; about people who had gaily neglected to pay their rent and so lost their right to live in Moscow; about what were the best foodstuffs to bring with them. Viktor didn't like these conversations, but in the end he too was talking about janitors and water-pipes; when he couldn't sleep at night, he wondered if the telephone had been cut off and remembered that he must get ration-cards for the Academy store.
The bad-tempered woman in charge of the coach had found a chicken-bone under Viktor's seat when she was sweeping out the compartment.
'What pigs!' she had muttered. 'And they think of themselves as intelligentsia!'
At Mourom, Viktor and Nadya had gone for a walk along the platform and run into some young men wearing long coats with Astrakhan fur collars. One of them had looked round and said: 'Look, Old Father Abraham's coming back from evacuation.'
'Yes,' laughed the other, 'he wants to get his medal for the defence of Moscow.'
At Kanash they had stopped opposite a train full of prisoners. Pressing their pale faces against the tiny barred windows, the prisoners had shouted, 'Tobacco!' or 'Give us a smoke!' The sentries patrolling up and down the train had cursed at the men as they pushed them away from the windows.
In the evening Viktor had gone to the next coach to see the Sokolovs. Marya Ivanovna, a coloured shawl round her head, was getting their bedding ready. She was sleeping in the top bunk, and Pyotr Lavrentyevich down below. Worried about whether Pyotr would be comfortable, she answered Viktor's questions quite randomly and forgot to ask after Lyudmila.
Sokolov himself had just yawned and said how exhausting he found the heat. For some reason Viktor had been offended by this lukewarm welcome.
'It's the first time in my life,' he said in an irritated tone that surprised even himself, 'that I've seen a man sleep below and make his wife climb up on top.'
'It's what we always do,' said Marya Ivanovna, kissing Sokolov on the temple. 'Pyotr Lavrentyevich gets too hot up on top – but it's all the same to me.'
'Well,' said Viktor, 'I'm off.' The Sokolovs didn't ask him to stay; once again he felt offended.
It was very hot in the carriage that night. All kinds of memories had come back to him – Kazan, Karimov, Alexandra Vladimirovna, his conversations with Madyarov, his tiny office at the university… What a charming, anxious look had come into Marya Ivanovna's eyes when Viktor had discussed politics at their evening gatherings. Very, very different from their preoccupied look just now.
'Would you believe it?' he said to himself. 'Taking the bottom bunk, where it's cool and comfortable. What a tyrant!'
Then he got angry with kind, meek Marya Ivanovna whom he liked more than any other woman he knew. 'She's a little red-nosed rabbit. But then Pyotr Lavrentyevich is a difficult man. He seems so gentle and measured, but really he's arrogant, secretive and vindictive. Yes, the poor woman has a lot to put up with.'
Viktor hadn't been able to get to sleep. He had tried to imagine the reactions of Chepyzhin and his other friends. Many of them knew about his work already. How would it all go? What would Gurevich and Chepyzhin say? He was, after all, a conquering hero…
Then he had remembered that Markov wouldn't be in Moscow for another week. He had made detailed arrangements for setting up the laboratory and it would be impossible to start work without him. It was a pity that he and Sokolov were such theoreticians, that they had such clumsy, insensitive hands.
Yes, a conquering hero…
But somehow he hadn't been able to hold on to this train of thought. He kept seeing the prisoners begging for tobacco and the young men who had called him 'Old Father Abraham'. And then there was that strange remark of Postoev's… Sokolov had been talking about a young physicist called Landesman and Postoev had said, 'Who cares about Landesman now Viktor Pavlovich has astonished the world with his discovery?' Then he had embraced Sokolov and said, 'Still, what matters is that we're both Russians.'
Would the telephone and the gas be working? And had people thought about trivia like this a hundred years ago – on their way back to Moscow after the defeat of Napoleon?
The truck came to a stop not far from their house. Once again the Shtrums saw the front door, the four windows of their flat with the blue paper crosses that had been pasted on last summer, the linden trees on the edge of the pavement, the sign saying 'Milk' and the board on the janitor's door.
'Well, I don't suppose the lift will be working,' said Lyudmila.
She turned to the driver. 'Can you help take our things up to the second floor?'
'Why not? You can pay me in bread.'
They unloaded the truck; Nadya stayed to watch over their things while Viktor and Lyudmila went up to their apartment. They went up the stairs very slowly, somehow surprised that everything had changed so little: the letter-boxes were still the same, the door on the first floor was still covered with a piece of black oil-cloth. How strange that streets, houses and things you forgot about didn't just disappear; they came back and there you were in the midst of them again.
Once, too impatient to wait for the lift, Tolya had run up to the second floor and shouted down to Viktor: 'Ha ha! I'm home already!'
'Let's stop for a moment on the landing. You're out of breath,' said Viktor.
'My God!' said Lyudmila. 'Just look at the state of the staircase! I'll have to go down tomorrow and get Vasily Ivanovich to have the place cleaned.'
There they were, husband and wife, standing once more before the door of their home.