Alexandra Vladimirovna didn't say a word about her own health. She didn't say whether her room was heated. She didn't say whether her rations had been increased. Lyudmila understood the reason for this all too well.
Lyudmila's home was now cold and empty. The warmth had drained out of it; it was a ruin. It was as though it had been destroyed by terrible, invisible bombs.
She thought a lot about Viktor that day. Their relationship had gone sour. Viktor was angry and treated her coldly. The saddest thing of all was that she didn't mind. She knew him too well. From the outside everything about him seemed exalted and poetic – but she didn't see people that way. Masha saw Viktor as a noble sage, as a martyr. Masha loved music and would go pale when she listened to the piano. Sometimes Viktor played for her. She obviously needed someone to adore. She had created for herself an exalted image, a Viktor who had never existed. But if she were to watch Viktor day in and day out, she'd be disenchanted soon enough.
Lyudmila knew that Viktor was moved only by egotism, that he cared for no one. Even now – though his confrontation with Shishakov filled her with fear and anxiety on his behalf – she felt the usual irritation: he was ready to sacrifice both his work and the peace of his family for the selfish pleasure of strutting about and posing as the defender of the weak.
Yesterday, in his anxiety about Nadya, he had forgotten his egotism. But was he capable of forgetting his troubles and showing the same anxiety on Tolya's behalf? She herself had been mistaken yesterday. Nadya hadn't been fully open with her. Was it just a childish infatuation? Or was this her destiny?
Nadya had spoken quite freely about the circle of friends where she had first met Lomov. She had told Lyudmila how they read futurist and symbolist poetry, how they argued about art, even about their contemptuous mockery for things which, in Lyudmila's eyes, deserved neither contempt nor mockery.
Nadya had answered Lyudmila's questions with good grace and seemed to be speaking the truth: 'No, we don't drink – apart from one evening when someone was leaving for the front'; 'We talk about politics now and then. No, not in the same language as Pravda… but only occasionally, just once or twice.'
But as soon as Lyudmila began asking about Lomov himself, Nadya had become edgy: 'No, he doesn't write poetry'; 'How do you expect me to know about his parents? I've never even met them. What's strange about that? Lomov doesn't know anything about Father. He probably thinks he works in a food store.'
What was all this? Was it Nadya's destiny? Or would it be quite forgotten in a month's time?
As she got the supper ready and did the washing, she thought in turn about her mother, Vera, Zhenya and Seryozha. She rang Marya Ivanovna, but no one answered. She rang the Postoevs – the domestic answered that her employer was out shopping. She rang the janitor about the broken tap, but apparently the plumber hadn't come in to work.
She sat down to write a long letter to her mother. She meant to say how sad she was that she had failed to make Alexandra Vladimirovna feel at home, how much she regretted her decision to stay on alone in Kazan. Lyudmila's relatives had given up coming to stay with her before the war. Now not even the very closest of them came to visit her in her large Moscow flat. Lyudmila didn't write the letter – all she did was spoil four sheets of paper.
Towards the end of the afternoon Viktor phoned to say that he'd be staying late at the Institute; the technicians he'd wanted from the military factory were coming that evening.
'Is there any news?' asked Lyudmila.
'You mean about all that? No, nothing.'
In the evening Lyudmila read through her mother's letter again and then got up and went over to the window.
The moon was shining and the street was quite empty. Once again she saw Nadya arm in arm with her lieutenant; they were walking down the road towards the flat. Suddenly Nadya started to run and the young man in the military greatcoat stood there in the middle of the road, gazing after her. Everything most incompatible suddenly fused together in Lyudmila's heart: her love for Viktor, her resentment of Viktor, her anxiety on Viktor's behalf; Tolya who had died without ever kissing a girl's lips; the lieutenant standing there in the road; Vera climbing happily up the staircase of her house in Stalingrad; poor homeless Alexandra Vladimirovna…
Her soul filled with the sense of life that is man's only joy and his most terrible pain.
56
Outside the main door of the Institute, Viktor met Shishakov getting out of his car. Shishakov raised his hat and said hello; he clearly didn't want to talk.
'That's bad,' thought Viktor.
At lunch Professor Svechin was sitting at the next table, but he looked straight past Viktor without saying a word. Stout Doctor Gurevich talked to Viktor with particular warmth on his way out of the canteen; he pressed his hand for a long time, but as the door of the director's reception room opened, he quickly said goodbye and walked off down the corridor.
In the laboratory, Markov, who was talking to Viktor about setting up the equipment for photographing atomic particles, suddenly looked up from his notes and said:
'Viktor Pavlovich, I've heard that you were the subject of a very harsh discussion during a meeting of the Party bureau. Kovchenko really had it in for you. He said: "Shtrum doesn't want to be a part of our collective."'
'Well,' said Viktor, 'that's that.' He felt one of his eyelids beginning to twitch.
While they were discussing the photographs, Viktor got the feeling that it was now Markov who was in charge of the laboratory. He had the calm voice of someone who is in control; Nozdrin twice came up to him to ask questions about the equipment.
Then Markov's face took on a look of pathetic entreaty.
'Viktor Pavlovich, if you say anything about this Party meeting, please don't mention my name. I'll be accused of revealing Party secrets.'
'Of course not.'
'It's just a storm in a teacup.'
'I don't know,' said Viktor. 'You'll get by without me. And the ambiguities surrounding the operation of psi are quite impossible.'
'I think you're wrong,' said Markov. 'I was talking to Kochkurov yesterday. You know what he's like – he's certainly got his feet on the ground. Well he said, "I know Shtrum's mathematics have overtaken his physics, but somehow I find his work very illuminating, I don't know why.'"
Viktor understood what Markov was saying. Young Kochkurov was particularly interested in the action of slow neutrons on the nuclei of heavy atoms. In his view, work in this area had great practical possibilities.
'It's not the Kochkurovs of this world who decide things,' said Viktor. 'The people who matter are the Badins – and he wants me to repent of leading physicists into Talmudic abstraction.'
Everyone in the laboratory seemed to know about yesterday's meeting and Viktor's conflict with the authorities. Anna Stepanovna kept giving Viktor sympathetic looks.
Viktor wanted to talk to Sokolov, but he had gone to the Academy in the morning and then rung up to say that he'd been delayed and probably wouldn't return that day.
Savostyanov, for some reason, was in an excellent mood.
'Viktor Pavlovich,' he said, 'y°u have before you the esteemed Gurevich – a brilliant and outstanding scientist.' He put his hands on his head and stomach to denote Gurevich's bald head and pot belly.