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.'