Alexandra Vladimirovna no longer slept well. Why was there still no news from Seryozha? She slept on the iron bed that had once been Lyudmila's; it was as though her daughter's anxieties had now been transferred to her.
How easily death annihilated people. How hard it was to go on living. She thought of Vera. Her child's father had either forgotten her or been killed. Stepan Fyodorovich was constantly depressed and anxious. As for Lyudmila and Viktor, all their griefs and losses had done nothing to bring them together.
Alexandra Vladimirovna wrote to Zhenya that evening. 'My dearest daughter…' She kept thinking of her during the night. What sort of mess was she in? What lay in store for her?
Anya Shtrum, Sonya Levinton, Seryozha… What had become of them all?
Next door she could hear two hushed voices.
'We should kill the duck for the October anniversary,' said Semyon Ivanovich.
'Do you think I've been feeding it on potatoes just to have it killed?' snapped Nina Matveyevna. 'Oh yes, once the old woman's out of the way I'd like to paint the floors. Otherwise the boards will start rotting.'
All they ever spoke of was food and material things; the world they lived in had room only for objects. There were no human feelings in this world – nothing but boards, paint, millet, buckwheat, thirty-rouble notes. They were hard-working, honest people; the neighbours all said that neither of them would ever take a penny that didn't belong to them. But somehow they were quite untouched by the wounded in hospital, by blind veterans, by homeless children on the streets, by the Volga famine of 1921.
In this they were quite the opposite of Alexandra Vladimirovna. She herself could get upset, overjoyed or angry over matters that had nothing to do with her or anyone close to her. The period of general collectivization, the events of 1937, the fate of women who had been sent to camps because of their husbands, the children who had been put in orphanages after their parents had been sent to camps, the summary execution of Russian prisoners-of-war, the many tragedies of the war – all these troubled her as deeply as the sufferings of her own family.
This wasn't something she had learnt from books, from the populist and revolutionary traditions of her family, from her friends, from her husband, or even from life itself. It was something she couldn't help; it was just the way she was. She always ran out of money six days before pay-day. She was always hungry. Everything she owned could be wrapped up in a handkerchief. But not once in Kazan had she thought of her belongings that had been burnt in Stalingrad -her furniture, her piano, her tea-service, her spoons and forks. She didn't even think about her books.
It was very strange that she should now be so far from the people who needed her, living under one roof with people who were so alien to her.
Two days after she had received the letters, Karimov came round. Alexandra Vladimirovna was glad to see him and offered him some rose-hip tea.
'How long since you last heard from Moscow?' he asked.
'Two days.'
'Really?' said Karimov with a smile. 'Tell me, how long does a letter take?'
'Have a look at the postmark,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna.
Karimov examined the envelope for some time. 'Nine days,' he said in a preoccupied tone of voice. He sat there thoughtfully – as though the slowness of the postal service was a matter of great importance to him.
'They say it's the censors,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'They're quite snowed under.'
Karimov looked at her with his beautiful dark eyes.
'So they're all right, are they? They're not having any problems?'
'You don't look at all well,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'Are you ill?'
'What do you mean? I'm fine!' he replied hurriedly, as though denying some accusation.
They began to talk about the war.
'We've come to a real turning-point now,' said Karimov. 'Even a child can see that.'
'Yes, and last summer it was just as obvious that the Germans were going to win,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna sarcastically.
'Is it very difficult for you on your own?' Karimov asked abruptly. 'I see you have to light the stove yourself.'
Alexandra Vladimirovna frowned – as though this were a question she could only answer after deep thought. Finally she said: 'Akhmet Usmanovich, have you really called on me just to ask if I find it difficult to light the stove?'
Karimov looked down at his hands. He waited for a long time before replying.
'The other day I was summoned to you-know-where. I was questioned about the meetings and conversations we had.'
'Why didn't you tell me that at the beginning?' asked Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'Why did you have to start asking about the stove?'
Trying to catch her eye, Karimov went on:
'Naturally, I was unable to deny that we had talked about politics and the war. It would have been absurd to try and make out that four adults had spoken exclusively about the cinema. Naturally I said that we had always talked like true Soviet patriots. I said we were all of us certain that, under the leadership of comrade Stalin and the Party, the Soviet people would be victorious. In general, the questions weren't particularly hostile. But after a few days I began to worry. I couldn't sleep at all. I began thinking that something must have happened to Viktor Pavlovich. And then there's this strange business with Madyarov. He went off for ten days to the Pedagogical Institute in Kazan. And he still hasn't come back. His students are waiting for him. The dean's sent him a telegram. And not a word. Well, you can imagine what goes through my head at night.'
Alexandra Vladimirovna said nothing.
'Just think,' he went on in a quiet voice, 'you only have to get talking over a glass of tea and everyone's full of suspicion, you get summoned you know where…'
Alexandra Vladimirovna said nothing. Karimov looked at her questioningly, as though inviting her to speak. He realized that she was waiting for him to tell her the rest.
'So there we are,' he said.
Alexandra Vladimirovna still didn't say anything.
'Oh yes,' he said. 'There's one thing I forgot. This comrade asked if we'd ever talked about the freedom of the press. We had indeed. Yes, and then they asked if I knew Lyudmila Nikolaevna's younger sister and her ex-husband… Krymov or something? I've never set eyes on them in my life and Viktor Pavlovich has never so much as mentioned them to me. And that's what I told them. Yes, and then they asked if Viktor Pavlovich had ever talked to me personally about the situation of the Jews. I asked why he should have talked about that to me. They answered: "You understand. You're a Tartar and he's a Jew…"'
Later, after Karimov had put on his hat and coat and was standing in the doorway, tapping the letter-box where Lyudmila had once found the letter telling her that Tolya had been wounded, Alexandra Vladimirovna said: 'It's strange. Why should they ask about Zhenya?'
But neither she nor Karimov had any idea why a Chekist in Kazan should suddenly take an interest in Zhenya, who lived in Kuibyshev, or in her ex-husband, who was now at the front.
People trusted Alexandra Vladimirovna and she had heard many similar stories and confessions. She had grown all too used to feeling that something important had been left unsaid. She didn't see any point in warning Viktor; it would merely cause him fruitless anxiety. Nor was there any point in trying to guess which of the group had talked carelessly or had informed. In situations like this it nearly always turned out to be the person you least suspected. And very often the matter had come to the attention of the NKVD in some quite unexpected manner: through a veiled hint in a letter, a joke, a few careless words in the communal kitchen… But why should the investigator have asked Karimov about Zhenya and Nikolay Gri-gorevich?