And so there he was, sitting next to his wife, talking to her, and all the time thinking his own secret thoughts.
The telephone rang. Its ringing now made Viktor as anxious as if it were the middle of the night and a telegram had arrived with news of some tragedy.
'I know what it is,' said Lyudmila. 'Someone promised to phone me about a job in a co-operative.'
She picked up the receiver. Raising her eyebrows, she said: 'He's just coming.'
'It's for you,' she said to Viktor.
Viktor looked at her questioningly.
She covered the receiver with the palm of her hand and said: 'It's a voice I don't know. I can't think…'
He took the receiver from her.
'Certainly,' he said. 'I'll hold on.'
Now it was Lyudmila's turn to look questioningly at him. He groped on the table for a pencil and scrawled a few letters on a scrap of paper. Very slowly, not knowing what she was doing, Lyudmila made the sign of the cross first over herself and then over Viktor. Neither of them said a word.
'This is a bulletin from all the radio services of the Soviet Union.'
A voice unbelievably similar to the voice that had addressed the nation, the army, the entire world on 3 July, 1941, now addressed a solitary individual holding a telephone receiver.
'Good day, comrade Shtrum.'
At that moment everything came together in a jumble of half-formed thoughts and feelings – triumph, a sense of weakness, fear that all this might just be some maniac playing a trick on him, pages of closely written manuscript, that endless questionnaire, the Lubyanka…
Viktor knew that his fate was now being settled. He also had a vague sense of loss, as though he had lost something peculiarly dear to him, something good and touching.
'Good day, Iosif Vissarionovich,' he said, astonished to hear himself pronouncing such unimaginable words on the telephone.
The conversation lasted two or three minutes.
'I think you're working in a very interesting field,' said Stalin.
His voice was slow and guttural and he placed a particularly heavy stress on certain syllables; it was so similar to the voice Viktor had heard on the radio that it sounded almost like an impersonation. It was like Viktor's imitation of Stalin when he was playing the fool at home. It was just as everyone who had ever heard Stalin speak – at a conference or during a private interview – had always described it.
Perhaps it really was a hoax after all?
'I believe in my work,' said Viktor.
Stalin was silent for a moment. He seemed to be thinking over what Viktor had said.
'Has the war made it difficult for you to obtain foreign research reports?' asked Stalin. 'And do you have all the necessary laboratory equipment?'
With a sincerity that he himself found astonishing, Viktor said: 'Thank you very much, Iosif Vissarionovich. My working conditions are perfectly satisfactory.'
Lyudmila was still standing up, as though Stalin could see her. Viktor motioned to her to sit down. Stalin was silent again, thinking over what Viktor had said.
'Goodbye, comrade Shtrum, I wish you success in your work.'
'Goodbye, comrade Stalin.'
He put down the phone.
There they both were, still sitting opposite each other – just as when they had been talking, a few minutes before, about the tablecloths Lyudmila had sold at the Tishinsky market.
'I wish you success in your work,' said Viktor with a strong Georgian accent.
There was something extraordinary about the way nothing in the room had changed. The sideboard, the piano, the chairs, the two unwashed plates on the table, were exactly the same as when Viktor and Lyudmila had been talking about the house-manager. It was enough to drive one insane. Hadn't their whole lives been turned upside down? Wasn't a new destiny now awaiting them?
'What did he say to you?'
'Nothing special. He just asked if I was having difficulty in obtaining foreign research literature,' said Viktor, trying to sound calm and unconcerned.
For a moment he felt almost embarrassed at his sudden feeling of happiness.
'Lyuda, Lyuda,' he said. 'Just think! I didn't repent. I didn't bow down. I didn't write to him. He phoned me himself.'
The impossible had happened. Its significance was incalculable. Was this really the same Viktor Pavlovich who had tossed about in bed and been unable to sleep, who had lost his head over some questionnaire, who had scratched himself as he wondered anxiously what had been said about him at the Scientific Council, who had gone over his sins one by one, who had repented – at least in thought – and begged for forgiveness, who had expected to be arrested or to live the rest of his life in poverty, who had trembled at the thought of talking to a girl at the passport office or the rations desk?
'My God, my God!' said Lyudmila. 'And to think that Tolya will never know!' She went to Tolya's room and opened the door.
Viktor picked up the telephone receiver and put it down again.
'But what if the whole thing was a hoax?' he said, going over to the window.
The street was deserted. A woman went by, dressed in a quilted coat.
He returned to the telephone and drummed on the receiver with his finger. 'How did my voice sound?'
'You spoke very slowly. You know, I've no idea what made me suddenly stand up like that.'
'Stalin himself!'
'Perhaps it really was just a hoax?'
'No one would dare. You'd get ten years for a joke like that.'
It was only an hour since Viktor had been pacing up and down the room, humming the old romance by Golenishchev-Kutuzov:
'… he lies forgotten, quite alone…'
Stalin and his telephone calls! Rumours would go round Moscow once or twice every year: 'Stalin's phoned Dovzhenko, the film director! Stalin's phoned Ilya Ehrenburg!'
There was no need for Stalin to give direct orders – to ask that a prize be awarded to X, a flat be allocated to Y, or an Institute be set up for Z. Stalin was above such matters; they were dealt with by subordinates who divined Stalin's will through his tone of voice and the look in his eyes. If Stalin gave a man a quick smile, his life would be transformed overnight; he would suddenly rise up out of the outer darkness to be greeted with power, fame and showers of honours. Dozens of notables would bow down before him – Stalin had smiled at him, Stalin had joked with him on the phone.
People repeated these conversations to one another in detail; every word of Stalin's seemed astonishing. And the more banal his words, the more astonishing they seemed. It was as if Stalin was incapable of saying anything ordinary.
Apparently he had phoned a famous sculptor and said, laughing:
'Hello, you old drunkard!'
He had rung a famous writer, a very decent man, and asked about a comrade of his who had been arrested. Taken aback, the writer had mumbled something quite inaudible in reply. Stalin had then said: 'You don't know how to defend your friends.' [51]
He had phoned up a newspaper for the young. The deputy editor had said: 'Bubyekin speaking.'
'And who is Bubyekin?' Stalin had asked.
'You should know,' Bubyekin had answered. He had then slammed down the receiver.
Stalin had called back and said: 'Comrade Bubyekin, this is Stalin speaking. Please explain who you are.'
After this, Bubyekin had apparently spent two weeks in hospital recovering from shock.
One word of his could annihilate thousands, tens of thousands, of people. A Marshal, a People's Commissar, a member of the Central Committee, a secretary of an obkom - people who had been in command of armies and fronts, who had held sway over vast factories, entire regions, whole Republics – could be reduced to nothing by one angry word. They would become labour-camp dust, rattling their tin bowls as they waited outside the kitchen for their ration of gruel.