One night Stalin and Beria had visited an Old Bolshevik from Georgia who had recently been released from the Lubyanka; they had stayed till morning. The other tenants hadn't dared use the toilet and hadn't even gone out to work in the morning. The door had been opened by a midwife, the senior tenant. She was wearing a nightdress and holding a pug-dog in her arms; she was very angry that the visitors hadn't rung the bell the correct number of times. As she put it herself: 'I opened the door and saw a portrait. Then the portrait started walking towards me.' Apparently Stalin had gone out into the corridor and looked for a long time at the sheet of paper by the phone where the tenants noted how many calls they had made.
It was the very banality of all these incidents that people found so amusing – and so unbelievable. Just imagine! Stalin himself had walked down the corridor of a communal flat.
It was unbelievable. It needed only one word from Stalin for vast buildings to rise up, for columns of people to march out into the taiga and fell trees, for hundreds of thousands of men and women to dig canals, build towns and lay down roads in a land of permafrost and polar darkness. He was the embodiment of a great State. The Sun of the Stalinist Constitution… The Party of Stalin… Stalin's five-year plans… Stalin's construction works… Stalin's strategy… Stalin's aviation… A great State was embodied in him, in his character, in his mannerisms.
'I wish you success in your work…,' Viktor kept repeating. 'You're working in a very interesting field…'
One thing was quite clear: Stalin knew about the importance attributed to nuclear physics in other countries.
Viktor was aware of the strange tension that was beginning to surround this area of research. He could sense this tension between the lines of articles by English and American physicists; he could sense it in the odd hiatuses that sometimes interrupted their chains of reasoning. He had noticed that the names of certain frequently-published researchers had disappeared from the pages of physics journals. Everyone studying the fission of heavy nuclei seemed to have vanished into thin air; no one even cited their work any longer. This silence, this tension, grew still more palpable when it came to anything relating to the fission of uranium nuclei.
Chepyzhin, Sokolov and Markov had discussed this more than once. Only the other day Chepyzhin had talked about the shortsightedness of people who couldn't see the practical application of the reactions of heavy nuclei to bombardment by neutrons. He himself had chosen not to work in this field…
The air was still full of the fire and smoke of battle, the rumble of tanks and the tramping of boots, but a new, still silent tension had appeared in the world. The most powerful of all hands had picked up a telephone receiver; a theoretical physicist had heard a slow voice say: 'I wish you success in your work.'
A new shadow, still faint and mute, barely perceptible, now hung over the ravaged earth, over the heads of children and old men. No one knew of it yet, no one was aware of the birth of a power that belonged to the future.
It was a long way from the desks of a few dozen physicists, from sheets of paper covered with alphas, betas, gammas, ksis and sigmas, from laboratories and library shelves to the cosmic and satanic force that was to become the sceptre of State power. Nevertheless, the journey had been begun; the mute shadow was thickening, slowly turning into a darkness that could envelop both Moscow and New York.
Viktor didn't think at this moment about the success of his work -work that had seemed abandoned for ever in the drawer of his writing-desk, but which would now once again see the light and be incorporated into lectures and scientific papers. Nor did he think about the triumph of scientific truth; nor about how he could once again help the progress of science, have his own students, be mentioned in the pages of textbooks and journals, wait anxiously to see whether his theory corresponded to the truth revealed by calculating machines and photographic emulsions.
No, what Viktor felt was a sense of pride – pride that he had been victorious over his persecutors. Not long ago he had felt quite free of resentment. Even now, he had no desire to occasion these people harm, to get his revenge. But he did take great joy in remembering their acts of dishonesty, cowardice and cruelty. The worse someone had behaved, the sweeter it was to think of him now.
When Nadya arrived back from school, Lyudmila shouted out:
'Nadya, Stalin's just telephoned Papa!'
Nadya rushed into the room, her scarf trailing on the floor, her coat half on and half off. Seeing her reaction made it easier for Viktor to imagine everyone's consternation when, later today or tomorrow, they heard what had happened.
They sat down to lunch. Viktor suddenly pushed his spoon away and said: 'I really don't want anything to eat.'
'It's a complete rout for all your detractors and persecutors,' said Lyudmila. 'Just think what must be going on now in the Institute and the Academy!'
'Yes, yes.'
'And the other women in the special store will say hello to you again, Mama, and smile at you,' said Nadya.
'That's right,' replied Lyudmila with a little laugh.
Viktor had always detested bootlickers. Still, it pleased him to think how obsequiously Shishakov would smile at him now.
There was just one thing he didn't understand. Mixed with his joy and his feeling of triumph was a sadness that seemed to well up from somewhere deep underground, a sense of regret for something sacred and cherished that seemed to be slipping away from him. For some reason he felt guilty, but he had no idea what of or before whom.
He sat there, eating his favourite buckwheat-and-potato soup and remembering a spring night in Kiev when he was a child; he had watched the stars looking down at him between the chestnut blossoms and wept. The world had seemed splendid then, the future quite vast, full of goodness and radiant light. Today his fate had been decided. It was as though he were saying goodbye to that pure, childish, almost religious love of science and its magic, saying goodbye to what he had felt a few weeks before as he overcame his terror and refused to lie to himself.
There was only one person he could have talked to about all this; but she wasn't there.
There was one other strange thing. He felt impatient and greedy; he wanted the whole world to know what had happened. He wanted it to be known in the Institute, in the auditoriums of the University, in the Central Committee, in the Academy, in the house management office, in the dacha office, in the different scientific societies. But Viktor felt quite indifferent as to whether or not Sokolov knew. And deep down, quite unconsciously, he would have preferred Marya Ivanovna not to know. He had the feeling it was better for their love that he should be persecuted and unhappy.
He told Nadya and Lyudmila a story they had all known even before the war. One night Stalin appeared in the metro, slightly drunk, sat down beside a young woman, and asked: 'What can I do for you?'
'I'd love to look round the Kremlin,' the woman replied.
Stalin thought for a moment and said: 'Yes, I can certainly arrange that for you.'
'See!' exclaimed Nadya. 'You're such a great man now that Mama let you finish the story without interrupting. She's already heard it a hundred and ten times.'
Once again, for the hundred and eleventh time, they all laughed at the simple-minded woman in the metro.
'Vitya,' said Lyudmila. 'Maybe we should have something to drink to celebrate the occasion?' She went to fetch a box of sweets that had been set aside for Nadya's birthday. 'There,' she said. 'But calm down, Nadya. There's no need to throw yourself on them like a starving wolf!'