'Papa,' said Nadya, 'what right have we got to laugh at the woman in the metro? After all, you could have asked Stalin about Krymov and Uncle Dmitry.'
'What do you mean? How could I?'
'I think you could. Grandmother would have said something straight away. That's for sure.'
'Maybe,' said Viktor. 'Maybe.'
'Don't be silly,' said Lyudmila.
'We're not being silly,' said Nadya. 'We're talking about the life of your own brother.'
'Vitya,' said Lyudmila. 'You must phone Shishakov.'
'I don't think you've quite taken in what's happened,' said Viktor. 'There's no need for me to phone anyone.'
'You should phone Shishakov,' said Lyudmila obstinately.
'Me phone Shishakov? When Stalin's wished me success in my work?'
Something had changed in Viktor. Until now he had always felt indignant at the way Stalin was idolized, the way his name appeared again and again in every column of every newspaper. And then there were all the portraits, busts, statues, oratorios, poems, hymns… And the way he was called a genius, the father of the people…
What had made Viktor particularly indignant was the way even Lenin's name had been eclipsed; Stalin's military genius was often contrasted with Lenin's more civic genius. There was a play of Aleksey Tolstoy's where Lenin obligingly lit a match so Stalin could have a puff at his pipe. One artist had portrayed Stalin striding up the steps of the Smolny with Lenin darting along behind him like a bantam cock. And if Lenin and Stalin were portrayed together in public, then the children and old people would be gazing tenderly at Lenin while a procession of armed giants – workers and sailors festooned with machine-gun belts – marched towards Stalin. Historians describing critical moments in the life of the Soviet State made it seem as though Lenin were constantly asking Stalin for advice – during the Kronstadt rebellion, during the defence of Tsaritsyn, even during the invasion of Poland. The strike at Baku, which Stalin had participated in, and the newspaper Bdzola, which he had edited, seemed more important in the history of the Party than the whole of the revolutionary movement that had gone before.
'Bdzola, Bdzola,' Viktor had repeated angrily. 'What about Zhelayabov, Plekhanov and Kropotkin? What about the Decembrists? All we ever hear about now is Bdzola.'
For a thousand years Russia had been governed by an absolute autocracy, by Tsars and their favourites. But never had anyone held such power as Stalin.
Now, though, Viktor no longer felt angry or horrified. The greater Stalin's power, the more deafening the hymns and trumpets, the thicker the clouds of incense at the feet of the living idol, the happier Viktor felt.
It was getting dark and Viktor didn't feel afraid.
Stalin had spoken to him. Stalin had said: 'I wish you success in your work.'
When it was fully dark, Viktor went out for a walk. He no longer felt helpless and doomed. No, he felt calm. The people who counted already knew everything. He found it strange even to think about Krymov, Abarchuk and Dmitry, about Madyarov and Chetverikov. Their fate was not his fate. He felt sad for them, but he felt no empathy.
Viktor was happy in his triumph: his intelligence, his moral strength had brought him victory. It didn't matter that this happiness was so different from what he had felt when he had been on trial, when he had felt his mother standing there beside him. He no longer cared whether Madyarov had been arrested or whether Krymov had informed on him. For the first time in his life he was free of anxiety about his careless talk and seditious jokes.
Late at night, when Lyudmila and Nadya were already in bed, the telephone rang.
'Hello,' said a quiet voice. Viktor felt an even greater excitement than he had earlier in the day.
'Hello,' he answered.
'I need to hear your voice. Say something to me.'
'Masha, Mashenka,' Viktor began. Then he fell silent.
'Viktor, darling,' she said. 'I can't lie to Pyotr Lavrentyevich. I told him I love you. I promised never to see you.'
The following morning Lyudmila came into the room, ruffled his hair, kissed him on the forehead and said: 'Did you phone someone last night? I thought I heard you in my sleep.'
'No, you must have been dreaming,' said Viktor, looking her straight in the eye.
'Don't forget. You have to go and see the house-manager.'
42
The investigator's jacket looked strange to Krymov, accustomed as he was to a world of soldiers' tunics and military uniforms. His face, however, was quite ordinary; Krymov had seen any number of political officers whose faces had the same sallow colour.
The first questions were easy enough; it began to seem as though the whole thing would be as straightforward as his first name, patronymic and surname.
The prisoner answered the investigator's questions quickly, as though anxious to assist him. After all, the investigator didn't know anything about him. The official-looking table that stood between them in no way divided them. They had both paid their Party membership dues, both watched the film Chapayev and both listened to briefings by the Central Committee; they had both been sent to make speeches in the factories during the week before May Day.
There were a number of preliminary questions and Krymov began to feel more at ease. Soon they would get to the heart of the matter and he would explain how he had led his men out of encirclement.
Finally it was established beyond doubt that the unshaven creature sitting at the desk in a soldier's open-collared tunic and a pair of trousers with the buttons torn off had a first name, patronymic and surname, had been born in the autumn, was of Russian nationality, had fought in two World Wars and one Civil War, had not been a member of any White Army bands, had not been involved in any court cases, had been a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) for twenty-five years, had been chosen as a delegate to a Comintern Congress and to the Pacific Ocean Trade Union Congress, and had not been awarded any orders or medals.
Krymov's main anxiety was centred on his time in encirclement, on the men he had led across the bogs of Byelorussia and the fields of the Ukraine.
Which of them had been arrested? Which of them had broken down under interrogation, had lost all sense of conscience? Krymov was taken aback by a sudden question concerning other, more distant, years.
'Tell me, when did you first become acquainted with Fritz Hacken?'
After a long silence, he replied:
'If I'm not mistaken, it was at the Central Trade Union Headquarters, in Tomsky's office. In spring 1927, if I'm not mistaken.'
The investigator nodded as though he had already known about this far-distant event. He sighed, opened a file inscribed 'To be kept in perpetuity', slowly loosened the white tapes and began leafing through pages covered in writing. Krymov caught a glimpse of different colours of ink, single- and double-spaced typescript and occasional appended notes in red and blue crayon and ordinary pencil.
The investigator turned the pages over slowly; he was like a prize-winning student glancing through a textbook, already certain he knows it from cover to cover. Sometimes he glanced at Krymov. At these moments he was like an artist checking his sketch against the modeclass="underline" the physical characteristics, the moral characteristics, even the window of the soul – the eyes…
But how evil he looked now. His very ordinary face – since 1937 Krymov had seen many such faces in raykoms, obkoms, district police stations, libraries and publishing houses – suddenly lost its ordinariness. He seemed to be made up of distinct cubes that had yet to be gathered into the unity of a human being. His eyes were on one cube, his slow hands on another; his mouth that kept opening to ask questions was on a third. Sometimes the cubes got mixed up and out of proportion. His mouth became vast, his eyes were set in his wrinkled forehead and his forehead was in the place that should have been occupied by his chin.