'I'm in command here. And what I say goes. As for you, comrade Getmanov, for all I care you can write reports, stories and whole novels about me! And you can send them to whoever you please – even comrade Stalin himself.'
He went through into the adjoining room…
Novikov put down the letter he had just read and gave a whistle. He used to whistle like that when he was a little boy. He would stand under his friend's window and whistle to him to come out and play. It was probably a good thirty years since he had whistled like that…
Then he looked out through the window. No, it was still light… In sudden, hysterical joy he cried out: 'Thank you, thank you, thank you for everything!'
For a moment he thought he was about to fall down dead. He walked up and down the room. He looked again at the letter on his desk. It was like a white, sloughed-off skin that a viper had just crawled out of. He put his hands to his chest and his sides. The viper wasn't there. It must have crawled inside him already. It must be burning his heart with poison.
He stood for a moment by the window. The drivers were laughing as they watched Marusya the telephonist walk past to the lavatory. The driver of the staff tank was carrying a bucket from the well. Sparrows were busying themselves in the straw beside the entrance to the cow-shed. Zhenya had once said that sparrows were her favourite bird… And now he was on fire – just like a house. The beams had given way. The ceiling was falling in. Cups and plates were crashing to the floor. Cupboards were toppling over. Books and pillows were tumbling about, flying through the smoke and the sparks like birds… 'I shall be grateful all my life for everything pure and noble that you have given me. But what can I do? The past is stronger than I am. I can't kill it, I can't forget it… Don't blame me – not because I'm not guilty, but because neither of us know quite what I am guilty of… Forgive me, forgive me, I'm crying for us both.'
So she was crying, was she! Novikov felt a sudden fury. The filthy bitch! The snake! He wanted to punch her on the jaw, in the eyes. He wanted to crack that whore's nose of hers with the butt of his revolver…
Suddenly, unbearably suddenly, he felt helpless. There was nothing in the whole world that could help him, only Zhenya, and she had destroyed him…
He looked in the direction she should have been coming from and said: 'What have you done to me, Zhenechka? Can you hear me? Look at me, Zhenechka! Look what you've done to me!'
He stretched out his hands to her. Then he thought: 'All this is a waste of time.' Yes, he had waited all those years, but now she had made up her mind. She wasn't a little girl. She had dragged it out for years, but now she had made up her mind. She had made up her mind -he must try to understand that.
A few minutes later he was again trying to find refuge in hatred: 'No, no, of course you didn't want me when I was an acting major in Nikolsk-Ussuriysk. But it was another story when I was promoted. You wanted to be the wife of a general. Well, women are all the same…' He soon realized what nonsense this was. She had left him for a man who was on his way to a camp, to Kolyma. What would she get out of that…? '"Russian women" – a poem by Nekrasov. [53] She doesn't love me, she loves him. No, she doesn't love him, she pities him. It's just that she pities him. But doesn't she have any pity for me? No one in the Lubyanka, no one in the camps, no one in hospital with a missing arm or leg can be more unhappy than I am. Very well, I'll go to a camp myself. Which of us will you choose then? Him! You two are the same breed, but I'm a stranger. That's what you called me – a stranger. Yes, I'll always be a peasant, a miner. Even if I become a marshal, I'll still never be an intellectual. I'll still never be able to make head or tail of all that painting of yours…'
In a loud hate-filled voice he asked: 'But why? Why?'
He took his pistol out of his back pocket and weighed it in the palm of his hand. 'I'm going to shoot myself. And not because I can't live without you – but to torment you with guilt. You whore!'
He put his pistol back in its place.
'She'll have forgotten me in a week.'
No, he was the one who needed to forget. He mustn't look back. He mustn't give her another thought.
He went up to the table and began to read the letter again. 'My dearest, my poor darling…' It wasn't the cruel words that hurt, it was the ones that were full of pity, full of affectionate, humiliating pity. He felt as though he could hardly breathe.
He could see her breasts, her shoulders, her knees. There she was – on her way to that wretched Krymov. 'But what can I do?' She was travelling in a crowded, airless wagon. Someone asked her a question and she answered: 'To join my husband.' She had the sad, docile eyes of a dog.
And he had looked out of this very window to see if she was on her way to him. His shoulders shook. He sniffed and gave a kind of bark; he was choking back his terrible sobs. He remembered how he'd ordered some chocolate and nougat from the Front Commissariat. 'Don't you dare touch them,' he'd said to Vershkov, 'or it'll be the end of you!'
Once again he muttered: 'See what you've done to me, my Zhenechka, my little one! You might have some pity!'
He suddenly dragged his suitcase out from under the bed. He took out Zhenya's letters and photos – the ones he'd been carrying around for years, the one she'd sent in her last letter, and the very first, cellophane-wrapped passport photo – and began tearing them to shreds with his large, powerful fingers. On tiny shreds of paper he recognized words he had read hundreds of times, words that had made his head spin. He watched her face, her neck, her eyes, her lips, all slowly disappear. He was working as fast as he could. When it was done he felt better; he felt as though he had eradicated her, as though he had stamped out the last trace of her, as though he had freed himself from a witch.
He had lived without her before. He could get over it! In a year or so he'd be able to walk straight past her without his heart so much as missing a beat. He needed her as much as a drunk needs a cork! But he understood all too quickly how vain these thoughts were. How can you tear something out of your heart? Your heart isn't made out of paper and your life isn't written down in ink. You can't erase the imprint of years.
He had allowed her to share in his thoughts, in his work, in his troubles. He had allowed her to witness his strengths and his weaknesses…
And the torn-up letters hadn't disappeared. The words he had read hundreds of times were still in his memory. Her eyes were still gazing at him from the photographs.
He opened the cupboard door and poured out a large glass of vodka. He drank it down and lit a cigarette. He lit it a second time -though it hadn't gone out. His head was full of clamouring grief; his insides were on fire.
'Zhenechka, my dearest, my little one, what have you done, what have you done, how could you?'
He stuffed the torn shreds of paper back into the suitcase, put the bottle back in the cupboard and thought: 'Well, that's a little better.'
Soon his tanks would reach the Donbass. He would visit the village where he had been born and the spot where his old people had been buried. His father would be proud of his Petya now; his mother would be full of pity for her unfortunate little son. When the war came to an end, he would go and live with his brother's family. His little niece would say: 'Uncle Petya, why are you so quiet?'
He suddenly remembered a moment from his childhood. The dog had gone off after a bitch on heat and had come back all chewed up. He had a torn ear, his mouth was crooked, one eye was half-closed because of a swelling, and tufts of his long hair had been torn out. He had stood there by the porch, his tail between his legs. Petya's father had looked at him and said good-naturedly: 'So you were just the best man, were you?'