'What a lot of nonentities there are everywhere! How afraid people are to defend their honour! How easily they give in! What miserable compromises they make!'
On one occasion he even attacked Chepyzhin: 'His passion for travelling and mountaineering conceals an unconscious fear of the complexity of life. And his resignation from the Institute reveals a conscious fear of confronting the most important question of our time.'
Yes, something was changing in him. He could feel it, but he didn't know what it was.
53
On his return to work, Viktor found Sokolov absent from the laboratory. He had caught pneumonia two days before.
Viktor learnt that before his illness he and Shishakov had agreed that he should be transferred to a different post. In the end he had been appointed director of another laboratory that was currently being reorganized. Evidently he was doing well.
Even the omniscient Markov was ignorant of the true reasons behind Sokolov's request to be transferred. Viktor felt no regret: he found it painful to think of meeting Sokolov, let alone working with him.
Who knows what Sokolov would have read in Viktor's eyes? Certainly Viktor had no right to think as he did about the wife of his friend. He had no right to be longing for her. He had no right to meet her in secret. If he'd heard a similar story about someone else, he'd have felt quite indignant. Deceiving one's wife! Deceiving a friend! But he did long for her. He did dream of meeting her.
Lyudmila and Marya Ivanovna were now seeing each other again. They had had a long telephone conversation and then met. They had both cried, each accusing herself of meanness, suspiciousness and lack of faith in their friendship.
How complicated life was! Marya Ivanovna, pure honest Marya Ivanovna, had been insincere and deceitful with Lyudmila. But only because of her love for him!
Viktor very seldom saw Marya Ivanovna now. Most of what he knew about her came from Lyudmila.
He learnt that Sokolov had been proposed for a Stalin Prize on the strength of some papers he had published before the war; that he had received an enthusiastic letter from some young physicists in England; that he might be chosen as a corresponding member of the Academy at the next elections. All this was what Marya Ivanovna told Lyudmila.
During his own brief meetings with her he never so much as mentioned Pyotr Lavrentyevich.
His work in the laboratory, his journeys and meetings were never enough to take his mind off her; he wanted to see her the whole time.
Lyudmila said several times: 'You know, I just don't understand what Sokolov's got against you now. Even Masha can't explain it.'
The explanation, of course, was simple enough, but it was impossible for Marya Ivanovna to share it with Lyudmila. It was quite enough that she had told her husband of her feelings for Viktor.
This confession had destroyed the friendship between Viktor and Sokolov for ever. She had promised her husband not to go on seeing Viktor. If she were to say one word to Lyudmila, she would be cut off from Viktor completely; he wouldn't know where she was or what she was doing. They met so seldom as it was. And their meetings were so brief. They spoke very little even when they did meet; they just walked down the street arm in arm or sat in silence on a park bench.
At the time of Viktor's troubles she had understood his feelings with a quite extraordinary sensitivity. She had been able to guess what he would think and what he would do; she had seemed able to anticipate all that was about to happen to him. The gloomier he had felt, the more passionately he had longed to see her. This perfect understanding of hers had seemed to him to be his only happiness. He had felt that with her beside him he could easily bear all his sufferings. With her he could be happy.
They had talked together one night in Kazan, they had gone for a walk in a Moscow park, they had sat together for a few moments in a square off Kaluga Street – and that was all. And then there was the present: a few telephone calls and a few brief meetings he hadn't told Lyudmila about.
Viktor knew, however, that his sin and her sin couldn't be measured by the number of minutes they had sat together on a bench. His was no mean sin: he loved her. How had she come to occupy such an important place in his life?
Every word he said to his wife was partly a lie. He couldn't help it; there was something deceitful in his every movement, in every look he gave her.
With affected indifference, he would ask her: 'Well, did your friend ring today? How is she? And is Pyotr Lavrentyevich well?'
He felt glad at Sokolov's successes, but not because he felt any goodwill towards him. No, it was because he felt it gave Marya Ivanovna the right not to feel guilty.
He found it unbearable to hear about Sokolov and Marya Ivanovna only through Lyudmila. It was humiliating for Lyudmila, for Marya Ivanovna, and for himself. He was conscious of something false even when he talked to Lyudmila about Nadya, Tolya and Alexandra Vladimirovna. There were lies everywhere. Why was this? How had it happened? His love for Marya Ivanovna was the deepest truth of his soul. How could it have given birth to so many lies?
It was only by renouncing his love that he could deliver himself, Lyudmila and Marya Ivanovna from these lies. But when he realized this was what he had to do, he was dissuaded by a treacherous fear that clouded his judgement: 'This lie isn't so very terrible. What harm does it do anyone? Suffering is more terrible than lying.'
And when he felt he was strong and ruthless enough to break with Lyudmila and ruin Sokolov's life, this same treacherous fear egged him on with a contradictory argument: 'Nothing can be worse than deceit. It would be better to break with Lyudmila altogether than to go on lying to her all the time. And making Marya Ivanovna lie to her. Deceit is more terrible than suffering.'
Viktor wasn't aware that his intelligence was now merely the obedient servant of his emotions and that there was only one way of escaping from this circle of confusion – by using the knife, by sacrificing himself rather than others.
The more he thought about it all, the less he understood. How could he unravel this tangle? How could his love for Marya Ivanovna be the truth of his life and at the same time be its greatest lie? Only last summer he had had an affair with the beautiful Nina. And they had done more than just walk round the square like schoolchildren who had fallen in love. But it was only now that he felt a sense of guilt and betrayal, a sense of having done wrong to his family.
All this consumed an incalculable amount of emotional and intellectual energy, probably as much as Planck had expended in elaborating his quantum theory.
He had once thought that his love had been born only of sorrow and tragedy… But now he was on the crest of the wave – and he needed Marya Ivanovna as much as ever.
She was unlike everyone else; she wasn't attracted in the least by power, riches and fame. She had wanted to share his grief, anxiety and deprivation… Would she turn away from him now?
He knew that Marya Ivanovna worshipped Pyotr Lavrentyevich. Sometimes this drove him almost insane.
Yevgenia was probably right. This second love, born after years of married life, must be the result of a vitamin deficiency of the soul. He was like a cow licking salt after searching for it for years in grass, hay and the leaves of trees. This hunger of the soul grew very slowly, but in the end it was irresistible. Yes, that's what it was. A hunger of the soul… Marya Ivanovna was indeed startlingly different from Lyudmila.
Was all this really so? Viktor didn't realize that these thoughts had nothing to do with his reason; that their truth or falsehood had nothing to do with how he acted. If he didn't see Marya Ivanovna, he was unhappy; if he knew he was going to see her, he was happy. And when he imagined a future in which they were inseparably together, he felt still more happy.