Katsenelenbogen had himself supervised the work of a camp design office; he was convinced that, in the camps, scientists and engineers were capable of solving the most complicated problems of contemporary science or technology. All that was necessary was to provide intelligent supervision and decent living conditions. The old saying about there being no science without freedom was simply nonsense.
'When the levels become equal,' he said, 'when we can place an equals sign between life on either side of the wire, repression will become unnecessary and we shall cease to issue arrest warrants. Prisons and solitary-confinement blocks will be razed to the ground. Any anomalies will be handled by the Culture and Education Section. Mahomed and the mountain will go to meet each other.
'The abolition of the camps will be a triumph of humanitarianism, but this will in no way mean the resurgence of the chaotic, primeval, cave-man principle of personal freedom. On the contrary, that will have become completely redundant.'
After a long silence he added that after hundreds of years this system might do away with itself too, and, in doing so, give birth to democracy and personal freedom.
'There is nothing eternal under the moon,' he said, 'but I'd rather not be alive then myself.'
'You're mad,' said Krymov. 'That's not the heart of the Revolution. That's not its soul. People say that if you work for a long time in a psychiatric clinic you finally go mad yourself. Forgive me for saying this, but it's not for nothing you've been put inside. You, comrade Katsenelenbogen, ascribe to the security organs all the attributes of the deity. It really was time you were replaced.'
Katsenelenbogen nodded good-humouredly.
'Yes, I believe in God. I'm an ignorant, credulous old man. Every age creates the deity in its own image. The security organs are wise and powerful; they are what holds sway over twentieth-century man. Once this power was held by earthquakes, forest-fires, thunder and lightning – and they too were worshipped. And if I've been put inside – well, so have you. It was time to replace you too. Only the future will show which of us is right.'
'Old Dreling's going back home today, back to his camp,' said Krymov, knowing that his words would not be wasted.
'Sometimes that vile old man disturbs my faith,' Katsenelenbogen replied.
57
Krymov heard a quiet voice saying: 'It's just been announced that we've routed the German forces at Stalingrad. I think Paulus has been captured, but I couldn't quite make it out.'
He let out a scream. He was struggling, kicking at the floor. He wanted to talk to that crowd of people in padded jackets and felt boots… The sound of their voices was drowning the quiet conversation that was going on beside him. He was in Stalingrad… Grekov was making his way towards him over piles of rubble…
The doctor was holding him by the hand and saying: 'You must break off for a while… repeated injections of camphor…'
Krymov swallowed down a ball of salty saliva. 'No, I'm quite all right, thanks to the medicine. You can carry on. But you won't get me to sign anything.'
'You will sign, in the end,' said the investigator, with the good-natured assurance of a factory foreman. 'We've had people more difficult than you.'
This second interrogation session lasted three days. At the end of it Krymov returned to his cell.
The soldier on duty placed a parcel wrapped in white cloth beside him.
'You must sign for this parcel, citizen prisoner.'
Krymov read through the list of contents: onion, garlic, sugar, white rusks. The handwriting was familiar. At the end of the list was written: 'Your Zhenya'.
'Oh God, oh God.' He began to cry.
58
On 1 April, 1943 Stepan Fyodorovich Spiridonov received an extract from the resolution passed by the college of the People's Commissariat of Power Stations. He was to leave Stalingrad and become the director of a small, peat-burning power station in the Urals. It wasn't such a very terrible punishment; he could well have been put on trial. Spiridonov didn't say anything about this at home, preferring to wait till the bureau of the obkom had come to their decision. On 4 April, 1943 he received a severe reprimand from the bureau of the obkom for abandoning his post without leave at a critical time. This too was a lenient decision; he could well have been expelled from the Party. But to Stepan Fyodorovich it seemed cruelly unjust; his colleagues in the obkom knew very well that he had remained at his post until the last day of the defence of Stalingrad; that the Soviet offensive had already begun when he crossed to the left bank to see his daughter who had just given birth in a barge. He had tried to protest during the meeting, but Pryakhin had replied sternly:
'You have the right to appeal against this decision to the Central Control Commission. For my part, I think that comrade Shkiryatov will consider this decision over-lenient.'
'I am certain that the Commission will annul this decision,' Stepan Fyodorovich had insisted, but he had heard stories about Shkiryatov. In the event, he preferred not to appeal.
In any case, he was afraid that there were other reasons for Pryakhin's severity. Pryakhin knew of the family ties between Spiridonov, Yevgenia Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova and Krymov; he was hardly likely to be well-disposed towards a man who knew that he himself was an old friend of Krymov's.
Even if he had wanted to, it would have been quite impossible for Pryakhin to support Spiridonov. If he had done, his enemies – and there are always more than enough of them around a man in a position of power – would have immediately informed the appropriate authorities that, out of sympathy for Krymov, an enemy of the people, Pryakhin was supporting the cowardly deserter, Spiridonov.
It seemed, however, that Pryakhin hadn't even wanted to support Spiridonov. He evidently knew that Krymov's mother-in-law was now living in Spiridonov's flat. He probably also knew that Yevgenia Nikolaevna was in correspondence with her, that she had recently sent her a copy of her letter to Stalin.
After the meeting was over, Spiridonov had gone down to the buffet to buy some sausage and some soft cheese. There he had bumped into Voronin, the head of the oblast MGB. Voronin had looked him up and down and said mockingly: 'Doing your shopping just after you've incurred a severe reprimand! You are a good little housekeeper, Spiridonov.'
Spiridonov had given him a pathetic, guilty smile. 'It's for the family. I'm a grandfather now.'
Voronin had smiled back and said: 'And there was I, thinking you were preparing a food-parcel.'
'Well, thank God I'm being sent to the Urals,' Spiridonov had thought. 'I wouldn't last long if I stayed here. But what's going to become of Vera and her little boy?'
He had been driven back to the power station in the cab of a truck. He had sat there in silence, looking through the misted-over glass at the ruined city he would soon be leaving. He remembered how his wife had once gone to work along this pavement now covered in bricks. He thought how the new cables from Sverdlovsk would soon arrive at the station and he himself would no longer be there. He thought about the pimples his grandson was getting on his hands and chest from malnutrition. He thought that a reprimand really wasn't as bad as all that. And then he thought that he wouldn't be awarded the medal 'For the defenders of Stalingrad '. For some reason this last thought upset him more than everything else; more than the imminent parting from the city he was tied to by his work, by his memories of Marusya, by his whole life. He started to swear out loud.