'Who've you got it in for now, Stepan Fyodorovich?' asked the driver. 'Or did you forget something at the obkom?'
'Yes, yes,' said Stepan Fyodorovich. 'But it hasn't forgotten me.'
Spiridonov's flat was cold and damp. The empty windows had been boarded over and there were large areas where the plaster had fallen from the walls. The rooms were heated only by paraffin stoves made from tin. Water had to be carried in buckets, right up to the third floor. One of the rooms had been closed off and the kitchen was used as a storeroom for wood and potatoes.
Stepan Fyodorovich, Vera and her baby, and Alexandra Vladimirovna all lived in the large room that had previously been the dining-room. The small room next to the kitchen, formerly Vera's, was now occupied by Andreyev.
Spiridonov could easily have installed some brick stoves and had the ceilings and walls replastered; he had the necessary materials and there were workmen at hand. He had always been a practical and energetic man; now, though, he seemed uninterested in such matters. As for Vera and Alexandra Vladimirovna, they seemed almost to prefer living amid this destruction. Their lives had fallen apart; if they restored the flat, it would only remind them of all they had lost.
Andreyev's daughter-in-law, Natalya, arrived from Leninsk only a few days after Alexandra Vladimirovna had arrived from Kazan. Having quarrelled with the sister of her late mother-in-law in Leninsk, she had left her son with her and come to stay for a while with her father-in-law.
Andreyev lost his temper with her and said:
'You didn't get on with my wife. And now you're not getting on with her sister. How could you leave little Volodya behind?'
Her life in Leninsk must have been very difficult indeed. As she went into Andreyev's room for the first time, she looked at the walls and ceiling and said: 'Isn't this nice?'
It was hard to see what was nice about the twisted stovepipe, the mound of plaster in the corner and the debris hanging from the ceiling.
The only light came through a small piece of glass set into the boards nailed over the window. This little porthole looked out onto a view that was far from cheerfuclass="underline" a buckled iron roof and some ruined inner walls that were painted blue and pink in alternate storeys.
Soon after her arrival, Alexandra Vladimirovna fell ill. Because of this she had to postpone her visit to the city centre; she had intended to go and look at the ruins of her own house. To begin with, in spite of her illness, she tried to help Vera. She lit the stove, washed nappies, hung them up to dry, and carried some of the rubble out onto the landing; she even tried to bring up the water. But her illness kept getting worse; she shivered even when it was very hot and would suddenly begin to sweat in the freezing kitchen.
She was determined not to go to bed and she didn't let on how bad she was feeling. And then one morning, going to get some wood from the kitchen, she fainted; she fell to the floor and cut her head. Vera and Spiridonov had to put her to bed.
When she had recovered a little, she called Vera into the room.
'You know, I found it harder to live with Lyudmila in Kazan than to live with you here. I came here for my own sake, not just to help you. But I'm afraid I'm going to cause you a lot of trouble before I'm back on my feet.'
'Grandma, I'm very happy to have you here,' said Vera.
But Vera's life really was very difficult. Wood, milk, water -everything was difficult to obtain. It was mild outside, but the rooms themselves were cold and damp; they needed a lot of heating.
Little Mitya had a constant stomach-ache and cried at night; he wasn't getting enough milk from his mother. Vera was busy all day – going out to get milk and bread, doing the laundry, washing the dishes, dragging up buckets of water. Her hands were red and her face was raw from the wind and covered in spots. She felt crushed by the constant work, by her constant feeling of exhaustion. She never did her hair or looked in the mirror and she seldom washed. She was always longing to sleep. By evening she was aching all over; her arms, legs and shoulders were all crying out for rest. She would lie down – and then Mitya would begin to cry. She would get up, change his nappies, feed him and walk about the room with him for a while. An hour later he would start crying again and she would have to get up. At dawn he would wake up for good; her head aching, still dazed with sleep, she would get up in the half-darkness, fetch some wood from the kitchen, light the fire, put some water on to boil for everyone's tea, and start doing the laundry. Surprisingly, she was no longer irritable; she had become meek and patient.
Everything was much easier for her after Natalya arrived.
Andreyev had gone away for a few days soon after her arrival. He wanted to see his factory and his old home in the northern part of Stalingrad. Alternatively, he may have been angry with Natalya for leaving her son in Leninsk – or perhaps he wanted to leave her his ration-card so she wouldn't eat the Spiridonovs' bread.
Natalya had got down to work almost the minute she arrived. She put her heart into the work and everything came easily to her. Sacks of coal, heavy buckets of water, tubs of washing – all this was nothing to her.
Now Vera was able to take Mitya outside for half an hour. She would sit down on a stone and gaze at the mist on the steppe, at the water sparkling in the spring sunshine.
Everything was quiet and the war was now hundreds of kilometres away. Somehow things had seemed easier when the air had been filled with the whine of German planes and the crash of shell-bursts, when life had been full of flames, full of fear and hope. Vera looked at the oozing pimples on her son's face and felt overwhelmed with pity. She felt a similar pity for Viktorov. Poor, poor Vanya! What a miserable, sickly, whining little son he had!
Then she climbed up the three flights of stairs, still covered in litter and rubbish, and returned to work. Her melancholy dissolved in the soapy water, in the smoke from the stove, in the damp that streamed down the walls.
Sometimes her grandmother would call her over and stroke her hair. Her usually calm, clear eyes would take on an expression of unbearable tenderness and sorrow.
Vera never talked to anyone – her father, her grandmother, or even five-month-old Mitya – about Viktorov.
After Natalya's arrival the flat was transformed. She scraped the mould off the walls, whitewashed the dark corners, and scrubbed off the dirt that seemed by then to have become a part of the floorboards. She even got down to the immense task of cleaning the rubbish, flight by flight, from the staircase – a job that Vera had been putting off till it got warm.
She spent half a day repairing the black, snake-like stovepipe. It was sagging horribly and a thick tarry liquid was oozing from the joints and collecting in puddles on the floor. She gave it a coat of whitewash, straightened it out, fastened it with wire and hung empty jam-jars under the dripping joints.
She and Alexandra Vladimirovna became firm friends from the first day – even though one might have expected the old woman to take a dislike to this brash young girl and her constant stream of risqué anecdotes. Natalya also made friends with dozens of other people – the electrician, the mechanic from the turbine room, the lorry-drivers.
Once, when she came back from queuing for food, Alexandra Vladimirovna said to her: 'Someone was asking for you just now – a soldier.'