Spiridonov pushed away his plate of soup.
'You eat that up!' said Vera.
'Well,' said Spiridonov, 'I've got some news for you all. I've incurred a severe reprimand from the Party, and the Commissariat are transferring me to a small peat-burning generating station in the Sverdlovsk oblast. In a word, I'm a has-been. I get two months' salary in advance and they provide me with somewhere to live. I begin handing over tomorrow. We'll be given enough ration-cards for the journey.'
Alexandra Vladimirovna exchanged glances with Vera.
'Well that's certainly something to celebrate!'
'You can have your own room – the best room,' said Spiridonov.
'There will probably only be one room,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna.
'Well, that will be yours, Mama.'
It was the first time in his life that Spiridonov had called her Mama. There were tears in his eyes – no doubt because he'd been drinking.
Natalya came in and Spiridonov changed the subject. 'So what does the old man have to say about the factories?'
'Pavel Andreyevich was waiting for you,' said Natalya, 'but he's just gone to sleep.' She sat down at the table, resting her cheeks on her fists. 'He said the workers hardly have anything to eat at all – just a few handfuls of seeds.
'Stepan Fyodorovich,' she asked suddenly, 'is it true that you're leaving?'
'Yes,' he replied gaily. 'I've heard the news too.'
'The workers are very sorry.'
'They'll be all right. I was at college with Tishka Batrov. He'll make a splendid boss.'
'But who will you find to darn your socks with such artistry?' asked Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'Vera will never manage.'
'Now that really will be a problem,' said Spiridonov.
'It looks like we'll have to send Natalya off to the Urals too,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna.
'Sure!' said Natalya. 'I'll go any time.'
They all laughed. Then there was a strained, uncomfortable silence.
60
Alexandra Vladimirovna decided to accompany Spiridonov and Vera as far as Kuibyshev; she was intending to stay for a while with Yevgenia Nikolaevna.
The day before their departure the new director lent her a car. She set off to visit the ruins of her old home.
On the way she kept asking the driver: 'Now what's this? And what was here before?'
'Before what?' asked the driver irritably.
Three different strata of life lay exposed in the ruins: life before the war, life during the fighting, and life today. One building had started out as a tailor's and dry cleaner's; then the windows had been bricked up, leaving small loopholes where German machine-guns had been mounted; now women queued at these loopholes to receive their bread ration.
Dug-outs and bunkers had sprung up among the ruined houses. These had provided shelter for soldiers, radio-operators and command-posts. Reports had been drawn up and machine-guns had been re-loaded. And now children were playing outside them. Washing was hanging up to dry. The smoke rising up from the chimneys had nothing to do with the war.
The war had given way to peace – a poor, miserable peace that was hardly any easier than the war.
Prisoners-of-war were clearing away heaps of rubble from the main streets. Queues of people with empty milk-cans were waiting outside cellars that now housed food-stores. Rumanian prisoners were lazily digging dead bodies out of some ruins. There were groups of sailors here and there, but no soldiers at all; the driver explained that the Volga fleet was still sweeping for mines. In some places lay sacks of cement and heaps of new beams and planks. Here and there the roads had been newly asphalted.
In one empty square she saw a woman harnessed to a two-wheeled cart loaded with bundles. Two children were helping, pulling on ropes tied to the shafts.
Everybody wanted to go back into Stalingrad, back to their homes, but Alexandra Vladimirovna was about to leave.
'Are you sorry that Spiridonov's leaving?' she asked the driver.
'What does it matter to me? Spiridonov worked me hard, and so will the new man. They just sign their instructions – and off I go.'
'What's this?' she asked, pointing to a thick, blackened wall with gaping windows.
'Just various offices. What they should do is let people live here.'
'And what was it before?'
'This was the headquarters of Paulus himself. It was here he was taken prisoner.'
'And before that?'
'The department store. Don't you recognize it?'
The wartime city seemed to have overshadowed the old Stalingrad. It was all too easy to imagine the German officers coming up from the cellars, to see the German field-marshal walking past this blackened wall while the sentries all stood to attention. But was it really here that she had bought a length of material for a coat or a watch as a birthday present for Marusya? Had she really come here with Seryozha and got him a pair of skates in the sports department on the first floor?
People who visit Verdun, the battlefield of Borodino or Malakhov Kurgan at Sebastopol must find it equally strange to find children playing, women doing their washing, carts full of hay and old men carrying rakes. Columns of French soldiers and trucks covered in tarpaulins once passed over fields that are now full of vines; now there is only a hut, a few apple trees and some kolkhoz sheep where Murat's cavalry advanced, where Kutuzov sat in his armchair and ordered the Russian infantry to counter-attack with a wave of his tired hand. Nakhimov stood on a mound where now there are only chickens and a few goats searching for blades of grass between the stones; this is where the flash-bombs described by Tolstoy were launched, where English bullets whistled and wounded soldiers screamed.
Alexandra Vladimirovna found something equally incongruous in these queues of women, these small huts, these old men unloading planks, these shirts hanging up to dry, these patched sheets, these stockings twirling about like snakes, these notices pasted over lifeless façades.
She had realized how flat everything now seemed to Spiridonov when he had talked about the arguments in the district committee over the allocation of cement, planks and manpower. She had sensed how bored he was by the endless articles in Stalingradskaya Pravda about the clearing away of rubble, the cleaning up of streets, the construction of new public baths and workers' canteens. He had only come to life when he talked about the bombing, the fires, the visits of General Shumilov, the German tanks advancing from the hill-tops, the counter-fire of the Soviet artillery.
It was on these streets that the war had been decided. The outcome of this battle was to determine the map of the post-war world, to determine the greatness of Stalin or the terrible power of Adolf Hitler. For ninety days one word had filled both the Kremlin and the Berchtesgaden – Stalingrad.
Stalingrad was to determine future social systems and philosophies of history. The shadow of all this had blinded people to the provincial city that had once led a commonplace, ordered life.
Alexandra Vladimirovna asked the driver to stop, then got out of the car and picked her way with some difficulty through the debris that still littered the deserted street. She stared at the ruins, half-recognizing the remains of houses.
When she came to her own home, she found that the wall facing the street was still there. Through the gaping windows, her farsighted eyes could make out the light blue and green walls of her flat. But the rooms had no floors or ceilings and there was nothing left of the staircase. The bricks had been darkened by flames; here and there they had been scarred by splinters.
With a terrible clarity, she was aware of all that life had been for her: her daughters, her unfortunate son, Seryozha, her many irrevocable losses, her present homelessness. There she was, looking at the ruins of her home – an old, sick woman in an old coat and trodden-down shoes.