Then they began whispering again. They must have noticed that the old woman was no longer snoring.
The old woman lived on her own. Her husband had died before the war and her one daughter lived in Sverdlovsk. She didn't have anyone at the front herself and she couldn't understand why she had been so upset by this soldier's arrival.
She didn't much like her tenant; she thought of her as a stupid, empty woman who couldn't cope on her own. She always got up late and she didn't look after her daughter – the girl went around in torn clothes and never ate proper meals. Most of the time her tenant seemed just to sit at the table, looking out of the window and not saying a word. Now and then, when the mood took her, she did get down to work – and then it turned out she could do everything. She sewed, washed the floors and made excellent soup; she knew how to milk a cow – even though she was from the city. Something was obviously wrong in her life. As for the girl, she was a strange little brat. She loved messing about with grasshoppers, cockroaches and beetles. And she didn't play with them like ordinary children – she was always kissing them and telling them stories. Then she would let them go and start crying, calling for them to come back. Last autumn the old woman had brought her a hedgehog from the forest. The girl had followed him wherever he went. He only had to give a little grunt and she was beside herself with joy. And if he went under the chest of drawers, she'd just sit there on the floor and wait for him. She'd say to her mother: 'Sh! Can't you see he's asleep?' Then the hedgehog had gone back to the forest and the little girl hadn't eaten for two whole days.
The old woman had lived in constant fear that her tenant was going to hang herself- and that she'd be left with the little girl. The last thing she wanted at her age were new anxieties.
'I don't owe anyone anything,' she would say. She couldn't rid herself of this anxiety. One morning she was going to wake up and find the woman hanging there from the ceiling. What on earth would she do with the little girl?
She'd been quite certain that the tenant's husband had abandoned her. Probably he'd found another, younger, woman at the front. That was why her tenant was always so sad. She got very few letters from him, and those she did get didn't seem to make her any happier. And she was a real clam – it was impossible to get a word out of her. Even the neighbours had noticed how peculiar she was.
The old woman had had a hard time with her husband. He was a drunkard – and a very quarrelsome one at that. And instead of just beating her like anyone else, he used to go for her with a stick or a poker. He used to beat their daughter too. And he wasn't much joy even when he was sober. He was always fussing, poking his nose into her saucepans, complaining about this and that. Everything she did was wrong – the way she milked the cow, the way she made the bed, the way she cooked. It was impossible for her to put a foot right. He was a miser, too. And he cursed and swore the whole time. In the end she'd become just as bad herself. She even swore at her beloved cow. She hadn't shed one tear over her husband when he died. He hadn't left her alone even when he was an old man, and he was quite impossible when he was drunk. He might at least have tried to behave in front of his own daughter. She felt ashamed to think of it. And how he'd snored! That had been even worse when he was drunk. And as for that cow of hers! The obstinate beast was always running away from the herd. How could an old woman ever keep up with her?
She listened to the whispering behind the partition and remembered her own difficult life with her husband. She felt pity as well as resentment. He had worked hard and earned little. They'd never have got by without the cow. And it was the dust from his mine that had killed him. But she hadn't died – she was still going strong. Once he'd brought her some beads from Yekaterinburg. She'd passed them on to her daughter…
Early next morning, before the little girl had woken up, the tenant and her husband set off for the next village. There they'd be able to buy some white bread with his army ration-card.
They walked along hand in hand, without saying a word. They had to go one and a half kilometres through the forest, climb down the slope and then walk along the shore of the lake.
The snow here hadn't thawed. Its large, rough crystals were filled with the blue of the lake-water. But on the sunny side of the hill the snow was just beginning to melt. The ditch beside the path was full of gurgling water. The glitter of the snow, the water and the ice on the puddles was quite blinding. There was so much light, it was so intense, that they seemed almost to have to force their way through it. It disturbed them and got in their way; when they stepped on the thin film of ice over the puddles, it seemed to be light that was crunching under their feet, breaking up into thin, splinter-like rays. And it was light that was flowing down the ditch beside the path; where the path was blocked by stones, the light swelled up, foaming and gurgling. The spring sun seemed to be closer to the earth than ever. The air was cool and warm at the same time.
The officer felt as though his throat, which had been scorched by frost and vodka, which had been blackened by tobacco, dust, fumes and swear-words, had suddenly been rinsed clean by this blue light. Then they went into the forest, into the shade of the young pine trees. Here the snow hadn't melted at all. There were squirrels hard at work in the branches above; the icy surface of the snow was littered with gnawed fir-cones and flakes of wood.
The forest seemed silent. The many layers of branches kept off the light; instead of tinkling and gurgling, it was like a soft cloak swathed round the earth.
They walked on in silence. They were together – and that was enough to make everything round about seem beautiful. And it was spring.
Still without saying anything, they came to a stop. Two fat bullfinches were sitting on the branch of a fir tree. Their red breasts seemed like flowers that had suddenly blossomed on enchanted snow. The silence was very strange.
This silence contained the memory of last year's leaves and rains, of abandoned nests, of childhood, of the joyless labour of ants, of the treachery of foxes and kites, of the war of all against all, of good and evil born together in one heart and dying with this heart, of storms and thunderbolts that had set young hares and huge tree-trunks trembling. It was the past that slept under the snow, beneath this cool half-light -the joy of lovers' meetings, the hesitant chatter of April birds, people's first meetings with neighbours who had seemed strange at first and then become a part of their lives.
Everyone was asleep – the strong and the weak, the brave and the timid, the happy and the unhappy. This was a last parting, in an empty and abandoned house, with the dead who had now left it for ever.
Somehow you could sense spring more vividly in this cool forest than on the sunlit plain. And there was a deeper sadness in this silence than in the silence of autumn. In it you could hear both a lament for the dead and the furious joy of life itself.
It was still cold and dark, but soon the doors and shutters would be flung open. Soon the house would be filled with the tears and laughter of children, with the hurried steps of a loved woman and the measured gait of the master of the house.
They stood there, holding their bags, in silence.
1960
