She took her place in the queue waiting to speak to the head of the passport section. The people in this queue talked in whispers; now and then they looked round as the secretaries with their thick lipstick, boots, and quilted jackets walked up and down the corridor. A man in a light overcoat and a cloth cap, the collar of his soldier's tunic just showing beneath his scarf, strolled down the corridor. His boots squeaked. He got out his key and opened the door – it was Grishin, the head of the passport section. Yevgenia soon noticed that, as they finally approached Grishin's door, people always looked round behind them, as though about to run away at the last moment.
While she waited in the queue, Yevgenia heard her fill of stories about people who had been refused residence permits: daughters who had wanted to live with their mothers, a paralysed woman who had wanted to live with her brother, another woman who had come to Kuibyshev to look after a war-invalid…
Yevgenia entered Grishin's office. Grishin motioned her to a chair, glanced at her papers and said: 'Your application has been refused. What can I do for you?'
'Comrade Grishin,' she said, her voice trembling, 'please understand: all this time I've been without a ration-card.'
He looked at her unblinkingly, an expression of absent-minded indifference on his broad young face.
'Just think, comrade Grishin,' she continued. 'There's a Shaposh-nikov Street in Kuibyshev. It was named after my own father – he was one of the founders of the revolutionary movement in Samara. How can you refuse his daughter a residence permit?'
His calm eyes were watching her; he was listening.
'You need an official request on your behalf,' he said. 'Without that I can do nothing.'
'But I work in a military establishment,' said Yevgenia.
'That's not clear from your documents.'
'Does that help, then?'
'Possibly,' admitted Grishin reluctantly.
When she went in to work next morning, Yevgenia told Rizin that she had been refused a residence permit. Rizin shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
'How idiotic,' he murmured. 'Don't they realize that you are doing war-work? And that you've been an indispensable member of staff since the very beginning?'
'Exactly,' said Yevgenia. 'He said that I need an official document certifying that this office comes under the People's Commissariat for Defence Industry. Please write one out for me. I'll take it to the police station this evening.'
Later that morning Rizin came up to Yevgenia and explained apologetically: 'The police must first send a request. Without that I can't write such a document.'
She went to the police station in the evening and waited her turn in the queue. Hating herself for her ingratiating smile, she asked Grishin to send an official request to Rizin.
'I have no intention of sending any such request,' Grishin replied.
When Yevgenia told Rizin about Grishin's refusal, he sighed and said thoughtfully: 'I know, get him to ask me by telephone.'
The following evening, Yevgenia had arranged to meet Limonov, a man of letters from Moscow who had once known her father. She went to the police station straight after work and asked the people in the queue to let her see the head of the passport department 'just for a minute, to ask one question'. They all just shrugged their shoulders and looked in the other direction. Finally Yevgenia gave up and said angrily: 'Very well then, who's last?'
That day the police station was particularly depressing. A woman with varicose veins shouted, 'I beg you, I beg you!' and then fainted in Grishin's office. A man with only one arm swore obscenely at Grishin, and the next man also made a commotion; the people in the queue could hear him shouting: 'I won't leave this spot!' In fact he left very quickly. While all this noise was going on, Grishin himself couldn't be heard at all. He didn't once raise his voice; it was as though his visitors were shouting and making threats in an empty office.
She sat in the queue for an hour and a half. Grishin nodded to her to sit down. Once again hating herself for her ingratiating smile and hurried 'Thank you very much', Yevgenia asked him to telephone her boss. She said that Rizin had been uncertain whether he was permitted to give her the necessary document without first receiving a written request, but had finally agreed to write one out with the heading: 'In answer to your telephone inquiry of such and such a day of such and such a month.'
Yevgenia handed Grishin the note she had prepared in advance: in large, clear handwriting she had written Rizin's name, patronymic, telephone number, rank and office; in small handwriting, in brackets, she had written, 'Lunch-break: from 1 until 2.' Grishin, however, didn't so much as glance at this note.
'I have no intention of making any requests.'
'But why not?'
'It's not my responsibility.'
'Lieutenant-Colonel Rizin says that unless he receives a request, even an oral one, he is not permitted to make out the necessary document.'
'In that case he ought not to write one.'
'But what can I do then?'
'How do I know?'
It was his absolute calm that was so bewildering. If he had got angry, if he had shown irritation at her muddle-headedness, Yevgenia felt it would have been easier. But he just sat there in half-profile, unhurried, not batting an eyelid.
When men talked to Yevgenia, they usually noticed how beautiful she was – and she knew it. But Grishin looked at her just as he might look at a cripple or an old woman with watering eyes; once inside his office, she was no longer a human being, no longer an attractive young woman, but simply another petitioner.
Yevgenia was conscious of her own weakness and the sheer massiveness of Grishin's strength. She hurried down the street, nearly an hour late for her meeting with Limonov but not in the least looking forward to it. She could still smell the corridor of the police station; she could still see the faces of the people in the queue, the portrait of Stalin lit by a dim electric lamp, and Grishin beside it.
Limonov, a tall stout man with a large head and a ring of youthful curls surrounding his bald patch, greeted her joyfully.
'I was afraid you weren't going to come,' he said as he helped her off with her coat.
He began asking her about Alexandra Vladimirovna.
'To me, ever since I was a student, your mother has been the image of the courageous soul of Russian womanhood. I write about her in all my books – that is, not literally, but you know what I mean…'
Lowering his voice and looking round at the door, he asked: 'Have you heard anything about your brother Dmitry?'
Then their talk turned to painting, and they attacked Repin. Limonov began making an omelette on the electric cooker, saying he was the finest omelette-maker in the country and that the chef at the National restaurant in Moscow had been his pupil.
'How is it?' he asked anxiously as he served Yevgenia, and then added with a sigh: 'I can't deny it. I do like eating.'
How oppressed she was by her memories of the police station! In this room full of books and periodicals – where they were soon joined by two witty middle-aged men who were also both lovers of art – she could not get Grishin out of her mind.
But the word, the free, intelligent word has great power. There were moments when Yevgenia quite forgot about Grishin and the depressed-looking faces in the queue. Then there seemed to be nothing else in life but conversations about Rublev and Picasso, about the poetry of Akhmatova and Pasternak, about the plays of Bulgakov…
But when she walked out onto the street she at once forgot these intelligent conversations. Grishin… Grishin… No one in the flat had asked whether or not she had a residence permit; no one had demanded to see her passport and its registration stamp. But she had felt for several days that she was being watched by Glafira Dmitrievna, the senior tenant, a brisk, over-friendly woman with a long nose and an unbelievably insincere voice. Every time she met her and looked at her dark sullen eyes, Yevgenia felt frightened. She thought that in her absence Glafira Dmitrievna was stealing into her room with a duplicate key, searching through her papers, reading her letters and taking copies of her applications for registration.