He even took an interest in the quarrel between Lyudmila and their landlady. The landlady was demanding additional rent for the use of the woodshed.
'Well,' he would ask, 'how are the negotiations with Nina Matveevna?'
After hearing Lyudmila through, he would say: 'What a mean old bitch!'
Now he no longer thought about the link between science and people's lives, about whether science was a joy or a sorrow. Only a master, a conqueror, can think about such questions – and he was just a bungling apprentice.
He felt as though he'd never again be able to work as he had before. His talent for research had been crushed by his sorrows. He went through the names of great physicists, mathematicians and writers whose most important work had been accomplished in their youth and who had failed to achieve anything of note after the age of thirty-five or forty. They at least had something to be proud of – whereas he would live out his life without having accomplished anything at all worthy of memory. Evariste Galois, who had laid down the lines along which mathematics would develop for a whole century, had been killed at the age of twenty-one; Einstein had published 'On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies' at the age of twenty-six; Hertz had died before he was forty. What an abyss lay between these men and Shtrum!
Viktor told Sokolov that he'd like to suspend their laboratory work for a while. Sokolov, however, had high expectations of the new apparatus and thought they should continue. Viktor didn't even remember to tell him about the letter from the factory.
Lyudmila never once asked Viktor about his work, though he could see that she knew of his failure. She was indifferent to the most important thing in his life – but she had time for housework, for conversations with Marya Ivanovna, for her quarrels with the landlady, for sewing a dress for Nadya, for meetings with Postoev's wife… Viktor felt bitter and angry with Lyudmila, quite failing to understand her true state of mind.
Viktor thought that his wife had returned to her habitual way of life; in fact, she was able to carry out these tasks precisely because they were habitual and so placed no demands on her. She was able to cook noodle soup and talk about Nadya's boots simply because she had done this for years and years. Viktor failed to see that she was only going through the motions, not truly entering into her previous life. She was like someone deep in thought, who, quite without noticing them, skirts pot-holes and steps over puddles as he walks down a familiar road.
In order to talk to her husband about his work, she would have needed new strength, new spiritual resources. She didn't have this strength. Viktor, however, thought that she remained interested in everything except his work.
He was also hurt by the way Lyudmila kept on bringing up occasions when he had been unkind to Tolya. It was as though she were drawing up the accounts between Tolya and his stepfather – and the balance was not in Viktor's favour.
Once Lyudmila said to her mother:
'Poor boy! What a torment it was to him when he had spots all over his face. He even asked me to get some kind of cream from the beauty parlour. And Viktor just teased him.'
This was true. Viktor had liked teasing Tolya; when Tolya came home and said hello to his stepfather, Viktor used to look him up and down, shake his head and say thoughtfully: 'Well, brother, you have come out in stars!'
Recently Viktor had preferred not to stay at home in the evenings. Sometimes he went round to Postoev's to play chess or listen to music -Postoev's wife was quite a good pianist. Sometimes he called on Karimov, a new friend he had met here in Kazan. More often, though, he went to Sokolov's.
He liked the Sokolovs' little room; he liked the hospitable Marya Ivanovna and her welcoming smile; above all, he enjoyed the conversations they had at table.
But, late at night, as he approached his front door, he was gripped by anguish – an anguish that had been lulled only for a moment.
63
Instead of going home from the Institute, Viktor went straight to his new friend, Karimov; he was to pick him up and go on to the Sokolovs'.
Karimov was an ugly man with a pock-marked face. His swarthy skin made his hair look still greyer, while his grey hair made his skin look still swarthier. He spoke Russian very correctly, and only the most attentive listener could detect his slight oddities of pronunciation and syntax.
Viktor had never heard his name before, but it appeared to be well-known even outside Kazan. Karimov had translated The Divine Comedy and Gulliver's Travels into Tartar; at present he was working on The Iliad.
At one time, before they had been introduced, they often used to run into one another at the University, in the small smoking-room on the way out of the reading-room. The librarian, a loquacious, slovenly old woman who used a lot of lipstick, had already told Viktor all about Karimov. He knew that Karimov had studied at the Sorbonne, that he had a dacha in the Crimea, and that he had formerly spent most of the year at the seaside. His wife and daughter had been caught in the Crimea by the war; Karimov had had no news of them since. The old woman had hinted that Karimov had been through eight years of great suffering, but Viktor had only looked at her blankly. It was clear that the old woman had also told Karimov all about Viktor. The two of them felt uneasy at knowing so much about each other without having been introduced; when they did meet, they tended to frown rather than smile. Finally, they bumped into each other one day in the library cloakroom, simultaneously burst out laughing and began to talk.
Viktor didn't know whether Karimov enjoyed his conversation; he only knew that he himself enjoyed talking when Karimov was listening. He knew from experience that a man who seems intelligent and witty at first often proves terribly boring to talk to.
There were people in whose presence Viktor found it hard to say even one word; his voice would go wooden and the conversation would become grey and colourless – as though they were both deaf-mutes. There were people in whose presence even one sincere word sounded false. And there were old friends in whose presence he felt peculiarly alone.
What was the reason for all this? Why is it that you occasionally meet someone – a travelling companion, a man sleeping next to you in a camp, someone who joins in a chance argument – in whose presence your inner world suddenly ceases to be mute and isolated?
Viktor and Karimov were walking side by side, talking away; Viktor realized that there were times now when he didn't think of his work for hours on end, especially during these evening talks at the Sokolovs'. He had never experienced this before; he normally thought about his work the whole time – in the tram, listening to music, eating, while he was drying his face after getting washed in the morning.
Yes, he must have got himself into a blind alley. Now he was unconsciously pushing away any thought of his work…
'How's your work gone today, Akhmet Usmanovich?' he asked.
'My mind's gone quite blank. All I can think of is my wife and daughter. Sometimes I think that everything's all right and that we will see each other again. And then I have a feeling that they're already dead.'
'I can understand,' said Viktor.
'I know,' said Karimov.
How strange it all was: here was someone Viktor had known for only a few weeks – and he could talk to him about what he couldn't even talk about with his wife or his daughter.
Almost every evening, people who would never have met in Moscow gathered together in the Sokolovs' small room.
Sokolov, though outstandingly talented, always spoke in a rather pedantic way. No one would have guessed from his smooth, polished speech that his father was a Volga fisherman. He was a kind, noble man, and yet there was something in his face that seemed sly and cruel.