She smiled and nodded her head. Her teeth were uneven, and her lips thin and pale. When she smiled, her pallid, even slightly grey, face suddenly became quite charming.
'She's a splendid woman,' thought Viktor. 'If only her nose wasn't always so red.'
Karimov turned to Madyarov.
'Leonid Sergeich, how can you reconcile your earlier hymn to Dostoyevsky with this passionate speech in praise of Chekhov and his humanity? Dostoyevsky certainly doesn't consider everyone equal. Hitler called Tolstoy a degenerate, but they say he has a portrait of Dostoyevsky hanging in his office. I belong to a national minority myself. I'm a Tartar who was born in Russia and I cannot pardon a Russian writer his hatred of Poles and Yids. No – even if he is a genius. We had more than enough blood spilt in Tsarist Russia, more than enough of being spat at in the eye. More than enough pogroms. A great writer in this country has no right to persecute foreigners, to despise Poles and Tartars, Jews, Armenians and Chuvash.'
The grey-haired, dark-eyed Tartar smiled haughtily and angrily -like a true Mongol. Still addressing Madyarov, he continued:
'Perhaps you've read Tolstoy's Hadji Mourat? Perhaps you've read The Cossacks? Perhaps you've read the story "A Prisoner in the Caucasus "? They Were written by a Russian count. While Dostoyevsky was a Lithuanian. As long as the Tartars remain in existence, they will pray to Allah on behalf of Tolstoy.'
Viktor looked at Karimov, thinking: 'Well, well. So that's how you feel, is it?'
'Akhmet Usmanovich,' said Sokolov, 'I profoundly respect your love for your people. But allow me to be proud of my nationality too. Allow me to love Tolstoy – and not only because of what he wrote about the Tartars. We Russians, for some reason, are never allowed to be proud of our own people. And if we show such pride, we're immediately taken for members of the Black Hundreds.'
Karimov got to his feet, his face covered in pearls of sweat.
'Let me tell you the truth. Why should I lie when I know the truth? Anyone who remembers how the pride of our race, every cultural figure of any importance, was exterminated way back in the twenties -anyone with a mind can see why The Diary of a Writer must be banned!'
'We suffered too,' said Artelev.
'It wasn't just people who were destroyed – it was a whole culture. Today's intelligentsia are savages by comparison.'
'Yes,' said Madyarov with heavy irony. 'But the Tartars might not have stopped at culture. They might have wanted Tartar home-rule and a Tartar foreign policy. And that's not on…'
'But you've got your own State now,' said Sokolov. 'You've got your own Institutes, your own schools, your own operas, your own books. You've got newspapers in Tartar. You owe all that to the Revolution.'
'Yes, a State opera and a comic-opera State. But it's Moscow that collects our harvest and Moscow that sends us to prison.'
'Would it be any better if you were jailed by a Tartar?' asked Madyarov.
'What if people weren't jailed at all?' asked Marya Ivanovna.
'Mashenka!' said Madyarov, 'what will you want next?' He looked at his watch and said: 'Hm, it's getting on.'
'Stay for the night, Lenechka,' Marya Ivanovna said hurriedly. 'I can make up the camp-bed.'
Madyarov had once told Marya Ivanovna that he felt particularly lonely late at night, when he came back to a dark empty room with no one waiting for him.
'Well,' he said, 'I won't say no. Is that all right by you, Pyotr Lavrentyevich?'
'Of course.'
'Said the master of the house without the least enthusiasm,' Madyarov added with a smile.
Everyone got up from the table and began saying goodbye. Sokolov accompanied his guests to the door. Marya Ivanovna lowered her voice and said to Madyarov: 'It is good that Pyotr Lavrentyevich no longer shrinks from these conversations. In Moscow he clammed up at the merest hint of anything political.'
She pronounced her husband's name and patronymic with particular tenderness and respect. At night she often copied out his work by hand; she kept all his notebooks and even pasted his casual jottings onto cards. She thought of him as a great man – and at the same time as her helpless child.
'I like Shtrum,' said Madyarov. 'I can't understand why people say he's disagreeable.' He smiled and added: 'I noticed he pronounced all his speeches in your presence, Mashenka. While you were busy in the kitchen, he spared us his eloquence.'
Marya Ivanovna had turned towards the door. She seemed not to have heard Madyarov. But then she asked: 'What do you mean, Lenya? He pays no more attention to me than to an insect. Petya considers him unkind, arrogant and too ready to mock people. That's why he's not popular and why some of the physicists are even afraid of him. But I don't agree. I think he's very kind.'
'That's the last thing I'd say of him,' said Madyarov. 'He disagrees with everyone and heaps sarcasm on them. But he's got a free mind; he hasn't been indoctrinated.'
'No, he is kind. And vulnerable.'
'But you have to admit,' said Madyarov, 'that our Petya doesn't let slip a careless word even now.'
Just then Sokolov came into the room. He overheard Madyarov.
'I'd like to ask you, Leonid Sergeyevich, first not to give me advice, and secondly never again to start conversations of that nature in my presence.'
'I don't need your advice, for that matter,' replied Madyarov. 'And just as you answer for your words, I'll answer for mine.'
Sokolov looked as if he wanted to say something very stinging. Instead, he left the room.
'Well, perhaps I'd better go home after all,' said Madyarov.
'You'll make me very upset,' said Marya Ivanovna. 'And you know how kind he is. It will torment him all night.'
She went on to explain that Pyotr Lavrentyevich had a very sensitive soul, that he had suffered a lot, that he had been interrogated very harshly in 1937 and as a result had had to spend four months in a clinic for nervous disorders.
Madyarov nodded his head. 'All right, Masha. I give in.'
Then, in a sudden fury, he added: 'That's all very well, but your Petya wasn't the only one to be interrogated. Have you forgotten the eleven months I spent in the Lubyanka? And how during all that time Pyotr only once telephoned my wife Klava – his own sister…? Have you forgotten how he forbade you to telephone her? All that hurt Klava very deeply. Yes, your Petya may be a great physicist, but he's got the soul of a lackey.'
Marya Ivanovna buried her face in her hands and remained silent. Then she said very quietly: 'No one, no one will ever understand how deeply this pains me.'
No one else understood how appalled her husband had been by the savagery of general collectivization and the events of 1937. She alone understood his spiritual purity. But then she alone knew how servile he was in the face of power.
That was why he was so capricious at home, such a petty tyrant. That was why Masha had to clean his shoes for him, why she had to fan him in hot weather with her headscarf, why she had to keep the mosquitoes off with a branch when they went for walks near their dacha.
Once, during his last year at university, Viktor had thrown a copy of Pravda on to the floor and said to a fellow student: 'It's so deadly boring. How can anyone ever read it?'
Immediately afterwards he had felt terrified. He had picked up the newspaper, smoothed its pages and smiled weakly. Even now, years later, the memory of that pitiful, hang-dog smile was enough to make him break out into a sweat.
A few days later, Viktor had held out another issue of Pravda to that same friend and said animatedly: 'Grishka, have a look at the leading article. It's a good stuff.'
His friend had taken the newspaper from him and said pityingly: