'Vitya's frightened, is he? Do you think I'm going to denounce you?'
Viktor had then taken a vow either to remain silent and not express dangerous thoughts or else to say what he thought without funking it. He had not kept this vow. He had often flared up and thrown caution to the wind – only to suddenly take fright and attempt to snuff out the flame he himself had lit.
In 1938, after the trial of Bukharin, he had said to Krymov:
'Say what you like, but I've met Bukharin. I've talked to him twice. I remember his kind, intelligent smile. And he's certainly got a head on his shoulders. My impression is that he's someone of great charm and absolute purity.'
Krymov had looked at him morosely. Thrown into confusion, Viktor had muttered: 'But then who knows? Espionage. Working as an agent of the Okhrana. [34] There's nothing charming or pure about that. It's just despicable!'
Krymov's next words left Viktor even more confused.
'Since we're relatives,' he said sullenly, 'let me say one thing to you: I am quite unable, and always shall be unable, to associate the name of Bukharin with the Okhrana.'
'My God, I can't believe all this horror!' Viktor had burst out with sudden fury. 'These trials are a nightmare. But why do they confess? Why do they all confess?'
Krymov had said nothing more. He had obviously said too much already…
What a wonderful power and clarity there is in speaking one's mind. What a terrible price people paid for a few bold words.
How often Viktor had lain awake listening to the cars on the street! Sometimes Lyudmila had gone barefoot to the window and parted the curtains. She had stayed there for a while and watched; then, thinking that Viktor was asleep, she had gone silently back to bed and lain down. In the morning she had asked: 'Did you sleep well?'
'All right, thank you. And you?'
'It felt very stuffy. I had to go to the window for some fresh air.'
'Yes.'
How can one ever describe those nights and that extraordinary sense of both doom and innocence?
'Remember, Viktor, every word reaches them. You're destroying yourself, together with me and the children.'
And another time:
'I can't tell you everything. But for the love of God, don't say a word to anyone. Viktor, we live in a terrible age – you've no idea just how terrible. Remember, Viktor, not a word to anyone.'
Sometimes Viktor glimpsed the opaque, sad eyes of someone he had known since childhood. He had been frightened not by what his old friend said, but by what he didn't say. And of course he had been much too frightened to ask directly: 'Are you an agent? Do you get called in for questioning?'
He remembered looking at his assistant's face after making a thoughtless joke about Stalin's having formulated the laws of gravity long before Newton.
'You didn't say anything, and I didn't hear anything,' this young assistant had said gaily.
Why, why, why all these jokes? It was mad to make such jokes – like banging a flask of nitroglycerine with a hammer.
What power and clarity lies in the word! In the unfettered, carefree word! The word that is still spoken in spite of all one's fears.
Was Viktor aware of the hidden tragedy in these conversations? Everyone who took part in them hated German Fascism and was terrified of it… But why did they only speak their minds at a time when Russia had been driven back to the Volga, at a time when terrible military defeats held out the threat of slavery?
Viktor walked silently beside Karimov.
'There's something very surprising,' he suddenly said, 'about novels portraying the foreign intelligentsia. I've just been reading Hemingway. When his characters have a serious conversation, they are always drinking. Cocktails, whisky, rum, cognac, more cocktails, more cognac, still more different brands of whisky. Whereas the Russian intelligentsia has always had its important discussions over a glass of tea. The members of "People's Will", the Populists, the Social Democrats all came together over glasses of weak tea. Lenin and his friends even planned the Revolution over a glass of weak tea. Though apparently Stalin prefers cognac.'
'Yes, yes,' said Karimov, 'you're quite right. And the conversation we had today was over a glass of tea.'
'Absolutely. And isn't Madyarov intelligent? Isn't he bold? I'm really not used to anyone speaking the way he does. It excites me.'
Karimov took Viktor by the arm.
'Viktor Pavlovich, have you noticed that the most innocent remark of Madyarov's somehow sounds like a generalization? I find that worrying. And he was arrested for several months in 1937 and then released. At a time when no one was released. There must be a reason. Do you follow me?'
'Yes,' Viktor answered slowly, 'I do. How could I not understand you? You think he's an informer.'
They parted at the next corner. Viktor walked back towards his house.
'To hell with it all!' he said to himself. 'At least we've talked like human beings for once. Without fear and hypocrisy. Saying whatever we felt about whatever we liked. Paris is worth a mass…'
How good that there still were people like Madyarov, people who hadn't lost their independence. Yes. Karimov's warning didn't strike the usual chill into Viktor's heart.
Viktor realized that he had once again forgotten to tell Sokolov about the letter from the Urals.
He walked on down the dark, empty street. Suddenly an idea came to him. Immediately, with his whole being, he knew it was true. He had glimpsed a new and improbable explanation for the atomic phenomena that up until now had seemed so hopelessly inexplicable; abysses had suddenly changed into bridges. What clarity and simplicity! This idea was astonishingly graceful and beautiful. It seemed to have given birth to itself – like a white water-lily appearing out of the calm darkness of a lake. He gasped, revelling in its beauty…
And how strange, he thought suddenly, that this idea should have come to him when his mind was far away from anything to do with science, when the discussions that so excited him were those of free men, when his words and the words of his friends had been determined only by freedom, by bitter freedom.
65
The Kalmyk steppe seems sad and lifeless when you see it for the first time, when you come to it full of preoccupations, when you watch absent-mindedly as the low hills slowly emerge from the horizon and slowly sink back into it… Lieutenant-Colonel Darensky had the feeling it was the very same wind-swept hillock that kept appearing in front of him, the very same curve that his car kept following… The horsemen too seemed identical – even though some were beardless and others grey-haired, even though some were on dun ponies, others on black…
The jeep passed through hamlets and villages, past small houses with tiny windows that sheltered a jungle of geraniums; it looked as though you had only to break the glass for the life-giving air to drain away into the surrounding emptiness, for the thick green of the geraniums to wither and die. The jeep drove past circular yurts with clay-smeared walls, through tall, grey feather-grass, through prickly camel-grass, past white splashes of salt, past the little clouds of dust kicked up by flocks of sheep, past small fires that gave off no smoke and danced in the wind…
To someone travelling by jeep, on tyres filled with the smoky air of the city, everything here blurs into a uniform grey… This Kalmyk steppe, which stretches, gradually changing to desert, right to the mouth of the Volga and the shores of the Caspian, has one strange characteristic: the earth and the sky above have reflected one another for so long that they have finally become undistinguishable, like a husband and wife who have spent their whole lives together. It's impossible to tell whether dusty, aluminium-grey feather-grass has begun to grow on the dull, lustreless blue of the sky, or whether the steppe itself has become impregnated with the sky's blue; earth and sky have blurred together, dusty and ageless. In the same way, the thick opaque water of Lakes Dats and Barmantsak looks like a sheet of salt, while the salt flats look like lakes…