One day he tried to explain the earlier life to his son. And even thought he had found the words he needed. He spoke of the czar, of old Count Dolshansky, of the revolution. It was a warm, still October day. The fields were already bare, the riverbank where they sat was carpeted with long, yellowing grasses. Noticing the flight of wild geese in the sky, Nikolai realized that for several minutes now the boy had not been listening to him. The birds were reflected in the river's smooth flow and Pavel was following their reflection, which seemed to be traveling upstream, amid long willow boughs and some stranded boats. Nikolai fell silent, looked where his son was looking and smiled: this limpid gliding of the wings over the water was more beautiful than the flight itself
After the famous spring of the confiscated needles there were two years of famine, a hundred dead in Dolshanka, several arrests. The disgust Nikolai had experienced that day at the sight of the telegraph machine became so familiar that he no longer noticed it. Everyone knew that the famine had been organized. But in order not to lose your reason, to survive in the midst of this madness, it was best not to think about it, it was better to concentrate on the straightness and depth of the furrow.
Besides, even during those years, they could still wake up in the middle of a beautiful October day with a flight of birds above the river. Or again on that day of great frost: coming home, Nikolai saw Anna beside the window, one hand on the cradle of their second child and the other holding a book. He went up to her, sat beside her, quite numb from the icy wind, glanced at the pages. It was a foreign book, Anna was looking only at the pictures, of men and women in ample old-fashioned clothes, of unknown cities. In the houses in the village one still came across these volumes from the scattered library of Count Dolshansky, and since people could not read them they used them for stoking up the fire or rolling a cigarette. "Now that, even if you asked me, I couldn't teach you!" he said, laughing, running his finger along the enigmatic letters. Anna smiled, but in a slightly distant way, as if she were trying to call to mind a forgotten word. There was infinite calm in their izba at that moment. The child was asleep, the fire hissed softly in the stove, the window, all covered in ice, blazed with the thousand scarlet granules of a sinking sun. This brilliance, this silence were enough for life. Everything else was a bad dream. Speeches, hate-filled voices talking about happiness. Fear of not being hard enough, not showing yourself to be happy enough, hate-filled enough toward all the enemies, fear, fear, fear. While all life needed was these minutes of a winter sunset, in a room protected by this woman's silence as she leaned over the sleeping child.
As in a bad dream, changes came, hard on one another's heels, contradicting one another, defying comprehension. One summer night Batum died in a hayloft at the center of a blaze started by his cigarette butt. His mistress escaped. He, being too drunk, was enmeshed in the bundles of hay. How could you comprehend that? This man, who had driven so many people to their deaths, had perished in the manner of a simple village drunk such as almost inspired pity. It was beyond the kolkhozniks' comprehension. Goldfish got married in the district capital and remained there with his wife, a woman with an enormous bosom who stood a whole head taller than her husband. This mass of flesh seemed to have engulfed the red-haired revolutionary, along with his volatile temper and all his grudges. You could see them together: he looked like a placid little official carrying crackers and a bottle of milk in a shopping bag. The inhabitants of Dolshanka shrugged their shoulders. Comrade Krassny's career within the Party apparatus was meteoric. His name, preceded by his latest title, appeared in the town newspaper on several occasions-and on the last of these without a title but with a qualifying phrase that had become current: "Unmasked traitor, lickspittle of the bourgeoisie, spy in the pay of the imperialists." Those who had known him at Dolshanka wondered why it had taken more than ten years to "unmask" him. But there was already a whole younger generation in the village to whom in this year of 1936, the names of those activists from the Twenties meant nothing.
Thinking about these young people, Nikolai took note of the solidity of the new world. Little by little the revolution was casting aside the revolutionaries and life was reverting to essentials, land and bread. Gutov, the blacksmith, passed on his anvil to his son and was elected president of the kolkhoz. He was already a member of the Party and had drawn Nikolai into it, saying, "You need to join, neighbor, otherwise they're going to dredge up another Goldfish for us." For a long time now the portrait of Stalin in every house had become almost invisible in its conspicuousness, as familiar as an icon used to be in the old days. Nikolai had great faith in the endurance of the snows, the rains, the winds, in the constancy of the fields, in the blissful routine of days that would set everything to rights. And when the heads began to roll again in Moscow he thought of the vast stretch of plains, forests, snows that lay between them and the capital. With the hope of a weary man, he was eager to convince himself at any price.
In spring when the work was at its height, the president of the kolkhoz was arrested. They spent several nights without going to bed, watching at the window: Nikolai, Anna, Pavel (who had come home from the town for a week's holiday), and Sasha. Above all, they did not want to be surprised when they were asleep and find themselves in the black car only half-dressed, like so many people taken for questioning. No one spoke and Nikolai was glad he had not succeeded in explaining to his son the difference between their current lives and life in the old days. Now the young man could judge for himself.
The car arrived very early in the morning. Anna woke Nikolai who had fallen asleep sitting on a chair. They took him immediately. He just had time, as if gulping a rapid mouthful, to take note of what he was leaving behind: their faces, the hesitant wave of a hand, the light of a lamp on the table.
At the town, even before the start of the interrogation the examining magistrate declared that the president of the kolkhoz had told them "everything, absolutely everything," that their conspiracy had been "unmasked," and that it was in his own interest for him to confess the facts. The questions came hurtling at him but during the first few minutes Nikolai heard them as if through a walclass="underline" the former blacksmith's treachery had hit a raw nerve in him, found a vulnerable spot he had not been aware of. Then he thought about the tortures that could extract all kinds of calumny, grew calmer, and resolved to defend himself right to the end.
Listening to the magistrate, he realized that this man knew nothing about him, had not even the vaguest conception of where Dolshanka was or how its inhabitants lived and, in fact, had no file on him of any kind, just a dozen sheets of paper that needed to be substantiated by the accused's replies, so as to make a guilty man of him as quickly as possible. That night, in the cell, where two-thirds of the prisoners remained upright for lack of benches, Nikolai talked to an old man, who from time to time gave up to him his place by the wall, against which everyone was eager to lean. The old man was due to return to the camp for the second time, having already spent six years there. It was he who explained to Nikolai that the number of people found guilty was subject to planning, just like the tons of the harvest. And as the forecasts in the plan always had to be surpassed… They talked until morning. Before being taken for interrogation Nikolai learned that the old man was three years younger than himself. An old man of thirty-nine.