Feeling his way, he gathered up dead branches, then turned to see the fire. Sometimes a scarlet flash glittered in the darkness. It was Fox lifting his head and seeking him with his eye by the light of the flames. The silence was such that Nikolai could hear the horse's breathing from a long way off, little sighs, now sharp, now reassured. And when he came back toward the fire he had the strange feeling that he was returning home.
In the morning they crossed the place where the rutted road was piled high with bundles of brushwood, advanced up a valley still white with mist, and finally found the meeting of the ways he had vainly sought the previous evening. Several times Nikolai tried to talk to the young woman, whom he had mounted on Fox's back, deciding to go on foot himself. She did not reply, sometimes smiling, but her smile resembled the tensing of a face on the brink of tears. Finally, toward noon, when they needed to make a halt to eat something, he lost his temper somewhat, irritated by her refusal to speak, "Listen, what's the matter with you? Why don't you say anything? It's finished. We're far away. They won't harm you any more. At least tell me your name."
The young woman's face twisted into a grimace, she tilted her head back slightly and forced open her lips. Between her teeth, in the place of a tongue, Nikolai saw a broad, oblique gash.
When he had recovered his wits, he realized that she had been mutilated so that she could no longer tell what she had seen. But tell it to whom? Everyone saw the same thing during these years of war. Moreover, how could one describe those heads in the clearing, those eyes being extinguished one by one? While the birds built their nests on the branches above them.
Dolshanka, half depopulated during the war, did not notice his return. The village had been scoured by so many waves of armed men, Reds, Whites, anarchists, bandits pure and simple, and then Reds again, by so many lootings, fires, and deaths, that the villagers were no longer surprised at anything. There was just one old woman who asked him as he was passing in the street, "Tell me, soldier, is it true the Bolsheviks have abolished death?" Nikolai nodded.
Over several weeks, before the child was born, he had time to teach the young woman to read and write. It was perhaps the greatest pride of his life: he never boasted about rescuing her from the tomb but he enjoyed talking about the lessons he gave her in the evenings, after the wearisome labor of plowing. Thanks to his teaching she could tell him her first name, writing it out in capital letters: Anna. And choose a name for the child: Pavel. And sign the papers on the occasion of their marriage. A girlhood friend of Anna's, who came to see them at Dolshanka from time to time, quickly got used to these words, thoughts, questions or answers, traced on a sheet of paper or in the dust on a road. Her friend spoke with a slight accent. From the south, Nikolai reckoned. He told himself that his wife must have had the same lilting voice as this Sasha.
For his part, he did not need the angular letters to understand her. The work on the land, the silence of their house, the lives of the animals, none of this had any need of words. He and Anna would look at one another for a long time and smile. During the daytime, catching sight of one another from afar, they would wave, without seeing the expressions on one another's faces but picturing the tiniest detail.
The world around them was becoming more and more talkative. People held forth about work instead of working. They made decrees for the happiness of the people and let an old woman starve to death in her izba with its collapsed roof. Above all there was the one who talked about the workers, that young, scabby little muzhik they called Goldfish, on account of his red hair, who had never plowed a furrow in his life. And those who promised happiness, like that man, ageless, faceless, expressionless, you might have said, so pale and evasive were his eyes, that unfrocked monk, who chose to be called Comrade Krassny. This champion of happiness never smiled, included the word "kill" in every sentence, and displayed particular ruthlessness toward anything even remotely connected with the Church. When it came to it, the one Nikolai preferred to these two was the former sailor, Batum, an emissary of the town soviet who at least did not conceal his true nature. He robbed home distillers and drank himself, lived openly with two mistresses and, when the peasants challenged him, chorussing, "You have no right…" would drown their complaints with his merry croak, "Here's my right!" roaring with laughter and patting the enormous holster of the automatic pistol at his thigh. There were many more besides. They all called themselves "activists." They talked endlessly, made everyone listen to them, and would not let anyone else utter a word. Nikolai tried once, arguing with a speech by Comrade Krassny Goldfish exploded, his eyes contracted with anger, "We'll have to shorten your tongue, like your good wife's!" Nikolai lunged at him but came up against the barrel of the automatic pistol. Batum was drunk. He could well have fired it without even feeling the trigger beneath his finger. Nikolai walked out of the House of the Soviet. It had once been Count Dolshansky's home.
Sometimes, as the plow jolted slowly and ponderously along, Nikolai told himself that this whole new order of things was only a transient clouding of people's minds, comparable to the posturing of a drunkard. Yes, it was a kind of hangover that would one day come to an end of its own accord. How could they change essential things, all these prattlers in leather jackets? This Krassny, whose principal achievement 'was mobilizing activists to tear down the domes of churches in the vicinity of Dolshanka. Or Batum, whose repertoire of gestures, when he did not have a bottle in his hand, was limited to two: unbuttoning his fly and reaching for his revolver. Nikolai shook his head, smiled, leaned heavily on the handles of the plow. No, they were powerless against the course of this plowshare polished by the earth, against this earth, open in the expectation of seed, against this wind that still had a snowy chill but was already mingling with the warm exhalation of the plowed lands.