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.
The judge was counting on settling the matter in an hour. After several questions, he announced the main charge, which the evidence given by the president of the kolkhoz made irrefutable: Nikolai had written scurrilous satires that his wife read out to the members of the kolkhoz, thus disseminating counter-revolutionary propaganda.
Nikolai managed not to betray his feelings. Calmly he explained why what was imputed to his wife was impossible. In the magistrate's eyes he thought he could see flitting past all the variations that would have made it possible to circumvent this line of reasoning. You could accuse Anna of an attempt on Stalin's life, of wanting to set fire to the Kremlin or poison the Volga. But you could not accuse her of speaking. "I shall send the doctor tomorrow for an expert opinion," barked the magistrate and he called the guard.
The doctor spent scarcely a minute in their house. When he took his leave he apologized, heaving a sigh and raising his eyes to heaven. It was Sasha who described the scene to him when Nikolai was finally freed.
Returning home after a week's absence, he paused beside the locked door of the smithy. Thanks to nights spent among prisoners packed close together, he could imagine what a man like Gutov must have experienced who had spent several months in those overflowing cells. He made an effort not to imagine the torture. And the nights following the torture, with his mouth filled with blood, his nails torn off. Gutov must have lived through that and in the course of one night, through the suffocating mists of pain, invented this accusation which would save those he denounced: Anna talked to the kol-khozniks. Continuing on his way, Nikolai noticed that beside the izba of the smithy the first grasses and flowers were already thrusting up in bright fresh tufts, as happened every spring.
With superstitious confidence, he allowed himself to believe that life had finally triumphed. And that Gutov's death, especially such a death, was a sufficient sacrifice. And that he and Anna had now paid their dues to the unexpected guest. All the books Anna had gradually accumulated in their house were in agreement about this ultimate justice: well-earned happiness, paid for by trials and suffering.
When, less than a year later, he found himself at the bedside where Anna lay dying, he had a momentary belief that he could understand everything, right to the end: life was no more complicated than the simpleton he had one day encountered in the neighboring village. A woman seated at the crossroads with her legs wide apart, very pale eyes that looked through you without seeing you, lips that babbled happily of "planting three sabers under every window of every izba," and hands that ceaselessly shuffled a little pile of fragments of glass, pebbles, tiny worn coins in the folds of her dress.
He shook himself, so as not to let himself be carried away toward this grinning folly. And saw Anna's gesture. She was offering him a little gray envelope. He took it, guessed he should not open it until the time came, and, hearing a noise, went to greet the doctor. In the doorway he passed Sasha coming in with a flask of water. Everything was repeating itself, as some months before, but in a different order: the doctor, silence, the proximity of death. Like the little fragments of glass juggled in the simpleton's blind hand.