They kept apart from this hubbub. Thanks to their solitude, their love. Thanks to the measured resonance they became aware of one December day in the snow-covered forest where they were collecting fallen timber. The wind blew strongly above the tops of the tall fir trees. But down below, seated on their bundle of firewood, all they could make out was a rustling sound: a mass of snow came tumbling down from the treetops and, as it slid from one branch to the next, found time to whisper a brief sequence of words. They did not speak, surprised to see how simple, almost poor, happiness could be, yes, materially poor and yet so abundant. A pile of snow embarked on its slippery descent down the branches, gave off a rapid whispering, fell. And the silent forest seemed to sense the presence of the woman tilting her face, eyes closed, toward the lazy fluttering of the snowflakes… Men had ripped open this earth with trenches, thought Volsky, had buried thousands of mines and then set about killing one another and the massacre had lasted four long years, and when it was over the survivors dug up the mines and went away. And the forest has once more become as it was before the killing. “And now the woman I love has her eyes closed, listening to the wind, and snow crystals settle on her face. A face which resembles that of a very thin young woman, with dark hair, drawn by a child…”
That December evening they tried out the big stove Volsky had built between the two new rooms of their house for the first time. The branches blazed with cheerful ferocity and they pictured Mila’s children seated in a circle, holding out their hands toward the fire.
When the snows melted the water came right up to the front steps of their house and they laughed as, without walking down them, Volsky flung an old piece of fishing net he had found in the loft into this slow tide. A scent of the damp bark of alder trees hung in the air, the warmth of wooden walls heated by the sun. Perched at the top of the steps, they watched the sky slowly turning pale, reflected in the river, and from time to time noticed the bobbing of the floats above the net. In the distance, beyond the waters, the other bank could be made out, and the delicate silhouettes of the trees now watching over the graves.
One glance took it all in. The riverbank where they had seen so many men die. And the river, slow and broad as a lake now, where once the ice had been streaked with the blood of a wounded man crawling up toward the singers. And their voices mingled with the shouting and explosions. A past still so close to the wooden steps where a woman now sat tossing twigs into the water gilded by the setting sun…
“So what was the point of it all?” thought Volsky, and in his memory he saw again those men busily clustered around a gun. There, on the same shore. Men who killed or were killed. What was the point?
“The defense of the country, victory…,” the words proclaimed their harsh truth within him. All those deaths were necessary. And often heroic. “Yes, useful, but only because people are unaware of this happiness,” he said to himself, and once more sensed the approach of a truth that encompassed all men and all lives. The happiness of watching these twigs floating away on the current lit by a low sun. Of seeing this woman stand up, go into the house. The happiness of seeing her face at a window above the waters. Her smile, the glow of her dress perceived through a windowpane.
This happiness rendered absurd men’s desire to dominate, to kill, to possess, thought Volsky. For neither Mila nor he possessed anything. Their joy came from the things one does not possess, from what other people had abandoned or scorned. But, above all, this sunset, this scent of warm bark, these clouds above the young trees in the graveyard, these belonged to everybody!
The fisherman’s net, which he began to haul up onto the steps, emerged empty. From time to time, amid the meshes slipping through the water, there was a dull golden flash of moonlight.
No one around them could perceive this transfigured world. Their neighbors cursed the worse than usual flooding of the Lukhta, the waterlogged roads. Mila and Volsky would nod in agreement, so as not to vex them, but on their return home sat upon the old steps letting their gaze drift across the shining expanse. At night the waters murmured beneath their windows, little waves lapped gently against the steps. This calm and joy should be spoken of to help people live differently. But with what words?
Explain nothing, Volsky thought one day, just show this other life… He was returning from Leningrad and, without intending to, he witnessed the rehearsal for a parade at the edge of the city. Bearing an enormous effigy of Stalin, a procession of workers was due, according to the scenario, to meet up with a column of soldiers, so that the head of the Leader should appear above the victorious army. A band then launched into its brassy din. The merging of the two was slow to achieve the desired artistic effect. Angry shouts rang out from a wooden perch on which there was a little man in a fedora hat shouting, “I can’t see Comrade Stalin!” (The workers hoisted the portrait up as high as possible.) Or else: “Come on! Look lively now!” The soldiers lifted up their chins, their eyes wide…
Volsky went pedaling on amid the fields. The barking of the loudspeaker faded, giving way to the clatter of the old bicycle. What he had seen was comic, he could have laughed at it but sadness lingered in his mind. It would doubtless not have been difficult to find workers in the procession who had lived through the horrors of the blockade. And many among the soldiers would be those who carried within them a heavy burden of mangled bodies, faces gone forever. Such grief should have led them toward a new and luminous truth. Instead of which it was this return to the same old circus parade, these foolishly radiant faces.
He went to the school where Mila taught, stopped beneath the windows of the music room, listened. And as the children sang in chorus, recognized a song his regimental comrades used to sing between battles. He had often hummed these tunes, his voice eloquent both of the soldiers’ weariness and the fragile nature of the hope they clung to, despite the mud and carnage. This was the music Mila was teaching her pupils, unusual in the school repertoire, which consisted of cheerful, patriotic outpourings.
It was a moment that gave expression to the true meaning of his new life: these faint voices that seemed to come from a daydream, a day lit up by the very first foliage, the scent of flooded woodland, and, so close at hand, snatched from death, the presence of the woman he loved. The rippling movement of her arm conducting the children’s singing…
He thought again about the war, which had brought them the wisdom of simple happiness. And became confused, unwilling to accept the terrible price for such wisdom. Mila emerged, came to kiss him. He wanted to question her: “Why couldn’t we be as happy as this before the war? From the moment we first met? When we were young and carefree?” But Mila’s look was expecting other words.
“This is it. I’ve got it,” he said, and saw a shadow of anxiety vanish from the woman’s face. From his postman’s sack he drew a typewritten sheet bearing several signatures and stamps. It was the license given by the city authorities for them to adopt the orphans, “Mila’s children,” as Volsky called them. The first four of them were to arrive at the start of the September term.
One evening in May it seemed as if he had fathomed the mystery of their new happiness… The dusk was mild; they had no desire to return home, remained lying amid the trees, beside a spring that they had cleared of scrub a week earlier. The earth was white from the petals of a wild cherry, it was like being in a winter snowstorm. The scent of this white blossom and the acrid freshness of lilies of the valley… “I’ve lived through this before,” thought Volsky. “Yes, in the war, after a battle. This blizzard of petals. That soldier who waved his hand, like swatting a mosquito, and then collapsed. Not a mosquito but a stray piece of shrapnel, a scrap of metal from an explosion. Heady blossom, the icy scent of lilies of the valley, a lovely spring evening and that fine young man who’d just died…”