Together with the bread I pulled out what felt like a soft little bag. It
dropped on the floor and I opened the door on the landing to pick it up,
it being dark in the hall. It was a yellow chamois-leather tobacco-pouch:
among other gifts, we sent such tobacco-pouches to the front for the
soldiers. After a moment's thought I untied it. Inside lay a photograph
broken in half and some rings. "Trucked them somewhere," I thought
with disgust. The photograph was an old one, and had some writing on
the back, which was hard to make out, as the letters had completely
faded. I was about to put the photo back but some odd feeling restrained
me, a feeling that I had once held this tobacco-pouch in my hand.
I went out onto the landing, where there was more light, and began to
spell out the writing. "If it's worth..." I read. A white sharp light flashed
before my eyes and stabbed my very heart. The writing on the
photograph read: "If it's worth doing at all, do it well."
I don't know what happened to me. I screamed, then found myself
sitting on the landing, groping about for that photograph. Through a
darkness that clouded my eyes I read the inscription and recognised C.
in a flying helmet, which made him look like a woman. C. with his large
eagle-like face and kind sombre eyes looking out from under his heavy
eyebrows. It was the photograph of C., which Sanya had always carried
about with him. He kept it in his pocket-book together with other
documents, though I had told him a thousand times that the
photograph would be worn away in his pocket and that it should be
framed and placed on his desk.
In a fury, I rushed back into the hall, tore the coat off the hanger and
flinging it out on to the landing, turned the pockets out. Sanya was dead,
killed. I don't know what I was looking for. Romashov had killed him.
The other pocket contained some money. I crushed the notes and threw
them down the stair-well. Killed him and taken the photograph. I did
not cry. Stole the documents, all the papers, maybe the disk as well, so
that nobody should know that this dead man in the wood, this corpse in
the wood, was Sanya. "Other papers, very important ones, in the
dispatch-case"—the words rang in my ears and it seemed as if someone
had lighted a lantern in front of every word of Romashov's.
This photograph had been in the dispatch-case. Other papers and the
newspaper Red Falcons had been there, too, but they had got soaked
and were ruined-hadn't Romashov said, "The newspaper had become
wet pulp"? But the photograph was intact, maybe because Sanya had
always carried it wrapped in tracing-paper.
Voices could be heard below. Rosalia was calling me. I slipped the
photograph in my bosom and put the tobacco-pouch back into the
pocket. I hung the coat up again, went downstairs and gave the bread to
Romashov.
"What's the matter?" he said. "Aren't you well?"
"No, I'm all right."
There was nothing. No empty, soundless streets through which people
walked in silence, slowly dragging their feet as in a frightful slow dream.
269
No ice-encrusted tramcars stranded in the middle of the streets with
thick ledges of snow hanging from them like from the eaves of country
cottages. No narrow tracks running away behind us as we dragged the
hand sled on which, swaddled like a child, lay a small body. I recollected
then that Romashov had had the coffin left behind because there was no
room for it on the sled.
"That's all right, we'll sell it," he had said.
As for Rosalia, she must have gone mad, because she said it was the
proper rite to have no coffin. I remembered this, then immediately
forgot it. A little girl with a tiny old woman's face stepped into the snow
to let us pass—there was no room for two on the narrow path trodden
down Pushkarskaya Street. Someone passed us in an oddly loose
dangling overcoat—a man with a briefcase slung across his shoulder on
a string. This, too, I saw and immediately forgot it. I saw everything-the
snowed-up streets, the swaddled body on the little sled, and another
body some woman was towing on the other side of the road, and who
kept stopping and finally dropped behind. Like traceless shadows that
glide noiselessly across glass, the freezing city passed before me all
white, buried in snow.
I was seeing another scene, one that smote my heart cruelly. Legs
stretched out in dirty bandages yellow with blood, lay Sanya with his
cheek to the ground and his murderer standing over him-alone, all
alone in a wet little aspen wood. Shoulders hunched, blue with cold, my
arm in that of Rosalia's, who could barely move-she had so many clothes
on—I trudged along behind the sled which moved far ahead, then, drew
near when the boys stopped to have a smoke. Two lonely pathetic old
women—we looked much the same, she and I. The similarity must have
struck Romashov, too, for he caught up with us and said irritably: "Why
did you have to go? You'll catch your death of cold. Go back, Katya, go
home!"
I looked at him-alive and hale. In his white new sheepskin coat,
shoulder harness and holster at his belt. Alive! I caught the air with
open mouth. And hale! I bent down and put some snow in my mouth.
The spade tied to the body glinted, and I stared and stared at its
hypnotic glitter.
The cemetery. We waited for a long time in a small, dirty office with
white strips of hoarfrosted tow running between the logs of the
timbered walls. The clerk, a woman with a bloated face, sat by an iron
little stove, her feet, wrapped in rags, thrust out close to the fire.
Romashov for some reason was shouting at her. Then they called us—
the grave was ready. The boys, leaning on their spades, stood on a
mound of earth and snow. What a shallow resting-place they had made
for poor Bertha! Romashov sent them for the body. Soon they came
back with her. The long mournful Jew walked behind the sled and from
time to time commanded a halt to read a short prayer. Romashov laid
ropes out on the snow, deftly lifted the body and kicked the sled away.
Now she was lying on the ropes. Rosalia gave her sister a last kiss. The
Jew sang, now raising his voice with surprising stresses, now dropping
to a low tone, like a mournful old bird.
We went back to the office to warm up—1 and Romashov. He made
mysterious signs to me and slapped his pocket as we approached the
door. Inside he drew out a bottle.
"Have some?" he said.
270
Oh, how my heart began to burn and swell, what hot waves surged
through my arms and legs! I felt hot. I undid my coat, threw off my
warm shawl. I walked, walked about the office, on light, springy feet.
"Some more?"
The woman with the bloated face looked at us hungrily, and I told
Romashov to pour some out for her. He did so—"Ah well, in for a
penny!"—gay, pale, with red ears, fur cap tilted back at a rakish angle. I,
too, felt gay, in jocular mood. I picked up from the desk one of the black
painted grave plates and held it out to Romashov.
"This is for you."
He laughed.
"Now that's more like my old Katya!"
"Not yours!"
He came over and took hold of my hands. His mouth began to quiver,