“Father,” said Victor, “you must believe me, I’d do anything in my power, if I could.... I’ve tried, but ...”
“Victor, we won’t argue. I’m not asking whether you can do it. I know you can. Don’t explain. Just say yes or no. Only, if it’s no, Victor, then it’s the end for you and me. Then I have no son any longer. There’s a limit, Victor, to how much I can forgive.”
“But, Father, it is thoroughly impossible, and ...”
“Victor, I said if it’s no, I have no son any longer. Think of how much I’ve lost these last few years. Now what is the answer?”
“I can do nothing.”
Vasili Ivanovitch straightened his shoulders slowly, the two lines that cut his cheeks, from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth, looked set, firm, emotionless. He turned and walked to the door.
“Where are you going?” Victor asked.
“That,” said Vasili Ivanovitch, “does not concern you any longer.”
In the dining room, Marisha and Acia were sitting at the table, staring at the plates of a cold dinner they had not touched.
“Acia,” said Vasili Ivanovitch, “get your coat and hat.”
“Father!” Marisha’s chair clattered back as she leaped to her feet; it was the first time she had ever addressed that word to Vasili Ivanovitch.
“Marisha,” Vasili Ivanovitch said gently, “I’ll telephone you in a few days ... when I find a place to live. Will you then send my things over ... what’s left of mine here?”
“You can’t go!” said Marisha, her voice breaking. “With no job and no money and ... This is your house.”
“This is your husband’s house,” said Vasili Ivanovitch. “Come on, Acia.”
“May I take my stamp collection along?” Acia muttered.
“Take your stamp collection along.”
Marisha knelt on the window sill, her nose flattened against the glass, her back heaving in silent sobs, and watched them go. Vasili Ivanovitch’s shoulders drooped and, under the street lantern, she could see the white patch of his bare neck, between the collar of his old coat and the black fur cap on his bowed head; he held Acia’s hand, and her arm was stretched up to his, and she seemed very small next to his huge bulk; she shuffled obediently, heels first, through a brown slush, and clutched the big stamp album to her breast.
Kira saw Irina in a cell of the G.P.U. on the evening of her departure. Irina smiled calmly; her smile was soft, wondering; her eyes, in a face that looked like wax, stared at Kira gently, vaguely, as if fixed, with quiet astonishment, on something distant that she was struggling to understand.
“I’ll send you mittens,” said Kira, trying to smile, “woolen ones. Only I warn you, I’ll knit them myself, so don’t be surprised if you won’t be able to wear them.”
“No,” said Irina, “but you can send me a snapshot. It will look nice: Kira Argounova knitting!”
“And you know,” said Kira, “you’ve never given me that drawing you promised.”
“That’s right, I haven’t. Father has them all. Tell him to let you select any that you want. Tell him I said so. Still, it’s not what I promised you. I promised a real portrait of Leo.”
“Well, we’ll have to wait for that till you come back.”
“Yes.” Then she jerked her head and laughed. “It’s nice of you, Kira, only you don’t have to fool me. I’m not afraid. But I know. Remember, when they sent those University students to Siberia? You don’t hear of any of them coming back. It’s the scurvy or consumption, or both.... Oh, it’s all right. I know it.”
“Irina ...”
“Come on, we don’t have to be emotional, even if it is the last time.... There’s something I wanted to ask you, Kira. You don’t have to answer, if you don’t want to, it’s just curiosity: what is there between you and Andrei Taganov?”
“I’ve been his mistress for over a year,” said Kira. “You see, Leo’s aunt in Berlin didn’t ...”
“It’s just as I thought. Well, kid, I don’t know which one of us needs more courage to face the future.”
“I’ll be afraid only on a day that will never come,” said Kira. “The day when I give up.”
“I’ve given up,” said Irina, “and I’m not afraid. Only there’s something I would like to understand. And I don’t think anyone can explain it. You see, I know it’s the end for me. I know it, but I can’t quite believe it, I can’t feel it. It’s so strange. There’s your life. You begin it, feeling that it’s something so precious and rare, so beautiful that it’s like a sacred treasure. Now it’s over, and it doesn’t make any difference to anyone, and it isn’t that they are indifferent, it’s just that they don’t know, they don’t know what it means, that treasure of mine, and there’s something about it that they should understand. I don’t understand it myself, but there’s something that should be understood by all of us. Only what is it, Kira? What?”
Political convicts traveled in a separate car; men with bayonets stood at its doors. Irina and Sasha sat facing each other on hard wooden benches; they had traveled together part of the way, but they were approaching a junction where Irina was to be transferred to another train. The car windows were black and lustrous, as if sheets of dusty patent leather had been pasted behind the glass panes; only the fluffy, wet stars of snow, smashing against the glass, showed that there was an earth beyond the panes, and wind, and a black sky. A lantern trembled high under the ceiling, as if every knock of the wheels under the floor kicked the yellow flame out, and it fluttered and came back again, shivering, clutching the little stub of candle. A boy in an old green student’s cap, alone by a window, sang softly, monotonously, through his teeth, and his voice sounded as if he were grinning, although his cheeks were motionless: