For them, however—and in this they were exceptional—those instants when the breath of passion flew like a breath of eternity into their doomed human existence, were moments of revelation and of learning ever new things about themselves and life.
11
“You absolutely must return to your family. I won’t keep you for a single extra day. But you see what’s going on. As soon as we merged with Soviet Russia, we were swallowed up by its devastation. Siberia and the East are plugging its holes. You don’t know anything. During your illness there have been such changes in town! The stores from our warehouses are being transported to the center, to Moscow. For her it’s a drop in the ocean, these supplies disappear into her as into a bottomless barrel, while we’re left without provisions. The mails don’t work, passenger transportation has ceased, express trains loaded with grain are all that run. There’s murmuring in town again, as there was before the Gajda uprising,2 and again the Cheka rages in response to the signs of discontent.
“So where are you going to go like that, skin and bones, your soul barely keeping in your body? And on foot again? You won’t make it! Recover, get your strength back, then it’s another matter.
“I won’t venture to give advice, but in your place, before setting out for your family, I’d find a job for a while, in your specialty of course, they value that, I’d go to our board of health, for example. It’s still in the old medical center.
“Otherwise, judge for yourself. The son of a Siberian millionaire who blew his brains out, your wife the daughter of a local industrialist and landowner. Was with the partisans and ran away. Whatever you say, that’s quitting the military-revolutionary ranks, it’s desertion. In no case should you stay out of things, with no legal status. My situation isn’t very firm either. And I’m also going to work, I’m joining the provincial education department. The ground’s burning under my feet, too.”
“How do you mean? What about Strelnikov?”
“It’s burning because of Strelnikov. I told you before how many enemies he had. The Red Army is victorious. Now the nonparty military, who were close to the top and know too much, are going to get it in the neck. And lucky if it’s in the neck and not in the back, so as to leave no traces. Among them, Pasha is in the first rank. He’s in great danger. He was in the Far East. I heard he escaped and is in hiding. They say he’s being sought. But enough about him. I don’t like to cry, and if I add even one more word about him, I can feel I’ll start howling.”
“You loved him, even now you still love him very much?”
“But I’m married to him, he’s my husband, Yurochka. He has a lofty, shining character. I’m deeply guilty before him. I didn’t do anything bad to him, it would be wrong to say so. But he’s of enormous importance, a man of great, great uprightness, and I’m trash, I’m nothing beside him. That’s my guilt. But enough of that, please. I’ll come back to it myself some other time, I promise. How wonderful your Tonya is! A Botticelli. I was there at her delivery. She and I became terribly close. But of that, too, some other time, I beg you. Yes, so, let’s the two of us find work. We’ll both go to work. Each month we’ll get billions in salary. Until the last coup, we were using Siberian money. It was abolished quite recently, and for a long time, all through your illness, we lived without currency. Yes. Just imagine. It’s hard to believe, but we somehow managed. Now a whole trainload of paper money has been delivered to the former treasury, about forty cars, they say, not less. It’s printed on big sheets in two colors, blue and red, like postage stamps, and divided into little squares. The blue ones are worth five million a square, the red ones ten million. They fade quickly, the printing is bad, the colors run.”
“I’ve seen that money. It was introduced just before we left Moscow.”
12
“What were you doing so long in Varykino? There’s nobody there, it’s empty. What kept you there?”
“Katenka and I were cleaning your house. I was afraid you’d stop there first thing. I didn’t want you to find your home in such a state.”
“What state? Messy, disorderly?”
“Disorder. Filth. I cleaned it.”
“How evasively monosyllabic. You’re not telling everything, you’re hiding something. But as you will, I won’t try to find out. Tell me about Tonya. How did they christen the girl?”
“Masha. In memory of your mother.”
“Tell me about them.”
“Let me do it sometime later. I told you, I can barely keep back my tears.”
“This Samdevyatov, the one who gave you the horse, is an interesting figure. What do you think?”
“Most interesting.”
“I know Anfim Efimovich very well. He was a friend of our house here, he helped us in these new places.”
“I know. He told me.”
“You’re friends, probably? He tries to be useful to you, too?”
“He simply showers me with kindnesses. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”
“I can easily imagine. You’re probably in close, friendly relations, on simple terms? He’s probably making up to you for all he’s worth?”
“I’ll say. Relentlessly.”
“And you? Sorry. I’m overstepping the limits of the permissible. What right do I have to question you? Forgive me. It’s indelicate.”
“Oh, please. You’re probably interested in something else—what sort of relations we have? You want to know whether anything more personal has crept into our good acquaintance? Of course not. I’m obliged to Anfim Efimovich for a countless number of things, I’m roundly in debt to him, but even if he showered me with gold, if he gave his life for me, it wouldn’t bring me a step closer to him. I have an inborn hostility to people of that alien cast. In practical matters, these enterprising, self-assured, peremptory people are irreplaceable. In matters of the heart, such strutting, mustachioed male self-satisfaction is disgusting. I understand intimacy and life quite differently. But that’s not all. In the moral respect, Anfim reminds me of another, far more repulsive man, who is to blame for my being this way, thanks to whom I am what I am.”
“I don’t understand. Just how are you? What are you getting at? Explain. You’re the best of all people in the
