the ruin of us all.'
Everyone expected a considerable improvement in the position of scientists; Stalin's words about Arakcheev held out great hopes.
A few days later an important botanist was arrested, Chetverikov the geneticist. There were various rumours about the reason for his arrest: that he was a spy; that he had associated with Russian emigres during his journeys abroad; that he had a German wife who had corresponded before the war with her sister in Berlin; that he had tried to instigate a famine by introducing inferior strains of wheat; that it was to do with a remark he had made about 'the finger of God'; that it was on account of a political anecdote he had told to a childhood friend.
Since the beginning of the war there had been relatively little talk of political arrests. Many people, Viktor among them, thought that they were a thing of the past. Now everyone remembered 1937: the daily roll-call of people arrested during the night; people phoning each other up with the news, 'Anna Andreevna's husband has fallen ill tonight'; people answering the phone on behalf of a neighbour who had been arrested and saying, 'He's gone on a journey, we don't know when he'll be back.' And the stories about the circumstances of these arrests: 'they came for him just as he was giving his little boy a bath'; 'they came for him at work… at the theatre… in the middle of the night'; 'the search lasted forty-eight hours, they turned everything upside down, they even took up the floorboards'; 'they hardly looked at anything at all, they just leafed through a few books for show'.
Victor remembered the names of dozens of people who had left and never returned: Academician Vavilov, Vize, Osip Mandelstam, Babel, Boris Pilnyak, Meyerhold, the bacteriologists Korshunov and Zlatogorov, Professor Pletnyov, Doctor Levin…
It wasn't important that these were famous and outstanding people; what mattered was that all those arrested-however famous or however unknown – were innocent.
Was all this going to begin again? Would one's heart sink, even after the war, when one heard footsteps or a car horn during the night?
How difficult it was to reconcile such things with the war for freedom…! Yes, they had been fools to talk so much in Kazan.
A week after Chetverikov's arrest, Chepyzhin announced that he was resigning from the Institute of Physics.
The President of the Academy had called at Chepyzhin's house; apparently Chepyzhin had been summoned by either Beria or Malenkov, but had refused to alter the Institute's research programme. In view of Chepyzhin's services to science, the authorities had been reluctant to resort to extreme measures. Pimenov, the young administrative director who was something of a liberal, was removed from his post at the same time. Shishakov was then appointed both administrative director and scientific director.
It was rumoured that, as a result of all this, Chepyzhin had had a heart attack. Viktor rang him immediately to arrange to go and see him, but the phone was answered by the housekeeper, who said that Dmitry Petrovich really had been ill during the last few days; on his doctor's advice he and Nadezhda Fyodorovna had gone to the country and would not be back for two or three weeks.
'It's like pushing a boy off a tram,' Viktor said to Lyudmila. 'And they call it defending us from Arakcheevs. What does it matter to physics whether Chepyzhin's a Marxist, a Buddhist or a Lamaist? Chepyzhin's founded his own school. Chepyzhin's a friend of Rutherford. Every street-sweeper knows Chepyzhin's equations.'
'That's putting it a bit strongly,' said Nadya.
'And you watch it,' said Viktor. 'Keep your mouth shut or you'll be the ruin of all of us.'
'I know,' said Nadya. 'Your speeches are only for domestic consumption.'
'Yes, my dear Nadya,' said Viktor meekly, 'but what can I do to change decisions taken by the Central Committee? Anyway Dmitry Petrovich himself said he wanted to resign. Even though, as we say, it was 'against the wishes of the people'.'
'You shouldn't get so steamed up about it,' said Lyudmila. 'Besides, you were always arguing with Dmitry Petrovich yourself.'
'There's no true friendship without discussion.'
'That's the trouble,' said Lyudmila. 'You and your discussions. You'll end up having your laboratory taken away from you.'
'That's not what worries me,' said Viktor. 'Nadya's right: my speeches are just for domestic consumption… Why don't you phone Chetverikov's wife? Or go and see her? You're a friend of hers.'
'That simply isn't done,' said Lyudmila. 'Anyway I don't know her that well. How can I help her? Why should she want to see me? Have you ever phoned anyone in that situation?'
'I think one should,' said Nadya.
Viktor frowned. It was Sokolov, not Lyudmila and Nadya, whom he really wanted to talk to about Chepyzhin's resignation. But he he stopped himself – it really wasn't something to discuss on the phone.
It was odd though. Why Shishakov? It was clear that Viktor's latest work was very important. Chepyzhin had said at the Council of Scientists that it was the most important development in Soviet theoretical physics for the last decade. And then they'd gone and put Shishakov in charge of the Institute. Was it a joke? A man who'd seen hundreds of photographs with the trajectories of electrons going off to the left, and had then been shown photographs with the same trajectories going off to the right… It was as though he'd been presented, on a silver plate, with the opportunity to discover the positron. Young Savostyanov would not have missed it. But Shishakov had just pouted and said the photographs must be defective.
What was most amazing of all was that no one was in the least surprised by this sort of thing. Somehow it all seemed quite natural. Viktor's wife and friends, even Viktor himself, all considered it the normal state of affairs. Shishakov was a suitable director, and Viktor was not.
What was it Postoev had said? 'Still, what matters is that we're both Russians.' But then it would be difficult to be more Russian than Chepyzhin.
On his way to the Institute the next morning, Viktor imagined that everyone – from doctors to laboratory assistants – would be talking only of Chepyzhin. By the main entrance to the Institute stood a Zis limousine. The chauffeur, a middle-aged man in glasses, was reading a newspaper. On the staircase Viktor met the old caretaker. That summer they'd had tea together in the laboratory.
'The new director's just arrived,' the old man announced. Then he asked sadly: 'What will become of our Dmitry Petrovich?'
The laboratory assistants were discussing how to set up the equipment that had just arrived from Kazan. There were piles of large boxes in the main hall. The new apparatus from the Urals had also arrived. Nozdrin was standing beside a huge crate. Viktor thought he looked very arrogant.
Perepelitsyn was hopping around the crate on his one leg, holding his crutch under his armpit.
'Look, Viktor Pavlovich!' said Anna Stepanovna, pointing at the boxes.
'Even a blind man could see all this,' said Perepelitsyn.
Anna Stepanovna, however, hadn't really been referring to the crates.
'I see,' said Viktor. 'Of course I see.'
'The workers will be arriving in an hour's time,' said Nozdrin. 'Professor Markov and I have made the arrangements.' He spoke in the calm, slow voice of someone who knows he's the boss. This was his hour of glory.
Viktor went into his office. Markov and Savostyanov were sitting on the sofa, Sokolov was standing by the window, and Svechin, the head of the magnetic laboratory next door, was sitting at the desk and rolling a cigarette.
He stood up as Viktor came in.
' 'This is the boss's chair.'
'No, no, sit down,' said Viktor. 'What are we discussing at the conference?'
'The special stores,' said Markov. 'Apparently Academicians will be allowed to spend fifteen hundred roubles, while us lesser mortals will only be allowed five hundred roubles – the same as People's Artists and great poets like Lebedev-Kumach.'
'We're beginning to set up the equipment,' said Viktor, 'and Dmitry Petrovich is no longer here. The house is burning, but the clock still keeps time, as the saying goes.'
No one responded to this change of subject.
'My cousin passed by yesterday on his way back from hospital to the front,' said Savostyanov. 'We wanted to
