mended the windows.' Vanya and Grisha were in the air force: there must have been Soviet air-raids. Later in the same letter she wrote: 'It rained just like in Bakhmach.' That was another way of saying the same thing – at the beginning of the war the railway station at Bakhmach had been bombed.
That evening a tall, thin old man came to see Khristya. He looked Semyonov up and down and said, with no trace of a Ukrainian accent:
'Where are you from, young man?'
'I was a prisoner.'
'We're all of us prisoners now.'
The old man had served in the artillery under Tsar Nikolay and he could recall the commands with astonishing accuracy. He began to rehearse them in front of Semyonov, giving the commands in Russian, in a hoarse voice, and then reporting their execution in a young, ringing voice with a Ukrainian accent. He had obviously remembered his own voice and that of his commanding officer as they had sounded years ago.
Then he began abusing the Germans. He told Semyonov that people had hoped they would do away with the
'Why do you say that?' asked Semyonov. 'Of course there are
'You be quiet!' said the old woman. 'Remember what you were like when you first arrived? Well, in 1930 the whole of the Ukraine was like that. When there were no more nettles, we ate earth… Every last grain of corn was taken away. My man died. As for me – I couldn't walk, my whole body swelled up, I lost my voice…'
Semyonov was astonished that old Khristya could once have starved just like he had. He had imagined hunger and death to be powerless before the mistress of the good hut.
'Were you kulaks?' he asked.
'What do you mean? Everyone was dying. It was worse than the war.'
'Are you from the country?' asked the old man.
'No, I was born in Moscow and so was my father.'
'Well,' said the old man, 'if you'd been here during collectivization, you'd have kicked the bucket in no time. You know why I stayed alive? Because I know plants. And I'm not talking about things like acorns, linden leaves, goosefoot and nettles. They all went in no time. I know fifty-six plants a man can eat. That's how I stayed alive. It was barely spring, there wasn't a leaf on the trees – and there was I digging up roots. I know everything, brother – every root, every grass, every flower, every kind of bark. Cows, sheep and horses can die of hunger – but not me. I'm more herbivorous than any of them.'
'You're from Moscow?' said Khristya very slowly. 'I hadn't realized you were from Moscow.'
The old man left and Semyonov went to bed. Khristya sat there, her head in her hands, gazing into the black night sky.
There had been a fine harvest in 1930. The wheat stood like a tall, thick wall. It was taller than she was. It came right up to the shoulders of her Vasily…
A low wailing hung over the village; the little children kept up a constant, barely audible whine as they crawled about like living skeletons. The men wandered aimlessly around the yards, exhausted by hunger, barely able to breathe, their feet swollen. The women went on searching for something to eat, but everything had already gone - nettles, acorns and linden leaves, uncured sheepskins, old bones, hooves and horns that had been lying around on the ground…
Meanwhile the young men from the city went from house to house, hardly glancing at the dead and the dying, searching cellars, digging holes in barns, prodding the ground with iron bars… They were searching for the grain hidden away by the kulaks.
One sultry day Vasily Chunyak had breathed his last breath. Just then the young men from the city had come back to the hut. One of them, a man with blue eyes and an accent just like Semyonov's, had walked up to the corpse and said:
'They're an obstinate lot, these kulaks. They'd rather die than give in.'
Khristya gave a sigh, crossed herself and laid out her bedding.
51
Viktor had expected his work to be appreciated by only a narrow circle of theoretical physicists. In fact, people were constantly telephoning him – and not only physicists, but also mathematicians and chemists whom he hadn't even met. Often they asked him to clarify certain points; his equations were of some complexity.
Delegates from one of the student societies came to the Institute to ask him to give a lecture to final-year students of physics and mathematics; he gave two lectures at the Academy itself. Markov and Savostyanov said that his work was being discussed in most of the Institute's laboratories. In the special store, Lyudmila overheard an exchange between the wives of two scientists: 'Where are you in the queue?' 'Behind Shtrum's wife.'
Viktor was by no means indifferent to this sudden fame – though he tried not to show it. The Scientific Council of the Institute decided to nominate his work for a Stalin Prize. Viktor didn't attend the meeting himself, but that evening he couldn't take his eyes off the phone; he was waiting for Sokolov to say what had happened. The first person to speak to him, however, was Savostyanov.
With not even a trace of his usual mockery or cynicism, Savostyanov repeated: 'It's a triumph, a real triumph!'
Academician Prasolov had said that the walls of the Institute had seen no work of such importance since the research of his late friend Lebedev on the pressure of light. Professor Svechin had talked about Viktor's mathematics, showing that there was an innovative element even in his methods. He had said that it was only the Soviet people who were capable of devoting their energy so selflessly to the service of the people at a time of war. Several other men, Markov among them, had spoken, but the most striking and forceful words of all had been Gurevich's.
'He's a good man,' said Savostyanov. 'He didn't hold back – he said what needed to be said. He called your work a classic, of the same importance as that of the founders of atomic physics, Planck, Bohr and Fermi.'
'That is saying something,' thought Viktor.
Sokolov phoned immediately afterwards.
'It's impossible to get through to you today. The line's been engaged for the last twenty minutes.'
He too was excited and enthusiastic.
'I forgot to ask Savostyanov how the voting went,' said Viktor.
Sokolov explained that Professor Gavronov, a specialist in the history of physics, had voted against Viktor; in his view Viktor's work lacked a true scientific foundation, was influenced by the idealist views of Western physicists and held out no possibilities of practical application.
'It might even help to have Gavronov against it,' said Viktor.
'Maybe,' agreed Sokolov.
Gavronov was a strange man. He was referred to in jest as 'The Slav Brotherhood', on account of the fanatical obstinacy with which he tried to link all the great achievements of physics to the work of Russian scientists. He ranked such little-known figures as Petrov, Umov and Yakovlev higher than Faraday, Maxwell and Planck.
Finally, Sokolov said jokingly:
'You see, Viktor Pavlovich, Moscow 's recognized the importance of your work. Soon we'll be banqueting in your house.'
Marya Ivanovna then took the receiver from Sokolov and said:
'Congratulations to both you and Lyudmila Nikolaevna. I'm so happy for you.'
'It's nothing,' said Viktor, 'vanity of vanities.'
Nevertheless, that vanity both excited and moved him.
