Life And Fate

The door opened. He entered an X-ray world of stifling official air and glaring official light. It was a world that existed quite independently of the war, outside it and above it.

He was taken to an empty, stifling room and ordered to strip. The light was as dazzling as a searchlight. A man in a doctor's smock ran his fingers thoughtfully over Krymov's body. Krymov twitched; it was clear that the war and all its thunder could never disturb the methodical work of these shameless fingers…

A dead soldier, a note in his gas-mask that he'd written before the attack: 'I died for the Soviet way of life, leaving behind a wife and six children…' A member of a tank-crew who had burned to death – he had been quite black, with tufts of hair still clinging to his young head… A people's army, many millions strong, marching through bogs and forests, firing artillery and machine-guns…

Calmly and confidently, the fingers went on with their work… They were under enemy fire. Commissar Krymov was shouting: 'Comrade Generalov, do you not want to defend the Soviet Motherland?'

'Turn round! Bend down! Legs apart!'

He was photographed in a soldier's tunic with its collar unbuttoned, full-face and in profile. With almost indecent diligence he pressed his fingerprints onto a sheet of paper. Someone bustled up, removed his belt and cut off his trouser buttons.

He went up in a brightly lit lift and walked down a long carpeted corridor, past a row of doors with round spy holes. They were like the wards of a cancer clinic. The air was warm. It was government air, lit by a mad electric light. This was a Radiological Institute for the Diagnosis of Society…

'Who had me arrested?'

He could hardly even think in this blind, stifling air. Reality and delirium, past and future, were wrestling with each other. He had lost his sense of identity… Did I ever have a mother? Maybe not, maybe I never had one. Zhenya no longer mattered. Stars caught in the tops of pine-trees, the ford over the Don, a green German flare, Workers of the World Unite, there must be people behind each door, I'll remain a Communist to my death, my head's buzzing, did Grekov really fire at me? Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev, the President of the Comintern, walked down this same corridor, what close, suffocating air, damn this blinding light… Grekov fired at me, the man from the Special Section punched me in the jaw, the Germans fired at me, what will happen tomorrow, I swear I'm not guilty, I need a piss, the old men singing songs at Spiridonov's were quite splendid, the Cheka, the Cheka, the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky had been the first master of this house, then Heinrich Yagoda, then Menzhinsky, then that little proletarian from Petersburg, Nikolay Ivanovich Yezhov with the green eyes – and now kind, intelligent Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria… Yes, we've already met – greetings to you! What was it we sang? 'Stand up, proletarian, and fight for your cause!' But I'm not guilty, I need a piss, they're not really going to shoot me, are they…?

How strange it was to walk down this long, straight corridor. Life itself was so confusing – with all its winding paths, its bogs, streams and ravines, its dust-covered steppes, its unharvested corn… You squeezed your way through or made long detours – but fate ran straight as an arrow. Just corridors and corridors and doors in corridors.

Krymov walked at an even pace, neither quick nor slow – as though the guard was walking in front of him, not behind him.

Something had happened. Something had changed the moment he set foot in this building.

'A geometrical arrangement of points,' he had said to himself as he had his fingerprints taken. He hadn't understood these words, but they expressed what had happened.

He was losing himself. If he had asked for water, he would have been given something to drink. If he had collapsed with a heart attack, a doctor would have given him the appropriate injection. But he was no longer Krymov; he didn't understand this yet, but he could feel it. He was no longer the comrade Krymov who could dress, eat lunch, buy a cinema ticket, think, go to bed – and remain the same person. What distinguished him from everyone else was his soul, his mind, his articles in The Communist International, the fact that he had joined the Party before the Revolution, his various personal habits, the different tones of voice he adopted when he talked to Komsomol members, secretaries of Moscow raykoms, workers, old Party members, friends of his and petitioners. His body was still like any other body; his thoughts and movements were still like anyone else's thoughts and movements; but his essence, his freedom and dignity had disappeared.

He was taken into a cell – a rectangle with a clean parquet floor and four bunks. The blankets on the bunks had been pulled tight and there were no creases. He at once felt that three human beings were looking with human interest at a fourth human being.

They were people. He didn't know whether they were good or bad, whether they would be hostile, indifferent or welcoming. All he knew was that their feelings were human feelings.

He sat down on the empty bunk. The three men watched him in silence. They were sitting on their bunks with open books on their knees. Everything he had lost came back to him.

One of the men was quite massive. He had a craggy face and a mass of Beethoven-like curls – some of them quite grey – that swept down over his low, bulging forehead. The second was an old man. His hands were as white as paper, his skull was bald and gaunt, and his face was like a metal bas-relief. What flowed in his veins and arteries might have been snow rather than blood. The third, Krymov's neighbour, had just taken off his spectacles and had a red mark on the bridge of his nose. He looked kind, friendly and unhappy. He pointed at the door, gave a faint smile and shook his head. Krymov understood: the guard was still looking through the spy-hole and they should keep quiet.

The man with the dishevelled hair spoke first.

'Well,' he said in a good-natured drawl, 'on behalf of our community let me welcome the armed forces. Where have you just come from, comrade?'

' Stalingrad,' said Krymov with an embarrassed smile.

'Oh! I'm glad to meet someone who's taken part in our heroic resistance. Welcome to our hut!'

'Do you smoke?' the white-faced old man asked hurriedly.

'Yes.'

The old man nodded and stared at his book.

'It's because I let the two of them down,' Krymov's kindly neighbour explained. 'I said I didn't smoke. Otherwise they could have had my ration themselves. But tell me – how long is it since you left Stalingrad?'

'I was there this morning.'

'I see,' said the giant. 'You were brought here by Douglas?'

'That's right.'

'Tell us about Stalingrad. We haven't managed to get any papers yet.'

'You must be hungry,' said Krymov's neighbour. 'We've already had supper here.'

'I don't want anything to eat,' replied Krymov. 'And the Germans aren't going to take Stalingrad. That's quite clear.'

'That always was clear,' said the giant. 'The synagogue stands and will continue to stand.'

The old man closed his book with a bang.

'You must be a member of the Communist Party?'

'Yes, I am a Communist.'

'Sh! Sh! You must always whisper,' said Krymov's neighbour.

'Even about being a Party member,' added the giant.

The giant's face seemed familiar. Finally Krymov remembered him. He was a famous Moscow compere. He and Zhenya had once seen him on stage during a concert in the Hall of Columns.

The door opened. A guard looked in.

'Anyone whose name begins with K?'

'Yes,' answered the giant. 'Katsenelenbogen.'

He got up, brushed back his dishevelled hair with one hand and walked unhurriedly to the door.

'He's being interrogated,' whispered Krymov's neighbour.

'Why 'Anyone whose name begins with K'?'

'It's a rule of theirs. Yesterday the guard called out, 'Any Katsenelenbogen whose name begins with K?' It was quite funny. He's a bit cracked.'

'Yes, we had a good laugh,' said the old man.

'I wonder what they put you inside for,' thought Krymov. And then: 'My name begins with ? too.'