Next morning, as he drank his tea, he kept looking at the clock; it was time to go to the laboratory. He felt a chilling sense of isolation. It was as though no one would ever come round to see him again. And it wasn't simply fear that stopped people from ringing him up; it was the fact that he was so dull, so boring and talentless.
'I don't suppose anyone asked for me yesterday,' he said to Lyudmila. Then he quoted the lines: 'I'm alone at the window, I don't expect guests or friends.'
'Oh yes, I forgot to say. Chepyzhin's back. He phoned and said he wants to see you.'
'How could you forget to tell me?' He began to tap out a solemn tune on the table-top.
Lyudmila went over to the window. Viktor was walking unhurriedly down the road – tall, bent forward, giving his briefcase an occasional swing. She could tell that he was thinking about his coming meeting with Chepyzhin. In his imagination, they had already exchanged greetings and were now deep in conversation.
She felt very sorry for Viktor, very anxious about him, but she couldn't forget his faults, least of all his egotism. How could he declaim, 'I'm alone at the window' – and then go off to a laboratory where he had real work to do, where he was surrounded by people? In the evening he'd go and see Chepyzhin; he probably wouldn't be back before midnight. And would he give her a moment's thought? Would it occur to him that she would be alone all day, that she would be standing by the window in an empty flat, that she was the one who wasn't expecting friends or guests?
She went into the kitchen to do the washing-up. She felt more depressed than ever. Marya Ivanovna wouldn't be phoning; she had gone to see her elder sister in Shabolovka.
How anxious she felt about Nadya! She still went out every evening, even though it had been forbidden. And of course she didn't say a word about it. As for Viktor, he was wrapped up in his own troubles. He didn't have time to think of Nadya.
Suddenly the bell rang. It must be the carpenter she had spoken to yesterday. He was coming to repair the door of Tolya's room. Human company – how wonderful!
Lyudmila opened the door. A woman in a grey fur hat was standing in the half-lit corridor, suitcase in hand.
'Zhenya!' she cried.
Her voice was so loud and so tragic that it took even her aback. She kissed her sister, flinging her arms round her shoulders and sobbing: 'He's dead, he's dead. My Tolya's dead.'
22
A thin stream of hot water dribbled into the bath; if you turned the tap any further, the water became cold. The bath was filling very slowly, but the two sisters felt as though they'd hardly had time to exchange a word.
While Yevgenia was in the bath, Lyudmila kept coming to the door and asking: 'Are you all right in there? Do you want me to rub your back for you? Keep an eye on the gas – it might go out.'
A few minutes later she'd be back, banging on the door and asking impatiently: 'What's going on in there? Have you gone to sleep or something?'
Yevgenia came out of the bathroom in her sister's towelling dressing-gown.
'You look like a witch,' said Lyudmila.
Yevgenia remembered how Sofya Osipovna had once called her a witch – on the night of Novikov's visit to Stalingrad.
'It's strange,' she said. 'After two days in a crowded train I've at last had a bath. I feel as though I should be in ecstasy, and yet…'
'What's brought you here so suddenly? Is something wrong?'
'I'll tell you in a moment,' said Yevgenia with a wave of the hand.
Lyudmila told her sister about Viktor's troubles and about Nadya's unexpected and amusing romance; she told her about their friends who no longer rang up and pretended not to recognize Viktor on the street. Yevgenia in turn told Lyudmila about Spiridonov; he was now in Kuibyshev and he wouldn't be offered a new job until the commission had completed its report. Somehow he seemed both noble and pathetic. Vera and her son were in Leninsk; Spiridonov couldn't so much as mention his little grandson without crying. Yevgenia went on to tell how Jenny Gerikhovna had been exiled, how Limonov had helped her to get a residence permit and what a sweet old man Shargorodsky was.
Her head was still full of tobacco smoke, conversations from the journey and the rumble of wheels; it was strange to be looking into her sister's face, to feel the soft dressing-gown against her newly-washed body, to be in a room with a carpet and a piano.
In every word the two sisters said, in all the sad, joyful, absurd or touching events they related, they could sense the presence of friends and family who had died but who would always be bound to them. Whatever they said about Viktor evoked the shade of his mother Anna Semyonovna; Dmitry and his wife, who had both died in camps, loomed behind any mention of their son Seryozha; and Lyudmila herself was always accompanied by the steps of a shy young man with broad shoulders and full lips. But neither of them mentioned any of this out loud.
'I haven't heard any news of Sofya Osipovna. She seems to have vanished into thin air,' said Yevgenia.
'The Levinton woman?'
'Yes, of course.'
'I never did like her… Are you doing any drawing?'
'I did in Stalingrad. But not since I moved to Kuibyshev.'
'Viktor took two of your pictures when we were evacuated. You should be flattered.'
'I am,' said Yevgenia with a smile.
'Well, madam general, you haven't said a word about what matters most of all. Are you happy? Do you love him?'
Fingering her dressing-gown, Yevgenia replied:
'Yes, I am happy. I'm fine. We love each other…'
She glanced quickly at Lyudmila.
'Shall I tell you why I came to Moscow? Nikolay Grigorevich has been arrested. He's in the Lubyanka.'
'Good Lord! What on earth for? He's such a hundred-per-cent Communist.'
'What about our Dmitry? Or your Abarchuk? He was a two-hundred-per-cent Communist.'
'But your Nikolay was so harsh. He was quite ruthless at the time of general collectivization. I remember asking what on earth was happening. And he just said: 'The kulaks can go to the devil for all I care.' He had a lot of influence on Viktor.'
'Lyuda,' said Yevgenia, a reproachful note in her voice, 'you remember only the worst about people and you always bring it up at the wrong moment.'
'What do you expect of me? I've always been one to call a spade a spade.'
'Fine,' said Yevgenia, 'but don't imagine that's always a virtue.'
She lowered her voice to a whisper.
'Lyuda, I was summoned for interrogation.'
She took her sister's scarf and draped it over the telephone. 'Apparently the mouthpieces can be bugged. Yes, I've had to make a statement.'
'You and Nikolay were never officially married, were you?'
'No, but what of it? They interrogated me as though I were his wife. Let me start from the beginning. I was sent a summons to appear at the office and to bring my passport. I went through hundreds of names – Dmitry, Ida, Abarchuk, everyone I knew who'd ever been arrested – but I can tell you I didn't once think of Nikolay. I was told to come at five o'clock. It was just an ordinary office with huge portraits of Stalin and Beria on the wall. The investigator was a very ordinary-looking young man, but he looked straight through me as if he knew everything and said: 'Are you aware of the counter-revolutionary activities of Nikolay Grigorevich Krymov?' Several times I thought I'd never be allowed out of the building. Once – can you imagine it? – he even hinted that Novikov… that I had become involved with Novikov in order to elicit information from him, and report it to Krymov. I felt quite paralysed.
