'Two days.'
'Really?' said Karimov with a smile. 'Tell me, how long does a letter take?'
'Have a look at the postmark,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna.
Karimov examined the envelope for some time. 'Nine days,' he said in a preoccupied tone of voice. He sat there thoughtfully – as though the slowness of the postal service was a matter of great importance to him.
'They say it's the censors,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'They're quite snowed under.'
Karimov looked at her with his beautiful dark eyes.
'So they're all right, are they? They're not having any problems?'
'You don't look at all well,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'Are you ill?'
'What do you mean? I'm fine!' he replied hurriedly, as though denying some accusation.
They began to talk about the war.
'We've come to a real turning-point now,' said Karimov. 'Even a child can see that.'
'Yes, and last summer it was just as obvious that the Germans were going to win,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna sarcastically.
'Is it very difficult for you on your own?' Karimov asked abruptly. 'I see you have to light the stove yourself.'
Alexandra Vladimirovna frowned – as though this were a question she could only answer after deep thought. Finally she said: 'Akhmet Usmanovich, have you really called on me just to ask if I find it difficult to light the stove?'
Karimov looked down at his hands. He waited for a long time before replying.
'The other day I was summoned to you-know-where. I was questioned about the meetings and conversations we had.'
'Why didn't you tell me that at the beginning?' asked Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'Why did you have to start asking about the stove?'
Trying to catch her eye, Karimov went on:
'Naturally, I was unable to deny that we had talked about politics and the war. It would have been absurd to try and make out that four adults had spoken exclusively about the cinema. Naturally I said that we had always talked like true Soviet patriots. I said we were all of us certain that, under the leadership of comrade Stalin and the Party, the Soviet people would be victorious. In general, the questions weren't particularly hostile. But after a few days I began to worry. I couldn't sleep at all. I began thinking that something must have happened to Viktor Pavlovich. And then there's this strange business with Madyarov. He went off for ten days to the Pedagogical Institute in Kazan. And he still hasn't come back. His students are waiting for him. The dean's sent him a telegram. And not a word. Well, you can imagine what goes through my head at night.'
Alexandra Vladimirovna said nothing.
'Just think,' he went on in a quiet voice, 'you only have to get talking over a glass of tea and everyone's full of suspicion, you get summoned you know where…'
Alexandra Vladimirovna said nothing. Karimov looked at her questioningly, as though inviting her to speak. He realized that she was waiting for him to tell her the rest.
'So there we are,' he said.
Alexandra Vladimirovna still didn't say anything.
'Oh yes,' he said. 'There's one thing I forgot. This comrade asked if we'd ever talked about the freedom of the press. We had indeed. Yes, and then they asked if I knew Lyudmila Nikolaevna's younger sister and her ex- husband… Krymov or something? I've never set eyes on them in my life and Viktor Pavlovich has never so much as mentioned them to me. And that's what I told them. Yes, and then they asked if Viktor Pavlovich had ever talked to me personally about the situation of the Jews. I asked why he should have talked about that to me. They answered: 'You understand. You're a Tartar and he's a Jew…''
Later, after Karimov had put on his hat and coat and was standing in the doorway, tapping the letter-box where Lyudmila had once found the letter telling her that Tolya had been wounded, Alexandra Vladimirovna said: 'It's strange. Why should they ask about Zhenya?'
But neither she nor Karimov had any idea why a Chekist in Kazan should suddenly take an interest in Zhenya, who lived in Kuibyshev, or in her ex-husband, who was now at the front.
People trusted Alexandra Vladimirovna and she had heard many similar stories and confessions. She had grown all too used to feeling that something important had been left unsaid. She didn't see any point in warning Viktor; it would merely cause him fruitless anxiety. Nor was there any point in trying to guess which of the group had talked carelessly or had informed. In situations like this it nearly always turned out to be the person you least suspected. And very often the matter had come to the attention of the NKVD in some quite unexpected manner: through a veiled hint in a letter, a joke, a few careless words in the communal kitchen… But why should the investigator have asked Karimov about Zhenya and Nikolay Gri-gorevich?
That night she was unable to sleep. She wanted something to eat. She could smell food in the kitchen. They must be frying potato-cakes – she could hear the clatter of tin plates and the calm voice of Semyon Ivanovich. God, how hungry she felt! What awful soup they'd served for lunch in the canteen! Now, though, she very much regretted not having finished it. She couldn't even think clearly; her desire for food kept interrupting her train of thought.
On her way in to work next morning she met the director's secretary, a middle-aged woman with an unpleasantly masculine face.
'Comrade Shaposhnikova,' she said, 'come round to my office during the lunch-break.'
Alexandra Vladimirovna felt surprised. Surely the director couldn't already have answered her request for a transfer? She walked through the yard. Suddenly she said out loud:
'I've had enough of Kazan. It's time to go home, to Stalingrad.'
31
Chalb, the head of the military police, had called company commander Lenard to the Headquarters of the 6th Army.
Lenard arrived late. A new order of Paulus's had forbidden the use of petrol for personal transport. All their supplies of fuel were now at the disposition of General Schmidt, the chief of staff. And he'd rather see you die ten deaths than sign you an order for five litres of petrol. There wasn't enough fuel for the officers' cars, let alone for the soldiers' cigarette-lighters.
Lenard had to wait till evening, when he could get a lift with the courier. The small car drove slowly over the frost-covered asphalt. The air was still and frosty; thin wisps of almost transparent smoke rose from the dug-outs and trenches of the front line. There were wounded soldiers walking along the road with towels and bandages round their heads. And then there were other soldiers, also with bandages round their heads and rags round their feet, who were being transferred to the area round the factories.
The driver stopped the car near the corpse of a dead horse and began digging about inside the engine. Lenard watched the anxious, unshaven men hewing off slabs of frozen horsemeat with hatchets. One soldier, standing between the horse's exposed ribs, looked like a carpenter up in the rafters of an unfinished roof. A few yards away, in the middle of a ruined building, was a fire with a black cauldron hanging down from a tripod. Round it stood a group of soldiers wrapped up in shawls and blankets, helmets and forage caps on their heads, tommy-guns and hand-grenades hanging from their shoulders and belts. The cook prodded with his bayonet at the pieces of meat that came to the surface. A soldier sitting on the roof of a dug-out was gnawing at a large bone; it looked for all the world like an improbably vast harmonica.
Suddenly the road and the ruined house were caught in the rays of the setting sun. The empty eye-sockets of the burnt-out building seemed to fill with frozen blood. The ploughed-up, soot-covered snow turned golden. The dark red cave of the horse's innards was lit up. The snow eddying across the road turned into a whirl of bronze.
The light of evening can reveal the essence of a moment. It can bring out its emotional and historical significance, transforming a mere impression into a powerful image. The evening sun can endow patches of soot and mud with thousands of voices; with aching hearts we sense past joys, the irrevocability of loss, the bitterness
