Sometimes he took his mother's letter out of his desk and read it through again.
'Vitya, I'm certain this letter will reach you, even though I'm now behind the German front line, behind the barbed wire of the Jewish ghetto… Where can I find the strength, my son…?'
And once more he felt a cold blade against his throat.
20
Lyudmila Nikolaevna took an official envelope out of the letter-box.
She rushed into her room; holding the envelope up to the light, she tore off one corner of the coarse paper.
For a moment she thought that photographs of Tolya would come pouring out of the envelope – of Tolya when he was tiny, still unable to hold up his head, lying naked on a pillow, pouting his lips and waving his little legs in the air like a bear-cub.
In some incomprehensible manner, hardly reading the words, but somehow absorbing, almost breathing in, line after line of the red handwriting of some uneducated clerk, she understood: he's alive, he's alive!
She read that Tolya was seriously wounded in the chest and in his side, that he had lost a lot of blood and was too weak to write to her himself, that he had had a fever for four weeks… But her eyes were clouded by tears of happiness – so great was the despair she had felt a moment before.
She went out onto the staircase, read the first lines of the letter and, her mind at rest, walked down to the woodshed. There, in the cold twilight, she read the middle and end of the letter and thought that this was Tolya's final farewell to her.
She began filling a sack with firewood. And – although the doctor in Moscow, at the University Clinic in Gagarin Alley, had ordered her not to lift more than three kilograms and to make only slow, smooth movements – Lyudmila Nikolaevna, grunting like a peasant and without a moment's hesitation, hoisted a sack of wet logs onto her shoulders and climbed straight to the third floor. The plates on the table clattered as she threw down the sack.
Lyudmila put on her coat, threw a scarf over her head and walked downstairs to the street.
People passing by turned round to look at her. She crossed the street; there was the harsh sound of a bell and the tram-driver shook her fist.
If she turned right, there was an alley which would take her to the factory where her mother worked.
If Tolya were to die, no one would ever tell his father… How would they know what camp to look for him in? Maybe he was already dead…
Lyudmila set off to the Institute to see Viktor. As she passed by the Sokolovs', she walked into the yard and knocked at the window. The curtain remained drawn. Marya Ivanovna was out.
'Viktor Pavlovich has just gone to his office,' said a voice. Lydumila said thank you without knowing who had just spoken to her – whether it was a man or a woman, whether it was someone she knew or someone she didn't know – and walked through to the laboratory hall. As usual, hardly anyone was actually working. The men always seemed to be chatting or reading and smoking, while the women were always knitting, boiling tea in chemical retorts, or removing their nail-varnish.
She was aware of everything, all kinds of trivia, even the paper with which an assistant was rolling himself a cigarette.
In Viktor's office she was given a noisy welcome. Sokolov rushed up to her, waving a large white envelope, and said: 'There's a ray of hope. We may be re-evacuated to Moscow, together with our families and all our gear and apparatus. Not bad, eh? Admittedly, the dates haven't been fixed yet. But still!'
His animated face and eyes were quite hateful. Surely Marya Ivanovna wouldn't have come running up to her like that? No, no. Marya Ivanovna would have understood straight away – she would have been able to read Lyudmila's face.
If she'd known she'd see so many happy faces, she'd never have come to see Viktor. He too would be bubbling with joy, and in the evening he would share this joy of his with Nadya – yes, now at last they would be leaving this hateful Kazan!
Would all the people in the world be worth the young blood that was the price of this joy?
She looked reproachfully at her husband. And Viktor's eyes looked with anxiety and understanding into hers, which were full of gloom.
When they were finally alone, he said he'd realized at once that something terrible had happened. He read through the letter and said: 'What can we do? Dear God, what can we do?'
Then he put on his coat and they walked out towards the exit.
'I won't be back today,' he said to Sokolov.
Sokolov was standing next to Dubyonkov, the recently appointed director of the personnel department, a tall round-headed man in a fashionable, broad-fitting jacket that was still too narrow for his wide shoulders.
Letting go of Lyudmila's hand for a moment, Viktor said to Dubyonkov in an undertone: 'We were going to start on the Moscow re-evacuation lists, but it will have to wait. I'll explain why afterwards.'
'Don't worry, Viktor Pavlovich,' said Dubyonkov in his bass voice. 'There's no hurry. They're just plans for the future. Anyway I can do all the basic work by myself.'
Sokolov waved and nodded his head. Viktor knew he had already guessed that another tragedy had befallen him.
There was a cold wind out on the street. It picked up the dust, whirled it about and suddenly scattered it, flinging it down like black chaff. There was an implacable severity in the frost, in the branches that tapped together like bones, in the icy blue of the tram-lines.
Viktor's wife turned her thin, cold face towards him. It had grown younger from suffering. She looked at him fixedly, entreatingly.
Once they had had a young cat. As she was giving birth to her first litter, there had been one kitten she hadn't been able to get out. As she was dying, she had crawled up to Viktor and cried, staring at him with wide, bright eyes. But who was there in this vast empty sky, on this pitiless, dusty earth – who was there to beg or entreat?
'There's the hospital where I used to work,' said Lyudmila.
'Lyuda,' said Viktor suddenly, 'Why don't you go in? They'll be able to locate the field hospital for you. Why didn't I think of that before?'
He watched Lyudmila climb up the steps and explain herself to the janitor.
Viktor walked round the corner and then paced back to the main entrance. People were rushing along with their string bags; inside them were glass jars full of grey potatoes or bits of macaroni in a grey soup.
'Vitya,' his wife called out. He could tell from her voice that she had regained her self-possession.
'So,' she said, 'he's in Saratov. The assistant medical director happens to have been there not long ago. He's written down the address for me.'
At once there was a mass of things to do and problems to sort out. She needed to know when the steamer left and how she could get a ticket; she'd need to pack some food and borrow some money; and somehow she'd have to get an official authorization…
Lyudmila Nikolaevna left with no food, none of her things, and almost no money; in the general confusion and bustle of embarkation she made her way onto the deck without a ticket.
All she took with her was the memory of parting with her husband, her mother and Nadya on a dark autumn evening. Black waves lapped noisily against the sides of the boat. A fierce wind blew from downstream, howling and flinging up spray from the river.
21
