was smeared with sticky blood and sat there, hunched up, resigned, taking her first involuntary steps towards the realization that Tolya no longer existed.
The people in the hospital had been struck by her calm and the number of questions she had asked. They hadn't appreciated her inability to understand something quite obvious – that Tolya was no longer among the living. Her love was so strong that Tolya's death was unable to affect it: to her, he was still alive.
She was mad, but no one had noticed. Now, at last, she had found Tolya. Her joy was like that of a mother-cat when she finds her dead kitten and licks it all over.
A soul can live in torment for years and years, even decades, as it slowly, stone by stone, builds a mound over a grave; as it moves towards the apprehension of eternal loss and bows down before reality.
The soldiers finished their work and left; the sun had nearly gone down; the shadows of the plywood boards over the graves lengthened. Lyudmila was alone.
She ought to tell Tolya's relatives about his death. Above all, she must tell his father in the camp. His father. And what had Tolya been thinking about before the operation? Had they fed him with a spoon? Had he been able to sleep a little on his side? Or on his back? He liked water with lemon and sugar. How was he lying right now? Was he shaven or unshaven?
It must be the unbearable pain in her soul that was making everything darker and darker.
She suddenly felt that her grief would last for ever; Viktor would die, her daughter's grandchildren would die – and she would still be grieving.
When her anguish grew unbearable, the boundary between her inner world and the real world again dissolved; eternity retreated before her love.
Why should she give the news of Tolya's death to his father, to Viktor, to her other relatives? After all, she didn't yet know for sure. Perhaps it would be better to wait; things might turn out differently.
'Don't tell anyone,' she whispered. 'No one knows yet. It will be all right.'
Lyudmila covered Tolya's feet with the hem of her coat. She took off her shawl and laid it over her son's shoulders.
'Heavens! What are you doing? Why haven't they given you any blankets? You really must have something over your feet.'
She fell into delirium, talking to her son, scolding him for writing such short letters. Sometimes she woke up and adjusted the shawl; it had been blown aside by the wind.
How good that they were alone together, that there was no one to disturb them. No one had ever loved him. People had always said he was ugly: that he had swollen lips; that he was very strange; that he was ridiculously touchy and quick-tempered. No one had ever loved her either; the people close to her saw only her failings… My poor boy, my poor, timid, clumsy little son… He was the only person who loved her – and now he was alone with her in the cemetery at night; he would never leave her; he would still love her when she was a useless old woman who got in everyone's way… How ill adapted he was to life. He never asked for anything; he was always absurdly shy. The schoolmistress said he was the laughing-stock of the school; the boys all teased him till he was quite beside himself and began to cry like a little child. Tolya, Tolya, don't leave me alone.
Day dawned. An icy red glow flared up over the steppes east of the Volga. A truck rumbled down the road.
Her madness had passed. She was sitting beside her son's grave. His body was covered with earth. He was dead.
She could see her dirty fingers and a shawl of hers lying on the ground; her legs had grown numb: she could feel that her face was smeared with dirt. Her throat tickled.
But none of this mattered. And if someone had told her that the war was over or that her daughter had just died, if a glass of hot milk or a piece of warm bread had suddenly appeared beside her, she wouldn't have stirred; she wouldn't have stretched out her hands or made any movement. She was sitting there without thought, without anxiety. Nothing mattered to her; there was nothing she needed. All that existed was some agonizing force that was crushing her heart and pressing against her temples. A doctor in a white smock and some other people from the hospital were talking about Tolya; she could see their mouths open, but she couldn't hear what they said. A letter was lying on the ground. It had fallen out of her coat-pocket. It was the letter she had received from the hospital, but she didn't want to pick it up or shake the dust off it. She was no longer thinking about how, when he was two, Tolya had waddled clumsily after a grasshopper as it jumped from spot to spot; it didn't matter that she'd forgotten to ask whether he had lain on his side or on his back on the last day of his life. She could see the light of day; she was unable not to see it.
Suddenly she remembered Tolya's third birthday: in the evening they had had tea and pastries and Tolya had asked: 'Mummy, why's it dark when today's my birthday?'
She could see some trees, the polished gravestones shining in the sun and the board with her son's name. 'shaposhn' was written in big letters, while 'ikov' was written very small, each letter clinging to the one before. She had no thoughts and no will. She had nothing.
She got up, picked up the letter, flicked a lump of earth off her coat with numb fingers, wiped her shoes and shook her coat until it was white again. She put on her shawl, using the hem to wipe the dust off her eyebrows and clean the blood from her lips and chin. With even steps and without looking round, she began to walk towards the gates.
34
After her return to Kazan, Lyudmila began to lose weight; soon she began to look like photographs of herself as a student. She went to the store to collect the family's rations; she prepared meals; she stoked the stove; she cleaned the floors and did the washing. The autumn days seemed very long; she could find nothing to fill their emptiness.
On the day she got back she told her family all about her journey and her feelings of guilt towards everyone close to her. She described her visit to the hospital and unwrapped the parcel containing the bloodstained shreds of her son's uniform. Nadya cried; Alexandra Vladimirovna breathed heavily; Viktor's hands trembled so much he couldn't even pick up a glass of tea. Marya Ivanovna had rushed in to visit Lyudmila; she turned pale, her mouth fell open and a martyred expression appeared in her eyes. Lyudmila was the only person able to speak calmly, looking around her with her bright, wide-open, light blue eyes.
She had always been very argumentative, but now she no longer argued with anyone; in the past one had only had to direct someone to the station for Lyudmila to fly into a temper and excitedly start to prove that they should take a different street and quite another trolley-bus.
One day Viktor asked her: 'Lyudmila, who is it you talk to at night?'
'I don't know,' she answered. 'Perhaps I'm just dreaming.'
He didn't question her further, but he told Alexandra Vladimirovna that almost every night Lyudmila opened some suitcases, spread a blanket over the sofa in the corner and began talking in a quiet, anxious voice.
'I get the feeling that during the daytime she's with you and me and Nadya in a dream, while at night her voice comes alive again like it was before the war,' he said. 'I think she's ill. She's become someone else.'
'I don't know,' said Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'We're all of us suffering, each in our own way.'
Their conversation was cut short by a knock at the front door. Viktor got up to answer it, but Lyudmila called, 'I'll go,' from the kitchen.
No one could understand why, but they had all noticed that since her return from Saratov, Lyudmila had been checking the letter-box several times a day. And whenever there was a knock at the door, she rushed to answer it.
Viktor and Alexandra Vladimirovna looked at each other as they listened to Lyudmila's hurried steps – she was almost running.
Then they heard her say in an exasperated tone of voice: 'No, we haven't got anything today. And don't come so often. I gave you half a kilo of bread only the day before yesterday.'
