Savostyanov's bright, laughing eyes were for once quite serious. They even seemed to be a different colour.
'Thank you, thank you, my friend,' said Viktor. 'I'm grateful to you for your concern.'
An hour later Sokolov said:
'Viktor Pavlovich, there's going to be an open meeting of the Scientific Council next week. I think you should say something.'
'What about?'
'I think you need to make some explanations. To be more precise, you must make a confession of error.'
Viktor paced up and down the room. Suddenly he stopped by the window, his eyes on the door.
'What if I write a letter, Pyotr Lavrentyevich? That would be easier than spitting at myself in public.'
'No, I think you need to make a speech. I spoke to Svechin yesterday. He led me to understand that they…' Sokolov made a vague gesture in the direction of the cornice above the door, 'require a speech rather than a letter.'
Viktor turned round to face Sokolov.
'No, I'm not going to make a speech and I'm not going to write a letter.'
In the patient voice of a psychiatrist talking to someone mentally ill, Sokolov said:
'Viktor Pavlovich, for you to remain silent is the equivalent of suicide. There are political accusations hanging over your head.'
'You know what torments me most of all?' said Viktor. 'Why does all this have to happen at a moment of victory, a moment of general rejoicing? Now any son of a bitch can say that I openly attacked the foundations of Leninism at a time when I imagined the Soviet regime was about to collapse. As though I attacked people when they were down.'
'I have heard that opinion expressed.'
'No,' said Viktor. 'To hell with it. I'm not going to repent.'
That night he locked himself in his room and began to write the letter. Suddenly overwhelmed with shame, he tore it up – and began writing the text of his speech to the Scientific Council. He then read it over, thumped his elbow on the table, and tore that up too.
'Well that's it!' he said out loud. 'If they want to arrest me, they can.'
He sat there for a while without moving, mulling over the import of this decision. Then he had the idea of writing a rough draft of the letter he would have sent if he had repented. There was nothing humiliating about that. No one would ever see it. No one.
He was alone, the door was locked, everyone in the house was asleep, and it was quiet outside. There was no traffic, no car horns.
But an invisible force was crushing him. He could feel its weight, its hypnotic power; it was forcing him to think as it wanted, to write as it dictated. This force was inside him; it could dissolve his will and cause his heart to stop beating; it came between him and his family; it insinuated itself into his past, into his childhood memories. He began to feel that he really was untalented and boring, someone who wore out the people around him with dull chatter. Even his work seemed to have grown dull, to be covered with a layer of dust; the thought of it no longer filled him with light and joy.
Only people who have never felt such a force themselves can be surprised that others submit to it. Those who have felt it, on the other hand, feel astonished that a man can rebel against it even for a moment – with one sudden word of anger, one timid gesture of protest.
It was for himself that Viktor wrote this letter. He intended to hide it away and never show it to anyone. Deep down, though, he knew that it might come in useful. He would hang on to it.
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.