Viktor's eyelids had started to twitch.
'Where can I find faith, strength, determination?'
He was speaking very quickly and with a strong Jewish accent.
'What can I say? You know what's happened – and now I'm being persecuted just because…'
He jumped up without finishing the sentence; his teaspoon fell to the floor. His hands were trembling; his whole body was trembling.
'Calm down, Viktor Pavlovich! Please calm down!' said Chepyzhin. 'Let's talk about something else.'
'No, no, I must go now. I'm sorry. Something's the matter with my head. Forgive me.'
He thanked Chepyzhin and took his leave. Afraid he could no longer control himself, he avoided looking him in the face. There were tears on his cheeks as he went down the stairs.
25
The others were already asleep when Viktor got back. He had the feeling he'd be sitting at his desk until morning, rewriting his letter of repentance and reading it over yet again, trying for the hundredth time to decide whether or not to go into the Institute.
He hadn't been able to think during the long walk home – not even about his tears on the staircase or his abruptly terminated conversation with Chepyzhin; not even about what might happen on the following day or about the letter from his mother in the side-pocket of his jacket. He was under the spell of the silent darkness of the streets; his mind was as vacant and windswept as the deserted alleys of Moscow at night. He felt no emotion: neither shame at his tears nor dread of what was to come, nor even hope that everything would come right in the end.
In the morning, when he wanted to go to the bathroom, he found the door locked from the inside.
'Is that you, Lyudmila?' he called.
He was astonished to hear Yevgenia's voice.
'Heavens! Zhenechka! What's brought you here?' He was so taken aback that he asked stupidly: 'Does Lyuda know that you're here?'
Yevgenia came out. They kissed each other.
'You don't look well,' said Viktor. 'That's what's called a Jewish compliment.'
There and then she told him about Krymov's arrest and the reason for her visit. Viktor was shocked. But after news like that, her visit seemed all the more precious. A bright happy Yevgenia, full of thoughts of her new life, would have seemed less close to him, less dear.
Viktor talked away, asking lots of questions, but continually looking at his watch.
'How senseless and absurd it all is,' he said. 'Just think of all the times I've argued with Nikolay, all the times he's tried to put me right. Now he's in prison – and I'm still at large.'
'Viktor,' interrupted Lyudmila, 'don't forget – the clock in the dining-room's ten minutes slow.'
Viktor muttered something and went off to his room. He looked at his watch twice as he walked down the corridor.
The meeting of the Scientific Council was due to begin at eleven o'clock. Surrounded by his books and other belongings, Viktor had an intensified, almost hallucinatory awareness of the bustle and tension there must be in the Institute. It was half-past ten. Sokolov was taking off his jacket. Savostyanov was whispering to Markov: 'Well, it seems our madman's decided not to show up.' Gurevich was scratching his stout behind and looking out of the window. A limousine was drawing up outside; Shishakov, wearing a hat and a long fur coat, was just getting out. Another car drew up and Badin got out. Kovchenko was going down the corridor. There were already about fifteen people in the hall, all of them looking through newspapers. They'd known it would be crowded and had come early to get a good place. Svechin and Ramskov, the secretary of the Institute Party Committee 'with the stamp of secrecy on his brow', were standing by the door of the Committee office. Old Academician Prasolov was gazing into the air as he floated down the corridor; he always made unbelievably vile speeches at meetings like this. The junior research assistants had formed a large noisy group of their own.
Viktor looked at his watch, took his statement out of the drawer, stuffed it into his pocket, and looked at his watch again.
He could go to the meeting and not say anything… No… If he did go, it would be wrong not to speak – and if he did speak, he would have to repent. But if he didn't go at all, if he just burnt his boats…
Yes, he knew what people would say – 'He didn't have the courage… openly defying the collective… a political challenge… after this we must adopt a different language in dealing with him…' Once again Viktor took his statement out of his pocket and put it back without reading it. He had read these lines dozens of times: 'I have realized that in expressing a lack of confidence in the Party leadership I have behaved in a manner incompatible with what is expected of a Soviet citizen, and therefore… Also, without realizing it, I have deviated in my researches from the central tenets of Soviet science and involuntarily opposed myself…'
Viktor kept wanting to reread his statement, but as soon as he picked it up, every letter of it seemed hatefully familiar… Krymov was in the Lubyanka and he was a Communist. As for Viktor – with his doubts, with his horror of Stalin's cruelty, with all he had said about freedom and bureaucracy, with his lurid political history – he should have been packed off to Kolyma long ago…
These last few days, Viktor had felt more and more frightened: he was sure they were coming to arrest him. There was usually more to an affair like this than just being fired from one's job. First you're taught a lesson, then you're fired – and then you're arrested.
Viktor looked at his watch again. The hall was already full. People were sitting there, looking at the door and whispering: 'Still no Shtrum…' One person said: 'It's already midday and Viktor's still not here.' Shishakov sat down in the chairman's place and put his briefcase on the table. A secretary was standing beside Kovchenko; she had brought him some urgent papers to sign.
Viktor felt crushed by the impatience and irritation of the dozens of people waiting in the hall. There was probably someone waiting in the Lubyanka too; the man in charge of his case was saying to himself: 'Is he really not going to come?' Viktor could see the grim figure from the Central Committee saying: 'So he's chosen not to show up, has he?' He could see people he knew talking to their wives and calling him a lunatic. He knew that Lyudmila resented what he had done: the State that Viktor had challenged was the one that Tolya had given his life for.
Previously, when he had counted the number of his and Lyudmila's relatives who had been arrested and deported, he had reassured himself with the thought: 'At least I can tell them not all my friends are like that. Look at Krymov – he's a close friend and he's an Old Bolshevik who worked in the underground.'
So much for Krymov. Maybe they'd interrogate him in the Lubyanka and he'd tell them all Viktor's heresies. But then Krymov wasn't that close to him – Zhenya and he had divorced. And his conversations with Krymov hadn't been that dangerous – it was only since the beginning of the war that Viktor's doubts had been so pressing. If they spoke to Madyarov, though…
The cumulative force of dozens of pushes and blows, dozens of fierce struggles, seemed to have bent his ribs, to be unstitching the bones of his skull.
As for those senseless words of Doctor Stockmann's: 'He who is alone is strong…!' Was he strong? Looking furtively over his shoulder with the pathetic grimaces of someone from a shtetl, Viktor hurriedly put on his tie, transferred his papers to the pockets of his new jacket and put on his new yellow shoes.
Just then, as he was standing fully-dressed by the table, Lyudmila looked into the room. She walked up to him silently, kissed him and went out again.