'Our fathers were much rougher with their children,' Mashuk said thoughtfully.
'But they still loved them,' said Galina's brother.
'Yes, of course they did. But they beat them too. At least they did me.'
'I've just remembered how my father went off to the war in 1915,' said Getmanov. 'No joking – he became a non-commissioned officer and was twice awarded the Cross of St George. It was early in the morning and my mother got everything ready for him: she put a sweater, some foot-cloths, some hard-boiled eggs and some bread in a bag while my sister and I lay there in bed, watching him sitting at table for the last time. He filled the water bucket that stood by the door and chopped lots of wood. My mother remembered every moment.'
Then, glancing at his watch, he said: 'Oho!'
'So, tomorrow's the day,' said Sagaydak as he got up.
'The plane leaves at seven.'
'From the civil airport?' asked Mashuk.
Getmanov nodded.
'So much the better,' said Nikolay Terentyevich as he too stood up. 'It's fifteen kilometres to the military airport.'
'What can that matter to a soldier?' said Getmanov.
They began saying goodbye, laughing again, embracing and generally making a stir. When they all had their hats and coats on and were standing out in the corridor, Getmanov remarked: 'A soldier can harden himself to anything. He can warm himself with smoke and shave with an awl. But what a soldier can never get used to is living apart from his children.'
And it was clear from his expression and tone of voice, from the way his guests looked at him as they went out, that he meant this.
22
It was night. Getmanov was in uniform, sitting at his desk and writing. His wife was sitting beside him in her dressing-gown and watching. He folded up a letter and said: 'That's to the director of the regional health authority in case you need special treatment or you have to travel somewhere for a consultation. He'll make out a certificate and then your brother can fix you up with a travel permit.'
'Have you made out the warrant for obtaining rations?'
'There's no need to. Just ring the person responsible at the obkom. Or even better, ring Puzichenko himself – he'll make one out for you.'
He went through the little pile of letters, notes and warrants. 'Well, that seems like everything.'
They fell silent.
'I'm afraid for you, my love,' said Galina. 'You're going to the war.'
'You just take care of yourself and look after the children,' he replied, getting to his feet. 'Did you remember to put some cognac in my suitcase?'
'Yes, yes. Do you remember – two years ago, when you were about to fly to Kislovodsk? Early in the morning you were writing out warrants – just like today.'
'Now the Germans are in Kislovodsk,' said Getmanov.
He walked up and down the room and then stopped for a moment to listen. 'Are they asleep?'
'Of course.'
They went through to the children's room. It was strange how silently these huge figures moved in the semi-darkness. The heads of the sleeping children showed up dark against the white of the pillowcases. Getmanov listened attentively to their breathing.
He held his hand to his chest, afraid that his booming heart-beats would disturb the children. He felt a piercing ache of tenderness, anxiety and pity for them. He desperately wanted to embrace his son and daughters and kiss their sleeping faces. He was overwhelmed by a helpless tenderness, an unreasoning love; he felt lost, weak and confused.
He wasn't in the least worried or frightened at the thought of the new job he was about to begin. He had taken on many new jobs, and had never had difficulty in finding the correct line to follow. He knew it would be the same in the tank corps.
But how could he reconcile his unshakeable, iron severity with this limitless tenderness and love?
He looked round at his wife. She was standing beside him, resting her cheek on her hand like a peasant. In the half-light her face seemed younger and thinner – just as it had been when they had gone to the sea on their honeymoon and stayed in a hostel right on the cliffs.
There was a discreet hoot beneath the window – the car from the obkom. Getmanov turned once more towards his children and spread out his hands – expressing through this gesture his impotence before a feeling he was unable to control.
In the corridor he said goodbye, kissed his wife for the last time and put on his fur coat and cap. Then he stood and waited while the driver carried out his cases.
'Well then,' he said – and suddenly stepped up to his wife, removed his cap and embraced her once more. And this second farewell – with the cold damp air off the streets slipping in through the half-open door and blending with the warmth of the house, with the rough, tanned hide of his coat touching the sweet-scented silk of her dressing-gown – this final farewell made them feel that their life, which had seemed one, had suddenly split apart. They felt desolate.
23
Yevgenia Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova, Lyudmila's younger sister, had moved to Kuibyshev. She was living with an old German woman, Jenny Genrikhovna, who years before had worked for the Shaposh-nikov family as a governess.
Yevgenia found it strange, after Stalingrad, to be sharing a small, quiet room with an old woman who never ceased marvelling at how a little girl with plaits could have turned into a grown woman.
Jenny Genrikhovna's gloomy little cubby-hole had once been part of the servants' quarters of a spacious merchant's flat. Now each room was inhabited by a whole family and was divided up by screens, curtains, rugs and the backs of sofas into little nooks and corners – one for eating, one for sleeping, one for receiving guests, another for the nurse to give injections to a paralysed old man…
In the evening the kitchen fairly hummed with the voices of all the inmates.
Yevgenia Nikolaevna liked this kitchen with its sooty ceiling and the dark red flames of the oil-stoves. People in dressing-gowns, padded jackets and soldiers' tunics bustled about below clothes that had been hung up to dry. Knives gleamed. Clouds of steam rose from tubs and bowls full of washing. The ample stove was no longer in use; the Dutch tiles lining its sides seemed cold and white – like the snow-covered slopes of some long-extinct volcano.
The tenants of the flat included the family of a docker who was now at the front, a gynaecologist, an engineer from an armaments factory, a single mother who worked as a cashier in a store, the widow of a hairdresser who had been killed at the front, the manager of a post-office, and – in what had once been the large dining-room – the director of a surgery.
The flat was as extensive as a town; it even had room in it for its own madman, a quiet little old man with the eyes of a sweet, good-natured puppy.
They were all crowded together and at the same time very isolated. They were always taking offence at one another and then making peace, one moment concealing every detail of their lives, and the next generously and excitedly sharing everything that happened to them.
Yevgenia would have liked to draw this flat – not so much the objects and people themselves as the feelings they aroused in her.
There were many facets to these feelings. It seemed unlikely that even a great artist could give expression to them. They arose from the strange incongruity between the tremendous military strength of the Soviet State and this dark kitchen with its poverty, gossip and general pettiness; the incongruity between cold, hard steel and kitchen pots and pans full of potato peelings.
The expression of these feelings would break up every line, distort figures and take the form of some apparently meaningless coupling of fragmented images and patches of light.