Old Jenny Genrikhovna was a meek, timid, obliging creature. She wore a black dress with a white collar and, in spite of her constant hunger, her cheeks were always rosy.
Her head was full of memories of Lyudmila's pranks when she was still in the first form, of amusing phrases little Marusya had once come out with, of how two-year-old Dmitry had once come into the dining-room in his pinafore and shouted out: 'Munch-time, munch-time!'
Now Jenny Genrikhovna worked as a daily help in the home of a dentist, looking after her sick mother. Sometimes the dentist would travel round the region for five or six days. Then Jenny would spend the night in her house to look after the old woman; she had recently had a stroke and was barely able to walk.
Jenny lacked any sense of property – she was constantly apologizing to Yevgenia and asking her permission to open the small upper window in order to let in her elderly tabby cat. Her main interests and worries were centred around this cat and how to protect it from her neighbours.
One of these neighbours, an engineer called Dragin, who was in charge of a workshop at his factory, looked with cruel mockery at her wrinkled face, her girlishly slim, emaciated waist and her pince-nez. His plebeian soul was indignant that the old woman should remain devoted to her memories of the past; indignant that she should continue, an idiotically blissful smile on her face, to tell stories about taking her pre-revolutionary charges out in the pram, or accompanying 'Madame' to Venice, Paris or Vienna. Many of the 'little ones' she had cared for had fought with Denikin or Wrangel during the Civil War and had been killed by the Red Army. The old woman, however, remained interested only in how they had once languished in bed with scarlet fever, diphtheria or colitis.
'I've never met anyone so gentle and so forgiving,' Yevgenia told Dragin. 'Believe me, she's a better person than any of the rest of us here in the flat.'
'Sweet little dicky bird!' said Dragin with a laugh. He looked her brazenly in the eye. 'You've sold yourself to the Germans, comrade Shaposhnikova – just for somewhere to live.'
Jenny Genrikhovna was evidently less fond of healthy children. She talked most often of all about the very sickliest of her charges, the son of a Jewish factory-owner. She still kept his exercise-books and drawings and would burst into tears each time she reached the point of describing the death of this quiet little boy.
It was many years since she had lived with the Shaposhnikovs, but she still remembered the names and nicknames of all the children. When she heard of Marusya's death she cried. She was always scrawling a letter to Alexandra Vladimirovna, but could never finish it.
She referred to caviare by its French rather than its Russian name and she told Yevgenia how her pre-revolutionary charges had breakfasted on a cup of strong broth and a slice of venison.
She fed her own rations to the cat, whom she called 'my dear, silver child.' The cat adored her; he was a rough and sullen beast, but would become suddenly animated and affectionate when he saw her.
Dragin kept asking her what she thought of Hitler. 'You must be happy now,' he would say. But the old woman shrewdly declared herself an anti-Fascist and called the Fuhrer a cannibal.
She was utterly impractical; she was unable to cook or wash and when she went to the shop for some matches, the assistant always hurriedly tore off the coupon for her monthly allowance of sugar or meat.
Children nowadays were quite unlike her charges of that earlier period which she referred to as 'peacetime'. Everything was different, even the games. The 'peacetime' children had played with hoops; they had played diabolo with varnished sticks, and catch with a painted ball kept in a white string-bag; whereas today's children played volleyball, swam the crawl, and played ice-hockey during the winter in skiing trousers, shouting and whistling all the time.
These children knew more than Jenny Genrikhovna about alimony, abortions and dishonestly acquired ration-cards; about senior lieutenants and lieutenant-colonels who had presented other people's wives with the butter, lard and tinned foods they had brought back from the front.
Yevgenia liked to hear the old woman reminisce about the years of her childhood, about her father, and about her brother Dmitry whom Jenny Genrikhovna remembered particularly well; he had had both diphtheria and whooping cough.
Once Jenny Genrikhovna said: 'I can remember the last family I worked for in 1917. Monsieur was Deputy Minister of Finance. He walked up and down the dining-room saying, "Everything's ruined, estates are being burnt, factories have ground to a halt, the currency's collapsed, safes are being robbed." And then the whole family split up – the same as you. Monsieur, Madame and Mademoiselle went to Sweden; my own pupil joined up with General Kornilov as a volunteer; Madame wept and kept saying, "We spend day after day saying goodbye, the end is near." '
Yevgenia smiled sadly and didn't respond.
One evening a police inspector called and handed Jenny Genrikhovna a note. The old woman put on a hat with a white flower and asked Yevgenia to feed the cat; she said she was going first to the police station and then to work and that she'd be back the next day. When Yevgenia came back from work, she found the room in chaos. Her neighbours told her that Jenny Genrikhovna had been arrested.
Yevgenia set off to make inquiries. At the police station she was told that the old woman was being taken to the Far North with a trainload of Germans.
The next day the inspector and the house-manager came round to collect a sealed basket of old clothes and yellowed letters and photographs.
Yevgenia went to the NKVD to find out how to send the old woman a fur coat. The man behind the window asked: 'Are you a German yourself?'
'No, I'm Russian.'
'Go home then. Don't waste people's time by asking unnecessary questions.'
'I was just asking about winter clothes.'
'Don't you understand?' said the man in a terrifyingly quiet voice.
That evening she overheard people talking about her in the kitchen.
'All the same, I don't like the way she's behaved,' said one voice.
'I think she did well,' answered a second voice. 'First she got one foot in the door; then she informed the appropriate authorities and had the old woman taken away; and now she's got the room for herself.'
'It's more a cubby-hole than a room,' said a man's voice.
'She's no fool,' said a fourth voice. 'A man would do all right with her around.'
The cat came to a sad end. First people argued about what to do with him while he sat sleepily and dispiritedly in the kitchen. 'To hell with the damned German,' said the women. Dragin, of all people, said he was willing to provide a share of the cat's food. But without Jenny Genrikhovna the creature wasn't to survive long; he died after being scalded with boiling water by one of the women, perhaps accidentally, perhaps not.
24
Yevgenia enjoyed her solitary life in Kuibyshev.
Never had she felt such a sense of lightness and freedom – even though she still had no residence permit or ration-card and could only eat one meal a day with her coupons for the canteen. She would think all morning about the moment she would enter the canteen and be given her plate of soup.
She seldom thought of Novikov during this period. She thought more often of Krymov, almost constantly in fact – but with no real warmth.
Her memories of Novikov did not torment her; they just flared up and faded away. Once, though, far away down the street, she saw a tall soldier in a long greatcoat and thought it was Novikov. Her knees went weak and she found it hard to breathe; she felt quite disorientated by her sudden feeling of happiness. A moment later she realized her mistake and at once forgot her excitement. And then during the night she suddenly woke up and thought: 'But why doesn't he write? He knows the address.'
She lived alone, without Krymov or Novikov or any of her relatives. She sometimes thought – mistakenly – that this freedom and loneliness of hers was happiness.