Kuibyshev at this time was the location of many of the Moscow People's Commissariats, newspaper offices and other establishments. It was the temporary capital, and here had come much of the life of Moscow -diplomats, the Bolshoy ballet, famous writers, impresarios and foreign journalists.
All these thousands of people lived in cramped little rooms and hotels, and yet carried on with their usual activities. People's commissars and the heads of important enterprises planned the economy and gave orders to their subordinates; extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassadors drove in luxurious cars to receptions with the architects of Soviet foreign policy; Ulanova, Lemeshev and Mikhailov delighted the audiences at the ballet and the opera; Mr Shapiro, the representative of the United Press Agency, asked the head of the Soviet Information Bureau, Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky, awkward questions at press conferences; writers wrote radio broadcasts or articles for national and foreign newspapers; journalists wrote up material gathered from hospitals into articles on the war.
But the everyday life of these people from Moscow was quite transformed. Lady Cripps, the wife of the extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador of Great Britain, ate supper in a hotel restaurant in exchange for a meal-coupon, wrapped up the left-over bread and sugar-lumps in newspaper and carried them up to her room; representatives of international news agencies pushed their way through the crowds of wounded at the market, discussed the quality of home-grown tobacco and rolled sample cigarettes – or else stood and waited, shifting their weight from foot to foot, in the long queue for the baths; writers famous for their hospitality discussed world politics and the fate of literature over a glass of home-distilled vodka and a ration of black bread.
Huge institutions were squeezed into cramped little buildings; the editors of the most important Soviet newspapers received visitors at tables where, after office hours, children prepared their lessons and women did their sewing. There was something strangely attractive in this coming together of the weighty apparatus of State with the bohemianism of the evacuation.
Yevgenia Nikolaevna had considerable difficulties over her residence permit. The head of the design office where she had got a job, Lieutenant-Colonel Rizin, a tall man with a soft voice, began complaining from the very first day about the responsibility he was assuming in taking on someone still without a permit. He gave Yevgenia a statement confirming her new post and sent her to the police station.
There a police officer took Yevgenia's passport and documents and told her to come back in three days' time.
When the day came, Yevgenia walked along the half-dark corridor. Everyone waiting their turn had that look on their faces peculiar to people who have come to a police station to enquire about passports and residence permits. She went up to the window. A woman's hand with dark red fingernails held out her passport and a calm voice announced: 'Your application has been refused.'
She took her place in the queue waiting to speak to the head of the passport section. The people in this queue talked in whispers; now and then they looked round as the secretaries with their thick lipstick, boots, and quilted jackets walked up and down the corridor. A man in a light overcoat and a cloth cap, the collar of his soldier's tunic just showing beneath his scarf, strolled down the corridor. His boots squeaked. He got out his key and opened the door – it was Grishin, the head of the passport section. Yevgenia soon noticed that, as they finally approached Grishin's door, people always looked round behind them, as though about to run away at the last moment.
While she waited in the queue, Yevgenia heard her fill of stories about people who had been refused residence permits: daughters who had wanted to live with their mothers, a paralysed woman who had wanted to live with her brother, another woman who had come to Kuibyshev to look after a war-invalid…
Yevgenia entered Grishin's office. Grishin motioned her to a chair, glanced at her papers and said: 'Your application has been refused. What can I do for you?'
'Comrade Grishin,' she said, her voice trembling, 'please understand: all this time I've been without a ration-card.'
He looked at her unblinkingly, an expression of absent-minded indifference on his broad young face.
'Just think, comrade Grishin,' she continued. 'There's a Shaposh-nikov Street in Kuibyshev. It was named after my own father – he was one of the founders of the revolutionary movement in Samara. How can you refuse his daughter a residence permit?'
His calm eyes were watching her; he was listening.
'You need an official request on your behalf,' he said. 'Without that I can do nothing.'
'But I work in a military establishment,' said Yevgenia.
'That's not clear from your documents.'
'Does that help, then?'
'Possibly,' admitted Grishin reluctantly.
When she went in to work next morning, Yevgenia told Rizin that she had been refused a residence permit. Rizin shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
'How idiotic,' he murmured. 'Don't they realize that you are doing war-work? And that you've been an indispensable member of staff since the very beginning?'
'Exactly,' said Yevgenia. 'He said that I need an official document certifying that this office comes under the People's Commissariat for Defence Industry. Please write one out for me. I'll take it to the police station this evening.'
Later that morning Rizin came up to Yevgenia and explained apologetically: 'The police must first send a request. Without that I can't write such a document.'
She went to the police station in the evening and waited her turn in the queue. Hating herself for her ingratiating smile, she asked Grishin to send an official request to Rizin.
'I have no intention of sending any such request,' Grishin replied.
When Yevgenia told Rizin about Grishin's refusal, he sighed and said thoughtfully: 'I know, get him to ask me by telephone.'
The following evening, Yevgenia had arranged to meet Limonov, a man of letters from Moscow who had once known her father. She went to the police station straight after work and asked the people in the queue to let her see the head of the passport department 'just for a minute, to ask one question'. They all just shrugged their shoulders and looked in the other direction. Finally Yevgenia gave up and said angrily: 'Very well then, who's last?'
That day the police station was particularly depressing. A woman with varicose veins shouted, 'I beg you, I beg you!' and then fainted in Grishin's office. A man with only one arm swore obscenely at Grishin, and the next man also made a commotion; the people in the queue could hear him shouting: 'I won't leave this spot!' In fact he left very quickly. While all this noise was going on, Grishin himself couldn't be heard at all. He didn't once raise his voice; it was as though his visitors were shouting and making threats in an empty office.
She sat in the queue for an hour and a half. Grishin nodded to her to sit down. Once again hating herself for her ingratiating smile and hurried 'Thank you very much', Yevgenia asked him to telephone her boss. She said that Rizin had been uncertain whether he was permitted to give her the necessary document without first receiving a written request, but had finally agreed to write one out with the heading: 'In answer to your telephone inquiry of such and such a day of such and such a month.'
Yevgenia handed Grishin the note she had prepared in advance: in large, clear handwriting she had written Rizin's name, patronymic, telephone number, rank and office; in small handwriting, in brackets, she had written, 'Lunch-break: from 1 until 2.' Grishin, however, didn't so much as glance at this note.
'I have no intention of making any requests.'
'But why not?'
'It's not my responsibility.'
'Lieutenant-Colonel Rizin says that unless he receives a request, even an oral one, he is not permitted to make out the necessary document.'