'Will she be back soon?'
'No, the war's already over for her. She's been deported.'
'Thank God for that.'
She wanted to tell him how sorry she felt for Krymov. He had no one to write to, no one to go home to, nothing but hopeless gloom and loneliness. She also wanted to tell him everything about Limonov and Shargorodsky. She wanted to tell him about the notebook where Jenny Genrikhovna had written down all the funny remarks she and the other children had come out with; if he wanted to, he could read it right now – it was there on the table. And she wanted to tell him the story of her residence permit and the head of the passport office. But she still felt shy; she didn't trust him enough. Would he really want to know all this?
How strange… It was as though she were reliving her break with Krymov. Deep down she had always thought she could make things up, that she could bring back the past. This had consoled her. But now she was being carried away by a new force; she felt frightened and tormented. Was what had happened final, irrevocable? Poor, poor Nikolay Grigorevich! What had he done to deserve all this?
'What's going to become of us all?' she asked.
'You're going to become Yevgenia Nikolaevna Novikova,' he answered.
She looked him in the face and laughed.
'But you're a stranger. You're a stranger to me. Who are you?'
'That I can't tell you. But you're Novikova, Yevgenia Nikolaevna.'
Now she was no longer somewhere up above, looking down on her life. She poured some more hot water into his cup and asked: 'More bread?'
'If anything happens to Krymov,' she began abruptly. 'If he ends up crippled or in prison, then I'll go back to him. That's something you should know.'
'Why should he end up in prison?' asked Novikov, frowning.
'Who knows?' said Yevgenia. 'He was a member of the Comintern. Trotsky knew him. He even said about one of his articles: "That's pure marble!'"
'All right then. Go back to him. He'll send you packing.'
'That's my affair.'
He told her that after the war she would be the mistress of a large beautiful house with its own garden.
Was all this final, for ever?
For some reason she wanted Novikov to understand that Krymov was extremely talented and intelligent, that she was attached to him, that she loved him. It wasn't that she consciously wanted to make him jealous, though her words did indeed have that effect. She had even told him, and him alone, what Krymov had once told her, and her alone: those words of Trotsky's. Krymov could hardly have survived the year 1937 if anyone else had known about that. Her feelings for Novikov were such that she had to trust him; she had entrusted him with the fate of the man she had wronged.
Her head was full of thoughts – about the future, about the present, about the past. She felt numb, happy, shy, anxious, sad, appalled… Dozens of people – her mother, her sister, Vera, her nephews – would be affected by this change in her life. What would Novikov find to say to Limonov? What would he think of their conversations about poetry and art…? But he wouldn't feel out of place – even if he hadn't heard of Chagall and Matisse… He was strong, strong, so strong. And she had given in to him. Soon the war would be over. Would she really never, never see Nikolay again? What had she done? It was best not to think of that now. Who knew what the future might bring?
'I've only just realized: I don't know you at all. You're a stranger-I mean it. What's all this about a house and garden? Are you being serious?'
'All right then. I'll leave the army and work on a construction site in Eastern Siberia. We can live in a hostel for married workers.'
Novikov wasn't joking.
'Perhaps not the hostel for married workers.'
'Yes,' he said emphatically. 'That's an essential part of it.'
'You must be mad. Why are you saying all this to me?' As she said this, she thought to herself: 'Kolenka.'
'What do you mean – why?' Novikov asked anxiously.
But he wasn't thinking about the past or the future. He was happy. He wasn't even frightened by the thought that he'd have to leave her in a few minutes. He was sitting next to her, looking at her… Yevgenia Nikolaevna Novikova… He was happy. It wasn't important that she was young, intelligent and beautiful. He loved her. At first he'd never even dared hope she might become his wife. Then year after year he had dreamed of nothing else. Even now, he still felt shy and timid as he waited for her smile or for some ironic comment. But he knew that something new had been born.
She watched him get ready to leave and said: 'The time has come for you to rejoin your complaining companions and cast me into the approaching waves.' [37]
As Novikov said goodbye, he began to realize that she wasn't really so very strong, that a woman was still a woman – for all the sharpness and clarity of her mind.
'There's so much I wanted to say and I haven't said any of it,' she said.
But that wasn't quite so. What really matters, whatever it is that decides people's fates, had become clearer. He loved her.
4
Novikov walked back to the station.
… Zhenya, her confused whispering, her bare feet, her tender whispering, her tears as they'd said goodbye, her power over him, her poverty and her purity, the smell of her hair, her modesty, the warmth of her body… And his own shyness at being just a worker and a soldier… And his pride at being a worker and a soldier.
As Novikov crossed the tracks, a sharp needle of fear suddenly pierced the warm blur of his thoughts. Like every soldier on a journey, he was afraid he had been left behind.
In the distance he caught sight of the open wagons, the rectangular outlines of the tanks under their tarpaulins, the sentries in their black helmets, the white curtains in the windows of the staff carriage.
A sentry corrected his stance as Novikov climbed in.
Vershkov, his orderly, was upset at not having been taken into Kuibyshev. Without a word, he placed on the table a coded message from the Stavka: they were to proceed to Saratov and then take the branch-line to Astrakhan…
General Nyeudobnov entered the compartment. Looking not at Novikov's face, but at the telegram in his hands, he said: 'They've confirmed our destination.'
'Yes, Mikhail Petrovich. More than that – they've confirmed our fate. Stalingrad…! Oh yes, greetings from Lieutenant-General Ryutin.'
'Mmm,' said Nyeudobnov. It was unclear whether this expression of indifference referred to the general's greetings or Stalingrad itself.
He was a strange man; Novikov sometimes found him quite frightening. Whenever anything had gone wrong on the journey -a delay because of a train coming in the opposite direction, a faulty axle on one of the carriages, a controller being slow to signal them on – Nyeudobnov had said with sudden excitement: 'Take down his name. That's deliberate sabotage. The swine should be arrested immediately.'
Deep down, Novikov felt indifferent towards the kulaks and saboteurs, the men who were called enemies of the people. He didn't hate them. He had never felt the least desire to have anyone flung in prison, taken before a tribunal or unmasked at a public meeting. He himself had always attributed this good-humoured indifference to a lack of political consciousness.
Nyeudobnov, on the other hand, seemed to be constantly vigilant. It was as if, whenever he met someone, he wondered suspiciously: 'And how am I to know, dear comrade, that you're not an enemy of the people yourself?' Yesterday he had told Novikov and Getmanov about the saboteur architects who had tried to convert the main Moscow boulevards into landing strips for enemy planes.