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The fortieth day after Anna Alexandrovna’s death fell on May 9, and Vasily Innokentievich, retired colonel of the Medical Corps, rather than meeting with his fellow officers from the regiment, went to attend a memorial service at the Church of Peter and Paul by the Yauza Gates. There was still a whole hour before the service was scheduled to begin, and he decided to go on foot from Dzerzhinsky Square. He walked along the western wall of the Polytechnical Museum, but on the opposite side of Serov Passage. A bevy of boys rolled out from under a gate and collapsed in a thrashing, kicking heap at his feet. One of them, the one being pursued, and the smallest, screamed loudly. The old man picked him up off the ground. The boy looked like he was about seven, with crooked teeth, and large gaps where they hadn’t grown in yet. The three older boys scrambled back under the gate, and spied on them from around the corner. The little boy squirmed in Vasily’s arms like a fish on a hook. His shirt was clanking with brightly shining metal … military decorations.
Vasily Innokentievich set the little fellow down on the ground. Holding him by the shoulders, he examined the military iconostasis. In addition to the ordinary decorations being paraded about by elderly veterans on this holiday, on their old uniform jackets or new suit coats, Vasily Innokentievich noticed some very special ones: For the Defense of the Soviet Polar Circle; For the Capture of Königsberg; and, very rare indeed, an American one, on which there was a laurel wreath, stars, and rays of light. This was the Legion of Merit. The American Allies had conferred this medal on the highest-ranking Soviet officers after the fall of Berlin, in 1945.
Vasily Innokentievich knew only one person who had received this honor. General Nichiporuk had lain in his hospital in 1945. In the evenings the hospital head had visited the general. Several times they had drunk and conversed together. The general had gone straight from the hospital to get his decoration, and they drank to the honor together the same evening. There was no doubt in his mind that these decorations belonged to General Nichiporuk—the proof of this were the others, much more common, for Königsberg and the Arctic Circle. This geography corresponded exactly to the war biography of Peter Petrovich.
Were these stolen? Vasily Innokentievich wondered, and immediately remembered that someone had told him General Nichiporuk had lost his mind, or was in prison for anti-Soviet activities. Vasily Innokentievich didn’t remember the details.
“What’s your grandfather’s name?” he asked the boy sternly, gripping his bony little shoulders.
“I don’t have any grandfather! Let me go!” the boy shouted.
“Where did you get these medals?” The old man shook him by the collar.
“I found them in the wardrobe, at my grandmother’s! My grandmother gave them to me!” He was an energetic little fellow. He twisted and turned, trying to slip out of the old man’s grasp.
When he finally wriggled free, he bit Vasily Innokentievich’s hand.
“You little stinker!” the old man said angrily. “Let’s go see your grandma!”
“She’s not there! There’s no one home!” he said, turning to go.
“Well, take me to your mother, then. Come on, let’s go!” the old man insisted, clutching the little boy by the back of the neck with his steely grip.
“No! I won’t go! I won’t take you there!” little Vitka screamed.
Then he fell silent, and, in a grown-up, serious voice, offered him a deal. “You might as well take them; the big boys will take them away from me, anyway. Only I don’t want to go home.” He could just imagine how his grandma would shout at him, what a whipping his mother would give him. It was better just to surrender now.
“Take off your shirt,” the old man commanded.
He had intended to take the decorations and medals off the faded blue shirt and return it to its rightful owner. But as soon as Vasily Innokentievich held the shirt with the decorations and medals in his hands, the boy slipped away, like a bar of soap, and disappeared under the gate.
It was stolen—there’s no doubt about it. Stolen, Vasily thought. He folded up the child’s shirt without unpinning the medals, and stuffed the whole thing in the pocket of his suit jacket, not without difficulty. His jacket was sagging, weighted down on one side.
Strange, strange incident—funny, in a curious way.
Vasily Innokentievich hadn’t seen General Nichiporuk since the war. After that, it was rumored that Nichiporuk was teaching at the Military Academy. He was no longer in touch with the general, but finding him would be easy enough—through Nefudov or Golubeva.
Pondering all of this, he walked to the church. Nadezhda was standing by the door. She looked like a forty-year-old Nuta, though completely ordinary. Nuta, of course, had been magnificent, incomparable, peerless. There was no one like her.
Two old women he didn’t know, and two young men—Sanya and his friend, the red-haired, bearded Mikha—were chatting with Nadezhda.
Anna Alexandrovna’s friend Elena ran up and stood next to him—her face was scarlet, and she was out of breath. She was a witness, a trusted companion, nearly a participant in their lives.
High blood pressure, Vasily Innokentievich noted to himself. He kissed Elena, but didn’t mention her blood pressure. What would be the point?
A church attendant came out.
“Father is calling you inside to the service.”
Vasily Innokentievich stood between Nadezhda and Elena, the old women he didn’t know stood at the sides, and behind them, Sanya and his friend.
From a side door a small, desiccated priest came out, swinging a smoking censer.
Vasily Innokentievich was in a church again for the second time in two months: first for Anna Alexandrovna’s funeral service, and now for the forty-days memorial service. Before this he hadn’t set foot in a church for about forty years. He had to admit, it stirred something in his soul that had stayed with him since childhood. How strange … Perhaps he was feeling his age. The elderly women sang magnificently, and he suddenly recollected all the words. Some men’s voices from behind joined in. He turned around to look. Sanya, Nuta’s grandson, a sweet boy, was singing: “O Thou, Who with wisdom profound order all things with love, and Who give to all what is needful, O only Creator, give rest, O Lord, to the souls of Thy servants, for on Thee have they set their hope, our Maker and Builder, and our God.”
How can he know this music? Vasily Innokentievich wondered.
In truth, forty days before, Sanya had not known it at all. But now he did.
Sanya’s red-haired friend was weeping like a child. Both of them were holding burning candles.
Vasily Innokentievich felt an indeterminate sense of guilt, longing, and sadness. Nuta, his second cousin, his first love and the love of his life, a romance that had lasted, with interruptions, since childhood—a parallel life, flickering, fading in and out, and most precious. How pitiless fate was … Her whole life she had tried to fend him off, but he pursued her insistently, stubbornly, making his presence known almost by force. She responded reluctantly, it seemed … and said with a smile, mysterious and melancholy, that had an air of the early twentieth century about it: