Three or four grates in a row were directly under the feet of the surging crowds. He couldn’t see them, since there was no light, but he heard the dreadful roar, and understood that he shouldn’t even try to exit there. Once he came upon a broken grate—half a dead body dangled through the gaping hole.
He had no idea what direction he was headed in, but he understood clearly that the pipes were his only way out, and that he had to keep moving along them, though he didn’t know where they would lead.
He lost track of time. Suddenly, he saw a grate, beyond which shone a bright yellow light. He climbed the brackets, touched the grate, and it opened. He crawled out and discovered that he was standing under the streetlamp in the courtyard of the building where Sanya Steklov lived. He had just enough strength left to make it to Sanya’s door and ring the bell.
Anna Alexandrovna opened it.
Ilya collapsed. His hands were clasping his stomach, where Fedya was still safely tucked away under his belt.
It was eleven in the evening on March 7. Anna Alexandrovna did what she could for Ilya: she undressed him, carried him to the bath with the help of a neighbor, and waited for him to open his eyes. Then she washed him off with a big shaggy sponge, carefully avoiding his wounds. His whole body was black and blue; his stomach was one big bruise. She was surprised that this skinny boy, with a completely boyish face, was already so well equipped for manhood. He got out of the bath by himself, made it to the divan, and collapsed again. They put a woman’s nightgown on him, covered him with a blanket, gave him sweet strong tea. Then, stuffing a big pillow behind his back, they propped him up to feed him some soup. He fell asleep.
The Steklovs sat at the table in silence.
“Nuta, I think a lot of people must have died today,” Sanya said to his grandmother, his voice a whisper.
“Most likely.”
Then Sanya sat down next to the sleeping Ilya, hoping he would wake up and tell him everything that had happened. His feelings for his friend were strong and complex: he was proud of him, and a bit envious that he himself wasn’t like Ilya, but he didn’t really want to be, either. He also understood that Ilya was a man—and it was not only the dark fuzz on his upper lip that attested to this, but the dark path of hair under his belly leading down to his large male member, which was not made just for peeing. He had never seen a naked man before today: he had never been taken to the public baths.
He had never seen a naked woman, either. Why would two proper, well-educated ladies, his mother and grandmother, take a notion to start undressing in front of him? But Sanya could guess what women were about—the breasts under the dress, the dark nest below the stomach. This naked man, his friend and classmate Ilya, surprised him much more—with a pang, Sanya sensed that he was not, and never would be, like his friend. Portraits of naked women—Sanya had seen many of them in museums and in art books—for some reason did not awaken such confusion and excitement in him as the nakedness of a man. He felt he might faint from the crudeness and power of it.
He had almost finished reading War and Peace, and the female shades didn’t move him in the least—Natasha, with her silly enthusiasms, Princess Liza with her short upper lip, Princess Marya, whose unattractiveness was stressed throughout; but the men … They were magnificent—their strength, generosity, their wit and intelligence, their nobility and sense of honor. Now, looking into Ilya’s face, he tried to figure out which of these magnificent men his friend resembled. No, certainly not the dry, aristocratic Bolkonsky; nor the fat, intelligent Bezukhov. And not the wonderful Petya Rostov, beloved by all. Not Nikolay, either, of course … Most likely it was Dolokhov.
* * *
Maria Fedorovna, Ilya’s mother, had been sitting on a chair by the door to the apartment for two days running. They didn’t have a telephone yet, and Anna Alexandrovna couldn’t inform her that her son was alive. It was terrifying, and too dangerous, to venture out onto the streets. And, in any case, crossing the streetcar tracks at the intersection of Chistoprudny Boulevard and Maroseyka was impossible because of the military and police cordons blocking the path.
A pall of fear hung over the city—an ancient terror, familiar from Greek tragedy and myth, enveloped it, drowning it in its black waters, the kind of terror that visits one only in dreams, in childhood nightmares, a terror that rises up from the bottom of the soul. It was as though some underground deposit had ruptured, and was now threatening all human life.
Borya Rakhmanov’s parents were also sitting, paralyzed with fear. It was impossible to reach the police, the hospital, or the morgue. All the lines were busy.
They would find Borya only four days later, among the bodies lying in the snow next to the overflowing Lefortovo Morgue. They would identify him by the laundry mark on the shirt—Galina Borisovna Rakhmanova never washed white shirts herself, preferring to take them to the cleaners. There was one other number on the hand of her dead son, written in violet ink: 1421.
These people, the victims of the stampede, were buried quietly, in secret. No one counted them a second time, and only the number on Borya’s hand witnessed to the fact that there had been no fewer than fourteen hundred of them.
No wreath from Borya’s school was laid on his grave. There were no flowers to be had in those days, anyway—all of them had been lavished on the Great Leader. During those terrible days, one other person died, a private death at home—the composer Sergei Prokofiev. This went completely unnoticed.
Of all Ilya’s photographs, only two came out. As he had suspected, the light was insufficient. But apart from the official images of the coffin in the Hall of Columns, which appeared in all the papers, no other photographs of that event existed.
THE LORLs
On Wednesdays, Victor Yulievich would make the rounds of Moscow with the LORLs (as they called themselves) in tow. Like some latter-day Pied Piper blowing on his flute, he would lead them out of their poor, sick time into a world where thought labored and lived, a world of freedom, and music, and the other arts. This is where it had all happened, right here, behind these very windows!
Their peregrinations through literary Moscow had a wonderfully chaotic character. On what was once called Gendrikov Lane, they looked into the courtyard of a building where Mayakovsky was rumored (mistakenly) to have shot himself. From there they walked down Dzerzhinsky Street, formerly Lubyanka, to the Sretensky Gates. This renaming of Moscow streets disturbed Victor Yulievich, and he always called them by their original names when he was with his students.
They walked down the boulevards to Pushkin Square, where their teacher showed them the house of Famusov, and they stopped at all the addresses associated with Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin: the houses of Vyazemsky and Nashchokin, and the house where Yogel’s dancing classes were held. This was where Pushkin had first seen the young Natalia, who would later become his wife.
“Tverskoy is the oldest of the boulevards. At one time it was just called the Boulevard. There was only one. They call it the Boulevard Ring, but there is no ring, and never was. It’s a semicircle. It runs down to the river. All the boulevards are built on the place where the stone walls of Bely Gorod, the White City, once stood.”