Pavel Alekseevich, seeing her consternation, chuckled.
“We’ll survive, with God’s help!”
Elena, hearing Pavel Alekseevich’s remark, smiled: she found it very amusing that Pavel Alekseevich the nonbeliever was reminding Vasilisa of God’s help.
“When things calm down a bit, I’ll try looking for my family again,” Elena resolved.
Since 1938 the fate of her parents had been cloaked in impenetrable mystery. Ten years without the right to write or send letters had ended a very long time ago, but in reply to the inquiry she had sent back in 1949 she received a response stating that because she was not a close relation of her parents she had no right to submit an inquiry. Elena’s adoption by her grandmother, necessitated in order to save her from repression, now deprived her of the right to obtain information on the fate of her real parents lost somewhere in Altai . . .
“It’s going to be worse now, even worse,” Vasilisa muttered.
Elena, quiet as always, just shook her head.
“It won’t be worse, it won’t . . .”
ATTENDING CLASSES OR GOING TO WORK DURING THOSE days of national mourning seemed blasphemous. Workers came to work and were gathered at meetings. Upper-echelon, lower-echelon, and lowest-of-the-low-echelon bureaucrats, as well as average Soviet people, delivered incoherent words of grief—fantasy infused with make-believe—sobbed, and composed mournful telegrams to the supreme address: Moscow, Kremlin . . . Then, with a Lenten look, they drank tea, smoked themselves into a stupor, iterated the same gnarled, sincere words, and sobbed again, only now not on a grandstand, but in the smoking room . . . Certain people who felt otherwise discreetly looked the other way, finding neither compassion in their hearts, nor tears in their tear glands.
Children went to school, but classes were not held, replaced by a kind of exhausting nervous idleness. They read poems about Stalin and listened to Beethoven over the black loudspeaker . . . Tanya would remember well those quaggy, dragging hours filled with stuffiness and an infernal ennui that exceeded the usual schooltime boredom. The plaster bust strung with a garland of holly and artificial flowers was attended by an honor guard of blubbering Young Pioneer girls who stood almost as plasterlike as the deceased leader. Skinny little Sonya Kapitonova—the girl at the top of the gymnastics pyramid who, propped on the quivering shoulders of her heftier classmates, had not all that long ago shouted from her live tower “Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for our happy childhood!” fainted at the foot of the bust and struck her head against the massive pedestal.
Their gallant physical education teacher, practically the sole male teacher at the school, carried her off to the nurse’s room in his arms, to the undisguised envy of the older girls. The teachers scurried about and called an ambulance, and a crowd of girls in a tizzy over the turn of events shoved and pushed each other near the nurse’s room, while Tanya stood at the window in the lavatory watching the snowy blur outside the glass, saddened once again by her own hard-heartedness.
It was already known that the national farewell procession would begin at noon the next day in the Hall of Columns in the House of Trade Unions. Their principal had said that they would be taken there as a group, but not on the first day. The girls were worried that they would be deceived and not taken there. Toma was full of determination to scout out the situation in advance and go on her own, early in the morning, so as to get a good place in line. For some reason she was sure that only the senior girls and honor students would get to go.
A rather poor student—although with Tanya’s help she had caught up—Toma had no shortage of practical ingenuity.
Toma found Tanya in the lavatory, drew her close, and pressing her mouth to her ear, whispered, “Nadezhda Ivanovna said that tomorrow everyone is going to the Hall of Columns to pay their respects. The coffin’s put up so that anyone can go see. Wanna go?”
“They won’t let us.” Tanya shook her head. “No way Dad will let us go.”
“We won’t tell him. We’ll just pretend we’re going to school and not say anything . . .”
Tanya pondered: the proposition was tempting. She really wanted to have a look at dead Stalin. She also remembered how they hadn’t taken her to Toma’s mother’s funeral. On the other hand, she had not learned to lie to her parents . . .
The girls left school together. On the last turn toward their building Toma stopped, like a little goat, and announced resolutely, “You do as you want, but I’m going to the Hall of Columns right this instant to find out what’s going on . . .”
This was the first time in their almost yearlong life together that Toma had made an independent decision. Usually she followed Tanya’s lead in everything. Tanya stamped about in place, and they headed off in opposite directions: Tanya, as usual, turned in the direction of Novoslobodskaya, where they lived, while Toma headed down Kaliaevskaya Street toward the center of town . . .
At home there was only Vasilisa, and she did not ask where Toma was. Toma returned only toward six. Her absence had passed unnoticed. Before falling asleep the girls whispered back and forth for a long time. As a result of her excursion Toma knew what most Muscovites still did not: the center of the city had been barricaded off, with trucks and soldiers blocking all passageways, and since yesterday evening people had been lining up in columns . . .
Tanya slept poorly: she dreamed an unending dream from which she longed to wake up, but could not. In her dream she was overcome by a sense of duty, and the idea lurked that if she were able to wake up, she would be able to shirk having to fulfill an important assignment . . . The assignment was to take something very important to some place. What exactly the important thing was she did not remember, but it was small, the size of a fist, totally amorphous and, moreover, invisible. All through the night poor Tanya walked up an empty staircase, looking for a passageway or an elevator. She was supposed to find a certain address, but there were no apartment numbers, and no doorways where the numbers might be written. In addition, she was in a hurry, because the conditions imposed by her dream included urgent delivery. Yet everyone she encountered was either afraid of her or just mean: no one wanted to talk to her . . .
Toma woke Tanya very early. A true villager, she always woke easily. The girls slipped into the kitchen. Vasilisa had not yet come out of her pantry. That meant it was not yet six thirty.
It was a plot, an escape, truancy, and an excursion to boot. Tanya prepared sandwiches and wrapped them in a worn piece of the carbon paper her mother brought from work in which they wrapped everything. Usually their father took a thermos with him on long walks, but Tanya did not know where he had hidden it. Toma boiled water, and they both drank a cup of tea with yesterday’s tea leaves. Tanya listened: there was still the sound of mumbling coming from the pantry, but they had to hurry. Vasilisa ended her obeisances by seven.
“You write the note,” Tanya said with an intonation of hidden imperative, handing Toma a piece of paper.
“What do I write?” Toma asked.
“That we had to leave for school early today.”
“You write it yourself: you write better than me,” Toma groused.
“If I write it, they’ll know right away that I’m lying.” Tanya shoved the pencil into Toma’s hand. “Write it already.”
They put on their winter coats. Toma—a new one, bought especially for her not long ago. Tanya—an old one with an extended hem of beaver lamb from another coat. Toma stuck her legs into felt boots with galoshes. Tanya laced up high boots with a fleecy trim. Proud red boots made to order at an atelier for not just anyone. No one had anything like them. Pavel Alekseevich had been displeased to see these new additions: it was not good to stand out. But on that day all the petty details would prove significant, even these ostentatious boots . . .