‘The one about the origin of the elements,’ said Alexandra Vladimirovna.
‘Ah yes,’ said Lyudmila. ‘Everything deriving from hydrogen. But what’s that got to do with the stew?’
‘The stew?’ repeated Viktor in astonishment. ‘Listen now: what happened with Prout is that he arrived at a correct hypothesis largely because of the gross errors that were current in the determination of the atomic weights. If the atomic weights had already been determined with the accuracy later achieved by Dumas and Stas, he’d never have dared hypothesize that they were multiples of hydrogen. What led him to the correct answer was his mistakes.’
‘But what’s all that got to do with the stew?’ asked Nadya.
‘The stew?’ Finally he understood and said: ‘It hasn’t got anything to do with the stew. But it’s hard to make sense of anything in the stew I’m in.’
‘Is that from today’s lecture?’ asked Alexandra Vladimirovna.
‘No, no, it’s just something . . . It’s neither here nor there . . . I don’t give lectures anyway.’
He caught Lyudmila’s eye and knew that she understood: once again he felt inspired by his work.
‘So how are things?’ he asked. ‘Did Marya Ivanovna come round? Did she read you any of Madame Bovary, the famous novel by Balzac?’
‘That’s enough from you!’ said Lyudmila.
That night she expected him to talk to her again about his work. But he didn’t say anything, and she didn’t ask.
17
How naïve Viktor found the ideas of the mid-nineteenth-century physicists, the opinions of Helmholtz who had reduced all the problems of physics to the study of the forces of attraction and repulsion – themselves dependent only on distance.
The soul of matter is a field of energy! A unity, both a wave of energy and a material particle . . . The particle nature of light . . . Is it a shower of bright drops or a wave that moves with the speed of lightning?
Quantum theory had replaced the laws governing individual physical entities with new laws: the laws of probability, the laws of a special statistics that rejected the concept of an individual entity and acknowledged only aggregates. The physicists of the preceding century reminded Viktor of men in suits, with starched collars and cuffs and dyed moustaches, crowded around a billiard table. Deep-thinking, serious men, armed with rulers and chronometers, knitting their thick brows as they measured speeds and accelerations and determined the masses of the resilient spheres which filled a universe of green cloth.
But space – measured by metal rods and rulers – and time – measured by the most accurate of watches – had suddenly begun to bend, to stretch and flatten. Their stability had turned out not to be the foundation-stone of science, but the walls and bars of its prison. The Day of Judgement had come; thousand-year-old truths had been declared errors. Truth had been sleeping for centuries, as though in a cocoon, inside ancient prejudices, errors and inaccuracies.
The world was no longer Euclidian, its geometrical nature no longer composed of masses and their speeds.
Science was progressing with ever increasing impetuousness in a world liberated by Einstein from the fetters of absolute time and space.
Two currents, one moving outwards together with whole universes, the other seeking to penetrate the nucleus of the atom, flowed in different directions but never lost sight of each other – though one moved in a world of parsecs while the other was measured in millimicrons. The more deeply physicists penetrated the heart of the atom, the more clearly they were able to understand the laws governing the luminescence of stars. The red shift in the spectrums visible from distant galaxies gave birth to the notion of universes receding into infinite space. But if one preferred a finite, convex space, distorted by speeds and masses, then one could suppose that space itself was expanding, dragging the galaxies after it.
Viktor never doubted it: no one in the world could be happier than the scientist . . . There were times – on his way to the Institute in the morning, during his evening stroll, this very night – when he thought about his work and was seized by a feeling of compounded happiness, humility and ecstasy.
The energies that filled the universe with the quiet light of the stars were being released by the transformation of hydrogen into helium . . .
Two years before the outbreak of war two young Germans had split the nuclei of heavy atoms by bombarding them with neutrons; Soviet scientists, reaching similar conclusions by different paths in their own researches, suddenly experienced what the cavemen had felt, thousands of years before, as they lit the first bonfire . . .
Of course, physics was determining the course of the twentieth century . . . Just as Stalingrad was now determining the course of events on every front of the World War.
But immediately behind Viktor, right at his heels, followed doubt, suffering, lack of belief.
18
Vitya, I’m certain this letter will reach you, even though I’m now behind the German front line, behind the barbed wire of the Jewish ghetto. I won’t receive your answer, though; I won’t be here to receive it. I want you to know about my last days. Like that, it will be easier for me to die.
It’s difficult, Vitya, ever really to understand people . . . The Germans entered the town on July 7th. The latest news was being broadcast on the radio in the park. I was on my way back from the surgery and I stopped to listen. It was a war-bulletin in Ukrainian. Then I heard distant shooting. Some people ran across the park. I set off home, all the time feeling surprised that I’d missed the air-raid warning. Suddenly I saw a tank and someone shouted: ‘It’s the Germans.’
‘Don’t spread panic!’ I warned. I’d been the day before to ask the secretary of the town soviet when we’d be evacuated. ‘There’ll be time enough to talk about that,’ he’d answered angrily. ‘We haven’t even drawn up the lists of evacuees yet.’
Well, it was indeed the Germans. All that night the neighbours were rushing round to each other’s rooms – the only people who stayed calm were myself and the little children. I’d just accepted that the same would happen to me as to everyone else. To begin with I felt utter horror. I realized that I’d never see you again. I wanted desperately to look at you once more. I wanted to kiss your forehead and your eyes. Then I understood how fortunate I was that you were safe.
When it was nearly morning, I fell asleep. I woke up and felt a terrible sadness. I was in my own room and my own bed, but I felt as though I were in a foreign country, alone and lost.
That morning I was reminded of what I’d forgotten during the years of the Soviet regime – that I was a Jew. Some Germans drove past on a lorry, shouting out: ‘Juden kaputt!’
I got a further reminder from some of my own neighbours. The caretaker’s wife was standing beneath my window and saying to the woman next door: ‘Well, that’s the end of the Jews. Thank God for that!’ What can have made her say that? Her son’s married to a Jew. She used to go and visit him and then come back and tell me all about her grandchildren.
The woman next door, a widow with a six-year-old daughter – a girl called Alyonushka with wonderful blue eyes, I wrote to you about her once – came round and said to me: ‘Anna Semyonovna, I’m moving into your room. Can you clear your things out by this evening?’ ‘Very well, I’ll move into your room then.’ ‘No, you’re moving into the little room behind the kitchen.’
I refused. There isn’t even a stove there, or a window.
I went to the surgery. When I came back, I found the door of my room had been smashed in and all my things piled in the little room. My neighbour just said: ‘I’ve kept the settee for myself. There’s no room for it where you are now.’
It’s extraordinary – she’s been to technical school and her late husband was a wonderful man, very quiet, an accountant at Ukopspilk. ‘You’re outside the law!’ she said, as though that were something very profitable for her. And then her little Alyonushka sat with me all evening while I told her fairy-tales. That was my house-
warming party – the girl didn’t want to go to bed and her mother had to carry her away in her arms. Then, Vityenka, they opened the surgery again. I and another Jewish doctor were both dismissed. I asked for the previous month’s pay but the new director said: ‘Stalin can pay you whatever you earned under the Soviet regime. Write to him in Moscow.’ The assistant, Marusya, embraced me and keened quietly, ‘Lord God, Lord God, what will become of you, what will become of you all?’ And Doctor Tkachev shook me by the hand. I really don’t know which is worse – gloating spite, or these pitying glances like people cast at a mangy, half-dead cat. No, I never thought I’d have to live through anything like this.
Many people have surprised me. And not only those who are poor, uneducated, embittered. There’s one old man, a retired teacher, seventy-five years old, who always used to ask after you and send you his greetings and say, ‘He’s the pride of our town.’ During these accursed days he’s just passed me by without a word, looking in the other direction. And I’ve heard that at a meeting called by the commandant, he said: ‘Now the air feels clean at last. It no longer smells of garlic.’ Why, why? – words like that are a stain on him. Yes, and how terribly the Jews were slandered at that meeting . . . But then of course, Vityenka, not everyone attended. Many people refused. And one thing – ever since the time of the Tsars I’ve associated anti-Semitism with the jingoism of people from the Union of Michael the Archangel. But now I’ve seen that the people who shout most loudly about delivering Russia from the Jews are the very ones who cringe like lackeys before the Germans, ready to betray their country for thirty pieces of German silver. And strange people from the outskirts of town seize our rooms, our blankets, our clothes. It must have been people like them who killed doctors at the time of the cholera riots. And then there are people whose souls have just withered, people who are ready to go along with anything evil – anything so as not to be suspected of disagreeing with whoever’s in power.
People I know are constantly coming round with bits of news. Their eyes are mad and they seem quite delirious. A strange expression has come into vogue: ‘hiding away one another’s things.’ People somehow think a neighbour’s house is going to be safer. The whole thing is like a children’s game.
An announcement was soon made about the resettlement of the Jews. We were each to be permitted to take 15 kilograms of belongings. Little yellow notices were hung up on the walls of houses: ‘All occupants are required to move to the area of the Old Town by not later than 6.00 p.m. on 15 July, 1941. Anyone remaining will be shot.’
And so, Vityenka, I got ready. I took a pillow, some bedclothes, the cup you once gave me, a spoon, a knife and two forks. Do we really need so very much? I took a few medical instruments. I took your letters; the photographs of my late mother and Uncle David, and the one of you with your father; a volume of Pushkin; Lettres de mon moulin; the volume of Maupassant with Une vie; a small dictionary . . . I took some Chekhov – the volume with ‘A Boring Story’ and ‘The Bishop’ – and that was that, I’d filled my basket. How many letters I must have written to you under that roof, how many hours I must have cried at night – yes, now I can tell you just how lonely I’ve been.
I said goodbye to the house and garden. I sat for a few minutes under the tree. I said goodbye to the neighbours. Some people are very strange. Two women began arguing in front of me about which of them would have my chairs, and which my writing-desk. I said goodbye and they both began to cry. I asked the Basankos to tell you everything in more detail if you ever come and ask about me after the war. They promised. I was very moved by the mongrel, Tobik – she was particularly affectionate towards me that last evening.
If you do come, feed her in return for her kindness towards an old Yid.
When I’d got everything ready and was wondering how I’d be able to carry my basket to the Old Town, a patient of mine suddenly appeared, a gloomy and – so I had always thought – rather callous man called Shchukin. He picked up my belongings, gave me 300 roubles and said he’d come once a week to the fence and give me some bread. He works at the printing-house – they didn’t want him at the front because of his eye trouble. He was a patient of mine before the war. If I’d been asked to list all the people I knew with pure, sensitive souls, I might have given dozens of names – but certainly not his. Do you know, Vityenka, after he came, I began to feel once more that I was a human being – it wasn’t only the yard-dog that still treated me as though I were.
He told me that a new decree was being printed: Jews are to be forbidden to walk on the pavements; they are required to wear a yellow patch, a Star of David, on the chest; they no longer have the right to use public transport, baths, parks, or cinemas; they are forbidden to buy butter, eggs, milk, berries, white bread, meat, or any vegetable other than potatoes; they are only allowed to make purchases in the market after six o’clock, when the peasants are already on their way home. The Old Town will be fenced off with barbed wire and people will only be allowed out under escort – to carry out forced labour. If a Jew is discovered in a Russian home, the owner will be shot – just as if he were harbouring a partisan.
Shchukin’s father-in-law, an old peasant, had travelled in from the nearby village of Chudnov. He had seen with his own eyes how all the Jews there were herded into the forest with their parcels and suitcases. All day long he heard shots and terrible screams; not one Jew returned. As for the Germans who’d commandeered his rooms, they didn’t come back till late at night. They were quite drunk and they carried on drinking and singing till dawn, sharing out brooches, rings and bracelets right under the old man’s nose. I don’t know whether the soldiers just got out of hand or whether that’s a foretaste of our common fate.
What a sad journey it was, my son, to the medieval ghetto. I was walking through the town where I have worked for the last twenty years. First we went down Svechnaya Street, which was quite deserted. Then we came out onto Nikolskaya Street and I caught sight of hundreds of people all on their way to this same accursed ghetto. The street was white with little parcels and pillows. There were invalids being led by the hand. Doctor Margulis’s paralysed father was being carried on a blanket. One young man was carrying an old woman in his arms while his wife and children followed behind, loaded with parcels. Gordon, a fat breathless man who manages a grocery shop, was wearing a winter coat with a fur collar; sweat was pouring down his face. I was struck by one young man; he had no belongings and he was walking with his head high, a book held open before him, and a calm, proud face. But how crazy and horror-struck most of the people beside him looked!
We all walked down the roadway while everyone else stood on the pavement and watched.
At one moment I was walking beside the Margulises and I could hear sighs of compassion from the women on the pavement. But everyone just laughed at Gordon’s winter coat – though, believe me, he looked more terrible than absurd. I saw many faces I knew. Some nodded goodbye, others looked away. I don’t think any eyes in that crowd were indifferent; some were pitiless, some were inquisitive, and some were filled with tears.
I realized there were two different crowds: there were the Jews – the men in winter coats and hats, the women wearing thick dresses – and there were the people in summer clothes on the pavement. There you could see bright dresses, men in shirt-sleeves, embroidered Ukrainian blouses. It was as though even the sun no longer shone for the Jews on the street, as though they were walking through the cold frost of a December night.
We came to the gateway into the ghetto and I said goodbye to my companion. He pointed out where we were to meet at the fence.
Can you guess what I felt, Vityenka, once I was behind the barbed wire? I’d expected to feel horror. But just imagine – I actually felt relieved to be inside this cattle-pen. Don’t think it’s because I’m a born slave. No. No. It’s because everyone around me shares my fate: now I no longer have to walk on the roadway like a horse, there are no more spiteful looks, and the people I know look me straight in the eye
instead of trying to avoid me. Everyone in this cattle-pen bears the stamp branded on us by the Fascists and it no longer burns my soul so fiercely. Now I’m no longer a beast deprived of rights – simply an unfortunate human being. And that’s easier to bear.
I’ve settled down, together with a colleague of mine, Doctor Sperling, in a small two-roomed house. The Sperlings have got two grown-up daughters and a twelve-year-old son, Yura. I gaze for hours at his thin little face and his big, sad eyes; twice I’ve called him Vitya by mistake and he’s corrected me: ‘I’m Yura, not Vitya.’
How different people are! Sperling, at fifty-eight years of age, is full of energy. He’s already managed to get hold of mattresses, kerosene and a cart for carrying firewood. Last night he had a sack of flour and half a sack of haricot beans brought to the house. He’s as pleased as punch at each little success of his. Yesterday he was hanging out the rugs. ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry, we’ll survive,’ he repeated. ‘The main thing is to get stocked up with food and firewood.’
He said we ought to start up a school in the ghetto. He even suggested I gave Yura French lessons in exchange for a bowl of soup. I agreed.
Sperling’s fat wife, Fanny Borisovna, just sighs, ‘Everything’s ruined, we’re all ruined.’ At the same time she keeps a careful watch on her elder daughter, Lyuba – a kind, good-natured girl – in case she gives anyone a handful of beans or a slice of bread. The mother’s favourite is the younger daughter, Alya. She’s the devil incarnate – mean, domineering and suspicious – and she’s always shouting at her father and sister. She came on a visit from Moscow before the war and got stuck here.
God, what poverty there is everywhere! If only the people who are always talking about how rich the Jews are, how they’ve always got something put by for hard times, could have a look at the Old Town now. Hard times have come indeed – there can be no harder. But the people who’ve been resettled with fifteen kilograms of baggage aren’t the only inhabitants of the Old Town: there have always been craftsmen living here – together with old men, workers, hospital orderlies . . . What terrible crowded conditions they live in! And what food they eat! If you could only see these half-ruined shacks that have almost become part of the earth.
Life and Fate Page 12