Life and Fate

by Vasily Grossman

  ‘Yes,’ said Viktor guiltily.

  ‘We’ve got eight square metres for the six of us,’ said the driver. ‘My old woman sleeps during the day when everyone’s out at work. During the night she just sits on a chair.’

  Viktor went over to the window. There was Nadya beside their heap of belongings, dancing about and blowing on her fingers.

  Dear Nadya, dear helpless daughter, this is the house where you were born.

  The driver brought up a sack of food and a hold-all full of toilet things, sat down and began rolling himself a cigarette.

  He seemed to be obsessed with the question of living-space. He at once began to regale Viktor with stories about the official hygiene recommendations and the bribe-takers at the local accommodation bureau.

  There was a clatter of pans from the kitchen.

  ‘A true housewife,’ said the driver, winking at Viktor.

  Viktor looked out of the window again.

  ‘A pretty kettle of fish,’ said the driver. ‘We’ll give the Germans a good thrashing at Stalingrad, people will start coming back to Moscow, and it will be even worse. Not long ago, one of our workers came back to the factory after being wounded twice at the front. His home, of course, had been blown up, so he and his wife moved into some awful cellar. And of course his wife was pregnant and his two children had TB. And then the cellar got flooded – the water came right up to their knees. They put wooden boards on top of stools and used them as bridges between the stove, the table and the bed. Then he started making applications. He wrote to the Party committee, he wrote to the district committee, he even wrote to Stalin himself. In reply they just made promises. And then one night, together with his family and all his gear, he moved into a room on the fourth floor that was kept for the district Soviet. Then things really did start to happen. He was summoned by the public prosecutor. He was told he must leave the room within twenty-four hours or he’d get five years in a camp and the kids would be packed off to an orphanage. What do you think he did then? Well, he’d been decorated at the front, so he stuck his medals into his chest, right into the flesh, and tried to hang himself in the lunch-break – there in the workshop. The other lads at work found him, cut the rope and had him rushed to hospital. He got his flat straight away, before he was discharged. Yes, he did well for himself. It’s not spacious, but it’s got all they need.’

  Nadya came in just as he finished.

  ‘What if the baggage gets stolen? Who’ll be to blame then?’ the driver asked.

  Nadya shrugged her shoulders and went off on a tour of the rooms, still blowing on her frozen fingers.

  As soon as Nadya came into the house Viktor felt angry again.

  ‘You might at least turn your collar down,’ he said.

  Nadya paid no attention and shouted towards the kitchen:

  ‘Mama, I’m terribly hungry!’

  Lyudmila was extraordinarily active that day. Viktor thought that if she had deployed this energy at the front, the Germans would already have retreated at least a hundred kilometres from Moscow.

  The plumber turned on the heating; the pipes were still working, even if they weren’t very hot. Getting hold of the gas man was more difficult. Lyudmila finally got the director of the gas board to send someone from the emergency brigade. She lit all the burners and placed irons on top of them. The gas was very weak, but they could at least take off their coats now. After the labours of the driver, the plumber and the gas man, the bag of bread had become extremely light.

  Lyudmila carried on working until late at night. She stuck a rag on the end of a broom and started dusting the walls and ceilings. She cleaned the chandelier, took the dead flowers out to the back staircase and assembled a huge heap of rags, old papers and other junk. A grumbling Nadya had to carry three bucket-loads down to the dustbin.

  Lyudmila washed all the plates from the kitchen and dining-room. She set Viktor to dry the knives, forks and plates, but refused to trust him with the tea service. She started doing the washing in the bathroom, thawed out the butter on top of the stove and sorted through the potatoes they had brought from Kazan.

  Viktor tried to phone Sokolov. Marya Ivanovna answered.

  ‘I’ve just put Pyotr Lavrentyevich to bed. He’s worn out from the journey, but I can wake him up if it’s urgent.’

  ‘No, no, I just wanted a chat,’ said Viktor.

  ‘I’m so happy,’ said Marya Ivanovna. ‘I keep wanting to cry.’

  ‘Why not come round? Are you doing anything this evening?’

  ‘You must be mad! Surely you realize how much Lyudmila and I have to do.’

  She started to ask how long it had taken to get the electricity and the plumbing sorted out. Viktor cut her short. ‘I’ll call Lyudmila. If you want to talk about plumbing, she can continue this discussion.’

  Then he added teasingly: ‘What a pity you can’t come round. We could have read Flaubert’s poem “Max and Maurice”.’

  Ignoring his joke, she said: ‘I’ll phone later. If I’ve got so much work with just the one room, I can’t imagine what it’s like for Lyudmila.’

  Viktor realized he had offended her. Suddenly he wished he were back in Kazan. How strange people are . . .

  Next, Viktor tried to ring Postoev, but his phone seemed to be cut off. He tried Gurevich, but was told by his neighbours that he had gone to his sister in Sokolniki. He rang Chepyzhin, but no one answered.

  Suddenly the phone rang. A boyish voice asked for Nadya. She was then on one of her trips to the dustbin.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked Viktor severely.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Just someone she knows.’

  ‘Viktor,’ called Lyudmila. ‘You’ve been chatting long enough on the phone. Come and help me with this cupboard.’

  ‘I’m not chatting,’ said Viktor. ‘No one in Moscow wants to speak to me. And you might at least give me something to eat. Sokolov’s already stuffed himself and gone to bed.’

  Lyudmila seemed only to have increased the chaos in the flat. There were heaps of linen everywhere; the crockery had been taken out of the cupboards and was lying all over the floor; you could hardly move in the rooms and the corridor for all the pans, bowls and sacks.

  Viktor hadn’t expected Lyudmila to go into Tolya’s room at first, but he was wrong. Looking flushed and anxious, she said to him: ‘Vitya, put the Chinese vase on Tolya’s bookshelf. I’ve just given the room a good clean.’

  The phone rang again. He heard Nadya answer.

  ‘Hello! No, I haven’t been out. Mama made me take the rubbish down.’

  ‘Give me a hand, Vitya,’ Lyudmila chivvied Viktor. ‘Don’t just go to sleep. There’s still masses to do.’

  A woman’s instinct is so simple – and so strong.

  By evening the chaos was vanquished. The rooms felt warmer and had begun to take on something of their pre-war appearance. They ate supper in the kitchen. Lyudmila had baked some biscuits and fried up some of the millet she had boiled in the afternoon.

  ‘Who was that on the phone?’ Viktor asked Nadya.

  ‘Just a boy,’ said Nadya and burst out laughing. ‘He’s been ringing for four days.’

  ‘What, have you been writing to him?’ asked Lyudmila. ‘Did you tell him we were coming back?’

  Nadya looked irritated and shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘I’d be happy if even a dog phoned me,’ said Viktor.

  During the night Viktor woke up. Lyudmila was in her nightgown, standing outside Tolya’s open door.

  ‘Can you see, Tolya?’ she was murmuring. ‘I’ve managed to clean everything now. Little one, to look at your room now, no one would think there’d ever been a war.’

  25

  On their return from evacuation, the University staff met in one of the halls of the Academy of Sciences. All these people – young and old, pale or bald, with large eyes or small piercing eyes, with wide foreheads or narrow foreheads – were conscious, as they came together, of the highest poetry of all, the p
oetry of prose.

  Damp sheets and the damp pages of books left for too long in unheated rooms, formulae noted down by frozen red fingers, lectures delivered in an overcoat with the collar turned up, salads made from slimy potatoes and a few torn cabbage leaves, the crush to get meal tickets, the tedious thought of having to write your name down for salt fish and an extra ration of oil – all this became suddenly unimportant. As people met, they greeted each other noisily.

  Viktor saw Chepyzhin standing next to Academician Shishakov.

  ‘Dmitry Petrovich! Dmitry Petrovich!’ Viktor repeated, looking at the face that was so dear to him. Chepyzhin embraced him.

  ‘Have you heard from your lads at the front?’ asked Viktor.

  ‘Yes, yes, they’re fine.’

  From the way Chepyzhin frowned as he said this, Viktor realized that he already knew about Tolya’s death.

  ‘Viktor Pavlovich,’ Chepyzhin went on, ‘give my regards to your wife. My sincerest regards. Mine and Nadezhda Fyodorovna’s.’

  Then he added: ‘I’ve read your work. It’s interesting. Very important – even more than it seems. Yes, it’s more interesting than we can yet appreciate.’

  He kissed Viktor on the forehead.

  ‘No, no, it’s nothing,’ said Viktor, feeling embarrassed and happy. On his way to the meeting he had been wondering stupidly who would have read his work and what they would say about it. What if no one had read it at all . . . ?

  Now he felt certain that no one would speak of anything else.

  Shishakov was still standing there. There were lots of things Viktor wanted to say, but not in the presence of a third party – and certainly not in the presence of Shishakov.

  When he looked at Shishakov, Viktor was always reminded of Gleb Uspensky’s phrase, ‘a pyramid-shaped buffalo’. His square fleshy face, his arrogant, equally fleshy lips, his pudgy fingers with their polished nails, his thick silver-grey crewcut, all somehow oppressed Viktor. Every time he met Shishakov, he caught himself thinking, ‘Will he recognize me? Will he say hello?’ He would then feel angry with himself for feeling glad when Shishakov’s fleshy lips slowly pronounced a few words that somehow seemed equally fleshy.

  ‘The arrogant bull,’ Viktor once said to Sokolov when Shishakov was mentioned. ‘He makes me feel like a Jew from a shtetl in the presence of a cavalry colonel.’

  ‘Just think!’ said Sokolov. ‘What he’s most famous for is failing to recognize a positron on a photograph. All the research students know the story. They call it “Academician Shishakov’s mistake”.’

  Sokolov very rarely spoke ill of people – whether from caution or from some pious principle that forbade him to judge his neighbours. But Shishakov irritated him beyond endurance; Sokolov couldn’t help but ridicule and abuse him.

  They began to talk about the war.

  ‘The German advance has been halted on the Volga,’ said Chepyzhin. ‘There’s the power of the Volga for you – living water, living power.’

  ‘Stalingrad, Stalingrad,’ said Shishakov. ‘The triumph of our strategy and the determination of our people.’

  ‘Aleksey Alekseyevich, are you acquainted with Viktor Pavlovich’s latest work?’ Chepyzhin asked suddenly.

  ‘I know of it, of course, but I haven’t yet read it.’

  It was by no means clear from Shishakov’s face whether he really had heard of it.

  Viktor looked for a long time into Chepyzhin’s eyes; he wanted his old friend and teacher to see all he had been through, all his doubts and losses. But he saw sadness, depression and the weariness of old age on Chepyzhin’s face too.

  Sokolov came up. Chepyzhin shook him by the hand, but Shishakov merely glanced carelessly at his rather old jacket. Then Postoev joined them and Shishakov’s large fleshy face broke into a smile.

  ‘Greetings, greetings, my friend. Now you’re someone I really am glad to see.’

  They asked after each other’s health, and after their wives and children. As they talked about their dachas, they sounded like grand lords.

  ‘How are you getting on?’ Viktor asked Sokolov quietly. ‘Is it warm in your flat?’

  ‘It’s not yet any better than Kazan,’ answered Sokolov. ‘Masha said I must give you her regards. She’ll probably come round and see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Splendid! We miss her. In Kazan we got used to seeing her every day.’

  ‘Every day! It seemed more like three times a day. I even suggested she move in with you.’

  Viktor laughed, but was conscious of something false in his laughter. Then Academician Leonryev entered the hall, a mathematician with a big nose, an imposing bald skull and enormous glasses with yellow frames. Once, when they had both been staying in Gaspre, they had gone on a trip together to Yalta. They had drunk a lot of wine in a shop and staggered back to the canteen in Gaspre singing a dirty song. This had alarmed the staff and amused the other holiday-makers. Seeing Viktor, Leontyev smiled. Viktor lowered his eyes, expecting Leontyev to say something about his work.

  Instead, Leontyev seemed to be remembering their adventures at Gaspre. With a wave of the hand he called out: ‘Well, Viktor Pavlovich, how about a song?’

  A young man with dark hair came in. He was wearing a black suit. Viktor noticed that Shishakov greeted him immediately.

  Suslakov also approached the young man. Suslakov was an important man on the Presidium, though the exact nature of his duties was rather obscure. But if you needed a flat, or if a lecturer needed to get from Alma-Ata to Kazan, then Suslakov could be more useful than the President himself. He had the tired face of a man who works at night and his cheeks seemed to have been kneaded from grey dough. He was the sort of man who is needed by everyone, all the time.

  They were all accustomed to the way Suslakov smoked ‘Palmyra’ at meetings, while the Academicians smoked ordinary tobacco or shag. And he didn’t get lifts home from some celebrity; no, he would offer the celebrities a ride in his Zis.

  Viktor watched the conversation between Suslakov and the young man with dark hair. He could tell that it wasn’t the young man who was asking a favour of Suslakov – however gracefully a man asks for a favour, you can always tell who is asking and who is being asked. On the contrary, the young man seemed quite ready to break off the conversation. And he greeted Chepyzhin coolly, with studied politeness.

  ‘By the way, who is that young grandee?’ asked Viktor.

  In a low voice Postoev answered: ‘He’s been working for a while in the scientific section of the Central Committee.’

  ‘Do you know,’ said Viktor. ‘I’ve got an extraordinary feeling. As though our determination at Stalingrad is the determination of Newton, the determination of Einstein. As though our victory on the Volga symbolizes the triumph of Einstein’s ideas. Well, you know what I mean . . .’

  Shishakov gave a perplexed smile and gently shook his head.

  ‘Don’t you understand me, Aleksey Alekseyevich?’ said Viktor.

  ‘It’s as clear as mud,’ said the young man from the scientific section, who was now standing beside Viktor. ‘But I suppose the so-called theory of relativity can allow one to establish a link between the Russian Volga and Albert Einstein.’

  ‘Why “so-called”?’ asked Viktor in astonishment. He turned to the pyramid-shaped Shishakov for support, but Shishakov’s quiet contempt seemed to extend to Einstein as well.

  Viktor felt a rush of anger. This was the way it sometimes happened – something would needle him and he would find it very difficult to restrain himself. At home in the evening, he would finally allow himself to reply. Sometimes he quite forgot himself, shouting and gesticulating, standing up for what he loved and ridiculing his enemies. ‘Papa’s making a speech again,’ Lyudmila would say to Nadya.

  This time, it wasn’t only on Einstein’s behalf that he was angry. Everyone he knew should be talking about his work – he himself should be the centre of attention. He felt upset and hurt. He knew it was ridiculous to take offence like this, but he
did. No one but Chepyzhin had spoken to him about his work.

  He began, rather timidly, to explain.

  ‘The Fascists have exiled the brilliant Einstein and their physics has become the physics of monkeys. But we, thank God, have halted the advance of Fascism. It all goes together: the Volga, Stalingrad, Albert Einstein – the greatest genius of our epoch – the most remote little village, an illiterate old peasant woman, and the freedom we all need. This all goes together. I may sound confused, but perhaps there isn’t anything clearer than this confusion.’

  ‘I think, Viktor Pavlovich, that your panegyric to Einstein is a trifle exaggerated,’ said Shishakov.

  ‘Yes,’ said Postoev lightly. ‘On the whole I would say the same.’

  The young man from the scientific section just looked at Viktor sadly.

  ‘Well, comrade Shtrum,’ he began, and Viktor once again felt the malevolence in his voice. ‘To you it may seem natural, at a time of such importance for our people, to couple Albert Einstein and the Volga. These days, however, have awoken other sentiments in the hearts of those who disagree with you. Still, no one has power over someone else’s heart and there’s nothing to argue about there. But there is room for argument as regards your evaluation of Einstein: it does seem inappropriate to regard an idealist theory as the peak of scientific achievement.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Viktor interrupted. ‘Aleksey Alekseyevich,’ he went on in an arrogant and didactic voice, ‘contemporary physics without Einstein is the physics of monkeys. It’s not for us to trifle with the names of Einstein, Galileo and Newton.’

  He raised a finger to silence Shishakov and saw him blink.

  A minute later Viktor was standing by the window and recounting this unexpected incident to Sokolov, partly in a whisper and partly quite loudly.

  ‘And you were right next to me and you didn’t even hear. Chepyzhin suddenly disappeared too. It was almost as though he did so on purpose.’

  He frowned and fell silent. How childishly, how naïvely he had looked forward to today’s triumph. As it turned out, it had been some young bureaucrat who had created the most stir.