‘Wait a moment,’ said Viktor. ‘I need room to breathe.’
‘For heaven’s sake!’ said Sokolov. ‘No one’s going to interfere with your work. You can breathe as much as you like.’
‘Listen, my friend,’ said Viktor with a sour smile. ‘You mean well by me and I thank you with all my heart. But please allow me to be equally frank. Why, for the love of God, did you have to talk like that about Dmitry Petrovich? After the freedom of thought we enjoyed in Kazan, I found that very upsetting. As for me, I’m afraid I’m not as fearless as all that. I’m no Danton – as we used to say in my student days.’
‘Thank God for that! To be quite honest, I’ve always thought of political speechmakers as people incapable of expressing themselves in anything creative. We ourselves do have that ability.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Viktor. ‘What about that young Frenchman Galois? And what about Kibalchich?’
Sokolov pushed his chair back. ‘Kibalchich, as you know very well, ended up on the scaffold. What I’m talking about is empty blather. Like Madyarov’s.’
‘So you’re calling me a blatherer?’
Sokolov shrugged his shoulders and didn’t answer.
One might have expected this quarrel to be forgotten as easily as their previous quarrels. But for some reason this particular flare-up was not forgotten. If two men’s lives are in harmony, they can quarrel, be wildly unjust to one another and then forget it. But if there is some hidden discord, then any thoughtlessness, any careless word, can be a blade that severs their friendship.
Such discord often lies so deep that it never reaches the surface, never becomes conscious. One violent, empty quarrel, one unkind word, appears then to be the fateful blow that destroys years of friendship.
No, Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich did not just quarrel over a goose!fn2
Footnotes
fn1 A minister under Alexander I. Here he epitomises a narrow-minded and rigid bureaucracy.
fn2 The subject of a famous story by Gogol.
27
When people talked about Kasyan Terentyevich Kovchenko, the new deputy director of the Institute, they always called him ‘one of Shishakov’s men’. He seemed friendly, he sprinkled his conversation with odd words of Ukrainian, and he managed to obtain both a car and a flat with remarkable speed.
Markov, who knew any number of stories about the different Academicians and senior members of staff, said that Kovchenko had been awarded a Stalin Prize for a work that he had first read through after its publication: his part had been to obtain materials that were in short supply and to smooth over various bureaucratic obstacles.
Shishakov entrusted Kovchenko with the task of filling the various positions that had fallen vacant. Applications were invited for the posts of director of the vacuum laboratory and director of the low temperature laboratory; there were also vacancies for research directors.
The War Department furnished both workers and materials; the mechanical workshop was reorganized and the main building of the Institute restored; the central power station agreed to provide an unlimited supply of electricity; special factories sent in whatever materials were in short supply. All this was arranged by Kovchenko.
Usually when a new director takes over, people say respectfully, ‘He’s the first to arrive at work and the last to leave.’ This was said of Kovchenko. But a new director wins even more respect when people say, ‘It’s two weeks since he was appointed and he’s only appeared once, for half an hour. He just never comes in.’ This means that the director is drawing up new canons of law, that he has access to the highest circles of government. And this is what was said of Academician Shishakov.
As for Chepyzhin, he went off to his dacha, to work in what he called his laboratory hut. Professor Feinhard, the famous cardiologist, had advised him not to lift anything heavy and to avoid any sudden movements. Chepyzhin, however, chopped wood, dug ditches and felt fine. He wrote to Professor Feinhard that a strict regime suited him.
In cold, hungry Moscow the Institute seemed an oasis of warmth and luxury. When they came in to work, the members of staff took great pleasure warming their hands on the hot radiators; their flats were freezing and damp.
What they liked most of all was the new canteen in the basement. It had a buffet where you could buy yoghurt, sweet coffee and pieces of sausage. And the woman behind the counter didn’t tear off the coupons for meat and fat from your ration-cards; this was particularly appreciated.
The canteen had six different menus: one for doctors of science, one for research directors, one for research assistants, one for senior laboratory assistants, one for technicians and one for service personnel. The fiercest passions were generated by the two highest-grade menus, which differed only in their desserts – stewed fruit or a jelly made from powder. Emotions also ran high over the food parcels delivered to the houses of doctors and research directors.
Savostyanov remarked that, in all probability, these parcels had stirred more passions than the theory of Copernicus.
Sometimes it seemed as though higher, more mysterious powers were involved in the arcana of rations allocation; that it did not depend merely on the Party committee and the administrators of the Institute.
‘You know, your parcel came today,’ Lyudmila announced one evening. ‘What I can’t understand is why Svechin, a nonentity in the scientific world, should get two dozen eggs, while you, for some reason, only get fifteen. I checked it on the list. You and Sokolov each get fifteen.’
‘God knows what it all means,’ said Viktor. ‘As you are aware, there are various different classes of scientists: very great, great, famous, talented and – finally – very old. Since the very great and the great are no longer with us, they don’t need eggs. The others receive varying quantities of eggs, semolina and cabbage according to rank. But then everything gets confused by other questions. Are you active in society? Do you give seminars in Marxism? Are you close to the directors? And it comes out quite crazy. The man in charge of the Academy garage gets the same as Zelinsky – twenty-five eggs. There’s a very charming young lady in Svechin’s laboratory who was so upset yesterday that she burst into tears and refused to eat anything at all. Like Gandhi.’
Nadya burst out laughing. ‘You know, Papa, I’m amazed you’re not ashamed to eat your lamb chops with the cleaning ladies right there beside you. Grandmother could never have done that.’
‘Each according to his labour,’ said Lyudmila. ‘That’s the principle of Socialism.’
‘Come on!’ said Viktor. ‘There’s no trace of Socialism in our canteen. Anyway, I don’t give a damn. But do you know what Markov told me today?’ he added suddenly. ‘At the Institute – and even at the Institute of Mathematics and Mechanics – people are typing out copies of my work and passing them round.’
‘Like Mandelstam’s poems,’ said Nadya.
‘Don’t make fun of me,’ said Viktor. ‘And the final-year students are even asking for special lectures on it.’
‘That’s nothing,’ said Nadya. ‘Alka Postoeva told me, “Your papa’s become a genius.”’
‘No,’ said Viktor, ‘I’m not yet a genius.’
He went off to his room. A moment later, however, he came back and said: ‘I just can’t get this nonsense out of my head. Two dozen eggs for Svechin! It’s amazing what ways they find to humiliate people.’
To Viktor’s shame, what hurt him most was being put on the same level as Sokolov. ‘Yes, they should have recognized my merits by allowing me at least one extra egg. They could have given Sokolov fourteen – just as a symbolic distinction.’
He tried to laugh at himself, but he couldn’t get rid of his pathetic sense of irritation. He was more upset at being given the same as Sokolov than at being given less than Svechin. With Svechin everything was clear enough: he was a member of the Party bureau. This was something Viktor could accept. But with Sokolov it was a matter of relative scientific standing. That was something he couldn’t ignore. He
felt quite tormented; his indignation sprang from the very depths of his soul. What an absurd way for the authorities to show their appreciation of people! But what could he do? There are times when everyone behaves pathetically.
As he was getting into bed, Viktor remembered his conversation with Sokolov about Chepyzhin and said in a loud, angry voice: ‘Homo lackeyus!’
‘Who do you mean?’ asked Lyudmila, who was already in bed, reading a book.
‘Sokolov. He’s a born lackey.’
Lyudmila put a finger in her book to mark the page and said, without even turning her head:
‘Soon you’ll be thrown out of the Institute – and all for a few fine words. You’re so irritable, you’re always telling everyone what to do . . . You’ve already quarrelled with everyone else and now you want to quarrel with Sokolov. Soon no one will even set foot in our house.’
‘No, Lyuda darling, that’s not it at all. How can I explain? Don’t you understand? The same fear as before the war, the same fear over every word, the same helplessness . . . Chepyzhin! Lyuda, we’re talking about a great man. I thought the whole Institute would be seething, but the only person who said anything was the old caretaker. And then that strange remark Postoev made to Sokolov: “What matters is that we’re both Russians.” Why, why on earth did he say that?’
He wanted to have a long talk with Lyudmila; he wanted to share all his thoughts with her. He was ashamed at being so preoccupied with things like rations. He had grown dull. Why? Why had he somehow become older now that they were back in Moscow? Why had these trivialities, these petty-bourgeois concerns suddenly become so important? Why had his spiritual life in Kazan been so much deeper and purer, so much more significant? Why was it that even his scientific work – and his joy in it – was now contaminated with vanity and pettiness?
‘It’s all very difficult, Lyuda. I’m not well. Lyuda? Why don’t you say anything?’
Lyudmila was asleep. Viktor laughed quietly. It seemed amusing that one woman should lose sleep over his troubles and another fall asleep while he talked about them. He could see Marya Ivanovna’s thin face before him. He repeated what he had just said to his wife.
‘Don’t you understand? Masha?’
‘Goodness, what nonsense gets into my head!’ he said to himself as he fell asleep.
What nonsense indeed.
Viktor was very clumsy with his hands. If the electric iron burnt out or the lights fused, it was nearly always Lyudmila who sorted things out. During their first years together, Lyudmila had found this helplessness of Viktor’s quite endearing; now, however, she found it irritating. Once, seeing him putting an empty kettle on the burner, she snapped: ‘What’s the matter with you? Are your hands made of clay or something?’
While they were assembling the new apparatus in the laboratory, these words of Lyudmila’s came back to him; they had upset him and made him angry.
Markov and Nozdrin now ruled the laboratory. Savostyanov was the first to sense this. At one of their meetings he announced: ‘There is no God but Professor Markov, and Nozdrin is his prophet!’
Markov’s reticence and arrogance had quite disappeared. Viktor was amazed at his bold thinking, delighted by the ease with which he could solve any problem as it came up. He was like a surgeon applying his scalpel to a network of blood-vessels and nerve-fibres. It was as though he were bringing some rational being to life, some creature with a quick and penetrating mind of its own. This new metallic organism, the first in the world, seemed endowed with a heart and feelings, seemed able to rejoice and suffer along with the people who had made it.
In the past Viktor had been a little amused by Markov’s unshakeable conviction that his work, the apparatus he had set up, was of more importance than the works of Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky or the futile occupations of a Buddha or a Mohammed.
Tolstoy had doubted the value of his own enormous labours. Tolstoy, a genius, had been unsure whether what he did was of any use to anyone. Not so the physicists. They had no doubts. And Markov least of all.
Now, however, this assurance of Markov’s no longer made Viktor laugh.
Viktor also loved to watch Nozdrin working away with a file, a screwdriver or a pair of pliers, or sorting through skeins of flex as he helped the electricians wire up the apparatus.
The floor was covered in bundles of wire and thin leaves of matt blueish lead. On a cast-iron platform in the middle of the hall stood the main part of the new apparatus, patterned with small circles and rectangles that had been punched out of the metal. There was something heart-breakingly beautiful about the apparatus, this huge slab of metal that would allow them to study the nature of matter with fantastic refinement.
In the same way, one thousand or two thousand years ago, a small group of men had gathered together on the shore of the sea to build a raft, lashing thick logs together with ropes. Their workbenches and winches had been set up on a sandy beach and pots of tar were boiling over fires. Soon they would set sail.
In the evening the builders of the raft had left; they had once again breathed in the scent of their homes, felt the warmth of their hearths and listened to the laughter and curses of their women. Sometimes they had got drawn into domestic quarrels, shouting, threatening their children and arguing with their neighbours. But in the warm darkness of night the sound of the sea had come back to them; their hearts beat faster as they dreamed of travelling into the unknown.
Sokolov usually watched the progress of the work in silence. Often Viktor caught his eye and saw the seriousness and intentness of his gaze; it seemed then that nothing had changed and that there was still something good and important between them.
He longed to talk to Sokolov. It really was very strange. All these humiliating emotions unleashed by the allocation of rations, all these petty thoughts about the exact measure of the authorities’ esteem for you. But there was still room in his soul for what did not depend on the authorities, on some prize or other, on his professional recognition or lack of it.
Once again those evenings in Kazan seemed young and beautiful, almost like pre-revolutionary student gatherings. As long as Madyarov could be trusted . . . How peculiar, though! Karimov suspected Madyarov, and Madyarov Karimov. They were both trustworthy! Viktor was sure of it. Unless, in the words of Heine, ‘They both stank’.
Sometimes he remembered a strange conversation he had once had with Chepyzhin. Why, now he was back in Moscow, were the things he recalled so trivial and insignificant? Why did he think so often of people he had no respect for? And why were the most talented people, the most trustworthy people, unable to help him?
‘It is odd,’ Viktor said to Sokolov. ‘People come from all the different laboratories to watch the new apparatus being assembled. But Shishakov hasn’t once honoured us with his presence.’
‘He’s very busy.’
‘Of course, of course,’ Viktor agreed hurriedly.
Now that they were in Moscow, it was impossible to have a sincere, friendly conversation with Sokolov. It was as though they no longer knew each other.
Viktor no longer tried to seize every pretext for an argument with Sokolov. On the contrary, he tried to avoid arguments. But this was difficult; sometimes arguments seemed to flare up of their own accord.
Once Viktor ventured:
‘I’ve been thinking of our talks in Kazan . . . By the way, do you know how Madyarov is? Does he write?’
Sokolov shook his head.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything about Madyarov. I told you that we stopped seeing one another. I find it increasingly unpleasant to even think of those conversations. We were so depressed that we tried to lay the blame for temporary military setbacks on entirely imaginary failings in the Soviet State itself. And what we thought of as failings have now shown themselves to be strengths.’
‘Like 1937, for example?’
‘Viktor Pavlovich, for some time now you’ve been trying to turn every conversation of ours into an argument.’
&
nbsp; Viktor wanted to say that it was the other way round, that it was Sokolov who was always irritable and that this irritation of his made him seek every opportunity for a quarrel. Instead, he just said:
‘It may well be that the fault lies in my bad character, Pyotr Lavrentyevich. It gets worse every day. Lyudmila has noticed it too.’
At the same time he thought to himself: ‘How alone I am. I’m alone at home and alone with my friend.’
28
Reichsführer Himmler had arranged a meeting to discuss the special measures being undertaken by the RSHA, the headquarters of the Reich Security Administration. The meeting was an important one: after it Himmler had to visit the headquarters of the Führer himself.
Obersturmbannführer Liss had been instructed by Berlin to report on the progress of the special building being constructed next to the camp administration centre. Before inspecting the building itself, Liss was to visit the chemical and engineering firms responsible for filling the Administration’s orders. He then had to go to Berlin to report to SS Obersturmbannführer Eichmann, the man responsible for organizing the meeting.
Liss was delighted to be entrusted with this mission. He was tired of the atmosphere in the camp, of constant dealings with men of a coarse, primitive mentality.
As he got into his car, he thought of Mostovskoy. Day and night, the old man must be racking his brains, trying vainly to understand why on earth Liss had summoned him. He was probably waiting anxiously and impatiently for their next meeting. And all Liss had wanted was to check out a few ideas in connection with an article he hoped to write: ‘The Ideology of the Enemy and Their Leaders’.
What an interesting old man! Yes, once you get inside the nucleus of the atom, the forces of attraction begin to act on you as powerfully as the centrifugal forces.
They drove out through the camp gates and Liss forgot Mostovskoy.
Early next morning he arrived at the Voss engineering works. After breakfast, Liss talked in Voss’s office with the designer, Praschke, and then with the engineers in charge of production. The commercial director gave him a cost estimate for the equipment that had been ordered. He spent several hours in the din of the workshops themselves; by the end of the day he was exhausted.
Life and Fate Page 57