‘Yes,’ said Viktor with a smile. ‘You can even take the integral.’
‘Listen now,’ said Chepyzhin. ‘I used to study the evolution of stars, but now I’ve come to understand the importance of the slightest movement of a spot of living mucus. Take the first line of evolution – from the lowest to the highest form of life. One day man will be endowed with all the attributes of the deity – omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience. The coming century will bring a solution to the problem of the transformation of matter into energy and the creation of life itself. There will be a parallel development towards the attainment of extreme speeds and the conquest of space. More distant millennia will see progress towards the harnessing of the very highest form of energy – psychic energy.’
Suddenly Viktor realized that this wasn’t just idle chatter and that he strongly disagreed with it.
‘Man will learn to materialize in his laboratory the content and rhythm of the psychic activity of rational beings throughout the metagalaxy. Psychic energy will cross millions of light-years of space instantaneously. Omnipresence – formerly an attribute of God – will have become one more conquest of reason. But man won’t just stop there. After attaining equality with God, he will begin to solve the problems that were beyond God. He will establish communication with rational beings from the highest level of evolution, beings from another space and another time to whom the whole history of humanity seems merely a dim flicker. He will establish communication with the life of the microcosm whose whole evolution occurs within the twinkling of a man’s eye. The abyss of time and space will be overcome. Man will finally be able to look down on God.’
Viktor shook his head.
‘Dmitry Petrovich,’ he said, ‘when you began, I was thinking that I might be arrested any day and that I wasn’t in the mood for philosophy. Suddenly I quite forgot about Kovchenko, Shishakov and comrade Beria; I forgot that I might be thrown out of my laboratory tomorrow and into prison on the following day. But what I felt as I listened to you was not joy, but utter despair. We think we’re so wise – to us Hercules seems like a child with rickets. And yet on this very day the Germans are slaughtering Jewish children and old women as though they were mad dogs. And we ourselves have endured 1937 and the horrors of collectivization – famine, cannibalism and the deportation of millions of unfortunate peasants . . . Once, everything seemed simple and clear. But these terrible losses and tragedies have confused everything. You say man will be able to look down on God – but what if he also becomes able to look down on the Devil? What if he eventually surpasses him? You say life is freedom. Is that what people in the camps think? What if the life expanding through the universe should use its power to create a slavery still more terrible than your slavery of inanimate matter? Do you think this man of the future will surpass Christ in his goodness? That’s the real question. How will the power of this omnipresent and omniscient being benefit the world if he is still endowed with our own fatuous self-assurance and animal egotism? Our class egotism, our race egotism, our State egotism and our personal egotism? What if he transforms the whole world into a galactic concentration camp? What I want to know is – do you believe in the evolution of kindness, morality, mercy? Is man capable of evolving in that way?’
He gave Chepyzhin a rueful look.
‘Forgive me for throwing a question like that at you. It seems even more abstract than the equations we were just talking about.’
‘No,’ said Chepyzhin. ‘It’s not so very abstract. It’s a question that’s had a very real effect on my life. I took a decision not to take part in any research relating to nuclear fission. You said yourself that man isn’t yet kind enough or wise enough to lead a rational life. Just think what would happen now if he was presented with the power within the atom! Man’s spiritual energy is still at a lamentable level. But I do believe in the future. I believe that it is not only man’s power that will evolve, but also his soul, his capacity for love.’
Chepyzhin fell silent, troubled by the expression on Viktor’s face.
‘I have thought about all this,’ said Viktor. ‘And I ended up feeling quite appalled. You and I are concerned about the imperfection of man. But take my laboratory – who else there has ever thought about these questions? Sokolov? He’s very clever – but very timid. He prostrates himself before the State and believes that there is no power except that of God. Markov? Markov hasn’t the slightest inkling of questions of good and evil, of love and morality. His is a strictly practical talent. His attitude to scientific problems is that of a chess-player. Savostyanov – the man I was just talking about? He’s charming and witty and a splendid physicist. But at the same time he’s just a gay young fellow without a thought in his head. When we were evacuated, he took with him a whole pile of photos of young women in bathing costumes. He likes playing the dandy, he likes dancing and getting drunk. He sees science as another kind of sport – understanding some particular phenomenon, solving a particular problem is the same as setting a new athletic record. All he cares about is getting there first. And I’m no better. I’ve never thought seriously about these matters myself. Science today should be entrusted to men of spiritual understanding, to prophets and saints. But instead it’s been left to chess-players and scientists. They don’t know what they’re doing. You do. But there’s only one of you. If there’s a Chepyzhin in Berlin, he won’t refuse to do research on neutrons. What then? And what about me? What’s going to happen to me? Once everything seemed quite simple, but now, now . . . You know that Tolstoy considered his works of genius to be just a trivial game. Well, we physicists are no geniuses but we aren’t half pleased with ourselves.’
Viktor’s eyelids had started to twitch.
‘Where can I find faith, strength, determination?’
He was speaking very quickly and with a strong Jewish accent.
‘What can I say? You know what’s happened – and now I’m being persecuted just because . . .’
He jumped up without finishing the sentence; his teaspoon fell to the floor. His hands were trembling; his whole body was trembling.
‘Calm down, Viktor Pavlovich! Please calm down!’ said Chepyzhin. ‘Let’s talk about something else.’
‘No, no, I must go now. I’m sorry. Something’s the matter with my head. Forgive me.’
He thanked Chepyzhin and took his leave. Afraid he could no longer control himself, he avoided looking him in the face. There were tears on his cheeks as he went down the stairs.
25
The others were already asleep when Viktor got back. He had the feeling he’d be sitting at his desk until morning, rewriting his letter of repentance and reading it over yet again, trying for the hundredth time to decide whether or not to go into the Institute.
He hadn’t been able to think during the long walk home – not even about his tears on the staircase or his abruptly terminated conversation with Chepyzhin; not even about what might happen on the following day or about the letter from his mother in the side-pocket of his jacket. He was under the spell of the silent darkness of the streets; his mind was as vacant and windswept as the deserted alleys of Moscow at night. He felt no emotion: neither shame at his tears nor dread of what was to come, nor even hope that everything would come right in the end.
In the morning, when he wanted to go to the bathroom, he found the door locked from the inside.
‘Is that you, Lyudmila?’ he called.
He was astonished to hear Yevgenia’s voice.
‘Heavens! Zhenechka! What’s brought you here?’ He was so taken aback that he asked stupidly: ‘Does Lyuda know that you’re here?’
Yevgenia came out. They kissed each other.
‘You don’t look well,’ said Viktor. ‘That’s what’s called a Jewish compliment.’
There and then she told him about Krymov’s arrest and the reason for her visit. Viktor was shocked. But after news like that, her visit seemed all the more precious. A bright happy Yevgenia, full of thoughts of her new lif
e, would have seemed less close to him, less dear.
Viktor talked away, asking lots of questions, but continually looking at his watch.
‘How senseless and absurd it all is,’ he said. ‘Just think of all the times I’ve argued with Nikolay, all the times he’s tried to put me right. Now he’s in prison – and I’m still at large.’
‘Viktor,’ interrupted Lyudmila, ‘don’t forget – the clock in the dining-room’s ten minutes slow.’
Viktor muttered something and went off to his room. He looked at his watch twice as he walked down the corridor.
The meeting of the Scientific Council was due to begin at eleven o’clock. Surrounded by his books and other belongings, Viktor had an intensified, almost hallucinatory awareness of the bustle and tension there must be in the Institute. It was half-past ten. Sokolov was taking off his jacket. Savostyanov was whispering to Markov: ‘Well, it seems our madman’s decided not to show up.’ Gurevich was scratching his stout behind and looking out of the window. A limousine was drawing up outside; Shishakov, wearing a hat and a long fur coat, was just getting out. Another car drew up and Badin got out. Kovchenko was going down the corridor. There were already about fifteen people in the hall, all of them looking through newspapers. They’d known it would be crowded and had come early to get a good place. Svechin and Ramskov, the secretary of the Institute Party Committee ‘with the stamp of secrecy on his brow’, were standing by the door of the Committee office. Old Academician Prasolov was gazing into the air as he floated down the corridor; he always made unbelievably vile speeches at meetings like this. The junior research assistants had formed a large noisy group of their own.
Viktor looked at his watch, took his statement out of the drawer, stuffed it into his pocket, and looked at his watch again.
He could go to the meeting and not say anything . . . No . . . If he did go, it would be wrong not to speak – and if he did speak, he would have to repent. But if he didn’t go at all, if he just burnt his boats . . .
Yes, he knew what people would say – ‘He didn’t have the courage . . . openly defying the collective . . . a political challenge . . . after this we must adopt a different language in dealing with him . . .’ Once again Viktor took his statement out of his pocket and put it back without reading it. He had read these lines dozens of times: ‘I have realized that in expressing a lack of confidence in the Party leadership I have behaved in a manner incompatible with what is expected of a Soviet citizen, and therefore . . . Also, without realizing it, I have deviated in my researches from the central tenets of Soviet science and involuntarily opposed myself . . .’
Viktor kept wanting to reread his statement, but as soon as he picked it up, every letter of it seemed hatefully familiar . . . Krymov was in the Lubyanka and he was a Communist. As for Viktor – with his doubts, with his horror of Stalin’s cruelty, with all he had said about freedom and bureaucracy, with his lurid political history – he should have been packed off to Kolyma long ago . . .
These last few days, Viktor had felt more and more frightened: he was sure they were coming to arrest him. There was usually more to an affair like this than just being fired from one’s job. First you’re taught a lesson, then you’re fired – and then you’re arrested.
Viktor looked at his watch again. The hall was already full. People were sitting there, looking at the door and whispering: ‘Still no Shtrum . . .’ One person said: ‘It’s already midday and Viktor’s still not here.’ Shishakov sat down in the chairman’s place and put his briefcase on the table. A secretary was standing beside Kovchenko; she had brought him some urgent papers to sign.
Viktor felt crushed by the impatience and irritation of the dozens of people waiting in the hall. There was probably someone waiting in the Lubyanka too; the man in charge of his case was saying to himself: ‘Is he really not going to come?’ Viktor could see the grim figure from the Central Committee saying: ‘So he’s chosen not to show up, has he?’ He could see people he knew talking to their wives and calling him a lunatic. He knew that Lyudmila resented what he had done: the State that Viktor had challenged was the one that Tolya had given his life for.
Previously, when he had counted the number of his and Lyudmila’s relatives who had been arrested and deported, he had reassured himself with the thought: ‘At least I can tell them not all my friends are like that. Look at Krymov – he’s a close friend and he’s an Old Bolshevik who worked in the underground.’
So much for Krymov. Maybe they’d interrogate him in the Lubyanka and he’d tell them all Viktor’s heresies. But then Krymov wasn’t that close to him – Zhenya and he had divorced. And his conversations with Krymov hadn’t been that dangerous – it was only since the beginning of the war that Viktor’s doubts had been so pressing. If they spoke to Madyarov, though . . .
The cumulative force of dozens of pushes and blows, dozens of fierce struggles, seemed to have bent his ribs, to be unstitching the bones of his skull.
As for those senseless words of Doctor Stockmann’s: ‘He who is alone is strong . . . !’ Was he strong? Looking furtively over his shoulder with the pathetic grimaces of someone from a shtetl, Viktor hurriedly put on his tie, transferred his papers to the pockets of his new jacket and put on his new yellow shoes.
Just then, as he was standing fully-dressed by the table, Lyudmila looked into the room. She walked up to him silently, kissed him and went out again.
No, he wasn’t going to recite these stereotyped formulae! He would tell the truth, he would say what came from his heart: ‘My friends, my comrades, I have listened to you with pain; I have asked myself with pain how it is that at this joyful time, the time of this great and hard-won breakthrough at Stalingrad, I find myself alone, listening to the angry reproaches of my comrades, my brothers, my friends . . . I swear to you – with my blood, with my brain, with all my strength . . .’ Yes, yes, now he knew what he would say . . . Quick, quick, there was still time . . . ‘Comrades . . . Comrade Stalin, I have lived falsely, I have had to reach the edge of the abyss to see my mistakes in their full horror . . .’ Yes, what he said would come from the depths of his soul. ‘Comrades, my own son died at Stalingrad . . .’
He went to the door.
Everything had been resolved. All that remained was to get to the Institute as quickly as possible, leave his coat in the cloakroom, enter the hall, hear the excited whispering of dozens of people, look round the familiar faces and say: ‘A word if you please. Comrades, I wish to share with you my thoughts and feelings of the last few days . . .’
But at the same moment, Viktor slowly took off his jacket and hung it on the back of a chair. He took off his tie, folded it and placed it on the edge of the table. He then sat down and began unlacing his shoes.
He felt a sense of lightness and purity. He felt calm and thoughtful. He didn’t believe in God, but somehow it was as though God were looking at him. Never in his life had he felt such happiness, such humility. Nothing on earth could take away his sense of rightness now.
He thought of his mother. Perhaps she had been standing beside him when he had so unaccountably changed his mind. Only a minute before he had sincerely wanted to make a hysterical confession. Neither God nor his mother had been in his mind when he had come to that last unshakeable decision. Nevertheless, they had been there beside him.
‘How good, how happy I feel,’ he thought.
Once again he imagined the meeting, the faces, the speakers’ voices.
‘How good, how light everything is,’ he said to himself once again.
He seemed never to have thought so deeply about life, about his family, about himself and his fate.
Lyudmila and Yevgenia came into the room. Seeing him there without his shoes and his jacket, with an open collar, Lyudmila said: ‘Good God! You’re still here. What will become of us now?’ She sounded like an old woman.
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Maybe it’s still not too late.’ She looked at him again and added: ‘I don’t kn
ow – you’re a grown man. But when it comes to matters like this, there are other things to think about than your principles.’
Viktor just sighed.
‘Lyudmila!’ said Yevgenia.
‘All right, all right,’ said Lyudmila. ‘Whatever will be, will be.’
‘Yes, Lyudochka,’ said Viktor. ‘One way or another, we’ll get by.’
He put his hand to his neck and smiled. ‘Forgive me, Zhenya. I haven’t got a tie on.’
Viktor looked at Lyudmila and Yevgenia. It was as though he had only now, for the first time, fully understood the difficulty and seriousness of life on earth, the true importance of close relationships. At the same time he knew that life would go on in its usual way, that he would still get upset over trifles, that he would still be infuriated by his wife and daughter.
‘That’s enough about me,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a game of chess, Zhenya. Remember how you checkmated me twice running?’
They set out the pieces. Viktor was white. He opened with the king’s pawn. Yevgenia said:
‘Nikolay always opened with the king’s pawn when he was white. What do you think they’ll say to me today at Kuznetsky Most?’
Lyudmila bent down and put Viktor’s slippers beside his feet. He tried to slip his feet into them without looking; Lyudmila gave a querulous sigh, knelt down on the floor and put them on for him. Viktor kissed her on the head and said absent-mindedly:
Life and Fate Page 83