The strangest thing of all was that, when he received this summons, Novikov had his first good night’s sleep after weeks of painful insomnia.
52
Viktor felt as though he were being carried along at great speed by a roaring train; he found it difficult even to remember the quiet of his own house. Time had become quite dense, full of people, events and telephone calls. It already seemed ten years since Shishakov had called round. He had been attentive and friendly, full of questions about Viktor’s health and all kinds of explanations. He had hinted gently that the events of the past weeks were best forgotten.
Viktor had imagined that the people who had tried to destroy him would now be too ashamed even to look at him. Instead, they greeted him joyfully on his return to the Institute, looking him straight in the eye as they expressed their heartfelt goodwill. The most extraordinary thing of all was that these people were quite sincere; now, they really did wish Viktor well.
Once again Viktor heard his work praised. Malenkov called him for an interview, looked straight at him with his quick black eyes and talked to him for the best part of an hour. Viktor was surprised at how familiar Malenkov was with his work and how easily he handled technical terms.
If this was surprising, Malenkov’s last words were astonishing: ‘We would be deeply regretful if anything at all were to hinder you in your work. We understand very well that there can be no practice without theory.’
Viktor really hadn’t expected that.
He found it very strange, on the following day, to see the anxious, questioning look with which Shishakov greeted him and at the same time remember the anger and humiliation he had felt when Shishakov had failed to invite him to the meeting held in his house.
Markov was warm and friendly, Savostyanov as witty as ever. Gurevich came into the laboratory and embraced him, saying: ‘I am glad to see you! I really am! You must be Benjamin the Fortunate!’
Yes, Viktor was still on the train.
He was asked whether he considered it necessary to expand his laboratory into an independent research institute. He was flown to the Urals by special plane, together with a Deputy People’s Commissar. He was allocated a special car which Lyudmila used to go to the store, giving lifts to women who had previously pretended not to recognize her.
Everything that had once seemed impossibly complicated and confusing now happened all by itself.
Young Landesman was deeply moved. Kovchenko phoned him at home and within an hour Dubyonkov had arranged for him to be taken onto the staff of Viktor’s laboratory.
On her return from Kazan, Anna Naumovna Weisspapier told Viktor that all her documentation had been arranged within two days and that Kovchenko had even arranged for a car to meet her at the station in Moscow. Anna Stepanovna had been informed by Dubyonkov in writing that she had been reinstated in her former post and that the deputy director had decided she should be paid in full for the weeks she was absent.
The new employees were constantly being fed. They said jokingly that their work was simply a matter of letting themselves be ferried, all day long, from one special canteen to another. Needless to say, this was far from the truth.
The new apparatus in Viktor’s laboratory no longer seemed quite so perfect. He had the feeling that in a year’s time it might seem slightly comic, like Stephenson’s ‘Rocket’.
What had happened in Viktor’s life seemed at once both natural and unnatural. His work really was interesting and important – why shouldn’t it be praised? Landesman had a talent for research – why shouldn’t he work in the Institute? Anna Naumovna was indeed irreplaceable – why should she have to hang around in Kazan?
Still, Viktor knew very well that, but for Stalin’s telephone call, his research – for all its excellence – would have been forgotten; and Landesman – for all his talent – would still be unemployed. But then Stalin’s telephone call was no accident; it was no mere whim or caprice. Stalin was the embodiment of the State – and the State has no whims or caprices.
Viktor had been afraid that all his time would be taken up with administrative matters – plans, conferences, taking on new staff, placing orders for new equipment . . . But the cars he travelled in were fast, the meetings he attended began punctually and moved swiftly to a conclusion, and all his wishes were immediately granted. As a result, Viktor was able to spend the entire morning – the time when he did his best work – in perfect freedom in his laboratory. No one disturbed him; he was able to concentrate exclusively on his own interests. His work still belonged to him. It was all a far cry from what happened to the artist in Gogol’s ‘The Portrait’.
He had been even more afraid that other people might encroach on his own field. This fear also proved groundless. ‘I really am absolutely free,’ he said to himself in surprise.
He thought once of what Artelev had said in Kazan about military factories: how well-provided they were with raw materials, energy and machine-tools, and how free from bureaucratic interference.
‘Yes,’ thought Viktor. ‘It is in its own absence that bureaucracy reveals itself most clearly. Whatever serves the principal aims of the State is rushed along at great speed. Bureaucracy can have two opposite effects: it can halt any movement or it can speed it up to an incredible degree – as though freeing it from the constraints of gravity.’
Not that Viktor thought often about those long conversations in that small room in Kazan. He no longer thought of Madyarov as someone remarkably intelligent and altogether exceptional. He no longer felt a constant anxiety over his fate. He was no longer obsessed by the terrible mutual suspicions harboured by him and Karimov.
Without his realizing it, everything that had happened to him began to seem quite normal, quite natural. His new life was the rule; he had begun to get used to it. It was his past life that had been the exception, and slowly he began to forget what it had been like. Was there really any truth in those reflections of Artelev’s?
In the past Viktor had felt nervous and irritated as soon as he crossed the threshold of the personnel department, as soon as he felt Dubyonkov even look at him. In fact, Dubyonkov was very decent and obliging. When he phoned Viktor, he said: ‘Dubyonkov speaking. I hope I’m not disturbing you, Viktor Pavlovich?’
Viktor had always regarded Kovchenko as a sinister and treacherous intriguer who would happily annihilate anyone who stood in his way; he had seemed to come from another world – a world of mysterious unwritten instructions – and to be profoundly indifferent to science itself. In fact he was not like this at all. He came round to Viktor’s laboratory every day; he was a true democrat and he didn’t stand on his dignity at all. He joked with Anna Naumovna, shook everyone by the hand and chatted with the technicians and metal-workers; it turned out that he had operated a lathe himself in his youth.
Shishakov was someone Viktor had disliked for years. Then one day he had lunch at his house and discovered that Shishakov was witty, hospitable, a gourmet and a fine raconteur; he enjoyed good cognac and he collected engravings. And – most important of all – he appreciated the importance of Viktor’s theory.
‘I’ve triumphed!’ thought Viktor. But he knew very well that it was not an absolute victory: if the people around him now treated him differently, if they now helped rather than hindered him, it certainly wasn’t because he had won their hearts with his great charm, intelligence and talent.
Nevertheless, Viktor rejoiced. He had triumphed!
There were special news bulletins on the radio nearly every evening. The Soviet offensive was still continuing. To Viktor, it seemed quite natural to link the course of his own life with that of the war, with the victory of the people and the army, the victory of the State. At the same time he knew that it wasn’t really quite so simple. He was quite capable of laughing at his childish habit of always wanting to see everything in black and white: ‘Stalin’s done this, Stalin’s done that, glory to Stalin!’
He had thought that important administrators and Party officia
ls never talked about anything, even with their families, except the ideological purity of their cadres. He had thought they did nothing except sign papers in red pencil, read A Short Course in the History of the Party out loud to their wives, and dream of temporary rulings and obligatory instructions. Now he had unexpectedly discovered that they had a human side too.
Ramskov, the Secretary of the Institute Party Committee, turned out to be a keen fisherman. Before the war he had gone on a boating holiday in the Urals, together with his wife and his sons.
‘What more can one ask for, Viktor Pavlovich?’ he would say. ‘You get up at dawn. Everything’s glittering with dew, and the sand on the bank’s still cold. Then you cast your lines. The water’s black. It’s not giving anything away, but it’s full of promises . . . Wait till the war’s over – then you can become one of us yourself!’
Kovchenko once talked to Viktor about childhood illnesses. Viktor was surprised how much he knew about the different treatments for rickets and tonsillitis. He had two children of his own and had also adopted a little Spanish boy. This boy was always falling ill and Kovchenko looked after him himself.
Even dry old Svechin talked to him about his collection of cacti and how he’d managed to save them from the terrible frosts during the winter of 1941.
‘They’re really not such bad people after all,’ he thought. ‘I suppose everyone has something human about them.’
Deep down, of course, Viktor understood that nothing had really changed. He was neither a fool nor a cynic; he could think for himself.
He remembered a story of Krymov’s about an old comrade of his, Bagryanov, a senior investigator in the Military Prosecutor’s Office. Bagryanov had been arrested in 1937 and then, during the brief spell of liberalism under Beria in 1939, had been released from the camp and allowed to return to Moscow.
Krymov had described how, one night, Bagryanov had turned up on his doorstep; he had come straight from the station and his trousers and shirt were in tatters. In his pocket was his certificate of release from the camp.
That night, Bagryanov had been full of seditious speeches and sympathy for the other prisoners; he had intended to set up as a gardener and a bee-keeper. But as he was allowed to return to his former life, his speeches gradually began to change.
Krymov had laughed as he described the slow evolution of Bagryanov’s ideology. First he was given back his military uniform; at that time his views were still liberal, but he was no longer a raging Danton. Then, in exchange for his certificate of release, he was given a passport allowing him to live in Moscow. He immediately began to take up the Hegelian position: ‘All that is real, is rational.’ Then he was given back his flat – and began making out that most of the prisoners in the camps really were enemies of the people. Then his medals were returned to him. Finally he was reinstated in the Party without loss of seniority.
It was just then that Krymov’s own difficulties had begun. Bagryanov stopped ringing him up. Krymov had met him by chance one day; he had two decorations on his tunic collar and he was getting out of a special car by the entrance to the Public Prosecutor’s Office. This was only eight months after the night when a man in a torn shirt, with a certificate from a labour camp in his pocket, had sat in Krymov’s room holding forth about innocent victims and blind violence.
‘I thought then that he was lost to the Public Prosecutor’s Office for ever,’ Krymov had said with a wry smile.
It wasn’t for nothing that Viktor remembered this story and recounted it to Nadya and Lyudmila. Nothing had changed in his attitude towards the victims of 1937. He was still as appalled as ever at the cruelty of Stalin. He knew very well that life hadn’t changed for other people simply because he was now Fortune’s pet instead of her stepson. Nothing would ever bring back to life the victims of collectivization or the people who had been shot in 1937; it made no difference to them whether or not prizes and medals were awarded to a certain Shtrum, whether he was called to see Malenkov or was pointedly not invited to a gathering at Shishakov’s.
And yet something had changed, both in his understanding and in his actual memory of things.
[ ................................................................................ ]
Often Viktor would make little speeches to his wife.
‘What a lot of nonentities there are everywhere! How afraid people are to defend their honour! How easily they give in! What miserable compromises they make!’
On one occasion he even attacked Chepyzhin: ‘His passion for travelling and mountaineering conceals an unconscious fear of the complexity of life. And his resignation from the Institute reveals a conscious fear of confronting the most important question of our time.’
Yes, something was changing in him. He could feel it, but he didn’t know what it was.
53
On his return to work, Viktor found Sokolov absent from the laboratory. He had caught pneumonia two days before.
Viktor learnt that before his illness he and Shishakov had agreed that he should be transferred to a different post. In the end he had been appointed director of another laboratory that was currently being reorganized. Evidently he was doing well.
Even the omniscient Markov was ignorant of the true reasons behind Sokolov’s request to be transferred. Viktor felt no regret: he found it painful to think of meeting Sokolov, let alone working with him.
Who knows what Sokolov would have read in Viktor’s eyes? Certainly Viktor had no right to think as he did about the wife of his friend. He had no right to be longing for her. He had no right to meet her in secret. If he’d heard a similar story about someone else, he’d have felt quite indignant. Deceiving one’s wife! Deceiving a friend! But he did long for her. He did dream of meeting her.
Lyudmila and Marya Ivanovna were now seeing each other again. They had had a long telephone conversation and then met. They had both cried, each accusing herself of meanness, suspiciousness and lack of faith in their friendship.
How complicated life was! Marya Ivanovna, pure honest Marya Ivanovna, had been insincere and deceitful with Lyudmila. But only because of her love for him!
Viktor very seldom saw Marya Ivanovna now. Most of what he knew about her came from Lyudmila.
He learnt that Sokolov had been proposed for a Stalin Prize on the strength of some papers he had published before the war; that he had received an enthusiastic letter from some young physicists in England; that he might be chosen as a corresponding member of the Academy at the next elections. All this was what Marya Ivanovna told Lyudmila. During his own brief meetings with her he never so much as mentioned Pyotr Lavrentyevich.
His work in the laboratory, his journeys and meetings were never enough to take his mind off her; he wanted to see her the whole time.
Lyudmila said several times: ‘You know, I just don’t understand what Sokolov’s got against you now. Even Masha can’t explain it.’
The explanation, of course, was simple enough, but it was impossible for Marya Ivanovna to share it with Lyudmila. It was quite enough that she had told her husband of her feelings for Viktor.
This confession had destroyed the friendship between Viktor and Sokolov for ever. She had promised her husband not to go on seeing Viktor. If she were to say one word to Lyudmila, she would be cut off from Viktor completely; he wouldn’t know where she was or what she was doing. They met so seldom as it was. And their meetings were so brief. They spoke very little even when they did meet; they just walked down the street arm in arm or sat in silence on a park bench.
At the time of Viktor’s troubles she had understood his feelings with a quite extraordinary sensitivity. She had been able to guess what he would think and what he would do; she had seemed able to anticipate all that was about to happen to him. The gloomier he had felt, the more passionately he had longed to see her. This perfect understanding of hers had seemed to him to be his only happiness. He had felt that with her beside him he could easily bear all his sufferings. With her he could be h
appy.
They had talked together one night in Kazan, they had gone for a walk in a Moscow park, they had sat together for a few moments in a square off Kaluga Street – and that was all. And then there was the present: a few telephone calls and a few brief meetings he hadn’t told Lyudmila about.
Viktor knew, however, that his sin and her sin couldn’t be measured by the number of minutes they had sat together on a bench. His was no mean sin: he loved her. How had she come to occupy such an important place in his life?
Every word he said to his wife was partly a lie. He couldn’t help it; there was something deceitful in his every movement, in every look he gave her.
With affected indifference, he would ask her: ‘Well, did your friend ring today? How is she? And is Pyotr Lavrentyevich well?’
He felt glad at Sokolov’s successes, but not because he felt any goodwill towards him. No, it was because he felt it gave Marya Ivanovna the right not to feel guilty.
He found it unbearable to hear about Sokolov and Marya Ivanovna only through Lyudmila. It was humiliating for Lyudmila, for Marya Ivanovna, and for himself. He was conscious of something false even when he talked to Lyudmila about Nadya, Tolya and Alexandra Vladimirovna. There were lies everywhere. Why was this? How had it happened? His love for Marya Ivanovna was the deepest truth of his soul. How could it have given birth to so many lies?
It was only by renouncing his love that he could deliver himself, Lyudmila and Marya Ivanovna from these lies. But when he realized this was what he had to do, he was dissuaded by a treacherous fear that clouded his judgement: ‘This lie isn’t so very terrible. What harm does it do anyone? Suffering is more terrible than lying.’
And when he felt he was strong and ruthless enough to break with Lyudmila and ruin Sokolov’s life, this same treacherous fear egged him on with a contradictory argument: ‘Nothing can be worse than deceit. It would be better to break with Lyudmila altogether than to go on lying to her all the time. And making Marya Ivanovna lie to her. Deceit is more terrible than suffering.’
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