Now, for the past month, young Sagaydak had been doing a mortar course; to the joy of his parents, no awkward incidents had yet occurred; they hoped for the best, but remained anxious.
Sagaydak’s second son, Igor, had caught polio when he was two and the after-effects of the illness had turned him into a cripple – his withered legs had no strength in them and he walked about on crutches. Poor Igor was unable to go to school and the teachers had to come to his home. He was a keen and hard-working pupil.
There wasn’t a famous neuropathologist in the Ukraine, or even in Moscow, Leningrad or Tomsk, whom the Sagaydaks hadn’t consulted about Igor. There was no new foreign medicine Sagaydak hadn’t managed to procure through either an embassy or a trade delegation. He knew that he could be reproved for his excessive love, but he also knew that this was not a mortal sin. He himself, coming up against very strong paternal feelings in several oblast officials, had made allowances for the fact that people of the new type had a particularly deep love for their children. He knew that he too would be forgiven the folk-healer he had brought from Odessa by plane and the herbs from some Far-Eastern holy man that had been delivered to Kiev by special courier.
‘Our leaders are very special people,’ said Sagaydak. ‘I’m not talking about comrade Stalin – that goes without saying – but about his close aides. They even place the Party above their feelings as parents.’
‘Yes, but they know one can’t expect that from everyone,’ said Getmanov. He went on to talk about the severity one of the Secretaries of the Central Committee had shown to a son of his who had been fined.
The conversation about children continued in a different tone, intimately and without pretension. One might have thought that all the strength of these people, all their joy in life, depended on whether their Tanechkas and Vitaliks had good colour in their cheeks, whether their Vladimirs and Lyudmilas were getting good marks at school and successfully moving up from class to class.
Galina Terentyevna began talking about her daughters. ‘Svetlana was very poorly until she was four. She had colitis the whole time – the poor girl was quite worn out. And do you know what cured it in the end – grated apple!’
Then Getmanov joined in. ‘This morning before school she said to me, “In class they call me and Zoya the general’s daughters.” And then Zoya, the cheeky little thing, started laughing and said: “General’s daughter – that’s no great honour. We’ve got one girl in our class who’s a marshal’s daughter – that really is something!”’
‘I know,’ said Sagaydak gaily. ‘One can’t satisfy them. Igor said to me the other day, “Third secretary – that’s no big deal.”’
There were many amusing little stories Nikolay Terentyevich could have recounted, but it wasn’t for him to bring up the intelligence of his own children when the conversation was about the intelligence of Igor Sagaydak and the Getmanovs’ daughters.
‘Our fathers were much rougher with their children,’ Mashuk said thoughtfully.
‘But they still loved them,’ said Galina’s brother.
‘Yes, of course they did. But they beat them too. At least they did me.’
‘I’ve just remembered how my father went off to the war in 1915,’ said Getmanov. ‘No joking – he became a non-commissioned officer and was twice awarded the Cross of St George. It was early in the morning and my mother got everything ready for him: she put a sweater, some foot-cloths, some hard-boiled eggs and some bread in a bag while my sister and I lay there in bed, watching him sitting at table for the last time. He filled the water bucket that stood by the door and chopped lots of wood. My mother remembered every moment.’
Then, glancing at his watch, he said: ‘Oho!’
‘So, tomorrow’s the day,’ said Sagaydak as he got up.
‘The plane leaves at seven.’
‘From the civil airport?’ asked Mashuk.
Getmanov nodded.
‘So much the better,’ said Nikolay Terentyevich as he too stood up. ‘It’s fifteen kilometres to the military airport.’
‘What can that matter to a soldier?’ said Getmanov.
They began saying goodbye, laughing again, embracing and generally making a stir. When they all had their hats and coats on and were standing out in the corridor, Getmanov remarked: ‘A soldier can harden himself to anything. He can warm himself with smoke and shave with an awl. But what a soldier can never get used to is living apart from his children.’
And it was clear from his expression and tone of voice, from the way his guests looked at him as they went out, that he meant this.
Footnotes
fn1 Obkom: the Party committee of an oblast or province.
fn2 Nomenklatura: the register kept by the Party organs of persons professionally and politically eligible for posts of responsibility.
fn3 An article condemning certain ‘excesses’ committed during collectivization – published when the famine resulting from the initial disasters threatened to get out of hand.
22
It was night. Getmanov was in uniform, sitting at his desk and writing. His wife was sitting beside him in her dressing-gown and watching. He folded up a letter and said: ‘That’s to the director of the regional health authority in case you need special treatment or you have to travel somewhere for a consultation. He’ll make out a certificate and then your brother can fix you up with a travel permit.’
‘Have you made out the warrant for obtaining rations?’
‘There’s no need to. Just ring the person responsible at the obkom. Or even better, ring Puzichenko himself – he’ll make one out for you.’
He went through the little pile of letters, notes and warrants. ‘Well, that seems like everything.’
They fell silent.
‘I’m afraid for you, my love,’ said Galina. ‘You’re going to the war.’
‘You just take care of yourself and look after the children,’ he replied, getting to his feet. ‘Did you remember to put some cognac in my suitcase?’
‘Yes, yes. Do you remember – two years ago, when you were about to fly to Kislovodsk? Early in the morning you were writing out warrants – just like today.’
‘Now the Germans are in Kislovodsk,’ said Getmanov.
He walked up and down the room and then stopped for a moment to listen. ‘Are they asleep?’
‘Of course.’
They went through to the children’s room. It was strange how silently these huge figures moved in the semi-darkness. The heads of the sleeping children showed up dark against the white of the pillow-cases. Getmanov listened attentively to their breathing.
He held his hand to his chest, afraid that his booming heart-beats would disturb the children. He felt a piercing ache of tenderness, anxiety and pity for them. He desperately wanted to embrace his son and daughters and kiss their sleeping faces. He was overwhelmed by a helpless tenderness, an unreasoning love; he felt lost, weak and confused.
He wasn’t in the least worried or frightened at the thought of the new job he was about to begin. He had taken on many new jobs, and had never had difficulty in finding the correct line to follow. He knew it would be the same in the tank corps.
But how could he reconcile his unshakeable, iron severity with this limitless tenderness and love?
He looked round at his wife. She was standing beside him, resting her cheek on her hand like a peasant. In the half-light her face seemed younger and thinner – just as it had been when they had gone to the sea on their honeymoon and stayed in a hostel right on the cliffs.
There was a discreet hoot beneath the window – the car from the obkom. Getmanov turned once more towards his children and spread out his hands – expressing through this gesture his impotence before a feeling he was unable to control.
In the corridor he said goodbye, kissed his wife for the last time and put on his fur coat and cap. Then he stood and waited while the driver carried out his cases.
‘Well then,’ he said – and suddenly stepped up to
his wife, removed his cap and embraced her once more. And this second farewell – with the cold damp air off the streets slipping in through the half-open door and blending with the warmth of the house, with the rough, tanned hide of his coat touching the sweet-scented silk of her dressing-gown – this final farewell made them feel that their life, which had seemed one, had suddenly split apart. They felt desolate.
23
Yevgenia Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova, Lyudmila’s younger sister, had moved to Kuibyshev. She was living with an old German woman, Jenny Genrikhovna, who years before had worked for the Shaposhnikov family as a governess.
Yevgenia found it strange, after Stalingrad, to be sharing a small, quiet room with an old woman who never ceased marvelling at how a little girl with plaits could have turned into a grown woman.
Jenny Genrikhovna’s gloomy little cubby-hole had once been part of the servants’ quarters of a spacious merchant’s flat. Now each room was inhabited by a whole family and was divided up by screens, curtains, rugs and the backs of sofas into little nooks and corners – one for eating, one for sleeping, one for receiving guests, another for the nurse to give injections to a paralysed old man . . .
In the evening the kitchen fairly hummed with the voices of all the inmates.
Yevgenia Nikolaevna liked this kitchen with its sooty ceiling and the dark red flames of the oil-stoves. People in dressing-gowns, padded jackets and soldiers’ tunics bustled about below clothes that had been hung up to dry. Knives gleamed. Clouds of steam rose from tubs and bowls full of washing. The ample stove was no longer in use; the Dutch tiles lining its sides seemed cold and white – like the snow-covered slopes of some long-extinct volcano.
The tenants of the flat included the family of a docker who was now at the front, a gynaecologist, an engineer from an armaments factory, a single mother who worked as a cashier in a store, the widow of a hairdresser who had been killed at the front, the manager of a post-office, and – in what had once been the large dining-room – the director of a surgery.
The flat was as extensive as a town; it even had room in it for its own madman, a quiet little old man with the eyes of a sweet, good-natured puppy.
They were all crowded together and at the same time very isolated. They were always taking offence at one another and then making peace, one moment concealing every detail of their lives, and the next generously and excitedly sharing everything that happened to them.
Yevgenia would have liked to draw this flat – not so much the objects and people themselves as the feelings they aroused in her.
There were many facets to these feelings. It seemed unlikely that even a great artist could give expression to them. They arose from the strange incongruity between the tremendous military strength of the Soviet State and this dark kitchen with its poverty, gossip and general pettiness; the incongruity between cold, hard steel and kitchen pots and pans full of potato peelings.
The expression of these feelings would break up every line, distort figures and take the form of some apparently meaningless coupling of fragmented images and patches of light.
Old Jenny Genrikhovna was a meek, timid, obliging creature. She wore a black dress with a white collar and, in spite of her constant hunger, her cheeks were always rosy.
Her head was full of memories of Lyudmila’s pranks when she was still in the first form, of amusing phrases little Marusya had once come out with, of how two-year-old Dmitry had once come into the dining-room in his pinafore and shouted out: ‘Munch-time, munch-time!’
Now Jenny Genrikhovna worked as a daily help in the home of a dentist, looking after her sick mother. Sometimes the dentist would travel round the region for five or six days. Then Jenny would spend the night in her house to look after the old woman; she had recently had a stroke and was barely able to walk.
Jenny lacked any sense of property – she was constantly apologizing to Yevgenia and asking her permission to open the small upper window in order to let in her elderly tabby cat. Her main interests and worries were centred around this cat and how to protect it from her neighbours.
One of these neighbours, an engineer called Dragin, who was in charge of a workshop at his factory, looked with cruel mockery at her wrinkled face, her girlishly slim, emaciated waist and her pince-nez. His plebeian soul was indignant that the old woman should remain devoted to her memories of the past; indignant that she should continue, an idiotically blissful smile on her face, to tell stories about taking her pre-revolutionary charges out in the pram, or accompanying ‘Madame’ to Venice, Paris or Vienna. Many of the ‘little ones’ she had cared for had fought with Denikin or Wrangel during the Civil War and had been killed by the Red Army. The old woman, however, remained interested only in how they had once languished in bed with scarlet fever, diphtheria or colitis.
‘I’ve never met anyone so gentle and so forgiving,’ Yevgenia told Dragin. ‘Believe me, she’s a better person than any of the rest of us here in the flat.’
‘Sweet little dicky bird!’ said Dragin with a laugh. He looked her brazenly in the eye. ‘You’ve sold yourself to the Germans, comrade Shaposhnikova – just for somewhere to live.’
Jenny Genrikhovna was evidently less fond of healthy children. She talked most often of all about the very sickliest of her charges, the son of a Jewish factory-owner. She still kept his exercise-books and drawings and would burst into tears each time she reached the point of describing the death of this quiet little boy.
It was many years since she had lived with the Shaposhnikovs, but she still remembered the names and nicknames of all the children. When she heard of Marusya’s death she cried. She was always scrawling a letter to Alexandra Vladimirovna, but could never finish it.
She referred to caviare by its French rather than its Russian name and she told Yevgenia how her pre-revolutionary charges had breakfasted on a cup of strong broth and a slice of venison.
She fed her own rations to the cat, whom she called ‘my dear, silver child.’ The cat adored her; he was a rough and sullen beast, but would become suddenly animated and affectionate when he saw her.
Dragin kept asking her what she thought of Hitler. ‘You must be happy now,’ he would say. But the old woman shrewdly declared herself an anti-Fascist and called the Führer a cannibal.
She was utterly impractical; she was unable to cook or wash and when she went to the shop for some matches, the assistant always hurriedly tore off the coupon for her monthly allowance of sugar or meat.
Children nowadays were quite unlike her charges of that earlier period which she referred to as ‘peacetime’. Everything was different, even the games. The ‘peacetime’ children had played with hoops; they had played diabolo with varnished sticks, and catch with a painted ball kept in a white string-bag; whereas today’s children played volleyball, swam the crawl, and played ice-hockey during the winter in skiing trousers, shouting and whistling all the time.
These children knew more than Jenny Genrikhovna about alimony, abortions and dishonestly acquired ration-cards; about senior lieutenants and lieutenant-colonels who had presented other people’s wives with the butter, lard and tinned foods they had brought back from the front.
Yevgenia liked to hear the old woman reminisce about the years of her childhood, about her father, and about her brother Dmitry whom Jenny Genrikhovna remembered particularly well; he had had both diphtheria and whooping cough.
Once Jenny Genrikhovna said: ‘I can remember the last family I worked for in 1917. Monsieur was Deputy Minister of Finance. He walked up and down the dining-room saying, “Everything’s ruined, estates are being burnt, factories have ground to a halt, the currency’s collapsed, safes are being robbed.” And then the whole family split up – the same as you. Monsieur, Madame and Mademoiselle went to Sweden; my own pupil joined up with General Kornilov as a volunteer; Madame wept and kept saying, “We spend day after day saying goodbye, the end is near.”’
Yevgenia smiled sadly and didn’t respond.
One even
ing a police inspector called and handed Jenny Genrikhovna a note. The old woman put on a hat with a white flower and asked Yevgenia to feed the cat; she said she was going first to the police station and then to work and that she’d be back the next day. When Yevgenia came back from work, she found the room in chaos. Her neighbours told her that Jenny Genrikhovna had been arrested.
Yevgenia set off to make inquiries. At the police station she was told that the old woman was being taken to the Far North with a trainload of Germans.
The next day the inspector and the house-manager came round to collect a sealed basket of old clothes and yellowed letters and photographs.
Yevgenia went to the NKVD to find out how to send the old woman a fur coat. The man behind the window asked: ‘Are you a German yourself?’
‘No, I’m Russian.’
‘Go home then. Don’t waste people’s time by asking unnecessary questions.’
‘I was just asking about winter clothes.’
‘Don’t you understand?’ said the man in a terrifyingly quiet voice.
That evening she overheard people talking about her in the kitchen.
‘All the same, I don’t like the way she’s behaved,’ said one voice.
‘I think she did well,’ answered a second voice. ‘First she got one foot in the door; then she informed the appropriate authorities and had the old woman taken away; and now she’s got the room for herself.’
‘It’s more a cubby-hole than a room,’ said a man’s voice.
‘She’s no fool,’ said a fourth voice. ‘A man would do all right with her around.’
The cat came to a sad end. First people argued about what to do with him while he sat sleepily and dispiritedly in the kitchen. ‘To hell with the damned German,’ said the women. Dragin, of all people, said he was willing to provide a share of the cat’s food. But without Jenny Genrikhovna the creature wasn’t to survive long; he died after being scalded with boiling water by one of the women, perhaps accidentally, perhaps not.