‘That’s enough!’ Sokolov finally shouted out.
‘Enough?’ repeated Madyarov in a mock-threatening tone of voice. ‘No, that isn’t enough. Chekhov brought Russia into our consciousness in all its vastness – with people of every estate, every class, every age . . . More than that! It was as a democrat that he presented all these people – as a Russian democrat. He said – and no one had said this before, not even Tolstoy – that first and foremost we are all of us human beings. Do you understand? Human beings! He said something no one in Russia had ever said. He said that first of all we are human beings – and only secondly are we bishops, Russians, shopkeepers, Tartars, workers. Do you understand? Instead of saying that people are good or bad because they are bishops or workers, Tartars or Ukrainians, instead of this he said that people are equal because they are human beings. At one time people blinded by Party dogma saw Chekhov as a witness to the fin de siècle. No. Chekhov is the bearer of the greatest banner that has been raised in the thousand years of Russian history – the banner of a true, humane, Russian democracy, of Russian freedom, of the dignity of the Russian man. Our Russian humanism has always been cruel, intolerant, sectarian. From Avvakum to Lenin our conception of humanity and freedom has always been partisan and fanatical. It has always mercilessly sacrificed the individual to some abstract idea of humanity. Even Tolstoy, with his doctrine of non-resistance to Evil, is intolerant – and his point of departure is not man but God. He wants the idea of goodness to triumph. True believers always want to bring God to man by force; and in Russia they stop at nothing – even murder – to achieve this.
‘Chekhov said: let’s put God – and all these grand progressive ideas – to one side. Let’s begin with man; let’s be kind and attentive to the individual man – whether he’s a bishop, a peasant, an industrial magnate, a convict in the Sakhalin Islands or a waiter in a restaurant. Let’s begin with respect, compassion and love for the individual – or we’ll never get anywhere. That’s democracy, the still unrealized democracy of the Russian people.
‘The Russians have seen everything during the last thousand years – grandeur and super-grandeur; but what they have never seen is democracy. Yes – and this is what separates Chekhov from the decadents. The State may sometimes express irritation with the decadents; it may box them on the ears or kick them up the arse. But it simply doesn’t understand Chekhov – that’s why it tolerates him. There’s still no place in our house for democracy – for a true humane democracy.’
It was obvious that Sokolov was very upset by Madyarov’s boldness. Noticing this, and with a delight he couldn’t quite understand, Viktor said: ‘Well said! That’s all very true and very intelligent. Only I beg you to be indulgent towards Scriabin. He may be a decadent, but I love him.’
Sokolov’s wife offered Viktor a saucer of jam. He made a gesture of refusal. ‘No thanks. Not for me.’
‘It’s blackcurrant,’ replied Marya Ivanovna.
Viktor looked into her golden-brown eyes and said: ‘Have I told you about my weakness, then?’
She smiled and nodded her head. Her teeth were uneven, and her lips thin and pale. When she smiled, her pallid, even slightly grey, face suddenly became quite charming.
‘She’s a splendid woman,’ thought Viktor. ‘If only her nose wasn’t always so red.’
Karimov turned to Madyarov.
‘Leonid Sergeich, how can you reconcile your earlier hymn to Dostoyevsky with this passionate speech in praise of Chekhov and his humanity? Dostoyevsky certainly doesn’t consider everyone equal. Hitler called Tolstoy a degenerate, but they say he has a portrait of Dostoyevsky hanging in his office. I belong to a national minority myself. I’m a Tartar who was born in Russia and I cannot pardon a Russian writer his hatred of Poles and Yids. No – even if he is a genius. We had more than enough blood spilt in Tsarist Russia, more than enough of being spat at in the eye. More than enough pogroms. A great writer in this country has no right to persecute foreigners, to despise Poles and Tartars, Jews, Armenians and Chuvash.’
The grey-haired, dark-eyed Tartar smiled haughtily and angrily – like a true Mongol. Still addressing Madyarov, he continued:
‘Perhaps you’ve read Tolstoy’s Hadji Mourat? Perhaps you’ve read The Cossacks? Perhaps you’ve read the story “A Prisoner in the Caucasus”? They were written by a Russian count. While Dostoyevsky was a Lithuanian. As long as the Tartars remain in existence, they will pray to Allah on behalf of Tolstoy.’
Viktor looked at Karimov, thinking: ‘Well, well. So that’s how you feel, is it?’
‘Akhmet Usmanovich,’ said Sokolov, ‘I profoundly respect your love for your people. But allow me to be proud of my nationality too. Allow me to love Tolstoy – and not only because of what he wrote about the Tartars. We Russians, for some reason, are never allowed to be proud of our own people. And if we show such pride, we’re immediately taken for members of the Black Hundreds.’
Karimov got to his feet, his face covered in pearls of sweat.
‘Let me tell you the truth. Why should I lie when I know the truth? Anyone who remembers how the pride of our race, every cultural figure of any importance, was exterminated way back in the twenties – anyone with a mind can see why The Diary of a Writer must be banned!’
‘We suffered too,’ said Artelev.
‘It wasn’t just people who were destroyed – it was a whole culture. Today’s intelligentsia are savages by comparison.’
‘Yes,’ said Madyarov with heavy irony. ‘But the Tartars might not have stopped at culture. They might have wanted Tartar home-rule and a Tartar foreign policy. And that’s not on . . .’
‘But you’ve got your own State now,’ said Sokolov. ‘You’ve got your own Institutes, your own schools, your own operas, your own books. You’ve got newspapers in Tartar. You owe all that to the Revolution.’
‘Yes, a State opera and a comic-opera State. But it’s Moscow that collects our harvest and Moscow that sends us to prison.’
‘Would it be any better if you were jailed by a Tartar?’ asked Madyarov.
‘What if people weren’t jailed at all?’ asked Marya Ivanovna.
‘Mashenka!’ said Madyarov, ‘what will you want next?’ He looked at his watch and said: ‘Hm, it’s getting on.’
‘Stay for the night, Lenechka,’ Marya Ivanovna said hurriedly. ‘I can make up the camp-bed.’
Madyarov had once told Marya Ivanovna that he felt particularly lonely late at night, when he came back to a dark empty room with no one waiting for him.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I won’t say no. Is that all right by you, Pyotr Lavrentyevich?’
‘Of course.’
‘Said the master of the house without the least enthusiasm,’ Madyarov added with a smile.
Everyone got up from the table and began saying goodbye. Sokolov accompanied his guests to the door. Marya Ivanovna lowered her voice and said to Madyarov: ‘It is good that Pyotr Lavrentyevich no longer shrinks from these conversations. In Moscow he clammed up at the merest hint of anything political.’
She pronounced her husband’s name and patronymic with particular tenderness and respect. At night she often copied out his work by hand; she kept all his notebooks and even pasted his casual jottings onto cards. She thought of him as a great man – and at the same time as her helpless child.
‘I like Shtrum,’ said Madyarov. ‘I can’t understand why people say he’s disagreeable.’ He smiled and added: ‘I noticed he pronounced all his speeches in your presence, Mashenka. While you were busy in the kitchen, he spared us his eloquence.’
Marya Ivanovna had turned towards the door. She seemed not to have heard Madyarov. But then she asked: ‘What do you mean, Lenya? He pays no more attention to me than to an insect. Petya considers him unkind, arrogant and too ready to mock people. That’s why he’s not popular and why some of the physicists are even afraid of him. But I don’t agree. I think he’s very kind.’
‘That’s the last thing I’d say of him,’ sa
id Madyarov. ‘He disagrees with everyone and heaps sarcasm on them. But he’s got a free mind; he hasn’t been indoctrinated.’
‘No, he is kind. And vulnerable.’
‘But you have to admit,’ said Madyarov, ‘that our Petya doesn’t let slip a careless word even now.’
Just then Sokolov came into the room. He overheard Madyarov.
‘I’d like to ask you, Leonid Sergeyevich, first not to give me advice, and secondly never again to start conversations of that nature in my presence.’
‘I don’t need your advice, for that matter,’ replied Madyarov. ‘And just as you answer for your words, I’ll answer for mine.’
Sokolov looked as if he wanted to say something very stinging. Instead, he left the room.
‘Well, perhaps I’d better go home after all,’ said Madyarov.
‘You’ll make me very upset,’ said Marya Ivanovna. ‘And you know how kind he is. It will torment him all night.’
She went on to explain that Pyotr Lavrentyevich had a very sensitive soul, that he had suffered a lot, that he had been interrogated very harshly in 1937 and as a result had had to spend four months in a clinic for nervous disorders.
Madyarov nodded his head. ‘All right, Masha. I give in.’
Then, in a sudden fury, he added: ‘That’s all very well, but your Petya wasn’t the only one to be interrogated. Have you forgotten the eleven months I spent in the Lubyanka? And how during all that time Pyotr only once telephoned my wife Klava – his own sister . . . ? Have you forgotten how he forbade you to telephone her? All that hurt Klava very deeply. Yes, your Petya may be a great physicist, but he’s got the soul of a lackey.’
Marya Ivanovna buried her face in her hands and remained silent. Then she said very quietly: ‘No one, no one will ever understand how deeply this pains me.’
No one else understood how appalled her husband had been by the savagery of general collectivization and the events of 1937. She alone understood his spiritual purity. But then she alone knew how servile he was in the face of power.
That was why he was so capricious at home, such a petty tyrant. That was why Masha had to clean his shoes for him, why she had to fan him in hot weather with her headscarf, why she had to keep the mosquitoes off with a branch when they went for walks near their dacha.
Once, during his last year at university, Viktor had thrown a copy of Pravda on to the floor and said to a fellow student: ‘It’s so deadly boring. How can anyone ever read it?’
Immediately afterwards he had felt terrified. He had picked up the newspaper, smoothed its pages and smiled weakly. Even now, years later, the memory of that pitiful, hang-dog smile was enough to make him break out into a sweat.
A few days later, Viktor had held out another issue of Pravda to that same friend and said animatedly: ‘Grishka, have a look at the leading article. It’s a good stuff.’
His friend had taken the newspaper from him and said pityingly: ‘Vitya’s frightened, is he? Do you think I’m going to denounce you?’
Viktor had then taken a vow either to remain silent and not express dangerous thoughts or else to say what he thought without funking it. He had not kept this vow. He had often flared up and thrown caution to the wind – only to suddenly take fright and attempt to snuff out the flame he himself had lit.
In 1938, after the trial of Bukharin, he had said to Krymov:
‘Say what you like, but I’ve met Bukharin. I’ve talked to him twice. I remember his kind, intelligent smile. And he’s certainly got a head on his shoulders. My impression is that he’s someone of great charm and absolute purity.’
Krymov had looked at him morosely. Thrown into confusion, Viktor had muttered: ‘But then who knows? Espionage. Working as an agent of the Okhrana.fn1 There’s nothing charming or pure about that. It’s just despicable!’
Krymov’s next words left Viktor even more confused.
‘Since we’re relatives,’ he said sullenly, ‘let me say one thing to you: I am quite unable, and always shall be unable, to associate the name of Bukharin with the Okhrana.’
‘My God, I can’t believe all this horror!’ Viktor had burst out with sudden fury. ‘These trials are a nightmare. But why do they confess? Why do they all confess?’
Krymov had said nothing more. He had obviously said too much already . . .
What a wonderful power and clarity there is in speaking one’s mind. What a terrible price people paid for a few bold words.
How often Viktor had lain awake listening to the cars on the street! Sometimes Lyudmila had gone barefoot to the window and parted the curtains. She had stayed there for a while and watched; then, thinking that Viktor was asleep, she had gone silently back to bed and lain down. In the morning she had asked: ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘All right, thank you. And you?’
‘It felt very stuffy. I had to go to the window for some fresh air.’
‘Yes.’
How can one ever describe those nights and that extraordinary sense of both doom and innocence?
‘Remember, Viktor, every word reaches them. You’re destroying yourself, together with me and the children.’
And another time:
‘I can’t tell you everything. But for the love of God, don’t say a word to anyone. Viktor, we live in a terrible age – you’ve no idea just how terrible. Remember, Viktor, not a word to anyone.’
Sometimes Viktor glimpsed the opaque, sad eyes of someone he had known since childhood. He had been frightened not by what his old friend said, but by what he didn’t say. And of course he had been much too frightened to ask directly: ‘Are you an agent? Do you get called in for questioning?’
He remembered looking at his assistant’s face after making a thoughtless joke about Stalin’s having formulated the laws of gravity long before Newton.
‘You didn’t say anything, and I didn’t hear anything,’ this young assistant had said gaily.
Why, why, why all these jokes? It was mad to make such jokes – like banging a flask of nitroglycerine with a hammer.
What power and clarity lies in the word! In the unfettered, carefree word! The word that is still spoken in spite of all one’s fears.
Was Viktor aware of the hidden tragedy in these conversations? Everyone who took part in them hated German Fascism and was terrified of it . . . But why did they only speak their minds at a time when Russia had been driven back to the Volga, at a time when terrible military defeats held out the threat of slavery?
Viktor walked silently beside Karimov.
‘There’s something very surprising,’ he suddenly said, ‘about novels portraying the foreign intelligentsia. I’ve just been reading Hemingway. When his characters have a serious conversation, they are always drinking. Cocktails, whisky, rum, cognac, more cocktails, more cognac, still more different brands of whisky. Whereas the Russian intelligentsia has always had its important discussions over a glass of tea. The members of “People’s Will”, the Populists, the Social Democrats all came together over glasses of weak tea. Lenin and his friends even planned the Revolution over a glass of weak tea. Though apparently Stalin prefers cognac.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Karimov, ‘you’re quite right. And the conversation we had today was over a glass of tea.’
‘Absolutely. And isn’t Madyarov intelligent? Isn’t he bold? I’m really not used to anyone speaking the way he does. It excites me.’
Karimov took Viktor by the arm.
‘Viktor Pavlovich, have you noticed that the most innocent remark of Madyarov’s somehow sounds like a generalization? I find that worrying. And he was arrested for several months in 1937 and then released. At a time when no one was released. There must be a reason. Do you follow me?’
‘Yes,’ Viktor answered slowly, ‘I do. How could I not understand you? You think he’s an informer.’
They parted at the next corner. Viktor walked back towards his house.
‘To hell with it all!’ he said to himself. ‘At least we’ve talked like
human beings for once. Without fear and hypocrisy. Saying whatever we felt about whatever we liked. Paris is worth a mass . . .’
How good that there still were people like Madyarov, people who hadn’t lost their independence. Yes. Karimov’s warning didn’t strike the usual chill into Viktor’s heart.
Viktor realized that he had once again forgotten to tell Sokolov about the letter from the Urals.
He walked on down the dark, empty street. Suddenly an idea came to him. Immediately, with his whole being, he knew it was true. He had glimpsed a new and improbable explanation for the atomic phenomena that up until now had seemed so hopelessly inexplicable; abysses had suddenly changed into bridges. What clarity and simplicity! This idea was astonishingly graceful and beautiful. It seemed to have given birth to itself – like a white water-lily appearing out of the calm darkness of a lake. He gasped, revelling in its beauty . . .
And how strange, he thought suddenly, that this idea should have come to him when his mind was far away from anything to do with science, when the discussions that so excited him were those of free men, when his words and the words of his friends had been determined only by freedom, by bitter freedom.
Footnotes
fn1 The Tsarist Secret Police.
65
The Kalmyk steppe seems sad and lifeless when you see it for the first time, when you come to it full of preoccupations, when you watch absent-mindedly as the low hills slowly emerge from the horizon and slowly sink back into it . . . Lieutenant-Colonel Darensky had the feeling it was the very same wind-swept hillock that kept appearing in front of him, the very same curve that his car kept following . . . The horsemen too seemed identical – even though some were beardless and others grey-haired, even though some were on dun ponies, others on black . . .