Life And Fate

The following morning Lyudmila came into the room, ruffled his hair, kissed him on the forehead and said: 'Did you phone someone last night? I thought I heard you in my sleep.'

'No, you must have been dreaming,' said Viktor, looking her straight in the eye.

'Don't forget. You have to go and see the house-manager.'

42

The investigator's jacket looked strange to Krymov, accustomed as he was to a world of soldiers' tunics and military uniforms. His face, however, was quite ordinary; Krymov had seen any number of political officers whose faces had the same sallow colour.

The first questions were easy enough; it began to seem as though the whole thing would be as straightforward as his first name, patronymic and surname.

The prisoner answered the investigator's questions quickly, as though anxious to assist him. After all, the investigator didn't know anything about him. The official-looking table that stood between them in no way divided them. They had both paid their Party membership dues, both watched the film Chapayev and both listened to briefings by the Central Committee; they had both been sent to make speeches in the factories during the week before May Day.

There were a number of preliminary questions and Krymov began to feel more at ease. Soon they would get to the heart of the matter and he would explain how he had led his men out of encirclement.

Finally it was established beyond doubt that the unshaven creature sitting at the desk in a soldier's open-collared tunic and a pair of trousers with the buttons torn off had a first name, patronymic and surname, had been born in the autumn, was of Russian nationality, had fought in two World Wars and one Civil War, had not been a member of any White Army bands, had not been involved in any court cases, had been a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) for twenty-five years, had been chosen as a delegate to a Comintern Congress and to the Pacific Ocean Trade Union Congress, and had not been awarded any orders or medals.

Krymov's main anxiety was centred on his time in encirclement, on the men he had led across the bogs of Byelorussia and the fields of the Ukraine.

Which of them had been arrested? Which of them had broken down under interrogation, had lost all sense of conscience? Krymov was taken aback by a sudden question concerning other, more distant, years.

'Tell me, when did you first become acquainted with Fritz Hacken?'

After a long silence, he replied:

'If I'm not mistaken, it was at the Central Trade Union Headquarters, in Tomsky's office. In spring 1927, if I'm not mistaken.'

The investigator nodded as though he had already known about this far-distant event. He sighed, opened a file inscribed 'To be kept in perpetuity', slowly loosened the white tapes and began leafing through pages covered in writing. Krymov caught a glimpse of different colours of ink, single- and double-spaced typescript and occasional appended notes in red and blue crayon and ordinary pencil.

The investigator turned the pages over slowly; he was like a prize-wi

But how evil he looked now. His very ordinary face – since 1937 Krymov had seen many such faces in raykoms, obkoms, district police stations, libraries and publishing houses – suddenly lost its ordinariness. He seemed to be made up of distinct cubes that had yet to be gathered into the unity of a human being. His eyes were on one cube, his slow hands on another; his mouth that kept opening to ask questions was on a third. Sometimes the cubes got mixed up and out of proportion. His mouth became vast, his eyes were set in his wrinkled forehead and his forehead was in the place that should have been occupied by his chin.

'So that's what happened,' said the investigator. His face became human again. He closed the file, but without tying up the curling tapes.

'Like a shoe with the laces undone,' thought the creature with no buttons on his trousers.

Very slowly and solemnly the investigator pronounced the words, 'The Communist International.' Then, in his usual voice: 'Nikolay Krymov, Comintern official.' And then, slowly, solemnly: 'The Third Communist International.' After that he remained silent for some time, apparently lost in thought.

Then, with sudden animation, in a frank, man-to-man voice, he said:

'That Muska Grinberg's a dangerous woman, isn't she?'

Krymov blushed, surprised and deeply embarrassed.

Yes! But what a long time ago that had been – even if he was still embarrassed. He must have already been in love with Zhenya. He had dropped in on an old friend after work. It must have been to return some money he had borrowed to go on a journey. After that he could remember everything clearly, without any 'must have's'. His friend Konstantin had been out… But he had never really liked her – a woman with the hoarse voice of a chain-smoker, whose judgments were always sweeping and assured. She was the Deputy Party Secretary in the Institute of Philosophy. She was, admittedly, beautiful -'a fine figure of a woman'. Yes, he had indeed pawed Kostya's wife on the couch. They'd even met a couple of times afterwards…

An hour before, he had thought that his investigator knew nothing about him, that he had recently been promoted from some village. But time passed and the investigator kept on asking questions about the foreign Communists who had been Krymov's comrades; he knew the familiar forms of their forenames, their nicknames, the names of their wives and lovers. There was something sinister in the extent of his knowledge. Even if Krymov had been a very great man, whose every word was important to history, it would still not have been worth gathering so many trifles, so much junk, into this great file.

But nothing was considered trifling.

Wherever he had been, he had left footprints behind him: a whole retinue had followed on his heels, committing his life to memory.

A mocking remark he had made about one of his comrades, a word or two about a book he had read, a comic toast he had made on someone's birthday, a three-minute telephone conversation, an angry note he had addressed to the platform at a conference – everything had been gathered together into the file.

A great State had busied itself over his affair with Muska Grinberg. Meaningless trifles and empty, careless words had become intertwined with his deepest convictions; his love for Yevgenia Nikolaevna didn't mean anything – what mattered were his most casual, shallow affairs. He himself could no longer distinguish between what was important and what was trivial. One disrespectful remark he had made about Stalin's knowledge of philosophy appeared to mean more than ten years of ceaseless work on behalf of the Party. Had he really, in 1932, in Lozovsky's office, told a visiting comrade from Germany that the Soviet Trade Union Movement represented the State more than the proletariat? A visiting comrade who had informed on him?

Heavens, what a tissue of lies it all was! A cobweb that was gumming up his mouth and nostrils.

'Please understand, comrade investigator…'

'Citizen investigator.'

'Yes, of course – citizen. Please – this is just a lie, a fabrication. I've been a Party member for more than twenty-five years. I incited soldiers to mutiny in 1917. I was four years in China. I worked day and night. Hundreds of people know me… In the present war I volunteered for the front. Even at the worst moments, people trusted me and followed me… I…'

'Do you think you're here to receive a testimonial?' asked the investigator. 'Are you applying for a citation?' He shook his head. 'And he even has the nerve to complain that his wife doesn't bring him any parcels. What a husband!'