Life And Fate

Suddenly the investigator asked: 'Well, have you remembered yet?'

Krymov threw up his hands helplessly. 'There isn't anything for me to remember.'

The telephone rang.

'Hello.' The investigator glanced cursorily at Krymov. 'Yes, you can get everything ready. It will soon be time.' For a moment Krymov thought the conversation was about him.

The investigator put down the receiver and picked it up again. The ensuing conversation was extraordinary: it was as though the creature sitting next to the investigator were not a man, but some quadruped.

He was obviously talking to his wife. First of all they discussed household matters: 'At the special store? Goose – that's fine. But they should have given it to you on your first coupon. Sergey's wife rang the department. She got a leg of lamb on her first coupon. They've asked us… By the way I got some cottage cheese in the canteen. Eight hundred grams. No, it's not sour… How's the gas been today? And don't forget about the suit.'

After this he said: 'Well then, take care, don't miss me too much. Did you dream about me? What did I look like? In my underpants again? Pity! Well, I'll teach you a thing or two when I get home. Now you be careful – housework's all very well, but you mustn't lift anything heavy.'

There was something improbable about how very bourgeois and ordinary it all was: the more normal, the more human the conversation, the less the speaker seemed like a human being. There's something ghastly about a monkey imitating the ways of a man… At the same time Krymov had a clear sense that he himself was no longer a human being – when had people ever had conversations like this in front of a third person…? 'Want a big fat kiss? No? Oh well…'

Of course, if Bogoleev's theory was correct, if Krymov was a Persian cat, a frog, a goldfinch or a beetle on a stick, then there wasn't anything in the least surprising about this conversation.

Towards the end, the investigator said: 'Something burning? Run then, run. So long.'

Then he took out a book and a writing pad and began to read. From time to time he noted something down in pencil. He might be preparing for a meeting of some study-group, or perhaps he was going to give a lecture…

Suddenly, in extreme exasperation, he said: 'Why do you keep tapping your feet like that? This isn't a gymnastics exhibition.'

'I've got pins and needles, citizen investigator.'

But the investigator had already buried himself again in his book.

After another ten minutes he asked absent-mindedly: 'Well? Have you remembered?'

'Citizen investigator, I need to go to the lavatory.'

The investigator sighed, walked to the door and gave a quiet call. His face was just like that of a dog-owner whose dog asks to go out for a walk at the wrong time. A young soldier in battledress walked in. Krymov looked him up and down with a practised eye: everything was in order – his belt was properly tucked in, his collar was clean and his forage cap was tilted at the right angle. It was only his work that was not that of a soldier.

Krymov got up. His feet were numb from sitting so long on the chair; at his first steps they almost gave way under him. He thought hurriedly, both while he was in the lavatory with the soldier watching him, and on his way back. He had a lot to think about.

When he got back the investigator was no longer there. A young man was sitting in his place. He had a captain's blue epaulettes on his uniform, bordered with red braid. He looked sullenly at Krymov as though he had known and hated him all his life.

'What are you standing up for?' he barked. 'Go on, sit down. And sit up straight, you sod. You'll catch it in the guts if you keep on slouching like that. That'll straighten you out.'

'So now we've introduced ourselves,' thought Krymov. He felt terrified, more terrified than he had ever felt during the war.

'Now it's going to begin in earnest,' he thought.

The captain let out a cloud of tobacco smoke. Through the haze, his voice continued: 'Here's a pen and some paper. Do you think I'm going to do your writing for you?'

The captain obviously enjoyed insulting him. Or was he just doing his duty? Perhaps he was like an artillery officer ordered to keep on firing day and night simply to fray the enemy's nerves.

'Don't slouch like that! Do you think you're here to have a good sleep?'

A few minutes later the captain shouted: 'Didn't you hear what I said? Have you gone deaf?'

He went up to the window, raised the black-out blind and switched off the light. A grey morning looked gloomily into Krymov's eyes. It was the first time he had seen daylight since he had arrived in the Lubyanka.

'So we've whiled the whole night away,' he thought.

Had he ever known a worse morning? Had he really, only a few weeks ago, been lying in a bomb-crater, happy and free, while friendly pieces of iron whistled over his head?

Time had become confused: it was only very recently that he had left Stalingrad, yet he had been sitting here in this office for an interminable length of time.

What a grey, stony light it was. The windows looked out onto the central pit of the I

No, it wasn't that his boots were too small; it was simply that his feet had swollen.

How had his past life and work become linked to the time he had been surrounded in 1941? Whose fingers had joined together things that could never be joined? And what was this for? Who needed all this? Why?

His thoughts burned so fiercely that there were moments when he quite forgot the aching pain in his spine and the small of his back. He no longer even felt how his swollen legs were bursting open the tops of his boots.

Fritz Hacken… How could he forget that in 1938 he had been sitting in a room just like this? Yes, but there was something very different in the way he had been sitting then – inside his pocket he had had a pass. What was worst of all was the way he had been so anxious to please everyone – the official in charge of issuing passes, the janitors, the lift attendant in military uniform. The investigator had said: 'Comrade Krymov, please assist us.'

No, there was something still more vile – his desire to be sincere! Yes, now he did remember. All that had been required of him was sincerity. And he had indeed been sincere: he had remembered Hack-en's mistaken appraisal of the Spartakist movement, the ill-will he had felt towards Thalman, the way he had wanted royalties for his book, the way he had divorced Else when Else was pregnant… He had, of course, remembered good things as well… The investigator had noted down the sentence: 'On the basis of many years' acquaintance I consider it improbable that he should have been involved in any direct sabotage against the Party; nevertheless, I am not able totally to exclude the possibility that he is a double agent…'

Yes. He had informed… Yes, and all the information about him in this file – this file that was to be kept in perpetuity – had been gathered from comrades of his who had also no doubt wished to be sincere. Why had he wanted to be sincere? His duty towards the Party? Nonsense! The really sincere thing to do would have been to bang his fist furiously on the table and shout: 'Hacken's my brother, my friend. He's i