Olga, joyful and cleanly washed, met Sashenka with her long, wet hair hanging loose, and wearing Sashenka’s mother’s robe.
“Vasya’s come back,” she whispered to Sashenka, as if inviting Sashenka to rejoice with her at news that Sashenka had been waiting for impatiently for a long time. “They let him go, the Lord be praised…”
The kitchen was intensely heated, several tubs of dirty water were standing on the floor, and there was a smell of household soap; clearly someone had been bathing here just recently. Some new kind of little paper napkins with scalloped edges, cut out of newspapers, had appeared in the kitchen. The old household table with its familiar notches—on which Sashenka’s mother prepared food, and which Sashenka loved to sniff because it smelled so delicious, like ground meat for patties—that little table had disappeared, and in its place was a new table, stoutly assembled out of fresh wooden boards. And in general things had changed imperceptibly somehow, as if Sashenka had come to a stranger’s apartment. Vasya wasn’t sitting behind his screen in the kitchen, he was at the table in the room, and when he saw Sashenka he gave her a welcoming smile without any fright in it, not like before. On the contrary, it was Sashenka who felt something like timidity. She walked in and sat down on the bolster of her sofa bed, which she had pounded shiny with her sides on sultry nights filled with dreaming and desires, but now even this sofa seemed unfamiliar to her.
“Sit at the table,” Olga said, and she put a blue bowl down in front of Sashenka, the one that Sashenka’s mother usually ate from. Two large, black dumplings were lying in the bowl, and Sashenka started eating them greedily, although she knew that Olga had gotten them on the church porch as charity. The filling in the dumplings was a hotchpotch of anything and everything. There were poppy seeds, rice, prunes, carrots, and onions, and it all seemed very tasty to Sashenka, and she thought about Olga gratefully, and every time Olga went out into the kitchen and then came back in again, Sashenka looked hopefully to see if Olga had brought her something else to eat. But Olga didn’t give her anything else, she just took away the bowl and wiped down the table. In the middle of the table was a bread bin with pieces of stale church Easter cake, and Olga put it away in the sideboard, to which she had the keys now. Olga noticed that some little bags of Olga’s were already standing on the shelves of the sideboard, with wooden spoons carved by Vasya propped up beside them, and a fresh, uncut loaf of bread was also lying there.
“They let me out,” Vasya said, smiling and showing his gums, “said I was completely free to go…”
Vasya was wearing a fresh striped shirt, which Olga had probably found in the special section of the wardrobe where Sashenka’s father’s things were kept. Yet neither Vasya nor Olga displayed even the slightest embarrassment about that, and for some reason Sashenka didn’t feel indignant; either she didn’t have the strength for that, or she sensed that her life had suddenly changed, so that now she had no right to be indignant. Olga and Vasya looked at each other, stroking and patting each other, and smiling at Sashenka, as if they were inviting her to share their joy. And Sashenka suddenly smiled, to make Vasya and Olga feel good, although she didn’t really want to smile, and after the two dumplings she was feeling hungrier than ever. It was only now, after she’d started coming to terms with the new situation and her own position, that Sashenka noticed how much Vasya had changed in the last few days. Before, he used to be a big, strong peasant, with a powerful barrel chest and a stupid, constantly frightened face. But now he was sitting there in front of her, an exhausted man with a shaved head, with circles under his eyes and sunken cheeks, the skin on his head was bluish and he looked like the prisoner Sashenka had seen in the major’s office. Vasya’s neck had gotten a bit thinner and a bit paler too, so that the collar of Sashenka’s father’s shirt was too big for him; even though the top button of the shirt was fastened, she could see Vasya’s scrawny collarbones. But along with its unhealthy look, Vasya’s face had also acquired a kind of calmness and a certain insightful expression, as if during these few short days in a jail cell he had understood something and could even look down on other people and teach them a thing or two, the way that sometimes happens after a grave illness or a disaster that has turned out well: a man suddenly starts thinking what a great fellow he is and that he has grasped the essential nature of everything that happens.
“You go and see Kaigorodtsev about your mother,” Vasya said. “They’ll try to send you to his deputy, the major, but don’t go…Tell them you’d rather wait a while…You’d rather come back later…I wasn’t a free man, I was obliged to do what they said, but I took one glance and I realized…No, no way…Don’t end up with that one…He’s a badass, real bad…But he’s got an edgy kind of job too, sorting out the likes of us…So I thought, the important thing here is to be patient…Some other boss, higher up, will come and figure everything out…And he figured everything out immediately, God grant him good health…a learned man, obviously…A colonel…You, he said, are not guilty, the only thing you’re guilty of is not showing up for the hearing at your local militia station, since a complaint was submitted against you…You tell me you didn’t trust the Soviet authorities…Guilty, I said, you’re right there…But it was Anna who reported that I was a polizei…I lived in her apartment…she used to treat me the way a drunk treats a woman…I told the village Soviet chairman: excuse me, but why didn’t anyone tell me what kind of person she is, why did you put me in her apartment? It was that Anna who reported that I was a polizei, but all I did was drive a water cart at the commandant’s office…I found out by chance, God grant them good health…There are good people everywhere…Yes…The Colonel, he figured things out immediately…God grant him good health…You go to him about your mother…” Suddenly Vasya stopped with his mouth slightly open and his eyes staring, and he pressed his hand against his throat; his face contorted and he started coughing, as if he were gagging on the air. He coughed for a long time, straining violently and dropping sputum with little red threads in it out of his mouth onto the fresh collar of Sashenka’s father’s shirt. He hastily unfastened the button below his throat with his gnarled fingers, as if it were choking him, although the collar was too large and it was sagging down. Olga started fussing around Vasya and hammering him on the back with her fist as if he had swallowed a bone, and she shouted angrily and demandingly at Sashenka.
“Run to the kitchen and get some water, don’t just sit there…”
Sashenka jumped up and meekly ran into the kitchen. When she came back, Vasya’s coughing fit had already passed and he was sitting there, smiling and wiping away his tears, and Olga was sitting beside him, already calm.
“There’s no more need,” she told Sashenka affectionately. “Our Vasya here’s taken sick,’ she added, as if Vasya were just as dear to Sashenka as he was to her. “Never mind, we’ll cure him…You put the mug in the kitchen…”
“It’s all right,” said Vasya, “I just had a little fit there, what’s important is that now I’m as free as a bird…Completely acquitted…I’ll go to work now…I’ll get a job at the glove factory…”
Olga had a curved comb stuck in her hair at the back. Vasya pulled it out and started combing Olga’s hair, carefully lifting up the damp, rye-colored strands from below with his left hand and running the comb through them, tracing out a white, washed part in the middle of Olga’s scalp. Olga narrowed her eyes in pleasure, and rubbed her pockmarked cheek against Vasya’s chin, looking like a shabby old cat that hasn’t been petted for a long time.
“If they hadn’t let me go,” said Vasya, “they’d have sent me to Gaiva today…Did you say goodbye to your mother? They’re sending them off at twelve…”
“I was ill,” Sashenka said. “I’ll go now…”
She hastily put on her fur coat and ran outside. Shuma’s sons were lying in wait for Sashenka beside the steps, with snowballs. Thirteen-year-old Louty’s eyes were blazing with stubborn fanaticism. His snowballs were well compacted, first slightly warmed in his hands and then frozen again, so that they had turned into round lumps of ice that whistled through the air. Shuma’s younger son, the five-year-old, made his snowballs clumsily, they crumbled into dust, and he found that amusing. The younger boy’s face was round and pink, and his eyes weren’t ferocious, but mischievous. Sashenka was in such a hurry that she had no time to fend off Louty. He chased after her all the way to the end of the side street and hurt her twice with hits from his icy snowballs, once on her leg and the second time on the back of her head between her collar and her hat. Louty obviously threw with deliberate thought—not one of his snowballs hit the fur jacket with its quilted lining—he aimed at spots where her body was exposed or least protected.
When Sashenka ran up to the three-story building with its upper floor clad in zinc, the gates were already standing wide open and the relatives, who were standing on the other side of the street to see people off, were agitated; obviously the prisoners were about to be led out at any moment. Sashenka recognized the woman in the astrakhan coat. She was standing there, craning her neck impatiently, peering in through the gates, and once again she was holding a delicious-smelling basket. The tall peasant was here too. He was standing propped against the wall, calmly smoking. The old woman whose parcels had not been accepted was here too; her eyes were watering and she kept taking the shawl tied in a little bundle out of her bosom with her bluish fingers, checking that it was still there. The master of ceremonies was standing right at the very edge of the crowd, in his fur-lined tank helmet. Sashenka almost bumped into him and hastily hid behind his back. The orderly whom Sashenka knew walked out of the gates. He was wearing a short sheepskin jacket, with a Mauser pistol in a big holster hanging on his belt. The orderly gave the crowd a worried look and said:
“Citizens, I warned you that no parcels will be accepted…There was time for that during the set hours, all in due order…”
“Comrade commander,” the woman wearing astrakhan said in a voice trembling with respect, “but I cooked some food for my husband…What can I do…”
“You can send the food by post…They’ll tell you the address at the visitors’ pass desk…Sharp items and alcoholic beverages are not accepted,” the orderly replied in a humdrum, bored voice. “So I’m warning you, citizens, if you create a disturbance, the guards will use force…In your own best interest…Is that clear, in general?”
There were a few seconds of silence.
“Yes, it’s clear, of course it is,” the tall peasant answered for all of them.
“Well, all right then,” said the orderly, and turning back toward the gates, he shouted:
“Didenko, let’s go!”
First to come out of the gates were two militiamen in quilted jackets and round astrakhan hats. One of them still had a red partisan’s ribbon set slantwise on his hat and he was holding a Mosin-Nagant rifle with no bayonet at the ready, while the second militiaman had a heavy German submachine gun hanging on his chest. Then the prisoners trailed out in rows of four. One part of the building was occupied by the militia, and the other part by the ministry for state security, where they kept the former polizeien, major bandits, and political cases. But when prisoners were sent to the railroad station, they all shared the same armed escort. The prisoners were young and old, tall and short, mostly men, although there were a few women, but all of them looked the same in some way; maybe it was the bluish color of their faces, or the way they maintained order and distance and observed the rules of behavior during transfer, with which free people were not familiar. The prisoners were surrounded by a dense escort in greatcoats of various colors: gray army coats, blue militia coats, and some made of green English cloth. There were also militiamen in partisans’ sheepskin jackets and quilted jackets. The members of the escort were armed with Russian Mosin-Nagant rifles, Shpaginsubmachine guns with round disks, and German submachine guns with heavy cylindrical housings, like a full-sized machine gun’s, and slim barrels. The orderly walked at the front, waving his Mauser pistol about and keeping the barrel pointing downward. One group among the prisoners was led along separately, not in a row, but in a bunch, and they were accompanied by two large German Shepherds in addition to the armed escort. This group included a tall, broad-shouldered man with a square jaw, a jagged crimson scar beside his ear, and dull, lackluster eyes. His arms were tightly bound together behind his back with thick rope at two points: the wrists and the elbows. Walking beside him was a small, skinny young man with a hollow chest, pale face, and narrow shoulders, but he was bound just as tightly. Shostak was walking in this group too; he wasn’t bound but he held his hands behind his back, obviously in accordance with the regulations for prisoners. Shostak’s face was a lifeless, sallow color, he coughed and gagged continuously, and every now and then he wiped his wet, slimy lips on his shoulder. The fourth individual walking in this group was an elderly man with a pince-nez. He was wearing a good-quality beaver-fur coat, but on his head he had a small, torn fur cap with earflaps that obviously wasn’t his and looked completely incongruous together with the coat: it stuck up comically on his dark hair with broad gray streaks, right on the very top of his head, and it didn’t cover his frozen ears. He tried to keep as far away as possible from Shostak and turned away in disgust, so that the spray from the other man’s coughing wouldn’t hit him in the face. He was also holding his hands behind his back. Squinting around, he thrust thems into his sleeves, warming them as if in a muff, but a young militiaman in the escort noticed this and shouted:
“Come on, get them out…Up to your tricks again…”
It clearly wasn’t the first time. The man pulled out his hands and wiggled them to warm up his fingers. In fact, he was wearing perfectly decent gloves of double-knitted wool.
Sashenka’s mother was walking in the third row, at the left edge, on the far side from the sidewalk where the people saying goodbye were standing. Walking in the same row as her were two swarthy women in long skirts that trailed over the snow—obviously gypsies—a young boy of about fifteen or sixteen, and a peasant who looked very much like the tall peasant, only a bit shorter. This peasant was distinguished from the other prisoners by his healthy complexion, and his calm air of discipline and skillful, hard work suggested that he was in good standing with the wardens, and after his trial he wouldn’t be banished from the republic, but sent to one of the nearest camps, perhaps even to work on building a local railroad station that had been destroyed by a bomb.
Sashenka’s mother wasn’t wearing her ragged old coat, but the warm army peacoat that Sashenka had seen before on the master of ceremonies. She had tarpaulin boots on her feet, the same boots in which she used to carry frozen lumps of porridge, patties, and doughnuts, and sometimes a little bag of rice or sugar, all the foodstuffs that Sashenka’s mother hid when they were being added to the general pot or complete items that she took by reducing the individual portions of personnel.
Sashenka’s mother had a shawl bound low around her head, like an old woman, and that made her face seem unfamiliar to Sashenka, especially the sharper-looking cheekbones. And it was strange for Sashenka to see the disciplined skill with which her mother obeyed a command from an escort, staying in step when the column turned and maintaining her distance. However, when the column had completely emerged from the gates and the two militiamen at the back came into sight, the prisoners began acting anxious, looking around to see if they could spot their relatives, and Sashenka’s mother looked too, ignoring the shouts from the escort. Elbowing his way through the people around him, the master of ceremonies made his way right up to the cordon, although his injured leg made it hard for him and he struggled to stay on his feet, since the others were all pushing too. Sashenka’s mother noticed him and her face immediately lit up, even becoming young and beautiful, despite the old-womanish headscarf, and she looked at the master of ceremonies with a love that triggered a painful twinge of spiteful jealousy in Sashenka’s heart.
Sashenka hastily hid behind the other people and, to encourage her bitterness, she started thinking about how her mother had hit her and how she had shamed the heroic memory of Sashenka’s father, and given the apartment to two paupers and driven her own daughter out into the street. These thoughts used to set the blood racing through her entire body, especially her head, making it boil with fury, so that her heart struggled to keep pace and she felt its pounding reverberating everywhere—in her temples, in her legs, just below her throat, and in her ears. But now Sashenka thought about all this feebly and drearily; she didn’t even know what she wanted, and her leg and the back of her head hurt where Louty had hit them with his icy snowballs.
At the sight of Sashenka’s mother, the master of ceremonies’ face changed too, becoming comically soft and tender; on his forehead, beside his eyebrows, there were marks left by splashes of molten armor plate, frozen forever where the skin had puckered into spongy patches with open pores. But now wrinkles appeared around the patches, like the wrinkles of a man with dimples in his cheeks when he wants to laugh.
“Katya,” the master of ceremonies said tenderly, although his neck had turned red from the strain of using his elbow to hold back the tall peasant, who was also trying to squeeze his way forward, and his left side was being squeezed by the astrakhan woman, who had turned desperate now, and with his chest he was holding back the pressure of an escort, who was bent over double.
“Katya,” said the master of ceremonies, “don’t you worry, everything will be all right…I’ll write to my general…I’ll put in a petition…A petition for leniency…In consideration of your…in general…”
The master of ceremonies was struggling hard to stay up, with his wounded leg sliding on the trampled, slippery snow.
“How’s Sashenka, my Sasha?” Sashenka’s mother shouted, rising up on tiptoe because her view was blocked by the well-fed peasant prisoner.
“All right,” the master of ceremonies shouted, almost falling under the pressure from all sides, “she’s with that Soviet official’s wife…I forgot the name…She’s all right…”
“If you see her,” Sashenka’s mother shouted, raising herself up even higher and craning her neck, “tell her, ask her to forgive…Ask her to forgive her mother…For bringing her into the world, but not providing for her and disgracing her…”
Tears ran down Sashenka’s mother’s face, and it instantly turned pale, looking old and unwell.
“Momma,” Sashenka suddenly shouted out impulsively, and started forcing her way forward so fiercely that she immediatelyran into the official-smelling back of a militiaman and stopped there with her fur coat hanging open and its buttons torn off.
“Sashenka!” her mother shouted despairingly. “Sashenka…”
“I’m here,” Sashenka babbled in fright, trying to reassure and calm her mother, like a little child. “I’m here, I’m all right…You’ll come back…You’ll atone for your guilt…I’ll work…I’ll get a job at the glove factory…”
“Sashenka,” her mother carried on shouting, “Sashenka…”
That was all she kept repeating, as if she had forgotten all the other words at once or she didn’t want to waste precious seconds on any other words, on long phrases, on the subordinate clauses, predicative clauses, and verbs that Sashenka had never been able to memorize at school either…But here there was everything in a single word: all her fear of not returning from imprisonment and not seeing her daughter again, because she hadn’t slept for six straight nights already, there were thirty people in the cell, it was stifling, her thoughts gave her no peace and her heart hurt all the time, so that she had already gotten used to it. And every now and then, especially just before morning, her joints ached, and the skin was flaking off her hands that were swollen from washing the kitchen vats, and after the trial there would be heavy work on the land, the kind that all the convicted prisoners with no qualifications did. It would be good if she managed to get work in the kitchen. And who else should she want to tell about her unlucky life, if not her own daughter…About how she had wanted to love, how wearily she had pined alone at night for so very long, how her youth had deserted her, how her figure had been ruined by the heavy vats, how she had forgotten the smell of face powder, lipstick, and eau de cologne, how her legs had turned heavy in the tarpaulin boots, and bony projections had appeared by the soles of her feet, so that the big toe on her right foot was driven completely inward and now she couldn’t even dream about high-heeled shoes. And her daughter had grown up beautiful, but spiteful and high-strung, and there was no way that she, her mother, could be forgiven for that. And there was another thing she wanted to share, because it was oppressing her heart but it was something she couldn’t share with her own daughter, it would be better with some chance acquaintance who was understanding, best of all with an elderly woman, that would make things easier for her, but she hadn’t found a single person like that in the cell, someone with whom she could talk about this. For the first time since Sashenka’s father died, she had a man, and now it was hard for her without him. She had waited five years after her husband, restraining herself, groaning at night, squeezing her withering breasts against the pillow, but now she had poured out everything in two months, she felt miserable and ashamed at the intense desires that had awakened and were tormenting her ailing, rapidly aging body, and it was frustrating that she hadn’t managed to satiate it before the end, before it finally sputtered to a complete halt and grew old, because at her age every second was dear, and her months and years would be spent all alone on a prison bunk. She couldn’t tell Sashenka about this, but she wanted her daughter to understand her yearning, even though it wasn’t clear to her; or rather, precisely because it wasn’t clear to her, so that she could forgive her mother and feel sorry for her.
When Sashenka’s mother stopped walking and shouted out, breaking step, the lines of prisoners fractured and pandemonium broke out. The old woman, Stepanets, suddenly darted in between the prisoners and the line of escorts with agile precision, taking no notice of the German Shepherd lunging toward her. She grabbed hold of the skinny young man with his arms bound, and started wailing. The woman in astrakhan fur tried to toss the delicious-smelling basket to her husband in the beaver-fur coat, but a young militiaman in the escort kicked the basket aside, and as Sashenka dashed toward her mother, she stepped on a boiled calf’s tongue, seasoned with garlic, pressing it into the snow with her heel. The blond-haired orderly ran past her, shouting something, and two members of the escort grabbed hold of the tall prisoner with the lackluster eyes and bound arms and hung on him. The tall peasant was the only one who wasn’t sucked into the pandemonium, and behind a militiaman’s back he deftly handed his brother chunks of fatback wrapped in greased sackcloth, two round loaves of home-baked bread, and several packs of Belomor cigarettes. All of this instantly disappeared into the well-fed prisoner’s rucksack. Sashenka wasn’t able to squeeze through to her mother; the prisoners were forced back into the courtyard and the gates were locked. The old woman, Stepanets, was locked in the guardroom. The major in glasses came out onto the porch. The pale-faced orderly gesticulated as he said something to him.
“Draw up a list,” the major said in a loud voice. “Cancel their right to receive food parcels, by hand or by post…And identify the ringleaders…”
He swung around and went back in, without looking at the jostling relatives, who were now feeling scared by what had happened.
