Once he reached the hotel, the lieutenant lay down on his bed and Sashenka sat by the headboard. The hotel room was a double, but fortunately the other bed was empty. The furniture in the room was in various styles from various times. Standing beside the khaki-colored bedside locker, to which a candle was attached, were two household chairs with curved backs and a low, light armchair, upholstered with scuffed leather. And the table, which was large and solid, but crooked, had obviously been knocked together out of knotty, unstained planks in the carpentry shop of the municipal communal services department. The bedstead on which the lieutenant was lying was nickel-plated with knobs, while the other was a standard, low, army metal-frame bed that even had a coating of rust. The room felt damp and cold. The lieutenant lay there, having removed his boots, but left his greatcoat on.
“Take off your coat and get under the blanket…You can put the coat over the top to make yourself snug,” Sashenka said.
The lieutenant meekly did as he was told, like an obedient child, but when Sashenka tried to move away to clear the oiled paper, crumbs, and empty stewed-meat jars off the table and wipe up the puddle around the tin kettle, which obviously leaked, the lieutenant grabbed her by the arm and wouldn’t let her leave him. It was strange, but Sashenka no longer felt her own exhaustion and fever, although she had spent the night out in the wind and the frosty air. On the contrary, at this moment Sashenka felt extraordinarily strong and capable. She fluffed up the pillows under the lieutenant’s head with deft, frugal movements, caressed him soothingly, cleared the table, wiped the waterlogged planks dry, gathered the leftovers of food on the bedside locker into a neat little heap, found a rag and plugged a hole in the window, since a chink had been left where the window was closed off with plywood and it let in a strong draught. After that, Sashenka took the kettle, went out into the icy-cold corridor and at the far end she found a little kitchen with a water heater, filled with acrid smoke. However, there was no water, either in the faucet or in the big, zinc boiler. Sashenka went down to the ground floor, fastening her quilted jacket snugly and tying her shawl around herself as tightly as she could. She went outside and stuffed the kettle full of snow, trying to choose the cleanest and whitest snow from a drift as far away as possible from the well-trampled tracks. After stuffing the kettle with white snow, Sashenka straightened up and looked round. Although it was still nighttime, she could tell that its end was imminent, not from any glimmers of dawn or brightening clouds, since the nocturnal gloom was as thick as ever, with the blizzard sweeping through it from end to end, but from the fact that lights were glimmering in windows, occasional passers-by had appeared, and an immense, war-trophy Fiat bus that brought workers from the surrounding villages to the chemical equipment factory went creeping and clattering by. Sleepy, nodding heads in caps, fur hats with earflaps, and shawls could be seen in the bus. Sashenka sighed, shivered and went back into the hotel lobby. She put the kettle in the stove, which was being tended by an old female stoker in big felt boots, and raked about inside the stove with a poker, turning the damp pieces of glowing peat on the bars of the grate, and, with her eyes closed, blew on the this peat that didn’t burn.
“A little bit of kerosene would do it,” the old woman said pensively. “It’d catch in a flash…Blow on it, daughter, I haven’t got enough puff…”
Sashenka leaned down and blew, raising dust that got in her eyes, then wiped it away with her hands and started blowing again until her cheeks ached, feeling the heat on her face. Standing in the oven beside the kettle was a cast-iron casserole with some kind of soup boiling in it; the old woman kept scooping some up in a wooden spoon and trying it. Before Sashenka’s kettle boiled, the old woman had already sampled almost half the casserole and she topped it up with water that she kept for her own needs, hidden from the guests in a secret spot behind the stove. Sashenka took her kettle and went up to the room. The lieutenant, who was still lying there exhausted, rose halfway and propped himself up on his elbow.
“I was worried about you,” he said wearily…
Sashenka poured hot water into a tin mug and found a jar of jam, a few packets of crackers, and an opened jar of stewed pork in the bedside locker.
“You eat too,” the lieutenant said, scooping up melted pork fat with a cracker.
Sashenka took a broken piece of cracker and inconspicuously scraped the wall of the jar with it so that the lieutenant wouldn’t notice, taking advantage of the fact that he was tearing open a packet of crackers. And so Sashenka felt perfectly satisfied, because there was quite a thick layer of fat left on the walls of the jar, and even a few fibers of meat and greasy gristle here and there. She left the best pieces of meat, sealed in the fat, for the lieutenant, who was exceptionally weak and pale. There were still a few jars left in the locker, it’s true, but Sashenka realized they were intended for paying Franya, Vasya, and Olga for digging up the graves. After she had eaten, Sashenka lay down beside the lieutenant on top of the blanket, with her cheek pressed against his cheek, without feeling any arousal or sensual desire as she did it, merely tenderness and calm. They lay there like that in the cold room, warming each other with their breathing.
“It’s cold for you,” the lieutenant said quietly, “get under the blanket.”
For an instant Sashenka felt afraid; it suddenly seemed as if something vile could happen now, for, strangely enough, in this moment she felt nothing but disgust for what she had dreamed about, lying on her sofa bed.
“There’s no need,” Sashenka said, “I’ll lie like this…”
She recalled her first kiss on the dark balcony—the wet, repulsive way that General Batiunya’s son had touched her face, destroying her dreams, and, as she now thought, laying the ground for all her subsequent miseries.
“Don’t be afraid,” the lieutenant said wearily. “I won’t touch you.”
“I’m not afraid,” Sashenka said, her heart pounding in fright as she threw back the edge of the blanket and slipped under it, frozen through and through, preparing for the very worst at the same time as feeling a gentle, languorous sensation appear in her joints. The strong male body immediately seared Sashenka with its heat, frightening and alluring, but several seconds went by and the lieutenant carried on lying there without moving; only his hand found the nape of Sashenka’s neck, cautiously caressing it, and Sashenka hastily jerked his hand away, because she was afraid that the lieutenant might feel the scar from the operation, which spoiled Sashenka so badly. So that the lieutenant wouldn’t feel the scar, Sashenka took his hands, put them together, palm to palm, and squeezed them between her knees, in the way that she herself liked to lie, with her hands stuck between her knees, where her skin was absolutely satin-smooth.
“I’ve taken you prisoner,” Sashenka said, squeezing his hands between her knees.
Sashenka trustingly put her head on the lieutenant’s chest, and when she felt the regular beats coming from within, she didn’t immediately realize that it was his heart, because she hadn’t really realized what was happening to her.
“It’s a bit frightening for me to hear someone else’s heart,” Sashenka said, “especially yours…”
They lay in silence for a little longer, huddling against each other. The candle was burning down and the lieutenant propped himself up on one elbow and extinguished it. It went dark, although outside the windows and also in the corridor, they could clearly hear footsteps, indicating that it was already morning.
“Let’s get a bit of sleep,” the lieutenant said, “we haven’t slept all night, after all…”
“All right,” Sashenka said, “I’ll just close the door so we won’t be disturbed.”
She slipped out from under the blanket, ran across the cold floor on tiptoe in her stockings, knocking over a chair, and started groping for the door, but stumbled into a locker and knocked something off it, she thought it was an empty stewed-meat jar. Eventually she stumbled across the door, closed the hook, went dashing back at a run and boldly dived under the blanket, as if she were used to it, as close as possible to the large, moist body.
“I’m sorry,” the lieutenant suddenly said in a hoarse voice, “I’m sorry.”
“What for?” Sashenka asked in surprise. “What are you saying, you silly thing…I’m so happy with you…”
“I’m sorry,” the lieutenant repeated. “I can’t be alone right now…Forgive me, little sister…”—he was feverish and almost delirious—“…you know, little sister, I think that professor is right…Your nearest and dearest should be buried by strangers…Especially if they were killed by a brick to the head…I’ve been wounded five times…I crawled along on burned legs…I cooled my legs in swamp water…Sometimes it felt as if my legs were enveloped in flames all the time. I wanted to put out the fire…Then I crept into a barn. There was grain in there, and rats. I ate the grain, and the rats ate me when I lost consciousness. There was plenty of meat on all sides without me, but they like warm meat…They especially liked my roasted legs…They gnawed right through my flying boots…Even when I was woken up by the rats’ teeth, it was hard for me drive the rats away from my legs…I beat them with the stick I tried to use to support myself when I walked, but they gnawed the end of the stick…There was one gray rat there in particular…Completely gray…I’ll remember its face for the rest of my life…It could think, I’m sure it could…It didn’t gnaw on the stick, it didn’t snarl, but calmly and patiently waited for me to pass out…Have you ever heard of Greek tragedy, my girl? Well that rat’s eyes refuted the cognizability of existence…They mocked at the theoretical optimism of Socrates…A rat like that could easily get into its head the idea of murdering an entire people out of compassion…In order to put an end to its torment and humiliation once and for all…Lots of rats darted around me, grown lazy from an abundance of food, with faces wet with human blood, but I summoned up all my strength and all my experience; I outwitted that rat, mastering the pain, trying not to groan, because I was certain it would understand and run farther off, but I tried not to groan. I cautiously crept closer and killed that gray rat with the stick…I paid dearly for that success, my legs started bleeding from the excessive effort, but I don’t regret it…”
“You’re soaking wet,” Sashenka said solicitously, “you’re soaking wet, my darling, my dear heart…”
“I’m drained,” the lieutenant said, breathing heavily, “completely drained. I don’t know if I can dig my mother and sister up out of the ground tonight. They were killed all together with the same brick…”
He suddenly grabbed Sashenka tightly by the wrist and moved her face close to his own, which was burning up with fever.
“You shouldn’t sell your own blood that cheap,” he said in a whisper, “it’s bad business…There’s no profit in trading your own blood that way…You have to take a liter for every drop…Two liters…A bucketful…Only then will the number of buyers be reduced…”
“What are you talking about, my darling?” Sashenka asked, looking delightedly at his blue eyes. “Don’t distress yourself…”
“I’m sorry,” the lieutenant said, “perhaps just a minute, a moment…I want to take a doze…Perhaps that’s where salvation lies…I want something different…To immerse myself in something different…Forgive me, my girl…That drunken Catholic custodian talked about atonement…But I’m afraid, and fear hardens the heart…I can’t imagine myself digging up the ground today and seeing my mother in the clay…The only thing I’m dreaming of is that her features have been distorted beyond recognition…There are ten thousand lying in the porcelain factory quarries…They were killed by fascism and totalitarianism, but my dear ones were killed by our neighbor with a rock…Fascism is a temporary stage of imperialism, but neighbors are eternal, like rocks…” He fell silent for a moment and gulped several times. “The custodian told me he watched through the window, but he was afraid to defend them…First our neighbor killed my sister, because she was young and she might run away or fight back. Then he stunned my father, my mother fainted, and the boot-cleaner’s practical reason told him that he could leave her for last…He started chasing my little five-year-old brother and couldn’t catch him for quite a long while, because he crept under the table on all fours, or ran around and around the aspidistra…Our neighbor moved aside the table, the aspidistra, and the chairs, and it was only then that he managed to kill the boy…Then he finished off my father and killed my mother. She died an easy death, because my father, he saw everything, he was only stunned as he lay there, but my mother died without recovering consciousness…Perhaps he merely smashed her skull when she was already dead, that’s what I really hope he did, because my mother had a weak heart…Then our neighbor tied all their legs together with the washing line and dragged them out into the yard, then he dragged them into the cesspit like that, into the night soil. He took a spade and smeared their faces with shit, filled their mouths with shit…Now he works in a sawmill at the Ivdel camp…And you know what I dream about. I dream about him surviving those twenty-five years and being released, so that I can rip open the skin on his neck with my fingernails…Old man’s skin, but that doesn’t matter…So that skin will hang down onto his shoulders like a collar, and then I can wait, wait until he bleeds to death from the torn veins in his neck…And soak my fingers in his blood…I know no one can live long with dreams like that…”
“My sweet darling,” said Sashenka, badly concerned now by her beloved’s hoarse, hasty speech, which was more like raving. “My sweet darling,” said Sashenka, pressing his head against her breasts, “I’m alone too…My father gave his life for the motherland, and my mother’s a thief…Things are hard for me…But we’re together now…”
“Yes,” said the lieutenant, “we’re together…I have to think about something else, or my skull will burst…I have to feel something else, live for something else…Right now, this very moment…Mere minutes decide everything…You know, I dreamed several times about killing that boot-polisher…After I found out the details…I only have to close my eyes…I had a dream at dawn today too. I was standing up to my waist in blood…The walls and the ceiling—they were all concrete…A hollow echo…There was a hideous moment—I was killing his children…I’m done for…They talk about universal forgiveness, atonement. But I don’t dream just in my sleep, it’s when I’m awake too…I yield to my heart, I feel an indescribable sweetness at the torment of my mother’s murderer…I break his fingers, I tear the tendons out of his legs…”
The lieutenant started choking. He was soaking wet with perspiration.
“Go to the boiler room,” he said in a quiet voice, “find out…I want to take a bath…Can they heat the water…Does the shower work…Go and find out right now…My body’s itching…I’d like to be clean…”
Sashenka got up and put on her boots. The lieutenant lay there, slumped back on the pillow, calm now; his chest had been heaving rapidly, but now he was breathing regularly. Sashenka went out into the corridor that was flooded with sunlight, but when she reached the first window aperture and saw a section of a bright winter day in full bloom, the glittering roofs white with snow, the calm black crows, the celestial blueness, the kids’ shouts coming up from below, obviously from the old bathhouse, where there was an icy slope for sliding down—when she saw and heard all this, Sashenka suddenly felt a terrible, incomprehensible anxiety that turned to fright and she went dashing back and tore open the door of the room. The lieutenant was lying on his side, facing the wall, and his right arm was bent at the elbow, with the hand pressed against his head. Sashenka grabbed hold of that hand with both of her own, trying to unbend the arm and pull the hand away from the head, still not even understanding why, but the hand was made of iron, it was completely still, and through the cloth Sashenka could feel the arm’s knobbly, tensed bicep muscle. Then Sashenka hastily and frenziedly sank her teeth into the lieutenant’s wrist, the lieutenant groaned and, as he tried to tear Sashenka off, he struck her a swinging, backhanded blow with his left hand. Sashenka’s temples started buzzing and rainbow-colored spirals started drifting in front of her eyes, but she didn’t let go of the wrist, she clamped her jaws together even more tightly, and something heavy fell onto the floor.
“Enough,” the lieutenant wheezed, “enough…Let go…”
Only then did Sashenka finally throw herself backward and sit down on the bed. She was breathless and sat there with her mouth wide open. Lying on the floor beside the bed was a large army semiautomatic TT pistol. For a while everything was quiet.
“How stupid,” the lieutenant said. “I forgot to close the door with the hook…Such a small detail…”
Then Sashenka started crying.
“You’re a fool,” she said. “You’re a fool, a fool…You’ve got no shame, you haven’t…You tried to deceive me…”
“I didn’t survive the war, my girl…I was killed…I was a student in the philosophy department, but I became an advocate of bloody vengeance after I saw my father’s face. Contorted in agony, with traces of sewage on his lips in that shed…”
“Sometimes I don’t want to live, either,” Sashenka said, “I want just to lie there with everyone feeling sorry for me…”
“You’re a good girl,” the lieutenant said and sat up. “None of it’s true…Despite everything, I want to live…Even though that boot-polisher stuffed my father’s mouth full of shit when he was still alive…Save me…I have to think about something else…Now, after you’ve saved me…I hit you…That’s terrible…Everything that…”
“But it doesn’t hurt,” Said Sashenka. “Don’t worry, my adorable one…”
“Something different…” said the lieutenant, “I must think about something completely different…It will block it out…It will save me…”
He suddenly embraced her as if he was drowning and had finally managed to set his hand on an object that promised salvation. He pressed her breasts against his lips and Sashenka felt a tingling, languorous sensation throughout her body, a feeling she hadn’t experienced for a long time, but this time the feeling was alive, everything that she had felt before was nothing compared with this, in this sweetness there was neither sin nor fright; she felt her beloved’s inexperienced and artless hands uncover her body, removing her clothes, but she didn’t feel even a hint of shame.
“I’m cold, I’m cold,” Sashenka complained in a whisper, and he hurriedly pulled the blanket up over Sashenka’s exposed back. Everything was simple and just, and Sashenka, also overcome by impatience, tried to help her tired beloved. The joints of Sashenka’s body desperately yearned for the moment she had craved, but which simply wouldn’t arrive, and the yearning for that moment was great, beyond the comprehension of those who have already stepped beyond it, for no memories or imagination could possibly reconstruct that apocalyptic thirst after it has been left behind. But then the thirsting ended for Sashenka too and the sweet agony began, the blissful torment in which her strength dissolved deliciously and joyful moans erupted from her chest, and finally came the something never experienced before, a sense of disappearing, of the death of the soul, which she would gladly have prolonged forever, flinging out a demonic, drunken challenge to life, nature, and impotent order, deriding and triumphing over all that was sanctified in this world, thumbing her nose at God, jeering at atheism, despising suffering, acknowledging neither father, nor mother, nor motherland, nor love and all the rest of it, the desires and sensations were so hard to define in this moment of total triumph of the body over the soul, of unreason over reason, of the animal over the human, of the idea of the devil over the idea of God, this moment of conception, the only moment, ambivalent like everything in the universe, when life, deprived of the assistance of fantasy and reason, shows its genuine value, equal to zero, and imparts through this truth an ineffable delight. But this effect, for all its transcendent bliss, is tenuous and inarticulate, having flung out a challenge to reason and fantasy, it finds itself vanquished, for, having forfeited words and thoughts, it is incapable of decoding its own essential nature and seducing man with that and, being chaste, and rapidly fading away, it merely strengthens order and reinforces the purposive nature and meaning of life. Thus does transient, persecuted life, filled with contrived meaning, enter into battle with the eternal, real chaos that reigns in the universe and emerge victorious.
Only at the moment of conception does this eternal chaos of the universe erupt into human flesh, and then only for a single, insane instant.
Helpless and happy, Sashenka lay beside her beloved; at first, perhaps, for a minute, perhaps five, perhaps even longer, Sashenka was so weak that she couldn’t raise her arms, and in her legs, which seemed to be lying a long way away, she could only feel her aching knees. Her beloved was also weak and quiet, and even his face had changed, the wrinkles around his eyes and on his forehead had smoothed out and, having lost their harshness, his features had become calmly exalted; this was a face like those of kind, stupid women when they pray, or of men whose sins are not great, and so their prayers are gentle toward both themselves and God, and do not require any shackles or raptures. But gradually this feeling started to pass, and as his strength returned, so did his concern, and the eyes that were pale-blue and naive during those moments of calm darkened once again and acquired a glint of intelligence. However, he carried on looking at Sashenka tenderly, and with his strength, his desires also woke again. He embraced Sashenka and started kissing her so passionately that they both lost their breath and every kiss left them breathing deeply and heavily.
“Again,” demanded Sashenka, whose body had also recovered its strength and become engorged, and was insatiably begging for caresses.
And then once again they reached out for each other, and once again there were sweet torments, and again their strength dissolved, and again there came that moment of disappearance, which they would have liked to prolong forever, but which quickly faded away, bringing weakness and calm. They lay there again for a while and suddenly, as if they were now a single organism, they both felt ravenously hungry.
“Look away,” Sashenka said, “I have to get dressed and feed you.”
He suddenly laughed.
“What’s the matter?” Sashenka asked.
“I’ve remembered that I don’t know your name,” the lieutenant said. “What nonsense…A convention…A label…We are given names and surnames for telling apart strangers, people who don’t need each other…I can sense you by smell, the way a wolf senses a she-wolf…”
“You’re talking nonsense,” said Sashenka, “We have to introduce ourselves immediately. If Zara finds out that we weren’t even acquainted, she’ll start spreading rumors…”
The lieutenant was called August.
“A good name,” said Sashenka, “but to myself I called you Vitya…That was before…”
“When?” August asked in surprise.
“It’s not important,” said Sashenka, “but now I’m going to get up, get washed, and heat up some stewed meat. There’s a stoker here, a woman—maybe I’ll get a brew of dried flowers with grated carrot from her…It tastes better than real tea.”
“Even if it’s just carrots,” said August. “That’s a good idea you had, tea…Give the stoker some jam in exchange.”
“That would be overdoing things,” Sashenka said thriftily “For jam you can get flour and bake flapjacks…I know where…But she’ll give us the brew for two crackers…And she’ll be grateful for that….”
Sashenka lowered her feet, suddenly stepped on something cold, and cried out.
“What a fright I got,” she said, holding her heart. “I thought it was a mouse…”
It was the TT pistol, still lying there in the same place. August’s face darkened; he quickly grabbed the pistol with his finger and thumb and stuck it under the pillow. Sashenka sat down beside August and put her arms around him, and he put his head on her shoulder.
“That’s all over with,” he said, “finished.” And he kissed Sashenka on the neck…
Sashenka quickly and skillfully put together breakfast. She bartered two crackers for carrot-tea brew from the woman stoker, and for another cracker she got a heavy cast-iron skillet from her too. August had a piece of stale bread in his rucksack; Sashenka soaked the bread in water, coated it in powdered egg and fried it with the pork fat. That produced a delicious kind of toast with an eggy coating. On August’s plate Sashenka put four pieces of toast and a piece of heated-up, marble-veined meat from the jar, and for herself she took two pieces of the toast and a slice of gristle, which she smeared with clarified butter to give it flavor. August gave his folding pocketknife with a fork on it to Sashenka, and he ate with a big SS dagger made by Solingen, with an obliterated swastika on the handle.
