17

Three weeks went by and Anna Sergeyevna went to the hospital. As they said goodbye, she said to Ivan Grigoryevich, “Happiness doesn’t seem to be our fate in this world.”

In the afternoon, while Ivan Grigoryevich was out at work, Anna Sergeyevna’s sister came and took Alyosha away, to live with her in her village.

Ivan Grigoryevich came back to an empty room. It was very quiet there. Although he had lived his whole life alone, it seemed that he had never before felt the full weight of loneliness.

That night he did not sleep; he was thinking. “...doesn’t seem to be our fate in this world...” The only light seemed to be in his distant childhood.

Now that happiness had looked him in the eyes, now that it had breathed on him, he weighed up his life with great acuteness, evaluating all that had befallen him.

It was painful indeed to realize that he was powerless to save Anna Sergeyevna, that he could do nothing to ease the last sufferings that had already begun for her. Strangely, he seemed to find comfort for his grief in thinking about the decades he had spent in camps and prisons.

He was trying to understand the truth of Russian life, what it was that linked past and present.

His hope was that Anna Sergeyevna would return from the hospital and he would tell her all he had recalled, all he had thought, all he had understood.

And she would share with him the burden, and the clarity, of understanding. This was the consolation for his grief. This was his love.