'No, no, I just wanted a chat,' said Viktor.

'I'm so happy,' said Marya Ivanovna. 'I keep wanting to cry.'

'Why not come round? Are you doing anything this evening?'

'You must be mad! Surely you realize how much Lyudmila and I have to do.'

She started to ask how long it had taken to get the electricity and the plumbing sorted out. Viktor cut her short. 'I'll call Lyudmila. If you want to talk about plumbing, she can continue this discussion.'

Then he added teasingly: 'What a pity you can't come round. We could have read Flaubert's poem "Max and Maurice".'

Ignoring his joke, she said: 'I'll phone later. If I've got so much work with just the one room, I can't imagine what it's like for Lyudmila.'

Viktor realized he had offended her. Suddenly he wished he were back in Kazan. How strange people are…

Next, Viktor tried to ring Postoev, but his phone seemed to be cut off. He tried Gurevich, but was told by his neighbours that he had gone to his sister in Sokolniki. He rang Chepyzhin, but no one answered.

Suddenly the phone rang. A boyish voice asked for Nadya. She was then on one of her trips to the dustbin.

'Who is it?' asked Viktor severely.

'It doesn't matter. Just someone she knows.'

'Viktor,' called Lyudmila. 'You've been chatting long enough on the phone. Come and help me with this cupboard.'

'I'm not chatting,' said Viktor. 'No one in Moscow wants to speak to me. And you might at least give me something to eat. Sokolov's already stuffed himself and gone to bed.'

Lyudmila seemed only to have increased the chaos in the flat. There were heaps of linen everywhere; the crockery had been taken out of the cupboards and was lying all over the floor; you could hardly move in the rooms and the corridor for all the pans, bowls and sacks.

Viktor hadn't expected Lyudmila to go into Tolya's room at first, but he was wrong. Looking flushed and anxious, she said to him: 'Vitya, put the Chinese vase on Tolya's bookshelf. I've just given the room a good clean.'

The phone rang again. He heard Nadya answer.

'Hello! No, I haven't been out. Mama made me take the rubbish down.'

'Give me a hand, Vitya,' Lyudmila chivvied Viktor. 'Don't just go to sleep. There's still masses to do.'

A woman's instinct is so simple – and so strong.

By evening the chaos was vanquished. The rooms felt warmer and had begun to take on something of their pre-war appearance. They ate supper in the kitchen. Lyudmila had baked some biscuits and fried up some of the millet she had boiled in the afternoon.

'Who was that on the phone?' Viktor asked Nadya.

'Just a boy,' said Nadya and burst out laughing. 'He's been ringing for four days.'

'What, have you been writing to him?' asked Lyudmila. 'Did you tell him we were coming back?'

Nadya looked irritated and shrugged her shoulders.

'I'd be happy if even a dog phoned me,' said Viktor.

During the night Viktor woke up. Lyudmila was in her nightgown, standing outside Tolya's open door.

'Can you see, Tolya?' she was murmuring. 'I've managed to clean everything now. Little one, to look at your room now, no one would think there'd ever been a war.'

25

On their return from evacuation, the University staff met in one of the halls of the Academy of Sciences. All these people – young and old, pale or bald, with large eyes or small piercing eyes, with wide foreheads or narrow foreheads – were conscious, as they came together, of the highest poetry of all, the poetry of prose.

Damp sheets and the damp pages of books left for too long in unheated rooms, formulae noted down by frozen red fingers, lectures delivered in an overcoat with the collar turned up, salads made from slimy potatoes and a few torn cabbage leaves, the crush to get meal tickets, the tedious thought of having to write your name down for salt fish and an extra ration of oil – all this became suddenly unimportant. As people met, they greeted each other noisily.

Viktor saw Chepyzhin standing next to Academician Shishakov.

'Dmitry Petrovich! Dmitry Petrovich!' Viktor repeated, looking at the face that was so dear to him. Chepyzhin embraced him.

'Have you heard from your lads at the front?' asked Viktor.

'Yes, yes, they're fine.'

From the way Chepyzhin frowned as he said this, Viktor realized that he already knew about Tolya's death.

'Viktor Pavlovich,' Chepyzhin went on, 'give my regards to your wife. My sincerest regards. Mine and Nadezhda Fyodorovna's.'

Then he added: 'I've read your work. It's interesting. Very important – even more than it seems. Yes, it's more interesting than we can yet appreciate.'

He kissed Viktor on the forehead.

'No, no, it's nothing,' said Viktor, feeling embarrassed and happy. On his way to the meeting he had been wondering stupidly who would have read his work and what they would say about it. What if no one had read it at all…?

Now he felt certain that no one would speak of anything else.

Shishakov was still standing there. There were lots of things Viktor wanted to say, but not in the presence of a third party – and certainly not in the presence of Shishakov.

When he looked at Shishakov, Viktor was always reminded of Gleb Uspensky's phrase, 'a pyramid-shaped buffalo'. His square fleshy face, his arrogant, equally fleshy lips, his pudgy fingers with their polished nails, his thick silver-grey crewcut, all somehow oppressed Viktor. Every time he met Shishakov, he caught himself thinking, 'Will he recognize me? Will he say hello?' He would then feel angry with himself for feeling glad when Shishakov's fleshy lips slowly pronounced a few words that somehow seemed equally fleshy.

'The arrogant bull,' Viktor once said to Sokolov when Shishakov was mentioned. 'He makes me feel like a Jew from a shtetl in the presence of a cavalry colonel.'

'Just think!' said Sokolov. 'What he's most famous for is failing to recognize a positron on a photograph. All the research students know the story. They call it "Academician Shishakov's mistake".'

Sokolov very rarely spoke ill of people – whether from caution or from some pious principle that forbade him to judge his neighbours. But Shishakov irritated him beyond endurance; Sokolov couldn't help but ridicule and abuse him.

They began to talk about the war.

'The German advance has been halted on the Volga,' said Chepyzhin. 'There's the power of the Volga for you – living water, living power.'

'Stalingrad, Stalingrad,' said Shishakov. 'The triumph of our strategy and the determination of our people.'

'Aleksey Alekseyevich, are you acquainted with Viktor Pavlovich's latest work?' Chepyzhin asked suddenly.

'I know of it, of course, but I haven't yet read it.'

It was by no means clear from Shishakov's face whether he really had heard of it.

Viktor looked for a long time into Chepyzhin's eyes; he wanted his old friend and teacher to see all he had been through, all his doubts and losses. But he saw sadness, depression and the weariness of old age on Chepyzhin's face too.

Sokolov came up. Chepyzhin shook him by the hand, but Shishakov merely glanced carelessly at his rather old jacket. Then Postoev joined them and Shishakov's large fleshy face broke into a smile.

'Greetings, greetings, my friend. Now you're someone I really am glad to see.'

They asked after each other's health, and after their wives and children. As they talked about their dachas, they sounded like grand lords.

'How are you getting on?' Viktor asked Sokolov quietly. 'Is it warm in your flat?'

'It's not yet any better than Kazan,' answered Sokolov. 'Masha said I must give you her regards. She'll probably come round and see you tomorrow.'

'Splendid! We miss her. In Kazan we got used to seeing her every day.'