During his weeks in Stalingrad Krymov had forgotten what it was like in Akhtuba. He'd forgotten the way your superiors, your colleagues, even the waitresses in the canteen, looked at you as if you barely existed.

In the evening he went back to his room. The landlady's dog was very glad to see him. It seemed to be made up of two halves – a shaggy, reddish-brown behind, and a long black-and-white face – and both halves were equally welcoming. The shaggy brown tail wagged, and the black-and-white face thrust itself into Krymov's hands, looking at him tenderly with its brown eyes. In the twilight it seemed there were two dogs, both of them making up to Krymov. The dog came with him as far as the door. Then the landlady appeared and shouted: 'Get out of it, you filthy creature!' Only then did she greet Krymov – and her welcome was as sullen as Toshcheyev's.

His quiet little room seemed very lonely after the friendly warmth of the trenches, the grey, smoky, tarpaulin-covered bunkers that were like the lairs of animals. The bed itself, the pillow in its white pillow-case, and the lace curtains all seemed equally unwelcoming.

Krymov sat down and started to compile his report. He wrote quickly, glancing only briefly at the notes he had made in Stalingrad. The most difficult part was house 6/1. He got up, walked about the room and sat down. Then he got up again, went out into the corridor and coughed. Surely that damned woman would offer him some tea? Instead he ladled out some water from the barrel. It was very pleasant, better than the water in Stalingrad. He went back into his room and sat down for a while to think, pen in hand. Then he lay down on the bed and closed his eyes.

How had it happened? Grekov had fired at him…

In Stalingrad he had felt a rapport with the men around him. He had been at ease there; people had no longer looked at him with blank indifference. In house 6/1 he had expected to feel the spirit of Lenin still more strongly. Instead he had immediately encountered mockery and hostility; he had lost his poise and begun lecturing people and making threats. What could have made him talk about Suvorov? And then Grekov had shot at him!

Today his isolation, the condescending arrogance of people whom he thought of as semi-literates, as mere greenhorns in the Party, had been more distressing than ever. Why should he have to bow and scrape before a man like Toshcheyev? What right did Toshcheyev have to look at him with such disdain and ill humour? In terms of the work he'd done for the Party he couldn't hold a candle to Krymov – for all his medals and high rank. What did people like him have to do with the Party and the Leninist tradition? Many of them had come to the fore only in 1937 – by writing denunciations and unmasking enemies of the people.

Then Krymov remembered the wonderful sense of faith, strength and light-heartedness he had felt as he walked down the underground passage towards that tiny point of daylight. He felt choked with anger – Grekov had exiled him from the life he yearned for. On his way to the building he had been joyfully conscious of a new turn in his destiny. He had believed that the spirit of Lenin was alive there. And then Grekov had fired at a Leninist, at an Old Bolshevik! He had sent Krymov back to the stifling offices of Akhtuba. The swine!

Krymov sat down. Every word he then wrote was the absolute truth.

He read the report over. Toshcheyev, of course, would pass it on to the Special Department. Grekov had subverted and demoralized the military sub-unit under his command. He had committed an act of terrorism: he had fired at a representative of the Party, a military commissar. Krymov would have to give evidence. Probably he would be summoned for a personal confrontation with Grekov – who by then would have been arrested.

He imagined Grekov in front of the investigator's desk, unshaven, without his belt, his face pale and yellow.

What was it Grekov had said? 'But you've suffered a lot.'

The Secretary General of the party of Marx and Lenin had been declared infallible, almost divine. And he certainly hadn't spared the Old Bolsheviks in 1937. He had infringed the very spirit of Leninism -that fusion of Party democracy and iron discipline.

How could Stalin have settled accounts so ruthlessly with members of Lenin's own party…? Grekov would be shot in front of the ranks. It was terrible to kill one's own men. But then Grekov was an enemy.

Krymov had never doubted the sacred right of the Revolution to destroy its enemies. The Party had a right to wield the sword of dictatorship. He had never been one to sympathize with the Opposition. He had never believed that Bukharin, Rykov, Zinoviev and Kamenev were true followers of Lenin. And Trotsky, for all his brilliance and revolutionary fervour, had never outlived his Menshevik past; he had never attained the stature of Lenin. Stalin, though, was a man of true strength. It wasn't for nothing he was known as 'the boss'. His hand had never trembled – he had none of Bukharin's flabby intellectuality. Crushing its enemies underfoot, the party of Lenin now followed Stalin. Grekov's military competence was of no significance. There was no point in listening to one's enemies, no point in arguing with them…

It was no good. Krymov could no longer bring himself to feel angry with Grekov.

Once again he remembered those words of Grekov's: 'But you've suffered a lot.'

'Have I gone and written a denunciation?' Krymov asked himself. 'All right, it may be true, but that doesn't make it any the less a denunciation… But what can you do about it, comrade? You're a member of the Party. You must do your duty.'

The following morning Krymov handed in his report.

Two days later, he was summoned by Regimental Commissar Ogibalov, the head of the agit-prop section, who was acting for the head of the Political Administration. Toshcheyev himself was busy with the commissar of a tank corps and was unable to see Krymov.

Ogibalov was a slow, methodical man with a pale face and a large nose.

'In a few days we're sending you off to the right bank, comrade Krymov,' he said. 'This time you'll be going to Shumilov's – the 64th Army. One of our cars will be going to the command post of the obkom. From there you can get across to Shumilov's yourself. The obkom secretaries are going to Beketovka to celebrate the anniversary of the Revolution.'

Very slowly, he dictated Krymov's instructions. The tasks he had been assigned were humiliatingly boring and trivial – of no importance except for official records.

'What about my lecture?' asked Krymov. 'At your request, I prepared a lecture, to be read to the different units during the October celebrations.'

'We'll have to leave that for the moment,' said Ogibalov, and went on to explain the reasons for this decision.

As Krymov was getting up to leave, the commissar said:

'As for that report of yours… Well, my boss has just put me in the picture.'

Krymov's heart sank. So the wheels were already turning…

'Our brave warrior's been lucky,' the commissar went on. 'We were informed yesterday by the head of the Political Section of the 62nd Army that Grekov, together with all his men, was killed during the German assault on the Tractor Factory.'

As though to console Krymov, he added:

'The Army commander nominated him posthumously for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. We'll certainly squash that.'

Krymov shrugged his shoulders, as if to say: 'So he's had a stroke of luck. Well, that's that.'

Ogibalov lowered his voice.

'The head of the Special Section thinks he may still be alive. He may have gone over to the enemy.'

Krymov found a note waiting for him at home: he was to report to the Special Section. So the Grekov affair wasn't yet over and done with.

Krymov decided to postpone what was bound to be a very disagreeable conversation until his return. After all, a posthumous affair could hardly be so very urgent.