He thought for a moment, then said:

'There is one possibility, however, though it will attract criticism. We can give Loshakova the position of junior assistant. And she can keep her card for the special store. Yes – that I can promise you.'

'No,' said Viktor. 'That would be insulting.'

'Viktor Pavlovich, are you saying that the Soviet State should be governed by one set of laws and Shtrum's laboratory by another?'

'No, I'm simply asking for Soviet law to be applied. According to Soviet law, Loshakova cannot be dismissed. And while we're on the subject of law, Kasyan Terentyevich,' Viktor went on, 'why did you refuse to confirm the appointment of young Landesman? He's extremely talented.'

Kovchenko bit his lip.

'Viktor Pavlovich, he may have the abilities you require, but you must understand that there are other circumstances to be considered by the Institute.'

'Very good,' said Viktor. 'I see.'

Then he asked in a whisper:

'The questionnaire, I suppose? Has he got relatives abroad?'

Kovchenko shrugged his shoulders.

'Kasyan Terentyevich,' said Viktor, 'let me continue this very pleasant conversation. Why are you delaying the return from Kazan of my colleague Anna Naumovna Weisspapier? She has, incidentally, completed a thesis. What contradiction are you going to find now between my laboratory and the State?'

A martyred expression appeared on Kovchenko's face.

'Viktor Pavlovich, why this interrogation? Please understand that choice of personnel is my responsibility.'

'Very good,' said Viktor. 'I see.'

He knew he was about to get extremely rude.

'With all due respect, Kasyan Terentyevich,' he went on, 'I just can't go on like this. Science isn't at Dubyonkov's beck and call – or yours. And I'm here for my work, not just to serve the obscure interests of the personnel department. I shall write to Aleksey Alekseyevich Shishakov – he can put Dubyonkov in charge of the nuclear laboratory.'

'Calm down, Viktor Pavlovich. Please calm down.'

'No, I can't go on like this.'

'Viktor Pavlovich, you've no idea how much the Institute values your work. And no one values it more than I do.'

'What do I care how much you value my work?' Viktor looked at Kovchenko's face. Rather than humiliation, however, he saw on it an expression of eager pleasure.

'Viktor Pavlovich, there is no question of your being allowed to leave the Institute,' Kovchenko said sternly. 'And that's not because you're indispensable. Do you really think that no one can replace Viktor Pavlovich Shtrum?'

His final words were spoken almost tenderly.

'You can't do without Landesman and Weisspapier – and you think there's no one in all Russia who can replace you?'

He looked at Viktor. Viktor felt that at any moment Kovchenko might come out with the words that had been hovering between them all along, brushing against his eyes, hands and brain like an invisible mist.

He bowed his head. He was no longer a professor, a doctor of science, a famous scientist who had made a remarkable discovery, a man who could be forthright and independent, arrogant and condescending. He was just a man with curly hair and a hooked nose, with a stooped back and narrow shoulders, screwing up his eyes as though he was expecting a blow on the cheek. He looked at the man in the embroidered Ukrainian shirt, and waited.

Very quietly, Kovchenko said:

'Calm down, Viktor Pavlovich, calm down. You really must calm down. Heavens, what a fuss over such a trifle!'

53

That night, after Lyudmila and Nadya had gone to bed, Viktor began filling in the questionnaire. Nearly all the questions were the same as before the war. Their very familiarity, however, somehow renewed Viktor's anxiety.

The State was not concerned about the adequacy of Viktor's mathematical equipment or the appropriateness of the laboratory apparatus for the complex experiments he was conducting; the State didn't want to know whether the staff were properly protected from neutron radiation, whether Sokolov and Shtrum had a good working relationship, whether the junior researchers had received adequate training for their exhausting calculations, whether they realized how much depended on their constant patience, alertness and concentration.

This was the questionnaire royal, the questionnaire of questionnaires. It wanted to know everything about Lyudmila's father and mother and about Viktor's grandfather and grandmother-where they had been born, where they had died, where they had been buried. In what connection had Viktor Pavlovich's father, Pavel Iosifovich, travelled to Berlin in 1910? There was something sinister about the State's anxious concern. Reading the questionnaire, Viktor began to doubt himself: was he really someone reliable?

1. Surname, name and patronymic… Who was he, who was this man filling in a questionnaire at the dead of night? Shtrum, Viktor Pavlovich? His mother and father had never been properly married, they had separated when Viktor was only two; and on his father's papers he had seen the name Pinkhus – not Pavel. So why was he Viktor Pavlovich? Did he know himself? Perhaps he was someone quite different – Goldman… or Sagaydachny? Or was he the Frenchman Desforges, alias Dubrovsky?

Filled with doubt, he turned to the second question.

2. Date of birth… year… month… day… (to be given according to both old and new styles). What did he know about that dark December day? Could he really claim with any confidence to have been born at that precise moment? To disclaim responsibility, should he not add the words, 'according to'?

3. Sex… Viktor boldly wrote, 'Male'. Then he thought, 'But what kind of man am I? A real man would never have kept silent after the dismissal of Chepyzhin.'

4. Place of birth… (according to both old and new systems of administration – province, county, district, village and oblast, region, rural or urban district). Viktor wrote, ' Kharkov '. His mother had told him he had been born in Bakhmut, but she had filled in his birth certificate two months later, after moving to Kharkov. Should he be more precise?

5. Nationality… Point five. This had been so simple and insignificant before the war; now, however, it was acquiring a particular resonance.

Pressing heavily on his pen, Viktor wrote boldly and distinctly, 'Jew'. He wasn't to know what price hundreds of thousands of people would soon have to pay for answering Kalmyk, Balkar, Chechen, Crimean Tartar or Jew. He wasn't to know what dark passions would gather year by year around this point. He couldn't foresee what fear, anger, despair and blood would spill over from the neighbouring sixth point: 'Social origin'. He couldn't foresee how in a few years' time many people would answer this fifth point with a sense of fatedness -the same sense of fatedness with which the children of Cossack officers, priests, landlords and industrial magnates had once answered the sixth point.

Nevertheless, Viktor could already sense how the lines of force were shifting, how they were now gathering around this point. The previous evening, Landesman had phoned; Viktor had told him of his failure to secure his nomination. 'Just as I expected!' Landesman had said angrily and reproachfully. 'Is there something awkward in your background?' Viktor had asked. Landesman had snorted and said, 'There's something awkward in my surname.'

And while they were drinking tea that evening, Nadya had said:

'Do you know, Papa, Mayka's father said that next year they're not going to accept a single Jew in the Institute of International Relations.'

'Well,' thought Viktor, 'if one's a Jew, then one's a Jew – and one must say so.'

6. Social origin… This was the trunk of a mighty tree; its roots went deep into the earth while its branches spread freely over the spacious pages of the questionnaire: social origin of mother and father, of mother's and father's parents… social origin of wife and wife's parents… if divorced, social origin of former wife together with her parents' occupation before the Revolution.