They went out onto the street.

'I feel awkward about your coming with me,' said Karimov. 'The weather's terrible and you've only just got back yourself.'

'It's all right,' said Viktor. 'I'll come as far as the corner.' He looked at his friend's face and said: 'I enjoy walking down the street with you – even if the weather is terrible.'

'Soon you'll be going back to Moscow. We'll have to say goodbye. You know, these meetings have meant a lot to me.'

'Believe me,' said Viktor. 'I feel sad too.'

As Viktor was on his way back, someone called out his name. Viktor didn't hear at first. Then he saw Madyarov's dark eyes looking straight at him. The collar of his overcoat was turned up.

'What's happening?' he asked. 'Have our meetings come to an end? You've vanished off the face of the earth. Pyotr Lavrentyevich is angry with me.'

'Yes,' said Viktor, 'it's a pity. But we did both say a lot of things in the heat of the moment.'

'Yes, but no one's going to pay any attention.'

Madyarov drew closer to Viktor. His large, melancholy eyes looked even more melancholy than usual.

'Still,' he said, 'there is one good thing about our not meeting any more.'

'What do you mean?'

'I have to tell you this,' said Madyarov, almost gasping, 'I think old Karimov's an informer. Do you understand? You meet quite often, don't you?'

'That's nonsense. I don't believe a word of it.'

'Can't you see? All his friends and all the friends of his friends are just labour-camp dust. His whole circle has vanished. He's the only one left. What's more, he's flourishing. He's been granted his doctorate.'

'And what of it?' said Viktor. 'I'm a doctor myself. And so are you.'

'The same goes for us. Just think a little about our wonderful fate. You're not a child any more.'

9

'Vitya, Mother's only just got back.'

Alexandra Vladimirovna was sitting at table with a shawl round her shoulders. She moved her cup of tea closer and then pushed it away again.

'Guess what?' she said. 'I spoke to someone who saw Misha just before the war.'

Speaking in a deliberately calm, measured tone because of her excitement, she went on to say that the neighbours of a colleague of hers had had someone to stay from their home-town. The colleague had happened to mention the name Shaposhnikova and he had asked if Alexandra Vladimirovna had a relative called Dmitry.

After work, Alexandra Vladimirovna had gone to her colleague's house. There she had learned that this man had recently been released from a labour camp. He had been a proof-reader on a newspaper and had spent seven years in the camps for missing a misprint in a leading article – the typesetters had got one letter wrong in Stalin's name. Just before the war he had been transferred for an infringement of discipline from a camp in the Komi ASSR to one of the special-regime 'lake camps' in the Far East. There he had slept next to Dmitry Shaposhnikov.

'I knew from the very first word that he really had met Mitya. He said: "Mitya just lay there on the bedboards, whistling 'Little Bird Where Have You Been?'" Mitya came round shortly before he was arrested – and whatever I asked, he just smiled and whistled that same tune… This evening the man's going on by lorry to his family in Laishevo. He said Mitya was ill – scurvy and heart trouble. And he said Mitya didn't believe he'd ever get out. Mitya had told him about me and Seryozha. He had a job in the kitchen – apparently that's the best work of all.'

'Yes,' said Viktor. 'It's not for nothing he's got two degrees.'

'You never know,' said Lyudmila. 'This man might be a provocateur.'

'Why should a provocateur bother with an old woman like me?'

'All right, but there is an organization that's interested in Viktor.'

'Lyudmila, you're talking rubbish,' said Viktor impatiently.

'But why was this man released?' asked Nadya. 'Did he say?'

'The things he said are quite incredible. It seems to be a world of its own, or rather a nightmare. He was like someone from a foreign country. They've got their own customs, their own Middle Ages and modern history, their own proverbs…

'I asked why he'd been released. He seemed quite surprised. "I was written off," he said. "Don't you understand?" In the end he explained that sometimes, when they're on their last legs, "goners" are released. There are lots of different classes in the camps – "workers", [40] "trusties", "bitches" [41]… I asked him about the ten years without right of correspondence that thousands of people were sentenced to in 1937. He said he'd been in dozens of camps but he hadn't met one person with that sentence. "Then what's happened to all those people?" I asked. "I don't know," he answered, "but they're not in the camps."'

'Tree-felling. Deportees. People serving additional time… It just appals me. And Mitya's lived there. He's used those same words – "goners", "trusties", "bitches"... Apparently there's a special way of committing suicide: they don't eat for several days and just drink water from the Kolyma bogs. Then they die of oedema, of dropsy. People just say, "He was drinking water" or "He began drinking". Of course, that's when they have a bad heart already.'

Alexandra Vladimirovna looked round at Nadya's furrowed brow and Viktor's tense, gloomy face. Her head on fire and her mouth quite dry, she went on:

'He said that the journey's even worse than the camp itself. The common criminals have absolute power. They take away people's food and clothes. They even stake the lives of the "politicals" at cards. Whoever loses has to kill someone with a knife. The victim doesn't know till the last moment that his life's just been gambled away. Yes, and apparently the criminals have all the important posts in the camp.

They're the ones in charge of the huts and the work-gangs. The politicals have no rights at all. The criminals call them "ty". They even called Mitya a Fascist.'

In a loud voice, as though she were addressing a crowd, Alexandra Vladimirovna announced:

'This man was transferred from Mitya's camp to Syktyfkar. In the first year of the war a man from Moscow called Kashkotin was appointed director of the lake-camps, including Mitya's. He's been responsible for the execution of tens of thousands of prisoners.'

'Oh my God!' said Lyudmila. 'But does Stalin know of these horrors?'

'Oh my God!' said Nadya angrily, imitating her mother's voice. 'Do you still not understand? It was Stalin who gave the order for the executions.'

'Nadya!' shouted Viktor. 'Cut it out!'

He flew into a sudden rage – the rage of a man who senses that someone else knows his hidden weaknesses.

'Don't you forget,' he shouted at Nadya, 'that Stalin's the commander-in-chief of the army fighting against Fascism. Your grandmother trusted in Stalin to the last day of her life. And if we still live and breathe, it's because of Stalin and the Red Army… First learn to wipe your nose properly, then criticize Stalin – the man who's halted the fascists at Stalingrad.'

'Stalin's in Moscow,' said Nadya. 'And you know very well who has really halted the Fascists. You are peculiar. You used to come back from the Sokolovs and say just the same things yourself…'

Viktor felt a new surge of anger. He felt as though he would be angry with Nadya for the rest of his life.

'I never said anything of the kind. You're imagining things.'

'Why bring up all these horrors now?' said Lyudmila. 'Soviet children are giving their lives for the Motherland.'

It was at this moment that Nadya showed how well she understood her father's weaknesses.

'No,' she said, 'of course you didn't. Not now – not when your work's going so well and the German advance has been halted.'

[40] I.e. prisoners still capable of a full day's work.

[41] Common criminals who have broken the underworld code.