Vasily Grossman - Life And Fate

Natalya had got down to work almost the minute she arrived. She put her heart into the work and everything came easily to her. Sacks of coal, heavy buckets of water, tubs of washing – all this was nothing to her.

Now Vera was able to take Mitya outside for half an hour. She would sit down on a stone and gaze at the mist on the steppe, at the water sparkling in the spring sunshine.

Everything was quiet and the war was now hundreds of kilometres away. Somehow things had seemed easier when the air had been filled with the whine of German planes and the crash of shell-bursts, when life had been full of flames, full of fear and hope. Vera looked at the oozing pimples on her son's face and felt overwhelmed with pity. She felt a similar pity for Viktorov. Poor, poor Vanya! What a miserable, sickly, whining little son he had!

Then she climbed up the three flights of stairs, still covered in litter and rubbish, and returned to work. Her melancholy dissolved in the soapy water, in the smoke from the stove, in the damp that streamed down the walls.

Sometimes her grandmother would call her over and stroke her hair. Her usually calm, clear eyes would take on an expression of unbearable tenderness and sorrow.

Vera never talked to anyone – her father, her grandmother, or even five-month-old Mitya – about Viktorov.

After Natalya's arrival the flat was transformed. She scraped the mould off the walls, whitewashed the dark corners, and scrubbed off the dirt that seemed by then to have become a part of the floorboards. She even got down to the immense task of cleaning the rubbish, flight by flight, from the staircase – a job that Vera had been putting off till it got warm.

She spent half a day repairing the black, snake-like stovepipe. It was sagging horribly and a thick tarry liquid was oozing from the joints and collecting in puddles on the floor. She gave it a coat of whitewash, straightened it out, fastened it with wire and hung empty jam-jars under the dripping joints.

She and Alexandra Vladimirovna became firm friends from the first day – even though one might have expected the old woman to take a dislike to this brash young girl and her constant stream of risqué anecdotes. Natalya also made friends with dozens of other people – the electrician, the mechanic from the turbine room, the lorry-drivers.

Once, when she came back from queuing for food, Alexandra Vladimirovna said to her: 'Someone was asking for you just now – a soldier.'

'A Georgian I suppose?' said Natalya. 'Send him packing if he shows his face here again! The fool's got it into his head he wants to marry me.'

'Already?' asked Alexandra Vladimirovna in astonishment.

'They don't need long. He wants me to go to Georgia with him after the war. He probably thinks I washed the stairs just for him.'

That evening she said to Vera: 'Let's go out tonight. There's a film on in town. Misha can take us in his truck. You and the boy can go in the cab, and I'll go in the back.'

Vera shook her head.

'Go on!' said Alexandra Vladimirovna. 'I'd go myself if only I were a bit stronger.'

'No. It's the last thing I feel like.'

'We've got to go on living, you know. Here we're all widows and widowers.'

'You sit at home all day,' Natalya chided. 'You never go out. And you don't even take proper care of your father. Yesterday I did his washing myself – his socks are all in holes.'

Vera picked up her baby and went out to the kitchen. Holding her son in her arms, she said: 'Mityenka, your mama isn't a widow, is she?'

Spiridonov was always very attentive towards Alexandra Vladimirovna. He helped Vera with the cupping glasses and he twice brought a doctor from the city. Sometimes he pressed a candy into her hand, saying: 'Now don't you go giving that to Vera. That's for you -she's already had one. They're from the canteen.'

Alexandra Vladimirovna knew very well that Spiridonov was in trouble. Sometimes she asked him if he'd heard from the obkom yet, but he always shook his head and began talking about something else. One evening, though, after he'd been told that his affair was about to be settled, he came home, sat down on the bed beside her and said: 'What a mess I've got myself into! Marusya would be out of her mind if she knew.'

'What are they accusing you of?'

'Everything.'

Then Natalya and Vera came in and they broke off the conversation.

Looking at Natalya, Alexandra Vladimirovna realized that there is a particular type of strong, stubborn beauty that no amount of hardship can injure. Everything about Natalya was beautiful – her neck, her firm breasts, her legs, her slim arms that she bared almost up to the shoulder. 'A philosopher without philosophy,' she thought to herself. She had noticed before how women used to a life of ease began to fade, to stop taking care of themselves, as soon as they were confronted with hardship; this was what had happened to Vera. She admired women who worked as traffic-controllers for the army, women who laboured in factories or did seasonal work on the land, women who worked in filthy, dusty conditions – and still found time to look in the mirror, to curl their hair, to powder their peeling noses. Yes, she admired the obstinate birds who went on singing no matter how bad the weather.

Spiridonov was also looking at Natalya. He suddenly took Vera by the hand and pulled her towards him. As though begging forgiveness for something, he kissed her.

Apparently quite irrelevantly, Alexandra Vladimirovna said:

'Come on, Stepan! We're neither of us going to die yet. I'm an old woman – and I'm going to get better. I'm good for a few more years.'

He glanced at her and smiled. Natalya filled a basin with warm water and placed it beside the bed. Kneeling down on the floor, she said: 'Alexandra Vladimirovna! It's nice and warm in the room. I'm going to wash your feet for you.'

'You idiot – you must be out of your mind! Get up at once!' shouted Alexandra Vladimirovna.

During the afternoon Andreyev came back from the workers' settlement around the factory.

First he went in to see Alexandra Vladimirovna. His sullen face broke into a smile: she had got up that day for the first time. There she was, sitting at the table, her spectacles on her nose, reading a book.

He said it had taken him a long time to find the place where his house had once stood. The whole area was nothing but trenches, craters and debris. Lots of workers had already gone back to the factory, and more were appearing every day. They even had policemen there. He hadn't been able to find out anything about the men who had served in the people's militia. They were burying bodies every day, and they were still finding more in the trenches and cellars. And everywhere you looked there were pieces of twisted metal.

Alexandra Vladimirovna kept on asking questions. She wanted to know where he'd spent the night, whether it had been a difficult journey, what he'd had to eat, how badly the open-hearth furnaces were damaged, what the workers themselves were getting to eat, whether he'd seen the director…

That very morning Alexandra Vladimirovna had said to Vera:

'You know I've always made fun of people's superstitions and premonitions. But for once in my life I feel quite certain of something: Pavel Andreyevich is going to bring news from Seryozha.'

She was wrong, but what Andreyev did have to say was still important. The workers had told him that they were getting nothing to eat, no wages, and that the dug-outs and cellars they lived in were cold and damp. The director had become a different person. While the Germans were attacking, he had been everyone's best mate. But now he didn't so much as say hello to anyone. And he'd had a new house built for him, a new car delivered from Saratov…