A Hero's Daughter Part 2

Ivan walked along taking great strides. In his old knapsack he carried two loaves of black bread, a paper bag containing millet, twelve onions, and a piece of bacon wrapped in a sc.r.a.p of cloth. But most precious of all, the liter of milk, that had long since turned sour, he carried in his hands. "With this we can feed the kid and then we'll see..." he thought.

A dense, dry heat hovered over the fields, like the exhalation from the mouth of an oven. A burning copper sun was plunging down behind the forest but scarcely any evening cool could be felt.

He pa.s.sed through the deserted village flooded with the violet light of the sunset. The radio above the soviet was still blaring away.

As he crossed the threshold he had a premonition of disaster. He called out to his wife. All that could be heard was the incessant buzzing of the flies. A fine golden ray of light pierced the gloom of the izba as Ivan rushed into the bedroom. Tatyana lay there on the bed, the child in her arms, and appeared to be asleep. He lifted the cover in haste and pressed his ear to her breast. Beneath the rough scar he heard her heart beating faintly. He heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness! I've arrived in time..." Then he touched the child. The cold, rigid little body already had a waxen sheen to it. Outside the window the sweet voice was unflaggingly pouring out these words: All the world turns blue and green about us In the forest gaily purls the stream.

There's never love without a touch of sadness...

Ivan bounded out of the house and ran over to the soviet. Blinded with tears, he began hurling stones at the black disk of the loudspeaker, without managing to hit it. Struck at last, the loudspeaker screeched and fell silent. A vertiginous stillness ensued. Only, somewhere at the edge of the forest, like a well-oiled machine, the cuckoo flung out its insistent, plaintive call.

The next day Tatyana was able to get up. She went out on the doorstep and saw Ivan driving nails into the little coffin's pine planks.

After burying their son and gathering together their meager luggage, they took the road to the station. Ivan had heard that in the small town of Borissov, some sixty miles from Moscow, they were recruiting drivers for the construction of a hydroelectric center and providing them with accommodation.

That was how they came to settle in the Moscow region. Ivan found himself behind the wheel of an old truck, whose side panels bore the inscription in flaking paint: "Next stop: Berlin!" Tatyana went to work at the furniture factory.

And the days, months, and years followed one another, calmly and uneventfully. Ivan and Tanya were content to see their lives following this ordinary, peaceful course. The same as everyone else, that of decent people. They had been given a room in a communal apartment. There were already two families living there, the Fedotovs and the Fyodorovs. And in the little room next to the kitchen lived Sofia Abramovna.

The Fedotovs, still a young couple, had three sons whom the father beat frequently and conscientiously. When their parents were out at work these rascals would take their father's heavy bicycle down from the wall. With a h.e.l.lish din, running over the other tenants' shoes, they careered up and down the long, dark corridor, where there hovered a persistent and bitter smell of stale borscht.

The Fyodorovs were almost twice as old as the Fedotovs. Their son had been killed just before the end of the war and the mother lived in the hope that the death notice had been sent by mistake: there were so many Fyodorovs in Russia! Secretly she hoped he had been taken prisoner and that some day or other he would return. Fyodorov, the father, had himself been in the war from the first day to the last and was under no illusions. Sometimes, when he had been drinking and could stand it no longer, exasperated by his wife's daily expectation, he would yell right through the apartment: "Oh sure, you can count on it. He'll be coming back. But if he's discharged from the POW camp he's not coming back here to you. He'll be sent beyond the Urals or even farther!"

Sofia Abramovna belonged to the old Moscow intelligentsia. In the 1930s she had been sent to a camp and had only been released in 1946, subject to a ban on living in Moscow and some hundred other cities. During her ten years in the camp she had lived through what human language was incapable of expressing. But her neighbors guessed it. When a quarrel broke out in the kitchen Sofia did not try to stand on the sidelines but lost her temper, cursed and swore, using surprising language. Sometimes she hurled turns of phrase at her adversaries contemptuous in their exaggerated politeness: "I give you my most humble thanks, Comrade Fyodorov. You are the very pinnacle of courtesy." On other occasions she would suddenly come out with expressions she had picked up in the camps: "See here, Fedotov, you keep your d.a.m.ned thieving hands off the stash in my sideboard. You're wasting your time casing it. There's no liquor in there."

But even at the height of these neighborly quarrels Sofia 's eyes were always staring into s.p.a.ce to such an extent that it was clear to everyone: she was still back there beyond the Urals. Which was why arguing with her was not very rewarding.

Whether they liked it or not, the Demidovs used to find themselves drawn into these conflicts. But their role was generally confined to acting as conciliators between the Fyodorovs and the Fedotovs when they squabbled and calming the wives as they sobbed noisily.

Life would have been somewhat lacking in savor for all of them without these altercations. For three days after a quarrel the neighbors would edge by when they met without exchanging greetings, glowering at one another. Then they would make up around a communal table and, after drinking a few vodkas, would begin to embrace, swearing eternal friendship and abjectly begging one another's forgiveness with tears in their eyes. The Fedotovs had an old windup phonograph. They would bring it down into the courtyard, put it on a small stool, and all the inhabitants of their little building would gather in the mauve dusk of spring. They would shuffle around to the strains of a languid tango, forgetting for an hour or two the lines outside the communal toilets every morning, the squabbles over the disappearance of a piece of soap, forgetting everything that made up their lives.

The Demidovs enjoyed these evenings. Tanya would put on her white wedding blouse, Ivan threw a jacket over his shoulders with all his medals in a row. And they danced together, smiling at each other, letting themselves be carried away by the sweet dreaminess of the words: Do you remember how we whispered, On those summer nights so blue, Words of tenderness and pa.s.sion dearest lover true...?

The years rolled by at once slowly and rapidly. Imperceptibly the Fedotov sons had grown up, developed into hefty young men with ba.s.s voices. They had all married and left in one direction or another.

Some records had had their day, others came into vogue. And now it was the younger generation who played them on their windowsills, commenting: "That's Lolita Torrez... Oh, this one's Yves Montand."

The only event that stuck in Ivan's memory during those years was the death of Stalin. And, in fact, not the death itself, because on that day they had drunk and wept buckets and that was all. No, it was another day, already under Khrushchev, when they removed the statue of Stalin. Why did they choose him, specifically him, Demidov, for this task? Was it because he was a Hero of the Soviet Union? The head of the motor pool had called him in. Ivan found himself among the local Party bosses. They explained to him what it was all about. He had to take his Zis truck that night and work some overtime.

This was how the memory of that spring night had stayed with him. They worked in darkness, simply lighting the monument with their vehicle headlamps. A fine rain was falling that had the bitter smell of poplar shoots. The cast-iron statue of the Great Leader glistened like rubber. The pulley on the crane began to do its work: Stalin found himself hanging in midair, somewhat askew, gently swaying, staring hard at the people scurrying about beneath him. And already the workmen were tugging him by his feet toward the Zis's open side panel. The foreman of the team, close beside Ivan, grunted: "Sometimes we were lying there on our bellies at the front and they were throwing so much at us you couldn't even lift your head up from the ground. The stuff was whistling over. A hail of bullets like a shower. Then the political commissar jumps to his feet with his little revolver, you know, like those kids' pistols. And once he yells: 'For our Country, for Stalin, forward!'... then it grabbed us, you know, G.o.dd.a.m.n it! We jumped up and went over the top... All right, you guys! Steer the head toward the corner. Otherwise it won't fit in. Steady she goes..."

A fresh breeze could be sensed in the air, with something sparkling and joyful about it. In Moscow, it appeared, pa.s.sions were being unleashed. Things were coming to the boil in kitchens at the highest level. Ivan even acquired a taste for reading newspapers, which he had never looked at before. All about them everything was relaxing, gaining a new lease of life. An endless procession of Fidel Castros, bearded and smiling, marched through the newspapers, as well as drawings of blacks with great white teeth, smashing the chains of colonialism, and the engaging faces of Belka and Strelka, the pioneer dog cosmonauts. All this added savor to life and caused joyful hopes to be reborn. As he sat behind the wheel, Ivan often hummed the song that could be heard everywhere: Cuba, my love, Isle of purple dawn...

And it seemed as if both Fidel and the blacks on the posters, breaking free from colonialism, were intimately linked to the life of Borissov, to their own existence. It seemed as if the world was about to be shaken and an endless festival would begin, here and everywhere on earth.

To crown it all, Gagarin had taken off into s.p.a.ce.

And at the Party Congress Khrushchev made the pledge: "We shall build Communism in twenty years."

At the end of this happy year two important events occurred in the Demidov family. In November they had a daughter and just before the new year they had bought a Zaria television set.

At the maternity ward the doctor said to Ivan: "Now listen, Ivan Dmitrevich, you may well be a Hero here, all the town knows you. But I'm going to speak frankly. With a war wound like that no one should have children! Her heart missed a beat three times during the birth..."

But it was a time for optimism. They had no thoughts of anything troublesome. On New Year's Eve Ivan and Tanya sat in front of the television, their arms around each other's shoulders, to watch Carnival Night, starring the popular actress Gurchenko, then in the flush of youth and trilling away merrily. They were perfectly happy. In the dim light the dark green glint of a bottle of champagne glowed on the table. The snow crunched under the feet of pa.s.sersby outside. From the neighbors' rooms could be heard the hubbub of guests. Behind the wardrobe in- a little wooden cradle their newborn was sleeping silently and diligently. They had called her Olya.

In the spring of the following year they were given an apartment of their own with two rooms.

During these years a whole generation who had not known the war came into the world and grew up. Ivan was more and more often invited to the school at Borissov just before the national celebration on May 9, Victory Day.

Now they addressed him as "Veteran." This amused him. To him it seemed as if the war had only just ended and he was still that former Guards staff sergeant, recently demobilized.

At the entrance to the school he was met by a young teacher, who greeted him with a radiant smile and led him into the cla.s.sroom. He followed her in, his medals tinkling on his chest, and thought: "How quickly time pa.s.ses! The truth is I really am a veteran now. She's young enough to be my daughter and she's a teacher already!"

As he entered the noisy cla.s.sroom silence fell. The pupils stood up, exchanging glances, whispering and staring at his decorations. They were impressed by the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union. A Hero. You don't meet one of those every day!

Then the teacher made some appropriate remarks about the great national celebration, and the twenty million lives sacrificed for the sake of the radiant future of these pupils, distracted as they were by the May sunlight, taking as her text: "No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten." After that her voice adopted a warmer, less official tone and she addressed Ivan, who was standing somewhat stiffly behind the table: "Honored Ivan Dmitrevich, on your chest shines our country's highest award, the Gold Star of a Hero of the Soviet Union. We should like to hear about the part you played in the war, your achievements in battle, and your heroic contribution to the Victory."

And Ivan cleared his throat and began his story He already knew by heart what he would tell them. Once he had started receiving invitations he had grasped what he had to say so that the cla.s.s remained attentive for the regulation forty minutes, much to the delight of the young teacher. He even knew that at the end of his talk after which there would be a tense silence for several seconds she would rise nimbly to her feet and p.r.o.nounce the expected words: "Now then, children, put your questions to Ivan Dmitrevich." Once again there would be an embarra.s.sing silence. But in obedience to a look from the teacher, a radiant girl would stand up in the front row, wearing a smock as white as whipped cream, who would say, as if she were reciting a lesson: "Honored Ivan Dmitrevich, please will you tell us what qualities of character you valued most in your wartime comrades?"

After the reply, to which no one paid much attention, the most presentable boy would stand up and ask Ivan, in the same conscientious tones, what advice he would give to future defenders of their Country.

At the end of this patriotic-military demonstration there would often be an unexpected diversion. Urged on by the whispers of his fellows, a great scruffy youth would rise to his feet in the back row. And without any preliminaries would stammer out: "So how thick was the armor on the German Tigers? Thicker or thinner than on our T-34?" "The gun. Ask him about the gun..." his neighbors prompted him. But the boy bright red, was already collapsing on his chair, proud of his excellent question. Ivan answered him. Then the bell rang and the much relieved teacher congratulated the veteran once more and gave him three red carnations, taken from a vase that stood on the desk. Impatiently the whole cla.s.s jumped to their feet.

On the way, Ivan Dmitrevich always had a few confused regrets. Each time he wished he had told them about a small detail: the wood he went into after the battle and the spring water that had reflected his face back at him.

Journalists sometimes came to see him as well, most often for the anniversary of the start of the Battle of Stalingrad. The first time, responding to a question about the battle, he began to talk about everything: Mikhalych, who would never know his grandchildren; Seryozha, who looked so serene, so carefree in death, the machine-gunner who had only one digit left on each hand. But the journalist, adroitly seizing the moment when Ivan was drawing a breath, interrupted him: "So, Ivan Dmitrevich, what impression did the ' Heroic City on the Volga ' make on you in that year of fire, 1942?" Ivan was disconcerted. Admit that he had never seen Stalingrad, never fought in the streets there? "All Stalingrad was burning," Ivan replied evasively.

After that he got used to this innocent untruth, which suited the journalists very well, for at that time Stalin was coming back into fashion and " Stalingrad " had a good ring to it. Sometimes Ivan was surprised to realize that even he was increasingly forgetful about the war. He could no longer distinguish between his old memories and the well-worn tales told to the schoolchildren and the interviews given to journalists. And when one day he was speaking of a detail that fascinated the boys: "Oh yes, our seventy-six-millimeter gun was powerful but it couldn't pierce the Tiger tank's frontal armor..." he would think: "But was it really like that? Maybe it's something I read in Marshal Zhukov's memoirs..."

The Demidovs' daughter, Olya, was growing up and going to school. She already knew the ancient story of the little mirror. To her it seemed legendary and alarming her father lying in a frozen field, his head all b.l.o.o.d.y; her mother, whom she could not manage even to picture, choosing him from among hundreds of soldiers lying all around. She knew that once upon a time there had been a battle, for which he had received his Star thanks to which he could buy train tickets without having to stand in line.

They had also told her about her mother's injury, which meant she was not supposed to carry heavy loads. But this did not stop her mother from lugging heavy wooden panels around, and Olya's father used to scold her for her lack of concern.

When Olya took her entrance exams for the Maurice Th.o.r.ez Inst.i.tute of Foreign Languages she experienced the reality of this legendary wartime past in a quite specific way. The friend with whom she had come to Moscow said to her with ill-concealed jealousy: "You're bound to pa.s.s, of course. They'll take you just because of your civil status. It's a foregone conclusion. You're the daughter of a Hero of the Soviet Union..."

2.

During the summer of 1980 Moscow was unrecognizable. People who lived in the rest of the country were not allowed into the capital. Most of the children were sent off to Pioneer camps. Long before the summer a serious purge had been carried out, in which all "antisocial elements" had been expelled. There was no sign now of lines in the shops, nor of jostling on the buses, nor of the glum throng of people from the provinces coming in with their big bags to do their shopping.

The cupolas of ancient churches had been hastily whitewashed, and members of the militia had been taught to smile and say a few words in English.

And the Moscow Olympic Games began. Everywhere buses could be seen coming and going, carrying the athletes to the events, while foreign tourists idly called out to one another in the deserted streets, busying themselves with guides and interpreters.

From this summer, from these games, from this influx of foreigners, everyone expected something extraordinary, a breath of fresh air, some kind of upheaval, almost a revolution. For the s.p.a.ce of a few weeks Brezhnev's Moscow, like a vast, spongy slab of floating ice at the time of the spring floods, nestled up to this colorful Western life, grinding its gray sides against it, and then drifted off bombastically on its way. The revolution did not take place.

Olya Demidova was totally caught up in this Olympic bustle, allowing herself to fall into a frenzy of happy exhilaration. She had completed her third year at the Inst.i.tute and had reached that stage in English and French where you are suddenly seized with an irresistible desire to converse. She already spoke with the hesitant freedom of a child who is just learning to run and enjoying the ability to keep her balance.

The interpreters hardly slept now. But their youth and their feverish excitement kept them on their feet. It was such fun in the morning to leap onto the platform of a bus, to see the athletes' young faces, to respond to their jokes and then go flying through Moscow 's resonant streets. In the evening the atmosphere was quite different. Inside the bus, heated up during the day by the burning sun, there hovered the acrid smell of "Western deodorants and muscular male bodies exhausted by their efforts. The streets slipped past and the cool evening twilight swept in at the windows of the bus. The men, slumped in their seats, exchanged idle remarks.

Sitting next to the driver on a seat that swiveled round, Olya glanced at them from time to time. They made her think of gladiators, resting after the fight.

One of them, Jean-Claude, a typically Mediterranean young man (she was working with a French team), sat there with his head thrown back and his eyes half closed. She guessed he was watching her through lowered eyelids. He smiled as he watched her, and when the coach stopped at the Olympic Village he was the last to get off. Olya stood beside the bus door, taking leave of the athletes and wishing each of them a good night. Jean-Claude shook her hand and remarked carelessly, but loud enough for this to be heard by the keeper who escorted them: "I've got something that needs translating. Could you help me? It's urgent."

Olya found herself in his room, surrounded by all those beautiful coveted objects that for her symbolized the Western world. She understood at once that the translation was only a pretext and that something was going to happen which, only a short time before, had still seemed unthinkable. To quell her fear she repeated like an incantation: "I couldn't care less. It's all the same to me. If it happens, it happens..."

When Jean-Claude came out of the shower she was already in bed. Stark naked and swathed in a pungent cloud of eau de cologne, he crossed the room in darkness, and tossed a sports shirt or a terry towel onto the edge of the bal.u.s.trade. Then he stopped before a tall, dark mirror and, as if lost in thought, ran his fingers several times through his damp hair, on which the blue light of a street lamp glinted. His skin also shone, with a dark, luminous glow. He closed the door to the balcony, and made his way toward the bed. It felt to Ol as if the ceiling were gently caving in on her, in a chamber made of synthetic foam.

After the third night, she had just emerged from the building in the early hours of the morning when the man who oversaw the interpreters loomed up in front of her. Without greeting her, he barked: "I see you know how to mix business with pleasure! Do I have to drag you out of bed to send you to work? What's going on? Is this the Olympic Games or a brothel? Report to the Organizing Committee. They'll soon deal with you!"

During those three days Olya had been so wildly happy she had not even given a moment's thought to seeking any justification or to preparing a plausible story. On their last night together Jean-Claude was intoxicated with happiness. He had come in second and won a silver medal. He drank, talked a lot, and looked at her with rather crazed eyes. It all involved a firm he had a contract with and a sports complex he would now be able to open. He talked about money without any embarra.s.sment. He became so excited as he talked about all this that Olya said to him, laughing: "Just listen to you, Jean-Claude, you sound as if you were on drugs!" Pretending to take fright, he put his hand over her mouth, pointing to the radio: "They're listening to all this." Then he put his arms around her and pressed her back on the pillows. Recovering his breath, immersed in silent exhaustion, he murmured in her ear: "Yes, I am on drugs... you're my drug!"

At the Organizing Committee, it all began with shouting. A shriveled old official of the Komsomol, with a clammy bald head, dressed in a suit with bulging pockets, methodically tore into their three days of happiness. "It's not just us you're dragging through the mire," he yelled. "You bring shame on the whole country. What are they going to think of the USSR in the West now? Well, what do you suppose? That all the Communist Youth are prost.i.tutes, like you? Is that it? Don't interrupt. And the daughter of a Hero of the Soviet Union, what's more! Your father gave his blood... And what if this incident reached the ears of the Central Committee? Have you thought of that? The daughter of a Hero of the Soviet Union! Coming from such stock, to soil yourself like that! Well, we have no intention of covering up for you. Make no mistake about that. They'll kick you out of the Inst.i.tute and the Komsomol. As they say among your young friends: 'Pleasure has to be paid for.' There's no point in crying now. You should have thought of it before."

After this tirade he removed the stopper from a carafe with a dry creak, poured out a gla.s.sful of tepid, yellowish water and drank it with a grimace of disgust. He went over to the window and drummed on the grayish windowsill, waiting for Olya to stop crying. The heat in the office was stifling. A red b.u.t.ter-fly with tattered, tarnished wings struggled inside the double glazing. Nauseated, he studied the dusty gla.s.s, the dark poplars outside the window. He turned back to Olya, who was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up a little damp handkerchief. "That's ah. You can go. I have nothing else to say to you. What happens to you is up to the competent authorities. Report to the third floor, Room Twenty-seven. They'll deal with you there."

Olya stumbled out and climbed up to the third Hoor, where, blinded by tears, she could scarcely find the door he had indicated. Before going in she took a quick look in her little pocket mirror, fanned her swollen eyes with her hand and knocked.

Behind the desk a handsome man in his forties was talking on the telephone. He looked up at her, greeted her with a nod, and, smiling, indicated the armchair. Olya sat down timidly on the edge of the seat. While continuing to give laconic replies, the man took out a bottle of water from under the desk and deftly opened it with one hand. He poured some into a gla.s.s and slid it gently across toward Olya, blinked, and smiled at her again. "He doesn't know why I'm here yet," she thought, swallowing a little sparkling mouthful. "When he discovers he'll yell at me and throw me out."

The man put down the receiver, extracted a sheet of paper from a drawer and scanned it quickly. He studied his visitor and said: "Good. Olya Ivanovna Demidova, if I'm not mistaken? Well, Olya, let's get to know one another." And he introduced himself: "Sergei Nikolaievich." Then he paused, sighed, rubbed his temples and went on, as if regretfully: "You see, Olya, what took place is without any doubt unfortunate and, I fear, heavy with consequences for you. As a man, I can understand you: youth's the season made for joy, of course. You yearn for new sensations... Essenin, you remember, calls it 'the flood tide of feelings' that's his phrase, isn't it? But that's the poet speaking. And you and I are living in the world of political and ideological realities. Today your Frenchman is throwing the javelin or doing the high jump. Tomorrow he's being trained for some kind of intelligence work and comes back here as a spy. Well, I'm not going to make a speech. You've already had an earful. I'm just going to say one thing to you. We, for our part, will do everything possible to get you out of trouble. You understand, no one wants to cast a shadow over your father; and you yourself, we don't want to ruin your future. But for your part you must help us. I shall have to talk about this whole business to my superiors. And so, to make sure that I don't give them a c.o.c.k-and-bull story, we're going to put it all down in black and white. Right, here's some paper. As to the form of words, I'll help you."

When Olya emerged from Room 27 an hour later, she felt as if, with a kick of her heels, she could have taken flight. How ridiculous he seemed to her now, chat Komsomol official with his glistening pate!

She had just had fleeting contact with the mechanism of real power in the country. Filled with wonder, she found a way to spell out to herself in naive but accurate enough terms all that had happened: "The KGB can do anything."

That evening, however, she was seized by an impression quite different from that of the morning. She recalled a sentence she had written in Room 27. Describing that first evening with Jean-Claude she had written: "Finding myself in the bedroom of the French athlete, Berthet, Jean-Claude... I engaged in intimate relations with him." It was that sentence that jarred. "Intimate relations," she thought. "What an odd turn of phrase! And yet, basically, why odd? That's all it was. Certainly not love, in any event..."

She only saw Jean-Claude one more time and, as the polite man in Room 27 had advised, said a few friendly words to him and slipped away.

On the day before the athletes left she came across him in the company of a friend. The two men pa.s.sed quite close by without noticing her. The friend was patting Jean-Claude on the shoulder and he was smiling with a contented air. Olya heard Jean-Claude remarking somewhat languidly, drawing out the syllables: "You know, I think I'm going ahead with that property in the Vendee. They simply hand the house over to you, with the keys: no problem."

"Is Fabienne happy with that?" asked the other.

"Absolutely! She adores sailing!"

In the spring of 1982 no one in the country yet knew that it was going to be a quite extraordinary year. In November Brezhnev would die and Andropov would accede to the throne. The liberal intelligentsia, gathered in their kitchens, would begin to be tormented by the worst forebodings. Everyone knew he was once the head of the KGB. He's bound to crack down hard. Under Brezhnev you could still risk opening your mouth frqm time to time. Now there's going to be a reaction, that's for sure. They say he's already ordering police raids in the streets. You step out of your office for five minutes and the militia pounce on you. Let's hope it's not going to be another 1937...

But History, as likely as not, had had enough of the dreary monolithic solemnity of those long decades of socialism and decided to have a bit of fun. The man whose character the alarmed intellectuals identified as that of another "Father of all the Peoples," or even another "Iron Felix" Dzerzhinsky, turned out to be a mortally weary and sick monarch. He knew that the majority of the members of the Politburo ought to be put up against a wall and shot. He knew that the Minister of the Interior, with whom he chatted amiably on the telephone, was a criminal against the state. He knew how much each of his colleagues in the Politburo had in Western bank accounts. He even knew the names of the banks. He knew that a feudal system had long since been reinstated in Central Asia and that the right place for all those responsible was prison. He knew that in Afghanistan the American scenario in Vietnam was being replicated. He knew that in the villages in the whole of the northwest, there was a shortage of bread. He knew that for a long time now the country had been run by a small family mafia who detested him personally, and who despised the people. He knew that if the ruble had been convertible half the country's rulers would have decamped to Miami or elsewhere long ago. He knew that the dissidents in prison or in exile did not know the hundredth part of what he knew and that the things they commented on were small potatoes. He knew so many things about this society that one day at the Party Plenum he let slip: "We have no cognizance of the society in which we live."

History had its little joke. The terror this man inspired in some and the hope he inspired in others, both arose, as it were, from beyond the grave. He was dying of nephritis and in his moments of lucidity used to derive amus.e.m.e.nt from a story he had been told by the Kremlin doctor. It tickled him greatly. It happens during a meeting of the Politburo. They are all discussing who is to succeed Brezhnev. Suddenly the door is flung open and Andropov bursts in, accompanied by Aliev. Brandishing a revolver, Andropov shouts: "Hands up!" All the old men raise their trembling hands. "Lower the left hand!" commands Andropov. Turning to Aliev, he says: "Make a note! A unanimous vote for Andropov!"

History delighted in making a mockery of those who thought they could determine its course with impunity. Andropov died. Chernenko followed him. With the indecent haste of a comic strip, all of Brezhnev's entourage were dying off. They celebrated funeral rites to the tune of Chopin's funeral march on Red Square so often that the people of Moscow found themselves whistling the tune as if it were a current popular song.

But in the spring of 1982 no one could even imagine that History might be up to such tricks.

In March the head of the transport organization called Demidov into his office. "You've got visitors, Ivan Dmitrevich. These comrades are going to make a film about you." Two television journalists from Moscow were there, the scriptwriter and the director.

The film in question was to be devoted to the fortieth anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad. They had already shot the scenes of the memorial ceremony where, beneath the enormous concrete monuments, veterans from all four corners of the country wandered like ghosts from the past.

They had rediscovered doc.u.mentary footage from the period, fragments of which they intended to use in the course of the film. They had already interviewed the generals and marshals who were still alive. What remained to be filmed was, in the eyes of the director, a very important episode. In this scene the princ.i.p.al role fell to Demidov. The director saw it like this: after the dachas on the outskirts of Moscow and the s.p.a.cious Moscow apartments, where the retired marshals, b.u.t.toned up tight in their uniforms, command armies and juggle with divisions in their memory, there appear the twisting streets of Borissov and a truck splashed with mud driving into the entrance of a garage. A man gets down from the truck, without turning toward the camera, wearing a battered cap and an old leather jacket. He crosses the yard, littered with sc.r.a.p iron, and makes his way over to the little office building. A somewhat metallic voice-over raps out the citation of the Hero of the Soviet Union: "By the decree of the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, for heroism and bravery displayed in battle..."

The truck driver hands in some papers at the office, nods to a colleague, shakes hands with another and goes home.

In the course of this scene Demidov's voice, a simple, informal voice, talks about the Battle of Stalingrad. The sequence of shots that follows is in the context of a home: the celebratory meal, a spread-out copy of Pravda on a set of shelves; yellowing photographs of the postwar years on the wall.

But the high point of the film was elsewhere. From time to time the story of this modest hero "who saved the world from the brown plague," as the commentary put it, breaks off. The Soviet foreign correspondent in one or another European capital appears on the screen, stopping pa.s.sersby and asking them: "Tell me, what does the name of Stalingrad mean to you?" The pa.s.sersby hesitate, make inept replies, and laughingly recall Stalin.

As for the correspondent in Paris, he had been filmed in melting snow, chilled to the bone, trying to make himself heard above the noise of the street: "I'm standing just ten minutes' walk away from the square in Paris that bears the name of Stalingrad. But do the Parisians grasp the significance of this name, so foreign to French ears?" And he begins to question pa.s.sersby, who prove incapable of giving an answer.

When they showed this scene for the first time at the studio one of the bosses asked the director: "So why couldn't he go to the square itself? What's all that about just ten minutes' walk away from'? It's like doing a report on Red Square from Gorky Park!"

"I already asked him that..." The director tried to excuse himself. "According to him, there's not a Frenchman to be found in the square. Nothing but blacks and Arabs. Yes, that's what he said. I give you my word. He said, 'They'll all think it was shot in Africa and not in Paris at all.' That's why he moved closer to the center to find some whites."

"Unbelievable!" bayed an official in the darkened auditorium. And the showing continued. The camera focused on a huddled clochard and a row of gleaming shop windows. And then once more there appeared yellowing shots of doc.u.mentary footage from the period: the gray steppe, tanks bobbing up and down, as if at sea, soldiers captured, still alive, on camera.

And Demidov appeared once more, no longer in his grease-stained jacket but in a suit, wearing all his decorations. He was in a cla.s.sroom, seated behind a desk that was decked out with a little vase containing three red carnations. In front of him schoolchildren were religiously drinking in his words.

The film ended with an apotheosis: the gigantic statue of the Mother Country, holding a sword aloft, towered up into the blue sky. Then the Victory Parade taking place on Red Square in 1945. The soldiers throwing down German flags at the foot of the Lenin Mausoleum. Hitler's personal standard could be seen in the foreground as it fell. After that, against the exultant sound of music, Stalingrad-Volgograd, in all its splendor, arises once more from the ruins, filmed from a helicopter.

And everything concluded with one final chord: Brezhnev appearing on the platform at the Twenty-sixth Party Congress, talking about the Soviet Union 's policies for peace.

By about the middle of April the film was ready. Demidov had patiently endured the excitement of the filming and, in answering questions, had even managed to include the story of the little wellspring in the wood.

"Well now, Ivan Dmitrevich," the director said to him, when it was time to say goodbye. "On Victory Day, May ninth, or perhaps the day before, you must sit down with all the family in front of the television."

The film was called: The Heroic City on the Volga.

On the afternoon of May 8, Ivan Dmitrevich was not working. He had been invited to the school for the traditional chat. He gave his usual talk and returned home with the three carnations in his hand.

Tatyana was still at work. He puttered about in the apartment. Then he draped his best jacket, with its armor plating of medals, over the back of a chair, switched on the set and settled himself down on the divan. The film about Stalingrad was due to start at six.

The workshop foreman flourished the bottle and began pouring alcohol into the gla.s.ses: "Very good, my friends, one last nip and we all go home..." They all drank, slipped what remained of the food into their bags and left. In the street the women workers wished one another a happy holiday and went back to their lodgings.

Tanya no longer a girl, she was now known as Tatyana Kuzminichna consulted her watch. "I have just enough time before the film to go to the store and pick up the veterans' parcel." Like all those who had served in the war, she would receive this package in the section of the store closed to ordinary mortals. People would watch the line of veterans there and quietly grumble.