get our poems out. We’ll look at every single one of them—no, even better, you’ll read them to me. What do you think? And after that, we’ll decide which one should come first, which one second, and so on. And in the end—you understand, Petya?—we’ll have a whole book full of poems.”
The boy nodded and said, “I’ll read them.” Then, to give himself strength, he said it again: “Yes, I’ll read them. When do I start?”
“This very evening!” His incredulity mingling with the recognition of what a profound and thorough change that piece of paper signified for him, Viktor Ipalyevich renewed his assault on the pork, chewed a mouthful, and emptied his glass in one gulp. In his excitement, he dunked one corner of the Glavlit document in tomato sauce.
Anna recalled that there was something else she’d intended to do that evening. The reason behind her intention lay in the last question Shchedrin had asked her: “Has there been any family incident that might have distressed Petya?” As she sat there in confused silence, the doctor had explained his query: “Allergy sufferers need a calm, secure environment. Distress or anger can intensify their allergies or even cause allergies to break out. Have you and yours undergone some sort of change that has disturbed Petya? It could be something that happened months ago.”
Anna had begun to perspire, and the floor had seemed to be shaking beneath her. “My husband’s a soldier,” she’d answered. “He was transferred out of Moscow almost a year ago.”
“Did father and son have a good relationship?”
Anna had done some mental reckoning: Petya’s symptoms had manifested themselves after Leonid’s departure. The relationship between the two of them was not merely good, but intimate, playful, filled with deep trust. One heart and one soul—that’s what they actually were. A telephone call is expensive, Anna thought, basically beyond our means, but this evening, she would call Leonid and tell him about Petya’s illness. She’d put the boy on the telephone and let them chat with each other. It was the least she could do.
ELEVEN
Leonid hung up. For a long moment, he stood still, his back to the desk in the military guard post. The soft voice still sounded in his ears. It was eight o’clock in the morning, and therefore midnight in Moscow; if Anna let Petya stay up so late, the thing must mean a lot to her. Leonid thanked the sergeant for having notified him, buttoned his overcoat all the way up, and left the central barracks. The windstorm was so strong that it pressed him against the wooden hut’s exterior wall. Leonid pulled down his ear flaps and fastened them under his chin. Bent forward, holding his arms tightly to his sides, he struggled on. There was nobody else on the parade ground; most of the barracks had wooden planks across the windows, screwed into place to keep the gusts from bursting the glass panes.
Leonid shivered. In this weather, he was supposed to assemble a technical squad and see to the cutter that had gone aground with its cargo of scrap iron during the night. Here, at the southernmost point of Sakhalin Island, most ships anchored at a respectful distance from the coast, for the sea was treacherous. The Three Brothers, three jagged reefs thrusting up out of the water, became invisible in heavy seas. The coastline consisted of dark inlets whose rock formations had formerly been exploited for their coal beds. In the winter months, the sharp-edged forms were veiled by storms and snow flurries, and the cold temperatures burst the sewer pipes that emptied into the sea at this point. Waves as black as night broke over the decks of the patrol ships; that morning, they had been unable to sail because the cutter was blocking their passage.
“How did the boat even get into the prohibited area?” the major had asked Leonid at morning roll call.
“The southwest drift turned east overnight,” Leonid replied. “When the ship became disabled, the captain let it be driven into the bay and stranded so it wouldn’t sink in the open sea.”
“Check the ship’s papers, the nationalities of the sailors, and their Party membership, if any, and examine the bill of lading and the cargo,” the major had ordered. “I don’t want to be fooled by some damned Jap.”
“The cutter sailed from Vladivostok three days ago.”
“How do we know she didn’t make an intermediate stop in Japan? Pay close attention to the tachograph.” With this final instruction, Leonid was dismissed.
When