a layer of reflective film. Amid pedestrians who were holding tightly to one another, falling, and laughing uproariously, Leonid groped his way up the hill. Eventually, he reached the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Hospital, walked across the dimly lit lobby, and asked at the reception desk for the Department of Surgery.
“You’re in the Department of Surgery,” the nurse replied. She wore a cylindrical cap on her head.
“May I speak to Doctor Korff, please?”
“I’ll see if I can reach her,” the nurse said, picking up the telephone.
In excited anticipation, Leonid paced a little, careful not to make any noise. Placards in display cases urged compliance with the rules of good hygiene.
“Here at the front desk,” he heard the nurse whisper into the phone. “No, he’s alone.”
Not a minute later, a swaddled figure came barreling around the corner: blue lab coat, blue pants, hair confined under a bonnet, white surgical mask covering mouth and nose. “You?” Galina Korff put her hands on her hips. “You’re scaring my girls!”
Leonid waved his arms in irritation. “How?”
“You come in here wearing your parade uniform, you march up and down. A person might think the army was occupying the hospital.”
“I wanted … no, please, I’m not here on duty,” he babbled, turning toward the nurse.
“So what do you want?” Galina’s eyes flashed up at him impatiently.
“I’ve been looking for you.”
“Are you ill?”
“No.”
“Lonely, then.” She smiled under her mask.
He didn’t want to have such a conversation in the nurse’s presence. “Any chance you might have a minute later?”
“Cases are waiting for me: one internal bleeding, one severed thumb.” She pointed to the row of benches that was screwed into the wall. “If you’re willing to wait that long …”
“How did the thumb accident happen?”
“Circular saw in the fish factory.”
He shook off the bloody image. “Won’t you be too tired after all that?”
“That depends on you.” She pushed her bonnet back and scratched her head. “See you later, then.”
Leonid nodded to her departing shape, and only then did he become aware of how weary that day had made him. I talked to my son on the telephone, he thought; I didn’t perform too hopelessly during the salvage operation, and I confiscated some dirty magazines. Now I’ll be happy to sit here without having to undertake anything. He watched Doctor Korff disappear through the next swinging door.
THIRTEEN
Usually, Petya had long been asleep by now, but not this evening. Viktor Ipalyevich had turned on all the lights in the apartment and taken out the folders containing his work of the last many years. Table and sofa, shelves and windowsill were covered with pages of poetry, some typed on thin paper with the poet’s old typewriter, but most handwritten on sheets torn from pads of graph paper. As Anna dried the dishes, she cast an occasional glance at the show. Grandson and grandfather were shuffling around the room, pausing often to stand still and admire, like visitors gazing devoutly at the memorabilia in the Museum of the Revolution. They stopped in front of the radiator, and the old man pointed to a sheet. The boy read aloud,
Uncoil your march, my lads!
Up, Blue Shirts! Storm the ocean!
Viktor Ipalyevich clicked his tongue, as though he were tasting wine. “No, that’s not it,” he said. He pointed to another poem. Petya got up on tiptoe so that he could see it better. He read,
I can’t cast off the unmoored boat;
The shadow’s step eludes my hearing.
“I like that one especially!” Anna called from the kitchen.
“You do?” Her father was already in the doorway. “Do you think it would be a good idea to open the cycle with it?”
Anna dried the carving knife. “No. Too mellow, too playful. For the beginning, you need something militant.”
“Just what I was thinking!” He disappeared. “Come on, Petya, the fighting poems are on the sofa.”
Several folders were searched through and the collections With Prometheus’ Hands and Spare Us the Eulogies! taken out. The boy began to read one poem after the other, but his grandfather wasn’t satisfied. “Old-fashioned,” he growled. “The war was still going on when I wrote that.” He nervously ran his hands over the table. “We need … it should be … damn it, I ought to write a new one!”
Petya yawned and tried to turn the page, but the old man prevented him. Viktor Ipalyevich glanced at the poem skeptically, read it in silence, and laid the page on the table. In the kitchen, Anna listened to his voice:
Where does Russia begin?
In the Kurils, or on
Bering Island, or at
the