Life And Fate (Orange Inheritance)

He stopped going to the Institute for a while; Sokolov took over the supervision of the laboratory work. Viktor hardly even left the house now; he sat at his desk for hours on end or strode up and down the room. Only in the evening did he sometimes go out for a walk, choosing the deserted streets near the station so as not to meet anyone he knew. At home he behaved the same as ever – making jokes at meals, reading newspapers, listening to Soviet Information Bureau bulletins, teasing Nadya, talking to his wife, asking Alexandra Vladimirovna about her work at the factory.

Lyudmila had the feeling that Viktor was now behaving in the same way as herself: he too did everything he was supposed to, while inwardly not participating in the life of the family at all. What he did came easily to him simply because it was habitual. This similarity, however, was merely superficial and did nothing to bring Lyudmila closer to Viktor. The husband and wife had quite opposite reasons for their alienation from the life of the family – as opposite as life and death.

Uncharacteristically, Viktor had no doubts about his results. As he formulated the most important scientific discovery of his life, he felt absolute certainty as to its truth. When this idea of a system of equations that would allow a new interpretation of a wide group of physical phenomena – when this idea had first come to him, he had sensed its truth immediately, without any of his usual doubts and hesitations. Even now, as he came to the end of the complicated mathematical demonstration, checking and double-checking each step he had taken, his certainty was no greater than at that first moment of inspiration on the empty street.

Sometimes he tried to understand the path he had followed. From the outside it all seemed quite simple.

The laboratory experiments had been intended to confirm the predictions of the theory. They had failed to do this. The contradiction between the experimental results and the theory naturally led him to doubt the accuracy of the experiments. A theory that had been elaborated on the basis of decades of work by many researchers, a theory that had then explained many things in subsequent experimental results, seemed quite unshakeable. Repetition of the experiments had shown again and again that the deflections of charged particles in interaction with the nucleus still failed to correspond with what the theory predicted. Even the most generous allowance for the inaccuracy of the experiments, for the imperfection of the measuring apparatus and the emulsions used to photograph the fission of the nuclei, could in no way account for such large discrepancies.

Realizing that there could be no doubt as to the accuracy of the results, Viktor had then attempted to patch up the theory. He had postulated various arbitrary hypotheses that would reconcile the new experimental data with the theory. Everything he had done had been based on one fundamental belief: that, since the theory was itself deduced from experimental data, it was impossible for an experiment to contradict it.

An enormous amount of labour was expended in an attempt to reconcile the new data with the theory. Nevertheless, the patched-up theory still failed to account for new contradictions in the results from the laboratory. The theory remained as powerless as ever, though it still seemed unthinkable to reject it.

It was at this moment that something had shifted.

The old theory had ceased to be something fundamental and all-embracing. It didn’t turn out to be a mistake or an absurd blunder, but simply a particular instance accounted for by the new theory . . . The purple-clad dowager had bowed her head before the new empress . . . All this had taken only a moment.

When Viktor thought about just how the new theory had come to him, he was struck by something quite unexpected. There appeared to be absolutely no logical connection between the theory and the experiments. The tracks he was following suddenly broke off. He couldn’t understand what path he had taken.

Previously he had always thought that theories arose from experience and were engendered by it. Contradictions between an existing theory and new experimental results naturally led to a new, broader theory.

But it had all happened quite differently. Viktor was sure of this. He had succeeded at a time when he was in no way attempting to connect theory with experimental data, or vice versa.

The new theory was not derived from experience. Viktor could see this quite clearly. It had arisen in absolute freedom; it had sprung from his own head. The logic of this theory, its chain of reasoning, was quite unconnected to the experiments conducted by Markov in the laboratory. The theory had sprung from the free play of thought. It was this free play of thought – which seemed quite detached from the world of experience – that had made it possible to explain the wealth of experimental data, both old and new.

The experiments had been merely a jolt that had forced him to start thinking. They had not determined the content of his thoughts.

All this was quite extraordinary . . .

His head had been full of mathematical relationships, differential equations, the laws of higher algebra, number and probability theory. These mathematical relationships had an existence of their own in some void quite outside the world of atomic nuclei, stars, and electromagnetic or gravitational fields, outside space and time, outside the history of man and the geological history of the earth. And yet these relationships existed inside his own head.

And at the same time his head had been full of other laws and relationships: quantum interactions, fields of force, the constants that determined the processes undergone by nuclei, the movement of light, and the expansion and contraction of space and time. To a theoretical physicist the processes of the real world were only a reflection of laws that had been born in the desert of mathematics. It was not mathematics that reflected the world; the world itself was a projection of differential equations, a reflection of mathematics.

And his head had also been full of readings from different instruments, of dotted lines on photographic paper that showed the trajectories of particles and the fission of nuclei.

And there had even been room in his head for the rustling of leaves, the light of the moon, millet porridge with milk, the sound of flames in the stove, snatches of tunes, the barking of dogs, the Roman Senate, Soviet Information Bureau bulletins, a hatred of slavery, and a love of melon seeds.

All this was what had given birth to his theory; it had arisen from the depths where there are no mathematics, no physics, no laboratory data, no experience of life, no consciousness, only the inflammable peat of the subconscious . . .

And the logic of mathematics, itself quite unconnected with the world, had become reflected and embodied in a theory of physics; and this theory had fitted with divine accuracy over a complex pattern of dotted lines on photographic paper.

And Viktor, inside whose head all this had taken place, now sobbed and wiped tears of happiness from his eyes as he looked at the differential equations and photographic paper that confirmed the truth he had given birth to.

And yet, if it hadn’t been for those unsuccessful experiments, if it hadn’t been for the resulting chaos, he and Sokolov would have gone on trying to patch up the old theory. What a joy that that chaos had refused to yield to their demands!

This new explanation had been born from his own head, but it was indeed linked to Markov’s experiments. Yes, if there were no atoms and atomic nuclei in the world, there would be none inside a man’s brain. If it weren’t for those famous glass-blowers the Petushkovs, if there were no power stations, no furnaces and no production of pure reactors, then there would be no mathematics inside the head of a theoretical physicist, no mathematics that could predict reality.

What Viktor found most astonishing was that he had achieved his greatest success at a time of unremitting depression and grief. How was it possible?

And why had it happened after those bold, dangerous conversations that had revived his spirits but which bore no relation to his work – why was it then that everything insoluble had so suddenly been resolved? But that was coincidence . . .

How could he ever make sense of all this . . . ?

Now that it was completed, Viktor wanted to talk about his work. Previously, it hadn’t even occurred to him to share his thoughts with anyone else. He wanted to see Sokolov and write to Chepyzhin; he wondered what Mandelstam, Joffe, Landau, Tamm, and Kurchatov would think of his new equations; he tried to guess what response they would evoke in his colleagues both here in the laboratory and in Leningrad. He tried to think of a title for his work. He wondered what Bohr and Fermi would think of it. Maybe Einstein himself would read it and write him a brief note. He also wondered who would oppose it and what problems it would help to resolve.

He didn’t, however, feel like talking to Lyudmila. In the past he had read even the most ordinary business letter out loud to her before sending it off. If he had unexpectedly bumped into someone he knew on the street, his first thought had always been, ‘Well, Lyudmila will be surprised!’ If he had come out with some fine sarcasm in an argument with the director, he had thought, ‘Yes, I’ll tell Lyudmila how I settled him!’ And he could never have imagined watching a film or sitting in a theatre without knowing that Lyudmila was there, that he could whisper in her ear, ‘God, what rubbish!’ He had shared his most secret anxieties with her. As a student, he had sometimes said to her, ‘You know, sometimes I think I’m an idiot.’

So why didn’t he say anything now? Was it that his compulsion to share his life with her had been founded on a belief that his life mattered more to her than her own, that his life was her life? And that now he was no longer sure of this? Did she no longer love him? Or did he no longer love her?

In the end, without really wanting to, he did tell his wife.

‘It’s a strange feeling, you know. Whatever may happen to me now, I know deep down in my heart that I haven’t lived in vain. Now, for the first time, I’m not afraid of dying. Now! Now that this exists!’

He showed her a page covered in scrawls that was lying on his table.

‘I’m not exaggerating. It’s a new vision of the nature of the forces within the atom. A new principle. It will be the key to many doors that until now have been locked . . . And do you know, when I was little . . . No, it’s as though a lily had suddenly blossomed out of still, dark waters . . . Oh, my God . . .’

‘I’m very glad, Viktor. I’m very glad,’ said Lyudmila with a smile.

Viktor could see that she was still wrapped up in her own thoughts, that she didn’t share his joy and excitement.

Indeed, Lyudmila didn’t mention any of this to Nadya or her mother. She evidently just forgot about it.

That evening, Viktor set out for the Sokolovs’. It wasn’t only about his work that he wanted to talk to Sokolov. He wanted to share his feelings with him. Pyotr Lavrentyevich would understand; he was more than merely intelligent; he had a pure, kind soul.

At the same time, Viktor was afraid that Sokolov would reproach him, that he would remind him of his earlier lack of faith. Sokolov loved explaining other people’s behaviour and subjecting them to long lectures.

It was a long time since he had been to the Sokolovs’. His friends had probably been there another three times since his last visit. Suddenly he glimpsed Madyarov’s bulging eyes. ‘Yes, he’s a bold devil,’ Viktor said to himself. How peculiar that, during all this time, he’d hardly given a thought to those gatherings. Now he didn’t want to. There was some fear, some anxiety, some expectation of imminent doom connected with those late-night discussions. They really had let themselves go. They had croaked away like birds of ill omen – but Stalingrad still stood, the Germans had been halted, evacuees were returning to Moscow.

Last night he had told Lyudmila that he wasn’t afraid of dying, not even at that very moment. And yet he was afraid of remembering the criticisms he had voiced. And as for Madyarov . . . That didn’t bear thinking about. Karimov’s suspicions were quite terrifying. What if Madyarov really were a provocateur?

‘No, I’m not afraid of dying,’ thought Viktor, ‘but now I’m a proletarian who has more to lose than his chains.’

Sokolov, in his indoor jacket, was sitting reading a book.

‘Where’s Marya Ivanovna?’ asked Viktor, surprised at his own surprise. He was quite taken aback not to find her at home – as though it was her he had come to talk to about theoretical physics.

Sokolov put his glasses back in their case and smiled. ‘Who says Marya Ivanovna has to hang around at home all day long?’

Coughing and stammering with excitement, Viktor began expounding his ideas and showing Sokolov his equations. Sokolov was the first person he had confided in; as he spoke, he relived everything again – though with very different feelings.

‘Well,’ said Viktor finally, ‘that’s it.’ His voice was shaking. He could feel Sokolov’s excitement.

They sat for a while in a silence that to Viktor seemed quite wonderful. He frowned and shook his bowed head from side to side. Finally he stole a timid look at Sokolov. He thought he could see tears in his eyes.

There was a miraculous link that joined these two men – sitting in a miserable little room during a terrible war that enveloped the whole world – to everyone, however distant in space and time, whose pure mind had aspired to these exalted realms.

Viktor hoped that Sokolov would remain silent a while longer. There was something divine in this silence.

They did remain silent for a long time. Then Sokolov went up to Viktor and put his hand on his shoulder. Viktor felt his eyes fill with tears.

‘It’s wonderful,’ said Sokolov, ‘quite unbelievable. What elegance! I congratulate you with all my heart. What extraordinary power! What logic, what elegance! Even from an aesthetic point of view your reasoning is perfect.’

Still trembling with excitement, Viktor thought: ‘For God’s sake! This isn’t a matter of elegance. This is bread for the soul.’

‘Do you see now, Viktor Pavlovich,’ Sokolov continued, ‘how wrong you were to lose heart and try to put everything off till our return to Moscow?’ Then, just like someone giving a sermon: ‘You lack faith, you lack patience. This often hinders you.’

‘I know, I know,’ Viktor interrupted impatiently. ‘But I got very depressed by the way we were so stuck. It made me feel quite ill.’

Then Sokolov began to hold forth. Though he understood the importance of Viktor’s work and praised it in superlative terms, Viktor hated every word he said. To him any evaluation seemed trivial and stereotyped.

‘Your work promises remarkable results.’ What a stupid word! He didn’t need Pyotr Lavrentyevich to know what his work promised. And anyway why ‘promises results’? It was a result in itself. ‘You’ve employed a most original method.’ No, it wasn’t a matter of originality . . . This was bread, bread, black bread.

Viktor decided to change the subject. He began to talk about the running of the laboratory.

‘By the way, Pyotr Lavrentyevich, I received a letter from the Urals. Our order’s going to be delayed.’

‘Well,’ said Sokolov, ‘that means we’ll already be in Moscow when the apparatus arrives. That’s not such a bad thing. We’d never have been able to set it up in Kazan anyway: we’d have been accused of failing to keep up with our schedule.’

He started to talk very pompously about matters connected with their work schedule. Although Viktor had himself initiated this change of topic, he was upset that Sokolov had gone along with it so readily.

It made Viktor feel very isolated. Surely Sokolov understood that his work was more important than the everyday affairs of the Institute? It was probably the most important of all his contributions to science; it would affect the theoretical outlook of physicists everywhere.

Sokolov realized from Victor’s expression that he had done the wrong thing. ‘It’s interesting,’ he said. ‘You’ve produced another confirmation of that business with neutrons and a heavy nucleus. We really shall need that new apparatus now.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Viktor. ‘But that’s only a detail.’

‘No,’ said Sokolov. ‘It’s very important. You know what enormous energy is involved.’

‘To hell with all that!’ said Viktor. ‘What interests me is that it’s a new way of seeing the microforces within the atom. That may bring joy to a few hearts and save one or two people from groping around in the dark.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Sokolov. ‘They’ll be as glad as sportsmen are when someone else sets a new record.’

Viktor didn’t answer. Sokolov was alluding to a recent argument in the laboratory. Savostyanov had compared scientists with athletes; he had claimed that a scientist had to undergo the same daily training as an athlete and that the tension surrounding his attempt to solve a scientific problem was no different from that surrounding an athlete’s attempt to break a record. In both cases it was a matter of records.

Viktor had got quite angry with Savostyanov, Sokolov even more so. He had made a long speech and called Savostyanov a young cynic. He had spoken of science as though it were a religion, an expression of man’s aspiration towards the divine.

Viktor knew that if he had lost his temper with Savostyanov, it wasn’t simply because he was wrong. He too had sometimes felt that same joy, excitement and envy. He also knew, however, that envy, competitiveness and the desire to set records were not in any way fundamental to his attitude towards science.

He had never told anyone, even Lyudmila, of his true feelings about science – feelings that had been born in him when he was still young. And so he had liked the way Sokolov had argued so justly, and so exaltedly, against Savostyanov.

Why then should Pyotr Lavrentyevich himself suddenly compare scientists with sportsmen? What had made him say that? And at a moment of such special importance for Viktor?

Feeling hurt and bewildered, he burst out: ‘So, Pyotr Lavrentyevich, someone else has set the record. Has my discovery upset you, then?’

At that moment Sokolov was saying to himself that Viktor’s solution was so simple as to be almost self-evident; that it was already there, on the verge of expression, in his own head.

‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘I’m as pleased as Lawrence must have been when the equations he had established were reworked and transformed by Einstein.’

Sokolov admitted this so frankly that Viktor regretted his animosity. Then, however, Sokolov added:

‘I’m joking, of course. Lawrence is neither here nor there. I don’t feel anything of the sort. But all the same, I am right – even though I don’t feel anything of the sort.’

‘Yes,’ said Viktor, ‘of course, of course.’

His irritation returned. He was sure now that Sokolov did feel envy. ‘How devious he is today,’ he thought. ‘He’s as transparent as a child. You can see his insincerity straight away.’

‘Pyotr Lavrentyevich,’ he said. ‘Are you having people round this Saturday?’

Sokolov’s thick, fierce-looking nostrils flared. He seemed about to say something, but kept silent. Viktor looked at him questioningly.

‘Viktor Pavlovich,’ Sokolov said at last. ‘Between you and me, I no longer enjoy these evenings of ours.’

Now it was his turn to look questioningly at Viktor. Viktor remained silent. In the end Sokolov went on:

‘You know very well why I say that. It’s no joke. Some people really let themselves go.’

‘You didn’t,’ said Viktor. ‘You kept very quiet.’

‘Yes,’ said Sokolov. ‘And that’s why I’m worried.’

‘Fine! Let me be the host! I’d be only too delighted,’ said Viktor.

It was quite incomprehensible. Now it was he who was being hypocritical. Why was he lying like this? Why should he argue with Sokolov when he knew he agreed with him? He too was afraid of these meetings and would prefer not to continue with them.

‘What difference would that make?’ asked Sokolov. ‘That’s not the problem. Let me be quite frank with you. I’ve quarrelled with Madyarov, our chief orator, my own brother-in-law.’

Viktor wanted very much to ask: ‘Pyotr Lavrentyevich, are you quite sure we can trust Madyarov? Can you vouch for him?’ Instead he said: ‘What is all this nonsense? You’ve got it into your head that a few bold words somehow endanger the State. I’m sorry you’ve quarrelled with Madyarov. I like him. Very much.’

‘It isn’t right,’ said Sokolov, ‘for us Russians, at such a difficult time, to criticize our own country.’

Again Viktor wanted to ask: ‘Pyotr Lavrentyevich, this is something very serious. Are you sure Madyarov’s not an informer?’ Instead he said: ‘Excuse me, but things have just taken a turn for the better. Stalingrad is the beginning of spring. We’ve already drawn up lists of personnel to return to Moscow. Do you remember what we were thinking two months ago? The Urals, Kazakhstan, the taiga?’

‘In that case,’ said Sokolov, ‘there’s even less reason for you to carp and croak.’

‘Croak?’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘For heaven’s sake, Pyotr Lavrentyevich!’

When he said goodbye to Sokolov, Viktor was feeling depressed and bewildered. Above all, he felt an unbearable loneliness. All day he had been longing to talk to Sokolov. He had thought this meeting would be very special. But almost every word of Sokolov’s had seemed trivial and insincere.

And he had been equally insincere himself. That made it even worse.

He went out onto the street. By the outer door a woman’s voice quietly called out his name. Viktor knew who it was.

Marya Ivanovna’s face was lit up by the street-lamp; her cheeks and forehead were shining with rain. In her old coat, with a woollen scarf round her neck, the professor’s wife seemed to embody the poverty of the wartime evacuee.

‘She looks like a conductor on one of the trams,’ thought Viktor.

‘How’s Lyudmila Nikolaevna?’ she asked, looking questioningly into his eyes.

‘The same as usual,’ said Viktor, shrugging his shoulders.

‘I’ll come round earlier tomorrow.’

‘You’re her guardian angel as it is,’ said Viktor. ‘It’s a good thing Pyotr Lavrentyevich doesn’t mind. You spend so much time with Lyudmila. And he’s just a child – he can hardly get by without you for even an hour.’

She was still looking at him thoughtfully. She seemed to be listening without really hearing. Then she said: ‘Viktor Pavlovich, your face looks quite different today. Has something good happened?’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Your eyes have changed,’ she said. ‘It must be your work. Your work’s going well at last. There you are now – and you used to say you were no longer good for anything after all the unhappiness you’ve been through.’

‘Lyudmila must have told her,’ thought Viktor. ‘Women are such chatterboxes!’ At the same time, trying to hide his irritation, he asked with a smile: ‘What do you see in my eyes then?’

Marya Ivanovna remained silent for a moment. When she did speak, it was in a serious tone of voice, quite unlike Viktor’s.

‘Your eyes are always full of suffering – but not today.’

Suddenly Viktor opened up.

‘Marya Ivanovna, I don’t understand it. I feel that I’ve done the most important thing of my life. Science is bread, bread for the soul . . . And this has happened at such a sad, difficult time. How strangely tangled our lives are. How I wish I could . . . No, there’s no use in saying . . .’

Marya Ivanovna listened, still gazing into Viktor’s eyes. Then she said very quietly: ‘How I wish I could drive the sorrow out of your home.’

‘Thank you, dear Marya Ivanovna,’ said Viktor as they parted. He felt suddenly calm – as though it really were her he had come to see and he had now said what he wanted to say.

A minute later, walking down the dark street, Viktor had forgotten the Sokolovs. A cold draught blew from each of the dark entrances; when he came to a crossroads the wind lifted up the tail of his coat. Viktor shrugged his shoulders and frowned. Would his mother never know, would she never know what her son had just achieved?