In the First Circle by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

Author:Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins US

Chapter 51

Fire and Hay

NADYA CRIED AND CRIED, gripping the blanket between her teeth to try and stop herself. Her head was damp under the pillow.

She would have liked to go out, to get away from that room till late night. But in the huge city of Moscow, she had nowhere to go.

It wasn’t the first time her roommates had used such wounding words, called her “old hag,” “misery guts,” “the nun.” What hurt most was the unfairness of it. She used to be so cheerful! But five years of lying leaves its mark. Five years of continually wearing a mask that cramps and pinches your face, hardens your voice, and numbs your thought. Maybe she really was by now an insufferable old maid? It was so difficult to see yourself clearly. It was only in a dormitory, where you couldn’t stamp your foot at mother as you did at home, only there among your peers that you learned to recognize what was bad in yourself.

Apart from Gleb no one, no one at all, would ever understand her. . . .

But even Gleb did not really understand.

He had not told her what she ought to do, what she should be making of her life.

He had only said that he would not be released.

Her husband’s swift and sure blows had shattered all the hopes that fortified her from day to day, bolstered her faith, gave her the strength to wait and preserve her independence.

He would never be released!

That meant that he had no need of her . . . that she was ruining her life . . . for nothing.

Nadya was lying face downward, staring fixedly through the gap between pillow and blanket at the patch of wall before her, and she could not, did not try to understand where all the light was coming from. She had thought that it was very dark, but suddenly she could make out the pimples in the crude whitewash on the familiar wall. Then suddenly Nadya heard, through her pillow, fingers beating a rhythm she recognized on the plywood panel of the door. When Dasha said, “Shchagov’s here, are you getting up?” Nadya had already whipped the pillow from her head, jumped off the bed in her stockings, straightened her rumpled skirt, and tidied her hair while her feet felt for her shoes.

Muza, watching her in the wan half-light, was taken aback by her eagerness.

Dasha darted over to Lyuda’s bed and quickly tucked in the bedclothes.

The visitor was then admitted.

Shchagov had draped an old army overcoat over his shoulders. He had not lost his soldierly bearing; he could bend, but he could not stoop. His movements were precise.

“Greetings, good people. I’ve come to see what you’re up to with the light out so that I can try it myself. I’m bored stiff.”

What a relief! In the yellowish gloom he could not see that her eyes were swollen and tearful.

Dasha answered him in the same tone. “So if the lights hadn’t dimmed, you wouldn’t have come?”

“Certainly not.

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