32
PARTISAN REVIEW
Nikolay Grigorevich would sense her presence . Without knowing
why , he would feel disturbed and excited .
Her old fate was now her new fate. What had seemed lost for
ever had become her future .
The spacious new reception room , whose polished windows
looked out onto the street, had been closed ; visitors now had to go to
the old room. She walked into a dirty courtyard, past a dilapidated
wall, and came to a half-open door. Everything inside looked sur–
prisingly normal- tables covered in ink-stains, wooden benches
along the walls, little information-windows with wooden sills .
There seemed to be no connection between this ordinary wait–
ing-room and the vast , many-storeyed stone building that looked out
over Lubyanka Square , Stretenka, Furkasovsky Lane and Malaya
Lubyanka Street.
There were lots of people there ; the visitors , mostly women,
were standing in line in front of the windows . A few were sitting on
the benches , and there was one old man , wearing glasses with thick
lenses, who was filling in a form at a table. Looking at these
faces - young and old, male and female, Yevgenia noticed that the
expression in their eyes and the set of their mouths all spoke of one
thing. If she had met any of these people on the street or in a tram ,
she could have guessed that they frequented 24 Kuznetsky Most.
She turned to the young man by the door. He was dressed in an
army greatcoat, but for some reason he looked very unlike a soldier.
"Your first time?" he asked, and pointed to one of the windows.
Yevgenia took her place in the queue , passport in hand, her fingers
and palms damp with sweat. A woman in a beret who was standing
in front of her said quietly:
"If he's not here in the Inner Prison, you must go to Matrosskaya
Tishina and then to the Butyrka- but that's only open on certain
days and they see people in alphabetical order. If he's not there, you
must go to the Lefortovo military prison, and then back here again .
I've been looking for my son for six weeks now. Have you been to the
military prosecutor yet?"
The queue was moving very quickly. That seemed a bad sign–
the answers people were getting must be vague and laconic. Then it
was the turn of a smart , middle-aged woman and there was a delay ;
the word went round that the man on duty had gone to check some–
thing , that a mere telephone conversation hadn't been enough. The
woman had turned round and was half-facing the queue; her slightly
narrowed eyes seemed to be saying that she had no intention of let-
