34
PARTISAN REVIEW
good - at the transit prison in Krasnaya Presnaya the 'politicals' are
put together with the common criminals and everything gets stolen
. .. There was a woman here the other day, whose elderly husband ,
an important engineer and designer, had been arrested , apparently
he'd had a brief affair in his youth and gone on sending the woman
alimony for a son he'd never even set eyes on . The son, now adult ,
had deserted to the Germans . And the old man had got ten years for
fathering a traitor to the Motherland ... Most people were sen–
tenced under article 58-10: Counter-Revolutionary Agitation , or not
keeping their mouths shut ... There had been arrests just before the
first of May, there were always a lot just before public holidays .. .
There was one woman who'd been phoned at home by the investi–
gator and had suddenly heard her husband's voice . ..
How strange it all was . Here, in the waiting room of the
NKVD, Yevgenia somehow felt calmer, less depressed, than she
had done after her bath in Lyudmila's house.
What wonderful good fortune to have a parcel accepted!
One of the people near her said in a stifled whisper: "When it
comes to people who were arrested in 1937, they just say whatever
comes into their head. One woman was told: 'He's alive and work–
ing.' She came back a second time and the same person gave her a
certificate saying that her husband had died in 1939. "
Now it was Yevgenia's turn . The man behind the window looked
up at her. His face was like that of any other clerk; yesterday he
might have been working on the desk at a fire station, and tomor–
row, if he was ordered to, he might be filling in forms for military
decorations .
"I want to inquire about someone who's been arrested - Krymov,
Nikolay Grigorevich," said Yevgenia. She had the feeling that even
people who didn't know her would be able to tell that she wasn't speak–
ing in her normal voice.
"When was he arrested?"
"November."
The man took out a form. "Fill this in . You don't need to queue
again - just hand it straight in. And come back tomorrow for the
answer."
As he handed her the form, the man looked at her again . This
time his rapid glance was not that of an ordinary clerk at
all-
it was the
glance of a Chekist, an intelligent glance that remembers everything.
She filled in the form with trembling fmgers - just like the old
man from the Timiryazev Academy who not long before had been sit-
