VASILY GROSSMAN
35
ting on the same chair. When she came to the question about her rela–
tionship to the person arrested, she wrote "Wife," underlining the word
heavily.
She handed the form in, sat down on the bench and put her pass–
port back in her bag. She kept moving it from one part of the bag to
another; finally she realized this was because she didn't want to leave
the people in the queue.
At that moment she wanted only one thing: to let Krymov know
that she was here, that she had given up everything for him, that she
had come to him.
If
only he could find out that she was here, so near him!
She walked down the street.
It
was already evening. Most of her
life had been spent in this city. But that life - with its theaters, art ex–
hibitions, orchestral concerts, dinners in restaurants and visits to
dachas- was now so distant as to be no longer her own. Stalingrad and
Kuibyshev had disappeared - as had the handsome, sometimes divinely
handsome face of Novikov himself. All that was left was 24 Kuznetsky
Most. It was as though she was walking down the unfamiliar streets of
a city she had never seen before.
Translated by Robert Chandler
Coming in
PARTISAN REVIEW
• An Interview with Julia Kristeva
• Lionel Abel on George Steiner's
The Portage to San Cristobal ofA.
H.
• Jeffrey Herf:
Out of the Sixties
• Raymond Aron :
A Memoir
• George F. Chapline:
In Difense of Star Wars
• George Stade:
Dracula's Women
