At the town, even before the start of the interrogation the examining magistrate declared that the president of the kolkhoz had told them "everything, absolutely everything," that their conspiracy had been "unmasked," and that it was in his own interest for him to confess the facts. The questions came hurtling at him but during the first few minutes Nikolai heard them as if through a wall: the former blacksmith's treachery had hit a raw nerve in him, found a vulnerable spot he had not been aware of. Then he thought about the tortures that could extract all kinds of calumny, grew calmer, and resolved to defend himself right to the end.
Listening to the magistrate, he realized that this man knew nothing about him, had not even the vaguest conception of where Dolshanka was or how its inhabitants lived and, in fact, had no file on him of any kind, just a dozen sheets of paper that needed to be substantiated by the accused's replies, so as to make a guilty man of him as quickly as possible. That night, in the cell, where two-thirds of the prisoners remained upright for lack of benches, Nikolai talked to an old man, who from time to time gave up to him his place by the wall, against which everyone was eager to lean. The old man was due to return to the camp for the second time, having already spent six years there. It was he who explained to Nikolai that the number of people found guilty was subject to planning, just like the tons of the harvest. And as the forecasts in the plan always had to be surpassed… They talked until morning. Before being taken for interrogation Nikolai learned that the old man was three years younger than himself. An old man of thirty-nine.
The judge was counting on settling the matter in an hour. After several questions, he announced the main charge, which the evidence given by the president of the kolkhoz made irrefutable: Nikolai had written scurrilous satires that his wife read out to the members of the kolkhoz, thus disseminating counter-revolutionary propaganda.
Nikolai managed not to betray his feelings. Calmly he explained why what was imputed to his wife was impossible. In the magistrate's eyes he thought he could see flitting past all the variations that would have made it possible to circumvent this line of reasoning. You could accuse Anna of an attempt on Stalin's life, of wanting to set fire to the Kremlin or poison the Volga. But you could not accuse her of speaking. "I shall send the doctor tomorrow for an expert opinion," barked the magistrate and he called the guard.
The doctor spent scarcely a minute in their house. When he took his leave he apologized, heaving a sigh and raising his eyes to heaven. It was Sasha who described the scene to him when Nikolai was finally freed.
Returning home after a week's absence, he paused beside the locked door of the smithy. Thanks to nights spent among prisoners packed close together, he could imagine what a man like Gutov must have experienced who had spent several months in those overflowing cells. He made an effort not to imagine the torture. And the nights following the torture, with his mouth filled with blood, his nails torn off. Gutov must have lived through that and in the course of one night, through the suffocating mists of pain, invented this accusation which would save those he denounced: Anna talked to the kol-khozniks. Continuing on his way, Nikolai noticed that beside the izba of the smithy the first grasses and flowers were already thrusting up in bright fresh tufts, as happened every spring.
With superstitious confidence, he allowed himself to believe that life had finally triumphed. And that Gutov's death, especially such a death, was a sufficient sacrifice. And that he and Anna had now paid their dues to the unexpected guest. All the books Anna had gradually accumulated in their house were in agreement about this ultimate justice: well-earned happiness, paid for by trials and suffering.
When, less than a year later, he found himself at the bedside where Anna lay dying, he had a momentary belief that he could understand everything, right to the end: life was no more complicated than the simpleton he had one day encountered in the neighboring village. A woman seated at the crossroads with her legs wide apart, very pale eyes that looked through you without seeing you, lips that babbled happily of "planting three sabers under every window of every izba," and hands that ceaselessly shuffled a little pile of fragments of glass, pebbles, tiny worn coins in the folds of her dress.
He shook himself, so as not to let himself be carried away toward this grinning folly. And saw Anna's gesture. She was offering him a little gray envelope. He took it, guessed he should not open it until the time came, and, hearing a noise, went to greet the doctor. In the doorway he passed Sasha coming in with a flask of water. Everything was repeating itself, as some months before, but in a different order: the doctor, silence, the proximity of death. Like the little fragments of glass juggled in the simpleton's blind hand.
Three days previously Anna had been returning from the district capital, walking along beside the river on ground that vibrated, awakened by the break-up of the ice, by the sounds of the thaw. The sunlight, the creaking collisions of ice floes, and the wild chill of the liberated waters were mingled together in a joyful giddiness. The people Anna passed had dazed looks, confused smiles, as if they had been caught drunk in broad daylight. When she went up to the old wooden bridge at the end of the village she thought for a second she must be drunk herself: the bridge no longer straddled the river but reared up, turned in the direction of the current. It must only just have been torn loose, for the children running between its handrails had not yet noticed anything, fascinated by the frenzied whirling of the ice blocks, and their crashing against the pillars. If she had been able to call to them she could have stopped them going to the end of the bridge. But all she could do was hasten her step, then run, then make her way down the frozen slope of the riverbank. Like beads on a broken necklace the children had slipped down into a gulf of black water. The rescue should have been a noisy one, attracting lots of people, but on the deserted riverbank in the sunshine there was just the sound of a little whimpering and the crunching of broken ice. Anna dove into the water, feeling with her hands for the little bodies that had just disappeared. She struggled against each second of cold, first pushed the children up onto the riverbank, then dragged them toward the nearest izba, undressed them, rubbed them down. Her own body was ice and, an hour later, fire.
It was only a month after the funeral that Nikolai found the forgotten envelope almost by chance. Elegant handwriting that he did not recognize and which had no connection with the capital letters he had taught Anna stared up at him. And yet it was indeed a letter from his wife. She told him her real name, the name of her father, the great landowner whose estate used to border on the lands belonging to Dolshansky, a distant relative of their family. She did not want to take the lie to the grave with her. She thanked him for having saved her life, for having taught her life. Nikolai spent several days getting used, not to Anna's absence, but to her new presence in the years they had lived together and in the years before. He had to picture Anna as a young girl who had lived in St. Petersburg, went on long journeys abroad, and whom nothing had prepared for meeting him and living in an izba at Dolshanka. Sasha had told him what the letter had not time to tell.
One night he woke up, struck by the vividness of what he had just dreamed. The light in this dream was the same pale light before the dawn as outside the window. He was walking toward a forest so tall that, even with his head tilted back, he could not see the tops of the trees. He was moving forward, guided by singing that drew him ever closer: its resonance embraced all the beauty of this forest still swathed in night mist, all the expanse of the sky as it began to grow pale, and even the delicate shapes of the leaves he brushed aside on his way. At the surface of his dream there fizzled a doubt: "She can't sing… She's…" But he went on walking, recognizing the voice better and better.