Pavel Nilin—The Polykhaevs

In this short story from a 1951 edition of the Soviet magazine Ogonek, Pavel Nilin tells the story of a pair of Stalingraders—the elderly Polykhaevs—who lived through the razing of the city in 1942 and took part in the early reconstruction. They welcome their long-lost grandson, Petya, who embodies the so-called “Stalingrad spirit” of young communists seeking to emulate the self-sacrifice of the older generation by participating in larger construction projects in Stalingrad.

Nilin’s story exemplifies the late-Stalinist Stalingrad story: the older Polykhaev, Erofey Kuzmich, symbolically dies and is resurrected with the city during the battle, while the sacrifices of the past are instrumentalised to encourage sacrifice in the present.

While the story is typical, Nilin—a relatively well-known writer of peasant origin—has a knack for characterizing the grandparents as a bickering elderly couple and for capturing the traumatic flashbacks the grandmother experiences as she seems almost to relive the events of her grandson’s evacuation from Stalingrad.

The translation from the Russian—an off-cut from my forthcoming compilation, Stalingrad Lives—is the first Nilin work to appear in English.

The Polykhaevs

Lately Grandmother had constantly been scuttling off to the highway to wait for a particular car. She would standing in the piercing wind for hours on end. On and on went the cars. Thousands must have gone by, but that car, the car that would bring Petya, did not come.

At last, one morning, Grandmother was getting ready to go to the highway. She was chasing around after the gloves that the kitten must have dragged off somewhere when Grandfather, Erofey Kuzmich, said:

“Sit down! You don’t want to catch a cold, do you? He’ll come when he comes, but running all over the place won’t do a thing. You’re no spring chicken.”

Grandmother was beaten. She sat down and began unbuttoning her fur jacket. She had just unbundled herself and taken off her lace shawl when a young man should appear amongst the snowdrifts on the path leading to the house. A belt with a shiny buckle looped around his black overcoat, while his black cap was quite inappropriate for the season. He carried a suitcase in one hand and was clapping the other hand against his ears so as to protect them from the wind.

Grandfather happened to be looking out the window when the boy approached. He stared at the lad intently. He did not move, nor did he say anything to Grandmother. After all, lots of people had turned up of late! Thousands of people were arriving on foot and by rail and road. A great undertaking was in progress.

There was a knock at the door. Grandmother raced to open it and instantly recoiled when she saw an unfamiliar young man in the cloud of steam.

“Do the Polykhaevs live here?” asked the young man.

“Petenka!” cried Grandmother. She burst into tears and began to race around. “Petenka...you’ve Anfisa’s eyes...it’s like Anfisa’s here…”

She helped her grandson to undress. When taking his cold overcoat, she observed that he had his father Vasya’s mouth and nose. Kissing his cheeks, still rosy from the cold, she did not stop crying.

Grandfather Erofey Kuzmich merely frowned a little and said:

“What are you doing wandering around in a cap like that in this weather? Haven’t you got a proper one? Drank it away, did you?”

“Not at all, Grandfather! I’m teetotal,” smiled Petya. “I’m just used to wearing a cap in any weather. They say your hair grows better if you wear a cap in winter. My hat’s in my suitcase.”

“Just like your father,” smiled Grandmother, wiping away the tears. “Vasya was just the same: well-dressed and a bit of a dandy. But your eyes are Anfisa’s. They’re her eyes...but you take your boots off now, quick step! You must be frozen right through.” She prodded him towards a stool so that he would find it easier to take off his boots. “Look at that, your boots are hard as iron after that cold. You should have work felt boots.”

“It’s much better to be in regular boots; I like how they feel! My felt ones are strapped to my suitcase,” said her grandson. He walked across the ochred clay floor in his woollen socks.

Grandmother sat him down next to the warm stove and started to put out the food she had prepared for her grandson’s arrival.

“We’ve been waiting almost two weeks for you, Petenka. Ever since we got your letter.”

Grandmother hustled and bustled around the table as if she were afraid of being late for something.

“Get out of it, you little devil!” she hissed at the cat who was trying to catch at her hem.

Grandfather silently looked the lad over. He had not yet decided how he ought to view this boy who was, in reality, a stranger.

“You wrote that you’d be here by the 12th, but it’s Sunday the 13th today” said Grandfather and tore a page off the calendar. “Where did you get held up?”

“D’you see, here’s what happened,” he began to explain as he coughed importantly into his hand. “I asked to go to Stalingrad, of course, and was issued documents to that effect. Then it turned out they’d already sent a bunch of our students here. Comrade Antonov said, ‘Go to Kuibyshev. It’s a site of great construction projects too,’ he says, ‘so I don’t see as it makes any difference. Or if you want we could send you to Central Asia.’

“I said to him, ‘Well it makes a difference to me. Stalingrad’s my hometown. It’s where I was born, where my mother and father were from.’ And he said, ‘Don’t get all sentimental. It doesn’t matter where people’s parents are from, we’re working to a plan. And don’t you forget that you’re a Komsomol member.’

“So I went to Comrade Samsonov. He summoned Antonov and said, ‘Don’t play the fool, you’ve got to fulfil Comrade Polykhaev’s request! Let Polykhaev go to Stalingrad.’ That’s why I was delayed. My training means I could have gone to Kuibyshev, to Central Asia, anywhere really…”

“And what was that training?”

“I’m learning to work with concrete.”

That answer pleased Grandfather immensely. He hadn’t said that “I am an expert” or that “I became an expert”; he’d said that he was “learning.” Quite right too. The old bricklayer had built dozens of houses in his time and knew that it took a whole lifetime to develop real expertise. His grandson was no young fool, then. He meant business.

“What’ve you put that fruit wine out for, Nadeya? Who’s going to drink that, eh? Better to get us out a good half-litre, something for the men…”

“Please, Erofey Kuzmich,” said Grandmother, “you don’t drink, and Petenka’s too young yet.”

“That’s no bother. It’s okay to mark an arrival. Especially on account of the cold.”

Two young girls emerged from the corner room. Grandmother had summoned their lodgers, a couple of surveyors, to meet her grandson. They greeted him and introduced themselves as Vera and Galya.

He offered them his hand and introduced himself—solemnly, the way a grown man should—by his surname alone: “Polykhaev.”

The death of two sons in the war had not done for that bricklaying family’s name. It had not disappeared, nor would it do so now, even if Erofey Kuzmich were to die. He had no intention of dying anytime soon, though. He still wanted to see how everything would grow, how a mighty hydroelectric station would be built and change everything, even the climate itself. He had heard that the forests and groves of graceful oaks would be enormous. Steamers from across the seas would, they said, mingle in this very port. Perhaps Erofey Kuzmich and Nadezhda Pavlovna—Grandmother Nadya—might yet set sail from here on a trip to far-off seas. Everything was possible, just so long as there was not another war. That would be a very bad thing indeed.

“Right then, let’s drink to you, Petr,” said Grandfather as if he were finishing off a thought. He raised his glass. “To you, and to all the young people who’ll come after us.”

Everybody clinked their glasses, downed the contents, and began to tuck in to the food.  Grandmother alone did not eat, for she was constantly, unerringly, looking at her grandson. Heavy tears ran down her rosy cheeks. Oh, how big he’d grown, the little lad! There was no chance she’d be able to pick him up and carry him even a couple of paces now, oh no – not like she had carried him in the fall of ’42 to the quay, to the last passenger boat to leave Stalingrad.

What horrors were wrought in the city at that time! It is dreadful even to recall them; you cannot believe what we saw with our very own eyes. Yet we are still alive.

Grandfather was still young back then. He worked as a bricklayer and instructed other bricklayers too. Grandmother was a cook in the children’s home, where her grandson Petya would pass the days with her. When the Germans got close to Stalingrad, Grandfather went off to build defensive lines, and Grandmother helped to evacuate children from the home. Grandfather did not allow his grandson Petya to leave:

“He ought to stay here with us. Maybe everything will work out somehow, and then we’ll know what’s what.”

Petya stayed at home supervised by an infirm neighbour. Life in the city was becoming unbearable. The enemy was bombing the town every day and every night. The city burned with fire. The time came when the Polykhaevs’ neighbour was about to leave.

“You’re mad,” she said to Grandmother, “You’re in danger yourselves, but why are you keeping the little boy here when death is right here, right in front of you, and it might take any one of us at any time? Just think how many people have died already…”

The last passenger steamer was due to leave Stalingrad with the children. Grandmother insisted that her grandson was to go too: “I couldn’t have it on my conscience if, God forbid, the boy should perish.”

She had soon kitted him out for the journey, so they set off for the quay. Getting there was no mean feat by that point. Houses on both sides of the street were in flames. Charred logs, burning timber, and hot chunks of iron were falling onto the pavement.

They walked two blocks. Grandmother’s dress and headscarf were smouldering, but she stubbornly kept moving forward. Her grandson was crying and kept pulling back:

“I shan’t go! I shan’t! Take me home or I’ll cry even more!”

At last they made it past the burning houses and onto a wide square, where they doubled their pace. Grandmother suddenly stopped.

“Good grief, my child!” she said, totally shaken having spotted an enormous elephant covered in dust from red bricks on the square. “Did they disturb you, you poor thing?” The elephant, driven from the zoo by the bombardment, seemed to surprise her more than the fires.

The grandson stopped crying. He stared wide-eyed at the elephant forlornly waving its trunk like a fire hose and slowly wandering through the ruined and burning buildings.

Even the enemy planes that had suddenly struck up a racket over the square could not draw the boy’s attention from this surprising passerby, who seemed utterly exhausted from the hellish fires.

“We have to go, Petenka,” said Grandmother, tugging on the boy’s hand, “quickly now.”

“No, wait up, let me have a look at him,” the boy said with an almost adult decisiveness.

“We’ll be killed any minute now, you fool! See those German planes?”

She pointed at the sky, which was clouded over with black smoke. Oil was burning somewhere nearby.

“Let them kill us,” said Petya angrily. “We’re going to look.”

Grandmother stooped down, seized the boy by his legs, threw him over her shoulder like a sack, and began to run across the square.

“Where did that strength come from?” she now wondered as she sat across the table from the cheery, almost unrecognizably mature young man. She wanted to ask if he remembered the elephant, but thought the better of interrupting grandfather and grandson’s lively conversation. Let them have a good talk, she thought, when they have not seen each other for so long.

Indeed, they had much to talk about. Grandfather was listening to Petya with satisfaction. He was especially pleased that his descendant had followed in the footsteps of the other Polykhaevs: he may not have been a bricklayer, but at least he was in construction. Construction would always be a useful and glorious business.

“I suppose you want to work on the dam?”

“Of course,” said the grandson with an air of importance. “We’re going to lay the cement, but I need to take some courses here first. Then I’ll get right to work.”

“That’s good,” said Grandfather. “You’ll be a sort of city founder. You’ll grow up, get married, and walk along the dam with your own children and, perhaps, you’ll say: ‘Look here, kids, I was here when this station was built. I took part in the construction myself. And now the whole world knows about it!’”

“I don’t think I’ll be married by the time the construction is done,” smiled Petya and, slightly blushing, squinted over at the young surveyors sitting at the table.

The surveyors smiled too. The perky, hazel-eyed Galya, who had something of the Armenian about her, reminded them: “After all, the station will be finished within five years. That means you’ll be twenty-one, Petya. Or maybe a little older?”

Petya gave the impression that he had not heard the question. He did not want these girls to know exactly how old he was; he wanted to seem more grown up. Trying to change the topic, he said, “I could barely wait to be sent to Stalingrad…”

At this, Grandmother again started to recall how her grandson had left Stalingrad. Grandfather had run to the quay, but the boat was already gone. It was in the middle of the river when when enemy bombers flew at it and released their bombs. Grandmother covered her face with her hands, but Grandfather looked on at the defenceless, dying steamer and at the boiling water in which his only grandson was certain to have perished. He looked as rowboats set off for the steamer from the other bank, but knew that nobody could be saved after such a disaster.

“You didn’t listen! He’s drowned. The boy’s drowned,” said Erofey Kuzmich. But seeing how Grandmother had fallen to the grass and was convulsing as if she wanted to bury herself in the ground, his bravery evaporated completely.

“Nadeya...what now, Nadeya?” he said as he bent over her. He stood, scooped up some water topped by a layer of smoking oil with his cap, and gave it to his wife.

“Nadeya! Snap out of it, Nadeya. There’s more to come for sure…”

He never managed to calm her, just he never promised the impossible. He had not done so in their youth when he had borrowed a comrade’s pair of boots for their wedding; nor did he do so in their old age, when the war led them to the gravest of tribulations.

He picked his wife, her whole body still trembling, up from the grass. He led her home, supporting her by the shoulders from which hung charred strips of a colourful dress. She quietly wept, pressing herself to him, and kept repeating:

“Forgive me, Erofey Kuzmich, I didn’t listen to you, and now the boy’s drowned. You’re right, he’s drowned. But I honestly thought I was doing something good for him. Just look at what’s happening all around us...what’s next?”

“I don’t know, Nadeya. I don’t know anything,” said Erofey Kuzmich. “We just need to get back home to the apartment so you can lie down and relax. Maybe you could use some of your droplets. You’ve got all sorts. Things are only going to get worse...we need to preserve our strength…”

Getting home by the directest route now, though, had become impossible. Flaming rubble from destroyed houses was covering both streets leading from the quay to the house. They would have to go around.

It took almost until evening to get back, but when they finally made it, they realized that there was nothing to get back to. Only the two corner walls of the massive five-storey house remained. In the middle, on the third floor, a kitchen shelf remained. Two enamel pans hung from the shelf, jangling in the wind.

“Those are the Zavyavlovs’ pans. That was their apartment,” said Grandmother.

“It doesn’t matter whose it was any more,” said Erofey Kuzmich. “Pans and apartments don’t matter now. In fact it’s a good thing we weren’t here, else we’d be lying under those bricks.”

“Maybe that would have been for the best,” sighed Grandmother.

“Quiet!” shouted Erofey Kuzmich. “Stop your panicking! I have no intention of dying. And I order you not to. I’m not done with living yet…”

“Where shall you and I go now?” asked his wife timidly. And then she rather more boldly scolded her husband: “It’s all on account of your stubbornness, Erofey Kuzmich! Zlatorogov came from the bureau twice to get us evacuated. And now the bureau’s probably gone too.”

Erofey Kuzmich was silent. He contemplated the ruins of the massive house that he had been laying bricks for not six years past. He had received two prizes for work on this very site. He had been given a big and light apartment for his entire family in this very building. And now there was no house, no building, and no family. A month ago they had received the notice of their two sons’ deaths, while the wife who had volunteered to go with her husband, their son, was missing. What’s next? Mm?

Thinking back to that terrible time, Grandmother once again smelled the acrid burning, the sizzling air again clutched at her heart, and she again froze, just as she had frozen back then, in the ruins.

“Pour us a spot of tea, Nadeya. Tea, I said,” repeated Erofey Kuzmich and touched Grandmother’s arm to rouse her.

“Ooh, tea. Hold on,” said Grandmother and reached for the samovar. Grandfather winked to his lodgers and grandson and smiled:

“Grandmother’s probably tipsy! Tipsy after one glass…”

“Of course I’m tipsy when I’m with you,” smiled Grandmother as if coming round from her reverie.

“Right then,” Erofey Kuzmich went on, “we’ll drink our tea and head to the building site, Petr. You can see what’s being built here.”

“Why do you have to go now?” exclaimed Grandmother, “I still want to look at my grandson. He can look around by himself. Let him chat with the young ladies and warm up, then I’ll show him the house.”

“You think he hasn’t seen houses just like this, d’you?” said Grandfather. “He came on business, so he ought to have a look at what’s to be done.”

“He’ll have plenty of time to get a good look.” Grandmother was not giving in. “You see, Petya, your Grandfather and I built this house ourselves. It was the first house in the new settlement. Everything had been utterly destroyed, totally flattened. Your Grandfather and I were living in a bunker under the hill. Grandfather was concussed.”

“Off she goes again!” grimaced Erofey Kuzmich. Grandmother wanted to explain right away how they had left the ruins of their house late one night in that terrible autumn, how they had gone to the district council in the Volga embankment, and how they had been assigned work.

Their work in the city was uniquely sad. They had to remove and bury the bodies and clean the detritus from the streets. It was impossible to walk, let alone drive, along the streets. Houses were burning and collapsing every day. The fires had to be extinguished.

Grandmother was hired as a cook and Grandfather as an orderly in the underground hospital. When the enemy bombed the hospital, Grandmother found work as a washerwoman. She washed army uniforms, and Grandfather helped by bringing water. He had to crawl everywhere to avoid the ceaseless firing from every side. He adopted all sorts of cunning ploys to make it to the Volga right under the enemy’s nose. He would pour water into a tub then, on all fours, drag it behind him on a sled. Bullets were constantly striking the tub and, if he were not careful, might well have hit him too. And hit him they did—in the shoulder and arm.

Grandmother sighed.

“What are you sighing for?” said Erofey Kuzmich. “You oughtn’t to sigh but to be happy. We survived and we’ll live a while yet—and life will be better! Are you regretting that we didn’t leave Stalingrad back then?”

“I don’t regret it a bit,” said Grandmother. “I’m just surprised that we survived. So many people died before our very eyes! Even iron burns and breaks in fire. Stone couldn’t have survived it. But us…”

“Your pride is endless,” smiled Grandfather, “and your self-worth too. Anyone listening would think that you defended Stalingrad alone.”

“I wasn’t alone. I was with everyone who was here and helped out,” said Grandmother. “Nobody can take that away from me.”

“Very true,” agreed Erofey Kuzmich, “but you oughtn’t to sigh. I dislike it more than anything when people go sighing over nothing. Look, our grandson has come, and he’d like to hear something new…”

“On the contrary, I wanted to ask what it was like,” said Petya, “since I only know what the Battle of Stalingrad was like from books and what I saw in the cinema. But you, one could say, took part…”

Grandmother livened up: “Of course one could say we took part. Everything happened right in front of us. But even now it’s impossible to explain it. I wonder at how it all happened. I shall probably die wondering. We were basically crawling around for a hundred days. Crawling, crawling on all fours, so as not to get hit by a bullet or shrapnel, or by who knows what. From trench to trench, pipe to pipe, basement to basement, bunker to bunker. Crawling. The whole city was crawling back and forth. And then we crawled out to this settlement, right to the Volga. The fighting had stopped and we were still living in bunkers. There was nowhere to live. Even the shells of houses were gone. Just broken, burning brick. Grandfather was lying concussed in the bunker, and I was bustling about after him like a nurse, a sister of mercy, as best I could.”

“You’re giving yourself too much credit,” said Grandfather, and mimicked her, “Like a nurse! Honestly…”

“Well, like an orderly then,” Grandmother corrected herself. “It doesn’t matter who I was like. What’s important is that I was looking after you the whole time. Then out of the blue Ivan Fedorovich Chalov, an engineer we knew, came: ‘We’re going to rebuild the factory—the Tractor Factory, the STF.[1] It’s an urgent matter.’ What was there to rebuild when almost nothing of the factory remained? The only thing standing was a statue, now riddled with bullet holes, by the gates. But Ivan Fedorovich Chalov said, ‘We’re putting up canvas tents for the workers around the factory. I want you to take part in the reconstruction.’ He said that to Erofey Kuzmich, because he was a bricklayer, and not to me, of course.

“But Erofey Kuzmich was barely alive—he was all skin and bones—and I thought that he’d never go back to bricklaying. He couldn’t pick up stone, and could not leave the bunker at all. And it was terribly cold. There was no food, because we’d been living off soldiers’ rations before. When the fighting was over, the soldiers had left for Berlin or wherever it was.

“Soon a woman from the district council who was going around all the bunkers found us. She said she’d give us food and ration cards, and send a doctor. She did everything she said, so when Ivan Fedorovich Chalov came, I gave him some tea and sugar. He’d brought some vodka and sausage, and I even got hold of some potatoes and onions.”

“Look how she’s accounted for everything and remembers who had what,” winked a laughing Erofey Kuzmich to his grandson. “What a spendthrift! She’d squeeze a whole pound of fat out of a sparrow!”

“Don’t interrupt,” said Grandmother, “I’m just trying to remember everything I can. After all, he asked us to tell him how we lived.

“So there we are in the bunker, drinking tea, and suddenly Ivan Fedorovich Chalov said, ‘By the way, I saw your Petya in the Urals.’ I asked, ‘Which Petya?’ Your Grandfather and I didn’t even hope to find you amongst the living after the steamer sank in front of us. Ivan Fedorovich said: ‘What d’you mean which Petya? The Petya, your grandson. He and my boy Grisha were in a children’s home together. Now they’re at school.’ I wrote down your address and sent you a letter. There was no reply for a year, even though I wrote close half a dozen letters.

“Then Grandfather Erofey Kuzmich began to get better, which was a shock to us all. Soon he went off to work. Not on the Tractor Factory, admittedly, because it was too far to travel, and they didn’t have any housing apart from tents. He worked right here in the village construction office.”

“The office is long gone,” said Erofey Kuzmich, and pointed out the window. “It was right there, where our girls”—he nodded at the surveyors—“have opened their office now. The drilling experts are housed there. Everything is going to be rather different now than how we imagined it back at the start. The hydrostation will create everything anew. One end of the dam will be pretty close to here.”

“I know,” said Petya, “I saw the design.”

Then Grandmother, rather offended, said, “Maybe you can tell the story by yourself, Erofey Kuzmich. I’ll be quiet. I’m not mad, of course, but…”

Grandfather smiled and offered some praise: “No, it’ll be better if you do it; you do it well. Maybe afterward you could put together a book.”

“I’m not putting together any books,” said Grandmother. “I’m just saying what I remember. Petena, the bunker where we lived was really quite close. You could see the spot from here, but it’s all covered in snow. One night, after the fighting was over and we were living in the bunker, Erofey Kuzmich’s shoulder started hurting again. He couldn’t fall asleep, so he was tossing and turning and grumbling away. I woke up and asked, ‘What are you grumbling about, Erofey Kuzmich?’ And he said, ‘I’m not grumbling, I’m thinking. Isn’t this all rather strange? I’m a bricklayer living in a bunker. Couldn’t I just build myself a house? I can’t just sit here waiting for life to happen, can I?’ So I said: ‘They’ll give us an apartment soon, for sure.’ And he said: ‘I doubt it. We have to take care of ourselves, and we could be a good example for others.’

“One morning quite soon after, on a Sunday too as it happens, he left the bunker and ordered me to come too. So off I went, of course, without a clue as to why or where. We walked for a kilometre or so, and then he suddenly stopped and said: ‘We shall build a little house on this very spot, and that the way we’ll start the street anew.’ To tell the truth, the street was still in ruins, all battered and burned bricks. But you can’t change Erofey Kuzmich’s mind. As soon as he’s got an idea in his head he won’t change course. On the following day he went to the district council and filled out the paperwork. Then a technician, a girl, came to the bunker, and said, ‘The district council has no objections to your plan, but we were a bit surprised that old timers like yourselves would want to take on such a project. But we’ll do whatever we can to help.”

“You’re going on a bit, Nadeya,” said Erofey Kuzmich, “this story’s taking a long time.”

“The house wasn’t built in a day, though.” said Grandmother, “We had to dig out the foundation. We had a lantern, the “bat” type, in the bunker. Misha Paderin, a sergeant from Siberia, gave it to us as a parting gift. As soon as Erofey Kuzmich got back from the construction office, he would eat, nap for an hour, and we would take that lantern and head for the construction site—for the Polykhaev Building Co.! That’s the nickname the council gave our house. We’d hang the lantern on a tripod then spend half the night digging around in the rubble, picking out the good bricks. We did that for a week or two until one evening we noticed lanterns just like ours glowing around us. Turns out more builders had turned up! The material we needed—charred brick and timber—was right there, to hand. The district council started on construction too. ‘Well there’s the competition!’ Erofey Kuzmich said, ‘We can’t skip a beat now. I wonder who’ll finish first.’ And we didn’t skip a beat. We put, as they say, our heart and soul into the work.”

“We took the work very seriously,” confirmed Grandfather as he looked at his grandson. “We really put our backs into it. You’d lie down to sleep, but your body’s still raring to go and bricks, mortar, and more bricks are swimming before your eyes. He turned to his wife. “Nadeya, I didn’t want to praise you for your work too much back then. I was afraid to offer praise. I thought it’d make you proud. But now I can say this: you’re a real fighter, even though you think you’re just some little old lady. The young ‘uns don’t stand a chance against you.”

Grandmother was embarrassed by this praise. She blushed and continued to tell her tale, but now without looking at Grandfather and still referring to him formally by his name and patronymic:

“Erofey Kuzmich wanted to get the front corner of the house, the one that would begin the street, built quickly. The moment it was done, Erofey Kuzmich cut out a wooden board, heated up a spike nail, and etched the street name—the old name—and the house number—number one—into the board. He fixed the board to the corner, stood back to admire it, and called me over. ‘Just you have a look at that, Nadeya! Now we have a proper address. Write another letter to the grandson…’ Naturally, I wrote the letter.”

“That’s right,” affirmed Grandfather, “she read me that letter. I was mad that she was crying so much, though. She dripped tears all over it. All the letters ended up smudged and blurred.”

Grandmother missed this last comment. She was in such a rush to keep telling the story that she continued:

“So. Our project, our Polykhaev Building Co., was getting close to being finished, when we found out that our neighbours—a team of mostly women—weren’t building a house for themselves. They were building a house for the greater good, for the orphans who were being discovered in practically every bunker. Erofey Kuzmich started to think: ‘What we’re doing isn’t right, Nadeya. People are working for the greater good, but we’re just doing it for ourselves, like private traders. Shouldn’t we give up our home for the children, mm?’ I said, ‘Well of course we can give it up. We’ll stay in the bunker and the children can come here. We had children too. This house can serve as a memorial to our perished children.’ And then I burst into tears.

“Erofey Kuzmich looked at me all suspicious, as usual, and said, ‘Those are crocodile tears, Nadeya. It’s not right. You’re crying from greed. You don’t want to give up your house for the children, so you’re crying.’ I was terribly offended by that and went off to the district council by myself to let them know we’d be giving the house up for the orphaned children. But they just waved their hands and said, ‘What are you on about? What would we need your house for? This house we’re building out of burned-out brick for the orphans is just a temporary measure. Soon real houses will be built. The funds are already in place.’

“While Grandfather Erofey and I were building our house the Tractor Factory had already started to produce new tractors. The other factories were working at full steam, even though there had been barely a brick left of them after the fighting. I thought I’d die and never see Stalingrad rise again. Now even the foreigners arriving are awestruck: ‘Nobody’s planning to restore many of our cities where the war was fought. But here everything’s like in a fairy tale…’”

“Don’t get started on foreigners, or you’ll never stop,” smiled Erofey Kuzmich. “You were talking about the house, but now you’ve gone off on some tangent like you were writing to a newspaper. You’ve dragged foreigners into it for some reason.”

“Maybe I won’t tell them anything at all, then.” Grandmother was getting offended again.

“No, you keep on talking now you’re started, just don’t rabbit on about this and that,” said a frowning Erofey Kuzmich.

Grandmother explained how, once the house was built, they did it up inside. She talked about how they got hold of and cut up timber, and how they acquired paint, nails, lime, latches and door handles.

“That was all easy,” Erofey Kuzmich again interrupted, “what really took something was the basement.” He pulled up the mat lying under his feet, grabbed an iron ring attached to the floor, and deftly lifted a trapdoor.

“There it is,” he said, staring into the dark pit, “I’ll turn the light on.” He flicked the switch. When lit, the pit turned out to be an enormous basement lined with small tiles. Grandfather was suddenly overcome with embarrassment: “It’s not such a great piece of workmanship really. It’s no Volga-Don, and no hydrostation. But people in the know will understand. Not a drop of water gets through. It’s really not badly done at all. We’ve got potato, carrot, and cabbage stored down here.”

“We’ve got a little garden”—Grandmother had to get her two cents in—“You can’t see it right now because of the snow. But it’s just beautiful in the spring!”

“It’s hardly beautiful,” said Erofey Kuzmich, “but it’s a good thing the Volga’s so close.”

“It’s no good thing at all!” exclaimed one of the surveyors—Vera with the red face, who had been silent until now. She turned bright red as her friend quickly grabbed Vera’s hand. Erofey Kuzmich looked at his lodgers.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing, nothing...just a silly remark…” answered Galya on Vera’s behalf.

Erofey Kuzmich’s countenance grew dark, but Grandmother continued to explain how she and Grandfather had read their grandson’s first letter—written in “letters just so!”—and had planned to visit him then changed their minds, and how they had delighted at his enrolment in the vocational school, how they had packed parcels for him, and how they had waited for him.

“And then you came, Petenka. I still can’t believe you came. Now Grandfather and I shall be at peace. We don’t need anything else. Not a thing. Only for you to be right here with us. All our hopes are resting on you…”

At this Grandmother looked at her husband and began to get quite emotional. What was Erofey Kuzmich’s sudden dark look? Maybe she had misspoken? The lodgers were whispering back and forth about something or other. Perhaps they had noticed something wrong?

Grandmother felt the situation rather awkward, so she broke the silence:

“I’ve got some nuts too; I’d forgotten about them. I’ll go and grab them.”

She disappeared into the kitchen. Erofey Kuzmich went over to the lodgers, sat on a chest right next to them, and said:

“Are you done muttering about your little secrets, girls? Shared them all already, have you?”

“We’re not keeping secrets, Erofey Kuzmich,” said an apologetic Galya.

“I know all about you and your secrets,”  smiled Erofey Kuzmich, “you just think that nobody knows them but you.”

“Honestly, Erofey Kuzmich,” exclaimed Vera, “we didn’t say anything!”

“Don’t be embarrassed now,” said Erofey Kuzmich. “I heard what you said about the Volga: ‘It’s not good that we’re so near the Volga’.”

“Well, it’s not,” affirmed Galya. “And it’s going to annoy us for as long as we’re here. We’re used to it, but it’s still not clear…”

“No. It’s already clear,” said Erofey Kuzmich.

“What happened?” asked Petya.

“They can explain,” said Erofey Kuzmich, gesturing to the surveyors.

“Well nothing has really happened yet,” said Vera and coquettishly corrected her hair, “but according to the plans for the hydrostation’s construction, we have to widen the river here. That means that this house and the neighbouring ones…”

Vera saw Grandmother returning from the kitchen and fell silent.

“In short,” concluded Tanya, “this conversation isn’t important right now.”

“But why?” asked Grandmother, placing a dish of nuts on the table. “Am I disturbing you?”

“No, of course not, Nadezhda Pavlovna!” Vera said awkwardly.

Everyone tucked into the nuts. Vera tried to crack one with her teeth. She had no luck, so took the nutcracker. Grandmother broke into a smile.

“You can’t crack them with your teeth, then, Verochka? You’re not strong enough? Watch how it’s done.” Gripping a nut between her teeth, she cracked it open smoothly and placed it on her palm. “See that, Verochka? I’ve still got my teeth; all present and correct! You feel sorry for me, but I’m not that old…”

“Why d’you think I feel sorry for you?”

“You do. You’re worried that if I find out what you know I’ll be upset.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“You do. You know that they plan to demolish the house, but you’re trying to keep it secret so as not to upset the old lady.” Grandmother squinted, almost angrily. “Do you really think I’ll cling onto this house without thinking of the greater good? Do you think I’ll go off crying like some bourgeois who’s lost her property?”

“Well it would still be your property,” said Galya. “The state will pay you handsomely for it. And they’ll give you another apartment—an even better one!”

“Are you trying to calm me down?” asked Grandmother. “Have I really worked for years and made it to old age so that some young girl can mollify me? Does money matter? Am I looking for a quiet life? My husband Erofey Kuzmich and I have taken part in all the great events of our lifetime. Do you really think after all that I’ll lock myself up in this house and close my eyes to what’s going on around me?”

“Alright, alright,” said Erofey Kuzmich. “Enough of that endless pride of yours, Nadeya! Enough!”

“Am I not telling the truth, hm?” asked Grandmother. “Did you and I exhaust ourselves for good building this house, Erofey Kuzmich? Is this the last of our efforts?”

“No, it’s not the end,” agreed Erofey Kuzmich. “We shall live and work yet, Nadeya, and we shall see what’s being done…”

“You wanted us to go to the Volga,” Petya interrupted his Grandfather.

“Let’s go, Petya,” said Grandfather. “Let’s go. I’ll show you what’s happening all around. We’ve done quite enough sitting around…”