But everyone had agreed with what he had said and they all ought to stand up for him, so they would not hold him for long…

She wanted to embrace him, to burst into tears, but the officer was standing next to her and looking at her through narrowed eyes. His lips were quivering, his moustache twitching, and it seemed to Vlasova that this man was just waiting for her tears, complaints and pleas. Summoning all her strength and trying not to speak very much, she squeezed her son’s hand and, holding her breath, said slowly and quietly:

“Goodbye, Pasha. Have you got everything you need?”

“Yes. Don’t feel lonely…”

“Christ be with you…”

When he had been taken away, she sat down on a bench and, closing her eyes, started quietly howling. Leaning her back against the wall, as her husband used to do, tightly bound by anguish and the hurtful consciousness of her own impotence, she threw back her head and howled in a monotone for a long time, pouring out in those sounds the pain of her wounded heart. And before her, like a motionless stain, was the yellow face with the sparse moustache, and the narrowed eyes watched her contentedly. Coiling in her breast was a black ball of bitterness and anger at such men who take a son away from his mother because that son is searching for the truth.

It was cold, rain knocked on the window panes and it seemed as if grey figures with wide, red, eyeless faces and long arms were walking around the house in the night, lying in wait. Walking and, just audibly, jangling their spurs.

“They should have taken me too,” she thought.

The siren howled, demanding that people get to work. Today its howl was muffled, low and uncertain. The door opened and in came Rybin. He stood in front of her and, wiping drops of rain from his beard with the palm of his hand, asked:

“Did they take him away?”

“They did – curse them!” she answered with a sigh.

“That’s how it is!” said Rybin with a grin. “I got it too – they searched, frisked me, ye-es. Gave me abuse… Well, but they didn’t do me any harm. So they took Pavel away! The director winked, the gendarme nodded – and the man’s gone! They’re good pals. One lot milks the people, the other holds them by the horns…”

“You ought to stand up for Pavel!” the mother exclaimed, getting to her feet. “He went on behalf of everyone, after all.”

“Who ought to?” asked Rybin.

“Everyone!”

“You what? No, that’s not going to happen.”

He went out with his heavy gait, grinning, having added to the mother’s woe with the stern hopelessness of his words.

“What if they beat him, torture him?…”

She imagined her son’s body, beaten up, torn apart, covered in blood, and fear lay in a cold lump upon her breast, crushing her. Her eyes ached.

She did not heat the stove, did not cook her dinner and did not drink any tea – only late in the evening did she eat a piece of bread. And when she went to bed, she fancied that never before had her life been so lonely and bare. In recent years she had grown used to living in constant expectation of something important and good. Youngsters had spun around her, noisy and cheerful, and always before her had been the serious face of her son, the creator of this anxious, yet good life. But now it was gone, and there was nothing.

XIV

A day and a sleepless night passed slowly, and the next day even more slowly. She expected someone, but no one came. Evening set in. And the night. Cold rain sighed and beat upon the wall, there was howling in the chimney and something bustling about under the floor. Water dripped from the roof, and the doleful sound of its falling merged strangely with the ticking of the clock. It seemed as if the whole house were quietly rocking, and everything around it were superfluous, numbed in anguish…

There was a quiet knocking at the window – once, twice… She was used to these knocks, and they did not frighten her, but now a joyous pricking in her heart made her give a start. A dim hope brought her quickly to her feet. Throwing a shawl over her shoulders, she opened the door…

In came Samoilov, and after him some other man with his face hidden by the collar of his coat, in a hat pulled down to his eyebrows.

“Did we wake you?” asked Samoilov, without any greeting, uncharacteristically preoccupied and glum.

“I wasn’t asleep!” she replied, and stared at them in silence with expectant eyes.

Samoilov’s companion took off his hat, sighing heavily and hoarsely, and, extending a broad, short-fingered hand to the mother, he said amicably, as if to an old acquaintance:

“Hello, Mamasha! Don’t you recognize me?”

“Is it you?” Vlasova exclaimed, suddenly joyful about something.