Page 192 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

"The script editor. He got two years."

"Then he must be free by now."

"Perhaps. I haven't heard. He won't get his old job back, so I'm not sure where he'd go."

He would come to Moscow, Tanya felt sure. But she shrugged, pretending indifference, and went back to typing an article about a woman bricklayer.

She had made several discreet inquiries among people who would have known if Vasili had returned. The answer had been the same in all cases: no one had heard anything.

Then, that afternoon, Tanya got word.

Leaving the TASS building at the end of the working day, she was accosted by a stranger. A voice said: "Tanya Dvorkin?" and she turned to see a pale, thin man in dirty clothes.

"Yes?" she said, a little anxiously: she could not imagine what such a man would want with her.

"Vasili Yenkov saved my life," he said.

It was so unexpected that for a moment she did not know how to respond. Too many questions raced through her mind: How do you know Vasili? Where and when did he save your life? Why have you come to me?

He thrust into her hand a grubby envelope the size of a regular shee

t of paper, then he turned away.

It took Tanya a moment to gather her wits. At last she realized there was one question more important than all the rest. While the man was still within earshot she said: "Is Vasili alive?"

The stranger stopped and looked back. The pause struck fear into Tanya's heart. Then he said: "Yes," and she felt the sudden lightness of relief.

The man walked away.

"Wait!" Tanya called, but he quickened his pace, turned a corner, and disappeared from view.

The envelope was not sealed. Tanya looked inside. She saw several sheets of paper covered with handwriting that she recognized as Vasili's. She pulled them halfway out. The first sheet was headed:

Frostbite

by Ivan Kuznetsov

She pushed the sheets back into the envelope and walked on to the bus stop. She felt scared and excited at the same time. "Ivan Kuznetsov" was an obvious pseudonym, the commonest name imaginable, like Hans Schmidt in German or Jean Lefevre in French. Vasili had written something, an article or a story. She could hardly wait to read it, yet at the same time she had to resist the impulse to hurl it away from her like something contaminated, for it was sure to be subversive.

She shoved it into her shoulder bag. When the bus came it was crowded--this was the evening rush hour--so she could not look at the manuscript on her way home without the risk that someone would read it over her shoulder. She had to suppress her impatience.

She thought about the man who had handed it to her. He had been badly dressed, half starved, and in poor health, with a look of permanent wary fearfulness: just like a man recently released from jail, she thought. He had seemed glad to get rid of the envelope, and reluctant to say more to her than he had to. But he had at least explained why he had undertaken his dangerous errand. He was repaying a debt. "Vasili Yenkov saved my life," he had said. Again she wondered how.

She got off the bus and walked to Government House. On her return from Cuba she had moved back into her mother's flat. She had no reason to get her own apartment and, if she had, it would have been a lot less luxurious.

She spoke briefly to Anya, then went to her bedroom and sat down on the bed to read what Vasili had written.

His handwriting had altered. The letters were smaller, the risers shorter, the loops less flamboyant. Did that reflect a change of personality, she wondered, or just a shortage of writing paper?

She began to read.

Josef Ivanovich Maslov, called Soso, was overjoyed when the food arrived spoiled.

Normally, the guards stole most of the consignment and sold it. The prisoners were left with plain gruel in the morning and turnip soup at night. Food rarely went bad in Siberia, where the ambient temperature was usually below freezing--but Communism could work miracles. So when, occasionally, the meat was crawling with maggots and the fat rancid, the cook threw it all into the pot, and the prisoners rejoiced. Soso gobbled down kasha that was oily with stinking lard, and longed for more.

Tanya was nauseated, but at the same time she had to read on.

With each page she was more impressed. The story was about an unusual relationship between two prisoners, one an intellectual dissident, the other an uneducated gangster. Vasili had a simple, direct style that was remarkably effective. Life in the camp was described in brutally vivid language. But there was more than just description. Perhaps because of his experience in radio drama, Vasili knew how to keep a story moving, and Tanya found that her interest never flagged.

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