Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman Page B

yourself are small and weak. But Ivan Grigoryevich’s mother had died long ago, and there was no power that could release him from this burden.
    As for Nikolay Andreeyevich, he was now experiencing a strange feeling that had arisen entirely involuntarily.
    While he had been waiting for Ivan, he had thought with intense feeling about how he would be supremely honest and sincere with him, as he had never been with anyone in his entire life. He had wanted to confess to Ivan all the sufferings of his conscience, to speak with humility of his own vile and bitter weakness.
    Let Vanya pass judgment on him. If he could, Vanya would understand; if he could, he would forgive. And if Vanya could not understand and forgive, well then, so be it. He had felt moved; tears had clouded his eyes as he repeated to himself Nekrasov’s famous lines:
    The son knelt down before the father;
He washed the old man’s feet.
    He had wanted to say to his cousin, “Vanya, Vanechka, this sounds wild and crazy, but I envy you, I envy you because you did not have to sign vile letters in your terrible camp. You never voted for the execution of innocent men; you never made vile speeches...”
    And suddenly, almost the moment he caught sight of Ivan, a totally opposite feeling had appeared inside him. The man in the padded jacket, in soldier’s boots, with a face eaten away by the cold and the
makhorka
-fille d air of a crowded camp barrack—this man had seemed alien, unkind, hostile.
    A similar feeling had arisen in him during his trips abroad. It had seemed unthinkable to speak to well-groomed foreigners about his doubts; it had been impossible for him to share with them the bitterness of his own sufferings.
    He had spoken to foreigners not about his anxieties but only about what was central and indisputable—about the historic achievements of the Soviet State. He had defended his Motherland—and himself—against them.
    Could he ever have imagined that Ivan would evoke in him a similar feeling? Why? How? But this was indeed what had happened.
    He felt now that Ivan had come to him in order to strike a line through the whole of his life. Any moment now—and Ivan would humiliate him; he would talk down to him, he would treat him with condescension and arrogance.
    And he desperately wanted to knock some sense into Ivan, to explain to him that everything had changed and begun anew, that all the old values had been deleted, that Ivan himself had been vanquished and broken, that it was not by chance that Ivan’s fate had turned out so bitter. Yes, yes, a gray-haired student—a loser...Who knows what he had been through? And what still lay ahead of him?
    And it must have been just because Nikolay Andreyevich so passionately and obstinately wanted to say these things to Ivan that he ended up saying exactly the opposite:
    â€œWho’d have believed everything could turn out so well? As regards what really matters, Vanya, you and I are equals. And I want to say one thing to you: if ever you have the feeling that you’ve lost whole decades and that your life has been wasted, if ever you feel like this when you meet people who have spent their lives writing books and suchlike rather than felling trees and digging the earth—don’t even give this feeling the time of day! In what really matters, Vanechka, you are the equal of all those who have moved science forward, the equal of all those who have succeeded in their life and work.”
    And he felt his voice tremble with emotion and his heart ache with sweetness.
    He saw Ivan’s embarrassment; he saw tears of agitation once again cloud his wife’s eyes.
    He did, in truth, love Ivan. He loved him. He had loved him all of his life.
    Listening to Nikolay Andreyevich trying to cheer up his unfortunate cousin, Maria Pavlovna felt that she had never before so fully sensed the strength of her husband’s soul. Yes, she herself had no doubt who was the