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all. You’ve eaten for the journey, so go on. Afterwards, who knows: your father might forgive you and calm down.’
    â€˜So that’s it then. You’re telling me to fuck off, your own son?’ he screeched, and started weeping shrilly, then suddenly hammering on the empty table, trying to crush it and smash it with his fist. ‘Take that! Take that! Get out! Get out! Go and rot! Go and rot!’
    Blood spurted. He held his hand up, stretching it out, showing it the way a child shows a little cut, and intoning in a meek, quiet voice:
    â€˜What have I done? Who have I killed, to be condemned like this, to have everything taken away from me? I love them, I love my father, I love them all! So why are they all killing me? She wanted to study, but I wouldn’t let her, but this other one will let her, he’s smarter, the child’s not his, he doesn’t mind … He’s got fine manners and I haven’t. He’s got the right approach, he read her poems, the snake, but I didn’t! Why, ma, why? Why did you have me? Why didn’t you and father get divorced – then I’d have a different life, I’d be different, everything would be different!’
    â€˜Yashka, listen, don’t you get started, do you hear me? You’ve done enough shouting. Stop it, or I’ll forget you’re my son,’ the mother said harshly. ‘Your wife left and now look at you, sitting there bellowing, drunk. You’ve done what you’ve done, you’ve got to understand that. And there’s no point bellowing, you can’t undo it. You have to live as things are, the way they’ve turned out. And why, why do you want to go chasing after her – have you lost your mind? You got your fingers burned once: do you want to get burned up completely? Live, there’s no one stopping you. Just live . If you want to croak, then you will. You know you don’t need a father or mother to do that. Get out of my sight, stop tormenting me.’
    Yakov wept, quiet now, almost radiant. The mother found a bandage and silently bound up his swollen hand. He asked her pitifully:
    â€˜Ma. What should I do? They’ll court-martial me, now. I had no right to abandon my post …’
    â€˜Well, now, we’re all equal before the law, and you left your unit voluntarily, you have to understand that,’ the mother reasoned seriously. ‘You go back, confess everything, tell them it was like this and that, admit your guilt, say it won’t happen again. Only don’t disgrace your father: don’t let the whole town know about it. And if you don’t go away, he’ll hand you in himself. But if it’s voluntary, with a confession, they’ll forgive you, and no one will even notice. You’re not some private after all: you’re an officer, they won’t want to disgrace themselves. You haven’t spent all your money on drink, have you? Have you enough left for a ticket? Well, look here, I’ll give you some for the train, but if you spend it on drink, don’t you come back, I won’t open the door …’
    The sight of this hunted man who was called his brother roused a scornful disbelief in Matiushin, as if he knew this man was only pretending and wasn’t in pain at all. He couldn’t forgive his brother for the words he had blurted out so thoughtlessly – and he sat there waiting for this unwelcome, drooling man to be gone from the table and the house.
    Yakov vanished from their turbid period of hard times. Three years later, a zinc coffin arrived for burial in Yelsk from a foreign war too far away to be heard: that was how they found out that all that time Yakov had existed, lived and fought. Liudmila disappeared without trace: the family heard nothing more about her and Alyonushka after Yakov came to Yelsk and was cursed by his father. When they got the death notice, Grigorii Ilich was shocked to think that his son