He had taken only a few steps in the world. He still needed his voice–he would have asked Aunt Sonya about those wolf-like eyes. He could see eyes peering through the glass Roze’s inquisitive eyes had momentarily met David’s. He could see people settling onto the ground he could see mouths that were toothless and mouths with white teeth and gold teeth he could see a thing stream of blood flowing from a nostril.

The half-dead boy was still breathing, but the air he took in only drove life away. Her feelings towards him were so simple that she no longer needed words and eyes. The boy’s movements filled her with pity. She stood there–mute, blind, her eyes still open. The bells ringing in her head became deafening she wanted to concentrate on one last thought, but was unable to articulate this thought. She was still breathing, but breathing was hard work and she was running out of strength. If someone had blinded her, she would have felt no sense of loss. Her eyes–which had read Homer, Izvestia, Huckleberry Finn and Mayne Reid, that had looked at good people and bad people, that had seen the geese in the green meadows of Kursk, the stars above the observatory at Pulkovo, the glitter of surgical steel, the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, tomatoes and turnips in the bins at market, the blue water of Issyk-Kul–her eyes were no longer of any use to her. When David moved his head and neck, it didn’t make Sofya Levinson want to turn and see what he was looking at. Speech was no longer of any use to people, nor was action action is directed towards the future and there no longer was any future. The shuffling quietened down all you could hear were occasional screams, groans and barely audible words. It looked like a grey rat, but he realized it was a fan beginning to turn. High up, behind a rectangular metal grating in the wall, David saw something stir. David watched the door close: gently, smoothly, as though drawn by a magnet, the steel door drew closer to its steel frame.

Life and fate vasily grossman review