We the Living (10 page)

She said: “You’re so very unhappy.”

His face was so close she could feel his breath on her lips. “Who asked you for sympathy? I suppose you think you can make me like you? Well, don’t fool yourself. I don’t give a damn what I think of you and less what you think of me. I’m just like any other man you’ve had in your bed—and like any you will have.”

She said: “You mean you would like to be like any other man. And you would like to think that there haven’t been any other men—in my bed.”

He looked at her silently. He asked abruptly: “Are you a . . . street woman?”

She answered calmly: “No.”

He jumped to his feet. “Who are you, then?”

“Sit down.”

“Answer.”

“I’m a respectable little girl who studies at the Technological Institute, whose parents would throw her out of the house if they knew she had talked to a strange man on the street.”

He looked down at her; she sat on the steps at his feet, looking up at his face. He saw no fear and no appeal in her eyes, only an insolent calm. He asked: “Why did you do it?”

“I wanted to know you.”

“Why?”

“I liked your face.”

“You little fool! If I were someone else, I might have . . . acted differently.”

“But I knew you were not someone else.”

“Don’t you know that such things are not being done?”

“I don’t care.”

He smiled suddenly. He asked: “Want a confession from me?”

“Yes.”

“This is the first time I’ve ever tried to . . . to buy a woman.”

“Why did you try it tonight?”

“I didn’t care. I’ve walked for hours. There isn’t a house in this city that I can enter tonight.”

“Why?”

“Don’t ask questions. I couldn’t make myself approach one of . . . of those women. But you—I liked your strange smile. What were you doing on such a street at such an hour?”

“I quarreled with someone and I had no carfare and I went home alone—and lost my way.”

“Well, thank you for a most unusual evening. This will be a rare memory to take with me of my last night in the city.”

“Your—last night?”

“I’m going away at dawn.”

“When are you coming back?”

“Never—I hope.”

She got up slowly. She stood facing him. She asked: “Who are you?”

“Even if I trust you, I can’t tell you that.”

“I can’t let you go away forever.”

“Well, I would like to see you again. I’m not going far. I may be back in town.”

“I’ll give you my address.”

“Don’t. You’re not living alone. I can’t enter anyone’s house.”

“Can I come to yours?”

“I haven’t any.”

“But then. . . .”

“Let’s say that we’ll meet here again—in a month. Then, if I’m still alive, if I can still enter the city, I’ll be waiting here for you.”

“I’ll come.”

“November tenth. But let’s make it in daylight. At three o’clock in the afternoon. On these steps.”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s as crazy as our whole acquaintance. And now it’s time for you to go home. You shouldn’t be out at this hour.”

“But where will you go?”

“I’ll walk until dawn. It’s only a few more hours. Come on.”

She did not argue. He took her arm. She followed. They stepped over the bowed lances of the broken fence. The street was deserted. A cab driver on a distant corner raised his head at the sound of their steps. He signaled the cab. Four horseshoes struck forward, shattering the silence.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Leo. And yours?”

“Kira.”

The cab approached. He handed the driver a bill. “Tell him where you want to go,” he said.

“Good-bye,” said Kira, “—for a month.”

“If I’m still alive,” he answered, “—and if I don’t forget.”

She climbed to the seat, kneeling and facing the back of the carriage. As it slowly started away, her hatless hair in the wind, she watched the man who stood looking after her.

When the cab turned a corner, she remained kneeling, but her head dropped. Her hand lay on the seat, helpless, palm up; and she could feel the blood beating in her fingers.

GALINA PETROVNA MOANED, EVERY MORNING: “WHAT’S THE matter with you, Kira? You don’t care if you eat or not. You don’t care if you’re cold. You don’t hear when people talk to you. What’s the matter?”

In the evenings, Kira walked home from the Institute, and her eyes followed every tall figure, peering anxiously behind every raised collar, her breath stopping. She did not expect to find him in the city; she did not want to find him. She never worried whether he would come or not. She never wondered whether he liked her. She never had any thought of him beyond the one that he existed. But she found it hard to remember the existence of anything else.

Once, when she came home, the door was opened by Galina Petrovna with red, swollen eyes. “Have you got the bread?” was the first question thrown into the cold draft of the open door.

“What bread?” asked Kira.

“
What
bread? Your bread! The Institute bread! This is the day you get it! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten it!”

“I’ve forgotten it.”

“Oh, my Lord in Heaven!”

Galina Petrovna sat down heavily and her hands fell helplessly. “Kira, what’s the matter with you? She gets rations that aren’t enough to feed a cat and she forgets them! No bread! Oh, Lord merciful!”

In the dark dining room, Lydia sat at the window, knitting a woolen stocking by the light of the street lamp outside. Alexander Dimitrievitch drowsed, his head on the table.

“No bread,” announced Galina Petrovna. “Her highness forgot it.”

Lydia sneered. Alexander Dimitrievitch sighed and got up. “I’m going to bed,” he muttered. “You don’t feel so hungry when you sleep.”

“No dinner tonight. No millet left. The water pipes broke. No water in the house.”

“I’m not hungry,” said Kira.

“You’re the only one in the family with a bread card. But, Lord, you don’t seem to think anything of it!”

“I’m sorry, Mother. I’ll get it tomorrow.”

Kira lighted the wick. Lydia moved her knitting toward the little flame.

“Your father hasn’t sold a single thing today in that store of his,” said Galina Petrovna.

Lydia’s needles clicked in the silence.

The door bell rang sharply, insistently. Galina Petrovna shuddered nervously and hurried to open the door.

Heavy boots stamped across the anteroom. The Upravdom entered without being invited, his boots trailing mud on the dining-room floor. Galina Petrovna followed, anxiously clutching her shawl. He held a list in his hand.

“In regards to this water pipes business, Citizen Argounova,” he said, throwing the list on the table without removing his hat. “The house committee has voted a resolution to assess the tenants in proportion to their social standing, for the purpose of water pipes, to repair same, in addition to rent. Here’s a list of who pays what. Have the money in my office no later than ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Good night, citizen.”

Galina Petrovna locked the door after him and held the paper to the light, in a trembling hand.

The paper fell to the floor; Galina Petrovna’s face fell on her hands on the table.

“What’s the matter, Galina? How much is it?” Alexander Dimitrievitch’s voice called from the bedroom.

Galina Petrovna raised her head. “It’s . . . it’s not very much. Go on. Sleep. I’ll tell you tomorrow.” She had no handkerchief; she wiped her eyes with a corner of her shawl and shuffled into the bedroom.

Kira bent over a textbook. The little flame trembled, dancing on the pages. The only thing she could read or remember was not written in the book:

“. . . if I’m still alive—and if I don’t forget. . . .”

 

Students received bread cards and free tramway tickets. In the damp, bare offices of the Technological Institute, they waited in line to get the cards. Then, in the Students’ Co-operative, they waited in line to get the bread.

Kira had waited for an hour. The clerk at the counter shoved hunks of dried bread at the line moving slowly past him, and dipped his hand into a barrel to fish out the herring, and wiped his hand on the bread, and collected the wrinkled bills of paper money. The bread and herring disappeared, unwrapped, into brief cases filled with books. Students whistled merrily and beat tap steps in the sawdust on the floor.

The young woman who stood in line next to Kira, leaned suddenly against her shoulder with a friendly, confidential grin, although Kira had never seen her before. The young woman had broad shoulders and a masculine leather jacket; short, husky legs and flat, masculine oxfords; a red kerchief tied carelessly over short, straight hair; eyes wide apart in a round, freckled face; thin lips drawn together with so obvious and fierce a determination that they seemed weak; dandruff on the black leather of her shoulders.

She pointed at a large poster calling all students to a meeting for the election of the Students’ Council. She asked: “Going to the meeting this afternoon, comrade?”

“No,” said Kira.

“Ah, but you must go, comrade. By all means. Tremendously important. You have to vote, you know.”

“I’ve never voted in my life.”

“Your first year, comrade?”

“Yes.”

“Wonderful! Wonderful! Isn’t it wonderful?”

“What’s wonderful?”

“To start your education at a glorious time like this, when science is free and opportunity open to all. I understand, it’s all new to you and must seem very strange. But don’t be afraid, dear. I’m an old-timer here, I’ll help you.”

“I appreciate your offer, but . . .”

“What’s your name, dear?”

“Kira Argounova.”

“Mine’s Sonia. Just Comrade Sonia. That’s what everybody calls me. You know, we’re going to be great friends, I can feel it. There’s nothing I enjoy more than helping smart young students like you.”

“But,” said Kira, “I don’t remember saying anything particularly smart.”

Comrade Sonia laughed very loudly: “Ah, but I know girls. I know women. We, the new women who are ambitious to have a useful career, to take our place beside the men in the productive toil of the world—instead of the old kitchen drudgery—we must stick together. There is no sight I like better than a new woman student. Comrade Sonia will always be your friend. Comrade Sonia is everybody’s friend.”

Comrade Sonia smiled. She smiled straight into Kira’s eyes, as if taking, gently, irrevocably, those eyes and the mind behind them into her own hand. Comrade Sonia’s smile was friendly; a kindly, insistent, peremptory friendliness that took the first word and expected to keep it.

“Thank you,” said Kira. “What is it you want me to do?”

“Well, to begin with, Comrade Argounova, you must go to the meeting. We’re electing our Students’ Council for the year. It’s going to be a tough battle. There is a strong anti-proletarian element among our older students. Our class enemies, you know. Young students like you must support the candidates of our Communist Cell, who stand on guard over your interests.”

“Are you one of the Cell’s candidates, Comrade Sonia?”

Comrade Sonia laughed: “See? I told you you were smart. Yes, I’m one of them. Have been on the council for two years. Hard work. But what can I do? The comrade students seem to want me and I have to do my duty. You just come with me and I’ll tell you for whom to vote.”

“Oh,” said Kira. “And after that?”

“I’ll tell you. All Red students join some kind of social activity. You know, you don’t want to be suspected of bourgeois tendencies. I’m organizing a Marxist Circle. Just a little group of young students—and I’m the chairman—to learn the proper proletarian ideology, which we’ll all need when we go out into the world to serve the Proletarian State, since that’s what we’re all studying for, isn’t it?”

“Did it ever occur to you,” asked Kira, “that I may be here for the very unusual, unnatural reason of wanting to learn a work I like only because I like it?”

Comrade Sonia looked into the gray eyes of Comrade Argounova and realized that she had made a mistake. “Well,” said Comrade Sonia, without smiling, “as you wish.”

“I think I’ll go to the meeting,” said Kira, “and—I think I’ll vote.”