We the Living (11 page)

An amphitheater of crowded benches rose like a dam, and the waves of students overflowed onto the steps of the aisles, the window sills, the low cabinets, the thresholds of the open doorways.

A young speaker stood on the platform, rubbing his hands solicitously, like a sales clerk at a counter. His face looked like an advertisement that had stayed in a shop window too long: a little more color was needed to make his hair blond, his eyes blue, his skin healthy. His pale lips made no frame for the dark hole of his mouth which he opened wide as he barked words like military commands at his attentive audience.

“Comrades! The doors of science are open to us, sons of toil! Science is now in our own calloused hands. We have outgrown that old bourgeois prejudice about the objective impartiality of science. Science is not impartial. Science is a weapon of the class struggle. We’re not here to further our petty personal ambitions. We have outgrown the slobbering egoism of the bourgeois who whined for a personal career. Our sole aim and purpose in entering the Red Technological Institute is to train ourselves into efficient fighters in the vanguard of Proletarian Culture and Construction!”

The speaker left the platform, rubbing his hands. Some hands in the audience clapped noisily. Most hands remained in the pockets of old coats, under the desks, silent.

Kira leaned toward a freckled girl beside her and asked: “Who is he?”

The girl whispered: “Pavel Syerov. Of the Communist Cell. Party member. Be careful. They have spies everywhere.”

The students sat in a huddled mass rising to the ceiling, a tight mass of pale faces and old, shapeless overcoats. But there was an unseen line dividing them, a line that drew no straight boundary across the benches, but zigzagged over the room, a line no one could see, but all felt, a line as precise and merciless as a sharp knife. One side wore the green student caps of the old days, discarded by the new rulers, wore them proudly, defiantly, as an honorary badge and a challenge; the other side wore red kerchiefs and trim, military leather jackets. The first faction, the larger one, sent speakers to the platform who reminded their audience that students had always known how to fight tyranny, no matter what color that tyranny was wearing, and a thunder of applause rolled from under the ceiling, down to the platform steps, an applause too loud, too long, earnest, hostile, challenging, as the only voice left to the crowd, as if their hands said more than their voices dared to utter. The other faction watched them silently, with cold, unsmiling eyes. Its speakers bellowed belligerently about the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, ignoring the sudden laughter that seemed to burst from nowhere, and the impudent sunflower-seed shells sent expertly at the speaker’s nose.

They were young and too confident that they had nothing to fear. They were raising their voices for the first time, while the country around them had long since spoken its last. They were graciously polite to their enemies and their enemies were graciously polite and called them “comrades.” Both knew the silent struggle of life or death; but only one side, the smaller, knew whose victory was to come. Young and confident, in their leather jackets and red kerchiefs, they looked with a deadly tolerance at those others, young and confident, too, and their tolerance had the cold glint of a hidden bayonet they knew to be coming.

Pavel Syerov bent toward his neighbor, a slight young man with a narrow, consumptive face, and whispered: “So that’s the kind of speeches they make here. What a task we have awaiting us! Had anyone dared that at the front. . . .”

“The front, Comrade Syerov,” answered the soft, expressionless voice of his companion, “has changed. The external front is conquered. It’s on the internal front that we have to dig our trenches now.”

He bent closer to Comrade Syerov. His long, thin hands were pressed to the desk; he barely raised one finger and moved it slowly, indicating the auditorium from wall to wall. “On the internal front,” he whispered, “there are no bombs, no machine guns. When our enemies fall—there is no blood, no cry. The world never knows when they were killed. Sometimes, they do not know it themselves. This day, Comrade Syerov, belongs to the fighters of Red Culture.”

When the last speech had been heard, a vote was taken. Candidates left the room in turn, while others made short speeches about them; then hands were raised, and students standing on tables, waving pencils, counted the votes.

Kira saw Victor going out and heard the speech of his loyal supporter about the wisdom of Comrade Victor Dunaev who was guided by a spirit of understanding and cooperation; both factions applauded; both factions voted for Comrade Dunaev. Kira did not.

“Candidate Pavel Syerov will kindly leave now,” the chairman of the meeting announced. “Word is given to Comrade Presniakova.”

To the clatter of applause, Comrade Sonia leaped to the platform, tore off her red kerchief and shook her short, bristling mane of hair with spirited abandon.

“Just Comrade Sonia!” she greeted her audience. “Hearty proletarian greetings to all! And—particularly—particularly to our comrade women! There’s no sight I like better than a new woman student, a woman emancipated from the old slavery of dishes and diapers. So here I am—Comrade Sonia—ready to serve you all!” She waited for the applause to stop. “Comrade students! We’ve got to stand up for our rights. We’ve got to learn to speak our proletarian will and make our enemies take notice. We’ve got to stamp our proletarian boot into their white throats and their treacherous intentions. Our Red schools are for Red students. Our Students’ Council must stand on guard over proletarian interests. It’s up to you to elect those whose proletarian loyalty is beyond doubt. You’ve heard Comrade Syerov speak. I’m here to tell you that he’s an old fighter in the Communist ranks, a Party member since before the revolution, a soldier of the Red Army. Let us all vote for a good proletarian, a Red soldier, the hero of Melitopol, Comrade Pavel Syerov!”

Through the roll of applause, her heavy shoes clattered down the platform steps, her stomach shaking, her broad face open in a huge grin, the back of one hand wiping perspiration from under her nose.

Comrade Syerov was elected; so was Comrade Sonia; so was Comrade Victor Dunaev; but so were members of the green cap faction—two-thirds of the new Students’ Council.

“And to close the meeting, comrades,” shouted the chairman, “we’ll sing our old song, ‘Days of Our Life.’ ”

A discordant chorus boomed solemnly:

It was an old drinking song grown to the dignity of a students’ anthem; a slow, mournful tune with an artificial gaiety in the roll of its spiritless notes, born long before the revolution in the stuffy rooms where unshaved men and mannish women discussed philosophy and with forced bravado drank cheap vodka to the futility of life.

Kira frowned; she did not sing; she did not know the old song and did not want to learn it. She noticed that the students in leather jackets and red kerchiefs kept silent, too.

When the song ended, Pavel Syerov shouted: “Now, comrades, our answer!”

For the first time in Petrograd, Kira heard the “Internationale.” She tried not to listen to its words. The words spoke of the damned, the hungry, the slaves, of those who had been nothing and shall be all; in the magnificent goblet of the music, the words were not intoxicating as wine; they were not terrifying as blood; they were gray as dish water.

But the music was like the marching of thousands of feet, measured and steady, like drums beaten by unvarying, unhurried hands. The music was like the feet of soldiers marching into the dawn that is to see their battle and their victory; as if the song rose from under the soldiers’ feet, with the dust of the road, as if the soldiers’ feet played it upon the earth.

The tune sang a promise, calmly, with the calm of an immeasurable strength, and then, tense with a restrained, but uncontrollable ecstasy, the notes rose, trembling, repeating themselves, too rapt to be held still, like arms raised and waving in the sweep of banners.

It was a hymn with the force of a march, a march with the majesty of a hymn. It was the song of soldiers bearing sacred banners and of priests carrying swords. It was an anthem to the sanctity of strength.

Everyone had to rise when the “Internationale” was played.

Kira stood smiling at the music. “This is the first beautiful thing I’ve noticed about the revolution,” she said to her neighbor.

“Be careful,” the freckled girl whispered, glancing around nervously, “someone will hear you.”

“When all this is over,” said Kira, “when the traces of their republic are disinfected from history—what a glorious funeral march this will make!”

“You little fool! What are you talking about?”

A man’s hand grasped Kira’s wrist and wheeled her around.

She stared up into two gray eyes that looked like the eyes of a tamed tiger; but she was not quite sure whether it was tamed or not. There were four straight lines on his face: two eyebrows, a mouth and a scar on his right temple.

For one short second, they looked at each other, silent, hostile, startled by each other’s eyes.

“How much,” asked Kira, “are you paid for snooping around?”

She tried to disengage her wrist. He held it. “Do you know the place for little girls like you?”

“Yes—where men like you wouldn’t be let in through the back door.”

“You must be new here. I’d advise you to be careful.”

“Our stairs are slippery and there are four floors to climb, so be careful when you come to arrest me.”

He dropped her wrist. She looked at his silent mouth; it spoke of many past battles louder than the scar on his forehead; it also spoke of many more to come.

The “Internationale” rang like soldiers’ feet beating the earth.

“Are you exceedingly brave?” he asked. “Or just stupid?”

“I’ll let you find that out.”

He shrugged, turned and walked away. He was tall and young. He wore a cap and a leather jacket. He walked like a soldier, his steps deliberate and very confident.

Students sang the “Internationale,” its ecstatic notes rising, trembling, repeating themselves.

“Comrade,” the freckled girl whispered, “what have you done?”

The first thing that Kira heard when she rang the Dunaevs’ door bell, was Maria Petrovna’s cough. Then, the key turned. Then, a wave of smoke struck Kira in the face. Through the smoke, she saw Maria Petrovna’s tear-filled eyes and her swollen hand covering her mouth, shaking with a violent cough.

“Come in, come in, Kira darling,” Maria Petrovna hissed. “Don’t be afraid. It’s not a fire.”

Kira walked into the gray fog that bit her eyelids like a strong onion; Maria Petrovna shuffled after her, painfully spurting words and coughs: “It’s the stove . . . that Soviet wood . . . we got . . . won’t burn . . . so damp you could . . . breed polliwogs. . . . Don’t take your . . . coat off, Kira . . . it’s too cold. . . . We have the windows open.”

“Is Irina at home?”

“She certainly is,” Irina’s clear, bright voice came from somewhere in the fog, “if you can find her.”

In the dining room, the big double-paneled windows had been sealed for the winter; but one small panel was open; a whirlpool of smoke spun around it, fighting the cold fresh air from the street. Irina sat at the table, her winter coat thrown over her shoulders, blowing at her stiff, blue fingers.

Maria Petrovna found a trembling little shadow in the corner behind the buffet and dragged her out. “Acia, say how-do-you-do to cousin Kira.”

Acia stared up sullenly, her red eyes and little wet nose showing above the collar of her father’s fur jacket.

“Acia, do you hear me? And where’s your handkerchief? Say how-do-you-do to cousin Kira.”

“How do you do,” Acia muttered, staring at the floor.

“Why aren’t you at school today, Acia?”

“Closed,” Maria Petrovna sighed. “The school’s closed. For two weeks. No wood.”

A door banged in the fog. Victor came in. “Oh, how do you do, Kira?” he said coldly. “Mother,
when
is this smoke going to stop? How can one be expected to study in this infernal atmosphere? Oh, I don’t care. If I don’t pass the examinations, there’ll be no bread cards for a certain family!” The door banged louder as he went out.

Kira sat watching Irina sketch. Irina studied Art; she devoted her time to solemn research into the ancient masterpieces of the museums; but her quick hand and mischievous eyes produced the impudent art of the newspapers. She sketched cartoons whenever she was supposed to, and at any other time. A drawing board on her lap, throwing her head and hair back once in a while for a swift glance at Acia through the smoke, she was sketching her little sister. On the paper, Acia was transformed into a goblin with huge ears and stomach, riding on the back of a snail.

Vasili Ivanovitch came home from the market. He was smiling happily. He had stood at the market all day and had sold the chandelier from their drawing room. He had managed to get a good price for it.