We the Living (20 page)

The captain’s nose pointed to a name. Kira saw the giant’s eyes widen in a strange expression she could not understand.

“Who’s the girl?” he asked.

“Don’t know,” the captain answered. “She’s not on our passenger list. She came at the last minute—with him.”

“Seventeen of them counter-revolutionary rats that tried to sneak out of the country, Comrade Timoshenko,” said a sailor.

Comrade Timoshenko chuckled, and his fist struck the muscles under his striped sweater. “Thought you could get away, eh?—from Stepan Timoshenko of the Red Baltfleet?”

The captain stared at his shoes.

“Keep your eyes and your guns ready,” said Comrade Timoshenko. “Any funny business—shoot their guts out.”

He grinned up at the fog, his teeth gleaming, his tanned neck open to the cold, and walked away, whistling.

When the two ships began to move, Comrade Timoshenko came back. He passed by Leo and Kira in the crowd of prisoners on the wet, glistening deck, and stopped, looking at them for a second, an inexplicable expression in his dark, round eyes. He passed and came back and said aloud to no one in particular, his thumb pointing at Kira: “The girl’s all right. He kidnapped her.”

“But I’m telling you . . .” Kira began.

“Make your little whore keep quiet,” Timoshenko said slowly; and there was something like understanding in the glance he exchanged with Leo.

They saw the skyline of Petrograd rise like a long, low string of houses stretched in a single row at the edge of an immense, frozen sky. The dome of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, a pale gold ball sliced in half, looked like a weary moon setting in the smoke of chimneys.

Leo and Kira sat on a coil of ropes. Behind them, a pock-marked sailor smoked a cigarette, his hand on his gun.

They did not hear the sailor move away. Stepan Timoshenko approached them. He looked at Kira and whispered:

“When we land—there’ll be a truck waiting. The boys will be busy. I just have a hunch they’ll have their backs turned. When they do—you start going—and keep going.”

“No,” said Kira, “I’ll stay with him.”

“Kira! You . . .”

“Don’t be a damn little fool. You can’t help him.”

“You won’t get any confessions from him—for my sake.”

Timoshenko chuckled: “He has no confessions to make. And I don’t want children mixed in with something they don’t understand a damn about. See that she’s gone when we reach the truck, citizen.”

Kira looked into the dark, round eyes; they leaned close to her and words hissed, in a whisper, through the white teeth: “It’s easier to get one—than two—out of the G.P.U. I’ll be there around four this afternoon. Come and ask for Stepan Timoshenko. Maybe I’ll have news for you. No one’ll hurt you. Gorokhovaia 2.”

He did not wait for an answer. He walked away and slapped the pock-marked sailor in the jaw for leaving the prisoners alone.

Leo whispered: “Do you want to make it harder for me? You’ll go. Also—you’ll stay away from Gorokhovaia 2.”

When houses rose close over the mast, he kissed her. It was hard to tear her lips off his, as hard as off frozen glass.

“Kira, what’s your name?” he whispered.

“Kira Argounova. And yours?”

“Leo Kovalensky.”

“At Irina’s. We talked and didn’t notice the time and it was too late to come home.”

Galina Petrovna sighed indifferently, her nightgown trembling on her shoulders in the cold anteroom. “And why this homecoming at seven in the morning? I suppose you awakened your Aunt Marussia and poor Marussia with her cough. . . .”

“I couldn’t sleep. Aunt Marussia didn’t hear me.”

Galina Petrovna yawned and shuffled back to her bedroom. Kira had stayed overnight at her cousin’s several times; Galina Petrovna had not been worried.

Kira sat down and her hands fell limply. There were so many hours to wait till four in the afternoon. She should be terrified, she thought, and she was; but under the terror there was something without name or words, a hymn without sound, something that laughed, even though Leo was locked in a cell on Gorokhovaia 2. Her body still felt as if it were holding him close to her.

House number 2 on Gorokhovaia Street was a pale green, the color of pea soup. Its paint and plaster were peeling. Its windows had no curtains and no iron bars. The windows looked quietly upon a quiet side street. It was the Petrograd Headquarters of the G.P.U.

There were words that people did not like to mention; they felt a superstitious fear in uttering their sounds, as when they spoke of a desolate cemetery, a haunted house, the Spanish Inquisition, Gorokhovaia 2. Many nights had passed over Petrograd; in the nights there had been many steps, many ringing door bells, many people gone never to be seen again; the flow of a silent terror swelled over the city, hushing voices to whispers; the flow had a heart, from which it came, to which it returned; that heart was Gorokhovaia 2.

It was a building like any of its neighbors; across the street, behind similar windows, families were cooking millet and playing the gramophone; at its corner, a woman was selling cakes; the woman had pink cheeks and blue eyes; the cakes had a golden crust and smelt of warm grease; a poster on a lamp post advertised the new cigarette of the Tobacco Trust. But as Kira walked toward that building, she saw people passing by its green walls without looking up, with tensely casual expressions, their steps hurrying involuntarily, as if afraid of their presence, of their eyes, of their thoughts. Behind the green walls was that which no one wanted to know.

The door was open. Kira walked in, her hands in her pockets, slouching deliberately, indifferently. There was a wide stairway inside, and corridors, and offices. There were many people, hurrying and waiting, as in all Soviet government buildings; there were many feet shuffling down bare floors, but not many voices. On the faces—there were no tears. Many doors were closed; the faces were set and closed like the doors.

Kira found Stepan Timoshenko sitting on a desk in an office and he grinned at her.

“It’s just as I thought,” he said. “They have nothing on him. It’s just his father. Well, that’s past. Had they got him two months ago—it would’ve been the firing squad and not many questions asked. But now—well, we’ll see.”

“What has he done?”

“Him? Nothing. It’s his father. Heard of the conspiracy of Professor Gorsky, two months ago? The old fool wasn’t in it—how could he, being blind?—but he hid Gorsky in his house. Well, he paid for it.”

“Who was Leo’s father?”

“Old Admiral Kovalensky.”

“The one who . . .” Kira gasped and stopped.

“Yeah. The one who was blinded in the war—and was shot.”

“Oh!”

“Well, I wouldn’t have done it—not that time. But I’m not the only one to have the say. Well, you don’t make a revolution with white gloves on.”

“But if Leo had nothing to do with it, why . . .”

“At the time—they’d have shot anyone that knew anyone in the conspiracy. Now—they’ve cooled off. It’s past. He’s lucky that way. . . . Don’t stare like a little fool. If you’d worked here, you’d know what difference time, and days, and hours can make here. Well, that’s the way we work. Well, what damn fool thinks that a revolution is all perfumed with cologne?”

“Then—you can let him . . .”

“I don’t know. I’ll try. We’ll investigate. Then there’s the business of trying to leave the country illegally. But that—I think I can. . . . We don’t fight children. Especially fool children who find time for love right on a spewing volcano.”

Kira looked into the round eyes; they had no expression; but the big mouth was grinning; he had a short nose that turned up, and wide, insolent nostrils.

“You’re very kind,” she said.

“Who’s kind?” he laughed. “Stepan Timoshenko of the Red Baltfleet? Do you remember the October days of 1917? Ever heard of what went on in the Baltic fleet? Don’t shudder like a cat. Stepan Timoshenko was a Bolshevik before a lot of these new punks had time to dry the milk behind their ears.”

“Can I see him?”

“No. Not a chance. No visitors allowed to that bunch.”

“But then . . .”

“But then you go home and stay there. And don’t worry. That’s all I wanted to tell you.”

“I have a friend who has connections, I think, who could . . .”

“You keep your mouth shut and don’t drag no connections into this. Sit still for two or three days.”

“That long!”

“Well, that’s not as long as never seeing him again. And don’t worry, we’ll keep him locked up for you—with no women around.”

He got off the desk, and grinned. Then his lips fell into a straight line; he towered over Kira, looking straight into her eyes, and his eyes were not gay. He said: “When you get him back, keep your claws on him. If you haven’t any—grow some. He’s not an easy stud. And don’t try to leave the country. You’re in this Soviet Russia; you may hate it, and you may choke, but in Soviet Russia you’ll stay. I think you have the claws for him. Watch him. His father loved him.”

Kira extended her hand. It disappeared in Stepan Timoshenko’s tanned fist.

At the door she turned and asked softly: “Why are you doing this?”

He was not looking at her; he was looking out the window. He answered: “I’ve gone through the war in the Baltic Fleet. Admiral Kovalensky was blinded in service in the Baltic Fleet. He was not the worst commander we had. . . . Get out of here!”

Lydia said: “She twists on her mattress all night long. You’d think we had mice in the house. I can’t sleep.”

Galina Petrovna said: “I believe you’re a student, Kira Alexandrovna? Or am I mistaken? You haven’t been at the Institute for three days. Victor said so. Would you condescend to inform us what kind of new foolishness is this that’s come over you?”

Alexander Dimitrievitch said nothing. He awakened with a start, for he had dozed off, a half-filled saccharine tube in his hand.

Kira said nothing.

Galina Petrovna said: “Look at those circles under her eyes. No respectable girl looks like that.”

“I knew it!” Lydia yelled. “I knew it! She’s put eight saccharine crystals into that tube again!”