We the Living (23 page)

“Father, what has Kira . . .” Irina began.

“Irina, the subject is not open to argument.”

“The world’s all upside down,” said Maria Petrovna and coughed.

Victor looked at his father with a bright glance of mutual understanding. But Vasili Ivanovitch did not respond; he turned away deliberately; he had been avoiding Victor for many weeks.

Acia crouched in a corner behind the buffet, sniveling softly, hopelessly.

“Acia, come here,” Vasili Ivanovitch ordered.

She waddled toward him slowly, cringing, looking down at the tip of her nose, wiping her nose with her collar.

“Acia, why are your school reports as bad as ever?” Vasili Ivanovitch asked.

Acia did not answer and sniffled.

“What is it that’s happened to you again in arithmetic?”

“It’s the tractors.”

“The what?”

“The tractors. I didn’t know.”

“What didn’t you know?”

“The Selskosoyuz had twelve tractors and they divided them among six poor villages and how many did each village get?”

“Acia, how much is twelve divided by six?”

Acia stared at her nose and sniffled.

“At your age, Irina was always first in her class,” said Vasili Ivanovitch bitterly and turned away.

Acia ran to hide behind Maria Petrovna’s chair.

Vasili Ivanovitch left the room. Victor followed him to the kitchen. If Vasili Ivanovitch heard his steps following, he paid no attention. It was dark in the kitchen; the window pane was broken and the window had been covered with boards. Three narrow slits of light added three bright stripes to the long cracks of the floor. Vasili Ivanovitch’s shirts were piled under the sink. He bent slowly, and stuffed the shirts into a brass pan, and filled the pan with cold water. His big fist closed over a cake of bluish soap. Slowly, awkwardly, he rubbed the collar of a shirt. They had had to let the servant go; and Maria Petrovna was too weak to work.

“What’s the matter, Father?” Victor asked.

Vasili Ivanovitch answered without turning: “You know it.”

Victor protested too eagerly: “Why, Father, I haven’t the slightest idea! Have I done anything wrong lately?”

“Did you see that girl?”

“Kira? Yes. Why?”

“I thought I could trust in her as in my own soul. But it got her. The revolution got her. And—you’re next.”

“But, Father . . .”

“In my days, a woman’s virtue wasn’t dragged in the gutter for every passerby.”

“But Kira . . .”

“I suppose I’m old-fashioned. I was born that way and that’s the way I’ll die. But all of you young people are rotted before you’re ripe. Socialism, Communism, Marxism, and to hell with decency!”

“But I, Father . . .”

“You. . . . It will get you in another way. I’ve been watching. Your friends for the last few weeks have been. . . . You came from a party this morning.”

“But surely you don’t object to a little party?”

“Who were the guests?”

“Some charming girls.”

“To be sure. Who else?”

Victor flicked a speck of dust off his sleeve and said: “A Communist or two.”

Vasili Ivanovitch said nothing.

“Father, let us be broad-minded. A little vodka with them can’t hurt me. But it can
help
me—a lot.”

Vasili Ivanovitch’s voice was stern as a prophet’s; bubbles gurgled in the cold water under his hands: “There are things with which one does not compromise.”

Victor laughed cheerfully and slipped his arm around the powerful, stooped shoulders: “Come on, old man, you and I can understand things together. You wouldn’t want me to sit down and fold my hands and surrender—because
they
hold the power, would you? Beat them at their own game—that’s what I’m going to do. Diplomacy—that’s the best philosophy of our days. It’s the century of diplomacy. You can’t object to that, can you? But you know me. It can’t touch me. It won’t get me. I’m still too much of a gentleman.”

Vasili Ivanovitch turned to him. A crack of light from the boarded window fell across his face. The face was not that of a prophet; the eyes under the heavy white brows were weary, helpless; the smile was timid. The smile was an effort; so were the words: “I know it, son. I trust you. I suppose—well, you know best. But these are strange days. And you—well, Irina and you are all I have left.”

Irina was the first visitor from Kira’s old world to her new home. Leo bowed gracefully, diffidently, but Irina looked straight at him, grinned and said openly:

“Well, I like you. But then, I expected to like you. And I hope you like me, because I’m the only one of your in-laws that you’ll see—for a long time. But they’ll all question me about you, you can be sure.”

They sat in the shadows of the large drawing room and talked about Rembrandt, whom Irina was studying; and about the new perfume Vava Milovskaia had received from a smuggler—real French perfume. Coty’s and fifty million rubles a bottle—and Irina had stolen a drop of it on her handkerchief—and Maria Petrovna had cried, smelling it; and about the American movie Irina had seen, in which women wore spangled gowns without sleeves—and there had been a shot of New York at night—real skyscrapers, floors and floors of lighted windows on the black sky—and she had stayed through two shows to see that shot, but it had been so brief—just a flash—she would like to draw New York.

She had picked up a book from the table and was sketching busily on the back of its white paper cover, her pencil flashing. When she finished, she threw the book to Kira across the room. Kira looked at the drawing: it was a sketch of Leo—standing erect, full figure, naked.

“Irina!”

“You may show it to him.”

Leo smiled, his lips drooping, looking at Irina inquisitively.

“That’s the state that fits you best,” she explained. “And don’t tell me that my imagination has flattered you—because it hasn’t. Clothes hide nothing from a—well, yes, an artist. Any objections?”

“Yes,” said Leo, “this book belongs to the Gossizdat.”

“Oh, well,” she tore the cover off swiftly, “tell them you’ve used the cover for a revolutionary poster.”

Alone with Kira for a moment, before leaving, Irina looked at her earnestly, curiously, almost timidly, and whispered: “Are you . . . happy?”

Kira said indifferently: “I’m happy.”

Kira seldom spoke of what she thought; and more seldom—of what she felt. There was a man, however, for whom she made an exception, both exceptions. She made other exceptions for him as well, and wondered dimly why she made them. Communists awakened fear in her, a fear of her own degradation if she associated, talked or even looked at them; a fear not of their guns, their jails, their secret, watchful eyes—but of something behind their furrowed foreheads, something they had—or, perhaps, it was something they didn’t have, which made her feel as if she were alone in the presence of a beast, its jaws gaping; whom she could never force to understand. But she smiled confidently up at Andrei Taganov; and pressed tightly against the wall of an empty auditorium at the Institute, her eyes radiant, her smile timid and trusting, like a child appealing to a guiding hand, she said: “I’m happy, Andrei.”

He had not seen her for many weeks. He smiled warmly, quietly, looking down into her eager eyes. “I’ve missed you, Kira.”

“I’ve missed you, Andrei. I . . . I’ve been busy.”

“I didn’t want to call on you. I thought you would prefer it if I never called at your house.”

“You see . . .” Then she stopped. She could not tell him. She could not bring him to her new home—to Leo’s home. Andrei could be dangerous; he was a member of the G.P.U.; he had a duty to fulfill; it was best not to tempt that duty. So she said only: “Yes, Andrei, I’d rather you would never call . . . at my house.”

“I won’t. But will you be more regular about your lectures? So that I can see you once in a while—and hear you say that you’re happy? I like to hear that.”

“Andrei, have you ever been happy?”

“I’ve never been unhappy.”

“Is that enough?”

“Well, I always know what I want. And when you know what you want—you go toward it. Sometimes you go very fast, and sometimes only an inch a year. Perhaps you feel happier when you go fast. I don’t know. I’ve forgotten the difference long ago, because it really doesn’t matter, so long as you move.”

“And if you want something toward which you can’t move?”

“I never did.”

“And if—on your way—you find a barrier that you don’t want to break?”

“I never have.”

She remembered suddenly: “Andrei, you haven’t even asked me why I’m happy.”

“Does it make any difference—so long as you are?”

He held her two hands, thin and trusting, in his five strong fingers.

The first signs of spring in Petrograd were tears and smiles: the men smiled, the houses dropped the tears. High on the roofs, the snow was melting, gray with city dust like dirty cotton, brittle and shining like wet sugar, and twinkling drops dripped slowly, trickled in little gurgling brooks from the mouths of drain pipes, and across the sidewalks, and into the gutters, rocking gently cigarette stubs and sunflower-seed shells. Men walked out of the houses and breathed deeply, and smiled, and did not know why they smiled, until they looked up and saw that above the roofs the sky was a feeble, hesitant, incredulous blue, a very pale blue, as if a painter had washed the color off his brush in a huge tub of water, and the water held only a drop of a promise.

Icy mush crunched under galoshes and the sun made white sparks in the black rubber toes; sleigh-runners grunted, cutting brown ridges; a voice yelled: “Saccharine, citizens!”; drops tapped the sidewalks steadily, persistently, like a soft, distant machine gun; a voice yelled: “Violets, citizens!”

Pavel Syerov bought a pair of new boots. He blinked in the sun down at Comrade Sonia and bought her a hot, shiny cabbage cake from a woman on a corner. She chewed it, smiling. She said: “At three o’clock—giving lecture at the Komsomol on ‘Our drive on the NEP front.’ At five o’clock—giving talk at the Club of the Rabfac, on ‘Proletarian Women and Illiteracy.’ At seven— discussion at the Party Club on ‘Spirit of the Collective.’ Why don’t you drop in at nine? Seems I never see you.”

He said: “Sonia, old pal, can’t take up your valuable time. People like you and me have no private life but that of our class duty.”

Lines stood at the doors of shoe stores; the trade unions were giving out cards for the purchase of galoshes.

Maria Petrovna stayed in bed most of the day and watched the sun on the glass of a closed window, and hid her handkerchiefs from the sight of all.

Comrade Lenin had had a second stroke and had lost his power of speech.
Pravda
said: “. . . no higher sacrifice to the cause of the Proletariat than a leader burning out his will, health and body in the superhuman effort of the responsibility placed upon his shoulders by the Workers and Peasants.”