We the Living (25 page)

She did not want to conceal it forever. The two men had to meet. She feared that meeting, a little. She remembered that one of them was the son of an executed father; the other one—a member of the G.P.U. Vava’s party was a convenient occasion: the two would meet; she would watch their reac tions; then, perhaps, she could bring Andrei to her house; and if, at the party, he heard the truth about her—well, she thought, so much the better.

Meeting him in the library of the Institute, she asked: “Andrei, would a bourgeois party frighten you?”

“Not if you’ll be there to protect me—if that’s an invitation.”

“I’ll be there. And it is an invitation. Saturday night. Lydia and I are going. And two men. You’re one of them.”

“Fine—if Lydia is not too afraid of me.”

“The other one—is Leo Kovalensky.”

“Oh.”

“I
didn’t
know his address
then
, Andrei.”

“I
didn’t
ask you, Kira. And it does not matter.”

“Call for us at nine-thirty, at the house on Moika.”

“I remember your address.”

“My . . . oh, yes, of course.”

Vava Milovskaia met her guests in the anteroom.

Her smile was radiant; her black eyes and black curls sparkled like the patent leather of the narrow belt around her slim waistline; and the delicate patent leather flowers on her shoulder—the latest Soviet fashion—sparkled like her eyes.

The guests entered, logs of wood under their arms. A tall, stern maid in black, with stiff white apron and cap, silently received the logs.

“Kira! Lydia! Darlings! So glad! How are you?” Vava fluttered.

“I’ve heard so much about you, Leo, that I’m really frightened,” she acknowledged the introduction, her hand in Leo’s; even Lydia understood Leo’s answering glance; as to Vava, she caught her breath and stepped back a little, and looked at Kira. But Kira paid no attention.

To Andrei, Vava said: “So you’re a Communist? I think that’s charming. I’ve always said that Communists were just like other people.”

The large drawing room had not been heated all winter. The fire had just been lit. A fretful smoke struggled up the chimney, escaping back into the room once in a while. A gray fog hung over the neatly polished mirrors, the freshly dusted tables proudly displaying careful rows of worthless knick-knacks; a damp odor of mildewed wood rose to destroy the painful dignity of a room too obviously prepared for guests.

The guests sat huddled in corners, shivering under old shawls and sweaters, tense and self-conscious and too carelessly nonchalant in their old best clothes. They kept their arms pressed to their sides to hide the holes in their armpits; elbows motionless on their knees—to hide rubbed patches; feet deep under chairs—to hide worn felt boots. They smiled vacantly without purpose, laughed too loudly at nothing in particular, timid and uncomfortable and guiltily conscious of a forbidden purpose, the forgotten purpose of gaiety. They eyed the fireplace wistfully, longing and reluctant to seize upon the best seats by the fire. Everybody was cold and everybody wanted desperately to be gay.

The only one whose bright, loud gaiety seemed effortless was Victor. His wide stride bounced from group to group, offering the tonic of a ringing voice and a resplendent smile: “This way, ladies and gentlemen. . . . Move over to this lovely fire. We’ll be warm in an instant. . . . Ah! my charming cousins, Kira and Lydia! . . . Delighted, Comrade Taganov, delighted! . . . Here’s a lovely armchair, Lydia darling, I save it specially for you. . . . Rita dear, you remind me of the heroine in the new Smirnov novel. Read it? Magnificent! Literature emancipated from outworn conceptions of form. A new woman—the free woman of the future. . . . Comrade Taganov, that project for the electrification of the entire R.S.F.S.R. is the most stupendous undertaking in the history of mankind. When we consider the amount of electrical power per citizen to be found in our natural resources. . . . Vava, these patent leather flowers are the latest word in feminine elegance. I understand that the most famous couturier of Paris has . . . I quite agree with you, Boris. Schopenhauer’s pessimism is entirely outmoded in the face of the healthy, practical philosophical conceptions of the rising proletariat and, no matter what our personal political convictions may be, we must all be objective enough to agree that the proletariat
is
the ruling class of the future. . . .”

With perfect assurance, Victor assumed the role of host. Vava’s dark eyes, that rested on him every time she flitted through the room, sanctioned his right by a long, adoring glance. She flew into the anteroom at every sound of the door bell, returning with a couple that smiled shyly, rubbing their cold hands, hiding the worn seams of their clothes. The solemn maid followed silently, carrying the logs as if she were serving a dish, and piled them neatly by the fireplace.

Kolya Smiatkin, a blond, chubby young man with a pleasant smile, who was filing clerk in the Tobacco Trust, said timidly: “They say . . . er . . . I heard . . . I’m afraid there’s going to be a reduction of staffs in our office—next month. Everybody’s whispering about it. Maybe I’ll get fired this time. Maybe not. Makes you feel sort of uncomfortable.”

A tall gentleman with a gold pince-nez and the intense eyes of an undernourished philosopher said lugubriously: “I have an excellent job in the archives. Bread almost every week. Only I’m afraid there’s a woman after the job—a Communist’s mistress—and . . .”

Someone nudged him and pointed at Andrei, who stood by the fireplace, smoking. The tall gentleman coughed and looked uncomfortable.

Rita Eksler was the only woman in the room who smoked. She lay stretched on a davenport, her legs high on its arm, her skirt high above her knees, red bangs low over pale green eyes, painted lips puckered insolently around a cigarette. Many things were whispered about her. Her parents had been killed in the revolution. She had married a commander of the Red Army and divorced him two months later. She was homely and used her homeliness with such skillful, audacious emphasis that the most beautiful girls feared her competition.

She stretched lazily and said, her voice slow, husky: “I’ve heard something amusing. A boy friend of mine wrote from Berlin . . .” All eyes turned to her, eagerly, reverently. “. . . and he tells me they have cafés in Berlin that are open all night—
all night,
elegant, eh?—they call them ‘Nacht Local.’ And in a famous, very naughty ‘Nacht Local,’ a famous dancer—Rikki Rey—danced with sixteen girls and with nothing on. I mean, positively nothing. So she got arrested. And the next night, she and her girls appeared in a military number, and they wore little chiffon trunks, two gold strings crossed over their breasts, and huge fur hats. And they were considered dressed. Elegant, eh?”

She laughed huskily at the awed crowd, but her eyes were on Leo; they had been on Leo ever since he had entered the room. Leo’s answer was a straight, mocking glance of understanding that insulted and encouraged Rita at the same time.

An anemic girl who sat sulkily in a corner, miserably hiding her feet and heavy felt boots, said with a dull stare, incredulous of her own words: “Abroad . . . I heard . . . they say they don’t have provision cards, or cooperatives, or anything, you just go into a store just when you feel like it and just buy bread or potatoes or anything, even sugar. Me, I don’t believe it myself.”

“And they say you buy your clothes without a trade-union order—abroad.”

“We have no future,” said the philosopher with the gold pince-nez. “We have lost it in materialistic pursuits. Russia’s destiny has ever been of the spirit. Holy Russia has lost her God and her Soul.”

“Did you hear about poor Mitya Vessiolkin? He tried to jump off a moving tramway, and he fell under, but he was lucky: just one hand cut off.”

“The West,” said Victor, “has no inner significance. The old civilization is doomed. It is filling new forms with a worn-out content that can no longer satisfy anyone. We may suffer hardships, but we are building something new. On our side—we have the future.”

“I have a cold,” said the anemic girl. “Mother got a union order for galoshes and there were none my size and we lost our turn and we have to wait three months and I got a cold.”

“Vera Borodina had her Primus explode on her. And she’s blind. And her face—you’d think she’d been in the war.”

“I bought myself a pair of galoshes in a private store,” Kolya Smiatkin said with a touch of pride. “And now I’m afraid but what I was too hasty. What with the reductions of staffs and. . . .”

“Vava, may I add wood to the fire? It’s still rather . . . cold.”

“The trouble with these days,” said Lydia, “is that there’s no spiritual enlightenment. People have forgotten the simple faith.”

“We had a reduction of staffs last month, but they didn’t touch me. I’m socially active. I’m teaching a class of illiterates—free—an hour every evening—as club duty—and they know I’m a conscientious citizen.”

“I’m vice-secretary of our club library,” said Kolya Smiatkin. “Takes three evenings a week—and no pay—but that kept me through the last reduction. But this time, I’m afraid it’s me or another guy—and the other guy, he’s vice-secretary of two libraries.”

“When we have a reduction of staffs,” said the anemic girl, “I’m afraid they’re going to throw out all the wives or husbands whose mates have employment. And Misha has such a fine job with the Food Trust. So we’re thinking . . . I’m afraid we’ll have to get divorced. Oh, that’s nothing. We can still go on living together. It’s being done.”

“My career is my duty to society,” said Victor. “I have selected engineering as the profession most needed by our great republic.”

He threw a glance at the fireplace to make sure that Andrei had heard.

“I’m studying philosophy,” said Leo, “because it’s a science that the proletariat of the R.S.F.S.R. does not need at all.”

“Some philosophers,” said Andrei slowly, in the midst of a sudden, stunned silence, “may need the proletariat of the R.S.F.S.R.”

“Maybe,” said Leo. “And maybe I’ll escape abroad, and sell my services to the biggest exploiter of a millionaire—and have an affair with his beautiful wife.”

“Without a doubt,” said Victor, “you’ll succeed in
that
.”

“Really,” Vava said hastily, “I think it’s still cold and we had better dance. Lydia darling?”

She threw a cajoling glance of inquiry at Lydia. Lydia sighed with resignation, rose and took the seat at the upright piano. She was the only accomplished musician in the crowd. She had a suspicion about the reason of her popularity at all the rare parties that were still being given. She rubbed her cold fingers and struck the piano keys with ferocious determination. She played “John Gray.”

Historians will write of the “Internationale” as the great anthem of the revolution. But the cities of the revolution had their own hymn. In days to come, the men of Petrograd will remember those years of hunger and struggle and hope—to the convulsive rhythm of “John Gray.”

It was called a fox-trot. It had a tune and a rhythm such as those of the new dances far across the border, abroad. It had very foreign lyrics about a very foreign John Gray whose sweetheart Kitty spurned his love for fear of having children, as she told him plainly. Petrograd had known sweeping epidemics of cholera; it had known epidemics of typhus, which were worse; the worst of its epidemics was that of “John Gray.”

Men stood in line at the co-operatives—and whistled “John Gray.” At the recreation hour in school, young couples danced in the big hall, and an obliging pupil played “John Gray.” Men hung on the steps of speeding tramways, humming desperately “John Gray.” Workers’ clubs listened attentively to a lecture on Marxism, then relaxed while a comrade showed his skill on a piano out of tune, playing “John Gray.”

Its gaiety was sad; its abrupt rhythm was hysterical; its frivolity was a plea, a moan for that which existed somewhere, forever out of reach. Through winter nights red flags whistled in the snowdrifts and the city prayed hopelessly with the short, sharp notes of “John Gray.”

Lydia played fiercely. Couples shuffled slowly across the drawing room in an old-fashioned two-step. Irina, who had no voice, sang the words, half singing, half coughing them out, in a husky moan, as she had heard a German singer do in vaudeville:

Kira danced in Leo’s arms. He whispered, looking down at her: “We would dance—like this—in a place of champagne glasses—and spangled gowns—and bare arms—a place called ‘Nacht Local.’ ”

She closed her eyes, and the strong body that led her expertly, imperiously, seemed to carry her to that other world she had seen, long ago, by a dark river that murmured the “Song of Broken Glass.”