We the Living (27 page)

They stayed in the city.

Galina Petrovna had made a bold decision and taken a job. She taught sewing in a school for workers’ children. She rocked through dusty miles in a tramway across the city to the factory district; she watched little grimy hands fashioning shirts and aprons and, sometimes, letters on a red banner; she talked of the importance of needlework and of the Soviet government’s constructive policy in the field of education.

Alexander Dimitrievitch slept most of the day. When he was awake, he played solitaire on the ironing board in the kitchen—and mixed painstakingly an imitation milk of water, starch and saccharine for Plutarch, the cat he had found in a gutter.

When Kira and Leo came to visit them, there was nothing to talk about. Galina Petrovna spoke too shrilly and too fast—about the education of the masses and the sacred calling of the intelligentsia in serving their less enlightened brothers. Lydia talked about the things of the spirit. Alexander Dimitrievitch said nothing. Galina Petrovna had long since dropped all hints related to the institution of marriage. Only Lydia was flustered when Leo spoke to her; she blushed, embarrassed and thrilled.

Kira visited them because Alexander Dimitrievitch watched her silently when she came, with a feeble shadow of a smile as if, had it not been for a dull haze suddenly grown between him and the life around him, he would have been glad to see her.

Kira sat on a window sill and watched the first autumn rain on the sidewalk. Glass bubbles sprang up in an ink puddle, a ring around each bubble, and floated for a brief second, and burst helplessly like little volcanoes. Rain drummed dully against all the pavements of the city; it sounded like the distant purring of a slow engine with just one thin trickle of water through the rumble, like a faucet leaking somewhere close by.

One single figure walked in the street below. An old collar raised between hunched shoulders, hands in pockets, arms pressed tightly to his sides, he walked away—a lonely shadow, swaying a little—into the city of glistening roofs under a fog of thin, slanting rain.

Kira did not turn on the light. Leo found her in the darkness by the window. He pressed his cheek to hers and asked: “What’s the matter?”

She said softly: “Nothing. Just winter coming. A new year starting.”

“You’re not afraid, are you, Kira? We’ve stood it so far.”

“No,” said Kira. “I’m not afraid.”

The new year was started by the Upravdom.

“It’s like this, Citizen Kovalensky,” he said, shifting from foot to foot, crumpling his cap in both hands and avoiding Leo’s eyes. “It’s on account of the Domicile Norm. There’s a law about as how it’s illegal for two citizens to have three rooms, on account of overcrowding conditions seeing as there are too many people in the city, and there are overcrowding conditions and no place to live. The Gilotdel sent me a tenant with an order for a room, and he’s a good proletarian, and I got to give him one of your rooms. He can take the dining room and you can keep the other two. Also, this ain’t the time when people could live in seven rooms as some people used to.”

The new tenant was a meek, elderly little man who stammered, wore glasses and worked as bookkeeper for the shoe factory “Red Skorohod.” He left early in the morning and came home late at night. He cooked on his own Primus and never had any visitors.

“I won’t be in the way, Citizen Argounova,” he had said. “I won’t be in the way at all. It’s just only as regards the bathroom. If you’ll let me take a bath once a month—I’ll be most grateful. As to the other necessities, there’s a privy in the back yard, if you’ll excuse the mention. I won’t mind. I won’t annoy a lady.”

They moved their furniture out of the dining room into their remaining quarters and nailed the connecting door. When Kira cooked, in the drawing room, she asked Leo to remain in the bedroom.

“Self-preservation,” she told him, “for both of us.”

Andrei had spent the summer on a Party mission in the villages of the Volga.

He met Kira again at the Institute on the first day of the new semester. His suntan was a little deeper; the lines at the corners of his mouth were not a wound nor a scar, but looked like both.

“Kira, I knew I’d be glad to see you again. But I didn’t know that I’d be so . . . happy.”

“You’ve had a hard summer, haven’t you, Andrei?”

“Thank you for your letters. They’ve kept me cheerful.”

She looked at the grimness of his lips. “What have they done to you, Andrei?”

“Who?” But he knew that she knew. He did not look at her, but he answered: “Well, I guess everybody knows it. The villages—that’s the dark spot on our future. They’re not conquered. They’re not with us. They have a red flag over the local Soviet and a knife behind their backs. They bow, and they nod, and they snicker in their beards. They stick pictures of Lenin over the barns where they hide their grain from us. You’ve read in the papers about the Clubhouse they burned and the three Communists they burned in it—alive. I was there the next day.”

“Andrei! I hope you got them!”

He could not restrain a smile: “Why, Kira! Are you saying that about men who fight Communism?”

“But . . . but they could have done it to
you
.”

“Well, nothing happened to me, as you see. Don’t look at that scar on my neck. Just grazed. The fool wasn’t used to firearms. His aim wasn’t very good.”

The boss of the Gossizdat had five pictures on the walls of his office: one of Karl Marx, one of Trotsky, one of Zinoviev and two of Lenin. On his desk stood two small plaster busts: of Lenin and Karl Marx. He wore a high-collared peasant blouse of expensive black satin.

He looked at his manicured fingernails; then he looked at Leo. “I feel certain, Comrade Kovalensky, that you will welcome this opportunity to do your duty in our great cultural drive, as we all do.”

Leo asked: “What do you want?”

“This organization has taken the honorary post of
‘Cultchef ’
to a division of the Baltfleet. You understand what I mean, of course? In line with the new—and brilliant—move of the Party toward a wider spread of education and Proletarian Culture, we have accepted the position of ‘Cultural Chief’ to a less enlightened unit, as all institutions of note have done. We are thus responsible for the cultural advancement of our brave brothers of the Baltic Fleet. Such is our modest contribution to the gigantic rise of the new civilization for the new ruling class.”

“Fine,” said Leo. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“I think it is obvious, Comrade Kovalensky. We are organizing a free night school for our protégés. With your knowledge of foreign languages—I had a class of German in mind, twice a week—Germany is the cornerstone of our future diplomacy and the next step of the world revolution—and a class of English, once a week. Of course, you are not to expect any financial remuneration for this work, your services are to be donated, inasmuch as this is not an undertaking of the government, but our strictly voluntary gift to the State.”

“Since the beginning of the revolution,” said Leo, “I haven’t been buying gifts for anyone, neither for my friends—nor otherwise. I can’t afford them.”

“Comrade Kovalensky, did it ever occur to you to consider what we think of men who merely work for their pay and take no part in social activity in their spare time?”

“Did it ever occur to you that I have a life to live—in my spare time?”

The man at the desk looked at the five pictures on his walls. “The Soviet State recognizes no life but that of a social class.”

“I don’t think we shall go into a discussion of the subject.”

“In other words, you refuse to do your share?”

“I do.”

“Very well. This service is not compulsory. Oh, not in the least. Its meaning and novelty is the free will of those participating. I was merely thinking of your own good when I made the offer. I thought, in view of certain events in your past, that you’d be only too glad to. . . . Never mind. However, I must call to your attention the fact that Comrade Zoubikov of the Communist Cell had been rather unpleasant about a man of your social past on our pay roll. And when he hears about this. . . .”

“When he does,” said Leo, “tell him to come to me. I’ll give
him
a free lesson—if he cares for the subject.”