We the Living (37 page)

They saved the money for many months and on a Sunday evening they bought two tickets to see “Bajadere,” advertised as the “latest sensation of Vienna, Berlin and Paris.”

They sat, solemn, erect, reverent as at a church service, Kira a little paler than usual in her gray silk dress, Leo trying not to cough, and they listened to the wantonest operetta from over there, from
abroad
.

It was very gay nonsense. It was like a glance straight through the snow and the flags, through the border, into the heart of that other world. There were colored lights, and spangles, and crystal goblets, and a real foreign bar with a dull glass archway where a green light moved slowly upward, preceding every entrance—a real foreign elevator. There were women in shimmering satin from a place where fashions existed, and people dancing a funny foreign dance called “Shimmy,” and a woman who did not sing, but barked words out, spitting them contemptuously at the audience, in a flat, hoarse voice that trailed suddenly into a husky moan—and a music that laughed defiantly, panting, gasping, hitting one’s ears and throat and breath, an impudent, drunken music, like the challenge of a triumphant gaiety, like the “Song of Broken Glass,” a promise that existed somewhere, that was, that could be.

The public laughed, and applauded, and laughed. When the lights went on after the final curtain, in the procession of cheerful grins down the aisles many noticed with astonishment a girl in a gray silk dress, who sat in an emptying row, bent over, her face in her hands, sobbing.

AT FIRST THERE WERE WHISPERS.

Students gathered in groups in dark corners and jerked their heads nervously at every approaching newcomer, and in their whispers one heard the words: “The Purge.”

In lines at co-operatives and in tramways people asked: “Have you heard about the Purge?”

In the columns of
Pravda
there appeared many mentions of the deplorable state of Red colleges and of the coming Purge.

And then, at the end of the winter semester, in the Technological Institute, in the University and in all the institutes of higher education, there appeared a large notice with huge letters in red pencil:

The notice directed all students to call at the office, receive questionnaires, fill them out promptly, have their Upravdom certify to the truth of the answers and return them to the Purging Committee. The schools of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics were to be cleaned of all socially undesirable persons. Those found socially undesirable were to be expelled, never to be admitted to any college again.

Newspapers roared over the country like trumpets: “Science is a weapon of the class struggle! Proletarian schools are for the Proletariat! We shall not educate our class enemies!”

There were those who were careful not to let these trumpets be heard too loudly across the border.

Kira received her questionnaire at the Institute, and Leo—his at the University. They sat silently at their dinner table, filling out the answers. They did not each much dinner that night. When they signed the questionnaires, they knew they had signed the death warrant of their future; but they did not say it aloud and they did not look at each other.

The main questions were:

 

Who were your parents?

What was your father’s occupation prior to the year 1917?

What was your father’s occupation from the year 1917 to the year 1921?

What is your father’s occupation now?

What is your mother’s occupation?

What did you do during the civil war?

What did your father do during the civil war?

Are you a Trade Union member?

Are you a member of the All-Union Communist Party?

 

Any attempt to give a false answer was futile; the answers were to be investigated by the Purging Committee and the G.P.U. A false answer was to be punished by arrest, imprisonment or any penalty up to the supreme one.

Kira’s hand trembled a little when she handed to the Purge Committee the questionnaire that bore the answer:

 

What was your father’s occupation prior to the year 1917?

Owner of the Argounov Textile Factory.

 

What awaited those who were to be expelled, no one dared to think; no one mentioned it; the questionnaires were turned in and the students waited for a call from the committee, waited silently, nerves tense as wires. In the long corridors of the colleges, where the troubled stream of students clotted into restless clusters, they whispered that one’s “social origin” was most important—that if you were of “bourgeois descent,” you didn’t have a chance—that if your parents had been wealthy, you were still a “class enemy,” even though you were starving—and that you must try, if you could, at the price of your immortal soul, if you had one, to prove your “origin from the work-bench or the plough.” There were more leather jackets, and red kerchiefs, and sunflower-seed shells in the college corridors, and jokes about: “My parents? Why, they were a peasant woman and two workers.”

It was spring again, and melting snow drilled the sidewalks, and blue hyacinths were sold on street corners. But those who were young had no thought left for spring and those who still thought were not young any longer.

Kira Argounova, head high, stood before the Purge Committee of the Technological Institute. At the table, among the men of the committee whom she did not know, sat three persons she knew: Comrade Sonia, Pavel Syerov, Andrei Taganov.

It was Pavel Syerov who did most of the questioning. Her questionnaire lay on the table before him. “So, Citizen Argounova, your father was a factory owner?”

“Yes.”

“I see. And your mother? Did she work before the revolution?”

“No.”

“I see. Did you employ servants in your home?”

“Yes.”

“I see.”

Comrade Sonia asked: “And you’ve never joined a Trade Union, Citizen Argounova? Didn’t find it desirable?”

“I have never had the opportunity.”

“I see.”

Andrei Taganov listened. His face did not move. His eyes were cold, steady, impersonal, as if he had never seen Kira before. And suddenly she felt an inexplicable pity for him, for that immobility and what it hid, although he showed not the slightest sign of what it hid.

But when he asked her a question suddenly, even though his voice was hard and his eyes empty, the question was a plea: “But you’ve always been in strict sympathy with the Soviet Government, Citizen Argounova, haven’t you?”

She answered very softly: “Yes.”

Somewhere, around a lamp, late in the night, amid rustling papers, reports and documents, a committee was holding a conference.

“Factory owners were the chief exploiters of the Proletariat.”

“Worse than landowners.”

“Most dangerous of class enemies.”

“We are performing a great service to the cause of the Revolution and no personal feelings are to interfere with our duty.”

“Order from Moscow—children of former factory owners are in the first category to be expelled.”

A voice asked, weighing every word: “Any exceptions to that rule, Comrade Taganov?”

He stood by a window, his hands clasped behind his back. He answered: “None.”

The names of those expelled were typewritten on a long sheet of paper and posted on a blackboard in the office of the Technological Institute.

Kira had expected it. But when she saw the name on the list:
“Argounova, Kira,”
she closed her eyes and looked again and read the long list carefully, to make sure.

Then she noticed that her brief case was open; she clasped the catch carefully; she looked at the hole in her glove and stuck her finger out, trying to see how far it would go, and twisted an unraveled thread into a little snake and watched it uncoil.

Then she felt that someone was watching her. She turned. Andrei stood alone in a window niche. He was looking at her, but he did not move forward, he did not say a word, he did not incline his head in greeting. She knew what he feared, what he hoped, what he was waiting for. She walked to him, and looked up at him, and extended her hand with the same trusting smile he had known on the same young lips, only the lips trembled a little.

“It’s all right, Andrei. I know you couldn’t help it.”

She had not expected the gratitude, a gratitude like pain, in his low voice when he answered: “I’d give you my place—if I could.”

“Oh, it’s all right. . . . Well . . . I guess I won’t be a builder after all. . . . I guess I won’t build any aluminum bridges.” She tried to laugh. “It’s all right, because everybody always told me one can’t build a bridge of aluminum anyway.” She noticed that it was harder for him to smile than for her. “And Andrei,” she said softly, knowing that he did not dare to ask it, “this doesn’t mean that we won’t see each other any more, does it?”

He took her hand in both of his. “It doesn’t, Kira, if . . .”

“Well, then, it doesn’t. Give me your phone number and address, so I can call you, because we . . . we won’t meet here . . . any more. We’re such good friends that—isn’t it funny?—I’ve never even known your address. All’s for the best. Maybe . . . maybe we’ll be better friends now.”

When she came home, Leo was sprawled across the bed, and he didn’t get up. He looked at her and laughed. He laughed dryly, monotonously, senselessly.

She stood still, looking at him.

“Thrown out?” he asked, rising on a wavering elbow, his hair falling over his face. “Don’t have to tell me. I know. You’re kicked out. Like a dog. So am I. Like two dogs. Congratulations, Kira Alexandrovna. Hearty proletarian congratulations!”

“Leo, you’ve . . . you’ve been drinking!”

“Sure. To celebrate. All of us did. Dozens and dozens of us at the University.

A toast to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. . . . Many toasts to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. . . . Don’t stare at me like that. . . . It’s a good old custom to drink at births, and weddings, and funerals. . . . Well, we weren’t born together, Comrade Argounova. . . . And we’ve never had a wedding, Comrade Argounova. . . . But we might yet see the other. . . . We might . . . yet . . . the other . . . Kira. . . .”

She was on her knees by the bed, gathering to her breast a pale face with a contorted wound of a mouth, she was brushing damp hair off his forehead, she was whispering: “Leo . . . dearest . . . you shouldn’t do that. . . . Now’s the time you shouldn’t. . . . We have to think clearly now. . . .” She was whispering without conviction. “It’s not dangerous so long as we don’t give up. . . . You must take care of yourself, Leo. . . . You must spare yourself. . . .”

His mouth spat out: “For what?”