We the Living (45 page)

But Leo wrote to her.

She read his letters, trying to remember the inflection of his voice as it would pronounce each word. She spread the letters around her and sat in the room as with a living presence.

He was coming back, cured, strong, saved. She had lived eight months for one telegram. She had never looked beyond it. Beyond the telegram, there was no future.

The train from the Crimea was late.

Kira stood on the platform, motionless, looking at the empty track, two long bands of steel that turned to brass far away, in the clear, summer sunset beyond the terminal vaults. She was afraid to look at the clock and learn that which she had feared: that the train was hopelessly, indefinitely late. The platform trembled under the grating wheels of a heavy baggage truck. Somewhere in the long steel tunnel, a voice cried mournfully at regular intervals, the same words that blended into one, like the call of a bird in the dusk: “Grishka shove it over.” Boots shuffled lazily, aimlessly past her. Across the tracks a woman sat on a bundle, her head drooping. The glass panes above were turning a desolate orange. The voice called plaintively: “Grishka shove it over. . . .”

When Kira went to the office of the station commandant, the executive answered briskly that the train would be quite late; unavoidable delay; a misunderstanding at a junction; the train was not expected till tomorrow morning.

She stood on the platform for a little while longer, aimlessly, reluctant to leave the place where she had almost felt his presence. Then she walked out slowly, walked down the stairs, her arms limp, her feet lingering unsteadily on every step she descended.

Far down at the end of the street, the sky was a flat band of bright, pure, motionless yellow, like the spilled yoke of an egg, and the street looked brown and wide in a warm twilight. She walked away slowly.

She saw a familiar corner, passed it, then came back and swerved into another direction, toward the house of the Dunaevs. She had an evening that had to be filled.

Irina opened the door. Her hair was wild, uncombed, but she wore a new dress of black and white striped batiste, and her tired face was powdered neatly.

“Well, Kira! Of all people! What a rare surprise! Come in. Take your coat off. I have something—someone—to show you. And how do you like my new dress?”

Kira was laughing suddenly. She took off her coat: she wore a new dress of black and white striped batiste. Irina gasped: “Oh . . . oh, hell! When did you get it?”

“About a week ago.”

“I thought that if I got the plain stripes, I wouldn’t see so many of them around, but the first time I wore it, I met three ladies in the same dress, within fifteen minutes. . . . Oh, what’s the use? . . . Oh, well, come on!”

In the dining room the windows were open, and the room felt spacious, fresh with the soft clatter of the street. Vasili Ivanovitch got up hastily, smiling, dropping tools and a piece of wood on the table. Victor rose gracefully, bowing. A tall, blond, husky young man jumped up and stood stiffly, while Irina announced: “Two little twins from the Soviet reformatory! . . . Kira, may I present Sasha Chernov? Sasha—my cousin, Kira Argounova.”

Sasha’s hand was big and firm, and his handshake too strong. He grinned shyly, a timid, candid, disarming grin.

“Sasha, this is a rare treat for you,” said Irina. “A rare guest. The recluse of Petrograd.”

“Of Leningrad,” Victor corrected.

“Of Petrograd,” Irina repeated. “How are you, Kira? I hate to admit how glad I am to see you.”

“I’m delighted to meet you,” Sasha muttered. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Without a doubt,” said Victor, “Kira is the most talked about woman in the city—and even in Party circles.” Kira glanced at him sharply; but he was smiling pleasantly: “Glamorous women have always been an irresistible theme for admiring whispers. Like Madame de Pompadour, for instance. Charm refutes the Marxist theory: it knows no class distinctions.”

“Shut up,” said Irina. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m sure it’s something rotten.”

“Not at all,” said Kira quietly, holding Victor’s eyes. “Victor is very complimentary, even though he does exaggerate.”

Awkwardly, diffidently, Sasha moved a chair for Kira, offering it to her silently with a wave of his hand and a helpless grin.

“Sasha is studying history,” said Irina, “that is, he was. He’s been thrown out of the University for trying to think in a country of free thought.”

“I will have you understand, Irina,” said Victor, “that I won’t tolerate such remarks in my presence. I expect the Party to be respected.”

“Oh, stop acting!” Irina snapped. “The Party Collective won’t hear you.”

Kira noticed Sasha’s long, silent glance at Victor; Sasha’s steely blue eyes were neither bashful nor friendly.

“I’m sorry about the University, Sasha,” said Kira, feeling suddenly that she liked him.

“I did not mind it,” Sasha drawled in a quiet, measured tone of conviction. “It, really, was not essential. There are some outward circumstances which an autocratic power can control. There are some values it can never reach nor subjugate.”

“You will discover, Kira,” Victor smiled coldly, “that you and Sasha have much in common. You are both inclined to disregard the rudiments of caution.”

“Victor, will you . . .” Vasili Ivanovitch began.

“Father, I have a right to expect, as long as I’m feeding this family, that my views . . .”

“You’re feeding whom?” a shrill voice asked from the next room. Acia appeared on the threshold, her stockings loose around her ankles, the shreds of a torn magazine in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other. “I wish someone’d feed someone. I’m still hungry and Irina wouldn’t give me a second helping of soup.”

“Father, I expect something to be done about this child,” said Victor. “She’s growing up like a bum. If she were to join a children’s organization, such as the Pioneers . . .”

“Victor, we won’t discuss that again,” Vasili Ivanovitch interrupted firmly, quietly.

“Who wants to be a stinking Pioneer?” asked Acia.

“Acia, you go back to your room,” Irina ordered, “or I’ll put you to bed.”

“You and who else?” stated Acia, disappearing behind a slammed door.

“Really,” Victor observed, “if I’m able to study as I do and work besides and provide for this household, I don’t see why Irina can’t take proper care of one brat.”

No one answered.

Vasili Ivanovitch bent over the piece of wood he had been carving. Irina drew pictures with a spoon handle on the old table cloth. Victor rose to his feet: “Sorry, Kira, to desert such a rare guest, but I have to go. I have a dinner engagement.”

“Sure,” said Irina. “See that the hostess doesn’t borrow any silverware from Kira’s room.”

Victor left. Kira noticed that the tools were trembling in Vasili Ivanovitch’s wrinkled fingers.

“What are you doing, Uncle Vasili?”

“Making a frame,” Vasili Ivanovitch raised his head, showing his work proudly, “for one of Irina’s pictures. They’re good pictures. It’s a shame to let them get crumpled and ruined in a drawer.”

“It’s beautiful, Uncle Vasili. I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Oh, I used to be good at it. I haven’t done it for years. But I used to be good in the . . . in the old days, when I was a young man, in Siberia.”

“How’s your job, Uncle Vasili?”

“No more,” said Irina. “How long do you think one can keep a job in a private store?”

“What happened?”

“Haven’t you heard? They closed the store for back taxes. And the boss, himself, is now more broke than we are. . . . Would you like some tea, Kira? I’ll fix it. The tenants stole our Primus, but Sasha will help me to light the samovar in the kitchen. Come on!” she threw at him imperiously, and Sasha rose obediently. “I don’t know why I ask him to help,” she winked at Kira, “he’s the most helpless, useless, awkward thing born.” But her eyes were sparkling happily. She took his arm and wheeled him out of the room.

It was growing dark, and the open window was a sharp, bright blue. Vasili Ivanovitch did not light a lamp. He bent lower over his carving.

“Sasha is a nice boy,” he said suddenly, “and I’m worried.”

“Why?” asked Kira.

He whispered: “Politics. Secret societies. Poor doomed little fool.”

“And Victor suspects?”

“I think so.”

It was Irina who switched on the light, returning with a sparkling tray of cups, preceding Sasha with a steaming samovar.

“Here’s the tea. And some cookies. I made them. See how you like them, Kira, for an artist’s cooking.”

“How’s the art, Irina?”

“The job, you mean? Oh, I still have it. But I’m afraid I’m not too good at drawing posters. I’ve been reprimanded twice in the Wall Newspaper. They said my peasant women looked like cabaret dancers and my workers were too graceful. My bourgeois ideology, you know. Well, what do they want? It’s not my specialty. I could scream, sometimes, I can’t get any ideas at all for one more of those damn posters.”

“And now they have that competition,” Vasili Ivanovitch said mournfully.

“What competition?”

Irina spilled tea on the table cloth. “An inter-club competition. Who’ll make the most, the best and the reddest posters. Have to work two hours extra every day—free—for the glory of the Club.”

“Under the Soviets,” drawled Sasha, “there is no exploitation.”

“I thought,” said Irina, “that I had a good idea for a winner: a real proletarian wedding—a worker and a peasant woman on a tractor, God damn them! But I heard that the Club of Red Printers is making a symbolic one—the union of an airplane and a tractor—sort of the spirit of Electrification and Proletarian State Construction.”

“And the wages,” sighed Vasili Ivanovitch. “She spent all of her last month’s salary on shoes for Acia.”

“Well,” said Irina, “she couldn’t go barefooted.”

“Irina, you work too hard,” Sasha remarked, “and you take the work too seriously. Why waste your nerves? It’s all temporary.”

“It is,” said Vasili Ivanovitch.

“I hope it is,” said Kira.

“Sasha’s my life-saver.” Irina’s weary mouth smiled tremulously and sarcastically at once, as if trying to deny the involuntary tenderness in her voice. “He took me to the theater last week. And week before last, we went to the Museum of Alexander III, and we wandered there for hours, looking at the paintings.”

“Leo’s coming back tomorrow,” Kira said suddenly, irrelevantly, as if she could not keep it any longer.

“Oh!” Irina’s spoon clattered down. “You never told us. I’m so glad! And he’s quite well?”

“Yes. He was to return tonight, but the train is late.”

“How is his aunt in Berlin?” asked Vasili Ivanovitch. “Still helping you? There’s an example of family loyalty. I have the greatest admiration for that lady, even though I’ve never seen her. Anyone who’s safe, away, free and can still understand us, buried alive in this Soviet graveyard, must be a wonderful person. She’s saved Leo’s life.”

“Uncle Vasili,” said Kira, “when you see Leo, will you remember never to mention it? His aunt’s help, I mean. You remember I explained to you how sensitive he is about being under obligation to her, and so we’ll all be careful not to remind him of it, will we?”

“Certainly, I understand, child. Don’t worry. . . . But that’s Europe for you. That’s abroad. That’s what a human life does to a human being. I think it’s hard for us to understand kindness and what used to be called ethics. We’re all turning into beasts in a beastly struggle. But we’ll be saved. We’ll be saved before it gets us all.”

“We don’t have long to wait,” said Sasha.

Kira noticed a frightened, pleading look in Irina’s eyes.

It was late when Kira and Sasha rose to go. He lived far on the other side of the city, but he offered to escort her home, for the streets were dark. He wore an old coat and he walked fast, slouching. They hurried together through a soft, transparent twilight, through the city full of the fragrance of a warm earth somewhere far under the pavements and cobblestones.

“Irina isn’t happy,” he said suddenly.

“No,” said Kira, “she isn’t. No one is.”

“We’re living in difficult times. But things will change. Things are changing. There still are men to whom freedom is more than a word on posters.”

“Do you think they have a chance, Sasha?”

His voice was low, tense with a passionate conviction, a quiet strength that made her wonder why she had ever thought him bashful: “Do you think the Russian worker is a beast that licks its yoke while his mind is being battered out of him? Do you think he’s fooled by the clatter of a very noisy gang of tyrants? Do you know what he reads? Do you know the books that are hidden in the factories? The papers that pass secretly through many hands? Do you know that the people is awakening and . . .”