We the Living (63 page)

High on the roofs, snow gathered into menacing white walls behind iron railings. Men in heavy mittens swung shovels high over the city and hurled huge, frozen white clods, as rocks, down to the pavements below; they crashed with a dull thud and a thin white cloud. Sleighs whirled sharply to avoid them; hungry sparrows, their feathers fluffed, scattered from under the muffled, thumping hoofs.

On street corners, huge cauldrons stood encased in boxes of unpainted boards. Men with shovels swung the snow up into the cauldrons, and narrow streams of dirty water gurgled from under the furnaces, running by the curb, long black threads cutting white streets.

At night, the furnaces blazed open in the darkness, little purplish-orange fires low over the ground, and ragged men slipped out of the night, bending to extend frozen hands into the red glow.

Kira walked soundlessly through the palace garden. A narrow track of footprints, half-buried under a fresh white powder, led through the deep snow to the pavilion; Andrei’s footprints, she knew; few visitors ever crossed that garden. Tree trunks stood bare, black and dead like telegraph poles. The palace windows were dark; but, far at the end of the garden, showing through the stiff, naked branches, a bright yellow square hung in the darkness and a little patch of snow was golden-pink under Andrei’s window.

She rose slowly up the long marble stairway. There was no light; her foot searched uncertainly for every frozen, slippery step. It was colder than in the street outside, the dead, damp, still cold of a mausoleum. Hesitantly, her hand followed the broken marble rail. She could see nothing ahead; it seemed as if the steps would never end.

When she came to a break in the railing, she stopped. She called helplessly, with a little note of laughter in her frightened voice: “Andrei!”

A wedge of light split the darkness above as he flung the door open. “Oh, Kira!” He rushed down to her, laughing apologetically: “I’m so sorry! It’s those broken electric wires.”

He swung her up into his arms and carried her to his room, while she laughed: “I’m sorry, Andrei, I’m getting to be such a helpless coward!”

He carried her to the blazing fireplace. He took off her coat and hat, his fingers wet with snow melting on her fur collar. He made her sit down by the fire, removed her mittens and rubbed her cold fingers between his strong palms; he unfastened her new felt overshoes, and took them off, shaking snow that sizzled on the bright red coals.

Then he turned silently, took a long, narrow box, dropped it in her lap and stood watching her, smiling. She asked: “What is this, Andrei?”

“Something from abroad.”

She tore the paper and opened the box. Her mouth fell open without a sound. The box held a nightgown of black chiffon, so transparent that she saw the flames of the fireplace dancing through its thin black folds, as she held it high in frightened, incredulous fingers. “Andrei . . . where did you get that?”

“From a smuggler.”

“Andrei!
You
—buying from a smuggler?”

“Why not?”

“From an . . . illegal speculator?”

“Oh, why not? I wanted it. I knew you’d want it.”

“But there was a time when . . .”

“There
was
. Not now.” Her fingers wrinkled the black chiffon as if they were empty. “Well?” he asked. “Don’t you like it?”

“Oh, Andrei!” she moaned. “Andrei! Do they wear things like that abroad?”

“Evidently.”

“Black underwear? How—oh, how silly and how lovely!”

“That’s what they do abroad. They’re not afraid of doing silly things that are lovely. They consider it reason enough to do things because they’re lovely.”

She laughed: “Andrei, they’d throw you out of the Party if they heard you say that.”

“Kira, would you like to go abroad?”

The black nightgown fell to the floor. He smiled calmly, bending to pick it up: “I’m sorry. Did I frighten you, Kira?”

“What . . . what did you say?”

“Listen!” He was kneeling suddenly by her side, his arms around her, his eyes intent with a reckless eagerness she had never seen in them before. “It’s an idea I’ve had for some time . . . at first, I thought it was insane, but it keeps coming back to me. . . . Kira, we could . . . You understand? Abroad . . . forever. . . .”

“But, Andrei . . .”

“It can be done. I could still manage to be sent there, get an assignment, some secret mission for the G.P.U. I’d get you a passport to go as my secretary. Once across the border—we’d drop the assignment, and our Red passports, and our names. We’d run away so far they’d never find us.”

“Andrei, do you know what you’re saying?”

“Yes. Only I don’t know what I’d do there. I don’t know—yet. I don’t dare to think about it, when I’m alone. But I can think of it, I can talk of it when you’re here with me. I want to escape before I see too much of what I see around us. To break with all of it at once. It would be like starting again, from the beginning, from a total void. But I’d have you. The rest doesn’t matter. I’d grow to understand what I’m just beginning to learn from you now.”

“Andrei,” she stammered, “you, who were the best your Party had to offer the world . . .”

“Well, say it. Say I’m a traitor. Maybe I am. And maybe I’ve just stopped being one. Maybe I’ve been a traitor all these years—to something greater than what the Party ever offered the world. I don’t know. I don’t care. I feel as if I were naked, naked and empty and clear. Because, you see, I feel certain of nothing in that involved mess they call existence, of nothing but you.” He noticed the look in her eyes and asked softly: “What’s the matter, Kira? Have I said anything to frighten you?”

She whispered without looking at him: “No, Andrei.”

“It’s only what I said once—about my highest reverence—remember?”

“Yes . . .”

“Kira, will you marry me?”

Her hands fell limply. She looked at him, silently, her eyes wide and pleading.

“Kira, dearest, don’t you see what we’re doing? Why do we have to hide and lie? Why do I have to live in this agony of counting hours, days, weeks between out meetings. Why have I no right to call you in those hours when I think I’ll go insane if I don’t see you? Why do I have to keep silent? Why can’t I tell them all, tell men like Leo Kovalensky, that you’re mine, that you’re my . . . my wife?”

She did not look frightened any longer; the name he had pronounced had given her courage, her greatest, coldest battlefield courage. She said: “Andrei, I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Would you do something for me, if I asked you very urgently?”

“Anything.”

“Don’t ask me why.”

“All right.”

“And I can’t go abroad. But if you want to go alone . . .”

“Let’s forget it, Kira. I won’t ask any questions. But as for my going alone—don’t you think you shouldn’t say that?”

She laughed, jumping up: “Yes, let’s forget it. Let’s have our own bit of Europe right here. I’m going to try your gift on. Turn around and don’t look.”

He obeyed. When he turned again, she was standing at the fireplace, her arms crossed behind her head, fire flickering behind the black silhouette of her body, through a thin, black mist.

He was bending her backward, so that the locks of her hair, tumbling down, looked red in the glow of the fire; he was whispering: “Kira . . . I wasn’t complaining tonight . . . I’m happy . . . happy that I have nothing left but you. . . .”

She moaned: “Andrei, don’t say it! Please, please, don’t say it!”

He did not say it again. But his eyes, his arms, the body she felt against her body, cried to her without sound: “I have nothing left but you . . . nothing . . . but you. . . .”

She came home long after midnight. Her room was dark, empty. She sat wearily down on the bed, to wait for Leo. She fell asleep, exhausted, her hair spilled over the foot of the bed, her body huddled in her crumpled red dress.

The telephone awakened her; it was ringing fiercely, insistently. She jumped up. It was daylight. The lamp was still burning on the table; she was alone.

She staggered to the telephone, her eyes closing heavily, her eyelids leaden. “Allo?” she muttered, leaning against the wall, her eyes closed.

“Is that you, Kira Alexandrovna?” an unctuous masculine voice asked, drawing vowels meticulously, with an anxious note in the pleasant inflection.

“Yes,” said Kira. “Who . . .”

“It’s Karp Morozov speaking, Kira Alexandrovna. Kira Alexandrovna, soul of mine, can you come over and take that . . . that Lev Sergeievitch home? Really, he shouldn’t be seen at my house so often. It seems there was a party and . . .”

“I’ll be right over,” said Kira, her eyes open wide, dropping the receiver.

She dressed hurriedly. She could not fasten her coat; her fingers would not slip the buttons through the buttonholes: her fingers were trembling.

It was Morozov who opened the door when she arrived. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and a vest was fastened too tightly, pulled in taut little wrinkles, across his broad stomach. He bowed low, like a peasant: “Ah, Kira Alexandrovna, soul of mine, how are we today? Sorry I had to trouble you, but . . . Come right in, come right in.”

The wide, white-paneled lobby smelled of lilac and mothballs. Behind a half-open door, she heard Leo laughing, a gay, ringing, carefree laughter.

She walked straight into the dining room, without waiting for Morozov’s invitation. In the dining room, a table was set for three. Antonina Pavlovna held a teacup, her little finger crooked delicately over its handle; she wore an Oriental kimono; powder was caked in white patches on her nose; lipstick was smeared in a blot between her nose and chin; her eyes seemed very small without make-up, puffed and weary. Leo sat at the table in his black trousers and dress shirt, his collar thrown open, his tie loose, his hair disheveled. He was laughing sonorously, trying to balance an egg on the edge of a knife.

He raised his head and looked at Kira, astonished. His face was fresh, young, radiant as on an early spring morning, a face that nothing, it seemed, could mar or alter. “Kira! What are you doing here?”

“Kira Alexandrovna just happened to . . .” Morozov began timidly, but Kira interrupted bluntly:

“He called me.”

“Why, you . . .” Leo whirled on Morozov, his face turned into a vicious snarl; then he shook his head and laughed again, as swiftly and suddenly: “Oh, hell, that’s a good one! So they all think that I have a wet-nurse to watch me!”

“Lev Sergeievitch, soul of mine, I didn’t mean to . . .”

“Shut up!” Leo ordered and turned to Kira. “Well, since you’re here, take your coat off and sit down and have some breakfast. Tonia, see if you have another couple of eggs.”

“We’re going home, Leo,” Kira said quietly.

He looked at her and shrugged: “If you insist . . .” and rose slowly.

Morozov picked up his unfinished cup of tea; he poured it into his saucer and held the saucer on the tips of his fingers and drank, sucking loudly. He said, looking at Kira, then at Leo, hesitantly, over the edge of the saucer: “I . . . you see . . . it was like this: I called Kira Alexandrovna because I was afraid that you . . . you weren’t well, Lev Sergeievitch, and you . . .”

“. . . were drunk,” Leo finished for him.

“Oh, no, but . . .”

“I was. Yesterday. But not this morning. You had no business . . .”

“It was just a little party, Kira Alexandrovna,” Antonina Pavlovna interrupted soothingly. “I suppose we did stay a little too late, and . . .”

“It was five o’clock when you crawled into bed,” Morozov growled. “I know, because you bumped into my bed and upset the water pitcher.”

“Well, Leo brought me home,” Antonina Pavlovna continued, ignoring him, “and I presume he must have been a little tired. . . .”

“A little . . .” Morozov began.

“. . . drunk,” Leo finished for him, shrugging.

“Plenty drunk, if you ask me.” Morozov’s freckles disappeared in a red flush of anger. “Just so drunk that I get up this morning and find him sprawled on the davenport in the lobby, full dress and all, and you couldn’t have awakened him with an earthquake.”

“Well,” Leo asked indifferently, “what of it?”

“It was a grand party,” said Antonina Pavlovna. “And how Leo can spend money! It was thrilling to watch. Really, Leo darling, you were too reckless, though.”

“What did I do? I don’t remember.”

“Well, I didn’t mind it when you lost so much on the roulette, and it was cute when you paid them ten rubles for every cheap glass you broke, but really you didn’t have to give the waiters hundred-ruble tips.”

“Why not? Let them see the difference between a gentleman and the Red trash of today.”

“Yes, but you didn’t have to pay the orchestra fifty rubles to shut up every time they played something you didn’t like. And then, when you chose the prettiest girl in the crowd, whom you’d never seen before, and you offered her any price she named to undress before the guests, and you stuck those hundreds down her décolleté . . .”