We the Living (76 page)

The applause thundered as if the old cannons of the Peter-Paul Fortress across the river had been fired all at once. And it thundered again when Victor’s black curls disappeared in the crowd, and the straight, stubby mane of Comrade Sonia waved high in the air, while she roared with all the power of her broad chest about the new duties of the new woman of the Proletariat. Then another face rose over the crowd, a thin, consumptive, unshaved face that wore glasses and opened a pale mouth wide, coughing words which no one could hear. Then another mouth spoke, and it could be heard far beyond the crowd, a mouth that bellowed sonorously through a thick, black beard. A freckled boy from the Communist Union of Youth spoke, stuttering, scratching his head. A tall spinster in a crumpled, old-fashioned hat spoke ferociously, opening her small mouth as if she were at the dentist’s, shaking her thin finger at the crowd as at a school-room of disobedient pupils. A tall sailor spoke, his fists on his hips, and those in the back rows laughed occasionally when they heard the front rows laughing, even though the words did not reach them.

Thousands stood, fidgeting nervously, knocking their heels together to keep them warm, burying their hands in their armpits, in their sleeves, in their fur lapels, breathing little wet icicles on the old scarfs high under their noses. They took turns in holding the red banners, and those who held them pressed the poles tightly to their sides with their elbows, blowing on their frozen fingers. A few sneaked away, hurrying furtively down side streets.

Kira Argounova stood without moving and listened attentively. She listened to every word. Her eyes held a question she hoped the world could answer.

Over the vast field, the sky was turning a dark, dirty, grayish blue, and in a window far away the first little yellow spark of light twinkled, greeting the early winter dusk. The voice of the last speaker had died, smothered in the thick mist of frost which one could not see, but felt flowing down heavily from the darkness above. The red coffin had been closed and had disappeared in the earth, and the grave had been filled, and a slab of red granite had risen over it. And suddenly the gray sea had shuddered, and the ranks were broken, and dark streams of men rolled swiftly into side streets, as if a dam had burst open. And far away, dying in the frozen twilight, the military band struck up the “Internationale,” the song of the living, like the marching of thousands of feet, measured and steady, like soldiers’ feet drumming a song upon the earth.

Then Kira Argounova walked slowly toward the new grave.

The Field was empty. The sky was descending, locking a frozen blue vault over the city. Through a crack in the vault, a single steely dot twinkled feebly. The houses far away were not houses any longer but flat, broken shadows of thin black paper pasted in a narrow strip against a brownish glow that had been red. Little lights trembled in little holes pierced through the paper. The Field was not in a city. The empty, quiet silence of a countryside hung over a white desert where whirls of snow rose in the wind, melting into thin white powder.

A lonely little figure stood over a granite tombstone.

Snowflakes fluttered lazily down on her bowed head, on the lashes of her eyes. Her lashes glistened with snowflakes, but without tears. She looked at the words cut into the red granite:

She wondered whether she had killed him, or the revolution had, or both.

LEO SAT ALONE BY THE FIREPLACE, SMOKING. A cigarette hung limply in his hand, then slipped out of his fingers; he did not notice it. He took another cigarette and held it unlighted for a long time, not noticing it. Then he glanced around for a match, and could not find it, even though the box lay on the arm of his chair. Then he picked up the match box and stared at it, puzzled, for he had forgotten what he wanted.

He had spoken little in the past two weeks. He had kissed Kira violently, once in a while, too violently, and she had felt his effort, and she had avoided his lips and his arms.

He had left home often and she had never asked him where he went. He had been drinking too often and too much, and she had not said whether she noticed it. When they had been alone together, they had sat silently, and the silence had spoken to her, louder than any words, of something which was an end. He had been spending the last of their money and she had not questioned him about the future. She had not questioned him about anything, for she had been afraid of the answer she knew: that her fight was lost.

When Kira came home from the funeral, Leo did not rise to his feet, but sat by the fireplace, not moving. He looked at her with a slow, curious, heavy glance between heavy eyelids.

Silently, she took off her coat and hung it in her wardrobe. She was taking off her hat when a sound made her turn: Leo was laughing; it was a hard, bitter, brutal laughter.

She looked at him, her eyes wide: “Leo, what’s the matter?”

He asked her fiercely: “Don’t you know?”

She shook her head.

“Well, then,” he asked, “do you want to know how much I know?”

“How much . . . you know . . . about what, Leo?”

“I don’t suppose this is a good time to tell you, is it? Right after your lover’s funeral?”

“My . . .”

He rose and approached her, and stood, his hands in his pockets, looking down at her with the arrogantly contemptuous look she worshipped, with the scornful, drooping smile; but his arched lips moved slowly to form three words: “You little bitch!”

She stood straight, without moving, her face white. “Leo . . .”

“Shut up! I don’t want to hear a sound out of you! You rotten little . . . I wouldn’t mind it, if you were like the rest of us! But you, with your saintly airs, with your heroic speeches, trying to make me walk straight, while you were . . . you were rolling under the first Communist bum who took the trouble to push you!”

“Leo, who . . .”

“Shut up! . . . No! I’ll give you a chance to speak. I’ll give you a chance to answer just one word. Were you Taganov’s mistress? Were you? Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“All the time I was away?”

“Yes.”

“And all the time since I came back?”

“Yes. What else did they tell you, Leo?”

“What else did you want them to tell me?”

“Nothing.”

He looked at her; his eyes were suddenly cold, clear, weary.

“Who told you, Leo?”

“A friend of yours. Of his. Our dear comrade, Pavel Syerov. He dropped in on his way back from the funeral. He just wanted to congratulate me on the loss of my rival.”

“Was it . . . was it a hard blow to you, Leo?”

“It was the best piece of news I’d heard since the revolution. We shook hands and had a drink together, Comrade Syerov and I. Drank to you and your lover, and any other lovers you may have. Because, you see, that sets me free.”

“Free . . . from what, Leo?”

“From a little fool who was my last hold on self-esteem! A little fool I was afraid to face, afraid to hurt! Really, you know, it’s funny. You and your Communist hero. I thought he had lied, making a great sacrifice by saving me for you. And he was just tired of you, he probably wanted to get you off his hands, for some other whore. So much for the sublime in the human race.”

“Leo, we don’t have to discuss him, do we?”

“Still love him?”

“That doesn’t make any difference to you—now—does it?”

“None. None whatever. I won’t even ask whether you had ever loved me. That, too, doesn’t make any difference. I’d rather think you hadn’t. That will make it easier for the future.”

“The future, Leo?”

“Well, what did you plan it to be?”

“I . . .”

“Oh, I know! Get a respectable Soviet job and rot over a Primus and a ration card, and keep holy something in your fool imagination—your spirit or soul or honor—something that never existed, that shouldn’t exist, that is the worst of all curses if it ever did exist! Well, I’m through with it. If it’s murder—well—I don’t see any blood. But I’m going to have champagne, and white bread, and silk shirts, and limousines, and no thoughts of any kind, and long live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!”

“Leo . . . what . . . are you going to do?”

“I’m going away.”

“Where?”

“Sit down.”

He sat down at the table. His one hand lay in the circle of light under the lamp, and she noticed how still and white it was, with a net of blue veins that did not seem alive. She stood, watching it, until one finger moved. Then she sat down. Her face was expressionless. Her eyes were a little wide. He noticed her lashes—little needles of shadow on her cheeks—and the lashes were dry.

“Citizen Morozov,” said Leo, “has left town.”

“Well?”

“He’s left Tonia—he wants no connections that could be investigated. But he’s left her a nice little sum of money—oh, quite nice. She’s going for a rest and vacation in the Caucasus. She has asked me to go with her. I’ve accepted the job. Leo Kovalensky, the great gigolo of the U.S.S.R.!”

“Leo!”

She stood before him—and he saw terror in her eyes, such naked, raw terror that he opened his mouth, but could not laugh.

“Leo . . . not that!”

“She’s an old bitch. I know. I like it better that way. She has the money and she wants me. Just a business deal.”

“Leo . . .
you
. . . like a . . .”

“Don’t bother about the names. You can’t think of any as good as the ones I’ve thought of myself.”

He noticed that the folds of her dress were shivering and that her hands were flung back unnaturally, as if leaning on space, and he asked, rising: “You’re not going to be fool enough to faint, are you?”

She said, drawing her shoulders together: “No, of course not. . . . Sit down. . . . I’m all right. . . .”

She sat on the edge of the table, her hands clutching it tightly, and she looked at him. His eyes were dead and she turned away, for she felt that those eyes should be closed. She whispered: “Leo . . . if you had been killed in the G.P.U. . . . or if you had sold yourself to some magnificent woman, a foreigner, young and fresh and . . .”

“I wouldn’t sell myself to a magnificent woman, young and fresh. I couldn’t. Not yet. In a year—I probably will.”

He rose and looked at her and laughed softly, indifferently: “Really, you know, don’t you think it’s not for you to express any depths of moral indignation? And since we both are what we are, would you mind telling me just why you kept me on while you had him? Just liked to sleep with me, like all the other females? Or was it my money and his position?”

Then she rose, and stood very straight, very still, and asked: “Leo, when did you tell her that you’d go with her?”

“Three days ago.”

“Before you knew anything about Andrei and me?”

“Yes.”

“While you still thought that I loved you?”

“Yes.”

“And that made no difference to you?”

“No.”

“If Syerov had not come here today, you’d still go with her?”

“Yes. Only then I’d have to face the problem of telling you. He spared me that. That’s why I was glad to hear it. Now we can say good-bye without any unnecessary scenes.”

“Leo . . . please listen carefully . . . it’s very important . . . please do me a last favor and answer this one question honestly, to the best of your knowledge: if you were to learn suddenly—it doesn’t matter how—but if you were to learn that I love you, that I’ve always loved you, that I’ve been loyal to you all these years—would you still go with her?”

“Yes.”

“And . . . if you
had
to stay with me? If you learned something that . . . that bound you to stay and . . . and to struggle on—would you try it once more?”

“If I were bound to—well, who knows? I might do what your other lover did. That’s also a solution.”

“I see.”

“And why do you ask that? What is there to bind me?”

She looked straight at him, her face raised to his, and her hair fell back off a very white forehead, and only her lips moved as she answered with the greatest calm of her life: “Nothing, Leo.”

He sat down again and clasped his hands and stretched them out, shrugging: “Well, that’s that. Really, I still think you’re wonderful. I was afraid of hysterics and a lot of noise. It’s ended as it should have ended. . . . I’m leaving in three days. Until then—I can move out of here, if you want me to.”

“No. I’d rather go. Tonight.”

“Why tonight?”

“I’d rather. I can share Lydia’s room, for a while.”

“I haven’t much money left, but what there is, I want you to . . .”

“No.”

“But . . .”

“Please, don’t. I’ll take my clothes. That’s all I need.”

She was packing a suitcase, her back turned to him, when he asked suddenly: “Aren’t you going to say anything? Have you nothing to say?”

She turned and looked at him calmly, and answered: “Only this, Leo: it was I against a hundred and fifty million people. I lost.”

When she was ready to go, he rose and asked suddenly, involuntarily: “Kira . . . you loved me, once, didn’t you?”

She answered: “When a person dies, one does not stop loving him, does one?”

“Do you mean Taganov or . . . me?”

“Does it make any difference, Leo?”

“No. May I help you to carry the suitcase downstairs?”

“No, thank you. It’s not heavy. Good-bye, Leo.”

He took her hand, and his face moved toward hers, but she shook her head, and he said only: “Good-bye, Kira.”

She walked out into the street, leaning slightly to her left, her right arm pulled down by the weight of the suitcase. A frozen fog hung like cotton over the street, and a lamp post made a sickly, yellow blot spilled in the fog. She straightened her shoulders and walked slowly, and the white earth cracked under her feet, and the line of her chin was parallel with the earth, and the line of her glance parallel with her chin.