We the Living (78 page)

She sold her cigarette lighter, her silk stockings, her French perfume. She sold all her new shoes and her dresses. Vava Milovskaia came to buy the dresses. Vava waddled in, shuffling heavily in worn-out felt boots. Vava’s dress had a greasy patch across the chest, and her matted hair looked uncombed. Her face was puffed, a coarse white powder had dried in patches on her nose, and her eyes were encircled in heavy blue bags. When she took off her clothes, slowly, awkwardly, to try on the dresses, Lydia noticed the swelling at her once slender waistline.

“Vava, darling! What, already?” Lydia gasped.

“Yes,” said Vava indifferently, “I’m going to have a baby.”

“Oh, darling! Oh, congratulations!” Lydia clasped her hands.

“Yes,” said Vava, “I’m going to have a baby. I have to be careful about eating and I take a walk every day. When it’s born, we’re going to register it with the Pioneers.”

“Oh, no, Vava!”

“Oh, why not? Why not? It has to have a chance, doesn’t it? It has to go to school, and to the University, maybe. What do you want me to do? Bring it up as an outcast? . . . Oh, what’s the difference? Who knows who’s right? . . . I don’t know any more. I don’t care.”

“But, Vava,
your
child!”

“Lydia, what’s the use? . . . I’ll get a job after it’s born, I’ll have to. Kolya is working. It will be the child of Soviet employees. Then, later, maybe they’ll admit it into the Communist Union of Youth. . . . Kira, that black velvet dress—it’s so lovely. It looks almost . . . almost foreign. I know it’s too tight for me now . . . but afterwards . . . maybe I’ll get my figure back. They say you do. . . . Of course, you know, Kolya isn’t making very much, and I don’t want to take anything from Father, and . . . But Father gave me a present for my birthday, fifty rubles, and I think I should . . . I could never buy anything like it anywhere.”

She bought the velvet dress and two others.

To Galina Petrovna, Kira had explained: “I don’t need those dresses. I don’t go anywhere. And I don’t like to keep them.”

“Memories?” Galina Petrovna had asked.

“Yes,” Kira had said. “Memories.”

She did not have much money after everything was sold. She knew that she would need every ruble. She could not buy a white coat. But she had the white bear rug that she had bought from Vasili Ivanovitch long ago. She took it secretly to a tailor and ordered it made into a coat. The coat came out as a short jacket that did not reach down to her knees. She would need a white dress. She could not buy one. But she still had Galina Petrovna’s white lace wedding gown. When she was alone at home, she took her old felt boots into the kitchen and painted them white with lime. She bought a pair of white mittens and a white woolen scarf. She bought a ticket to a town far out of the way, far from the Latvian border.

When everything was ready, she sewed her little roll of money into the lining of the white fur jacket. She would need it there—if she crossed the border.

On a gray winter afternoon, she left the house when no one was at home. She did not say good-bye. She left no letter. She walked down the stairs and out into the street as if she were going to the corner store. She wore an old coat with a matted fur collar. She carried a small suitcase. The suitcase contained a white fur jacket, a wedding gown, a pair of boots, a pair of mittens, a scarf.

She walked to the station. A brownish mist hung over the roof tops, and men walked, bent to the wind, huddled, their hands in their armpits. A white frost glazed the posters, and the bronze cupolas of churches were dimmed in a silvery gray. The wind whirled little coils in the snow, and kerosene lamps stood in store windows, melting streaks on the frozen white panes.

“Kira,” a voice called softly on a corner.

She turned. It was Vasili Ivanovitch. He stood under a lamp post, hunched, the collar of his old coat raised to his red ears, an old scarf twisted around his neck, two leather straps slung over his shoulders, holding a tray of saccharine tubes.

“Good evening, Uncle Vasili.”

“Where are you going, Kira, with that suitcase?”

“How have you been, Uncle Vasili?”

“I’m all right, child. It may seem a strange business to find me in, I know, but it’s all right. Really, it’s not as bad as it looks. I don’t mind it at all. Why don’t you come to see us, sometimes, Kira?”

“I . . .”

“It’s not a grand place, ours, and there’s another family in the same room, but we’re getting along. Acia will be glad to see you. We don’t have many visitors. Acia is a nice child.”

“Yes, Uncle Vasili.”

“It’s such a joy to watch her growing, day by day. She’s getting better at school, too. I help her with her lessons. I don’t mind standing here all day, because then I go home, and there she is. Everything isn’t lost, yet. I still have Acia’s future before me. Acia is a bright child. She’ll go far.”

“Yes, Uncle Vasili.”

“I read the papers, too, when I have time. There’s a lot going on in the world. One can wait, if one has faith and patience.”

“Uncle Vasili . . . I’ll tell them . . . over there . . . where I’m going . . . I’ll tell them about everything . . . it’s like an S.O.S. . . . And maybe . . . someone . . . somewhere . . . will understand. . . .”

“Child, where are you going?”

“Will you sell me a tube of saccharine, Uncle Vasili?”

“Why, no, I won’t sell it to you. Take it, child, if you need it.”

“Certainly not. I was going to buy it anyway from someone else,” she lied. “Don’t you want me for a customer? It may bring you luck.”

“All right, child.”

“I’ll take this nice big one with the big crystals. Here you are.”

She slipped the coin into his hand and the tube of saccharine into her pocket.

“Well, good-bye, Uncle Vasili.”

“Good-bye, Kira.”

She walked away without looking back. She walked through the dusk, through gray and white streets, under grayish banners bending down from old walls, grayish banners that had been red. She walked through a wide square where the tramway lights twinkled, springing out of the mist. She walked up the frozen steps of the station, without looking back.

THE TRAIN WHEELS KNOCKED AS if an iron chain were jerked twice, then rumbled dully, clicking, then gave two sharp broken jerks again. The wheels tapped like an iron clock ticking swiftly, knocking off seconds and minutes and miles.

Kira Argounova sat on a wooden bench by the window. She had her suitcase on her lap and held it with both hands, her fingers spread wide apart. Her head leaned back against the wooden seat and trembled in a thin little shudder, like the dusty glass pane. Her lids drooped heavily over her eyes fixed on the window. She did not close her eyes. She sat for hours without moving, and her muscles did not feel the immobility, or she did not feel her muscles any longer.

Beyond the window, nothing moved in the endless stretches of snow but black smears of telegraph poles, as if the train were suspended, stationary, between two slices of white and gray, and the wheels shrieked as if grating in a void. Once in a while, a white blot on a white desert, a blot with black edges shaped as fir branches, sprang up suddenly beyond the window and whirled like lightning across the pane.

When she remembered that she had not eaten for a long time, dimly uncertain whether it was hours or days, dimly conscious that she had to eat, even though she had forgotten hunger, she broke a chunk off a stale loaf of bread, which she had bought at the station, and chewed it slowly, with effort, her jaws moving monotonously, like a machine.

Around her, men left the car, when the train stopped at stations, and came back with steaming tea kettles. Once, someone put a cup into her hands, and she drank, the hot tin edge pressed to her lips.

Telegraph wires raced the train, crossing and parting and crossing again, thin black threads flying faster, faster than the shuddering car could follow.

In the daytime, the sky seemed lighter than the earth, a pale stretch of translucent gray over a heavy white. At night, the earth seemed lighter than the sky, a pale blue band under a black void.

She slept, sitting in her corner, her head on her arms, her arms on her suitcase. She tied the suitcase handle to her wrists, with a piece of string, at night. There were many moans around her about stolen luggage. She slept, her consciousness frozen on a single thought—of her suitcase. She awakened with a jolt whenever the motion of the car made the suitcase slip a little.

She had no thoughts left. She felt empty, clear and quiet, as if her body were only an image of her will, and her will—only an arrow, tense and hard, pointing at a border that had to be crossed. The only living thing she felt was the suitcase on her lap. Her will was knocking with the wheels of the train. Her heart beat there, under the floor.

She noticed dimly, once, on the bench before her, a woman pressed a cold white breast into a child’s lips. There still were people and there still were lives. She was not dead. She was only waiting to be born.

At night, she sat for hours, staring at the window. She could see nothing but the dim reflection of the candle-glow and benches and boarded walls shuddering in space, and the tousled shadow of her own head. There was no earth, no world beyond the window. Only far down, by the track, yellow squares of snow raced the train in the glow of the windows, and black clots whirled past as long, thin streaks. Once in a while, a spark of light pierced the darkness, somewhere far away, at the edge of the sky, and brought suddenly into existence a blue waste of snow beyond the glass. The light died and the earth went with it, leaving nothing in the window but the boarded walls and the candle and the tousled head.

There were stations where she had to get out, and stand at a ticket window on a windswept platform, and buy a new ticket, and wait for another train to come rushing through the dusk, a black engine spewing showers of red sparks.

Then there were wheels again, knocking under the floor, and another station, and another ticket, and another train. There were many days and nights, but she did not notice them. The men in khaki peaked caps, who examined the tickets, could not know that the girl in the old coat with the matted fur collar was going toward the Latvian border.

The last station, where she did not buy another ticket, was a dark little platform of rotted wooden planks, the last stop before the train’s terminal, before the border town.

It was getting dark. Brown wheel-tracks in the snow led far away into a glowing red patch. A few sleepy soldiers on the platform paid no attention to her. A large wicker hamper rattled as husky fists lowered it to the ground from a baggage car. At the station door, someone begged loudly for hot water. Lights twinkled in the car windows.

She walked away, clutching her suitcase, following the wheel tracks in the snow.

She walked, a slender black figure, leaning faintly backward, alone in a vast field rusty in the sunset.

It was dark when she saw the village houses ahead and yellow dots of candles in windows low over the ground. She knocked at a door. A man opened it; his hair and beard were a bushy blond tangle from which two bright eyes peered inquisitively. She slipped a bill into his hand and tried to explain as fast as she could, in a choked whisper. She did not have to explain much. Those in the house knew and understood.

Behind a low wooden partition, her feet in the straw where two pigs slept huddled together, she changed her clothes, while those in the room sat around a table, as if she were not present, five blond heads, one of them in a blue kerchief. Wooden spoons knocked in the wooden bowls on the table, and the sound of another spoon came from the shelf of a brick stove in the corner, where a gray head bent, sighing, over a wooden bowl. A candle stood on the table, and three little red tongues flickered before a bronze triangle of ikons in a corner, little glimmers of red in the bronze halos.

She put on the white boots and took off her dress; her naked arms shuddered a little, even though the room was hot and stuffy. She put on the white wedding gown, and its long train rustled in the straw, and a pig opened one slit of an eye. She lifted the train and pinned it carefully to her waistline, with big safety-pins. She wound the white scarf tightly about her hair, and put on the white fur jacket. She felt cautiously the little lump in the lining over her left breast, where she had sewn the bills; it was the last and only weapon she would need.

When she approached the table, the blond giant said, his voice expressionless: “Better wait for an hour or so, till the moon sets. The clouds ain’t so steady.”

He moved, making room for her on the bench, pointing to it silently, imperatively. She raised the lace dress, stepped over the bench and sat down. She took off the jacket and held it over her arm, pressed tightly to her body. Two pairs of feminine eyes stared at her high lace collar, and the girl in the blue kerchief whispered something to the older woman, her eyes awed, incredulous.

Silently, the man put a steaming wooden bowl before the guest.

“No, thank you,” she said. “I’m not hungry.”

“Eat,” he ordered. “You’ll need it.”

She ate obediently a thick cabbage soup that smelled of hot lard.

The man said suddenly in the silence, without looking at her: “It’s pretty near a whole night’s walk.”

She nodded.

“Pretty young,” said the woman across the table, shaking her head, and sighed.

When she was ready to go, the man opened the door to a cold wind whining over an empty darkness, and muttered in his blond beard: “Walk as long as you can. When you see a guard—crawl.”

“Thank you,” she said, as the door closed.