The Early Ayn Rand (23 page)

He said nothing. The two convicts moved past him, to the stairs; and went down, hastily, not too steadily; he heard one of them stumbling, if he heard or noticed them at all. He had not ordered them to go.

Commandant Kareyev stood alone on the tower platform, his hair flying in the wind. He leaned over the parapet and looked at the boat. The sky above him was gray as the steel of the gun at his belt.

Commandant Kareyev had worn a gun at his belt for five years. For five years he had been Commandant of Strastnoy Island, the only one of the garrison who had been able to stand it that long. Years before, he had carried a bayonet and fought in the civil war, against some of the men whose prison he was now guarding, and against the parents of others. The civil war had given him a scar on his shoulder and a contempt of death. Peace gave him Strastnoy Island and a contempt of life.

Commandant Kareyev still served the revolution as he had served it in the civil war. He had accepted the island as he had accepted night attacks in the trenches; only this was harder.

He walked sharply, lightly, as if each step were a quick electric shock throwing him forward; a few white streaks shone in his hair, as his first decoration of the North; his lips were motionless when he was pleased, and smiled when he wasn’t; he never repeated an order. At night, he sat at his window and looked somewhere, without movement, without thought. They called him “Comrade Commandant” when they met him; behind his back, they called him “the Beast.”

The boat was approaching. Commandant Kareyev could distinguish figures on deck. He bent over the parapet; there was no eagerness in his glance, and no curiosity. He could not find the figure he expected. He turned and went down the stairs.

The guard on the first landing straightened quickly at his approach; the guard had been looking at the boat.

At the foot of the stairs, two convicts leaned over a windowsill overlooking the sea.

“. . . he told them he was lonely,” he heard one of them say.

“I wouldn’t want what he’s getting,” said the other.

He walked down a deserted corridor. In one of the cells he saw three men standing on a table pushed against a small barred window. They were looking at the sea.

In the hall he was stopped by Comrade Fedossitch, his assistant. Comrade Fedossitch coughed. When he coughed his shoulders shook, drooping forward, and his long neck dipped like the beak of a starving bird. Comrade Fedossitch’s eyes had lost their color; they stared, reflecting, like a frozen mirror, the gray of the monastery walls. They stared timidly and arrogantly at once, as if fearing and inviting an insult. He wore a leather whip at his belt.

Comrade Fedossitch had been told that Strastnoy Island was not good for his cough. But it was the only job he knew where he could wear a whip. Comrade Fedossitch had stayed.

He saluted the Commandant, and bowed, and said with a little grin, a servile grin spread like lacquer over the sharp edges of his words:

“If you please, Comrade Commandant. Of course, the Comrade Commandant knows what’s best, but I was just thinking: a female citizen coming here against all regulations and . . .”

“What do you want?”

“Well, for instance, our rooms are good enough for us, but do you think the comrade woman will like hers? Do you want me to fix it up a little and . . .”

“Never mind. It’s good enough for her.”

In the yard, convicts were busy chopping logs. A wide archway opened upon the sea, and a guard stood in the archway, his back to the convicts, watching the boat that rocked softly, growing, approaching in the pale green fog of waves and sky.

A few axes struck the logs indifferently, once in a while; the convicts, too, were looking at the sea. A stately gentleman, erect in his ragged prison garb, whispered to his companions:

“Really, it’s the best story I’ve ever heard. You see, Commandant Kareyev had sent in his resignation. I presume five years of Strastnoy Island was too much, even for his red nerves. But how would they ever run the place without the Beast? They asked him to stay.”

“Where would they find another fool who’d freeze his blood away for the sake of his duty to the revolution?”

“And this was his condition to the authorities on the mainland: ‘I’ll stay, if you send me a woman; any woman.’ ”

“Just that: any woman.”

“Well, gentlemen, that’s only natural: a good red citizen lets his superiors select his mates. Leaves it to their judgment. All in the line of duty.”

“You can imagine how far a woman must fall to accept such an invitation.”

“And a man to make it.”

Michael Volkontzev stood aside from the others. He did not look at the sea. The ax flashed over his head in a wide silver circle, as he chopped the logs vigorously, rhythmically, without stopping. A lock of black hair rose and fell over his right eye. One of his sleeves was torn, and the muscles of his arm stood out, young and strong. He did not take part in the conversation. But when he was not busy he usually spoke to his fellow convicts, spoke often and long; only the more he spoke, the less they could learn about him. They knew one thing for certain, however: when he spoke, he laughed; he laughed gaily, easily, with an air of mocking, boyish defiance; it was sufficient to know that about him; to know that he was the kind of man who could still laugh like that after two years on Strastnoy Island. He was the only one who could.

The prisoners liked to talk about their past. Their memories were the only future they had. And there were many memories to exchange: memories of the universities where some of them had taught, of the hospitals where others had attended the sick, of the buildings they had designed, of the bridges they had built. There were men of many professions. All of them had been useful and had worked hard in the past. All of them had one thing in common: that the Red State had chosen to discard them and to throw them into jail, for some reason or another, often without reason; perhaps because of some careless word they had uttered somewhere; perhaps simply because they had been too able and had worked too hard.

Michael Volkontzev was the only one among them who would not speak about his past. He would speak about anything under the sun, and often on a subject and at a time when it would have been far safer to remain quiet; he would risk his life drawing caricatures of Commandant Kareyev on the walls of his cell; but he would not speak about his past. No one knew where he had come from or why. They suspected that he had been an engineer at some time in his life, because he was always assigned to any work that required an engineer’s skill, such as repairing the dynamo that operated the wireless high in a room on top of the tower. They could discover nothing else about him.

The boat’s siren roared hoarsely outside. A convict waved his arm in the direction of the sea and announced:

“Gentlemen, salute the first woman on Strastnoy Island!”

Michael raised his head.

“Why all this excitement,” he asked indifferently, “about some cheap tramp?”

Commandant Kareyev had stopped at the entrance to the yard. He walked slowly toward Michael. He stood, watching him silently. Michael did not seem to notice it, but raised his ax and split another log in two. Kareyev said:

“I’m warning you, Volkontzev. I know how little you’re afraid of and how much you like to show it. But you’re not to show it on the subject of that woman. You’re to leave her alone.”

Michael threw his head back and looked at Kareyev innocently.

“Certainly, Commandant,” he said with a charming smile. “She’ll be left alone. Trust my good taste.”

He gathered an armful of logs and walked away, down the steps of the cellar.

The boat’s siren roared again. Commandant Kareyev went to meet it at the landing.

The boat came to the island four times a year. It brought food and new prisoners. There were two convicts aboard, this time. One of them was mumbling prayers and the other one was trying to hold his head high, but it was not convincing, because his lips trembled as he looked at the island.

The woman stood on deck and looked at the island, too. She wore a plain, black coat. It did not look expensive, but it was too plain, and fitted too well, and showed a slim, young body, not the kind that Commandant Kareyev had seen tramping wearily the dark streets of Russian cities. Her hand held her fur collar tightly under her chin. Her hand had long, slender fingers. There was a quiet curiosity in her large, wide eyes, and such an indifferent calm that Commandant Kareyev would not believe she was looking at the island. No one had ever looked at it like that. But she did.

He watched her walking down the gangplank. The fact that her steps were steady, light, assured was astonishing; the fact that she looked like a woman who belonged in exquisite drawing rooms was startling; but the fact that she was beautiful was incredible. There had been some mistake: she was not the woman sent to him.

He bowed curtly. He asked:

“What are you doing here, citizen?”

“Commandant Kareyev?” she inquired. Her voice had a strange, slow, indifferent calm—and a strange foreign accent.

“Yes.”

“I thought you were expecting me.”

“Oh.”

Her cool eyes looked at him as they had looked at his island. She had nothing of the smiling, inviting, professional charm he had expected. She was not smiling. She did not seem to notice his astonishment. She did not seem to find the occasion unusual at all. She said:

“My name is Joan Harding.”

“English?”

“American.”

“What are you doing in Russia?”

She took a letter from her pocket and handed it to him. She said:

“Here is my letter of introduction from the GPU at Nijni Kolimsk.”

He took the letter, but did not open it. He said curtly:

“All right. Come this way, Comrade Harding.”

He walked up the hill, to the monastery, stiff, silent, without offering a hand to help her up the old stone steps, without looking back at her, followed by the eyes of all the men on the landing and by the unusual, long-forgotten sound of French heels.

The room he had prepared for her was a small cube of gray stone. There was a narrow iron cot, a table, a candle on the table, a chair, a small barred window, a stove of red bricks built in the wall. There was nothing to greet her, nothing to show that a human being had been expected to enter that room, only a thin red line of fire trembling in the crack of the stove’s iron door.

“Not very comfortable,” said Commandant Kareyev. “This place wasn’t built for women. It was a monastery—before the revolution. The monks had a law that a woman’s foot could not touch this ground. Woman was sin.”

“You have a better opinion of women, haven’t you, Comrade Kareyev?”

“I’m not afraid of being a sinner.”

She looked at him. She spoke slowly, and he knew she was answering something he had not said:

“The only sin is to miss the things you want most in life. If they’re taken from you, you have to reclaim them—at any price.”

“If this is the price you’re paying for whatever it is you want, it’s pretty high, you know. Sure it’s worth it?”

She shrugged lightly:

“I’ve been accustomed to rather high-priced things.”

“So I notice, Comrade Harding.”

“Call me Joan.”

“It’s a funny name.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

“What are you doing in Russia?”

“In the coming months—anything you wish me to do.”

It was not a promise nor an invitation; it was said as an efficient secretary might have said it, and more coldly, more impersonally than that; as one of the guards might have said it, awaiting orders; as if the sound of her voice added that the words meant nothing—to him or to her.

He asked:

“How do you happen to be in Russia at all?”

She shrugged lazily. She said:

“Questions are so boring. I’ve answered so many of them at the GPU before they sent me here. The GPU officials were satisfied. I’m sure you never disagree with them, do you?”

He watched her as she took her hat off, and threw it down on the table, and shook her hair. Her hair was short, blond, and stood like a halo over her face. She walked to the table and touched it with her finger. She took out a small lace handkerchief and wiped the dust off the table. She dropped the handkerchief to the floor. He looked at it. He did not pick it up.

He watched her thoughtfully. He turned to go. At the door he stopped and faced her suddenly.

“Do you,” he asked, “whoever you are, understand what you’re here for?”

She looked straight into his eyes, a long, quiet, disconcerting look, and her eyes were mysterious because they were too calm and too open.

“Yes,” she said slowly, “I understand.”

 

The letter from the GPU said:

 

Comrade Kareyev,

As per your request, we are sending to you the bearer of this, Comrade Joan Harding. We vouch for her political trustworthiness. Her past reputation will guarantee that she will satisfy the purpose of your request and lighten the burden of your difficult duty on the far outpost of our great proletarian Republic.

With Communistic greetings, Ivan Veriohoff,

Political Commissar

 

Commandant Kareyev’s bed had a coarse gray blanket, like those on the prisoners’ cots. His cell of damp gray stone looked emptier than theirs; there was a bed, a table, two chairs. A tall glass door, long and narrow like a cathedral window, led to an open gallery outside. The room looked as if a human being had been flung there in a hurry for a short moment: there were rows of old nails on the bare stone walls bearing clothes and arms, wrinkled shirts hanging by one sleeve, old leather jackets, rifles, trousers turned inside out, cartridge belts; there were cigarette butts and ashes on the bare stone floor. The human being had lived there for five years.