We the Living (24 page)

Victor invited three Communist students to his room and they discussed the future of Proletarian Electrification. He let them out through the back door to avoid Vasili Ivanovitch.

England had treacherous designs on the Republic of Workers and Peasants. Teaching of English was prohibited in schools.

Acia had to study German, sniveling over the difference of “der,” “die,” “das,” trying to remember what it was that our German class brothers had done at Rapallo.

The boss at the Gossizdat said: “The city proletariat is marching tomorrow in a demonstration of protest against France’s policy in the Ruhr. I expect all our employees to take part, Comrade Kovalensky.”

Leo said: “I’ll stay in bed. I’m having a headache—tomorrow.”

Vasili Ivanovitch sold the shade off the lamp in the drawing room; he kept the lamp because it was the last one.

In the dark, warm evenings, churches overflowed with bowed heads, incense and candle light. Lydia prayed for Holy Russia and for the dull fear in her heart.

Andrei took Kira to the Marinsky Theater and they saw Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty” ballet. He left her at the house on Moika and she took a tramway to her other home. A light snow melted on her face, like rain.

Leo asked: “How’s your Communist boy friend?”

She asked: “Have you been lonely?”

He brushed the hair off her forehead and looked at her lips, in the deliberate tension of refusing himself a kiss. He answered: “I would like to say no. But you know it’s yes.”

His warm lips gathered the cold spring rain off hers.

The year 1923, like any other, had a spring.

KIRA HAD WAITED IN LINE for three hours to get the bread at the Institute Co-operative. It was dark when she stepped down from the tramway, her loaf pressed tightly under her arm. At distant corners, lanterns made snakes of light wiggle in black puddles. She walked straight ahead, her shoes splashing through the water, kicking little icicles that clinked like glass. When she turned the corner of her street, a hurrying shadow whistled to her in the darkness.

“Allo!” called Irina’s voice. “And whom do I remind you of when I say that?”

“Irina! What are you doing here at this hour?”

“Just left your house. Waited for you for an hour. Had given up hope.”

“Well, come on back.”

“No,” said Irina, “maybe it’s better if I tell you here. I . . . well, I came to tell you something. And . . . well, maybe Leo won’t like it, and he’s home, and . . .” Irina hesitated, which was unusual for her.

“What is it?”

“Kira, how’s . . . how’re your finances?”

“Why, splendid. Why do you ask that?”

“It’s just . . . you see . . . well, if I’m too presumptuous, tell me to shut up. . . . Don’t be angry. . . . You know I’ve never mentioned them before . . . but it’s your family.”

Kira peered in the darkness at Irina’s worried face. “What about them?”

“They’re desperate, Kira. Just desperate. I know Aunt Galina’d kill me if she knew I told you, but. . . . You see, the saccharine man got arrested as a speculator. They sent him to jail for six years. And your folks . . . well, what is there left to do? You know. Last week Father brought them a pound of millet. If we only could. . . . But you know how things are with us. Mother so sick. And nothing much left for the Alexandrovsky market but the wallpaper. I don’t think they have a thing in the house—your folks. I thought maybe you . . . maybe you would like to know.”

“Here,” said Kira, “take this bread. We don’t need it. We’ll buy some from a private store. Tell them you’ve found, borrowed or stolen it, or anything. But don’t tell them it’s from me.”

On the following day, Galina Petrovna rang the door bell. Kira was not at home. Leo opened the door and bowed graciously.

“I believe it is my . . . mother-in-law?” he asked.

“That’s what it would like to be,” Galina Petrovna stated.

His smile disarmed her; it was infectious; she smiled.

When Kira came in, there were tears. Galina Petrovna crushed her in her arms, before a word was said, and sobbed: “Kira, my child! . . . . My dear child! . . . God forgive us our sins! . . . These are hard days. . . . These are very hard days. . . . After all, who are we to judge? . . . Everything’s gone to pieces. . . . What difference does it all make? If we can just forget, and pull the pieces together, and . . . God show us the way. We’ve lost it. . . .”

When she released Kira, and powdered her nose from a little envelope full of potato flour, she muttered: “About that bread, Kira. We didn’t use it all. I hid it. I was afraid—maybe you need it yourself. I’ll bring it back if you do. We took only a small slice; your father was so hungry.”

“Irina talks too much,” said Kira. “We don’t need the bread, Mother. Don’t worry. Keep it.”

“You must come and see us,” said Galina Petrovna. “Both of you. Let by-gones be by-gones. Of course, I don’t see why you two don’t get . . . Oh, well, it’s your business. Things aren’t what they were ten years ago. . . . You must visit us, Leo—I may call you Leo, may I not? Lydia is so anxious to meet you.”

One could buy bread in the private stores. But the price made Kira hesitate. “Let’s go to a railroad station,” she said to Leo.

Railroad terminals were the cheapest and most dangerous markets of the city. There were strict rules against private “speculators” who smuggled food from the villages. But the speculators in ragged overcoats dared long rides on roofs and buffers, miles on foot down slimy mud roads, lice and typhus on trains, and—on return—the vigilance of government agents. Food slinked into the city in dusty boots, in the linings of vermin-infested coats, in bundles of soiled underwear. The starved city awaited every train. After its arrival, in the dark side streets around the depot, crystal goblets and lace chemisettes were exchanged furtively for hunks of lard and mouldy sacks of flour.

Arm in arm, Kira and Leo walked to the Nikolaevsky station. Drops tapped the sidewalk. The sun dripped to the sidewalk with every drop. Leo bought a bunch of violets on a corner. He pinned it to Kira’s shoulder, a purple tuft, young and fragrant on her old black coat. She smiled happily and kicked an icicle in a puddle, splashing water at the passersby, laughing.

The train had arrived. They made their way through an eager crowd that pushed them aside and drove them forward, and stuck elbows into their stomachs, and heels on their toes. Soldiers watched the descending passengers, silent, alert, suspicious.

A man stepped down from the train. He had a peculiar nose; it was so short and turned up so sharply that his two wide, slanting nostrils were almost vertical; under the nostrils there was a wide space and a heavy mouth. His stomach shivered like gelatin as he stepped down. His coat seemed too ragged, his boots too dirty.

Soldiers seized his arms. They were going to search him. He whined softly: “Comrades, brothers! So help me God, you’re wrong. I’m nothing but a poor peasant, brothers, nothing but the poorest peasant. Never heard of speculating. But I’m a responsible citizen, too. I’ll tell you something. If you let me go, I’ll tell you something.”

“What can you tell, you son of a bitch?”

“See that woman there? She’s a speculator. I know. I’ll tell you where she’s hiding food. I seen her.”

Strong hands seized the woman. Her arms were like a skeleton’s in the soldiers’ fists; gray hair hung over her eyes from under an old hat with a black feather; the shawl held on her sunken chest by an ancient mosaic pin shook silently, convulsively, a thin, nervous shudder, like that of a window at the distant sound of an explosion. She moaned, showing three yellow teeth in a dark mouth: “Comrades. . . . It’s my grandson. . . . I wasn’t going to sell. . . . It’s for my grandson. . . . Please, let me go, comrades . . . my grandson—he’s got the scurvy. . . . Has to eat. . . . Please, comrades. . . . The scurvy. . . . Please. . . .”

The soldiers dragged her away. Her hat was knocked off. They did not stop to pick it up. Someone stepped on the black feather.

The man with the vertical nostrils watched them go. His wide red lips grinned.

Then he turned and saw Kira looking at him. He winked mysteriously, in understanding, and pointed with a jerk of his head to the exit. He went out; Kira and Leo followed him, puzzled.

In a dark alley by the station, he looked cautiously, winked again and opened his coat. The ragged coat had a smooth lining of heavy, expensive fur, with the suffocating odor of carnation oil used by all travelers of means as protection against lice on trains. He unfastened some unseen hooks in the depth of the fur. His arm disappeared in the lining and returned with a loaf of bread and a smoked ham. He smiled. His lips and the lower part of his face smiled; the upper part—the short nose, the light, narrow eyes—remained strangely immobile, as if paralyzed.

“Here you are, citizens,” he said boastfully. “Bread, ham, anything you wish. No trouble. We know our business.”

The next moment, Kira was running down the street, fleeing wildly, senselessly from a feeling she could not explain.

“Just a little party, Kira darling,” said Vava Milovskaia over the telephone. “Saturday night. . . . Shall we say about ten o’clock? . . . And you’ll bring Leo Kovalensky, of course? I’m simply dying to meet him. . . . Oh, just fifteen or twenty people. . . . And Kira, here’s something a little difficult: I’m inviting Lydia, and . . . could you bring a boy for her? You see, I have just so many boys and girls on my list, and they’re all in couples, and—well, boys are so hard to get nowadays . . . and . . . well, you know how it is, and I thought maybe you knew someone—anyone. . . .”

“Anyone? Do you care if he’s a Communist?”

“A Communist? How thrilling! Is he good-looking? . . . Certainly, bring him. . . . We’re going to dance. . . . And we’re going to have refreshments. Yes, food. Oh, yes. . . . And, oh, Kira, I’m asking every guest to bring one log of wood. One apiece. . . . To heat the drawing room. It’s so large we couldn’t affo . . . You don’t mind? . . . So sweet of you. See you Saturday night.”

Parties were rare in Petrograd in 1923. It was Kira’s first. She decided to invite Andrei. She was a little tired of the deception, a little bewildered that it had gone so far. Leo knew all about Andrei; Andrei knew nothing about Leo. She had told Leo of her friendship; he had not objected; he smiled disdainfully when she spoke of Andrei, and inquired about her “Communist boy friend.” Andrei knew no one in Kira’s circle and no gossip had reached him. He never asked questions. He kept his promise and never called on her. They met at the Institute. They talked of mankind, and its future, and its leaders; they talked of ballet, tramways and atheism. By a silent agreement, they never spoke of Soviet Russia. It was as if an abyss separated them, but their hands and their spirits were strong enough to clasp over the abyss.

The grim lines of his tanned face were like an effigy of a medieval saint; from the age of the Crusades he had inherited the ruthlessness, the devotion, and also the austere chastity. She could not speak of love to him; she could not think of love in his presence; not because she feared a stern condemnation; but because she feared his sublime indifference.