The Early Ayn Rand (28 page)

“Loyalty,” said Michael, “is like rubber: one can stretch it so far, and then—it snaps.”

Kareyev looked at him surprised, as if noticing him for the first time.

“Where did you get these perfect waiter’s manners, Volkontzev?” he asked.

“Oh, I’ve had a lot of experience, sir,” Michael answered calmly, “from a slightly different angle, though. We had banquets in my day, too. I remember one. We had many flowers and guests. We had a wedding such as those of the old days. She held a bouquet more gracefully than any woman I’ve ever seen. She wore a long white veil—then.”

Commandant Kareyev looked at him, looked at a convict with a shadow of sympathy—for the first time.

“Do you miss her?” he asked.

“No,” said Michael. “I wish I did.”

“And she?”

“She’s the kind that doesn’t stay lonely for a long time.”

“I wouldn’t say that about a woman I had loved.”

“You and I, Commandant, did not love the same woman.”

“After dinner,” Joan said slowly, looking at Michael, “will you bring some wood to my room? I’ve burned the last logs. It’s very cold at night.”

Michael bowed silently.

Commandant Kareyev pointed to a dark bottle that stood on the table. Michael poured, filling their glasses.

The wine was dark red, and when he poured it, little ruby sparks tumbled into the glasses, as a draft waved the candle flame.

Commandant Kareyev rose holding his glass, looking at Joan. She rose, too.

“To love,” he said calmly, solemnly.

He had pronounced the word for the first time.

Joan held her glass out to his. They met over the candle. It threw a trembling red glow over their faces through the dark liquid, and the shadows swayed over their cheeks, as the flame in the draft.

Her hand jerked suddenly, when she sat down. She spilled a red drop on the white tablecloth. Michael hurried to refill her glass.

“To love, madame,” he said, “that
is
—and that
was.
”

She drank.

 

Joan was alone in her room when Michael entered carrying the wood.

She watched him silently, standing at the window, her arms crossed, without moving. He dropped the logs by the stove. He asked, without looking at her:

“Is that all?”

“Start the fire,” she ordered.

He obeyed, kneeling by the stove. He struck a match and the crisp bark crackled, curling, twisting, bursting into little white flames. She approached him and whispered:

“Michael, please listen. I . . .”

“How many logs, madame?” he asked coldly.

“Michael, what were you trying to do? Do you want to ruin my plan?”

“I didn’t know there was any plan left to ruin.”

“Your faith doesn’t last long, does it?”

“My faith? What about his? I’ve seen what you’ve done to that.”

“Isn’t that what I set out to do?”

“Yes, but I can see the way you look at him. I can see the way you talk to him. What am I to believe?”

“My love.”

“I believe in that. Yes. Your love. But for whom?”

“Don’t you know?”

“He trusts you, too. Which one of us are you deceiving?”

She looked at him, her eyes narrowing with the indifferent, even, enigmatic glance that no one could answer. She said slowly, with the innocence of a perfect calm:

“Maybe both.”

He stepped toward her, his voice tense, his eyes pleading:

“Frances, I trust you. I wouldn’t last here one day if I didn’t trust you. But I can’t stand it. We’ve tried. There’s nothing we can do. You must see that now. It’s hopeless. The boat leaves at dawn. It’s the last one before the sea freezes. You’ll go back. You’ll take that boat tomorrow.”

She spoke slowly, without changing her voice, her words lazy, indifferent:

“I won’t take that boat, Michael. Someone else is taking it.”

“Who’s taking it?”

“You.”

He stared at her, speechless.

“Keep working on that fire,” she ordered.

He obeyed. She bent over him, whispering quickly, eagerly:

“Listen carefully. You’ll get on board. You’ll hide in the hold. The Commandant won’t make his inspection rounds tonight, I’ll see to that.”

“But . . .”

“Here are the keys to the outside door and the gate. There’s only one guard on the wall who can see the landing. Watch him. At midnight he’ll be removed.”

“How?”

“Leave that to me. When you see him go—hurry to the boat.”

“And you?”

“I’m staying here.”

He stared at her. She added:

“I’m staying here just a little longer. To keep him from discovering your escape. Don’t worry. There’s no danger. He’ll never know who helped you.”

He took her hand. “Frances . . .”

“Dearest, not a word. Please! I’ve lived three long months for just this night. We can’t weaken now. We can’t retreat. It’s our last battle. You understand?”

He nodded slowly. She whispered:

“I’ll join you in a free country where we’ll take these last two years of our lives, and seal them, and never open them again.”

“But I’d like to read again about what you’ve done.”

“There’s only one thing I want you to read and remember, only one thing that I’ll write over these years: I love you.”

They heard Kareyev’s steps outside. Michael went out as he entered. Joan stood at the open door of the stove where a bright flame whistled merrily. She said to Michael, aloud:

“Thank you, this will warm the room. I’ll feel much better—tonight.”

The island was blue under the moon, blue-white, sparkling like hard clean sugar. Dark shadows cut black holes in the snow, with sharp gaping edges. The sky, a black precipice above, twinkled with a white foam of stars floating over its smooth surface, as the foam that crashed furiously against the island, leaping in silver sprays high over the top of the walls. On the black precipice of the sea below floated the white shadows of the first ice.

The lights were out in the monastery. The entrance door had been locked for the night. The gray flag fought the wind on the tower.

Michael sat on his cot in the darkness and watched the wall outside. A guard walked there slowly, back and forth. His lantern seemed a little red eye winking at Michael. His muffler flapped in the wind.

Michael’s roommate, the old professor, had gone to bed. But he could not sleep. He sighed in the darkness, and made the sign of the cross.

“Aren’t you going to bed, Michael?”

“Not yet.”

“Why do you keep your coat on?”

“I’m cold.”

“That’s funny. I feel stuffy in here. . . . Well, goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

The professor turned to the wall. Then he sighed. Then he turned to Michael again.

“Do you hear the sea? It has been beating there for centuries. It’s been moaning before we came here. It will be moaning long after we’re gone.”

He made the sign of the cross. Michael was watching the guard’s lantern.

“We wander in the darkness,” said the professor. “Man has lost sight of beauty. There is a great beauty on this earth of ours. A beauty one’s spirit can approach only bare-headed. But how many of us ever get a glimpse of it?”

Commandant Kareyev’s window was a long, thin, blue cut in the darkness of his room. The moonlight made a long, thin band across the floor, checkered into panes, pointed as the door of an ancient cathedral. In the darkness by the window, Joan’s head was leaning against the back of an armchair, her face a pale white with soft blue shadows under her cheekbones, with a glowing blue patch in the triangle under her chin thrown back, her mouth dark and soft and tender, glistening with a few lost sparks of moonlight. The darkness swallowed her body and only her hands were white on her knees, and in her hands lay the face of Commandant Kareyev at her feet. He did not move. The light of a single candle on the table did not reach them. He whispered, his dark hair brushing her white wrists:

“. . . and then, someday, you may want to leave me. . . .”

She shook her head slowly.

“You may be lonely here in winter. The sea freezes. The nights are so long.”

“Nights like this?”

He looked at the window, smiling.

“Lovely, isn’t it? I’ve never noticed that before. As if . . . as if it were a night for just the two of us.”

Somewhere, far downstairs, an old clock slowly chimed twelve. She repeated softly at the last stroke:

“Yes . . . for just the two . . . of us. Let’s step outside. It’s lovely.”

Commandant Kareyev wrapped her winter cloak around her shoulders. The huge collar of fluffy gray fox swallowed her head, rising over the tips of her blond curls.

On the gallery outside, a soft silver glow streamed from the heavy, sparkling fringe of icicles on the cornices above their heads. A guard with a lantern passed slowly on the wall before them. Beyond the wall rose the black funnel of the boat.

Commandant Kareyev looked at her. It had been his first wine in five years. It had been his first celebration. He drew her closer. His hand slipped under the fluffy fox collar. She jerked herself away.

“What’s the matter?” he whispered.

“Not here.”

“Why?”

Calmly, she pointed to the guard on the wall, a few steps away. Commandant Kareyev smiled. He blew his whistle. The guard turned abruptly, raised his head, saluted.

“Report to post number four at once,” Kareyev shouted over the roar of the waves. “Patrol it until further orders.”

The guard saluted, climbed down, hurried away across the white yard, snow crunching under his boots.

Commandant Kareyev’s lips sank into Joan’s. His arms crushed her body against his.

“Did you ever feel a moment when you knew why you had been living, my dearest . . . dearest . . .” he whispered. “I’m happy . . . Joan.”

Her head was thrown far back, so far that he could see the reflection of the stars in her eyes; so far that she could see the yard below. Her body fell backwards recklessly, limp against his arm. She was smiling triumphantly, deliriously.

“Why do you look so strange, Joan? Why do you smile like that?”

“I’m happy—tonight,” she whispered at the stars.

 

Michael opened the entrance door noiselessly. He tried with his foot the frozen, slippery steps outside. He felt the gun in his pocket. He stepped out. It took him three minutes to pull the door closed again, slowly, gradually, without a sound. He locked it behind him.

The blue snow glared at him. But there was a narrow line of shadow under the wall of the building. He could follow it to the landing gate. He glided silently into the deep snow, pressing himself against the wall. The snow rose higher than his boots. He could feel it sliding inside. It felt hot as a burn against the holes in his old woolen socks. He moved slowly, his eyes on the empty wall where the guard had been, drawn by it as by a magnet.

He stopped across from the landing gate. He could see the boat’s funnel beyond it. There was no sound on the island but the beating of waves against the wall. He could see two little red dots of lanterns far away. He had to cross to the gate in the open, in the snow. But the guards were too far. The lights were out in the building.

He threw himself down in the snow and crawled as fast as he could toward the gate. He felt the snow biting his wrists between his gloves and sleeves. Halfway across, he raised his head to look back at the building. He stopped.

High on an open gallery, he saw two figures. They were immobile in a passionate embrace. The man’s back was to the yard below.

Michael rose to his feet. He stood in the open, in the glaring snow, and looked at them. One glove slid from his hand, but he didn’t notice it. There was no sound as the glove fell; no sound of his breathing, not even of his heart. Then he ran through the snow, in the moonlight, back to the monastery door.

Commandant Kareyev and Joan turned when the door of his room was flung open. Joan screamed. Michael stood on the threshold, snow dripping from his clothes.

“You might need these,” he said and threw the keys into Kareyev’s face. “I’ve tried to escape. I don’t care what you do to me. And I don’t care what you do to her.”

“Michael!” Joan screamed. “Get out of here! Keep quiet!”

“She’s afraid,” said Michael, “that I’ll tell you that she’s my wife!

“Oh, that’s all right,” he continued, as no answer came. “You can have her, with my compliments and permission. Only I don’t think you needed the permission.”

Commandant Kareyev looked at Joan. She stood straight, looking at him. The cloak with the fluffy collar had fallen to her feet.

Commandant Kareyev bent down and picked up the keys. Then he blew his whistle three times. A little drop of blood rolled from his lips where the keys had struck him.

Comrade Fedossitch and two guards appeared at the door. Comrade Fedossitch was hastily pulling his night-shirt into his trousers.

“Put Citizen Volkontzev in the tower detention cell,” Commandant Kareyev ordered.

“Why don’t you throw me into the pit?” asked Michael. “You’ll be rid of me quicker. Then you can enjoy my wife without any trouble.”

“Did you say—your
wife,
Citizen Volkontzev?” gasped Comrade Fedossitch.

“Put Citizen Volkontzev in the tower detention cell,” repeated Commandant Kareyev.

The guards grasped Michael’s arms. He walked out, head high, laughing. Comrade Fedossitch followed.

The long flame of a candle on the table hissed in the silence, smoking, reaching the end of the little wax butt. Commandant Kareyev looked at Joan. She stood leaning against the table, her head bent, looking at her toe buried in the fur collar on the floor.