The Early Ayn Rand (29 page)

Commandant Kareyev walked to a shelf, took a new candle, lighted it, replaced the old one. He stood waiting. She did not look at him, did not speak. He asked:

“What are you going to say?”

“Nothing.”

“Is it true?”

“My name is Frances Volkontzeva.”

“You love him?”

She looked at him slowly, fixedly, from under her eyelids, without raising her head.

“I didn’t say that,” she answered.

He waited. She was silent.

“Is that all you have to say to me?” he asked.

“No . . . but that’s all I’m going to say.”

“Why?”

“I won’t explain. You won’t believe me.”

“That’s for me to decide.”

His words were an order; but his eyes were a plea.

She studied him again from under her eyelids. Then she raised her head. She looked straight at him. Her eyes were clear and haughty, as they always were when she was proud of the truth in her words or prouder of the lie.

“Well, yes, I’m his wife. Yes, I came here only to save my husband. I came here hating all Communists. But I stayed because I loved one.”

He did not move. But she noticed that he made an effort not to move and she knew that she could go on.

“At first it was just a game, like my name Joan. But, you see, Joan killed Frances, and now it’s Joan who lives . . . and loves.”

“She did not forget Frances’ plans, however.”

“Oh, don’t you understand? I wanted him out of the way. How could I remain here with that threat, that reminder always before me? I wanted his freedom to feel that I had earned mine. But you don’t have to believe me.”

Her eyes were defiant; but her lips trembled, soft and childish, and her body leaned against the table, suddenly frail, helpless, calling for his protection.

“I was young when I married Michael. I thought I loved him. I didn’t learn what love could be until it was too late.”

In his arms was all the strength of his despair, of his faith grateful to be forced to believe again.

“It’s never too late,” he whispered, “while one lives—if one still wants to live.”

She was laughing through his kisses, laughing happily.

“Let him escape,” she whispered. “You can’t leave him here. And you can’t kill him. He’ll always stand between us.”

“Don’t talk about him, now, dear. Let’s just keep silent, and let me hold you like this . . . close.”

“Let him go. I’ll stay here with you . . . forever.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking. If I let him go, there will be an investigation. They’ll learn your real name and arrest you. We’ll be separated. Forever.”

“I can’t stay here if he does.”

“And as long as I’m Commandant here, I can’t betray my Party’s confidence.”

“Well, then, do you have to be Commandant here?”

He let her out of his arms, stepped back, and looked at her. He was not indignant, just surprised.

“Oh, don’t you see?” Her voice fell to a passionate, breathless whisper. “I’ve betrayed my whole past when I said I loved you. Do the same. Let’s kill the years behind us with one blow—and start life again from the same grave.”

“What do you mean, Joan?”

“Let’s escape all together—the three of us. I know that you can’t leave without permission, but we’ll take the emergency motorboat. We’ll go to Nijni Kolimsk. I have a friend there—an English merchant. He has connections in the GPU—it’s right across the street.”

“And . . . then?”

“He’ll arrange our passage on an English ship to foreign lands, far, far away. To America. There Michael will give me my freedom. It’s a fair exchange. And then . . .”

“Joan, I’ve belonged to a Party for twenty-two years. A Party that fought for the revolution.”

“That fought for
them
? The people, the collective? Look at them, your millions. They sleep, they eat, they marry, they die. Is there one among them who will shed one tear in honor of a man that gave up his desire of desires for their sake?”

“They’re my brothers, Joan. You don’t understand our duty, our great struggle. They’re hungry. They have to be fed.”

“But your own heart will die of starvation.”

“They’ve toiled hopelessly for centuries.”

“But you’ll give up your own last hope.”

“They’ve suffered so much.”

“But you’re going to learn what suffering means.”

“There is a great duty . . .”

“Yes, we all have a great duty. A sacred inviolable duty, and we spend our lives trying to violate it. Our duty to ourselves. We fight it, we stifle it, we compromise. But there comes a day when it gives us an order, its last, highest order—and then we can’t disobey any longer. You want to go. With me. You
want
it. That’s the highest of all reasons. You can’t question it. When you can’t ask any questions—then you know you’re facing your duty.”

He moaned helplessly:

“Oh, Joan, Joan!”

She stood before him, solemn as a priestess looking into the future, but her words were soft, dreamy, as if her voice were smiling between her stern lips, and it seemed to him that it was not her voice, not her words, but the soft, faint movements of her mouth that drew him, tempting, irresistible, into a future it knew, but he had never known.

“Over there, far away, electric fires will blaze on dark boulevards . . . and they’ll play the ‘Song of Dancing Lights’ . . .”

He whispered obediently:

“. . . and I’ll carry you out of the car . . .”

“. . . and I’ll teach you to dance . . .”

“. . . and I’ll laugh, laugh, and will never feel guilty . . .”

“Are we going?”

He seemed to awaken suddenly. He stepped aside. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again she saw the look she had forgotten on the Beast’s face.

“The boat is to leave at dawn,” he said slowly. “I’ll order it to wait till noon. You can pack your clothes. At noon, you’ll go—alone.”

“Is that your choice?”

“I know what I’m missing. But there are some things I can’t do. I want you to go—before it is too late for me.”

“Repeat it again.” Her voice was calm, like his, and indifferent.

“Tomorrow—at noon—you will go—alone.”

“All right, Commandant. I’ll go to sleep, since I have to travel tomorrow. . . . Goodnight. . . . When you think of me, remember only that I . . . loved you.”

The big trunk stood open in the middle of Joan’s room. She folded her dresses slowly and put them in, one by one. She wrapped her slippers in paper. She gathered her stockings, that made a film thin as smoke over her fingers; her white powder puffs, her crystal bottles of perfume. She moved through the room quietly, without hurry. She was as calmly indifferent as on the day when she had unpacked that trunk.

She could hear, above the roar of the sea, the low droning of bells that moaned when the wind was very strong. The sea, a dirty white, turbid like dishwater, swayed furiously, ready to be slung out of the pail. The spurting sprays of foam soiled the sky to a muddy gray.

Twice, Joan had stepped out into the hall and looked at the room next to hers. Its door was open. It was empty. Its new carpet was a deep blue in the daylight. The lace spread and pillows on the bed had not been disturbed. One pillow had been flung against the wall in a far corner.

The monastery was silent. The wind whistled in the old abandoned cells high on top of the towers. Below, in the long, dim halls, whispers crawled eagerly, stealthily, as hushed gusts of wind.

“. . . and all the time she was his wife.”

“I don’t envy him.”

“I do. I wish I had a woman who loved me like that.”

In a huddled group on a stair landing, the old professor whispered, sighing:

“How lonely this place will be without her!”

“I’m glad she’s going,” a weary voice answered, “for her sake.”

At a window, the general leaned on the Count’s shoulder. They were watching the sea.

“Well, the Beast has made people suffer,” the general whispered. “It’s his turn.”

“He’s getting the loan back,” the Count remarked, “with
plenty
of interest.”

Comrade Fedossitch leaned heavily, crouching, against a windowsill. He was not looking at the sea. He was looking, his shrewd, narrow pupils fixed tensely, up at the tower platform under the bells. The tall figure of a man stood there, at the parapet. Comrade Fedossitch had a good idea of what the Commandant was thinking.

Commandant Kareyev stood on the tower, the wind tearing his hair. He was looking far out to where the clouds, as a heavy gray curtain, had descended over the coast and all that lay beyond the coast. Commandant Kareyev had faced long city streets where barricades rose red with human flags and human blood, where, behind every corner, from every rooftop, machine guns coughed a death rattle deadlier than that of a consumptive. He had faced long trenches where behind rusted barbed wire thin, bluish blades of steel waited, silent, sure, pitiless. But his face had never looked as it did now.

Steps grated on the stairs behind him. He turned. The young engineer was coming up, carrying a stepladder and a new red flag. The old flag was gray, shivering desolately in its last convulsions, high over the cupola white with snow.

The engineer looked at him. In his young, blue eyes was a sorrow he knew they were sharing. He said slowly:

“It’s a bad morning, Commandant. Gray. No sun.”

“There will be no sun for a long time,” said Kareyev.

“I’m cold. I’m so cold. And . . .” He looked straight into Kareyev’s eyes. “I’m not the only one, Commandant.”

“No,” said Commandant Kareyev, “you’re not the only one.”

The engineer put his stepladder against the tower wall. Then he turned again. He said, as if each word were to pierce the grim, fathomless pupils of the man he had hated until that moment:

“If I found that the climate here wasn’t good for my lifeblood, I’d flee to the end of the world—
if I were free.
”

Kareyev looked at him. Then he looked slowly up, at the old flag fighting the wind between the clouds and the snow. He said thoughtfully, irrelevantly, pointing up:

“Look at that red flag. Red against the white snow. Doesn’t look well together.”

“The flag has faded,” the engineer said slowly. “The snow has taken its color away.”

“It was of cheap material. Good stuff keeps its color—in all weather.”

“It’s due for a change, Commandant. It has served its time.”

He climbed up the ladder. He turned again to look down at the man before him. He spoke suddenly, with an impetuous fire, with the solemn gravity of a prophet, his voice clear, vibrant in the wind:

“A thousand years from now, Commandant, whether the world is red as this flag or white as the snow, who will care that a certain Communist on a speck of an island gave up the very blood of his heart—for the glory of the world revolution?”

 

Joan’s door was left open. Commandant Kareyev passed by. He hesitated. She saw him and called:

“Good morning.”

“Good morning,” he answered.

“Won’t you come in? We’re not parting like enemies, are we?”

“Of course not.”

“Maybe you’ll help me to pack? Here, can you fold this blue velvet dress for me?”

She handed him the dress she had worn the night before, his favorite one. He folded it; he handed it back to her; he said brusquely:

“I’m sorry. I can’t help you much. I’m busy.”

He walked away. In the corridor, Comrade Fedossitch stopped him. Comrade Fedossitch bowed. Comrade Fedossitch said gently:

“The boat is waiting for Frances Volkontzeva, Comrade Commandant.”

“Well?”

“Do I understand it correctly that she is going away free, that she is not to be arrested for her counterrevolutionary, treacherous plan?”

“She is going away free.”

“I should think our duty is to send her to the GPU in Nijni Kolimsk. I should think hers is a serious offense against the State, punishable by . . .”

“Someday, Comrade Fedossitch, you may be Commandant of this island. Someday. Not yet.”

Commandant Kareyev saw Joan again in the library. She was saying goodbye to the convicts. She was leaving the radio to them to remember her by, she said. She noticed him at the door, but did not turn.

A strange thing happened. The pale, bearded Senator, who had never looked at her, got up. He walked straight to her, took her hand, and raised it to his lips in the most courtly manner.

“I want to tell you, Citizen Volkontzeva,” he said in his hoarse, dead voice, “that you are a great woman.”

“Thank you, Senator,” she answered. “Only, when I go away, I shall not be Citizen Volkontzeva any more. I’m going as Joan Harding.”

Commandant Kareyev hurried away. Outside, on the wharf, the pockmarked, one-eyed captain was leaning on the rail of the boat, smoking his pipe. He looked at the sky and called:

“Almost noon, Comrade Commandant. The woman ready?”

“Not yet,” Kareyev answered.

Soundlessly, as a shadow, Comrade Fedossitch suddenly stood at his elbow. Comrade Fedossitch saluted and said sweetly:

“Of course, Comrade Commandant, there’s no question of our loyalty to you. All this will never be known. But I was just thinking that if one of us Party members here decided to go and tell the GPU about the aristocrat who got away . . .”

“The emergency motorboat is at the service of the first one who wants to go,” said Kareyev. “Ask me for the key when you need it.”

A guard came running down the hill, saluting, reporting breathlessly:

“Citizen Volkontzeva wants to see you, Comrade Commandant!”

Kareyev ran up to the monastery, through the snow, leaping two steps at once. The guard looked after him, surprised. Comrade Fedossitch nodded slowly.