The Early Ayn Rand (32 page)

“We can’t, Joan. We have plenty of time.”

“I hate it here.”

“You’ve gone through many things you’ve hated, Frances,” said Michael. “You’ve been brave. It’s the end, now. Think of what’s awaiting us.”

“What’s awaiting us,” said Kareyev slowly, “is for two—only.”

“Yes,” said Michael. “Only. And I hope the third one steps aside as bravely as he has been behaving.”

“I hope he does,” said Kareyev.

“It’s too cold here,” Joan complained.

“I’ll make a fire, Frances.”

“Don’t. They may notice the smoke.”

“Let me hold you close, Joan. You’ll be warmer.”

Commandant Kareyev drew her into his arms.

“Take your hands off her,” said Michael slowly.

“What?”

“I said, take your hands off her.”

Commandant Kareyev did. He put Joan aside gently and rose to his feet. So did Michael.

Joan stood between them, her eyes dark, scornful.

“Keep quiet!” she ordered. “Both of you seem to forget where we are—and when.”

“We may as well settle this now, once and for all,” said Kareyev. “He forgets that he has no more rights to you.”

“And you, Commandant,” said Michael, “forget that you never had any.”

“I bought her from you in exchange for the next fifty years of your life.”

“She wasn’t for sale.”

“I wouldn’t stand in a woman’s way after she had asked me to get out.”

“I wish you would remember that.”

Commandant Kareyev turned to Joan. He said very gently:

“It’s been a game, Joan, and a bad one. I know the truth, but you must tell it to him. You’ve been too cruel with him.”

“Oh, please! please . . .” she begged, backing away from him. “Don’t. Not now. Not here.”

“Right here, Frances,” said Michael. “Now.”

She stood straight, facing them. She raised her head high. Her eyes and her voice were clear. It was not her apology. It was the proud, defiant verdict of her sublime right.

“I love—one of you. No matter what I’ve done, don’t you understand that there is a love beyond all justice?”

“Which one?” asked Michael.

“We want a proof, Joan,” said Kareyev. “One beyond doubt.”

A hand knocked at the door.

“In the name of the law . . . open this door!”

Michael leaped to the window. His gun flashed. He fired.

Shots answered from outside, the bark of several rifles.

Michael dropped his gun. His hand grasped the edge of the window. He pulled himself up to his full height, shuddered, and fell backwards, his arms swinging in a wide circle over his head.

Joan’s cry did not sound like a woman’s voice. She threw herself over his body, tearing his jacket, fumbling for his heart, blood running over her fingers.

“Come here!” she screamed to Kareyev. “Help him!”

Kareyev was pressed to the door, trying to hold it against furious blows, his gun in a crack of the wall, shooting blindly at those outside.

“Come here!” she cried. “Help him! Come here!”

He obeyed. Michael’s head fell limply over his arm. He tore the jacket, felt a faint beating under his fingers, looked at the little hole in the chest that spurted a dark stream with each beat.

“He’s all right, Joan. Just fainted. The wound isn’t serious.”

She looked at the sticky red that thickened into a web between her fingers. She pulled her collar open, tore a piece of her dress, pressed it to the wound.

She did not hear the door crash into splinters under the butts of rifles. She did not see the two soldiers who jumped in through the window, nor the two others who stood at the door.

“Hands up!” said the soldier who entered first. “You’re under arrest.”

Commandant Kareyev rose slowly and raised his arms. Joan looked up indifferently.

The soldiers wore shaggy sheepskin coats that smelled of sweat; the long fur of their big caps stuck to their wet foreheads; their boots left tracks of snow on the floor.

“And that, citizens,” said their leader, “is how all counterrevolutionaries get their white necks twisted.”

His stomach bulged over his cartridge belt. He spread his heavy, square boots wide apart. He pushed his fur cap at the back of his head, scratched his neck, and laughed. He had a wide grin and short teeth.

“Pretty smart, aren’t you, citizens?” The cartridge belt shook under his stomach. “But the hand of the proletarian republic is long, and has good sharp claws.”

“What are the orders from those who sent you?” Commandant Kareyev asked slowly.

“Not so fast, citizen. Why the hurry? You’ll have plenty of time to find out.”

“Let’s go,” said Joan, rising. “This man here is wounded. Take him to a doctor.”

“He won’t need one.”

“Their horses are here, behind the house,” a soldier reported, entering.

“Bring them out. . . . Such is the end, citizens, of all who dare to raise a hand against the great will of the proletariat.”

“What are your orders?” repeated Commandant Kareyev.

“The orders are to save your valuable chests for better bullets than ours. The convict, the woman’s husband, is to be taken right back to Strastnoy Island, to be executed. The woman and the traitor Commandant are to be taken for trial to Nijni Kolimsk, to the GPU. Nice place, your ladyship, right across the street from a rich English merchant.”

Joan’s eyes met Kareyev’s. In the house across the street from the rich English merchant, doors could be left unlocked, guards could be absent, prisoners could disappear without trace: for execution—or for freedom.

There were three of them. Two were saved—if they reached that house. One was doomed.

“And, by the way,” asked the soldier, “which one is your husband?”

Joan stood by the table. She leaned far back against it, her tense arms propped against the edge, her head in her shoulders. Her hands grasping the table seemed to hold her body from falling backwards. But her eyes looked straight at the soldier; there was no fear in them, there was the last, desperate resolution of a cornered animal.

“This is my husband,” she answered and pointed at Kareyev.

Commandant Kareyev looked at her. His eyes were calm and grew calmer as they studied hers. Hers were not pleading; they were proud with a defiant hopelessness.

He had asked for a proof of the truth; one beyond doubt. He had it.

Commandant Kareyev looked at the sky where dawn, like a child, smiled its first hope to the beginning of life. Then, he turned to the soldier.

“Yes,” he said calmly, “I am her husband.”

Joan’s body slid from the edge of the table. Her arms pulled it up again. Her eyes widened looking at that for which she had not dared to hope.

“Let’s go,” said the soldier. “You must be crazy, Citizen Convict. I don’t see anything to be smiling about.”

The soldiers bent over Michael. He stirred faintly.

“The traitor’s all right,” said the leader. “He can make the journey to Nijni Kolimsk. Put him into our sleigh, and the woman, too, and take them to town. I’ll take the convict back to the coast. Send an order to have a boat for Strastnoy waiting there.”

Joan did not look at the men lifting Michael and carrying him out to the sleigh. She did not notice the figures passing before her. Her eyes were frozen, staring at Kareyev.

There was a great calm in Commandant Kareyev’s face; a calm that seemed to erase softly the wrinkles of many years on the Beast’s face. He was not looking at Joan. He was staring, wondering, at something he seemed to understand for the first time. He was not smiling; but his face looked as if it were.

“Well, come on,” said the soldier. “What’s the matter, citizen woman? Stop staring at him like that.”

“May I,” asked Kareyev, “say goodbye . . . to my wife?”

“Go ahead. But make it quick.”

Commandant Kareyev turned and met her eyes. Then, he smiled softly and took her hands.

“Goodbye, Joan.”

She did not answer. She was staring at him.

“There is a love beyond all justice, Joan. I understand.”

She did not seem to hear. He added:

“And also there is a love beyond all sorrow. So don’t worry about me.”

“I can’t let you go,” her lips said almost without sound.

“You have been mine. You gave me life. You have a right to take it.”

“I’d rather . . .”

“You’d rather keep quiet. . . . You have a duty to me, now. You must be happy—for my sake.”

“I’ll be . . . happy,” she whispered.

“You’re not crying, are you, Joan? It’s not as bad as all that. I don’t want to be a ghost who will ruin the life awaiting you. Are you strong enough to promise that you will always smile when you think of me?”

“I’m . . . smiling . . . dear. . . .”

“Remember me only when—in the countries where you’ll be sent by . . . the house across the street from the English merchant—you see the lights . . . dancing.”

She raised her head. She stood straight as a soldier at attention. She said slowly, each word steady and solemn as a step to the scaffold:

“I can’t thank you. I only want you to know that of all the things I’ve done, the one I’m doing now is the hardest.”

He took her in his arms and kissed her. It was a long kiss. He wanted to sum up his life in it.

They walked out together, her hand in his. The sun greeted them, rising over the forest. It rose slowly, and its rays were like arms outstretched in a solemn blessing. Far away in the forest, snow glistened on the branches like tears that had dropped from the flaming sunrise and rolled, overfilling the forest, over the wide plain. But the tall, old trees raised their dark heads straight into the sky, above the snow, triumphant, greeting life that was starting again for the first time. And over the white plain little sparks burned in the snow, little twinkling, dancing lights of all colors, like a rainbow.

“To the glory of the world revolution!” said the soldier and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

Two sleighs were waiting, their horses turned in opposite directions. Two soldiers sat in one sleigh, waiting for their prisoner. In the other, Michael was propped against the seat. He moaned feebly, still unconscious. A soldier sat next to him, holding the reins.

Joan stopped. She had no strength to go on. Commandant Kareyev smiled calmly. He noticed that her fur collar was open and fastened it. The soldiers’ leader pulled her towards the sleigh.

She stopped and turned, facing Kareyev. She stood straight, leaning against the sunrise, her golden hair in the wind. She smiled proudly, gallantly, in sublime sanction of life.

Kareyev walked to the other sleigh, without an order, stepped in calmly, and sat down between the two soldiers.

A rough hand pulled Joan into the sleigh. She put her arm around Michael and held him, his head on her shoulder.

The soldier clicked his whip. The horses jerked forward, into the sunrise. Their harness creaked. Snow spurted up.

Joan turned to look at the other sleigh. Commandant Kareyev did not turn back when the horses tore forward. She saw his hair waving in the wind and above it the white line of his forehead: Commandant Kareyev’s head was held high.

 

 

Editor’s Preface

Ayn Rand returned to
We the Living
in 1932, but interrupted it again the next year to write her first stage play,
Night of January 16th,
produced in Hollywood in 1934, then on Broadway in 1935. (This play has been separately published by New American Library.) The novel was completed in March 1934, but could find no publisher until 1936. After issuing a first edition of 3,000 copies, the publisher, despite indications of rising sales, destroyed the type, and the book was not to reach its audience for a quarter of a century. In 1959, it was reissued by Random House, and in 1960 in paperback by New American Library. Since that time, more than three million copies of
We the Living
have been sold.

Ayn Rand’s view of the theme and current relevance of
We the Living,
and of its place in her work, can be found in her foreword to the reissued edition.

In looking through the manuscript of the novel, I found several passages or “outtakes” that had been cut from the final version. Ayn Rand was a champion of literary economy; she was ruthless in cutting passages she considered inessential. There should not, she held, be an unnecessary scene or word in a piece of writing; in judging any element, the standard is not its interest on its own terms, but its contribution to the total.

Several of the cut passages, however, are of some interest. They can be enjoyed as separate pieces, even while one agrees with Miss Rand that they are not parts of the novel, and must not be viewed as such. I have selected for this anthology two such pieces from the early part of
We the Living,
both probably written in 1931. Neither has received Ayn Rand’s customary editing and polishing. The titles are my own invention.

“No” is an eloquent montage of life in Soviet Russia after the Revolution. It offers a glimpse of the kind of daily existence Ayn Rand herself had to endure before she could leave for America. Some elements of this montage were retained in the novel, in the form of brief paragraphs integrated with the development of the story. Evidently, Miss Rand judged that a separate extended treatment would be too static. Perhaps she thought also that it would repeat what was already clear elsewhere in the book.

The “month to wait” mentioned in the opening lines is the month Kira, the heroine, must wait between meetings with Leo, the man she loves and is not to see again until October 28.

In the novel, there is one paragraph describing a story about a Viking that the young Kira had read; the Viking became her private symbol of man the hero. I had always loved this brief reference and was delighted to find that the story had originally been given a fuller treatment.