We the Living (13 page)

“No.”

“Well, I dislike women’s questions, but I don’t know whether I like a woman who won’t let me have the satisfaction of refusing to answer.”

“I have nothing to ask.”

“There are a few things you don’t know about me.”

“I don’t have to know.”

“That’s another thing I want to warn you about: I don’t like women who make it obvious how much they like me.”

“Why? Do you think I want you to like me?”

“Why are you here?”

“Only because I like you. I don’t care what you think of women who like you—nor how many of them there have been.”

“Well, that was a question. And you won’t get any answer. But I’ll tell you that I like you, you arrogant little creature, whether you want to hear it or not. And I’ll also ask questions: what is a child like you doing at the Technological Institute?”

He knew nothing about her present, but she told him about her future; about the steel skeletons she was going to build, about the glass skyscraper and the aluminum bridge. He listened silently and the corners of his lips drooped, contemptuous, and amused, and sad.

He asked: “Is it worth while, Kira?”

“What?”

“Effort. Creation. Your glass skyscraper. It might have been worth while—a hundred years ago. It may be worth while again—a hundred years from now, though I doubt it. But if I were given a choice—of all the centuries—I’d select last the curse of being born in this one. And perhaps, if I weren’t curious, I’d choose never to be born at all.”

“If you weren’t curious—or if you weren’t hungry?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You have no desires?”

“Yes. One: to learn to desire something.”

“Is that hopeless?”

“I don’t know. What is worth it? What do you expect from the world for your glass skyscraper?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps—admiration.”

“Well, I’m too conceited to want admiration. But if you do want it—who can give it to you? Who is capable of it? Who can still want to be capable? It’s a curse, you know, to be able to look higher than you’re allowed to reach. One’s safer looking down, the farther down the safest—these days.”

“One can also fight.”

“Fight what? Sure, you can muster the most heroic in you to fight lions. But to whip your soul to a sacred white heat to fight lice . . . ! No, that’s not good construction, comrade engineer. The equilibrium’s all wrong.”

“Leo, you don’t believe that yourself.”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to believe anything. I don’t want to see too much. Who suffers in this world? Those who lack something? No. Those who have something they should lack. A blind man can’t see, but it’s more impossible not to see for one whose eyes are too sharp. More impossible and more of a torture. If only one could lose sight and come down, down to the level of those who never want it, never miss it.”

“You’ll never do it, Leo.”

“I don’t know. It’s funny, Kira. I found you because I thought you’d do it for me. Now I’m afraid you’ll be the one who’ll save me from it. But I don’t know whether I’ll thank you.”

They sat side by side and talked and, as the darkness rose, their voices fell lower, for a militia-man was on guard, passing up and down the street behind the bowed lances. Snow squeaked under his boots like new leather. The houses were growing blue, dark blue against a lighter sky, as if the night were rising from the pavements. Yellow stars trembled in frosted windows. A street lamp flared up on the corner, behind the trees. It threw a triangle of pink marble veined by shadows of bare twigs on the blue snow of the garden, at their feet.

Leo looked at his wristwatch, an expensive, foreign watch under a frayed shirt cuff. He rose in one swift, supple movement and she sat looking up with admiration, as if hoping to see him repeat it.

“I have to go, Kira.”

“Now?”

“There’s a train to catch.”

“So you’re going again.”

“But I’m taking something with me—this time.”

“A new sword?”

“No. A shield.”

She got up. She stood before him. She asked obediently: “Is it to be another month, Leo?”

“Yes. On these steps. At three o’clock. December tenth.”

“If you’re still alive—and if you don’t. . . .”

“No. I’ll be alive—because I won’t forget.”

He took her hand before she could extend it, tore off the black mitten, raised the hand slowly to his lips and kissed her palm.

Then he turned quickly and walked away. The snow creaked under his feet. The sound and the figure melted into the darkness, while she was still standing motionless, her hand outstretched, until a little white flake fluttered onto her palm, onto the unseen treasure she was afraid to spill.

When Alexander Dimitrievitch’s store did good business, he gave Kira money for carfare; when business fell, she had to walk to the Institute. But she walked every day and saved her carfare to buy a brief case.

She went to the Alexandrovsky market to buy it; she could get a used one—and any article that people used or had used—at the Alexandrovsky market.

She walked slowly, carefully stepping over the goods spread on the sidewalk. A little old lady with ivory hands on a black lace shawl looked at her eagerly, hopefully, as she stepped over a table cloth displaying silver forks, a blue plush album of faded photographs, and three bronze ikons. An old man with a black patch over one eye extended to her silently the picture of a young officer in a nicked gold frame. A coughing young woman thrust forward a faded satin petticoat.

Kira stopped suddenly. She saw broad shoulders towering over the long, hopeless line on the edge of the sidewalk. Vasili Ivanovitch stood silently; he did not advertise his purpose in standing there; the delicate clock of bright Sachs porcelain held in two red, frozen, gloveless hands did it for him. The dark eyes under his heavy, graying brows were fixed, expressionless, on some point above the heads of the passersby.

He saw Kira before she had a chance to run and spare him, but he did not seem to mind; he called her, his grim face smiling happily, the strange, helpless smile he had but for Kira, Victor and Irina.

“How are you, Kira? Glad to see you. Glad to see you. . . . This? Just an old clock. Doesn’t mean much. . . . I bought it for Marussia on her birthday . . . her first birthday after we were married. She saw it in a museum and wanted it. It and no other. So I had to do some diplomatic work. It took an Imperial order from the palace to get it sold out of the museum. . . . It doesn’t run any more. We’ll get along without it.”

He stopped to look hopefully at a fat peasant woman who was staring at the clock, scratching her neck. But when she met Vasili Ivanovitch’s eyes, she turned and hurried away, raising her heavy skirts high over felt boots.

Vasili Ivanovitch whispered to Kira: “You know, this is not a cheerful place. I feel so sorry for all these people here, selling the last of their possessions, with nothing to expect of life. For me, it’s different. I don’t mind. What’s a few knick-knacks more or less? I’ll have time to buy plenty of new ones. But I have something I can’t sell and can’t lose and it can’t be nationalized. I have a future. A living future. My children. You know, Irina—she’s the smartest child. She was always first in school; had she graduated in the old days she would have received a gold medal. And Victor?” The old shoulders straightened vigorously like those of a soldier at attention. “Victor is an unusual young man. Victor’s the brightest boy I’ve ever seen. Sure, we disagree a little sometimes, but that’s because he’s young, he doesn’t quite understand. You mark my word: Victor will be a great man some day.”

“And Irina will be a famous artist, Uncle Vasili.”

“And, Kira, did you read the papers this morning? Just watch England. Within the next month or two. . . .”

A fat individual in a sealskin hat stopped and eyed the Sachs clock critically.

“Give you fifty millions for it, citizen,” he said curtly, pointing at the clock with a short finger in a leather glove.

The price could not buy ten pounds of bread. Vasili Ivanovitch hesitated; he looked wistfully at the sky turning red high above the houses; at the long line of shadows on the sidewalk, that peered eagerly, hopelessly into every passing face.

“Well . . .” he muttered.

“Why, citizen,” Kira whirled on the man, her voice suddenly sharp, querulous, like an indignant housewife, “fifty millions? I’ve just offered this citizen sixty millions for the clock and he wouldn’t sell. I was going to offer. . . .”

“Seventy-five millions and I’ll take it along,” said the stranger.

Vasili Ivanovitch counted the bills carefully. He did not follow the clock with his eyes as it disappeared in the crowd, quivering against a portly hip. He looked at Kira.

“Why, child, where did you learn that?”

She laughed. “One can learn anything—in an emergency.”

Then they parted. Vasili Ivanovitch hurried home. Kira went on in search of the brief case.

Vasili Ivanovitch walked to save carfare. It was getting dark. Snow fluttered down slowly, steadily, as if saving speed for a long run. Thick white foam grew along the curbs.

On a corner, a pair of human eyes looked up at Vasili Ivanovitch from the level of his stomach. The eyes were in a young, clean-shaven face; the legs of the body to which the face belonged seemed to have fallen through the sidewalk, up to above the knees; it took Vasili Ivanovitch an effort to realize that the body had no legs, that it ended in two stumps wrapped in dirty rags, in the snow. The rest of the body wore the neat, patched tunic of an officer of the Imperial army; one of its sleeves was empty; in the other there was an arm and a hand; the hand held out a newspaper, silently, level with the knees of passersby. In the lapel of the tunic Vasili Ivanovitch noticed a tiny black and orange band, the ribbon of the Cross of St. George.

Vasili Ivanovitch stopped and bought a newspaper. The newspaper cost fifty thousand rubles; he handed down a million-ruble bill.

“I’m sorry, citizen,” the officer said in a soft, courteous voice, “I have no change.”

Vasili Ivanovitch muttered gruffly: “Keep it. And I’ll still be your debtor.”

And he hurried away without looking back.

Kira was listening to a lecture at the Institute. The auditorium was not heated; students kept on their overcoats and woolen mittens; the auditorium was overcrowded; students sat on the floor in the aisles.

A hand opened the door cautiously; a man’s head leaned in and threw a quick glance at the professor’s desk. Kira recognized the scar on the right temple. It was a lecture for beginners and he had never attended it. He had entered the auditorium by mistake. He was about to withdraw when he noticed Kira. He entered, closed the door noiselessly and took off his cap. She watched him from the corner of her eye. There was room in the aisle by the door, but he walked softly toward her and sat down on the steps in the aisle, at her feet.

She could not resist the temptation of looking down at him. He bowed silently, with the faintest hint of a smile, and turned attentively toward the professor’s desk. He sat still, his legs crossed, one hand motionless on his knee. The hand seemed all bones, skin and nerves. She noticed how hollow his cheeks were, how sharp the angles of his cheekbones. His leather jacket was more military than a gun, more communistic than a red flag. He did not look up at her once.

When the lecture ended and a mob of impatient feet rushed down the aisles, he got up; but he did not hurry to the door; he turned to Kira.

“How are you today?” he asked.

“Surprised,” she answered.

“By what?”

“Since when do conscientious Communists waste time by listening to lectures they don’t need?”

“Conscientious Communists are curious. They don’t mind listening to investigate that which they don’t understand.”

“I’ve heard they have many efficient ways of satisfying their curiosity.”