We the Living (39 page)

Vava Milovskaia had a date with Victor for Wednesday night. Wednesday afternoon, Victor telephoned her, his voice impatiently apologetic: he was detained on urgent business at the Institute and would not be able to see her. Urgent business had detained him the last three times he had promised to come. Vava had heard rumors; she had heard a name; she knew what to suspect.

In the evening, she dressed carefully; she pulled a wide black patent leather belt tight around the slim waist of her best new white coat; she touched her lips faintly, cautiously, with her new foreign lipstick; she slipped on her foreign celluloid bracelet. She tilted her white hat recklessly over her black curls and told her mother that she was going out to call on Kira Argounova.

She hesitated on the stair landing before Kira’s apartment, and her hand trembled a little when she pressed the bell.

The tenant opened the door. “To see Citizen Argounova? This way, comrade,” he told her. “You have to pass through Citizen Lavrova’s room. This door here.”

Resolutely, Vava jerked the door open without knocking.

They were there—together—Marisha and Victor—bending over the gramophone that played “The Fire of Moscow.”

Victor’s face was cold, silent fury. But Vava did not look at him. She tossed her head up and said to Marisha, as proudly, as dramatically as she could, in a shaking voice, swallowing tears: “I beg your pardon, citizen, I’m just calling on Citizen Argounova.”

Surprised and suspecting nothing, Marisha pointed to Kira’s door with her thumb. Head high, Vava walked across the room. Marisha could not understand why Victor left in such a hurry.

Kira was not at home, but Leo was.

Kira had had a restless day. Leo had promised to telephone her at the office and tell her the doctor’s diagnosis. He had not called. She telephoned him three times. There was no answer. On her way home, she remembered that it was Wednesday night and that she had a date with Andrei.

She could not keep him waiting indefinitely at a public park gate. She would drop by the Summer Garden and tell him that she couldn’t stay. She reached the Garden on time.

Andrei was not there. She looked up and down the darkening quay. She peered into the trees and shadows of the garden. She waited. Twice, she asked a militia-man what time it was. She waited. She could not understand it.

He did not come.

When she finally went home, she had waited for an hour.

She clutched her hands angrily in her pockets. She could not worry about Andrei when she thought of Leo, and the doctor, and of what she still had to hear. She hurried up the stairs. She darted through Marisha’s room and flung the door open. On the davenport, her white coat trailing to the floor, Vava was clasped in Leo’s arms, their lips locked together.

Kira stood looking at them calmly, an amazed question in her lifted eyebrows.

They jumped up. Leo was not very steady. He had been drinking again. He stood swaying, with his bitter, contemptuous smile.

Vava’s face went a dark, purplish red. She opened her mouth, choking, without a sound. And as no one said a word, she screamed suddenly into the silence: “You think it’s terrible, don’t you? Well, I think so too! It’s terrible, it’s vile! Only I don’t care! I don’t care what I do! I don’t care any more! I’m rotten? Well, I’m not the only one! Only I don’t care! I don’t care! I don’t care!”

She burst into hysterical sobs and rushed out, slamming the door. The two others did not move.

He sneered: “Well, say it.”

She answered slowly: “I have nothing to say.”

“Listen, you might as well get used to it. You might as well get used to it that you can’t have me. Because you can’t have me. You won’t have me. You won’t have me long.”

“Leo, what did the doctor say?”

He laughed: “Plenty.”

“What is it you have?”

“Nothing. Not a thing.”

“Leo!”

“Not a thing—yet. But I’m going to have it. Just a few weeks longer. I’m going to have it.”

“What, Leo?”

He swayed with a grand gesture: “Nothing much. Just—tuberculosis.”

The doctor asked: “Are you his wife?”

Kira hesitated, then answered: “No.”

The doctor said: “I see.” Then, he added: “Well, I suppose you have a right to know it. Citizen Kovalensky is in a very bad condition. We call it incipient tuberculosis. It can still be stopped—now. In a few weeks—it will be too late.”

“In a few weeks—he’ll have—tuberculosis?”

“Tuberculosis is a serious disease, citizen. In Soviet Russia—it is a fatal disease. It is strongly advisable to prevent it. If you let it start—you will not be likely to stop it.”

“What . . . does he need?”

“Rest. Plenty of it. Sunshine. Fresh air. Food. Human food. He needs a sanatorium for this coming winter. One more winter in Petrograd would be as certain as a firing squad. You’ll have to send him south.”

She did not answer; but the doctor smiled ironically, for he heard the answer without words and he looked at the patches on her shoes.

“If that young man is dear to you,” he said, “send him south. If you have a human possibility—or an inhuman one—send him south.”

Kira was very calm when she walked home.

When she came in, Leo was standing by the window. He turned slowly. His face was so profoundly, serenely tranquil that he looked younger; he looked as if he had had his first night of rest; he asked quietly: “Where have you been, Kira?”

“At the doctor’s.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to know all that.”

“He told me.”

“Kira, I’m sorry about last night. About that little fool. I hope you didn’t think that I . . .”

“Of course, I didn’t. I understand.”

“I think it’s because I was frightened. But I’m not—now. Everything seems so much simpler—when there’s a limit set. . . . The thing to do now, Kira, is not to talk about it. Don’t let’s think about it. There’s nothing we can do—as the doctor probably told you. We can still be together—for a while. When it becomes contagious—well . . .”

She was watching him. Such was his manner of accepting his death sentence.

She said, and her voice was hard: “Nonsense, Leo. You’re going south.”

In the first State hospital she visited, the official in charge told her: “A place in a sanatorium in the Crimea? He’s not a member of the Party? And he’s not a member of a Trade Union? And he’s not a State employee? You’re joking, citizen.”

In the second hospital, the official said: “We have hundreds on our waiting list, citizen. Trade Union members. Advanced cases. . . . No, we cannot even register him.”

In the third hospital, the official refused to see her.

There were lines to wait in, ghastly lines of deformed creatures, of scars, and slings, and crutches, and open sores, and green, mucous patches of eyes, and grunts, and groans, and—over a line of the living—the smell of the morgue.

There were State Medical headquarters to visit, long hours of waiting in dim, damp corridors that smelt of carbolic acid and soiled linen. There were secretaries who forgot appointments, and assistants who said: “So sorry, citizen. Next, please”; there were young executives who were in a hurry, and attendants who groaned: “I tell you he’s gone, it’s after office hours, we gotta close, you can’t sit here all night.”

At the end of the first two weeks she learned, as firmly as if it were some mystic absolute, that if one had consumption one had to be a member of a Trade Union and get a Trade Union despatchment to a Trade Union Sanatorium.

There were officials to be seen, names mentioned, letters of recommendation offered, begging for an exception. There were Trade Union heads to visit, who listened to her plea with startled, ironic glances. Some laughed; some shrugged; some called their secretaries to escort the visitor out; one said he could and he would, but he named a sum she could not earn in a year.

She was firm, erect, and her voice did not tremble, and she was not afraid to beg. It was her mission, her quest, her crusade.

She wondered sometimes why the words: “But he’s going to
die
,” meant so little to them, and the words: “But he’s not a registered worker,” meant so little to her, and why it seemed so hard to explain.

She made Leo do his share of inquiries. He obeyed without arguing, without complaining, without hope.

She tried everything she could. She asked Victor for help. Victor said with dignity: “My dear cousin, I want you to realize that my Party membership is a sacred trust not to be used for purposes of personal advantage.”

She asked Marisha. Marisha laughed. “With all our sanatoriums stuffed like herring-barrels, and waiting lists till the next generation, and comrade workers rotting alive waiting—and here he’s not even sick yet! You don’t realize reality, Citizen Argounova.”

She could not call on Andrei. Andrei had failed her.

For several days after the date he had missed, she called on Lydia with the same question: “Has Andrei Taganov been here? Have you had any letters for me?”

The first day, Lydia said: “No.” The second day, she giggled and wanted to know what was this, a romance? and she’d tell Leo, and with Leo so handsome! and Kira interrupted impatiently: “Oh, stop this rubbish, Lydia! It’s important. Let me know the minute you hear from him, will you?”

Lydia did not hear from him.

One evening, at the Dunaevs’, Kira asked Victor casually if he had seen Andrei Taganov at the Institute. “Sure,” said Victor, “he’s there every day.”

She was hurt. She was angry. She was bewildered. What had she done? For the first time, she questioned her own behavior. Had she acted foolishly that Sunday in the country? She tried to remember every word, every gesture. She could find no fault. He had seemed happier than ever before. After a while, she decided that she must trust their friendship and give him a chance to explain.

She telephoned him. She heard the old landlady’s voice yelling into the house: “Comrade Taganov!” with a positive inflection that implied his presence; there was a long pause; the landlady returned and asked: “Who’s calling him?” and before she had pronounced the last syllable of her name, Kira heard the landlady barking: “He ain’t home!” and slamming her receiver.