We the Living (49 page)

Andrei said: “It’s been two weeks, Kira, and . . . and you probably need it.” He slipped a roll of bills into her hand, his monthly salary.

She whispered, pushing it back, closing his fingers over the bills: “No, Andrei. . . . Thank you. . . . But I don’t need it. And . . . and I don’t think I’ll need it again. . . .”

“But . . .”

“You see, I get so many excursions to lead, and Mother got more classes at the school, and we all have clothes and everything we need, so that . . .”

“But, Kira, I want you to . . .”

“Please, Andrei! Don’t let’s argue. Not about that. . . . Please. . . . Keep it. . . . If . . . if I need it, I’ll tell you.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

The violins rumbled dully, heavily, and suddenly the music burst out like a firecracker, so that the swift, laughing notes could almost be seen as sparks shooting to the ceiling.

“You know,” said Kira, “I shouldn’t ask you to bring me here. It’s not a place for you. But I like it. It’s only a caricature and a very poor little one at that, but still it’s a caricature of what Europe is. Do you know that music they’re playing? It’s from ‘Bajadere.’ I saw it. They’re playing it in Europe, too. Like here . . . almost like here.”

“Kira,” Andrei asked, “that Leo Kovalensky, is he in love with you or something?”

She looked at him, and the reflection of an electric light stood still as two sparks in her eyes and as a bright little oval on her patent leather collar. “Why do you ask that?”

“I saw your cousin, Victor Dunaev, at a club meeting and he told me that Leo Kovalensky was back, and he smiled as if the news should mean something to me. I didn’t even know that Kovalensky had been away.”

“Yes, he’s back. He’s been away somewhere in the Crimea, for his health, I think. I don’t know whether he’s in love with me, but Victor was in love with me once, and he’s never forgiven me for that.”

“I see. I don’t like that man.”

“Victor?”

“Yes. And Leo Kovalensky, too. I hope you don’t see him often. I don’t trust that type of man.”

“Oh, I see him occasionally.”

The orchestra had stopped playing.

“Andrei, ask them to play something for me. Something I like. It’s called the ‘Song of Broken Glass.’ ”

He watched her as the music burst out again, splattering sparks of sound. It was the gayest music he had ever heard; and he had never seen her look sad; but she sat, motionless, staring helplessly, her eyes forlorn, bewildered.

“It’s very beautiful, this music, Kira,” he whispered, “why do you look like that?”

“It’s something I liked . . . long ago . . . when I was a child. . . . Andrei, did you ever feel as if something had been promised to you in your childhood, and you look at yourself and you think ‘I didn’t know, then, that this is what would happen to me’—and it’s strange, and funny, and a little sad?”

“No, I was never promised anything. There were so many things that I didn’t know, then, and it’s so strange to be learning them now. . . . You know, the first time I brought you here, I was ashamed to enter. I thought it was no place for a Party man. I thought . . .” he laughed softly, apologetically, “I thought I was making a sacrifice for you. And now I like it.”

“Why?”

“Because I like to sit in a place where I have no reason to be, no reason but to sit and look at you across the table. Because I like those lights on your collar. Because you have a very stern mouth—and I like that—but when you listen to that music, your mouth is gay, as if it were listening, too. And all those things, they have no meaning for anyone on earth but me, and when I’ve lived a life where every hour had to have a purpose, and suddenly I discover what it’s like to feel things that have no purpose but myself, and I see suddenly how sacred a purpose that can be, so that I can’t even argue, I can’t doubt, I can’t fight it, and I know, then, that a life is possible whose only justification is my own joy—then everything, everything else suddenly seems very different to me.”

She whispered: “Andrei, you shouldn’t talk like that. I feel as if I were taking you away from your own life, from everything that has been your life.”

“Don’t you want to feel it?”

“But doesn’t it frighten you? Don’t you think sometimes that it may bring you to a choice you have no right to make?”

He answered with so quiet a conviction that the word sounded light, unconcerned, with a calm beyond earnestness: “No.” He leaned toward her across the table, his eyes serene, his voice soft and steady: “Kira, you look frightened. And, really, you know, it’s not a serious question. I’ve never had many questions to face in my life. People create their own questions, because they’re afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don’t sit looking at it—walk. I joined the Party because I knew I was right. I love you because I know I’m right. In a way, you and my work are the same. Things are really very simple.”

“Not always, Andrei. You know your road. I don’t belong on it.”

“That’s not in the spirit of what you taught me.”

She whispered helplessly: “What did I teach you?”

The orchestra was playing the “Song of Broken Glass.” No one sang it. Andrei’s voice sounded like the words of that music. He was saying: “You remember, you said once that we had the same root somewhere in both of us, because we both believed in life? It’s a rare capacity and it can’t be taught. And it can’t be explained to those in whom that word—life—doesn’t awaken the kind of feeling that a temple does, or a military march, or the statue of a perfect body. It is for that feeling that I joined a Party which, at the time, could lead me only to Siberia. It is for that feeling that I wanted to fight against the most senseless and useless of monsters standing in the way of human life—and that’s something we call now humanity’s politics. And so my own existence was only the fight and the future. You taught me the present.”

She made a desperate attempt. She said slowly, watching him: “Andrei, when you told me you loved me, for the first time, you were hungry. I wanted to satisfy that hunger.”

“And that’s all?”

“That’s all.”

He laughed quietly, so quietly that she had to give up. “You don’t know what you’re saying, Kira. Women like you don’t love
only
like that.”

“What are women like me?”

“What temples are, and military marches, and . . .”

“Let’s have a drink, Andrei.”

“
You
want a drink?”

“Yes. Now.”

“All right.”

He ordered the drinks. He watched the glow of the glass at her lips, a long, thin, shivering line of liquid light between fingers that looked golden in its reflection. He said: “Let’s drink a toast to something I could never offer but in a place like this: to my life.”

“Your new life?”

“My only one.”

“Andrei, what if you lose it?”

“I can’t lose it.”

“But so many things can happen. I don’t want to hold your life in my hands.”

“But you’re holding it.”

“Andrei, you must think . . . once in a while . . . that it’s possible that . . . What if anything should happen to me?”

“Why think about it?”

“But it’s possible.”

She felt suddenly as if the words of his answer were the links of a chain she would never be able to break: “It’s also possible for every one of us to have to face a death sentence some day. Does it mean that we have to prepare for it?”

THEY LEFT THE ROOF GARDEN EARLY, AND Kira asked Andrei to take her home; she was tired; she did not look at him.

He said: “Certainly, dearest,” and called a cab, and let her sit silently, her head on his shoulder, while he held her hand and kept silent, not to disturb her.

He left her at her parents’ house. She waited on a dark stair-landing and heard his cab driving away; she waited longer; for ten minutes, she stood in the darkness, leaning against a cold glass pane; beyond the pane there was a narrow airshaft and a bare brick wall with one window; in the window, a yellow candle shivered convulsively and the huge shadow of a woman’s arm kept rising and falling, senselessly, monotonously.

After ten minutes, Kira walked downstairs and hurried to a tramway.

Passing through Marisha’s room, she heard a stranger’s voice behind the door of her own room, a slow, deep, drawling voice that paused carefully, meticulously on every letter “o” and then rolled on as if on buttered hinges. She threw the door open.

The first person she saw was Antonina Pavlovna in a green brocaded turban, pointing her chin forward inquisitively; then she saw Leo; then she saw the man with the drawling voice—and her eyes froze, while he lumbered up, throwing at her a swift glance of appraisal and suspicion.

“Well, Kira, I thought you were spending the night with the excursion guides. And you said you’d be back early,” Leo greeted her sharply, while Antonina Pavlovna drawled:

“Good evening, Kira Alexandrovna.”

“I’m sorry. I got away as soon as I could,” Kira answered, her eyes staring at the stranger’s face.

“Kira, may I present? Karp Karpovitch Morozov—Kira Alexandrovna Argounova.”

She did not notice that Karp Karpovitch’s big fist was shaking her hand. She was looking at his face. His face had large blond freckles, light, narrow eyes, a heavy red mouth and a short nose with wide, vertical nostrils. She had seen it twice before; she remembered the speculator of the Nikolaevsky station, the food trader of the market.

She stood without removing her coat, without saying a word, cold with a feeling of sudden, inexplicable panic.

“What’s the matter, Kira?” Leo asked.

“Leo, haven’t we met Citizen Morozov before?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Never had the pleasure, Kira Alexandrovna,” Morozov drawled, his eyes at once shrewd and naïve and complacently friendly.

While Kira was removing her coat slowly, he turned to Leo: “And the store, Lev Sergeievitch, we’ll have it in the neighborhood of the Kouznetzky market. Best neighborhood. I have my eyes on a vacant store—just what we need. One window, narrow room—not many square meters to pay for—and I slipped a couple of tens to the Upravdom, and he’ll let us have a good, big basement thrown in—just what we need. I can take you there tomorrow, you’ll be most pleased.”

Kira’s coat dropped to the floor. A lamp stood on the table; in its glow, she could see Morozov’s face leaning toward Leo’s, his slow words muffled on his heavy lips to a sly, guilty whisper. She stared at Leo. He was not looking at her; his eyes were cold, widened slightly by a strange eagerness. She stood in the semi-darkness, beyond the circle of lamp light. The men paid no attention to her. Antonina Pavlovna threw a slow, expressionless glance at her and turned to the table, flicking ashes off her cigarette.

“How’s the Upravdom?” Leo asked.

“Couldn’t be better,” Morozov chuckled. “A friendly fellow, easy-going and . . . practical. A few ten-ruble bills and some vodka once in a while—with careful handling, he won’t cost us much. I told him to have the store cleaned for you. And we’ll order new signs—‘Lev Kovalensky. Food Products.’ ”

“What are you talking about?” Kira threw the words at Morozov with the violence of a slap in the face. She stood over him, the lamp light scattering broken shadows across her face. Morozov leaned away from her, closer to the table, startled.

“It’s a little business deal we’re discussing, Kira Alexandrovna,” he explained in a soft, conciliating drawl.

“I’ve promised you that Koko would do a great deal for Leo,” Antonina Pavlovna smiled.

“Kira, I’ll explain later,” Leo said slowly. The words were a command.

Silently, she pulled a chair to the table and sat facing Morozov, leaning forward on her crossed elbows. Morozov continued, trying not to look at her fixed eyes that seemed to register his every word: “You understand the advantage of the arrangement, Lev Sergeievitch. A private trader is no easy title to bear these days. Consider the rent on your living quarters, for instance. That alone could swallow all the profits. Now if we say you’re the sole owner—well, the rent won’t be so much since you have just this one room here to pay for. Now me, for instance, we have three large rooms, Tonia and me, and if they brand me a private trader—Good Lord Almighty!—the rent on that will wreck the whole business.”

“That’s all right,” said Leo. “I’ll carry it. I don’t mind if I’m called private trader or Nicholas II or Mephistopheles.”

“That’s it,” Morozov chuckled too loudly, his chin and stomach shaking. “That’s it. And, Lev Sergeievitch, sir, you won’t regret it. The profits—Lord bless us!—the profits will make the old what-they-called-bourgeois look like beggars. With our little scheme, we’ll sweep in the rubles, easy as picking ’em off the street. A year or two and we’re our own masters. A few hundreds slipped where necessary and we can fly abroad—to Paris, or Nice or Monte Carlo, or any of the foreign places that are pleasant and artistic.”

“Yes,” said Leo wearily. “Abroad.” Then he shook his head, as if breaking off an unbearable thought, and turned imperiously, throwing orders to the man who was hiring him: “But that friend of yours—the Communist—that’s the danger point of the whole scheme. Are you sure of him?”

Morozov spread his fat arms wide, shaking his head gently, reproachfully, his smile as soothing as Vaseline: “Lev Sergeievitch, soul of mine, you don’t think I’m a helpless babe making my first steps in business, do you? I’m as sure of him as of the eternal salvation of our souls, that’s how sure I am. He’s as smart a young man as ever you could hope to find. Quick and reasonable. And not one of those windbags that like to hear themselves talk. He’s not aiming to get nothing but big words and dried herring out of his life, no, sir. He knows when he has bread and butter in his hands—and he won’t let it slip through. And then again, he’s the one who takes the big chance. One of us common folks, if caught, might wiggle out with ten years in Siberia, but for one of them Party men—it’s the firing squad and no time to say good-bye.”