We the Living (60 page)

THE DOOR BELL RANG.

Irina shuddered and dropped her newspaper. Marisha lowered her book.

“I’ll open it,” said Victor, rising.

Irina looked at the dining-room clock. One hour was left before the train’s departure. And Victor had not gone to the Party meeting; and he would not leave the house.

Vasili Ivanovitch was carving a paper knife, sitting by the window. Acia yelled from somewhere under the table, rustling old magazines: “Say, is this a picture of Lenin? I gotta cut out ten of them for the Nook and I can’t find that many. Is this Lenin or is it a Czechoslovakian general? I’ll be damned if I can . . .”

They heard the steps of many heavy boots in the lobby. The door was thrown open. A man in a leather jacket stood on the threshold, a slip of paper in his hand. Two soldiers in peaked caps stood behind him, their hands on the butts of the guns at their belts. A third one stood at the entrance door in the lobby, holding a bayonet.

They heard a scream; it came from Marisha. She jumped up, pressing both hands to her mouth. Vasili Ivanovitch rose slowly. Acia stared up from under the table, her mouth hanging open. Irina stood very straight, too straight, leaning back a little.

“Search warrant,” said the man in the leather jacket, throwing the paper on the table, and motioning to his soldiers. “This way!”

They walked down the corridor to Irina’s room.

They threw the closet door open. Sasha stood on the threshold, looking at them with a somber grin.

Vasili Ivanovitch gasped, in the corridor, behind the soldiers. Acia yelled: “Oh, God! That’s why she wouldn’t let me open . . .” Marisha kicked her ankles. A drawing on the edge of a table slid down, rustling, fluttering to the floor.

“Which one is the Citizen Irina Dunaeva?” asked the man in the leather jacket.

“I am,” said Irina.

“Listen,” Sasha jerked forward. “She had nothing to do with it . . . she . . . it’s not her fault. . . . I threatened her and . . .”

“With what?” the man in the leather jacket asked, his voice expressionless.

A soldier ran his hands swiftly down Sasha’s clothes. “No weapons,” he reported.

“All right,” said the man in the leather jacket. “Take him down to the car. The Citizen Dunaeva, too. And the old man. Search the apartment.”

“Comrade,” Vasili Ivanovitch approached the leader, his voice steady, his hands shaking. “Comrade, my daughter couldn’t be guilty of . . .”

“You’ll have a chance to talk later,” said the man and turned to Victor. “Are you a Party member?”

“Yes,” said Victor.

“Your card?” Victor showed his Party card. The man pointed to Marisha: “Your wife?”

“Yes.”

“All right. These two can stay. Get your coats, citizens.”

On the floor, melting snow trailed the soldiers’ boots. A lamp with a shade that had slipped sidewise, threw a broken patch of light into the corridor, on Marisha’s face, greenish-white, with sunken eyes staring at Victor.

The soldier on guard in the lobby opened the door to admit the Upravdom. The Upravdom’s coat was thrown hurriedly over his shoulders, over a dirty, unbuttoned shirt. He wailed, clutching his fingers with a dry little crackle of stretched joints: “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! . . . Comrade Commissar, I knew nothing about this. Comrade Commissar, I swear. . . .” The soldier slammed the door in the faces of curious neighbors gathered on the stair-landing.

Irina kissed Acia and Marisha. Victor approached her, his face frozen in anxious concern: “Irina, I’m so sorry. . . . I don’t understand. . . . I’ll see what I can do and . . .”

Her eyes stopped him; they were looking at him fixedly; they looked suddenly like the eyes of Maria Petrovna in the old portrait. She turned and followed the soldiers, without a word. She went first; Sasha and Vasili Ivanovitch followed.

Vasili Ivanovitch was released in three days.

Sasha Chernov was sentenced to ten years in a Siberian prison, for counter-revolutionary activity.

Irina Dunaeva was sentenced to ten years in a Siberian prison, for assisting a counter-revolutionary.

Vasili Ivanovitch tried to see officials, got a few letters of introduction to a few assistant secretaries, spent hours huddled in the corners of unheated waiting rooms, made telephone calls, trying to keep his voice from trembling. Nothing could be done and he knew it.

When he came home, he did not speak to Victor. He did not look at Victor. He did not ask for Victor’s help.

Marisha, alone, greeted Vasili Ivanovitch when he came home. She said timidly: “Here, Vasili Ivanovitch, have some dinner. I cooked the noodle soup you like—for you, specially.” She blushed, grateful and embarrassed, when he answered with a silent, absent-minded smile.

Vasili Ivanovitch saw Irina in a cell of the G.P.U. He locked himself in his room for many hours and cried silently, happily, on the day when he arranged for her last request to be granted. She had asked permission to marry Sasha before they were sent away.

The wedding was performed in a bare hall of the G.P.U. Armed guards stood at the door. Vasili Ivanovitch and Kira were the witnesses. Sasha’s lips twitched. Irina was very calm. She had been calm ever since her arrest. She looked a little thinner, a little paler; her skin seemed transparent; her eyes too big; her fingers were steady on Sasha’s arm. She raised her face for his kiss after the ceremony, with a tender, compassionate smile.

The official whom Vasili Ivanovitch saw on the following day said: “Well, you got what you wanted. Only I don’t see what good that fool rigmarole will do them. Don’t you know that their prisons are three hundred and fifty kilometers apart?”

“No,” said Vasili Ivanovitch and sat down heavily. “I didn’t know that.”

But Irina had expected it. That had been the reason for the wedding; she had hoped it would influence the decision. It had not.

It was Vasili Ivanovitch’s last crusade. No one could appeal a sentence of the G.P.U. But a prison assignment could be changed; if he could get the proper influence, the proper connections. . . . Vasili Ivanovitch rose at dawn. Marisha forced him to swallow a cup of black coffee, stopping him in the lobby on his way out, pushing the mug into his hands, trembling in her long nightgown. Night found him in a casino lobby, pushing his way through a crowd, crumpling his hat in both hands, stopping an imposing figure he had been expecting for hours, saying softly: “Comrade Commissar . . . just a few words . . . please . . . Comrade Commissar . . .” He was thrown out by an attendant in uniform, once, and lost his hat.

He made appointments and obtained interviews. He entered a solemn office, his old, patched coat brushed thoroughly, his shoes shined, his white hair parted neatly. He stood before a desk, and his tall shoulders that had carried a heavy rifle through many dark nights, through many Siberian forests, many years ago, sagged helplessly. He looked into a stern face and said:

“Comrade Commissar, that’s all I ask. Just that. It’s not much, is it? Just send them to the same place. I know they’ve been counter-revolutionaries and you have a right to punish them. I’m not complaining, Comrade Commissar. It’s ten years, you know, but that’s all right. Only send them to the same place. What difference does it make to you? What difference does it make to the State? They’re so young. They love each other. It’s ten years, but you know and I know that they’ll never come back—it’s Siberia, and the cold and the hunger, and the conditions . . .”

“What’s that?” a stern voice interrupted him.

“Comrade Commissar, I . . . I didn’t mean anything . . . No . . . I didn’t mean . . . Only suppose they get sick or something? Irina is not very strong. They’re not sentenced to death. And while they’re alive—couldn’t you let them be together? It would mean so much to them—and so little to anyone else. I’m an old man, Comrade Commissar, and she’s my daughter. I know Siberia. It would help me, if I knew that she wasn’t alone—there—that she had a man with her, her husband. I’m not sure I know how to ask you, Comrade Commissar, but you must forgive me. You see, I’ve never asked a favor in my life. You probably think that I’m indignant and hate you all in my heart. But I don’t. I won’t. Just do that one thing—that last thing—send them to the same prison—and I’ll bless you as long as I live.”

He was refused.

“I heard the whole story,” said Andrei, when Kira spoke to him about it. “Do you know who denounced Irina?”

“No,” said Kira, and turned away, and added: “I suspect it, though. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear it.”

“I won’t.”

“I didn’t want to ask for your help, Andrei. I know I can’t expect you to intercede for a counter-revolutionary, but couldn’t you ask them to change her prison assignment and have them sent to the same place? It wouldn’t be treason on your part, and it really makes no difference to your officials.”

He held her hand and said: “Certainly. I’ll try.”

In an office of the G.P.U., the executive looked at Andrei coldly and asked:

“Pleading for a . . . relative, aren’t you, Comrade Taganov?”

“I don’t understand you, comrade,” Andrei answered slowly, looking straight at him.

“Oh, yes, I think you do. And I think you should understand that keeping a mistress who is the daughter of a former factory owner, is not the best way to strengthen your Party standing. . . . Don’t look startled, Comrade Taganov. You really didn’t think it was unknown to us, did you? And you working in the G.P.U.! You surprise me.”

“My personal affairs . . .”

“Your
what kind
of affairs, Comrade Taganov?”

“If you’re speaking of Citizen Argounova . . .”

“I
am
speaking of Citizen Argounova. And I’d suggest that you use some of the methods and authority which your position gives you, to investigate Citizen Argounova a little—for your own sake, while we’re on the subject.”

“I know everything I have to know about Citizen Argounova. You don’t have to bring her into this. She is absolutely blameless politically.”

“Oh,
politically
? And in other respects?”

“If you’re speaking as my superior, I refuse to listen to anything about Citizen Argounova except her political standing.”

“Very well. I don’t have to say anything. I was speaking merely as a friend. You should be careful, Comrade Taganov. You don’t have many friends left—in the Party.”

Andrei could do nothing to change Irina’s sentence.