We the Living (66 page)

“Oh,” said Timoshenko, watching him with eyes that were alarmingly sober. “Oh, just a scrap of waste paper. Well, we’ll let it lie there. We’ll let the janitor throw it in the waste basket.”

“Yes,” Morozov nodded eagerly, “that’s it. In the waste basket. Very well put, comrade.” He giggled, mopping his forehead. “We’ll let the janitor throw it in the waste basket. Would you like another drink, comrade? The bottle’s empty. The next one’s on me. Waiter! Another bottle of the same.”

“Sure,” said Timoshenko without moving. “I’ll have another drink.”

The waiter brought the bottle. Morozov filled the glasses, leaning solicitously over the table. He said, regaining his voice syllable by syllable: “You know, comrade, I think you misunderstood me, but I don’t blame you. I can see your motives and I sympathize thoroughly. There are so many objectionable—er—shall we say dishonorable?—types these days. One has to be careful. We must get better acquainted, comrade. It’s hard to tell at a glance, you know, and particularly in a place like this. I bet you thought I was a—a speculator, or something. Didn’t you? Very funny, isn’t it?”

“Very,” said Timoshenko. “What are you looking down at, Comrade Morozov?”

“Oh!” Morozov giggled, jerking his head up. “I was just looking at my shoes, comrade. They’re sort of tight, you know. Uncomfortable. Guess it’s because I’m on my feet so much, you know, in the office.”

“Uh-huh,” said Timoshenko. “Shouldn’t neglect your feet. Should take a hot bath when you come home, a pan of hot water with a little vinegar. That’s good for sore feet.”

“Oh, indeed? I’m glad you told me. Yes, indeed, thank you very much. I’ll be sure and try it. First thing when I get home.”

“About time you were getting home, isn’t it, Comrade Morozov?”

“Oh! . . . well, I guess . . . well, it’s not so late yet and . . .”

“I thought you were in a hurry a little while ago.”

“I . . . well, no, I can’t say that I’m in any particular hurry, and besides, such a pleasant . . .”

“What’s the matter, Comrade Morozov? Anything you don’t want to leave around here?”

“Who, me? I don’t know what that could be, comrade . . . comrade . . . what did you say your name was, comrade?”

“Timoshenko. Stepan Timoshenko. It isn’t that little scrap of waste paper down there under the table, by any chance?”

“Oh, that? Why, Comrade Timoshenko, I’d forgotten all about that. What would I want with it?”

“I don’t know,” said Timoshenko slowly.

“That’s just it, Comrade Timoshenko, nothing. Nothing at all. Another drink, Comrade Timoshenko?”

“Thanks.”

“Here you are, comrade.”

“Anything wrong under the table, Comrade Morozov?”

“Why no, Comrade Timoshenko. I was just bending to tie my shoe lace. The shoe lace is unfastened.”

“Where?”

“Well, isn’t that funny? It really isn’t unfastened at all. See? And I thought it was. You know how it is, these Soviet . . . these shoe laces nowadays. Not solid at all. Not dependable.”

“No,” said Timoshenko, “they tear like twine.”

“Yes,” said Morozov, “just like twine. Just, as you would say, like—like twine. . . . What are you leaning over for, Comrade Timoshenko? You’re not comfortable. Why don’t you move over here like this, you’ll be more . . .”

“No,” said Timoshenko, “I’m just fine here where I am. With a fine view of the table there. I like that table. Nice legs it has. Hasn’t it? Sort of artistic, you know.”

“Quite right, comrade, very artistic. Now on the other hand, comrade, there, on our left, isn’t that a pretty blonde there, by the orchestra? Quite a figure, eh?”

“Yes, indeed, comrade. . . . It’s nice shoes you have, Comrade Morozov. Patent leather, too. Bet you didn’t get those in a co-operative.”

“No . . . that is . . . to tell you the truth . . . well, you see . . .”

“What I like about them is that bulb. Right there, on the toes. Like a bump on someone’s forehead. And shiny, too. Yep, those foreigners sure know how to make shoes.”

“Speaking of the efficiency of production, comrade, take for instance, in the capitalistic countries . . . in the . . . in the . . .”

“Yes, Comrade Morozov, in the capitalistic countries?”

It was Morozov who leaped for the letter. It was Timoshenko who caught his wrist with fingers like talons, and for one brief moment they were on their hands and knees on the floor, and their eyes met silently like those of two beasts in deadly battle. Then Timoshenko’s other hand seized the letter, and he rose slowly, releasing Morozov, and sat down at the table. He was reading the letter, while Morozov was still on his hands and knees, staring up at him with the eyes of a man awaiting the verdict of a court-martial.

Morozov was sitting at the table when Timoshenko raised his head from the letter. Timoshenko laughed as Morozov had never heard a man laugh.

Timoshenko rose slowly, laughing. His stomach shook, and his rabbit fur collar, and the sinews of his bare throat. He swayed a little and he held the letter in both hands. Then his laughter died down slowly, smoothly, like a gramophone record unwinding, to a low, coughing chuckle on a single dry note. He slipped the letter into his pocket and turned slowly, his shoulders stooped, his movements suddenly awkward, humble. He shuffled heavily, uncertainly to the door. At the door, the maitre d’hotel glanced at him sidewise. Timoshenko returned the glance; Timoshenko’s glance was gentle.

Morozov sat at the table, one hand frozen in mid-air in an absurd, twisted position, like the hand of a paralytic. He heard Timoshenko’s chuckles dropping down the stairway; monotonous, disjoined chuckles that sounded like hiccoughs, like barks, like sobs.

He jumped up suddenly. “Oh my God!” he moaned. “Oh, my God!”

He ran, forgetting his hat and coat, down the long stairs, out into the snow. In the broad, white, silent street, Timoshenko was nowhere in sight.

Morozov did not send the money to Pavel Syerov. He did not go to his own office at the Food Trust. He sat all the following morning and all of the afternoon at home, in his room, and drank vodka. Whenever he heard the telephone or the door bell ringing, he crouched, his head in his shoulders, and bit his knuckles. Nothing happened.

At dinner time, Antonina Pavlovna brought the evening paper and threw it to him, snapping: “What the hell’s the matter with you today?”

He glanced through the paper. There were news items on the front page:

In the village Vasilkino, in the Kama region, the peasants, goaded by the counter-revolutionary hoarder element, burned the local Club of Karl Marx. The bodies of the Club president and secretary, Party comrades from Moscow, were found in the charred ruins. A G.P.U. squad is on its way to Vasilkino.

In the village Sverskoe, twenty-five peasants were executed last night for the murder of the Village Correspondent, a young comrade from the staff of a Communist Union of Youth newspaper in Samara. The peasants refused to divulge the name of the murderer.

 

On the last page was a short item:

Morozov wiped his forehead, as if a noose had been slipped off his throat, and drank two glasses of vodka.

When the telephone rang, he swaggered boldly to take the receiver, and Antonina Pavlovna wondered why he was chuckling.

“Morozov?” a muffled voice whispered over the wire.

“That you, Pavlusha?” Morozov asked. “Listen, pal, I’m awfully sorry, but I have the money and . . .”

“Forget the money,” Syerov hissed. “It’s all right. Listen . . . did I leave you a note yesterday?”

“Why, yes, but I guess I deserved it and . . .”

“Have you destroyed it?”

“Why?”

“Nothing. Only you understand what it could . . . Have you destroyed it?”

Morozov looked at the evening paper, grinned and said: “Sure. I have. Forget about it, pal.”

He held the paper in his hand all evening long.

“The fool!” he muttered under his breath, so that Antonina Pavlovna looked at him inquisitively, chin forward. “The damn fool! He lost it. Wandered about all night, God knows where, the drunken fool. He lost it!”

Morozov did not know that Stepan Timoshenko had come home from the European roof garden and sat at a rickety table in his unheated garret and written painstakingly a letter on a piece of brown wrapping paper, in the light of a dying candle in a green bottle; that he had folded the letter carefully and slipped it into an old envelope and slipped another scrap of paper, wrinkled and creased, into the envelope, and written Andrei Taganov’s address on it; that he had sealed the letter and had gone, steadily, unhurriedly, down the creaking stairs into the street.

The letter on the brown wrapping paper said:

PAVEL SYEROV SAT AT THE DESK IN his office, correcting the typewritten copy of his next speech on “Railroads and the Class Struggle.” His secretary stood by the desk, watching anxiously the pencil in his hand. The window of his office opened upon one of the terminal platforms. He raised his head just in time to notice a tall figure in a leather jacket disappearing down the platform. Syerov jerked forward, but the man was gone.

“Hey, did you see that man?” he snapped at the secretary.

“No, Comrade Syerov. Where?”

“Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I just thought it was someone I knew. Wonder what he’s doing around here?”

An hour later, Pavel Syerov left his office, and—walking down the stairs, on his way to the street, chewing sunflower seeds and spitting out their shells—saw the man in the leather jacket again. He had not been mistaken: it was Andrei Taganov.

Pavel Syerov stopped, and his brows moved closer together, and he spit one more shell out of the corner of his mouth. Then he approached Andrei casually and said: “Good evening, Comrade Taganov.”

Andrei answered: “Good evening, Comrade Syerov.”

“Thinking of taking a trip, Andrei?”

“No.”

“Hunting train speculators?”

“No.”

“Been shifted to the G.P.U. transport section?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m glad to see you. A rare person to see, aren’t you? So busy you have no time for old friends any more. Have some sunflower seeds?”

“No, thank you.”

“Don’t have the dirty habit? Don’t dissipate at all, do you? No vices, but one, eh? Well, I’m glad to see you taking an interest in this old station which is my home, so to speak. Been around for an hour or so, haven’t you?”

“Any more questions to ask?”

“Who, me? I wasn’t asking any questions. What would I be questioning you for? I was just being sociable, so to speak. One must be sociable once in a while, if one doesn’t want to be branded as an individualist, you know. Why don’t you drop in to see me while you’re in these parts?”

“I may,” said Andrei slowly. “Good-bye, Comrade Syerov.”

Syerov stood, frowning, an unbroken sunflower seed between his teeth, and watched Andrei descending the stairs.