We the Living

I

PETROGRAD SMELT OF CARBOLIC ACID.

A pinkish-gray banner that had been red, hung in the webbing of steel beams. Tall girders rose to a roof of glass panes gray as the steel with the dust and wind of many years; some of the panes were broken, pierced by forgotten shots, sharp edges gaping upon a sky gray as the glass. Under the banner hung a fringe of cobwebs; under the cobwebs — a huge railway clock with black figures on a yellow face and no hands. Under the clock, a crowd of pale faces and greasy overcoats waited for the train.

Kira Argounova entered Petrograd on the threshold of a box car. She stood straight, motionless, with the graceful indifference of a traveler on a luxurious ocean liner, with an old blue suit of faded cloth, with slender, sunburned legs and no stockings. She had an old piece of plaid silk around her neck, and short tousled hair, and a stockingcap with a bright yellow tassel. She had a calm mouth and slightly widened eyes with the defiant, enraptured, solemnly and fearfully expectant look of a warrior who is entering a strange city and is not quite sure whether he is entering it as a conqueror or a captive.

Behind her was a car overloaded with a freight of humans and bundles. The bundles were wrapped in bed-sheets, newspapers and flour sacks. The humans were bundled in ragged overcoats and shawls. The bundles had served as beds and had lost all shape. Dust had engraved wrinkles on the dry, cracked skin of faces that had lost all expression.

Slowly, wearily, the train pulled to a stop, the last one of a long journey across the devastated plains of Russia. It had taken two weeks to make a three days’ trip — from the Crimea to Petrograd. In 1922 the railroads, as well as everything else, had not as yet been organized. The civil war had come to an end. The last traces of the White Army had been wiped out. But as the hand of the Red rule was bridling the country, the net of steel rails and telegraph wires still hung limply, out of the hand’s grasp.

There were no schedules, no time-tables. No one knew when a train would leave or arrive. A vague rumor that it was coming rushed a mob of anxious travelers to the stations of every town along its way. They waited for hours, for days, afraid to leave the depot where the train could appear in a minute — or a week. The littered floors of the waiting rooms smelt like their bodies; they put their bundles on the floors, and their bodies on the bundles, and slept. They munched patiently dry crusts of bread and sunflower seeds; they did not undress for weeks. When at last, snorting and groaning, the train rumbled in, men besieged it with fists and feet and ferocious despair. Like barnacles, they clung to the steps, to the buffers, to the roofs. They lost their luggage and their children; without bell or notice the train started suddenly, carrying away those who had crawled aboard.

Kira Argounova had not started the journey in a box car. At the start, she had had a choice seat: the little table at the window of a third-class passenger coach; the little table was the center of the compartment, and Kira — the center of the passengers’ attention. A young Soviet official admired the line that the silhouette of her body made against the light square of a broken window. A fat lady in a fur coat was indignant that the girl’s defiant posture somehow suggested a cabaret dancer perched among champagne glasses, but a dancer with a face of such severe, arrogant calm, that the lady wondered whether she was really thinking of a cabaret table or a pedestal. For many long miles, the travelers of that compartment watched the fields and prairies of Russia roll by as a background for a haughty profile with a mass of brown hair thrown off a high forehead by the wind that whistled outside in the telegraph wires.

For lack of space Kira’s feet rested on her father’s lap. Alexander Dimitrievitch Argounov slumped wearily in his corner, his stomach a shelf for his folded hands, his red, puffed eyes half-closed, drowsing, jerking himself up with a sigh once in a while when he caught his mouth hanging open. He wore a patched khaki overcoat, high peasant boots with run-down heels and a burlap shirt on the back of which one could still read: “Ukrainian Potatoes.” This was not an intentional disguise; it was all Alexander Dimitrievitch possessed. But he was greatly worried lest someone should notice that the rim of his pince-nez was of real gold.

Crushed against his elbow, Galina Petrovna, his wife, managed to hold her body erect and her book high to the tip of her nose. She had kept her book, but lost all her hairpins in the flight for seats, when her efforts had secured the family’s entrance into the car. She was careful not to let her fellow travelers observe that her book was French.

Once in a while her foot felt cautiously under the seat to make certain that her best bundle was still there, the one wrapped in the cross-stitch embroidered table cloth. That bundle held the last remnants of her hand-made lace underwear, purchased in Vienna before the war, and the silverware with the Argounov family initials. She greatly resented, but could not prevent the fact that the bundle served as a pillow for a snoring soldier who slept under the bench, his boots protruding into the aisle.

Lydia, the Argounovs’ elder daughter, had to sit in the aisle, next to the boots, on a bundle; but she made it a point to let every passenger in the car understand that she was not used to such mode of traveling. Lydia did not condescend to hide outward signs of social superiority, of which she proudly displayed three: a jabot of tarnished gold lace on her faded velvet suit, a pair of meticulously darned silk gloves and a bottle of eau-de-cologne. She took the bottle out at rare intervals to rub a few drops on her carefully groomed hands, and hid it promptly, noticing the sidewise, yearning glance of her mother from behind the French novel.

It had been four years since the Argounov family left Petrograd. Four years ago Argounov’s textile factory on the outskirts of the capital was nationalized in the name of the people. In the name of the people the banks were declared national property. Argounov’s safe-deposit boxes were broken open and emptied. The luminous collars of rubies and diamonds, which Galina Petrovna paraded proudly in sparkling ball-rooms and kept prudently locked afterwards, passed into unknown hands, never to be seen again.

In the days when the shadow of a growing, nameless fear descended upon the city, hanging like a heavy mist on unlighted street corners, when sudden shots rang in the night, trucks bristling with bayonets rumbled down the cobblestones, and store windows crashed with a sonorous ringing of glass; when the members of the Argounovs’ social set suddenly melted away, like snowdrops over a bonfire; when the Argounov family found themselves in the halls of their stately granite mansion, with a considerable sum of cash, a few last pieces of jewelry, and a constant terror at every sound of the door bell — a flight from the city stood before them as their only course of action.

In those days the thunder of the revolutionary struggle had died in Petrograd, in the resigned hopelessness of Red victory, but in the south of Russia it still roared on the fields of civil war. The south was in the hands of the White Army. That army was thrown in disjoined troops across the vast country, divided by miles of broken railroad tracks and unknown, desolated villages; that army carried three-colored banners, an impatient, bewildered contempt of the enemy — and no realization of his importance.

The Argounovs left Petrograd for the Crimea, there to await the capital’s liberation from the Red yoke. Behind them, they left drawing rooms with tall mirrors reflecting blazing crystal chandeliers; perfumed furs and thoroughbred horses on sunny winter mornings; plate-glass windows that opened on the avenue of stately mansions, the Kamenostrovsky, Petrograd’s exclusive thorough-fare. They met four years of crowded summer shacks where piercing Crimean winds whistled through porous stone walls; of tea with saccharine, and onions fried in linseed oil; of nightly bombardments and fearful mornings when only the red flags or the three-colored banners in the streets announced into whose hands the town had passed.

The Crimea changed hands six times. Nineteen twenty-one saw the end of the struggle. From the shores of the White Sea to those of the Black, from the border of Poland to the yellow rivers of China, the red banner rose triumphantly to the sound of the “Internationale” and the clicking of keys, as the world’s doors closed on Russia.

The Argounovs had left Petrograd in autumn, calmly and almost cheerfully. They had considered their trip an unpleasant, but short annoyance. They had expected to be back in the spring. Galina Petrovna had not allowed Alexander Dimitrievitch to take a winter fur coat along. “Why, he thinks it’s going to last a year!” she had laughed, referring to the Soviet government.

It had lasted five years. In 1922, with a silent, dull resignation, the family took the train back to Petrograd, to start life all over again, if a start were still possible.

When they were in the train and the wheels screeched and tore forward for the first time, in that first jerk toward Petrograd, they looked at one another, but said nothing. Galina Petrovna was thinking of their mansion on Kamenostrovsky and whether they could get it back; Lydia was thinking of the old church where she had knelt every Easter of her childhood, and that she would visit it on her first day in Petrograd; Alexander Dimitrievitch was not thinking; Kira remembered suddenly that when she went to the theater, her favorite moment was the one when the lights went out and the curtain shivered before rising; and she wondered why she was thinking of that moment.

Kira’s table was between two wooden benches. Ten heads faced one another — like two tense, hostile walls, swaying as the train rocked — ten weary, dusty white spots in the semi-darkness: Alexander Dimitrievitch and the faint glint of his gold pince-nez, Galina Petrovna, her face whiter than the white pages of her book, a young Soviet official with glimmers of light in his new leather brief case, a bearded peasant in a smelly sheepskin coat, who scratched himself continuously, a haggard woman with sagging breasts, who was counting constantly, hysterically her packages and children; and facing them — two of the bare-footed, uncombed children, and a soldier, his head bent, his yellow bast shoes resting on the alligator suitcase of a fat lady in a fur coat, the only passenger with a suitcase and with pink, glossy cheeks, and next to her the sallow, freckled face of a dissatisfied woman with a man’s jacket, bad teeth and a red kerchief on her hair.

Through the broken window, a ray of light came in over Kira’s head. Dust danced in the ray and it stopped on three pairs of boots swinging down from the upper berth where three soldiers huddled together. Above them, high over the upper berth, a consumptive young fellow was curled on the baggage rack, his chest crushed against the ceiling, asleep, snoring raucously, breathing with effort. Under the travelers’ feet the wheels knocked as if a load of rusty iron crashed and then splinters rolled, clattering down three steps, and another crash and splinters clattering, and another crash and splinters clattering, and over the travelers’ heads a man’s breath whistled like air hissing out of a punctured balloon; the man stopped at times to moan weakly; the wheels went on clattering.

Kira was eighteen years old and she thought of Petrograd.

The faces around her spoke of Petrograd. She did not know whether the sentences hissed into the dusty air were spoken in one hour, or one day, or through the two weeks in the rocking haze of dust, sweat and fear. She did not remember — because she did not listen.

“In Petrograd they have dried fish, citizens.”

“And sunflower-seed oil.”

“Sunflower-seed oil! Not real?”

“Stepka, don’t scratch your head at me, scratch in the aisle! ... At our co-operative in Petrograd, they gave potatoes. A bit frozen, but real potatoes.”

“Have you ever tried pancakes of coffee grounds with treacle, citizens?”

“Mud up to your knees, in Petrograd.”

“You stand in line for three hours at the co-operative and maybe you get food.”

“But they have NEP in Petrograd.”

“What’s that?”

“Never heard? You’re not a conscientious citizen.”

“Yes, comrades, Petrograd and NEP and private stores.”

“But if you’re not a speculator, you’ll starve, but if you are, you can go in and buy anything you want, but if you buy you’re a speculator, and then look out, but if you’re not a speculator you have no money for a private store and then you stand in line at the co-operative.”

“At the co-operative they give millet.”

“Empty bellies are empty bellies with everybody but the lice.”

“You stop scratching, citizen.”

Someone on the upper berth said: “I’d like buckwheat porridge when I get to Petrograd.”

“Oh, Lord,” sighed the lady in the fur coat, “if I could have a bath, a nice, hot bath with soap when I get to Petrograd.”

“Citizens,” Lydia asked boldly, “do they have ice-cream in Petrograd? I haven’t tasted it for five years. Real ice-cream, cold, so cold it takes your breath away....”

“Yes,” said Kira, “so cold it takes your breath away, but then you can walk faster, and there are lights, a long line of lights, moving past you as you walk.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Lydia.

“Why, about Petrograd.” Kira looked at her, surprised. “I thought you were talking about Petrograd, and how cold it was there, weren’t you?”

“We were not. You’re off — as usual.”

“I was thinking about the streets. The streets of a big city where so much is possible and so many things can happen to you.”

Galina Petrovna remarked dryly: “You’re saying that quite happily, aren’t you? I should think we’d all be quite tired of ‘things happening,’ by now. Haven’t you had enough happen to you with the revolution, and all?”

“Oh, yes,” said Kira indifferently, “the revolution.”

The woman in the red kerchief opened a package and produced a piece of dried fish, and said to the upper berth: “Kindly take your boots away, citizen. I’m eating.”

The boots did not move. A voice answered: “You don’t eat with your nose.”

The woman bit into the fish and her elbow poked furiously into the fur coat of her neighbor, and she said: “Sure, no consideration for us proletarians. It’s not like as if I had a fur coat on. Only I wouldn’t be eating dried fish then. I’d be eating white bread.”

“White bread?” The lady in the fur coat was frightened. “Why, citizen, who ever heard of white bread? Why, I have a nephew in the Red Army, citizen, and ... and, why, I wouldn’t dream of white bread!”

“No? I bet you wouldn’t eat dry fish, though. Want a piece?”

“Why ... why, yes, thank you, citizen. I’m a little hungry and....”

“So? You are? I know you bourgeois. You’re only too glad to get the last bite out of a toiler’s mouth. But not out of my mouth, you don’t!”

The car smelt of rotting wood, clothes that had not been changed for weeks and the odor coming from a little door open at the end of the coach.

The lady in the fur coat got up and made her way timidly toward that door, stepping over the bodies in the aisle.

“Could you please step out for a moment, citizens?” she asked humbly of the two gentlemen who were traveling comfortably in that little private compartment, one of them on the seat, the other stretched in the filth of the floor.

“Certainly, citizen,” the one who was sitting answered politely and kicked the one on the floor to awaken him.

Left alone where no one could watch her, the lady in the fur coat opened her handbag furtively and unwrapped a little bundle of oiled paper. She did not want anyone in the car to know that she had a whole boiled potato. She ate hurriedly in big, hysterical bites, choking, trying not to be heard beyond the closed door.

When she came out, she found the two gentlemen waiting by the door to retrieve their seats.

At night, two smoked lanterns trembled over the car, one at each end, over the doors, two shivering yellow spots in the darkness, with a gray night sky shaking in the squares of broken windows. Black figures, stiff and limp as dummies, swayed to the clatter of the wheels, asleep in sitting postures. Some snored. Some moaned. No one spoke.

When they passed a station, a ray of light swept across the car, and against the light Kira’s figure flashed for a second, bent, her face in her lap on folded arms, her hair hanging down, the light setting sparks in the hair, then dying again.

Somewhere in the train, a soldier had an accordion. He sang, hour after hour, through the darkness, the wheels and the moans, dully, persistently, hopelessly. No one could tell whether his song was gay or sad, a joke or an immortal monument; it was the first song of the revolution, risen from nowhere, gay, reckless, bitter, impudent, sung by millions of voices, echoing against train roofs, and village roads, and dark city pavements, some voices laughing, some voices wailing, a people laughing at its own sorrow, the song of the revolution, written on no banner, but in every weary throat, the “Song of the Little Apple.”

“Hey, little apple,

Where are you rolling?”

“Hey, little apple, where are you rolling? If you fall into German paws, you’ll never come back.... Hey, little apple, where are you rolling? My sweetie’s a White and I’m a Bolshevik.... Hey, little apple, where....”

No one knew what the little apple was; but everyone understood.

Many times each night the door of the dark car was kicked open and a lantern burst in, held high in an unsteady hand, and behind the lantern came gleaming steel bands, and khaki, and brass buttons; bayonets and men with stern, imperious voices that ordered: “Your documents!”

The lantern swam slowly, shaking, down the car, stopping on pale, startled faces with blinking eyes, and trembling hands with crumpled scraps of paper.

Then Galina Petrovna smiled ingratiatingly, repeating: “Here you are, comrade. Here, comrade,” thrusting at the lantern a piece of paper with a few typewritten lines which stated that a permission for a trip to Petrograd had been granted the citizen Alexander Argounov with wife Galina and daughters: Lydia, 28, and Kira, 18.

The men behind the lantern looked at the paper, and curtly handed it back, and walked farther, stepping over Lydia’s legs stretched across the aisle.

Sometimes some men threw a quick glance back at the girl who sat on the table. She was awake and her eyes followed them. Her eyes were not frightened; they were steady, curious, hostile.

Then the men and the lantern were gone and somewhere in the train the soldier with the accordion wailed:

“And now there is no Russia,

For Russia’s all sprawled.

Hey, little apple,

Where have you rolled?”

Sometimes the train stopped at night. No one knew why it had stopped. There was no station, no sign of life in the barren waste of miles. An empty stretch of sky hung over an empty stretch of land; the sky had a few black spots of clouds; the land — a few black spots of bushes. A faint, red, quivering line divided the two; it looked like a storm or a distant fire.

Whispers crawled down the long line of cars: “The boiler exploded....”

“The bridge is blown up half a mile ahead....”

“They’ve found counter-revolutionaries on the train and they’re going to shoot them right here, in the bushes....”

“If we stay much longer ... the bandits ... you know....”

“They say Makhno is right in this neighborhood.”

“If he gets us, you know what that means, don’t you? No man leaves alive, but the women do and wish they didn’t....”

“Stop talking nonsense, citizen. You’re making the women nervous.”

Searchlights darted into the clouds and died instantly and no one could say whether they were close by or miles away. And no one could tell whether the black spot that had seemed to move was a horseman or just a bush.

The train started as suddenly as it had stopped. Sighs of relief greeted the screeching of wheels. No one ever learned why the train had stopped.

Early one morning, some men rushed through the car. One of them had a Red Cross badge. There was the sound of a commotion outside. One of the passengers followed the men. When he came back his face made the travelers feel uneasy.

“It’s in the next car,” he explained. “A fool peasant woman. Traveled between the cars and tied her legs to the buffer so she wouldn’t fall. Fell asleep at night, too tired, I guess, and slipped off. Legs tied, it just dragged her with the train, under the car. Head cut off. Sorry I went to see.”

Halfway through the journey, at a lonely little station that had a rotting platform and bright posters and unkempt soldiers on both platform and posters, it was found that the passenger coach in which the Argounov family traveled, could go no farther. The cars had not been repaired or inspected for years; when they suddenly and finally broke down, no repairs could help. The occupants were requested to move out speedily. They had to squeeze themselves into the other over-crowded cars — if they could.

The Argounovs fought their way into a box car. Gratefully, Galina Petrovna and Lydia made the sign of the cross.

The woman with the sagging breasts could not find room for all of her children. When the train pulled out, she was seen sitting on her bundles, the bewildered children clinging to her skirt, watching the train with a dull, hopeless stare.

Across prairies and marshes, the long line of cars crawled wearily, a veil of smoke floating and melting into white puffs behind it. Soldiers huddled in groups on the sloping, slippery roofs. Some of them had harmonicas. They played and sang about the little apple. The song trailed and melted away with the smoke.

A crowd awaited the train in Petrograd. When the last panting of the engine reverberated through the terminal vaults, Kira Argounova faced the mob that met every train. Under the folds of shapeless clothes, their bodies were driven by the tense, unnatural energy of a long struggle that had become habitual; their faces were hard and worn. Behind them were tall, grilled windows; behind these was the city.

Kira was pushed forward by impatient travelers. Alighting, she stopped for one short second of hesitation, as if feeling the significance of the step. Her foot was sunburned, and she wore a home-made wooden sandal with leather straps. For one short second the foot was held in the air. Then the wooden sandal touched the wooden boards of the platform: Kira Argounova was in Petrograd.

II

PROLETARIANS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

Kira looked at the words on the bare plaster walls of the station. The plaster had crumbled off in dark blotches that made the walls look skin-diseased. But fresh signs had been printed upon them. Red letters announced: LONG LIVE THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT! WHO IS NOT WITH US — IS AGAINST US!

The letters had been made by a smudge of red paint over a stencil. Some lines were crooked. Some letters had dried with long, thin streaks of red winding down the walls.

A young fellow leaned against a wall under the signs. A crumpled lambskin hat was crushed over his pale hair that hung over his pale eyes. He stared aimlessly ahead and cracked sunflower seeds, spitting the shells out of the corner of his mouth.

Between the train and the walls, a whirlpool of khaki and red dragged Kira into the midst of soldiers’ coats, red kerchiefs, unshaved faces, mouths that opened soundlessly, their screams swallowed in a roar of boots shuffling down the platform, beating against the high steel ceiling. An old barrel with rusty hoops and a tin cup attached on a chain bore a painted inscription: “Boiled water” and a huge sign: “BEWARE OF CHOLERA. DO NOT DRINK RAW WATER.” A stray dog with ribs like a skeleton’s, its tail between its legs, was smelling the littered floor, searching for food. Two armed soldiers were fighting through the crowd, dragging a peasant woman who struggled and sobbed: “Comrades! I didn’t! Brothers, where are you taking me? Comrades dear, so help me God, I didn’t!”

From below, among the boots and swishing, mud-caked skirts, someone howled monotonously, not quite a human sound nor a barking: a woman was crawling on her knees, trying to gather a spilled sack of millet, sobbing, picking up the grain mixed with sunflower-seed shells and cigarette butts.

Kira looked at the tall windows. She heard, from the outside, the old familiar sound of the piercing tramway bell. She smiled.

At a door marked in red letters “Commandant,” a young soldier stood on guard. Kira looked at him. His eyes were austere and forbidding like caverns where a single flame burned under cold, gray vaults; there was an air of innate temerity in the lines of his tanned face, of the hand that grasped the bayonet, of the neck in the open shirt collar. Kira liked him. She looked straight into his eyes and smiled. She thought that he understood her, that he guessed the great adventure beginning for her.

The soldier looked at her coldly, indifferently, astonished. She turned away, a little disappointed, although she did not know just what she had expected.

All the soldier noticed was that the strange girl in the child’s stocking-cap had strange eyes; also that she wore a light suit and no brassiere, which fact he did not resent at all.

“Kira!” Galina Petrovna’s voice pierced the roar of the station. “Kira! Where are you? Where are your parcels? How about your parcels?”

Kira returned to the box car where her family was struggling with the luggage. She had forgotten that she had to carry three bundles, porters being a luxury out of reach. Galina Petrovna was fighting off these porters, husky loafers in ragged soldiers’ coats, who seized luggage without being asked, insolently offering their services.

Then, arms strained by the bundled remains of their fortune, the Argounov family descended upon the ground of Petrograd.

A gold sickle and hammer rose over the station’s exit door. Two posters hung by its side. One bore a husky worker whose huge boots crushed tiny palaces, while his raised arm, with muscles red as beefsteaks, waved a greeting to a rising sun red as his muscles; above the sun stood the words: COMRADES! WE ARE THE BUILDERS OF A NEW LIFE!

The other bore a huge white louse on a black background with red letters: LICE SPREAD DISEASE! CITIZENS, UNITE ON THE ANTI-TYPHUS FRONT!

The smell of carbolic acid rose higher than all the rest. Station buildings were disinfected against the diseases that poured into the city on every train. Like a breath from a hospital window, the odor hung in the air as a warning and a grim reminder.

The doors into Petrograd opened upon the Znamensky square. A sign on a post announced its new name: SQUARE OF UPRISING. A huge gray statue of Alexander III faced the station, against a gray hotel building, against a gray sky. It was not raining heavily, but a few drops fell at long intervals, slowly, monotonously, as if the sky were leaking, as if it too were in need of repairs, like the rotted wooden paving where raindrops made silver sparks on dark puddles. The raised black tops of hansom cabs looked like patent leather, swaying, quivering, wheels grunting in the mud with the sound of animals chewing. Old buildings watched the square with the dead eyes of abandoned shops in whose dusty windows the cobwebs and faded newspapers had not been disturbed for five years.

But one shop bore a cotton sign: PROVISION CENTER. A line waited at the door, stretching around the corner; a long line of feet in shoes swollen by the rain, of red, frozen hands, of raised collars that did not prevent the raindrops from rolling down many backs, for many heads were bent.

“Well,” said Alexander Dimitrievitch, “we’re back.”

“Isn’t it wonderful!” said Kira.

“Mud, as ever,” said Lydia.

“We’ll have to take a cab. Such an expense!” said Galina Petrovna.

They crowded into one cab, Kira sitting on top of the bundles. The horse jerked forward, sending a shower of mud on Kira’s legs, and turned into the Nevsky Prospect.

The long, broad avenue lay before them, as straight as if it were the spine of the city. Far away, the slender gold spire of the Admiralty gleamed faintly in the gray mist, like a long arm raised in a solemn greeting.

Petrograd had seen five years of revolution. Four of those years had closed its every artery and every store, when nationalization smeared dust and cobwebs over the plate-glass windows; the last year had brought out soap and mops, new paint and new owners, as the state’s New Economic Policy had announced a “temporary compromise” and allowed small private stores to re-open timidly.

After a long sleep, Nevsky was opening its eyes slowly. The eyes were not used to the light; they had opened in a hurry and they stared, wide, frightened, incredulous. New signs were cotton strips with glaring, uneven letters. Old signs were marble obituaries of men long since gone. Gold letters spelled forgotten names on the windows of new owners, and bullet holes with sunburst cracks still decorated the glass. There were stores without signs and signs without stores. But between the windows and over closed doors, over bricks and boards and cracked plaster, the city wore a mantle of color bright as a patchwork: there were posters of red shirts, and yellow wheat, and red banners, and blue wheels, and red kerchiefs, and gray tractors, and red smokestacks; they were wet, transparent in the rain, showing layers of old posters underneath, growing — unchecked, unrestricted — like the bright mildew of a city.

On a corner, an old lady held timidly a tray of home-made cakes, and feet hurried past without stopping; someone yelled: “Pravda! Krasnaya Gazeta! Latest news, citizens!” and someone yelled: “Saccharine, citizens!” and someone yelled: “Flints for cigarette lighters, cheap, citizens!” Below, there was mud and sunflower-seed shells; above, there were red banners bending over the street from every house, streaked and dripping little pink drops.

“I hope,” said Galina Petrovna, “that sister Marussia will be glad to see us.”

“I wonder,” said Lydia, “what these last years have done to the Dunaevs.”

“I wonder what is left of their fortune,” said Galina Petrovna, “if anything. Poor Marussia! I doubt if they have more than we do.”

“And if they have,” sighed Alexander Dimitrievitch, “what difference does it make now, Galina?”

“None,” said Galina Petrovna, “ — I hope.”

“Anyway, we’re still no poor relations,” Lydia said proudly and pulled her skirt up a little to show the passersby her high-laced, olive-green shoes.

Kira was not listening; she was watching the streets.

The cab stopped at the building where, four years ago, they had seen the Dunaevs in their magnificent apartment. One half of the imposing entrance door had a huge, square glass pane; the other half was filled in with unpainted boards hastily nailed together.

The spacious lobby had had a soft carpet, Galina Petrovna remembered, and a hand-carved fireplace. The carpet was gone; the fireplace was still there, but there were penciled inscriptions on the white stomachs of its marble cupids and a long, diagonal crack in the large mirror above it.

A sleepy janitor stuck his head out of the little booth under the stairs and withdrew it indifferently.

They carried their bundles up the stairs. They stopped at a padded door; the black oilcloth was ripped and gray lumps of soiled cotton made a fringe around the door.

“I wonder,” Lydia whispered, “if they still have their magnificent butler.”

Galina Petrovna pressed the bell.

There were steps inside. A key turned. A cautious hand half opened the door, protected by a chain. Through the narrow crack, they saw an old woman’s face cut by hanging gray hair, a stomach under a dirty towel tied as an apron, and one foot in a man’s bedroom slipper. The woman looked at them silently, with hostile inquiry, with no intention of opening the door farther.

“Is Maria Petrovna in?” Galina Petrovna asked in a slightly unnatural voice.

“Who wants to know?” asked the toothless mouth.

“I’m her sister, Galina Petrovna Argounova.”

The woman did not answer; she turned and yelled into the house: “Maria Petrovna! Here’s a mob that says them’s your sister!”

A cough answered from the depths of the house, then slow steps; then a pale face peered over the old woman’s shoulder and a mouth opened with a shriek: “My Lord in Heaven!”

The door was thrown wide open. Two thin arms seized Galina Petrovna, crushing her against a trembling chest. “Galina! Darling! It’s you!”

“Marussia!” Galina Petrovna’s lips sank into the powder on a flabby cheek and her nose into the thin, dry hair sprinkled with a perfume that smelled like vanilla.

Maria Petrovna had always been the beauty of the family, the delicate, spoiled darling whose husband carried her in his arms through the snow to the carriage in winter. She looked older than Galina Petrovna now. Her skin was the color of soiled linen; her lips were not red enough, but her eyelids were too red.

A door crashed open behind her and something came flying into the anteroom; something tall, tense, with a storm of hair and eyes like automobile headlights; and Galina Petrovna recognized Irina, her niece, a young girl of eighteen with the eyes of twenty-eight and the laughter of eight. Behind her, Acia, her little sister, waddled in slowly and stood in the doorway, watching the newcomers sullenly; she was eight years old, needed a haircut and one garter.

Galina Petrovna kissed the girls; then she raised herself on tiptoe to plant a kiss on the cheek of her brother-in-law, Vasili Ivanovitch. She tried not to look at him. His thick hair was white; his tall, powerful body stooped. Had she seen the Admiralty tower stooping, Galina Petrovna would have felt less alarmed.

Vasili Ivanovitch spoke seldom. He said only: “Is that my little friend Kira?” The question was warmer than a kiss.

His sunken eyes were like a fireplace where the last blazing coals fought against slow, inevitable ashes. He said: “Sorry Victor isn’t home. He’s at the Institute. The boy works so hard.” His son’s name acted like a strong breath that revived the coals for a moment.

Before the revolution, Vasili Ivanovitch Dunaev had owned a prosperous fur business. He had started as a trapper in the wilderness of Siberia, with a gun, a pair of boots, and two arms that could lift an ox. He wore the scar of a bear’s teeth on his thigh. Once, he was found buried in the snow; he had been there for two days; his arms clutched the body of the most magnificent silver fox the frightened Siberian peasants had ever seen. His relatives heard no word from him for ten years. When he returned to St. Petersburg, he opened an office of which his relatives could not afford the door knobs; and he bought silver horseshoes for the three horses that galloped with his carriage down Nevsky.

His hands had provided the ermines that swept many marble stairways in the royal palaces; the sables that embraced many shoulders white as marble. His muscles and the long hours of the frozen Siberian nights had paid for every hair of every fur that passed through his hands.

He was sixty years old; his backbone had been as straight as his gun; his spirit — as straight as his backbone.

When Galina Petrovna raised a steaming spoonful of millet to her lips in her sister’s dining room, she threw a furtive glance at Vasili Ivanovitch. She was afraid to study him openly; but she had seen the stooped backbone; she wondered about the spirit.

She saw the changes in the dining room. The spoon she held was not the monogrammed silverware she remembered; it was of heavy tin that gave a metallic taste to the mush. She remembered crystal and silver fruit vases on the buffet; one solitary jug of Ukrainian pottery adorned it now. Big rusty nails on the walls showed the places where old paintings had hung.

Across the table, Maria Petrovna was talking with a nervous, fluttering hurry, a strange caricature of the capricious manner that had charmed every drawing room she entered. Her words were strange to Galina Petrovna, words like milestones of the years that had been parted and of what had happened in those years.

“Ration cards — they’re for Soviet employees only. And for students. We get only two ration cards. Just two cards for the family — and it isn’t easy. Victor’s student card at the Institute and Irina’s at the Academy of Arts. But I’m not employed anywhere, so I get no card, and Vasili....”

She stopped short, as if her words, running, had skidded too far. She looked at her husband, furtively, a glance that seemed to cringe. Vasili Ivanovitch was staring into his plate and said nothing.

Maria Petrovna’s hands fluttered up eloquently: “These are hard times, God have pity on us, these are hard times. Galina, do you remember Lili Savinskaia, the one who never wore any jewelry except pearls? Well, she’s dead. She died in 1919. It was like this: they had nothing to eat for days, and her husband was walking in the street and he saw a horse that fell and died of hunger, and there was a mob fighting for the body. They tore it to pieces, and he got some. He brought it home and they cooked it, and ate, and I suppose the horse hadn’t died of hunger only, for they both got terribly sick. The doctors saved him, but Lili died.... He lost everything in 1918, of course.... His sugar business — it was nationalized the same day when our fur store....”

She stopped short again, her eyelids trembling over a glance at Vasili Ivanovitch. Visili Ivanovitch said nothing.

“More,” said little Acia sullenly and extended her plate for a second helping of millet.

“Kira!” Irina called brightly across the table, her voice very clear and loud, as if to sweep away all that had been said. “Did you eat fresh fruit in the Crimea?”

“Yes. Some,” Kira answered indifferently.

“I’ve been dreaming, yearning and dying for grapes. Don’t you like grapes?”

“I never notice what I eat,” said Kira.

“Of course,” Maria Petrovna hurried on, “Lili Savinskaia’s husband is working now. He’s a clerk in a Soviet office. Some people are taking employment, after all....” She looked openly at Vasili Ivanovitch and waited, but he did not answer.

Galina Petrovna asked timidly: “How’s ... how’s our old house?”

“Yours? On Kamenostrovsky? Don’t even dream of it. A sign painter lives there now. A real proletarian. God knows where you’ll find an apartment, Galina. People are crowded like dogs.”

Alexander Dimitrievitch asked hesitantly: “Have you heard what ... about the factory ... what happened to my factory?”

“Closed,” Vasili Ivanovitch snapped suddenly. “They couldn’t run it. Closed. Like everything else.”

Maria Petrovna coughed. “Such a problem for you, Galina, such a problem! Are the girls going to school? Or — how are you going to get ration cards?”

“But — I thought — with the NEP and all, you have private stores now.”

“Sure — NEP, their New Economic Policy, sure, they allow private stores now, but where will you get the money to buy there? They charge you ten times more than the ration cooperatives. I haven’t been in a private store yet. We can’t afford it. No one can afford it. We can’t even afford the theater. Victor’s taken me to a show once. But Vasili — Vasili won’t set foot inside a theater.”

“Why not?”

Vasili Ivanovitch raised his head, his eyes stern, and said solemnly: “When your country is in agony, you don’t seek frivolous recreations. I’m in mourning — for my country.”

“Lydia,” Irina asked in her sweeping voice, “aren’t you in love yet?”

“I do not answer indecent questions,” said Lydia.

“I’ll tell you, Galina,” Maria Petrovna hurried and coughed, choked, and went on, “I’ll tell you the best thing to do: Alexander must take a job.”

Galina Petrovna sat up straight, as if she had been slapped in the face. “A Soviet job?”

“Well ... all jobs are Soviet jobs.”

“Not as long as I live,” Alexander Dimitrievitch stated with unexpected strength.

Vasili Ivanovitch dropped his spoon and it clattered into his plate; silently, solemnly, he stretched his big fist across the table and shook Alexander Dimitrievitch’s hand and threw a dark glance at Maria Petrovna. She cringed, swallowed a spoonful of millet, coughed.

“I’m not saying anything about you, Vasili,” she protested timidly. “I know you don’t approve and ... well, you never will.... But I was just thinking they get bread cards, and lard, and sugar, the Soviet employees do — sometimes.”

“When I have to take Soviet employment,” said Vasili Ivanovitch, “you’ll be a widow, Marussia.”

“I’m not saying anything, Vasili, only....”

“Only stop worrying. We’ll get along. We have so far. There are still plenty of things to sell.”

Galina Petrovna looked at the nails on the walls; she looked at her sister’s hands, the famous hands that artists had painted and a poem had been written about — “Champagne and Maria’s hands.” They were frozen to a dark purple, swollen and cracked. Maria Petrovna had known the value of her hands; she had learned how to keep them in sight constantly, how to use them with the pliant grace of a ballerina. It was a habit she had not lost. Galina Petrovna wished she would lose it; the soft, fluttering gestures of those hands were only one more reminder.

Vasili Ivanovitch was speaking suddenly. He had always been reticent in the expression of his feelings. But one subject aroused him and then his expressions were not restrained: “All this is temporary. You all lose faith so easily. That’s the trouble with our spineless, snivelling, impotent, blabbering, broad-minded, drooling intelligentsia! That’s why we are where we are. No faith. No will. Thin gruel for blood. Do you think all this can go on? Do you think Russia is dead? Do you think Europe is blind? Watch Europe. She hasn’t said her last word yet. The day will come — soon — when these bloody assassins, these foul scoundrels, that Communist scum....”

The door bell rang.

The old servant shuffled to open the door. They heard a man’s steps, brisk, resonant, energetic. A strong hand threw the dining-room door open.

Victor Dunaev looked like a tenor in an Italian grand opera, which was not Victor’s profession; but he had the broad shoulders, the flaming black eyes, the wavy, unruly black hair, the flashing smile, the arrogantly confident movements. As he stopped on the threshold, his eyes stopped on Kira; as she turned in her chair, they stopped on her legs.

“It’s little Kira, isn’t it?” were the first sounds of his strong, clear voice.

“It was,” she answered.

“Well, well, what a surprise! What a most pleasant surprise! ... Aunt Galina, younger than ever!” He kissed his aunt’s hand. “And my charming cousin Lydia!” His dark hair brushed Lydia’s wrist. “Sorry to be so late. Meeting at the Institute. I’m a member of the Students’ Council.... Sorry, Father. Father doesn’t approve of any elections of any sort.”

“Sometimes even elections are right,” said Vasili Ivanovitch without disguising the paternal pride in his voice; and the warmth in his stern eyes suddenly made them look helpless.

Victor whirled a chair about and sat next to Kira. “Well, Uncle Alexander,” he flashed a row of sparkling white teeth at Alexander Dimitrievitch, “you’ve chosen a fascinating time to return to Petrograd. A difficult time, to be sure. A cruel time. But most fascinating, like all historical cataclysms.”

Galina Petrovna smiled with admiration: “What are you studying, Victor?”

“Institute of Technology. Electrical engineer. Greatest future in electricity. Russia’s future.... But Father doesn’t think so.... Irina, do you ever comb your hair? What are your plans, Uncle Alexander?”

“I’ll open a store,” Alexander Dimitrievitch announced solemnly, almost proudly.

“But it will take some financial resources, Uncle Alexander.”

“We’ve managed to save a little, in the south.”

“Lord in Heaven!” cried Maria Petrovna. “You’d better spend it quickly. At the rate that new paper money is going down — why, bread was sixty thousand rubles a pound last week — and it’s seventy-five thousand now!”

“New enterprises, Uncle Alexander, have a great future in this new age,” said Victor.

“Until the government squashes them under its heel,” Vasili Ivanovitch said gloomily.

“Nothing to fear, Father. The days of confiscations are past. The Soviet government has a most progressive policy outlined.”

“Outlined in blood,” said Vasili Ivanovitch.

“Victor, they’re wearing the funniest things in the south,” Irina spoke hurriedly. “Did you notice Kira’s wooden sandals?”

“All right, League of Nations. That’s her name. Trying to keep peace. I would love to see the sandals.”

Kira raised her foot indifferently. Her short skirt concealed little of her leg; she did not notice the fact, but Victor and Lydia did.

“At your age, Kira,” Lydia remarked pointedly, “it’s time to wear longer skirts.”

“If one has the material,” Kira answered indifferently. “I never notice what I wear.”

“Nonsense, Lydia darling,” Victor stated with finality, “short skirts are the height of feminine elegance and feminine elegance is the highest of the Arts.”

That night, before retiring, the family gathered in the drawing room. Maria Petrovna painfully counted out three logs, and a fire was lighted in the fireplace. Little flames flickered over the glazed abyss of darkness beyond the big, bare, curtainless windows; little sparks danced in the polished curves of the hand-carved furniture, leaving in shadows the torn brocade; golden spangles played in the heavy gold frame of the only picture in the room, leaving in shadows the picture itself: a painting of Maria Petrovna twenty years ago, with a delicate hand resting on an ivory shoulder, mocking the old knitted shawl which the living Maria Petrovna clutched convulsively over her trembling shoulders when she coughed.

The logs were damp; a fretful blue flame hissed feebly, dying and flaring up again in a burst of acrid smoke.

Kira sat in the deep, silken fur of a white bear rug at the fireplace, her arm encircling affectionately the huge monster’s ferocious head. It had been her favorite since childhood. When visiting her uncle, she had always asked for the story of how he had killed that bear, and she had laughed happily when he threatened that the bear would come back to life and bite disobedient little girls.

“Well,” said Maria Petrovna, her hands fluttering in the fire glow, “well, here you are back in Petrograd.”

“Yes,” said Galina Petrovna, “here we are.”

“Oh, Saint Mother of God!” sighed Maria Petrovna. “It makes it so hard sometimes to have a future to think about!”

“It does,” said Galina Petrovna.

“Well, what are the plans for the girls? Lydia darling, quite a young lady, aren’t you? Still heart-free?” Lydia’s smile was not a grateful one. Maria Petrovna sighed: “Men are so strange, nowadays. They don’t think of marriage. And the girls? I was carrying a son at Irina’s age. But she doesn’t think of a home and family. The Academy of Arts for her. Galina, do you remember how she used to ruin my furniture with her infernal drawings as soon as she was out of diapers? Well, Lydia, are you going to study?”

“I have no such intention,” said Lydia. “Too much education is unfeminine.”

“And Kira?”

“It’s funny to think that little Kira is of college age, isn’t it?” said Victor. “First of all, Kira, you’ll have to get a labor book — the new passport, you know. You’re over sixteen. And then....”

“I think,” Maria Petrovna suggested eagerly, “that a profession is so useful nowadays. Why don’t you send Kira to a medical school? A lady doctor gets such nice rations!”

“Kira a doctor?” Galina Petrovna sneered. “Why, the selfish little thing just loathes physical injury. She wouldn’t help a wounded chicken.”

“My opinion ...” Victor began.

A telephone rang in the next room. Irina darted out and returned, announcing aloud with a significant wink at Victor: “For you, Victor. It’s Vava.”

Victor walked out reluctantly. Through the door, left open by a draft, they heard some of his words: “... I know I promised to come tonight. But it’s an unexpected examination at the Institute. I have to study every minute of the evening.... Of course not, no one else.... You know I do, darling....”

He returned to the fireplace and settled himself comfortably on the white bear’s back, close to Kira.

“My opinion, my charming little cousin,” he stated, “is that the most promising career for a woman is offered not by a school, but by employment in a Soviet office.”

“Victor, you don’t really mean that,” said Vasili Ivanovitch.

“One has to be practical nowadays,” Victor said slowly. “A student’s ration doesn’t provide much for a whole family — as you ought to know.”

“Employees get lard and sugar,” said Maria Petrovna.

“They are using a great many typists,” Victor insisted. “A typewriter’s keys are the stepping stones to any high office.”

“And you get shoes, and free tramway tickets,” said Maria Petrovna.

“Hell,” said Vasili Ivanovitch, “you can’t make a drayhorse out of a racing steed.”

“Why, Kira,” asked Irina, “aren’t you interested in the subject of this discussion?”

“I am,” Kira answered calmly, “but I think the discussion is superfluous. I am going to the Technological Institute.”

“Kira!”

There were seven startled voices and they all uttered one name. Then Galina Petrovna said: “Well, with a daughter like this even her own mother isn’t let in on secrets!”

“When did you decide that?” Lydia gasped.

“About eight years ago,” said Kira.

“But Kira! What will you do?” Maria Petrovna gasped.

“I’ll be an engineer.”

“Frankly,” said Victor, annoyed, “I do not believe that engineering is a profession for women.”

“Kira,” Alexander Dimitrievitch said timidly, “you’ve never liked the Communists and here you select such a modern favorite profession of theirs — a woman engineer!”

“Are you going to build for the Red State?” asked Victor.

“I’m going to build because I want to build.”

“But Kira!” Lydia stared at her, bewildered. “That will mean dirt, and iron, and rust, and blow-torches, and filthy, sweaty men and no feminine company to help you.”

“That’s why I’ll like it.”

“It is not at all a cultured profession for a woman,” said Galina Petrovna.

“It’s the only profession,” said Kira, “for which I don’t have to learn any lies. Steel is steel. Most of the other sciences are someone’s guess, and someone’s wish, and many people’s lies.”

“What you lack,” said Lydia, “are the things of the spirit.”

“Frankly,” said Victor, “your attitude is slightly anti-social, Kira. You select a profession merely because you want it, without giving a thought to the fact that, as a woman, you would be much more useful to society in a more feminine capacity. And we all have our duty to society to consider.”

“Exactly to whom is it that you owe a duty, Victor?”

“To society.”

“What is society?”

“If I may say it, Kira, this is a childish question.”

“But,” said Kira, her eyes dangerously gentle and wide, “I don’t understand it. To whom is it that I owe a duty? To your neighbor next door? Or to the militia-man on the corner? Or to the clerk in the co-operative? Or to the old man I saw in line, third from the door, with an old basket and a woman’s hat?”

“Society, Kira, is a stupendous whole.”

“If you write a whole line of zeroes, it’s still — nothing.”

“Child,” said Vasili Ivanovitch, “what are you doing in Soviet Russia?”

“That,” said Kira, “is what I’m wondering about.”

“Let her go to the Institute,” said Vasili Ivanovitch.

“I’ll have to,” Galina Petrovna agreed bitterly. “You can’t argue with her.”

“She always gets her way,” said Lydia resentfully. “I don’t see how she does it.”

Kira bent over the fire to blow at the dying flame. For one moment, as a bright tongue leaped up, a red glow tore her face out of the darkness. Her face was like that of a blacksmith bending over his forge.

“I fear for your future, Kira,” said Victor. “It’s time to get reconciled to life. You won’t get far with those ideas of yours.”

“That,” said Kira, “depends on what direction I want to go.”

III

TWO HANDS HELD A LITTLE BOOK BOUND in gray burlap. They were dry and calloused. They had seen many years of labor in the oil and the heat and the grease of roaring machines. The wrinkles were encrusted in black on a skin stiff with the dust of years. There were black tips on the cracked fingernails. One finger wore a tarnished ring with an imitation emerald.

The office had bare walls. They had served as towel to many a dirty hand, for traces left by five fingers zigzagged across the faded paint. In the old house now nationalized for government offices, it had been a washroom. The sink was removed; but a rusty outline with glaring nailholes still drew its picture on the wall, and two broken pipes hung out, like the bowels of the wounded building.

The window had an iron grate and broken panes which a spider had tried to mend. It faced a bare wall with red bricks losing the last scabs of paint which had been the advertisement of a hair-restorer.

The official sat at his desk. The desk had a blotter torn in one corner and a half-dry inkstand. The official wore a khaki suit and glasses.

Like two silent judges presiding behind their spokesman, two pictures flanked his head. They had no frames; four thumbtacks nailed each to the wall. One was of Lenin, the other of Karl Marx. Red letters above them said: IN UNION LIES OUR STRENGTH.

Head high, Kira Argounova stood before the desk.

She was there to receive her labor book. Every citizen over sixteen had to have a labor book and was ordered to carry it at all times. It had to be presented and stamped when he found employment or left it; when he moved into an apartment or out of one; when he enrolled at a school, got a bread card or was married. The new Soviet passport was more than a passport: it was a citizen’s permit to live. It was called “Labor Book,” for labor and life were considered synonymous.

The Russian Socialist Federalist Soviet Republic was about to acquire a new citizen.

The official held the little book bound in gray burlap, whose many pages he was going to fill. He had trouble with his pen; it was old and rusty, and dragged strings from the bottom of the inkstand.

On the clean open page he wrote:

Name: ARGOUNOVA, KIRA ALEXANDROVNA.

Height: MEDIUM.

Kira’s body was slender, too slender, and when she moved with a sharp, swift, geometrical precision, people were conscious of the movement alone, not of the body. Yet through any garment she wore, the unseen presence of her body made her look undressed. People wondered what made them aware of it. It seemed that the words she said were ruled by the will of her body and that her sharp movements were the unconscious reflection of a dancing, laughing soul. So that her spirit seemed physical and her body spiritual.

The official wrote:

Eyes: GRAY.

Kira’s eyes were dark gray, the gray of storm clouds from behind which the sun can be expected at any moment. They looked at people quietly, directly, with something that people called arrogance, but which was only a deep, confident calm that seemed to tell men her sight was too clear and none of their favorite binoculars were needed to help her look at life.

Mouth: ORDINARY.

Kira’s mouth was thin, long. When silent, it was cold, indomitable, and men thought of a Valkyrie with lance and winged helmet in the sweep of battle. But a slight movement made a wrinkle in the corners of her lips — and men thought of an imp perched on top of a toadstool, laughing in the faces of daisies.

Hair: BROWN.

Kira’s hair was short, thrown back off her forehead, light rays lost in its tangled mass, the hair of a primitive jungle woman over a face that had escaped from the easel of a modern artist who had been in a hurry: a face of straight, sharp lines sketched furiously to suggest an unfinished promise.

Particular Signs: NONE.

The Soviet official picked a thread off his pen, rolled it in his fingers and wiped them on his trousers.

Place and Date of Birth: PETROGRAD, APRIL 11, 1904.

Kira was born in the gray granite house on Kamenostrovsky. In that vast mansion Galina Petrovna had a boudoir where, at night, a maid in black fastened the clasps of her diamond necklaces; and a reception room where, her taffeta petticoats rustling solemnly, she entertained ladies with sables and lorgnettes. Children were not admitted into these rooms, and Galina Petrovna seldom appeared in any of the others.

Kira had an English governess, a thoughtful young lady with a lovely smile. She liked her governess, but often preferred to be alone — and was left alone. When she refused to play with a crippled relative of whom the family’s compassion had made a general idol — she was never asked to do it again. When she threw out of the window the first book she read about the good fairy rewarding an unselfish little girl — the governess never brought another one of that kind. When she was taken to church and sneaked out alone in the middle of the services, to get lost in the streets and be brought home to her frantic family — in a police wagon — she was never taken to church again.

The Argounov summer residence stood on a high hill over a river, alone in its spacious gardens, on the outskirts of a fashionable summer resort. The house turned its back upon the river and faced the grounds where the hill sloped down gracefully into a garden of lawns drawn with a ruler, bushes clipped into archways and marble fountains made by famous artists.

The other side of the hill hung over the river like a mass of rock and earth disgorged by a volcano and frozen in its chaotic tangle. Rowing downstream, people expected a dinosaur to stretch its head out of the black caves overgrown with wild ferns, between trees that grew horizontally into the air, huge roots, like spiders, grasping the rocks.

For many summers, while her parents were visiting Nice, Biarritz and Vienna, Kira was left alone to spend her days in the wild freedom of the rocky hill, as its sole, undisputed sovereign in a torn blue skirt and a white shirt whose sleeves were always missing. The sharp sand cut her bare feet. She swung from rock to rock, grasping a tree branch, throwing her body into space, the blue skirt flaring like a parachute.

She made a raft of tree branches and, clutching a long pole, sailed down the river. There were many dangerous rocks and whirlpools on the way. The thrill of the struggle rose from her bare feet, that felt the stream pulsating under the frail raft, through her body tensed to meet the wind, the blue skirt beating against her legs like a sail. Branches bending over the river brushed her forehead. She swept past, leaving threads of hair entwined in the leaves, and the trees leaving wild red berries caught in her hair.

The first thing that Kira learned about life and the first thing that her elders learned, dismayed, about Kira, was the joy of being alone.

“Born in 1904, eh?” said the Soviet official. “That makes you ... let’s see ... eighteen. Eighteen. You’re lucky, comrade. You’re young and have many years to give to the cause of the toilers. A whole life of discipline and hard work and useful labor for the great collective.”

He had a cold, so he took out a large checkered handkerchief and blew his nose.

Family Position: SINGLE.

“I wash my hands of Kira’s future,” Galina Petrovna had said. “Sometimes I think she’s a born old maid and sometimes a born ... yes, bad woman.”

Kira saw her first years of lengthened skirts and high heels during their refuge in Yalta, where the strange society of emigrants from the North, families of old names and past fortunes, clung together like frightened chickens on a rock with the flood rising slowly around them. Young men of irreproachably parted hair and manicured nails, noticed the slim girl who strode down the streets swinging a twig like a whip, her body thrown into the wind that blew a short dress which hid nothing. Galina Petrovna smiled with approval when the young men called at their house. But Kira had strange eyebrows; she could lift them in such a cold, mocking smile, while her lips remained motionless — that the young men’s love poems and intentions froze at the very roots. And Galina Petrovna soon stopped wondering why the young men stopped noticing her daughter.

In the evenings Lydia read avidly, blushing, books of delicate, sinful romance, which she hid from Galina Petrovna. Kira began reading one of these books; she fell asleep and did not finish it. She never began another.

She saw no difference between weeds and flowers; she yawned when Lydia sighed at the beauty of a sunset over lonely hills. But she stood for an hour looking at the black silhouette of a tall young soldier against the roaring flame of a blazing oil well he had been posted to guard.

She stopped suddenly, as they walked down a street in the evening, and pointed at a strange angle of white wall over battered roofs, luminous on a black sky in the glare of an old lantern, with a dark, barred window like that of a dungeon, and she whispered: “How beautiful!”

“What’s beautiful about it?” Lydia asked.

“Because it’s so strange ... promising ... as if something could happen there....”

“Happen to whom?”

“To me.”

Lydia seldom questioned Kira’s emotions; they were not feelings to her but only Kira’s feelings; and the family shrugged impatiently at what they called Kira’s feelings. She had the same feeling for eating soup without salt, and for discovering a snail slithering up her bare leg, and for young men who pleaded, broken-hearted, their eyes humid, their lips soft. She had the same feeling for white statues of ancient gods against black velvet in museums, and for steel shavings and rusty dust and hissing torches and muscles tense as electric wires in the iron roar of a building under construction. She seldom visited museums; but when they went out with Kira, her family avoided passing by any construction works: houses, and particularly roads, and most particularly bridges. She was certain to stop and stand watching, for hours, red bricks and oaken beams and steel panels growing under the will of man. But she could never be made to enter a public park on Sunday, and she stuck her fingers into her ears when she heard a chorus singing folk songs. When Galina Petrovna took her children to see a sad play depicting the sorrow of the serfs whom Czar Alexander II had magnanimously freed, Lydia sobbed over the plight of the humble, kindly peasants cringing under a whip, while Kira sat tense, erect, eyes dark in ecstasy, watching the whip cracking expertly in the hand of a tall, young overseer.

“How beautiful!” said Lydia, looking at a stage setting. “It’s almost real.”

“How beautiful!” said Kira, looking at a landscape. “It’s almost artificial.”

“In a way,” said the Soviet official, “you comrade women have an advantage over us men. You can take care of the young generation, the future of our republic. There are so many dirty, hungry children that need the loving hands of our women.”

Union Membership: NONE.

Kira went to school in Yalta. The school dining room had many tables. At luncheon, girls sat at these tables in couples, in fours, in dozens. Kira always sat at a table in a corner — alone.

One day her class declared a boycott against a little freckled girl who had incurred the displeasure of her most popular classmate, a loud-voiced young lady who had a smile, a handshake and a command ready for everyone.

That noon, at luncheon, the little table in the corner of the dining room was occupied by two students: Kira and the freckled girl. They were half through their bowls of buckwheat mush, when the indignant class leader approached them.

“Do you know what you’re doing, Argounova?” she asked, eyes blazing.

“Eating mush,” answered Kira. “Won’t you sit down?”

“Do you know what this girl here has done?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“You haven’t? Then why are you doing this for her?”

“You’re mistaken. I am not doing this for her, I am doing it against twenty-eight other girls.”

“So you think it’s smart to go against the majority?”

“I think that when in doubt about the truth of an issue, it’s safer and in better taste to select the least numerous of the adversaries.... May I have the salt, please?”

At the age of thirteen, Lydia fell in love with a grand opera tenor. She kept his picture on her dresser, with a single red rose in a thin crystal glass beside it. At the age of fifteen, she fell in love with Saint Francis of Assisi, who talked to the birds and helped the poor, and she dreamed of entering a convent. Kira had never been in love. The only hero she had known was a Viking whose story she had read as a child; a Viking whose eyes never looked farther than the point of his sword, but there was no boundary for the point of his sword; a Viking who walked through life, breaking barriers and reaping victories, who walked through ruins while the sun made a crown over his head, but he walked, light and straight, without noticing its weight; a Viking who laughed at kings, who laughed at priests, who looked at heaven only when he bent for a drink over a mountain brook and there, over-shadowing the sky, he saw his own picture; a Viking who lived but for the joy and the wonder and the glory of the god that was himself. Kira did not remember the books she read before that legend; she did not want to remember the ones she read after it. But through the years that followed, she remembered the end of the legend: when the Viking stood on a tower over a city he had conquered. The Viking smiled as men smile when they look up at heaven; but he was looking down. His right arm was one straight line with his lowered sword; his left arm, straight as the sword, raised a goblet of wine to the sky. The first rays of a coming sun, still unseen to the earth, struck the crystal goblet. It sparkled like a white torch. Its rays lighted the faces of those below. “To a life,” said the Viking, “which is a reason unto itself.”

“So you’re not a Union member, citizen?” said the Soviet official. “Too bad, too bad. The trade unions are the steel girders of our great state building, as said ... well, one of our great leaders said. What’s a citizen? Only a brick and of no use unless cemented to other bricks just like it.”

Occupation: STUDENT.

From somewhere in the aristocratic Middle Ages, Kira had inherited the conviction that labor and effort were ignoble. She had gone through school with the highest grades and the sloppiest composition books. She burned her piano etudes and never darned her stockings. She climbed to the pedestals of statues in the parks to kiss the cold lips of Greek gods — but slept at symphony concerts. She sneaked out through a window when guests were expected, and she could not cook a potato. She never went to church and seldom read a newspaper.

But she had chosen a future of the hardest work and most demanding effort. She was to be an engineer. She had decided it with her first thought about the vague thing called future. And that first thought had been quiet and reverent, for her future was consecrated, because it was her future. She had played with mechanical toys, which were not intended for girls, and had built ships and bridges and towers; she had watched rising steel and bricks and steam. Over Lydia’s bed hung an ikon, over Kira’s — the picture of an American skyscraper. Even though those who listened smiled incredulously, she spoke about the houses she would build of glass and steel, about a white aluminum bridge across a blue river — “but, Kira, you can’t make a bridge of aluminum” — about men and wheels and cranes under her orders, about a sunrise on the steel skeleton of a skyscraper.

She knew she had a life and that it was her life. She knew the work which she had chosen and which she expected of life. The other thing which she expected, she did not know, for it had no name, but it had been promised to her, promised in a memory of her childhood.

When the summer sun sank behind the hills, Kira sat on a high cliff and watched the fashionable casino far down by the river. The tall spire of the music pavilion pierced the red sky. The slim, black shadows of women moved against the orange panels of the lighted glass doors. An orchestra played in the pavilion. It played gay, sparkling tunes from musical comedies. It threw the fire of electric signs, of ringing glasses, of shining limousines, of nights in Europe’s capitals — into the dark evening sky over a silent river and a rocky hill with prehistorical trees.

The light tunes of casinos and beer-gardens, sung all over Europe by girls with sparkling eyes and swaying hips, had a significance for Kira that no one else ever attached to them. She heard in them a profound joy of life, so profound that it could be as light as a dancer’s feet. And because she worshipped joy, Kira seldom laughed and did not go to see comedies in theaters. And because she felt a profound rebellion against the weighty, the tragic, the solemn, Kira had a solemn reverence for those songs of defiant gaiety.

They came from the strange world where grownups moved among colored lights and white tables, where there was so much that she could not understand and so much that was awaiting her. They came out of her future.

She had selected one song as her, Kira’s, own: it was from an old operetta and was called “The Song of Broken Glass.” It had been introduced by a famous beauty of Vienna. There had been a balustrade on the stage, overlooking a drop with the twinkling lights of a big city, and a row of crystal goblets lined along the balustrade. The beauty sang the number and one by one, lightly, hardly touching them, kicked the crystal goblets and sent them flying in tingling, glittering splinters — around the tight, sheer stockings on the most beautiful legs in Europe.

There were sharp little blows in the music, and waves of quick, fine notes that burst and rolled like the thin, clear ringing of broken glass. There were slow notes, as if the cords of the violins trembled in hesitation, tense with the fullness of sound, taking a few measured steps before the leap into the explosion of laughter.

The wind blew Kira’s hair across her eyes and sent a cold breath at the toes of her bare feet hanging over the cliff’s edge. In the twilight, the sky seemed to rise slowly to a greater height, growing darker, and the first star dropped into the river. A lonely little girl on a slippery rock listened to her own hymn and smiled at what it promised her.

Such had been Kira’s entrance into life. Some enter it from under gray temple vaults, with head bowed in awe, with the light of sacrificial candles in their hearts and eyes. Some enter it with a heart like a pavement — tramped by many feet, and with a cold skin crying for the warmth of the herd. Kira Argounova entered it with the sword of a Viking pointing the way and an operetta tune for a battle march.

The Soviet official angrily wiped his pen with his checkered handkerchief, for he had made an ink spot on the last page.

“Toil, comrade,” he said, “is the highest aim of our lives. Who does not toil, shall not eat.”

The book was filled. The official applied his rubber stamp to the last page. The stamp bore a globe overshadowed by a crossed sickle and hammer.

“Here’s your Labor Book, Citizen Argounova,” said the Soviet official. “You are now a member of the greatest republic ever established in the history of the world. May the brotherhood of workers and peasants ever be the goal of your life, as it is the goal of all Red citizens.”

He handed her the book. Across the top of the first page was printed the slogan:

PROLETARIANS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

Under it was written the name:

Kira Argounova

IV

KIRA HAD BLISTERS ON HER HANDS WHERE the sharp string had rubbed too long. It was not easy to carry packages up four floors, eight flights of stone stairs that smelled of cats and felt cold through the thin soles of her shoes. Every time she hurried down for another load, skipping briskly over the steps, sliding down the bannister, she met Lydia, climbing up slowly, heavily, clutching bundles to her breast, panting and sighing bitterly, steam blowing from her mouth with every word: “Our Lord in Heaven! ... Saint Mother of God!”

The Argounovs had found an apartment.

They had been congratulated as if it were a miracle. The miracle had been made possible by a handshake between Alexander Dimitrievitch and the Upravdom — the manager — of that house, a handshake after which Alexander Dimitrievitch’s hand remained empty, but the Upravdom’s did not. Three rooms and a kitchen were worth a little gratitude in an over-crowded city.

“A bath?” the indignant Upravdom had repeated Galina Petrovna’s timid question. “Don’t be foolish, citizen, don’t be foolish.”

They needed furniture. Bravely, Galina Petrovna paid a visit to the gray granite mansion on Kamenostrovsky. Before the stately edifice rising to the sky, she stood for a few moments, gathering her faded coat with the shedding fur collar tightly around her thin body. Then she opened her bag and powdered her nose: she felt ashamed before the gray slabs of granite. Then she did not close her bag, but took out a handkerchief: tears were painful in the cold wind. Then she rang the bell.

“Well, well, so you’re Citizen Argounova,” said the fat, glossy-cheeked sign painter who let her in and listened patiently to her explanation. “Sure, you can have your old junk back. That which I don’t use. It’s in the coach house. Take it. We’re not so hard-hearted. We know it’s tough for all you citizens bourgeois.”

Galina Petrovna threw a wistful glance at her old Venetian mirror whose onyx stand bore a bucket of paint, but she did not argue and went down to the coach house in the back yard. She found a few chairs with missing legs, a few priceless pieces of antique porcelain, a wash stand, a rusty samovar, two beds, a chest of old clothes, and Lydia’s grand piano, all buried under a pile of books from their library, old boxes, wood shavings and rat dung.

They hired a drayman to transfer these possessions to the little flat on the fourth floor of an old brick house whose turbid windows faced the turbid Moika stream. But they could not afford a drayman twice. They borrowed a wheelbarrow — and Alexander Dimitrievitch, silently indifferent, carted the bundles left at the Dunaevs to their new home. The four of them carried the bundles up the stairs, past landings that alternated grimy doors and broken windows; the “black stairway” it used to be called, the back entrance for servants. Their new home had no front entrance. It had no electrical connections; the plumbing was out of order; they had to carry water in pails from the floor below. Yellow stains spread over the ceilings, bearing witness to past rains.

“It will be very cozy — with just a little work and artistic judgment,” Galina Petrovna had said. Alexander Dimitrievitch had sighed.

The grand piano stood in the dining room. On top of the grand piano, Galina Petrovna put a teapot without handle or nose, the only thing left of her priceless Sachs tea service. Shelves of unpainted boards carried an odd assortment of cracked dishes; Lydia’s artistry decorated the shelves with borders of paper lace. A folded newspaper supported the shortest leg of the table. A wick floating in a saucer of linseed oil threw a spot of light on the ceiling in the long, dark evenings; in the mornings, strands of soot, like cobwebs, swayed slowly in the draft, high under the ceiling.

Galina Petrovna was the first one to get up in the morning. She threw an old shawl over her shoulders and, blowing hard to make the damp logs burn, cooked millet for breakfast. After breakfast the family parted.

Alexander Dimitrievitch shuffled two miles to his business, the textile store he had opened. He never took a tramway; long lines waited for every tramway and he had no hope of fighting his way aboard. The store had been a bakery shop. He could not afford new signs. He had stretched a piece of cotton with crooked letters by the door, over one of the old black glass plates bearing a gold pretzel. He had hung two kerchiefs and an apron in the window. He had scraped the bakery labels off the old boxes and stacked them neatly on empty shelves. Then he sat all day, his freezing feet on a cast-iron stove, his arms folded on his stomach, drowsing.

When a customer came in, he shuffled behind the counter and smiled affectionately: “The best kerchiefs in town, citizen.... Certainly, fast colors, as fast as foreign goods.... Would I take lard, instead of money? Certainly, citizen peasant, certainly.... For half a pound? You can have two kerchiefs, citizen, and a yard of calico for good measure.”

Smiling happily, he put the lard into the large drawer that served as cash register, next to a pound of rye flour.

Lydia wound an old knitted scarf around her throat, after breakfast, put a basket over her arm, sighed bitterly and went to the co-operative. She stood in line, watching the hand of the clock on a distant tower moving slowly around its face and she spent the time reciting mentally French poems she had learned as a child.

“But I don’t need soap, citizen,” she protested when her turn came, at the unpainted counter inside the store that smelled of dill pickles and people’s breath. “And I don’t need dried herring.”

“All we’ve got today, citizen. Next!”

“All right, all right, I’ll take it,” Lydia said hastily. “We’ve got to have something.”

Galina Petrovna washed the dishes after breakfast; then she put on her glasses and sorted out two pounds of lentils from the gravel that came with them; she chopped onions, tears rolling down her wrinkles; she washed Alexander Dimitrievitch’s shirt in a tub of cold water; she chopped acorns for coffee.

If she had to go out, she sneaked hurriedly down the stairs, hoping not to meet the Upravdom. If she met him, she smiled too brightly and sang out: “Good morning, Comrade Upravdom!”

Comrade Upravdom never answered. She could read the silent accusation in his sullen eyes: “Bourgeois. Private traders.”

Kira had been admitted to the Technological Institute. She went there every morning, walking, whistling, her hands in the pockets of an old black coat with a high collar buttoned severely under her chin. At the Institute, she listened to lectures, but spoke to few people. She noticed many red kerchiefs in the crowds of students and heard a great deal about Red builders, proletarian culture and young engineers in the vanguard of the world revolution. But she did not listen, for she was thinking about her latest mathematical problem. During the lectures, she smiled suddenly, once in a while, at no one in particular; smiled at a dim, wordless thought of her own. She felt as if her ended childhood had been a cold shower, gay, hard and invigorating, and now she was entering her morning, with her work before her, with so much to be done.

At night, the Argounovs gathered around the wick on the dining room table. Galina Petrovna served lentils and millet. There was not much variety in their menus. The millet went fast; so did their savings.

After dinner, Kira brought her books into the dining room, for they had but one oil wick. She sat, the book between her elbows on the table, her fingers buried in the hair over her temples, her eyes wide, engrossed in circles, cubes, triangles, as in a thrilling romance.

Lydia sat embroidering a handkerchief and sighed bitterly: “Oh, that Soviet light! Such a light! And to think that someone has invented electricity!”

“That’s right,” Kira agreed, astonished, “it’s not a very good light, is it? Funny. I never noticed it before.”

One night, Galina Petrovna found the millet too mildewed to cook. They had no dinner. Lydia sighed over her embroidery: “These Soviet menus!”

“That’s right,” said Kira, “we didn’t have any dinner tonight, did we?”

“Where’s your mind,” Lydia raged, “if any? Do you ever notice anything?”

Through the evenings, Galina Petrovna grumbled at intervals: “A woman engineer! Such a profession for a daughter of mine! ... Is that a way for a young girl to live? Not a boy, not a single beau to visit her.... Tough as a shoe-sole. No romance. No delicacy. No finer feelings. A daughter of mine!”

In the little room which Kira and Lydia shared at night, there was only one bed. Kira slept on a mattress on the floor. They retired early, to save light. Tucked under a thin blanket, with her coat thrown over it, Kira watched Lydia’s figure in a long nightgown, a white stain in the darkness, kneeling before her ikons in the corner. Lydia mumbled prayers feverishly, trembling in the cold, making the sign of the cross with a hurried hand, bowing low to the little red light and the few glimmers of stern, bronze faces.

From her corner on the floor, Kira could see the reddish-gray sky in the window and the gold spire of the Admiralty far away in the cold, foggy dusk over Petrograd, the city where so much was possible.

Victor Dunaev had taken a sudden interest in the family of his cousins. He came often, he bent over Galina Petrovna’s hand as if he were at a Court reception, and laughed cheerfully as if he were at the circus.

In his honor, Galina Petrovna served her last precious bits of sugar, instead of saccharine, with the evening tea. He brought along his resplendent smile, and the latest political gossip, and the current anecdotes, and news of the latest foreign inventions, and quotations from the latest poems, and his opinions on the theory of reflexes and the theory of relativity and the social mission of proletarian literature. “A man of culture,” he explained, “has to be, above all, a man attuned to his century.”

He smiled at Alexander Dimitrievitch and hastily offered a light for his home-made cigarettes; he smiled at Galina Petrovna and rose hastily every time she rose; he smiled at Lydia and listened earnestly to her discourses on the simple faith; but he always managed to sit next to Kira.

On the evening of October tenth, Victor came late. It was nine o’clock when the sound of the door bell made Lydia dash eagerly to the little anteroom.

“Sorry. So terribly, terribly sorry,” Victor apologized, smiling, hurling his cold overcoat on a chair, raising Lydia’s hand to his lips and patting his unruly hair with a quick glance in the mirror, all within the space of one second. “Detained at the Institute. Students’ Council. I know this is an indecent hour to visit, but I promised Kira a ride around the city and ...”

“It’s perfectly all right, Victor dear,” Galina Petrovna called from the dining room. “Come in and have some tea.”

The tiny flame floating in linseed oil quivered with every breath, as they sat at the table. Five huge shadows rose to the ceiling; the feeble glow drew a triangle of light under the five pairs of nostrils. Tea gleamed green through heavy glasses cut out of old bottles.

“I heard, Victor,” Galina Petrovna whispered confidentially, like a conspirator, “I heard — on good authority — that this NEP of theirs is only the beginning of many changes. The beginning of the end. Next they’re going to return houses and buildings to former owners. Think of it! You know our house on Kamenostrovsky, if only.... The clerk in the co-operative is the one who told me about it. And he has a cousin in the Party, he ought to know.”

“It is highly probable,” Victor stated with authority, and Galina Petrovna smiled happily.

Alexander Dimitrievitch poured himself another glass of tea; he looked at the sugar, hesitated, looked at Galina Petrovna, and drank his tea without sugar. He said sullenly: “Times aren’t any better. They’ve called their secret police G.P.U. instead of Cheka, but it’s still the same thing. Do you know what I heard at the store today? They’ve just discovered another anti-Soviet conspiracy. They’ve arrested dozens of people. Today they arrested old Admiral Kovalensky, the one who was blinded in the war, and they shot him without trial.”

“Nothing but rumors,” said Victor. “People like to exaggerate.”

“Well, anyway, it’s becoming easier to get food,” said Galina Petrovna. “We got the nicest lentils today.”

“And,” said Lydia, “I got two pounds of millet.”

“And,” said Alexander Dimitrievitch, “I got a pound of lard.”

When Kira and Victor rose to go, Galina Petrovna accompanied them to the door.

“You’ll take care of my child, won’t you, Victor dear? Don’t stay out late. Streets are so unsafe these days. Do be careful. And, above all, don’t speak to any strangers. There are such odd types around nowadays.”

The cab rattled through silent streets. Wide, smooth, empty sidewalks looked like long canals of gray ice, luminous under the tall lamp posts that swam, jerking, past the cab. At times, they saw the black circle of a shadow on the bare sidewalk; over the circle, a woman in a very short skirt stood swaying a little on fat legs in tightly laced shoes. Something like the black silhouette of a windmill wavered down the sidewalk; over it — a sailor tottered unsteadily, waving his arms, spitting sunflower seeds. A heavy truck thundered by the cab, bristling with bayonets; among the bayonets, Kira saw the flash of a white face, pierced by two holes of dark, frightening eyes.

Victor was saying: “A modern man of culture must preserve an objective viewpoint which, no matter what his personal convictions, enables him to see our time as a tremendous historical drama, a moment of gigantic importance to humanity.”

“Nonsense,” said Kira. “It is an old and ugly fact that the masses exist and make their existence felt. This is a time when they make it felt with particular ugliness. That’s all.”

“This is a rash, unscientific viewpoint, Kira,” said Victor, and went on talking about the esthetic value of sculpture, about the modern ballet and about new poets whose works were published in pretty little books with glossy white paper covers; he always kept the latest poem on his desk along with the latest sociological treatise, “for balance” he explained; and he recited his favorite poem in the fashionable manner of an expressionless, nasal sing-song, slowly taking Kira’s hand. Kira withdrew her hand and looked at the street lights.

The cab turned into the quay. She knew they were driving along a river, for on one side of them the black sky had fallen below the ground into a cold, damp void, and long bands of silver shimmered lazily across that void, streaming from lonely lights that hung in the darkness somewhere very far away. On the other side of them, mansions fused into a black skyline of urns, statues, balustrades. There were no lights in the mansions. The horse’s hoofs, pounding the cobblestones, rolled in echoes through rows of empty chambers.

Victor dismissed the cab at the Summer Garden. They walked, shuffling through a carpet of dry leaves that no one swept. No lights, no other visitors disturbed the silent desolation of the famous park. Around them, the black vaults of ancient oaks had suddenly swallowed the city; and in the moist, rustling darkness, fragrant of moss, mouldy leaves and autumn, white shadows of statues outlined the wide, straight walks.

Victor took out his handkerchief and wiped an old bench wet with dew. They sat down under the statue of a Greek goddess whose nose was broken off. A leaf floated down slowly, fluttered around its head and settled in the curve of its handless arm.

Victor’s arm slowly encircled Kira’s shoulders. She moved away. Victor bent close to her and whispered, sighing, that he had waited to see her alone, that he had known romances, yes, many romances, women had been too kind to him, but he had always been unhappy and lonely, searching for his ideal, that he could understand her, that her sensitive soul was bound by conventions, un-awakened to life — and love. Kira moved farther away and tried to change the subject.

He sighed and asked: “Kira, haven’t you ever given a thought to love?”

“No, I haven’t. And I never will. And I don’t like the word. Now that you know it, we’re going home.”

She rose. He seized her wrist. “No, we’re not. Not yet.”

She jerked her head, and the violent kiss intended for her lips brushed her cheek. A swift movement of her body set her free and sent him reeling against the bench. She drew a deep breath and tightened the collar of her coat.

“Good night, Victor,” she said quietly. “I’m going home — alone.”

He rose, confused, muttering: “Kira.... I’m sorry. I’ll take you home.”

“I said I’m going alone.”

“Oh, but you can’t do that! You know you can’t. It’s much too dangerous. A girl can’t be alone in the streets at this hour.”

“I’m not afraid.”

She started walking. He followed. They were out of the Summer Garden. On the deserted quay, a militia-man leaned against the parapet, gravely studying the lights in the water.

“If you don’t leave me right now,” said Kira, “I’m going to tell this militia-man that you’re a stranger who’s annoying me.”

“I’ll tell him you’re lying.”

“You may prove it — tomorrow morning. In the meantime, we’ll both spend a night in jail.”

“Well, go ahead. Tell him.”

Kira approached the militia-man. “Excuse me, comrade” — she began; she saw Victor turning and hurrying away — “can you tell me please which way is the Moika?”

Kira walked alone into the dark streets of Petrograd. The streets seemed to wind through an abandoned stage setting. There were no lights in the windows. Over the roofs, a church tower rose against floating clouds; the tower looked as if it were swimming slowly across a motionless sky, menacing, ready to collapse into the street below.

Lanterns smoked over locked gates; through grilled peepholes, night-watchmen’s eyes followed the lonely girl. Militia-men glanced at her sidewise, sleepily suspicious. A cab driver awakened at the sound of her steps to offer his services. A sailor tried to follow her, but took one look at the expression of her face and changed his mind. A cat dived soundlessly into a broken basement window as she approached.

It was long past midnight when she turned suddenly into a street that seemed alive in the heart of a dead city. She saw yellow, curtained squares of light breaking stern, bare walls; squares of light on the bare sidewalk at glass entrance doors; dark roofs, far away, that seemed to meet in the black sky over that narrow crack of stone and light.

Kira stopped. A gramophone was playing. The sound burst into the silence from a blazing window. It was “The Song of Broken Glass.”

It was the song of a nameless hope that frightened her, for it promised so much, and she could not tell what it promised; she could not even say that it was a promise; it was an emotion, almost of pain, that went through her whole body.

Quick, fine notes exploded, as if the trembling cords could not hold them, as if a pair of defiant legs were kicking crystal goblets. And, in the gaps of ragged clouds above, the dark sky was sprinkled with a luminous powder that looked like splinters of broken glass.

The music ended in someone’s loud laughter. A naked arm pulled a curtain over the window.

Then Kira noticed that she was not alone. She saw women with lips painted scarlet on faces powdered snow-white, with red kerchiefs and short skirts, and legs squeezed by high shoes laced too tightly. She saw a man taking a woman’s arm and disappearing through a glass door.

She understood where she was. With a jerk, she started away hurriedly, nervously toward the nearest corner.

And then she stopped.

He was tall; his collar was raised; a cap was pulled over his eyes. His mouth, calm, severe, contemptuous, was that of an ancient chieftain who could order men to die, and his eyes were such as could watch it.

Kira leaned against a lamp post, looking straight at his face, and smiled. She did not think; she smiled, stunned, without realizing that she was hoping he would know her as she knew him.

He stopped and looked at her. “Good evening,” he said.

And Kira who believed in miracles, said: “Good evening.”

He stepped closer and looked at her with narrowed eyes, smiling. But the corners of his mouth did not go up when he smiled; they went down, raising his upper lip into a scornful arc.

“Lonely?” he asked.

“Terribly — and for such a long time,” she answered simply.

“Well, come on.”

“Yes.”

He took her arm and she followed him. He said: “We have to hurry. I want to get out of this crowded street.”

“So do I.”

“I must warn you not to ask any questions.”

“I have no questions to ask.”

She looked at the unbelievable lines of his face. She touched timidly, incredulously, the long fingers of the hand that held her arm.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked. But she did not answer. He said: “I’m afraid I’m not a very cheerful companion tonight.”

“Can I help you?”

“Well, that’s what you’re here for.” He stopped suddenly. “What’s the price?” he asked. “I haven’t much.”

Kira looked at him and understood why he had approached her. She stood looking silently into his eyes. When she spoke, her voice had lost its tremulous reverence; it was calm and firm. She said: “It won’t be much.”

“Where do we go?”

“I passed a little garden around the corner. Let’s go there first — for a while.”

“Any militia-men around?”

“No.”

They sat on the steps of an abandoned residence. Trees shielded them from a street light, and their faces and the wall behind them were dotted, checkered, sliced with shivering splinters of light. Over their heads were rows of empty windows on bare granite. The mansion bore an unhealed scar above its entrance door from where the owner’s coat of arms had been torn. The garden fence had been broken through, and its tall iron spikes bent toward the ground, like lances lowered in a grave salute.

“Take your cap off,” said Kira.

“What for?”

“I want to look at you.”

“Sent to search for someone?”

“No. Sent by whom?”

He did not answer and took off his cap. Her face was a mirror for the beauty of his. Her face reflected no admiration, but an incredulous, reverent awe. All she said was: “Do you always go around with your coat shoulder torn?”

“That’s all I have left. Do you always stare at people as if your eyes would burst?”

“Sometimes.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you. The less you see of them the better off you are. Unless you have strong nerves and a strong stomach.”

“I have.”

“And strong legs?”

His two fingers were held straight while his fingertips threw her skirt up, high above her knees, lightly, contemptuously. Her hands grasped the stone steps. She did not pull her skirt down. She forced herself to sit without movement, without breath, frozen to the steps. He looked at her; his eyes moved up and down, but the corners of his lips moved only downward.

She whispered obediently, without looking at him: “And strong legs.”

“Well, if you have strong legs, then — run.”

“From you?”

“No. From all people. But forget it. Pull your skirt down. Aren’t you cold?”

“No.” But she pulled the skirt down.

“Don’t pay any attention to what I say,” he told her. “Have you anything to drink at your place?”

“Oh, ... yes.”

“I warn you I’m going to drink like a sponge tonight.”

“Why tonight?”

“That’s my habit.”

“It isn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I know it isn’t.”

“What else do you know about me?”

“I know that you’re very tired.”

“I am. I’ve walked all night.”

“Why?”

“I thought I told you not to ask any questions.”

He looked at the girl who sat pressed tightly against the wall. He saw only one gray eye, quiet and steady, and above it — one lock of hair; the white wrist of a hand held in a black pocket; the black, ribbed stockings on legs pressed tightly together. In the darkness, he guessed the patch of a long, narrow mouth, the dark huddle of a slender body trembling a little. His fingers closed around the black stocking. She did not move. He leaned closer to the dark mouth and whispered: “Stop staring at me as if I were something unusual. I want to drink. I want a woman like you. I want to go down, as far down as you can drag me.”

She said: “You know, you’ve very much afraid that you can’t be dragged down.”

His hand left her stocking. He looked at her a little closer and asked suddenly: “How long have you been in this business?”

“Oh ... not very long.”

“I thought so.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve tried my best.”

“Tried what?”

“Tried to act experienced.”

“You little fool. Why should you? I’d rather have you as you are, with these strange eyes that see too much.... What led you into ... this?”

“A man.”

“Was he worth that?”

“Yes.”

“What an appetite!”

“For what?”

“For life.”

“If one loses that appetite, why still sit at the table?”

He laughed. His laughter rolled into the empty windows above them, as cold and empty as the windows. “Perhaps to collect under the table a few little crumbs of refuse — like you — that can still be amusing.... Take your hat off.”

She took off her tam. Against the gray stone her tangled hair and the light tangled in the leaves, glittered like warm silk. He ran his fingers through her hair and jerked her head back so violently that it hurt her. “Did you love that man?” he asked.

“What man?”

“The one who led you into this?”

“Did I ...” She was suddenly confused, surprised by an unexpected thought. “No. I didn’t love him.”

“That’s good.”

“Have you ... ever ...” She began a question and found that she could not finish it.

“They say I have no feeling for anyone but myself,” he answered, “and not much of that.”

“Who said it?”

“A person that didn’t like me. I know many people that don’t like me.”

“That’s good.”

“But I’ve never known one who said it was good.”

“Yes, you’ve known one.”

“And can you tell me who that is?”

“Yourself.”

He bent toward her again, his eyes searching the darkness, then moved away and shrugged: “You’re wrong. I’m nothing like what I think you think I am. I’ve always wanted to be a Soviet clerk who sells soap and smiles at the customers.”

She said: “You’re so very unhappy.”

His face was so close she could feel his breath on her lips. “Who asked you for sympathy? I suppose you think you can make me like you? Well, don’t fool yourself. I don’t give a damn what I think of you and less what you think of me. I’m just like any other man you’ve had in your bed — and like any you will have.”

She said: “You mean you would like to be like any other man. And you would like to think that there haven’t been any other men — in my bed.”

He looked at her silently. He asked abruptly: “Are you a ... street woman?”

She answered calmly: “No.”

He jumped to his feet. “Who are you, then?”

“Sit down.”

“Answer.”

“I’m a respectable little girl who studies at the Technological Institute, whose parents would throw her out of the house if they knew she had talked to a strange man on the street.”

He looked down at her; she sat on the steps at his feet, looking up at his face. He saw no fear and no appeal in her eyes, only an insolent calm. He asked: “Why did you do it?”

“I wanted to know you.”

“Why?”

“I liked your face.”

“You little fool! If I were someone else, I might have ... acted differently.”

“But I knew you were not someone else.”

“Don’t you know that such things are not being done?”

“I don’t care.”

He smiled suddenly. He asked: “Want a confession from me?”

“Yes.”

“This is the first time I’ve ever tried to ... to buy a woman.”

“Why did you try it tonight?”

“I didn’t care. I’ve walked for hours. There isn’t a house in this city that I can enter tonight.”

“Why?”

“Don’t ask questions. I couldn’t make myself approach one of ... of those women. But you — I liked your strange smile. What were you doing on such a street at such an hour?”

“I quarreled with someone and I had no carfare and I went home alone — and lost my way.”

“Well, thank you for a most unusual evening. This will be a rare memory to take with me of my last night in the city.”

“Your — last night?”

“I’m going away at dawn.”

“When are you coming back?”

“Never — I hope.”

She got up slowly. She stood facing him. She asked: “Who are you?”

“Even if I trust you, I can’t tell you that.”

“I can’t let you go away forever.”

“Well, I would like to see you again. I’m not going far. I may be back in town.”

“I’ll give you my address.”

“Don’t. You’re not living alone. I can’t enter anyone’s house.”

“Can I come to yours?”

“I haven’t any.”

“But then....”

“Let’s say that we’ll meet here again — in a month. Then, if I’m still alive, if I can still enter the city, I’ll be waiting here for you.”

“I’ll come.”

“November tenth. But let’s make it in daylight. At three o’clock in the afternoon. On these steps.”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s as crazy as our whole acquaintance. And now it’s time for you to go home. You shouldn’t be out at this hour.”

“But where will you go?”

“I’ll walk until dawn. It’s only a few more hours. Come on.”

She did not argue. He took her arm. She followed. They stepped over the bowed lances of the broken fence. The street was deserted. A cab driver on a distant corner raised his head at the sound of their steps. He signaled the cab. Four horseshoes struck forward, shattering the silence.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Leo. And yours?”

“Kira.”

The cab approached. He handed the driver a bill. “Tell him where you want to go,” he said.

“Good-bye,” said Kira, “ — for a month.”

“If I’m still alive,” he answered, “ — and if I don’t forget.”

She climbed to the seat, kneeling and facing the back of the carriage. As it slowly started away, her hatless hair in the wind, she watched the man who stood looking after her.

When the cab turned a corner, she remained kneeling, but her head dropped. Her hand lay on the seat, helpless, palm up; and she could feel the blood beating in her fingers.

V

GALINA PETROVNA MOANED, EVERY MORNING: “WHAT’S THE matter with you, Kira? You don’t care if you eat or not. You don’t care if you’re cold. You don’t hear when people talk to you. What’s the matter?”

In the evenings, Kira walked home from the Institute, and her eyes followed every tall figure, peering anxiously behind every raised collar, her breath stopping. She did not expect to find him in the city; she did not want to find him. She never worried whether he would come or not. She never wondered whether he liked her. She never had any thought of him beyond the one that he existed. But she found it hard to remember the existence of anything else.

Once, when she came home, the door was opened by Galina Petrovna with red, swollen eyes. “Have you got the bread?” was the first question thrown into the cold draft of the open door.

“What bread?” asked Kira.

“What bread? Your bread! The Institute bread! This is the day you get it! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten it!”

“I’ve forgotten it.”

“Oh, my Lord in Heaven!”

Galina Petrovna sat down heavily and her hands fell helplessly. “Kira, what’s the matter with you? She gets rations that aren’t enough to feed a cat and she forgets them! No bread! Oh, Lord merciful!”

In the dark dining room, Lydia sat at the window, knitting a woolen stocking by the light of the street lamp outside. Alexander Dimitrievitch drowsed, his head on the table.

“No bread,” announced Galina Petrovna. “Her highness forgot it.”

Lydia sneered. Alexander Dimitrievitch sighed and got up. “I’m going to bed,” he muttered. “You don’t feel so hungry when you sleep.”

“No dinner tonight. No millet left. The water pipes broke. No water in the house.”

“I’m not hungry,” said Kira.

“You’re the only one in the family with a bread card. But, Lord, you don’t seem to think anything of it!”

“I’m sorry, Mother. I’ll get it tomorrow.”

Kira lighted the wick. Lydia moved her knitting toward the little flame.

“Your father hasn’t sold a single thing today in that store of his,” said Galina Petrovna.

Lydia’s needles clicked in the silence.

The door bell rang sharply, insistently. Galina Petrovna shuddered nervously and hurried to open the door.

Heavy boots stamped across the anteroom. The Upravdom entered without being invited, his boots trailing mud on the dining-room floor. Galina Petrovna followed, anxiously clutching her shawl. He held a list in his hand.

“In regards to this water pipes business, Citizen Argounova,” he said, throwing the list on the table without removing his hat. “The house committee has voted a resolution to assess the tenants in proportion to their social standing, for the purpose of water pipes, to repair same, in addition to rent. Here’s a list of who pays what. Have the money in my office no later than ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Good night, citizen.”

Galina Petrovna locked the door after him and held the paper to the light, in a trembling hand.

Doubenko — Worker — in #12 ..... 3,000,000 rubles

Rilnikov — Soviet Employee — in #13 ..... 5,000,000 rubles

Argounov — Private Trader — in #14 ..... 50,000,000 rubles

The paper fell to the floor; Galina Petrovna’s face fell on her hands on the table.

“What’s the matter, Galina? How much is it?” Alexander Dimitrievitch’s voice called from the bedroom.

Galina Petrovna raised her head. “It’s ... it’s not very much. Go on. Sleep. I’ll tell you tomorrow.” She had no handkerchief; she wiped her eyes with a corner of her shawl and shuffled into the bedroom.

Kira bent over a textbook. The little flame trembled, dancing on the pages. The only thing she could read or remember was not written in the book:

“... if I’m still alive — and if I don’t forget....”

Students received bread cards and free tramway tickets. In the damp, bare offices of the Technological Institute, they waited in line to get the cards. Then, in the Students’ Co-operative, they waited in line to get the bread.

Kira had waited for an hour. The clerk at the counter shoved hunks of dried bread at the line moving slowly past him, and dipped his hand into a barrel to fish out the herring, and wiped his hand on the bread, and collected the wrinkled bills of paper money. The bread and herring disappeared, unwrapped, into brief cases filled with books. Students whistled merrily and beat tap steps in the sawdust on the floor.

The young woman who stood in line next to Kira, leaned suddenly against her shoulder with a friendly, confidential grin, although Kira had never seen her before. The young woman had broad shoulders and a masculine leather jacket; short, husky legs and flat, masculine oxfords; a red kerchief tied carelessly over short, straight hair; eyes wide apart in a round, freckled face; thin lips drawn together with so obvious and fierce a determination that they seemed weak; dandruff on the black leather of her shoulders.

She pointed at a large poster calling all students to a meeting for the election of the Students’ Council. She asked: “Going to the meeting this afternoon, comrade?”

“No,” said Kira.

“Ah, but you must go, comrade. By all means. Tremendously important. You have to vote, you know.”

“I’ve never voted in my life.”

“Your first year, comrade?”

“Yes.”

“Wonderful! Wonderful! Isn’t it wonderful?”

“What’s wonderful?”

“To start your education at a glorious time like this, when science is free and opportunity open to all. I understand, it’s all new to you and must seem very strange. But don’t be afraid, dear. I’m an old-timer here, I’ll help you.”

“I appreciate your offer, but ...”

“What’s your name, dear?”

“Kira Argounova.”

“Mine’s Sonia. Just Comrade Sonia. That’s what everybody calls me. You know, we’re going to be great friends, I can feel it. There’s nothing I enjoy more than helping smart young students like you.”

“But,” said Kira, “I don’t remember saying anything particularly smart.”

Comrade Sonia laughed very loudly: “Ah, but I know girls. I know women. We, the new women who are ambitious to have a useful career, to take our place beside the men in the productive toil of the world — instead of the old kitchen drudgery — we must stick together. There is no sight I like better than a new woman student. Comrade Sonia will always be your friend. Comrade Sonia is everybody’s friend.”

Comrade Sonia smiled. She smiled straight into Kira’s eyes, as if taking, gently, irrevocably, those eyes and the mind behind them into her own hand. Comrade Sonia’s smile was friendly; a kindly, insistent, peremptory friendliness that took the first word and expected to keep it.

“Thank you,” said Kira. “What is it you want me to do?”

“Well, to begin with, Comrade Argounova, you must go to the meeting. We’re electing our Students’ Council for the year. It’s going to be a tough battle. There is a strong anti-proletarian element among our older students. Our class enemies, you know. Young students like you must support the candidates of our Communist Cell, who stand on guard over your interests.”

“Are you one of the Cell’s candidates, Comrade Sonia?”

Comrade Sonia laughed: “See? I told you you were smart. Yes, I’m one of them. Have been on the council for two years. Hard work. But what can I do? The comrade students seem to want me and I have to do my duty. You just come with me and I’ll tell you for whom to vote.”

“Oh,” said Kira. “And after that?”

“I’ll tell you. All Red students join some kind of social activity. You know, you don’t want to be suspected of bourgeois tendencies. I’m organizing a Marxist Circle. Just a little group of young students — and I’m the chairman — to learn the proper proletarian ideology, which we’ll all need when we go out into the world to serve the Proletarian State, since that’s what we’re all studying for, isn’t it?”

“Did it ever occur to you,” asked Kira, “that I may be here for the very unusual, unnatural reason of wanting to learn a work I like only because I like it?”

Comrade Sonia looked into the gray eyes of Comrade Argounova and realized that she had made a mistake. “Well,” said Comrade Sonia, without smiling, “as you wish.”

“I think I’ll go to the meeting,” said Kira, “and — I think I’ll vote.”

An amphitheater of crowded benches rose like a dam, and the waves of students overflowed onto the steps of the aisles, the window sills, the low cabinets, the thresholds of the open doorways.

A young speaker stood on the platform, rubbing his hands solicitously, like a sales clerk at a counter. His face looked like an advertisement that had stayed in a shop window too long: a little more color was needed to make his hair blond, his eyes blue, his skin healthy. His pale lips made no frame for the dark hole of his mouth which he opened wide as he barked words like military commands at his attentive audience.

“Comrades! The doors of science are open to us, sons of toil! Science is now in our own calloused hands. We have outgrown that old bourgeois prejudice about the objective impartiality of science. Science is not impartial. Science is a weapon of the class struggle. We’re not here to further our petty personal ambitions. We have outgrown the slobbering egoism of the bourgeois who whined for a personal career. Our sole aim and purpose in entering the Red Technological Institute is to train ourselves into efficient fighters in the vanguard of Proletarian Culture and Construction!”

The speaker left the platform, rubbing his hands. Some hands in the audience clapped noisily. Most hands remained in the pockets of old coats, under the desks, silent.

Kira leaned toward a freckled girl beside her and asked: “Who is he?”

The girl whispered: “Pavel Syerov. Of the Communist Cell. Party member. Be careful. They have spies everywhere.”

The students sat in a huddled mass rising to the ceiling, a tight mass of pale faces and old, shapeless overcoats. But there was an unseen line dividing them, a line that drew no straight boundary across the benches, but zigzagged over the room, a line no one could see, but all felt, a line as precise and merciless as a sharp knife. One side wore the green student caps of the old days, discarded by the new rulers, wore them proudly, defiantly, as an honorary badge and a challenge; the other side wore red kerchiefs and trim, military leather jackets. The first faction, the larger one, sent speakers to the platform who reminded their audience that students had always known how to fight tyranny, no matter what color that tyranny was wearing, and a thunder of applause rolled from under the ceiling, down to the platform steps, an applause too loud, too long, earnest, hostile, challenging, as the only voice left to the crowd, as if their hands said more than their voices dared to utter. The other faction watched them silently, with cold, unsmiling eyes. Its speakers bellowed belligerently about the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, ignoring the sudden laughter that seemed to burst from nowhere, and the impudent sunflower-seed shells sent expertly at the speaker’s nose.

They were young and too confident that they had nothing to fear. They were raising their voices for the first time, while the country around them had long since spoken its last. They were graciously polite to their enemies and their enemies were graciously polite and called them “comrades.” Both knew the silent struggle of life or death; but only one side, the smaller, knew whose victory was to come. Young and confident, in their leather jackets and red kerchiefs, they looked with a deadly tolerance at those others, young and confident, too, and their tolerance had the cold glint of a hidden bayonet they knew to be coming.

Pavel Syerov bent toward his neighbor, a slight young man with a narrow, consumptive face, and whispered: “So that’s the kind of speeches they make here. What a task we have awaiting us! Had anyone dared that at the front....”

“The front, Comrade Syerov,” answered the soft, expressionless voice of his companion, “has changed. The external front is conquered. It’s on the internal front that we have to dig our trenches now.”

He bent closer to Comrade Syerov. His long, thin hands were pressed to the desk; he barely raised one finger and moved it slowly, indicating the auditorium from wall to wall. “On the internal front,” he whispered, “there are no bombs, no machine guns. When our enemies fall — there is no blood, no cry. The world never knows when they were killed. Sometimes, they do not know it themselves. This day, Comrade Syerov, belongs to the fighters of Red Culture.”

When the last speech had been heard, a vote was taken. Candidates left the room in turn, while others made short speeches about them; then hands were raised, and students standing on tables, waving pencils, counted the votes.

Kira saw Victor going out and heard the speech of his loyal supporter about the wisdom of Comrade Victor Dunaev who was guided by a spirit of understanding and cooperation; both factions applauded; both factions voted for Comrade Dunaev. Kira did not.

“Candidate Pavel Syerov will kindly leave now,” the chairman of the meeting announced. “Word is given to Comrade Presniakova.”

To the clatter of applause, Comrade Sonia leaped to the platform, tore off her red kerchief and shook her short, bristling mane of hair with spirited abandon.

“Just Comrade Sonia!” she greeted her audience. “Hearty proletarian greetings to all! And — particularly — particularly to our comrade women! There’s no sight I like better than a new woman student, a woman emancipated from the old slavery of dishes and diapers. So here I am — Comrade Sonia — ready to serve you all!” She waited for the applause to stop. “Comrade students! We’ve got to stand up for our rights. We’ve got to learn to speak our proletarian will and make our enemies take notice. We’ve got to stamp our proletarian boot into their white throats and their treacherous intentions. Our Red schools are for Red students. Our Students’ Council must stand on guard over proletarian interests. It’s up to you to elect those whose proletarian loyalty is beyond doubt. You’ve heard Comrade Syerov speak. I’m here to tell you that he’s an old fighter in the Communist ranks, a Party member since before the revolution, a soldier of the Red Army. Let us all vote for a good proletarian, a Red soldier, the hero of Melitopol, Comrade Pavel Syerov!”

Through the roll of applause, her heavy shoes clattered down the platform steps, her stomach shaking, her broad face open in a huge grin, the back of one hand wiping perspiration from under her nose.

Comrade Syerov was elected; so was Comrade Sonia; so was Comrade Victor Dunaev; but so were members of the green cap faction — two-thirds of the new Students’ Council.

“And to close the meeting, comrades,” shouted the chairman, “we’ll sing our old song, ‘Days of Our Life.’ ”

A discordant chorus boomed solemnly:

“Swift as the waves

Are the days of our life....”

It was an old drinking song grown to the dignity of a students’ anthem; a slow, mournful tune with an artificial gaiety in the roll of its spiritless notes, born long before the revolution in the stuffy rooms where unshaved men and mannish women discussed philosophy and with forced bravado drank cheap vodka to the futility of life.

Kira frowned; she did not sing; she did not know the old song and did not want to learn it. She noticed that the students in leather jackets and red kerchiefs kept silent, too.

When the song ended, Pavel Syerov shouted: “Now, comrades, our answer!”

For the first time in Petrograd, Kira heard the “Internationale.” She tried not to listen to its words. The words spoke of the damned, the hungry, the slaves, of those who had been nothing and shall be all; in the magnificent goblet of the music, the words were not intoxicating as wine; they were not terrifying as blood; they were gray as dish water.

But the music was like the marching of thousands of feet, measured and steady, like drums beaten by unvarying, unhurried hands. The music was like the feet of soldiers marching into the dawn that is to see their battle and their victory; as if the song rose from under the soldiers’ feet, with the dust of the road, as if the soldiers’ feet played it upon the earth.

The tune sang a promise, calmly, with the calm of an immeasurable strength, and then, tense with a restrained, but uncontrollable ecstasy, the notes rose, trembling, repeating themselves, too rapt to be held still, like arms raised and waving in the sweep of banners.

It was a hymn with the force of a march, a march with the majesty of a hymn. It was the song of soldiers bearing sacred banners and of priests carrying swords. It was an anthem to the sanctity of strength.

Everyone had to rise when the “Internationale” was played.

Kira stood smiling at the music. “This is the first beautiful thing I’ve noticed about the revolution,” she said to her neighbor.

“Be careful,” the freckled girl whispered, glancing around nervously, “someone will hear you.”

“When all this is over,” said Kira, “when the traces of their republic are disinfected from history — what a glorious funeral march this will make!”

“You little fool! What are you talking about?”

A man’s hand grasped Kira’s wrist and wheeled her around.

She stared up into two gray eyes that looked like the eyes of a tamed tiger; but she was not quite sure whether it was tamed or not. There were four straight lines on his face: two eyebrows, a mouth and a scar on his right temple.

For one short second, they looked at each other, silent, hostile, startled by each other’s eyes.

“How much,” asked Kira, “are you paid for snooping around?”

She tried to disengage her wrist. He held it. “Do you know the place for little girls like you?”

“Yes — where men like you wouldn’t be let in through the back door.”

“You must be new here. I’d advise you to be careful.”

“Our stairs are slippery and there are four floors to climb, so be careful when you come to arrest me.”

He dropped her wrist. She looked at his silent mouth; it spoke of many past battles louder than the scar on his forehead; it also spoke of many more to come.

The “Internationale” rang like soldiers’ feet beating the earth.

“Are you exceedingly brave?” he asked. “Or just stupid?”

“I’ll let you find that out.”

He shrugged, turned and walked away. He was tall and young. He wore a cap and a leather jacket. He walked like a soldier, his steps deliberate and very confident.

Students sang the “Internationale,” its ecstatic notes rising, trembling, repeating themselves.

“Comrade,” the freckled girl whispered, “what have you done?”

The first thing that Kira heard when she rang the Dunaevs’ door bell, was Maria Petrovna’s cough. Then, the key turned. Then, a wave of smoke struck Kira in the face. Through the smoke, she saw Maria Petrovna’s tear-filled eyes and her swollen hand covering her mouth, shaking with a violent cough.

“Come in, come in, Kira darling,” Maria Petrovna hissed. “Don’t be afraid. It’s not a fire.”

Kira walked into the gray fog that bit her eyelids like a strong onion; Maria Petrovna shuffled after her, painfully spurting words and coughs: “It’s the stove ... that Soviet wood ... we got ... won’t burn ... so damp you could ... breed polliwogs.... Don’t take your ... coat off, Kira ... it’s too cold.... We have the windows open.”

“Is Irina at home?”

“She certainly is,” Irina’s clear, bright voice came from somewhere in the fog, “if you can find her.”

In the dining room, the big double-paneled windows had been sealed for the winter; but one small panel was open; a whirlpool of smoke spun around it, fighting the cold fresh air from the street. Irina sat at the table, her winter coat thrown over her shoulders, blowing at her stiff, blue fingers.

Maria Petrovna found a trembling little shadow in the corner behind the buffet and dragged her out. “Acia, say how-do-you-do to cousin Kira.”

Acia stared up sullenly, her red eyes and little wet nose showing above the collar of her father’s fur jacket.

“Acia, do you hear me? And where’s your handkerchief? Say how-do-you-do to cousin Kira.”

“How do you do,” Acia muttered, staring at the floor.

“Why aren’t you at school today, Acia?”

“Closed,” Maria Petrovna sighed. “The school’s closed. For two weeks. No wood.”

A door banged in the fog. Victor came in. “Oh, how do you do, Kira?” he said coldly. “Mother, when is this smoke going to stop? How can one be expected to study in this infernal atmosphere? Oh, I don’t care. If I don’t pass the examinations, there’ll be no bread cards for a certain family!” The door banged louder as he went out.

Kira sat watching Irina sketch. Irina studied Art; she devoted her time to solemn research into the ancient masterpieces of the museums; but her quick hand and mischievous eyes produced the impudent art of the newspapers. She sketched cartoons whenever she was supposed to, and at any other time. A drawing board on her lap, throwing her head and hair back once in a while for a swift glance at Acia through the smoke, she was sketching her little sister. On the paper, Acia was transformed into a goblin with huge ears and stomach, riding on the back of a snail.

Vasili Ivanovitch came home from the market. He was smiling happily. He had stood at the market all day and had sold the chandelier from their drawing room. He had managed to get a good price for it.

His smile widened when he saw Kira and he nodded to her cheerfully. Maria Petrovna brought him a bowl of hot soup. She asked timidly: “Would you like some soup, Kira?”

“No, thank you, Aunt Marussia. I’ve just had my dinner.”

She knew that Maria Petrovna had but one bowl of soup left, saved for Vasili Ivanovitch; she knew that Maria Petrovna sighed with relief.

Vasili Ivanovitch ate cheerfully, talking to Kira as if she were his personal guest; he spoke to so few of their guests that Maria Petrovna and Irina did not object, watching anxiously the rare sight of his smile.

He chuckled: “Look at Irina drawing. Here she is, daubing, smudging all day long. Not bad, are they, Kira? The drawings, I mean. How’s Victor at the Institute? Not one of the last, I bet.... Well, we still have something left. Yes, we still have something left.” He leaned forward suddenly over his soup, his eyes sparkling, his voice low: “Have you read the papers tonight, Kira?”

“Yes, Uncle Vasili. What was it?”

“The news from abroad. Of course, there wasn’t much in the paper. They wouldn’t print it. But you have to know how to read between the lines. Just watch it. Just mark my word. Europe is doing things. And it won’t be long ... it won’t be long now before ...”

Maria Petrovna coughed nervously. She was used to it; for five years she had listened to what Vasili Ivanovitch read between the lines of the newspapers about the salvation coming from Europe, which never came. She sighed; she did not dare to argue. Vasili Ivanovitch was grinning happily: “... and when it happens, I’m all set to start again where they’ve interrupted. It won’t be difficult. Of course, they’ve closed my store and taken all the furniture away, but ...” he leaned close to Kira, whispering, “but I’ve watched it. I know where they’ve taken it. I know where it is now.”

“You do, Uncle Vasili?”

“I’ve seen the showcases in a government shoe store on the Bolshoi Prospect; and the chairs — in a factory restaurant in the Viborgsky district; and the chandelier — the chandelier’s in the new Tobacco Trust office. I haven’t been wasting time. I’m ready. As soon as ... as soon as things change — I’ll know where to find it all and I’ll open the old store again.”

“That’s wonderful, Uncle Vasili. I’m glad they haven’t destroyed your furniture or burned it.”

“No, that’s my luck, they haven’t. It’s still as good as new. I did see a long scratch on one of the showcases, it’s a shame, but it can be fixed. And — here’s the funniest thing,” he chuckled slyly, as if he had outwitted his enemies, “the sign boards. Do you remember my sign boards, Kira, gilded glass with black letters? Well, I’ve even found those. They’re hanging over a co-operative near the Alexandrovsky market. On one side it says: ‘State Co-operative’ but on the other — on the other side it still says: ‘Vasili Dunaev. Furs.’ ” He caught the look in Maria Petrovna’s eyes. He frowned. “Marussia doesn’t believe any more. She doesn’t think we’ll get it all back. She loses faith so easily. How about it, Kira? Do you think you’ll live your whole life under a Red boot?”

“No,” said Kira, “it can’t last forever.”

“Of course, it can’t. Certainly, it can’t. That’s what I say, it can’t.” He rose suddenly. “Come here, Kira, I’ll show you something.”

“Vasili,” Maria Petrovna sighed, “won’t you finish your soup?”

“Never mind the soup. I’m not hungry. Come on to my office, Kira.”

There was no furniture left in Vasili Ivanovitch’s office but a desk and one chair. He unlocked a desk drawer and took out a bundle wrapped in an old, yellowed handkerchief. He unfastened a tight knot and, smiling proudly, happily, straightening his stooped shoulders, showed Kira neatly tied piles of large, crisp currency bills of the Czar’s days. They were large piles; they contained a fortune of many thousands.

Kira gasped: “But, Uncle Vasili, they’re ... they’re worthless. You’re not allowed to use ... or even to keep them any more. It’s ... dangerous.”

He laughed: “Sure, they’re worthless — now. But just wait and see. Wait till things change. You’ll see how much there is right here in my fist.”

“But ... Uncle Vasili, where did you get them?”

“I bought them. Secretly, of course. From speculators. It’s dangerous, but you can get them. It cost me a lot, too. I’ll tell you why I bought so many. You see, just ... just before it happened ... you know, before they nationalized the store ... I owed one large bill — for my new plate-glass windows — got them from abroad, from Sweden, no one in town had any like that. When they took the store, they kicked their boots through the glass, but it doesn’t matter, I still owe the firm for it. There’s no way I can pay now — you can’t send money abroad — but I’m waiting. I can’t pay it in that worthless Soviet paper trash ... why, abroad they wouldn’t use it in the bathroom. And you can’t get gold. But these — these will be as good as gold. And I’ll pay my debt. I’ve checked up. The old man of the glass firm has died, but his son is alive. He’s in Berlin now. I’ll pay him. I don’t like to be in debt. I’ve never owed a ruble to any man in my life.” He weighed the paper bundle in the palm of his large hand. He said softly: “Take some advice from an old man, Kira. Don’t ever look back. The past is dead. But there is always a future. There is always a future. And — here’s mine. A good idea, wasn’t it, Kira, getting this money?”

Kira forced a smile, and looked away from him, and whispered: “Yes, Uncle Vasili, a very good idea.”

The door bell rang. Then, in the dining room, they heard a girl’s laughter that seemed clearer, louder than the bell. Vasili Ivanovitch frowned. “Here she is again,” he said sullenly. “Vava Milovskaia. A friend of Victor.”

“What’s the matter, Uncle Vasili? You don’t like her?”

He shrugged: “Oh, she’s all right, I suppose. I don’t dislike her. Only there’s nothing in her to like. Just a scatter-brained little female. Not a girl like you, Kira. Come on, I suppose you’ll have to meet her.”

Vava Milovskaia stood in the middle of the dining room like two luminous circles; the lower and larger one — a full skirt of pink starched chintz; the upper and smaller one — a tangled chrysanthemum of glistening black curls. Her dress was only chintz, but it was new, obviously expensive, and she wore a narrow diamond bracelet.

“Good evening, Vasili Ivanovitch!” she sang. “Good evening! Good evening!” She jumped up, her hands on his shoulders, her pink skirt flaring, and planted a kiss on his stern forehead. “And this is — I know — Kira! Kira Argounova. I’m so glad to see you, at last, Kira!”

Victor came out of his room. Vava repeated persistently that she had come to see Irina, but he knew, as everybody knew, the real object of her visit. He watched her, smiling. He laughed happily, and teased her, and pulled Acia’s ear, and brought a warm shawl for Maria Petrovna when she coughed, and told anecdotes, and even forced Vasili Ivanovitch, who sat gloomily in a dark corner, to smile once at a joke.

“I’ve brought something to show you all,” Vava announced mysteriously, producing a little package from her handbag. “Something ... something marvelous. Something you’ve never seen before.”

All heads bent over the table, over a tiny, round, orange and gold box. Vava whispered the magic words: “From abroad.”

They looked at it reverently, afraid to touch it. Vava whispered proudly, breathlessly, trying to sound casual: “Face powder. French. Real French. It’s smuggled from Riga. One of Father’s patients gave it to him — in part payment.”

“You know,” said Irina, “I’ve heard that they use not only powder, abroad, but — imagine — lipstick!”

“Yes,” said Vava, “and that woman, Father’s patient, promised to get me — a lipstick, next time.”

“Vava! You won’t dare to use it!”

“Oh ... I don’t know. Maybe ... maybe a tiny bit ... just once in a while.”

“No decent woman paints her lips,” said Maria Petrovna.

“But they say they do and it’s perfectly all right — abroad.”

“Abroad,” Maria Petrovna sighed wistfully. “Such a place does exist somewhere, doesn’t it? ... Abroad....”

Snow had not come; but a heavy frost glazed the mud on the sidewalks, and the first icicles grew whiskers in the mouths of drain pipes. The sky hung clear and green, lustrous with cold glints of ice. Men walked slowly, awkwardly, like beginners learning to skate; they slipped, waving one helpless leg high in the air, grasping the nearest lamp post. Horses slipped on the glassy cobblestones; sparks flew from under the hoofs scratching the ice convulsively.

Kira walked to the Institute. Through her thin soles, the frozen sidewalk sent a cold breath up her legs. She hurried uncertainly, her feet slipping at odd angles.

She heard steps behind her, very firm, resolute steps that made her turn involuntarily. She looked at the tamed tiger with the scar on his forehead. Their eyes met. He smiled. And she smiled up at him. He touched the visor of his cap. “Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning,” said Kira.

She watched his tall figure walking on hurriedly, his shoulders erect in his leather jacket, his feet steady on the ice.

Across from the Institute, he stopped suddenly and turned, waiting for her. She approached. The high sidewalk sloped down abruptly at a steep, frozen, dangerous angle. He offered his arm to help her. Her feet slipped perilously. His strong hand closed over her arm and quickly, masterfully landed her on her feet.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I thought you might need help. But then,” he looked at her with a faint smile, “I suppose you weren’t afraid.”

“On the contrary. I was very much afraid — this time,” she said, and her smile was an answer of sudden understanding.

He touched the visor of his cap and hurried away through the Institute gates, down a long corridor.

Kira saw a boy she knew. She pointed at the disappearing figure in the leather jacket, and asked: “Who is that?”

The boy looked and made a strange, warning noise with his lips. “Be careful of that,” he whispered and breathed three dreaded letters: “G.P.U.”

“Oh, is he?” said Kira.

“Is he?” said the boy with a long, indignant whistle for an answer.

VI

FOR A MONTH KIRA HAD NOT APPROACHED the neighborhood of the mansion with a broken garden fence; she had not thought of the garden, for she did not want to see it empty, even before her own closed eyes. But on November tenth she walked toward it calmly, evenly, without hurry, without doubts.

Darkness was coming, not from the gray, transparent sky, but from the corners of houses where shadows suddenly grew thicker, as if without reason. Slow whirls of smoke over chimneys were rusty in the rays of a cold, invisible sunset somewhere beyond the clouds. In store windows kerosene lamps stood on the sills, melting yellow circles on the huge, frozen panes, around little orange dots of trembling fire. It had snowed. Whipped into mud by horses’ hoofs, the first snow looked like a pale coffee with thin, melting splinters of sugar. It hushed the city into a soft, padded silence. Hoofs thumped through the mud with a clear, wet sound, as if someone were clicking his tongue loudly, rhythmically, and the sound rolled, dying, down long, darkening streets.

Kira turned a corner; she saw the black lances bowing to the snow, and the trees gathering snatches of cotton in the black net of bare branches. Then, for one second, she stopped, because she was suddenly afraid to look; then she looked into the garden.

He stood on the steps of the mansion, his hands in his pockets, his collar raised. She stopped to look at him. But he heard her and turned quickly.

He walked to meet her. He smiled at her, his mouth a scornful arc. “Allo, Kira.”

“Good evening, Leo.”

She pulled off a heavy black mitten; he held her hand for a long moment in his cold, strong fingers. Then he asked: “Foolish, aren’t we?”

“Why?”

“I didn’t think you’d come. I know I had no intention of coming.”

“But you’re here.”

“I awakened this morning and I knew that I’d be here — against my better judgment, I admit.”

“Are you living in Petrograd now?”

“No. I haven’t been here since that night I met you. We’ve often gone without food because I couldn’t drive to the city. But I’ve returned to meet a girl on a street corner. My compliments, Kira.”

“Who went without food because you couldn’t drive to the city?”

His smile told her that he understood the question and more than the question. But he said: “Let’s sit down.”

They sat down on the steps and she tapped her feet against each other, knocking off the snow. He asked: “So you want to know with whom I’m living? See? My coat is mended.”

“Yes.”

“A woman did that. A very nice woman who likes me very much.”

“She sews well.”

“Yes. But her eyesight isn’t so good any more. And her hair’s gray. She’s my old nurse and she has a shack in the country. Anything else you want to ask?”

“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.”

“They don’t always want to use them,” he answered calmly, “so they have to find out for themselves.”

“For themselves? Or for the Party?”

“Sometimes both. But not always.”

They were out of the auditorium, walking together down the corridor. A strong hand clapped Kira’s back; and she heard a laughter that was too loud.

“Well, well, well, Comrade Argounova!” Comrade Sonia roared into her face. “What a surprise! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Walking with Comrade Taganov, the reddest Communist we’ve got?”

“Afraid I’ll corrupt him, Comrade Sonia?”

“Corrupt? Him? Not a chance, dear, not a chance. Well, bye-bye. Have to run. Have three meetings at four o’clock — and promised to attend them all!”

Comrade Sonia’s short legs marched resonantly down the hall, her arm swinging a heavy brief case like a knapsack.

“Are you going home, Comrade Argounova?” he asked.

“Yes, Comrade Taganov.”

“Would you mind if you’re compromised by being seen with a very red Communist?”

“Not at all — if your reputation won’t be tarnished by being seen with a very white lady.”

Outside, snow melted into mud under many hurried steps and the mud froze into sharp, jagged ridges. He took Kira’s arm. He looked at her with a silent inquiry for approval. She answered by closing her eyes and nodding. They walked silently. Then she looked up at him and smiled.

She said: “I thought that Communists never did anything except what they had to do; that they never believed in doing anything but what they had to do.”

“That’s strange,” he smiled, “I must be a very poor Communist. I’ve always done only what I wanted to do.”

“Your revolutionary duty?”

“There is no such thing as duty. If you know that a thing is right, you want to do it. If you don’t want to do it — it isn’t right. If it’s right and you don’t want to do it — you don’t know what right is and you’re not a man.”

“Haven’t you ever wanted a thing for no reason save one: that you wanted it?”

“Certainly. That’s always been my only reason. I’ve never wanted things unless they could help my cause. For, you see, it is my cause.”

“And your cause is to deny yourself for the sake of millions?”

“No. To bring millions up to where I want them — for my sake.”

“And when you think you’re right, you do it at any price?”

“I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say, as so many of our enemies do, that you admire our ideals, but loathe our methods.”

“I loathe your ideals.”

“Why?”

“For one reason, mainly, chiefly and eternally, no matter how much your Party promises to accomplish, no matter what paradise it plans to bring mankind. Whatever your other claims may be, there’s one you can’t avoid, one that will turn your paradise into the most unspeakable hell: your claim that man must live for the state.”

“What better purpose can he live for?”

“Don’t you know,” her voice trembled suddenly in a passionate plea she could not hide, “don’t you know that there are things, in the best of us, which no outside hand should dare to touch? Things sacred because, and only because, one can say: ‘This is mine’? Don’t you know that we live only for ourselves, the best of us do, those who are worthy of it? Don’t you know that there is something in us which must not be touched by any state, by any collective, by any number of millions?”

He answered: “No.”

“Comrade Taganov,” she whispered, “how much you have to learn!”

He looked down at her with his quiet shadow of a smile and patted her hand like a child’s. “Don’t you know,” he asked, “that we can’t sacrifice millions for the sake of the few?”

“Can you sacrifice the few? When those few are the best? Deny the best its right to the top — and you have no best left. What are your masses but millions of dull, shrivelled, stagnant souls that have no thoughts of their own, no dreams of their own, no will of their own, who eat and sleep and chew helplessly the words others put into their brains? And for those you would sacrifice the few who know life, who are life? I loathe your ideals because I know no worse injustice than the giving of the undeserved. Because men are not equal in ability and one can’t treat them as if they were. And because I loathe most of them.”

“I’m glad. So do I.”

“But then....”

“Only I don’t enjoy the luxury of loathing. I’d rather try to make them worth looking at, to bring them up to my level. And you’d make a great little fighter — on our side.”

“I think you know I could never be that.”

“I think I do. But why don’t you fight against us, then?”

“Because I have less in common with you than the enemies who fight you, have. I don’t want to fight for the people, I don’t want to fight against the people, I don’t want to hear of the people. I want to be left alone — to live.”

“Isn’t it a strange request?”

“Is it? And what is the state but a servant and a convenience for a large number of people, just like the electric light and the plumbing system? And wouldn’t it be preposterous to claim that men must exist for their plumbing, not the plumbing for the men?”

“And if your plumbing pipes got badly out of order, wouldn’t it be preposterous to sit still and not make an effort to mend them?”

“I wish you luck, Comrade Taganov. I hope that when you find those pipes running red with your own blood — you’ll still think they were worth mending.”

“I’m not afraid of that. I’m more afraid of what times like ours will do to a woman like you.”

“Then you do see what these times of yours are?”

“We all do. We’re not blind. I know that, perhaps, it is a living hell. Still, if I had a choice, I’d want to be born when I was born, and live the days I’m living, because now we don’t sit and dream, we don’t moan, we don’t wish — we do, we act, we build!”

Kira liked the sound of the steps next to hers, steady, unhurried; and the sound of the voice that matched the steps. He had been in the Red Army; she frowned at his battles, but smiled with admiration at the scar on his forehead. He smiled ironically at the story of Argounov’s lost factories, but frowned, worried, at Kira’s old shoes. His words struggled with hers, but his eyes searched hers for support. She said “no” to the words he spoke, and “yes” to the voice that spoke them.

She stopped at a poster of the State Academic Theaters, the three theaters that had been called “Imperial” before the revolution.

“ ‘Rigoletto,’ ” she said wistfully. “Do you like opera, Comrade Taganov?”

“I’ve never heard one.”

She walked on. He said: “But I get plenty of tickets from the Communist Cell. Only I’ve never had the time. Do you go to the theater often?”

“Not very often. Last time was six years ago. Being a bourgeois, I can’t afford a ticket.”

“Would you go with me if I asked you?”

“Try it.”

“Would you go to the opera with me, Comrade Argounova?”

Her eyebrows danced slyly. She asked: “Hasn’t your Communist Cell at the Institute a secret bureau of information about all students?”

He frowned a little, perplexed: “Why?”

“You could find out from them that my name is Kira.”

He smiled, a strangely warm smile on hard, grave lips. “But that won’t give you a way of finding out that my name is Andrei.”

“I’ll be glad to accept your invitation, Andrei.”

“Thank you, Kira.”

At the door of the red-brick house on Moika she extended her hand.

“Can you break Party discipline to shake a counter-revolutionary hand?” she asked.

He held her hand firmly. “Party discipline isn’t to be broken,” he answered, “but, oh! how far it can be stretched!”

Their eyes held each other longer than their hands, in a silent, bewildering understanding. Then he walked away with the light, precise steps of a soldier. She ran up four flights of stairs, her old tam in one hand, shaking her tousled hair, laughing.

VII

ALEXANDER DIMITRIEVITCH KEPT HIS SAVINGS SEWN IN his undershirt. He had developed the habit of raising his hand to his heart once in a while, as if he had gas pains; he felt the roll of bills; he liked the security under his fingertips. When he needed money, he cut the heavy seam of white thread and sighed as the load grew lighter. On November sixteenth, he cut the seam for the last time.

The special tax on private traders for the purpose of relieving the famine on the Volga had to be paid, even though it closed the little textile store in the bakery shop. Another private enterprise had failed.

Alexander Dimitrievitch had expected it. They opened on every corner, fresh and hopeful like mushrooms after a rain; and, like mushrooms, they faded before their first morning was over. Some men were successful. He had seen them: men in resplendent new fur coats, with white, flabby cheeks that made him think of butter for breakfast, and eyes that made him raise his hand, nervously, to the roll over his heart. These men were seen in the front rows at the theaters; they were seen leaving the new confectioners’ with round white cake boxes the price of which could keep a family for two months; they were seen hiring taxis — and paying for them. Insolent street children called them “Nepmen”; their cartoons adorned the pages of Red newspapers — with scornful denunciations of the new vultures of NEP; but their warm fur hats were seen in the windows of automobiles rocketing the highest Red officials through the streets of Petrograd. Alexander Dimitrievitch wondered dully about their secrets. But the dreaded word “speculator” gave him a cold shudder; he lacked the talents of a racketeer.

He left the empty bakery boxes; but he carried home his faded cotton sign. He folded it neatly and put it away in a drawer where he kept old stationery with the embossed letterhead of the Argounov textile factories.

“I will not become a Soviet employee if we all starve,” said Alexander Dimitrievitch.

Galina Petrovna moaned that something had to be done. Unexpected help appeared in the person of a former bookkeeper from the Argounov factory.

He wore glasses and a soldier’s coat and he was not careful about shaving. But he rubbed his hands diffidently and he knew how to respect authority under all circumstances.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, Alexander Dimitrievitch, sir,” he wailed. “This is no life for you. Now, if we get together ... if you just invest a little, I’ll do all the work....”

They formed a partnership. Alexander Dimitrievitch was to manufacture soap; the unshaved bookkeeper was to sell it; had an excellent corner on the Alexandrovsky market.

“What? How to make it?” he enthused. “Simple as an omelet. I’ll get you the greatest little soap recipe. Soap is the stuff of the moment. The public hasn’t had any for so long they’ll tear it out of your hands. We’ll put them all out of business. I know a place where we can get spoiled pork fat. No good for eating — but just right for soap.”

Alexander Dimitrievitch spent his last money to buy spoiled pork fat. He melted it in a big brass laundry tub on the kitchen stove. He bent over the steaming fumes, blinking, his shirt sleeves rolled above his elbows, stirring the mixture with a wooden paddle. The kitchen door had to be kept open; there was no other stove to heat the apartment. The bitter, musty odor of a factory basement rose, with the whirling steam of a laundry, to the streaked ceiling. Galina Petrovna chopped the spoiled pork fat on the kitchen table, delicately crooking her little finger, clearing her throat noisily.

Lydia played the piano. Lydia had always boasted of two accomplishments: her magnificent hair, which she brushed for half an hour every morning, and her music, which she practiced for three hours each day. Galina Petrovna asked for Chopin. Lydia played Chopin. The wistful music, delicate as rose petals falling slowly in the darkness of an old park, rang softly through the haze of soap fumes. Galina Petrovna did not know why tears dropped on her knife; she thought that the pork fat hurt her eyes.

Kira sat at the table with a book. The odor from the kettle raked her throat as if with sharp little prongs. She paid no attention to it. She had to learn and remember the words in the book for that bridge she would build some day. But she stopped often. She looked at her hand, at the palm of her right hand. Stealthily, she brushed her palm against her cheek, slowly, from the temple to the chin. It seemed a surrender to everything she had always disliked. She blushed; but no one could see it through the fumes.

The soap came out in soft, soggy squares of a dirty brown. Alexander Dimitrievitch found an old brass button off his yachting jacket and imprinted an anchor in the corner of each square.

“Great idea! Trademark,” said the unshaved bookkeeper. “We’ll call it ‘Argounov’s Navy Soap.’ A good revolutionary name.”

A pound of soap cost Alexander Dimitrievitch more than it did on the market.

“That’s nothing,” said his partner. “That’s better. They’ll think more of it if they have to pay more. It’s quality soap. Not the old Jukov junk.”

He had a tray with straps to wear over his shoulders. He arranged the brown squares carefully on the tray and departed, whistling, for the Alexandrovsky market.

In a hall of the Institute Kira saw Comrade Sonia. She was making a little speech to a group of five young students. Comrade Sonia was always surrounded by a brood of youngsters; and she always talked, her short arms flapping like protective wings.

“... and Comrade Syerov is the best fighter in the ranks of proletarian students. Comrade Syerov’s revolutionary record is unsurpassed. Comrade Syerov, the hero of Melitopol....”

A freckled boy with a soldier’s cap far on the back of his head, stopped his hurried waddle down the hall and barked at Comrade Sonia: “The hero of Melitopol? Ever heard of Andrei Taganov?”

He sent a sunflower seed straight at a button on Comrade Sonia’s leather jacket and staggered away carelessly. Comrade Sonia did not answer. Kira noticed that the look on her face was not a pleasant one.

Finding a rare moment when Comrade Sonia was alone, Kira asked her: “What kind of man is Comrade Taganov?”

Comrade Sonia scratched the back of her head, without a smile. “A perfect revolutionary, I suppose. Some call him that. However, it’s not my idea of a good proletarian if a man doesn’t unbend and be a little sociable with his fellow comrades once in a while.... And if you have any intentions in a bedroom direction, Comrade Argounova — well, not a chance. He’s the kind of saint that sleeps with red flags. Take it from one who knows.”

She laughed aloud at the expression on Kira’s face and waddled away, throwing over her shoulder: “Oh, a little proletarian vulgarity won’t hurt you!”

Andrei Taganov came again to the lecture for beginners, in the crowded auditorium. He found Kira in the crowd and elbowed his way toward her and whispered: “Tickets for tomorrow night. Mikhailovsky Theater. ‘Rigoletto.’ ”

“Oh, Andrei!”

“May I call for you?”

“It’s number fourteen. Fourth floor, on the back stairs.”

“I’ll be there at seven-thirty.”

“May I thank you?”

“No.”

“Sit down. I’ll make room for you.”

“Can’t. I have to go. I have another lecture to attend.”

Cautiously, noiselessly, he made his way to the door, and turned once to glance back at her smiling face.

Kira delivered her ultimatum to Galina Petrovna: “Mother, I have to have a dress. I’m going to the opera tomorrow.”

“To the ... opera!” Galina Petrovna dropped the onion she was peeling; Lydia dropped her embroidery.

“Who is he?” gasped Lydia.

“A boy. At the Institute.”

“Good-looking?”

“In a way.”

“What’s his name?” inquired Galina Petrovna.

“Andrei Taganov.”

“Taganov? ... Never heard.... Good family?”

Kira smiled and shrugged.

A dress was found at the bottom of the trunk; Galina Petrovna’s old dress of soft dark-gray silk. After three fittings and conferences between Galina Petrovna and Lydia, after eighteen hours when two pairs of shoulders bent over the oil wick and two hands feverishly worked two needles, a dress was created for Kira, a simple dress with short sleeves and a shirt collar, for there was no material to trim it.

Before dinner, Kira said: “Be careful when he comes. He’s a Communist.”

“A Com ...” Galina Petrovna dropped the salt shaker into the pot of millet.

“Kira! You’re not ... you’re not being friendly with a Communist?” Lydia choked. “After shouting how much you hate them?”

“I happen to like him.”

“Kira, it’s outrageous! You have no pride in your social standing. Bringing a Communist into the house! I, for one, shan’t speak to him.”

Galina Petrovna did not argue. She sighed bitterly: “Kira, you always seem to be able to make hard times harder.”

There was millet for dinner; it was mildewed and everyone noticed it; but no one said a word for fear of spoiling the others’ appetite. It had to be eaten; there was nothing else; so they ate in silence.

When the bell rang, Lydia, curious in spite of her convictions, hurried to open the door.

“May I see Kira, please?” Andrei asked, removing his cap.

“Yes, indeed,” Lydia said icily.

Kira performed the introductions. Alexander Dimitrievitch said: “Good evening,” and made no other sound, watching the guest fixedly, nervously. Lydia nodded and turned away.

But Galina Petrovna smiled eagerly: “I’m so glad, Comrade Taganov, that my daughter is going to hear a real proletarian opera in one of our great Red theaters!”

Kira’s eyes met Andrei’s over the wick. She was grateful for the calm, gracious bow with which he acknowledged the remark.

Two days a week were “Profunion days” at the State Academic Theaters. No tickets were sold to the public; they were distributed at half-price among the professional unions. In the lobby of the Mikhailovsky Theater, among trim new suits and military tunics, a few felt boots shuffled heavily and a few calloused hands timidly removed leather caps with flapping, fur-lined ears. Some were awkward, diffident; others slouched insolently, defying the impressive splendor by munching sunflower seeds. Wives of union officials ambled haughtily through the crowd, erect and resplendent in their new dresses of the latest style, with their marcelled hair, sparkling manicures and patent leather slippers. Glistening limousines drove, panting sonorously, up to the light-flooded entrance and disgorged heavy fur coats that waddled swiftly across the sidewalk, projecting gloved hands to throw coins at the ragged program peddlers. The program peddlers, livid, frozen shadows, scurried obsequiously through the free “profunion” audience, a wealthier, haughtier, better fed audience than the week-day paying guests.

The theater smelt of old velvet, marble and moth balls. Four balconies rose high to a huge chandelier of crystal chains that threw little rainbows on the distant ceiling. Five years of revolution had not touched the theater’s solemn grandeur; they had left but one sign: the Imperial eagle was removed from over the huge central box which had belonged to the royal family.

Kira remembered the long satin trains, and the bare white shoulders, and the diamonds that sparkled like the crystals of the chandelier, moving down the orange carpets of the wide aisles. There were few diamonds now; the dresses were dark, sober, with high necklines and long sleeves. Slender, erect in her soft gray satin, she walked in as she had seen those ladies walk many years ago, her arm on that of a tall young man in a leather jacket.

And when the curtain went up and music rose in the dark, silent shaft of the theater, growing, swelling, thundering against walls that could not hold it, something stopped in Kira’s throat and she opened her mouth to take a breath. Beyond the walls were linseed-oil wicks, men waiting in line for tramways, red flags and the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the stage, under the marble columns of an Italian palace, women waved their hands softly, gracefully, like reeds in the waves of music, long velvet trains rustled under a blinding light and, young, carefree, drunk on the light and the music, the Duke of Mantua sang the challenge of youth and laughter to gray, weary, cringing faces in the darkness, faces that could forget, for a while, the hour and the day and the century.

Kira glanced at Andrei once. He was not looking at the stage; he was looking at her.

During an intermission, in the foyer, they met Comrade Sonia on the arm of Pavel Syerov. Pavel Syerov was immaculate. Comrade Sonia wore a wrinkled silk dress with a tear in the right armpit. She laughed heartily, slapping Kira’s shoulder.

“So you’ve gone quite proletarian, haven’t you? Or is it Comrade Taganov who’s gone bourgeois?”

“Very unkind of you, Sonia,” Pavel Syerov remonstrated, his pale lips opening in a wide grin. “I can compliment Comrade Argounova on her wise choice.”

“How do you know my name?” Kira asked. “You’ve never met me.”

“We know a lot, Comrade Argounova,” he answered very pleasantly, “we know a lot.”

Comrade Sonia laughed and, steering Syerov’s arm masterfully, disappeared in the crowd.

On the way home, Kira asked: “Andrei, did you like the opera?”

“Not particularly.”

“Andrei, do you see what you’re missing?”

“I don’t think I do, Kira. It’s all rather silly. And useless.”

“Can’t you enjoy things that are useless, merely because they are beautiful?”

“No. But I enjoyed it.”

“The music?”

“No. The way you listened to it.”

At home, on her mattress in the corner, Kira remembered regretfully that he had said nothing about her new dress.

Kira had a headache. She sat at the window of the auditorium, her forehead propped by her hand, her elbow on a slanting desk. She could see, reflected in the window pane, a single electric bulb under the ceiling and her drawn face with dishevelled hair hanging over her eyes. The face and the bulb stood as incongruous shadows against the frozen sunset outside, beyond the window, a sunset as sinister and cold as dead blood.

Her feet felt cold in a draft from the hall. Her collar seemed too tight around her throat. No lecture had ever seemed so long. It was only December second. There were still so many days to wait, so many lectures. She found her fingers drumming softly on the window pane, and each couple of knocks was a name of two syllables, and her fingers repeated endlessly, persistently, against her will, a name that echoed somewhere in her temples, a name of three letters she did not want to hear, but heard ceaselessly, as if something within her were calling out for help.

She did not notice when the lecture ended and she was walking out, down a long, dark corridor, to a door open upon a white sidewalk. She stepped out into the snow; she drew her coat tighter against a cold wind.

“Good evening, Kira,” a voice called softly from the darkness.

She knew the voice. Her feet stood still, then her breath, then her heart.

In a dark corner by the door, Leo stood leaning against the wall, looking at her.

“Leo ... how ... could ... you?”

“I had to see you.”

His face was stern, pale. He did not smile.

They heard hurried steps. Pavel Syerov rushed past them. He stopped short; he peered into the darkness; he threw a quick glance at Kira; then he shrugged and hurried away, down the street. He turned once to glance back at them.

“Let’s get away from here,” Kira whispered.

Leo called a sleigh. He helped her in, fastened the heavy fur blanket over their knees. The driver jerked forward.

“Leo ... how could you?”

“I had no other way of finding you.”

“And you....”

“Waited at the gate for three hours. Had almost given up hope.”

“But wasn’t it....”

“Taking a chance? A big one.”

“And you came ... again ... from the country?”

“Yes.”

“What ... what did you want to tell me?”

“Nothing. Just to see you.”

On the quay, at the Admiralty, Leo stopped the sleigh and they got out and walked along the parapet. The Neva was frozen. A solid coat of ice made a wide, white lane between its high banks. Human feet had stamped a long road across its snow. The road was deserted.

They descended down the steep, frozen bank to the ice below. They walked silently, suddenly alone in a white wilderness.

The river was a wide crack in the heart of the city. It stretched the silence of its snow under the silence of the sky. Far away, smokestacks, like little black matches, fumed a feeble brown salute of melting plumes to the sunset. And the sunset rose in a fog of frost and smoke; then it was cut by a red gash, raw and glowing, like living flesh; then the wound closed and the blood flowed slowly higher up the sky, as if under a misty skin, a dull orange, a trembling yellow, a soft purple that surrendered, flowing up into a soft irrevocable blue. The little houses high and very far away, cut brown, broken shadows into the sky; some windows gathered drops of fire from above; others answered feebly with little steely lights, cold and bluish as the snow. And the golden spire of the Admiralty held defiantly a vanished sun high over the dark city.

Kira whispered: “I ... I was thinking about you ... today.”

“Were you thinking about me?”

His fingers hurt her arm; he leaned close to her, his eyes wide, menacing, mocking in their haughty understanding, caressing and masterful.

She whispered: “Yes.”

They stood alone in the middle of the river. A tramway clattered, rising up the bridge, shaking the steel beams to their roots in the water far below. Leo’s face was grim. He said: “I thought of you, too. But I didn’t want to think of you. I fought it this long.”

She did not answer. She stood straight, tense, still.

“You know what I wanted to tell you,” he said, his face very close to hers.

And, without thought, without will or question, in a voice that was someone’s order to her, not her voice, she answered: “Yes.”

His kiss felt like a wound.

Her arms closed around the frightening wonder of a man’s body. She heard him whisper, so close that it seemed her lips heard it first: “Kira, I love you....”

And someone’s order to her repeated through her lips, persistently, hungrily, insanely: “Leo, I love you.... I love you.... I love you....”

A man passed by. The little spark of a cigarette jerked up and down in the darkness.

Leo took her arm and led her away, on perilous ground, through the deep, unbroken snow, to the bridge.

They stood in the darkness of steel vaults. Through the black webbing above, they saw the red sky dying out slowly.

She did not know what he was saying; she knew that his lips were on hers. She did not know that her coat collar was unbuttoned; she knew that his hand was on her breast.

When a tramway rose up the bridge over their heads, the steel clattered convulsively, a dull thunder rolling through its joints; and for a long time after it was gone, the bridge moaned feebly.

The first words she remembered were: “I’ll come tomorrow.”

Then she found her voice and stood straight and said: “No. It’s too dangerous. I’m afraid someone saw you. There are spies at the Institute. Wait for a week.”

“Not that long?”

“Yes.”

“Here?”

“No. Our old place. At night. Nine o’clock.”

“It will be hard to wait.”

“Yes, Leo ... Leo....”

“What?”

“Nothing. I like to hear your name.”

That night, on the mattress in the corner of her room, she lay motionless and saw the blue square of the window turn pink.

VIII

IN THE INSTITUTE CORRIDOR, ON THE NEXT day, a student with a red badge stopped her.

“Citizen Argounova, you’re wanted in the Communist Cell. At once.”

In the room of the Communist Cell, at a long bare table, sat Pavel Syerov.

He asked: “Citizen Argounova, who was the man at the gate with you last night?”

Pavel Syerov was smoking. He held the cigarette firmly at his lips and looked at Kira through the smoke.

She asked: “What man?”

“Comrade Argounova having trouble with her memory? The man I saw at the gate with you last night.”

A picture of Lenin hung on the wall, behind Pavel Syerov. Lenin looked sidewise, winking slyly, his face frozen in half a smile.

“Oh, yes, I do remember,” said Kira. “There was a man. But I don’t know who he was. He asked me how to find some street.”

Pavel Syerov shook the ashes off his cigarette into a broken ashtray. He said pleasantly: “Comrade Argounova, you’re a student of the Technological Institute. Undoubtedly you wish to continue to be.”

“Undoubtedly,” said Kira.

“Who was that man?”

“I wasn’t interested enough to ask him.”

“Very well. I won’t ask you that. I’m sure we both know his name. All I want is his address.”

“Well, let me see, ... yes, he asked the way to Sadovaia Street. You might look there.”

“Comrade Argounova, I’ll remind you that the gentlemen of your faction have always accused us proletarian students of belonging to a secret police organization. And, of course, that might be true, you know.”

“Well, may I ask you a question, then?”

“Certainly. Always pleased to accommodate a lady.”

“Who was that man?”

Pavel Syerov’s fist came down on the table. “Citizen Argounova, do you have to be reminded that this is no joke?”

“If it isn’t, will you tell me what it is?”

“You’ll understand what it is and damn quick. You’ve lived in Soviet Russia long enough to know how serious it is to protect counter-revolutionaries.”

A hand opened the door without knocking. Andrei Taganov came in. His face showed no astonishment or emotion. Syerov’s did; he raised the cigarette to his lips a little too quickly.

“Good morning, Kira,” Andrei said calmly.

“Good morning, Andrei,” she answered.

He walked to the table. He took a cigarette and bent toward the one in Syerov’s hand. Syerov held it out to him hastily. Syerov waited; but Andrei said nothing; he stood by the table, the smoke of his cigarette rising in a straight column. He looked at Kira and Syerov, silently.

“Comrade Argounova, I do not doubt your political trustworthiness,” Comrade Syerov said gently. “I’m sure that the single question of one address will not be hard for you to answer.”

“I told you I don’t know him. I’ve never seen him before. I can’t know his address.”

Pavel Syerov tried surreptitiously to observe Andrei’s reaction; but Andrei did not move. Pavel Syerov leaned forward and spoke softly, confidentially. “Comrade Argounova, I want you to understand that this man is wanted by the State. Perhaps it’s not our assignment to search for him. But if you can help us to find him, it will be very valuable to you and to me — and to all of us,” he added significantly.

“And if I can’t help you — what am I to do?”

“You’re to go home, Kira,” said Andrei.

Syerov dropped his cigarette.

“That is,” Andrei added, “unless you have lectures to attend. If we need you again — I’ll send for you.”

Kira turned and left the room. Andrei sat down on the corner of the table and crossed his legs.

Pavel Syerov smiled; Andrei was not looking at him. Pavel Syerov cleared his throat. Pavel Syerov said: “Of course, Andrei, old pal, I hope you don’t think that I ... because she is a friend of yours and....”

“I don’t think it,” said Andrei.

“I’d never question or criticize your actions. Not even if I did think that it’s not good discipline to cancel a fellow Communist’s order before an outsider.”

“What discipline permitted you to call her for questioning?”

“Sorry, pal. My fault. Of course, I was only trying to help you.”

“I have not asked for help.”

“It was like this, Andrei. I saw her with him at the door last night. I’ve seen his pictures. The G.P.U. has been searching for him for almost two months.”

“Why didn’t you report it to me?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure it was the man. I might have been mistaken ... and ...”

“And your help in the matter would have been — valuable to you.”

“Why, old pal, you’re not accusing me of any personal motives, are you? Maybe I did overstep my authority in these little G.P.U. matters that belong to your job, but I was only thinking of helping a fellow proletarian in his duty. You know that nothing can stop me in fulfilling my duty, not even any ... sentimental attachments.”

“A breach of Party discipline is a breach of Party discipline, no matter by whom committed.”

Pavel Syerov was looking at Andrei Taganov too fixedly, as he answered slowly: “That’s what I’ve always said.”

“It is never advisable to be overzealous in one’s duty.”

“Certainly not. It’s as bad as being lax.”

“In the future — any political questioning in this unit is to be done by me.”

“As you wish, pal.”

“And if you ever feel that I cannot perform that task — you may report it to the Party and ask for my dismissal.”

“Andrei! How can you say that! You don’t think that I question for a single minute your invaluable importance to the Party? Haven’t I always been your greatest admirer — you, the hero of Melitopol? Aren’t we old friends? Haven’t we fought in the trenches together, under the red flag, you and I, shoulder to shoulder?”

“Yes,” said Andrei, “we have.”

In the year 1896, the red-brick house in the Putilovsky factory district of St. Petersburg had no plumbing. The fifty worker families that clotted its three floors had fifty barrels in which to keep their water. When Andrei Taganov was born, a kindly neighbor brought a barrel from the stair-landing; the water was frozen; the neighbor broke the ice with an ax, and emptied the barrel. The pale, shivering hands of the young mother stuffed an old pillow into the barrel. Such was Andrei’s first bed.

His mother bent over the barrel and laughed, laughed happily, hysterically, until tears fell into the dimples of the tiny, red hands. His father did not hear of his birth for three days. His father had been away for a week and the neighbors spoke about it in whispers.

In the year 1905, the neighbors did not need to whisper about the father any longer. He made no secret of the red flag he carried through the streets of St. Petersburg, nor of the little white pamphlets he sowed into the dark soil of crowds, nor of the words his powerful voice sent like a powerful wind to carry the seeds — the flaming words to the glory of Russia’s first revolution.

It was Andrei’s tenth year. He stood in a corner of the kitchen and looked at the brass buttons on the gendarmes’ coats. The gendarmes had black moustaches and real guns. His father was putting his coat on slowly. His father kissed him and kissed his mother. The gendarmes’ boots grated the last paint off the kitchen floor. His mother’s arms clung to his father’s shoulders like tentacles. A strong hand tore her off. She fell across the threshold. They left the door open. Their steps rang down the stairs. His mother’s hair was spilled over the bricks of the stair-landing.

Andrei wrote his mother’s letters. Neither of them had been taught to write, but Andrei had learned it by himself. The letters went to his father and the address bore, in Andrei’s big, awkward handwriting, the name of a town in Siberia. After a while his mother stopped dictating letters. His father never came back.

Andrei carried the baskets with the laundry his mother washed. He could have hidden himself, head and toes, in one of the baskets, but he was strong. In their new room in the basement there was a white, billowing, sour foam, like clouds, in the wooden trough under his mother’s purple hands and a white, billowing, sour steam, like clouds, under the ceiling. They could not see that it was spring outside. But they could not have seen it, even without the steam: for the window opened upon the sidewalk and they could watch only the shiny new galoshes grunting through the mud of melting snow, and, once, someone dropped a young green leaf right by the window.

Andrei was twelve years old when his mother died. Some said it was the wooden trough that had killed her, for it had always been too full; and some said it was the kitchen cupboard, for it had always been too empty.

Andrei went to work in a factory. In the daytime, he stood at a machine and his eyes were cold as its steel, his hands steady as its levers, his nerves tense as its belts. At night, he crouched on the floor behind a barricade of empty boxes in the corner he rented; he needed the barricade because the three other corner tenants in the room objected to candle light when they wanted to sleep, and Agrafena Vlassovna, the landlady, did not approve of book reading. So he kept the candle on the floor, and he held the book to the candle, and he read very slowly, and he wrapped his feet in newspapers because they were very cold; and the snow wailed battering the window, the three corner tenants snored, Agrafena Vlassovna spat in her sleep, the candle dripped, and everybody was asleep but Andrei and the cockroaches.

He talked very little, smiled very slowly and never gave coins to beggars.

Sometimes, on Sundays, he passed Pavel Syerov in the street. They knew each other, as all children did in the neighborhood, but they did not talk often. Pavel did not like Andrei’s clothes. Pavel’s hair was greased neatly and his mother was taking him to church. Andrei never went to church.

Pavel’s father was a clerk in the corner dry-goods store and waxed his moustache six days a week. On Sundays, he drank and beat his wife. Little Pavel liked perfumed soap, when he could steal it from the apothecary shop; and he studied God’s Law — his best white collar on — with the parish priest.

In the year 1915, Andrei stood at the machine, and his eyes were colder than its steel, his hands steadier than its levers, his nerves colder and steadier than both. His skin was tanned by the fire of the furnaces; his muscles and the will behind his muscles were tempered like the metal he had handled. And the little white pamphlets his father had sown, reappeared in the son’s hands. But he did not throw them into crowds on the wings of fiery speeches; he passed them stealthily into stealthy hands and the words that went with them were whispers. His name was on the list of a party about which not many dared to whisper and he sent through the mysterious, unseen veins of the Putilovsky factory messages from a man named Lenin.

Andrei Taganov was nineteen. He walked fast, talked slowly, never went to dances. He took orders and gave orders, and had no friends. He looked at superintendents in fur coats and at beggars in felt boots, with the same level, unflinching eyes, and had no pity.

Pavel Syerov was clerking in a haberdashery. On Sundays he entertained a noisy crowd of friends in the corner saloon, leaned back in his chair and swore at the waiter if service was too slow. He loaned money freely and no one refused a loan to “Pavlusha.” He put on his patent leather shoes when he took a girl to a dance, and put eau-de-cologne on his handkerchief. He liked to hold the girl’s waist and to say: “We’re not a commoner, dearie. We’re a gentleman.”

In the year 1916, Pavel Syerov lost his job in the haberdashery, owing to a fight over a girl. It was the third year of the war; prices were high; jobs were scarce. Pavel Syerov found himself trudging through the gates of the Putilovsky factory on winter mornings, when it was so dark and so early that the lights over the gate cut his puffed, sleepy eyes and he yawned into his raised collar. At first, he avoided his old crowd, for he was ashamed to admit where he was working. After a while, he avoided them because he was ashamed to admit they had been his friends. He circulated little white pamphlets, made speeches at secret meetings and took orders from Andrei Taganov only because “Andrei’s been in it longer, but wait till I catch up with him.” The workers liked “Pavlusha.” When he happened to meet one of his old friends, he passed by haughtily, as if he had inherited a title; and he spoke of the superiority of the proletariat over the paltry petty bourgeoisie, according to Karl Marx.

In February of the year 1917, Andrei Taganov led crowds through the streets of Petrograd. He carried his first red flag, received his first wound and killed his first man — a gendarme. The only thing that impressed him was the flag.

Pavel Syerov did not see the February Revolution rise, triumphant, from the city pavements. He stayed at home: he had a cold.

But in October, 1917, when the Party whose membership cards Andrei and Pavel carried reverently, rose to seize the power, they were both in the streets. Andrei Taganov, his hair in the wind, fought at the siege of the Winter Palace. Pavel Syerov received credit for stopping — after most of the treasures were gone — the looting of a Grand Duke’s mansion.

In the year 1918, Andrei Taganov, in the uniform of the Red Army, marched with rows of other uniforms, from shops and factories, through the streets of Petrograd, to the tune of the Internationale, to the depot, to the front of civil war. He marched solemnly, with silent triumph, as a man walks to his wedding.

Andrei’s hand carried a bayonet as it had fashioned steel; it pulled a trigger as it had pushed a lever. His body was young, supple, as a vine ripe in the sun, on the voluptuous couch of a trench’s mud. He smiled slowly and shot fast.

In the year 1920, Melitopol hung by a thread between the White Army and the Red. The thread broke on a dark spring night. It had been expected to break. The two armies held their last stand in a narrow, silent valley. On the side of the White Army was a desperate desire to hold Melitopol, a division numbering five to one of their adversaries, and a vague, grumbling resentment of the soldiers against their officers, a sullen, secret sympathy for the red flag in the trenches a few hundred feet away. On the side of the Red Army was an iron discipline and a desperate task.

They stood still, a few hundred feet apart, two trenches of bayonets shimmering faintly, like water, under a dark sky, of men ready and silent, tense, waiting. Black rocks rose to the sky in the north and black rocks rose to the sky in the south; but between them was a narrow valley, with a few blades of grass still left among the torn clots of earth, and enough space to shoot, to scream, to die — and to decide the fate of those beyond the rocks on both sides. The bayonets in the trenches did not move. And the blades of grass did not move, for there was no wind and no breath from the trenches to stir them.

Andrei Taganov stood at attention, very straight, and asked the Commander’s permission for the plan he had explained. The Commander said: “It’s your death, ten to one, Comrade Taganov.”

Andrei said: “It does not matter, Comrade Commander.”

“Are you sure you can do it?”

“It has been done, Comrade Commander. They’re ripe. They need but one kick.”

“The Proletariat thanks you, Comrade Taganov.”

Then those in the other trenches saw him climb over the top. He raised his arms, against the dark sky; his body looked tall and slender. Then he walked, arms raised, toward the White trenches; his steps were steady and he did not hurry. The blades of grass creaked, breaking under his feet, and the sound filled the valley. The Whites watched him and waited in silence.

He stopped but a few steps from their trenches. He could not see the many guns aimed at his breast; but he knew they were there. Swiftly, he took the holster at his belt and threw it to the ground. “Brothers!” he cried. “I have no weapons. I’m not here to shoot. I just want to say a few words to you. If you don’t want to hear them — shoot me.”

An officer raised a gun; another stopped his hand. He didn’t like the looks of their soldiers; they were holding bayonets; but they were not aiming at the stranger; it was safer to let him speak.

“Brothers! Why are you fighting us? Are you killing us because we want you to live? Because we want you to have bread and give you land to grow it? Because we want to open a door from your pigsty into a state where you’ll be men, as you were born to be, but have forgotten it? Brothers, it’s your lives that we’re fighting for — against your guns! When our red flag, ours and yours, rises ...”

There was a shot, a short, sharp sound like a pipe breaking in the valley, and a little blue flame from an officer’s gun held close under blue lips. Andrei Taganov whirled and his arms circled against the sky, and he fell on the clotted earth.

Then there were more shots and fire hissing down the White trenches, but it did not come from those on the other side. An officer’s body was hurled out of the trench, and a soldier waved his arms to the Red soldiers, yelling: “Comrades!” There were loud hurrahs, and feet stamping across the valley, and red banners waving, and hands lifting Andrei’s body, his face white on the black earth, his chest hot and sticky.

Then Pavel Syerov of the Red Army jumped into the White trenches where Red and White soldiers were shaking hands, and he shouted, standing on a pile of sacks:

“Comrades! Let me greet in you the awakening of class consciousness! Another step in the march of history toward Communism! Down with the damn bourgeois exploiters! Loot the looters, comrades! Who does not toil, shall not eat! Proletarians of the world, unite! As Comrade Karl Marx has said, if we, the class of ...”

Andrei Taganov recovered from his wound in a few months. It left a scar on his chest. The scar on his temple he acquired later, in another battle. He did not like to talk about that other battle; and no one knew what had happened after it.

It was the battle of Perekop in 1920 that surrendered the Crimea for the third and last time into Soviet hands. When Andrei opened his eyes he saw a white fog flat upon his chest, pressing him down like a heavy weight. Behind the fog, there was something red and glowing, cutting its way toward him. He opened his mouth and saw a white fog escaping from his lips, melting into the one above. Then he thought that it was cold and that it was the cold which held him chained to the ground, with pain like pine needles through his every muscle. He sat up; then he knew that it was not only the cold in his muscles, but a dark hole and blood on his thigh; and blood on his right temple. He knew, also, that the white fog was not close to his chest; there was enough room under it for him to stand up; it was far away in the sky and the red dawn was cutting a thin thread through it, far away.

He stood up. The sound of his feet on the ground seemed too loud in a bottomless silence. He brushed the hair out of his eyes and thought that the white fog above was the frozen breath of the men around him. But he knew that the men were not breathing any longer. Blood looked purple and brown and he could not tell where bodies ended and earth began, nor whether the white blotches were clots of fog or faces.

He saw a body under his feet and a canteen on its hip. The canteen was intact; the body was not. He bent and a red drop fell on the canteen from his temple. He drank.

A voice said: “Give me a drink, brother.”

What was left of a man was crawling toward him across a rut in the ground. It had no coat, but a shirt that had been white; and boots that followed the shirt, although there did not seem to be anything to make them follow.

Andrei knew it was one of the Whites. He held the man’s head and forced the canteen between lips that were the color of the blood on the ground. The man’s chest gurgled and heaved convulsively. No one else moved around them.

Andrei did not know who had won last night’s battle; he did not know whether they had won the Crimea; nor whether — more important to many of them — they had captured Captain Karsavin, one of the last names to fear in the White Army, a man who had taken many Red lives, a man whose head was worth a big price in Red money. Andrei would walk. Somewhere this silence must end. He would find men, somewhere; Red or White — he did not know, but he started walking toward the sunrise.

He had stepped into a soft earth, damp with cold dew, but clear and empty, a road leading somewhere, when he heard a sound behind him, a rustling as of heavy skis dragged through the mud. The White man was following him. He was leaning on a piece of stick and his feet walked without leaving the ground. Andrei stopped and waited for him. The man’s lips parted and it was a smile. He said: “May I follow you, brother? I’m not very ... steady to find my own direction.”

Andrei said: “You and I aren’t going the same way, buddy. When we find men — it will be the end for either you or me.”

“We’ll take a chance,” said the man.

“We’ll take a chance,” said Andrei.

So they walked together toward the sunrise. High banks guarded the road, and shadows of dry bushes hung motionless over their heads, with thin branches like a skeleton’s fingers spread wide apart, webbed by the fog. Roots wound across the road and their four feet crossed them slowly, with a silent effort. Ahead of them, the sky was burning the fog. There was a rosy shadow over Andrei’s forehead; on his left temple little beads of sweat were transparent as glass; on his right temple the beads were red. The other man breathed as if he were rattling dice deep inside his chest.

“As long as one can walk — ” said Andrei.

“ — one walks,” finished the man.

Their eyes met as if to hold each other up.

Little red drops followed their steps in the soft, damp earth — on the right side of the road and on the left.

Then, the man fell. Andrei stopped. The man said: “Go on.”

Andrei threw the man’s arm over his shoulder and went on, staggering a little under the load.

The man said: “You’re a fool.”

“One doesn’t leave a good soldier, no matter what color he’s wearing,” said Andrei.

The man said: “If it’s my comrades that we come upon — I’ll see that they go easy on you.”

“I’ll see that you get off with a prison hospital and a good bed — if it’s mine,” said Andrei.

Then, Andrei walked carefully, because he could not allow himself to fall with his burden. And he listened attentively to the heart beating feebly against his back.

The fog was gone and the sky blazed like a huge furnace where gold was not melted into liquid, but into burning air. Against the gold, they saw the piled black boxes of a village far away. A long pole among the boxes pointed straight at a sky green and fresh, as if washed clean with someone’s huge mop in the night. There was a flag on the pole and it beat in the morning wind like a little black wing against the sunrise. And Andrei’s eyes and the tearless eyes on his shoulder looked fixedly at the little flag, with the same question. But they were still too far away.

When they saw the color of the flag, Andrei stopped and put the man down cautiously and stretched his arms to rest and in greeting. The flag was red.

The man said strangely: “Leave me here.”

“Don’t be afraid,” said Andrei, “we’re not so hard on fellow soldiers.”

“No,” said the man, “not on fellow soldiers.”

Then Andrei saw a torn coat sleeve hanging at the man’s belt and on the sleeve the epaulet of a captain.

“If you have pity,” said the man, “leave me here.”

But Andrei had brushed the man’s sticky hair off his forehead and was looking attentively, for the first time, at a young, indomitable face he had seen in photographs.

“No,” said Andrei, very slowly, “I can’t do that, Captain Karsavin.”

“I’m sure to die here,” said the captain.

“One doesn’t take chances,” said Andrei, “with enemies like you.”

“No,” said the captain, “one doesn’t.”

He propped himself up on one hand, and his forehead, thrown back, was very white. He was looking at the dawn.

He said: “When I was young, I always wanted to see a sunrise. But Mother never let me go out so early. She was afraid I’d catch a cold.”

“I’ll let you rest for a while,” said Andrei.

“If you have pity,” said Captain Karsavin, “you’ll shoot me.”

“No,” said Andrei, “I can’t.”

Then they were silent.

“Are you a man?” asked Captain Karsavin.

“What do you want?” asked Andrei.

The captain said: “Your gun.”

Andrei looked straight into the dark, calm eyes and extended his hand. The captain shook it. When he took his hand out of the captain’s, Andrei left his gun in it.

Then he straightened his shoulders and walked toward the village. When he heard the shot, he did not turn. He walked steadily, his head high, his eyes on the red flag beating against the sunrise. Little red drops followed the steps in the soft, damp earth — on one side of the road only.

IX

“ARGOUNOV’S NAVY SOAP” WAS A FAILURE.

The unshaven bookkeeper scratched his neck, muttered something about unprincipled bourgeois competition and disappeared with the price of the three pieces he had sold.

Alexander Dimitrievitch was left with a tray full of soap and a black despair.

Galina Petrovna’s energy found their next business venture.

Their new patron had a black astrakhan hat and a high astrakhan collar. He panted after climbing four flights of stairs, produced from the mysterious depths of his vast, fur-lined coat a heavy roll of crinkling bills, counted them off, spitting on his fingers, and was always in a hurry.

“Two kinds,” he explained, “the crystals in glass tubes and the tablets in paper boxes. I furnish the materials. You — pack. Remember, eighty-seven tablets is all you have to put into a box labeled ‘One Hundred.’ Great future in saccharine.”

The gentleman in the astrakhan hat had a large staff; a net of families packing his merchandise; a net of peddlers carrying his trays on street corners; a net of smugglers miraculously procuring saccharine from far-away Berlin.

Four heads bent around the wick in the Argounov dining room and eight hands counted carefully, monotonously, despairingly: six little crystals from a bright foreign tin can into each little glass tube, eighty-seven tiny white tablets into each tiny white box. The boxes came in long sheets; they had to be cut out and folded; they bore German inscriptions in green letters — “Genuine German Saccharine”; the other side of the sheet bore the bright colors of old Russian advertisements.

“Sorry, it’s too bad about your studies, Kira,” Galina Petrovna said, “but you’ll just have to help. You have to eat, you know.”

That evening, there were only three heads and six hands around the wick: Alexander Dimitrievitch had been mobilized. There had been snow storms; snow lay deep and heavy on Petrograd’s sidewalks; a mobilization of all private traders and unemployed bourgeois had been effected for the purpose of shoveling snow. They had to report for duty at dawn; they grunted and bent in the frost, steam rising to blue noses, old woolen mittens clutching shovels, red flesh in the slits of the mittens; they worked, bending and grunting, shovels biting wearily into white walls. They were given shovels, but no pay.

Maria Petrovna came to visit. She unrolled yards of scarfs from around her neck, shaking snow off her felt boots in the anteroom, coughing.

“No, no, Marussia,” Galina Petrovna protested. “Thanks, but you can’t help. The powder’ll make you cough. Sit by the stove. Get yourself warm.”

“... seventy-four, seventy-five, seventy-six ... What news, Aunt Marussia?” Lydia asked.

“Heavy are our sins,” Maria Petrovna sighed. “Is that stuff poisonous?”

“No, it’s harmless. Just sweet. The dessert of the revolution.”

“Vasili sold the mosaic table from the drawing room.... Fifty million rubles and four pounds of lard. I made an omelet with the egg powder we got at the co-operative. They can’t tell me they made that powder out of fresh eggs.”

“... sixteen, seventeen, eighteen ... they say their NEP is a failure, Marussia ... nineteen, twenty ... they’re going to return houses to owners before long.”

Maria Petrovna took a little nail buffer out of her bag and went on talking, polishing her nails mechanically; her hands had always been her pride; she was not going to neglect them, even though she did think, at times, that they had changed a little.

“Did you hear about Boris Koulikov? He was in a hurry and he tried to jump into a crowded tramway at full speed. Both legs cut off.”

“Marussia! What’s the matter with your eyes?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been crying so much lately ... and for no reason at all.”

“There’s no spiritual comfort these days, Aunt Marussia,” Lydia sighed, “... fifty-eight, fifty-nine.... Those pagans! Those sacrilegious apostates! They’ve taken the gold ikons from the churches — to feed their famine somewhere. They’ve opened the sacred relics ... sixty-three, sixty-four, sixty-five ... We’ll all be punished, for they defy God.”

“Irina lost her ration card,” sighed Maria Petrovna. “She gets nothing for the rest of this month.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Lydia coldly. “Irina is not to be trusted.”

Lydia disliked her cousin ever since Irina, following her custom of expressing her character judgments in sketches, had drawn Lydia in the shape of a mackerel.

“What’s that on your handkerchief, Marussia?” Galina Petrovna asked.

“Oh ... nothing ... sorry ... it’s a dirty one.... I can’t sleep at night any more, it seems. Seems my nightgown is always so hot and sticky. I’m so worried about Victor. Now he’s bringing the strangest fellows into the house. They don’t remove their caps in the drawing room and they shake ashes all over the carpet. I think they’re ... Communists. Vasili hasn’t said a word. And it frightens me. I know what he thinks.... Communists in the house!”

“You’re not the only ones,” said Lydia and threw a dark glance at Kira. Kira was stuffing crystals into a glass tube.

“You try and speak to Victor and he says: ‘Diplomacy is the highest of the Arts.’ ... Heavy are our sins!”

“You’d better do something about that cough, Marussia.”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Nothing at all. Just the cold weather. Doctors are fools and don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Kira counted the little crystals in the palm of her hand. She tried not to breathe or swallow; when she did, the white powder, seeping through her lips and nostrils, bit her throat with the pain of a piercing, metallic sweetness.

Maria Petrovna was coughing: “Yes, Nina Mirskaia.... Imagine! Not even a Soviet registration wedding. And her father, God rest his soul, was a bishop.... Just sleeping together like cats.”

Lydia cleared her throat and blushed.

Galina Petrovna said: “It’s a disgrace. This new love freedom will ruin the country. But, thank God, nothing like this will ever happen to us. There still are some families with some standards left.”

The bell rang.

“It’s Father,” said Lydia and hurried to open the door. It was Andrei Taganov.

“May I see Kira?” he asked, shaking snow off his shoulders.

“Oh! ... Well, I can’t stop you,” Lydia answered haughtily.

Kira rose, when he entered the dining room, her eyes wide in the darkness.

“Ah! ... Well, what a surprise!” said Galina Petrovna, her hand holding a half-filled box, trembling, the saccharine tablets rolling out. “That is ... yes ... a most pleasant.... How are you tonight? ... Ah! ... Yes.... May I present? Andrei Fedorovitch Taganov — my sister, Maria Petrovna Dunaeva.”

Andrei bowed; Maria Petrovna looked, astonished, at the box in her sister’s hand.

“May I speak to you, Kira?” Andrei asked. “Alone?”

“Excuse us,” said Kira. “This way, Andrei.”

“I daresay,” gasped Maria Petrovna, “to your room? Why, modern youth behaves almost like ... like Communists.”

Galina Petrovna dropped the box; Lydia kicked her aunt’s ankle. Andrei followed Kira to her room.

“We have no light,” said Kira, “just that street lamp outside. Sit down here, on Lydia’s bed.”

Andrei sat down. She sat on her mattress on the floor, facing him. The street light from beyond the window made a white square on the floor, with Andrei’s shadow in the square. A little red tongue flickered in space, high in the corner of Lydia’s ikons.

“It’s about this morning,” said Andrei. “About Syerov.”

“Yes?”

“I wanted to tell you that you don’t have to worry. He had no authority to question you. No one can issue an order to question you — but me. The order won’t be issued.”

“Thank you, Andrei.”

“I know what you think of us. You’re honest. But you’re not interested in politics. You’re not an active enemy. I trust you.”

“I don’t know his address, Andrei.”

“I’m not asking whom you know. Just don’t let them drag you into anything.”

“Andrei, do you know who that man is?”

“Do you mind if we don’t discuss it, Kira?”

“No. But will you allow me one question?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“Why are you doing this for me?”

“Because I trust you and I think we’re friends. Though don’t ask me why we are, because I don’t know that myself.”

“I know that. It’s because ... you see, if we had souls, which we haven’t, and if our souls met — yours and mine — they’d fight to the death. But after they had torn each other to pieces, to the very bottom, they’d see that they had the same root. I don’t know if you can understand it, because, you see, I don’t believe in souls.”

“I don’t either. But I understand. And what is the root?”

“Do you believe in God, Andrei?”

“No.”

“Neither do I. But that’s a favorite question of mine. An upside-down question, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if I asked people whether they believed in life, they’d never understand what I meant. It’s a bad question. It can mean so much that it really means nothing. So I ask them if they believe in God. And if they say they do — then, I know they don’t believe in life.”

“Why?”

“Because, you see, God — whatever anyone chooses to call God — is one’s highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It’s a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it.”

“You’re a strange girl.”

“You see, you and I, we believe in life. But you want to fight for it, to kill for it, even to die — for life. I only want to live it.”

Behind the closed door, Lydia, tired of counting saccharine, rested by playing the piano. She played Chopin.

Andrei said suddenly: “You know, that’s beautiful.”

“What’s beautiful, Andrei?”

“That music.”

“I thought you didn’t care for music.”

“I never have. But, somehow, I like this, now, here.”

They sat in the darkness and listened. Somewhere below, a truck turned a corner. The window panes trembled with a thin, tense shudder. The light square with Andrei’s shadow rose from the floor, swept, like a fan, across the walls, and froze at their feet again.

When the music ended, they returned to the dining room. Lydia still sat at the piano. Andrei said hesitantly: “It was beautiful, Lydia Alexandrovna. Would you play it again?”

Lydia jerked her head proudly. “I’m sorry,” she said, rising brusquely. “I’m tired.” And she left the room with the step of a Jeanne d’Arc.

Maria Petrovna cringed in her chair, as if trying to squeeze herself out of Andrei’s sight. When her cough attracted his eyes, she muttered: “I’ve always said that our modern youth does not follow sufficiently the example of the Communists.”

When Kira accompanied him to the door, Andrei said: “I don’t think I should call on you, Kira. It makes your family uncomfortable. It’s all right, I understand. Will I see you at the Institute?”

“Yes,” said Kira. “Thank you, Andrei. Good night.”

Leo stood on the steps of the empty mansion. He did not move when he heard Kira’s feet hurrying across the snow; he stood motionless, his hands in his pockets.

When she was beside him, their eyes met in a glance that was more than a kiss. Then, his arms crushed her with the violence of hatred, as if he wanted to grind their coats into shreds against each other.

Then he said: “Kira....”

There was some odd, disturbing quality in the sound of his voice. She tore his cap off; she raised herself on tiptoe to reach his lips again, her fingers in his hair.

He said: “Kira, I’m going away.”

She looked at him, very quietly, her head bent a little to one shoulder, in her eyes — a question, but no understanding.

“I’m going away tonight. Forever. To Germany.”

She said: “Leo....” Her eyes were wide, but not frightened.

He spoke as if biting into every word, as if all his hatred and despair came from these sounds, not their meaning: “I’m a fugitive, Kira. A counter-revolutionary. I have to leave Russia before they find me. I’ve just received the money — from my aunt in Berlin. That’s what I’ve been waiting for. They smuggled it to me.”

She asked: “The boat leaves tonight?”

“A smugglers’ boat. They smuggle human flesh out of this wolf-trap. And desperate souls, like mine. If we’re not caught — we land in Germany. If we’re caught — well, I don’t suppose it’s a death sentence for everybody, but I’ve never heard of a man who was spared.”

“Leo, you don’t want to leave me.”

He looked at her with a hatred more eloquent than tenderness. “Sometimes I’ve found myself wishing they would catch the boat and bring me back.”

“I’m going with you, Leo.”

He was not startled. He asked: “Do you understand the chance you’re taking?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know that it’s your life at stake if we don’t reach Germany, and perhaps also if we do?”

“Yes.”

“The boat leaves in an hour. It’s far. We have to start right away. From here. No time to get any luggage.”

“I’m ready.”

“You can’t tell anyone. You can’t telephone any farewells.”

“I don’t have to.”

“All right. Come on.”

He picked up his cap and walked to the street, swiftly, silently, without looking at her or noticing her presence. He called a sleigh. The only words he spoke were an address to the driver. The sharp runners cut into the snow, and the sharp wind into their faces.

They turned a corner, past a house that had collapsed; snow-dusted bricks had rolled far out into the street; the ray of a lamp post behind the house pierced the empty rooms; the skeleton of an iron bed hung high somewhere in the ray of light. A newsboy barked hoarsely: “Pravda! ... Krasnaya Gazeta!” to an empty street.

Leo whispered: “Over there ... there are automobiles ... and boulevards ... and lights....”

An old man stood in a doorway, snow gathering in the brim of his frayed hat, his head hanging down on his breast, asleep over a tray of home-made cookies.

Kira whispered: “... lipstick and silk stockings....”

A stray dog sniffed at a barrel of refuse under the dark window of a co-operative.

Leo whispered: “... champagne ... radios ... jazz bands.”

Kira whispered: “... like the ‘Song of Broken Glass’ ...”

A man moaned, blowing on his hands: “Saccharine, citizens!”

A soldier cracked sunflower seeds and sang about the little apple.

Posters followed them, as if streaming slowly from house to house, red, orange, white, arms, hammers, wheels, levers, lice, airplanes.

The noise of the city was dying behind them. A factory raised tall black chimneys to the sky. Over the street, on a rope from roof to roof, like a barrier, a huge banner clicked, fighting the wind, twisting in furious contortions, yelling to the street and the wind:

PROLETAR ... OUR COLLECTI ... CLASS WELD ... STRUG ... FREED ... FUTURE ...

Then their eyes met, and the glance was like a handshake. Leo smiled; he said: “I couldn’t ask you to do this. But I think I knew you’d come.”

They stopped at a fence on an unpaved street. Leo paid the driver. They started to walk slowly. Leo watching cautiously till the sleigh disappeared around a corner. Then he said: “We have two miles to walk to the sea. Are you cold?”

“No.”

He took her hand. They followed the fence down a wooden sidewalk. A dog howled somewhere. A bare tree whistled in the wind.

They left the sidewalk. Snow rose to their ankles. They were in an open field, walking toward a bottomless darkness.

She moved with quiet precision, as one moves in the face of the inevitable. He held her hand. Behind them, the red glow of the city breathed into the sky. Ahead of them, the sky bent to the earth, or the earth rose to the sky, and their bodies were cutting the two apart.

Snow rose to their calves. The wind blew against them. They walked bent forward, their coats like sails fighting a storm, cold tightening the skin of their cheeks.

Beyond the snow was the world; beyond the snow was that consummate entity to which the country behind them bowed reverently, wistfully, tragically: Abroad. Life began beyond the snow.

When they stopped, the snow ended abruptly. They looked into a black void without horizon or sky. From somewhere far below, they heard a swishing, slapping sound, as if someone were emptying pails of water at regular intervals. Leo whispered: “Keep quiet.”

He was leading her down a narrow, slippery path, in someone’s footprints. She distinguished a vague shape floating on the void, a mast, a tiny spark, like a dying match.

There were no lights on the ship. She did not notice the husky figure in their path until the ray of a flashlight struck Leo’s face, licked his shoulder, stopped on hers, and was gone. She saw a black beard and a hand holding a gun. But the gun was lowered.

Leo’s hand crinkled in his pocket and slipped something to the man. “Another fare,” Leo whispered. “This girl goes with me.”

“We have no cabins left.”

“That’s all right. Mine’s enough.”

They stepped onto boards that rocked softly. Another figure rustled up from nowhere and led them to a door. Leo helped Kira down the companion-way. There was a light below deck and furtive shadows; a man with a trim beard and the Cross of St. George on his breast looked at them silently; in a doorway, a woman wrapped in a coat of tarnished brocade watched them fearfully, clutching a little wooden box in her hands, the hands trembling.

Their guide opened a door and pointed inside with a jerk of his head.

Their cabin was only a bed and a narrow strip of space between cracked, unpainted walls. A board cut a corner off as a table. A smoked lantern hung over the table, and a yellow, shivering spot of light. The floor rose and fell softly, as if breathing. A shutter was locked over the porthole.

Leo closed the door and said: “Take your coat off.”

She obeyed. He took his coat off and threw his cap down on the table. He wore a heavy black sweater, tight around his arms and shoulders. It was the first time that they had seen each other without overcoats. She felt undressed. She moved away a little.

The cabin was so small that even the air enveloping her seemed a part of him. She backed slowly to the table in the corner.

He looked down at her heavy felt boots, too heavy for her slim figure. She followed his glance. She took her boots off and threw them across the cabin.

He sat down on the bed. She sat at the table, hiding her legs with their tight black cotton stockings under the bench, her arms pressed closely to her sides, her shoulders hunched, her body gathered tightly, as if cringing from the cold, the white triangle of her open collar luminous in the semi-darkness.

Leo said: “My aunt in Berlin hates me. But she loved my father. My father ... is dead.”

“Shake the snow off your shoes, Leo. It’s melting on the floor.”

“If it weren’t for you, I’d have taken a boat three days ago. But I could not go away without seeing you. So I waited for this one. The other boat disappeared. Shipwrecked or caught — no one knows. They didn’t reach Germany. So you’ve saved my life — perhaps.”

When they heard a low rumble and the boards creaked louder and the flame in the lantern fluttered against the smoked glass, Leo sprang up, blew out the light and opened the shutter over the porthole. Their faces close together in the little circle, they watched the red glow of the city moving away. The red glow died; then there were only a few lights left between earth and sky; and the lights did not move, but shrank slowly into stars, then into sparks, then into nothing. She looked at Leo; his eyes were wide with an emotion she had never seen in them before. He asked slowly, triumphantly:

“Do you know what we’re leaving?”

Then his hands closed over her shoulder and his lips forced hers apart, and she felt as if she were leaning back against the air, her muscles feeling the weight of his. Her arms moved slowly over his sweater, as if she wanted to feel his body with the skin of her arms.

Then he released her, closed the shutter and lighted the lantern. The match spluttered with a blue flame. He lighted a cigarette and stood by the door, without looking at her, smoking.

She sat down by the table, obediently, without a word or a question, her eyes not leaving him.

Then he crushed the cigarette against the wall and approached her, and stood silently, his hands in his pockets, his mouth a scornful arc, his face expressionless.

She rose slowly, obediently, looking up at him. She stood still as if his eyes were holding her on a leash.

He said: “Take your clothes off.”

She said nothing, and did not move her glance away from his, and obeyed.

He stood watching her. She did not think of the code of her parents’ world. But that code came back once, for an instant, when she saw her skirt on the floor; then, in defiance, she regretted that her underwear was not silk, but only heavy cotton.

She unfastened the strap of her slip and let it fall under her breast. She was about to unfasten the other strap, but he tore her off the ground, and then she was arched limply in space, her hair hanging over his arm, her breast at his mouth.

Then they were on the bed, her whole weight on his hand spread wide between her naked shoulder blades. Then he blew out the lantern. She heard his sweater falling to the floor.

Then she felt his legs like a warm liquid against hers. Her hair fell over the edge of the bed. Her lips parted as in a snarl.

X

WHEN KIRA AWAKENED, LEO’S HEAD WAS RESTING on her one breast; a sailor was looking at the other.

She jerked the blanket up to her chin and Leo awakened. They stared up together.

It was morning. The door was open. The sailor stood on the threshold; his shoulders were too wide for the door and his fist was closed over a gun at his belt; his leather jacket was open over a striped sweater and his mouth was open in a wide grin over two resplendent white stripes of teeth; he stooped a little, for his blue cap touched the top of the doorway; the cap bore a red five-pointed Soviet star.

He chuckled: “Sorry to disturb you, citizens.”

Kira, her eyes glued to the red star, the star that filled her eyes, but could not reach her brain, muttered foolishly, softly, as a child: “Please go away. This is our first ...” Her voice choked, as the red star reached her brain.

The sailor chuckled: “Well, you couldn’t have selected a worse time, citizen. You couldn’t have.”

Leo said: “Get out of here and let us dress.”

His voice was not arrogant, nor pleading; it was such an implacable command that the sailor obeyed as if at the order of a superior officer. He closed the door behind him.

Leo said: “Lie still till I gather your things. It’s cold.”

He got out of bed and bent for her clothes, naked as a statue and as unconcerned. A gray light came through a crack of the closed shutter.

They dressed silently. The ceiling trembled under hurrying steps above. Somewhere a woman’s voice was howling in sobs, like a demented animal. When they were dressed, Leo said: “It’s all right, Kira. Don’t be afraid.”

He was so calm that for an instant she welcomed the disaster that let her see it. Their eyes met for a second; it was a silent sanction of what they both remembered.

He flung the door open. The sailor was waiting outside. Leo said evenly: “Any confessions you want. I’ll sign anything you write — if you let her go.” Kira opened her mouth; Leo’s hand closed it brutally. He continued: “She had nothing to do with it. I’ve kidnapped her. I’ll stand trial for it, if you wish.”

Kira screamed: “He’s lying!”

Leo said: “Shut up.”

The sailor said: “Shut up, both of you.”

They followed him. The woman’s howls were deafening. They saw her crawling on her knees after two sailors who held her little wooden box; the box was open; the jewels sparkled through the sailors’ fingers; the woman’s hair hung over her eyes and she howled into space.

At an open cabin door, Leo suddenly jerked Kira forward so that she passed without seeing it. Inside the cabin, men were bending over a motionless body on the floor; the body’s hand was clutching the handle of a dagger in the heart, under the Cross of St. George.

On deck, the gray sky descended to the tip of the mast and steam breathed with commands from the lips of men who had taken control of the boat, men from the coast guard ship that rose and fell as a huge shadow in the fog, a red flag stirring feebly on its mast.

Two sailors held the arms of the black-bearded smugglers’ captain. The captain was staring at his shoes.

The sailors looked up at the giant in the leather jacket, waiting for orders. The giant took a list out of his pocket and held it under the captain’s beard; he pointed with his thumb, behind his shoulder, at Leo, and asked: “Which one is him?”

The captain’s nose pointed to a name. Kira saw the giant’s eyes widen in a strange expression she could not understand.

“Who’s the girl?” he asked.

“Don’t know,” the captain answered. “She’s not on our passenger list. She came at the last minute — with him.”

“Seventeen of them counter-revolutionary rats that tried to sneak out of the country, Comrade Timoshenko,” said a sailor.

Comrade Timoshenko chuckled, and his fist struck the muscles under his striped sweater. “Thought you could get away, eh? — from Stepan Timoshenko of the Red Baltfleet?”

The captain stared at his shoes.

“Keep your eyes and your guns ready,” said Comrade Timoshenko. “Any funny business — shoot their guts out.”

He grinned up at the fog, his teeth gleaming, his tanned neck open to the cold, and walked away, whistling.

When the two ships began to move, Comrade Timoshenko came back. He passed by Leo and Kira in the crowd of prisoners on the wet, glistening deck, and stopped, looking at them for a second, an inexplicable expression in his dark, round eyes. He passed and came back and said aloud to no one in particular, his thumb pointing at Kira: “The girl’s all right. He kidnapped her.”

“But I’m telling you ...” Kira began.

“Make your little whore keep quiet,” Timoshenko said slowly; and there was something like understanding in the glance he exchanged with Leo.

They saw the skyline of Petrograd rise like a long, low string of houses stretched in a single row at the edge of an immense, frozen sky. The dome of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, a pale gold ball sliced in half, looked like a weary moon setting in the smoke of chimneys.

Leo and Kira sat on a coil of ropes. Behind them, a pock-marked sailor smoked a cigarette, his hand on his gun.

They did not hear the sailor move away. Stepan Timoshenko approached them. He looked at Kira and whispered:

“When we land — there’ll be a truck waiting. The boys will be busy. I just have a hunch they’ll have their backs turned. When they do — you start going — and keep going.”

“No,” said Kira, “I’ll stay with him.”

“Kira! You ...”

“Don’t be a damn little fool. You can’t help him.”

“You won’t get any confessions from him — for my sake.”

Timoshenko chuckled: “He has no confessions to make. And I don’t want children mixed in with something they don’t understand a damn about. See that she’s gone when we reach the truck, citizen.”

Kira looked into the dark, round eyes; they leaned close to her and words hissed, in a whisper, through the white teeth: “It’s easier to get one — than two — out of the G.P.U. I’ll be there around four this afternoon. Come and ask for Stepan Timoshenko. Maybe I’ll have news for you. No one’ll hurt you. Gorokhovaia 2.”

He did not wait for an answer. He walked away and slapped the pock-marked sailor in the jaw for leaving the prisoners alone.

Leo whispered: “Do you want to make it harder for me? You’ll go. Also — you’ll stay away from Gorokhovaia 2.”

When houses rose close over the mast, he kissed her. It was hard to tear her lips off his, as hard as off frozen glass.

“Kira, what’s your name?” he whispered.

“Kira Argounova. And yours?”

“Leo Kovalensky.”

“At Irina’s. We talked and didn’t notice the time and it was too late to come home.”

Galina Petrovna sighed indifferently, her nightgown trembling on her shoulders in the cold anteroom. “And why this homecoming at seven in the morning? I suppose you awakened your Aunt Marussia and poor Marussia with her cough....”

“I couldn’t sleep. Aunt Marussia didn’t hear me.”

Galina Petrovna yawned and shuffled back to her bedroom. Kira had stayed overnight at her cousin’s several times; Galina Petrovna had not been worried.

Kira sat down and her hands fell limply. There were so many hours to wait till four in the afternoon. She should be terrified, she thought, and she was; but under the terror there was something without name or words, a hymn without sound, something that laughed, even though Leo was locked in a cell on Gorokhovaia 2. Her body still felt as if it were holding him close to her.

House number 2 on Gorokhovaia Street was a pale green, the color of pea soup. Its paint and plaster were peeling. Its windows had no curtains and no iron bars. The windows looked quietly upon a quiet side street. It was the Petrograd Headquarters of the G.P.U.

There were words that people did not like to mention; they felt a superstitious fear in uttering their sounds, as when they spoke of a desolate cemetery, a haunted house, the Spanish Inquisition, Gorokhovaia 2. Many nights had passed over Petrograd; in the nights there had been many steps, many ringing door bells, many people gone never to be seen again; the flow of a silent terror swelled over the city, hushing voices to whispers; the flow had a heart, from which it came, to which it returned; that heart was Gorokhovaia 2.

It was a building like any of its neighbors; across the street, behind similar windows, families were cooking millet and playing the gramophone; at its corner, a woman was selling cakes; the woman had pink cheeks and blue eyes; the cakes had a golden crust and smelt of warm grease; a poster on a lamp post advertised the new cigarette of the Tobacco Trust. But as Kira walked toward that building, she saw people passing by its green walls without looking up, with tensely casual expressions, their steps hurrying involuntarily, as if afraid of their presence, of their eyes, of their thoughts. Behind the green walls was that which no one wanted to know.

The door was open. Kira walked in, her hands in her pockets, slouching deliberately, indifferently. There was a wide stairway inside, and corridors, and offices. There were many people, hurrying and waiting, as in all Soviet government buildings; there were many feet shuffling down bare floors, but not many voices. On the faces — there were no tears. Many doors were closed; the faces were set and closed like the doors.

Kira found Stepan Timoshenko sitting on a desk in an office and he grinned at her.

“It’s just as I thought,” he said. “They have nothing on him. It’s just his father. Well, that’s past. Had they got him two months ago — it would’ve been the firing squad and not many questions asked. But now — well, we’ll see.”

“What has he done?”

“Him? Nothing. It’s his father. Heard of the conspiracy of Professor Gorsky, two months ago? The old fool wasn’t in it — how could he, being blind? — but he hid Gorsky in his house. Well, he paid for it.”

“Who was Leo’s father?”

“Old Admiral Kovalensky.”

“The one who ...” Kira gasped and stopped.

“Yeah. The one who was blinded in the war — and was shot.”

“Oh!”

“Well, I wouldn’t have done it — not that time. But I’m not the only one to have the say. Well, you don’t make a revolution with white gloves on.”

“But if Leo had nothing to do with it, why ...”

“At the time — they’d have shot anyone that knew anyone in the conspiracy. Now — they’ve cooled off. It’s past. He’s lucky that way.... Don’t stare like a little fool. If you’d worked here, you’d know what difference time, and days, and hours can make here. Well, that’s the way we work. Well, what damn fool thinks that a revolution is all perfumed with cologne?”

“Then — you can let him ...”

“I don’t know. I’ll try. We’ll investigate. Then there’s the business of trying to leave the country illegally. But that — I think I can.... We don’t fight children. Especially fool children who find time for love right on a spewing volcano.”

Kira looked into the round eyes; they had no expression; but the big mouth was grinning; he had a short nose that turned up, and wide, insolent nostrils.

“You’re very kind,” she said.

“Who’s kind?” he laughed. “Stepan Timoshenko of the Red Baltfleet? Do you remember the October days of 1917? Ever heard of what went on in the Baltic fleet? Don’t shudder like a cat. Stepan Timoshenko was a Bolshevik before a lot of these new punks had time to dry the milk behind their ears.”

“Can I see him?”

“No. Not a chance. No visitors allowed to that bunch.”

“But then ...”

“But then you go home and stay there. And don’t worry. That’s all I wanted to tell you.”

“I have a friend who has connections, I think, who could ...”

“You keep your mouth shut and don’t drag no connections into this. Sit still for two or three days.”

“That long!”

“Well, that’s not as long as never seeing him again. And don’t worry, we’ll keep him locked up for you — with no women around.”

He got off the desk, and grinned. Then his lips fell into a straight line; he towered over Kira, looking straight into her eyes, and his eyes were not gay. He said: “When you get him back, keep your claws on him. If you haven’t any — grow some. He’s not an easy stud. And don’t try to leave the country. You’re in this Soviet Russia; you may hate it, and you may choke, but in Soviet Russia you’ll stay. I think you have the claws for him. Watch him. His father loved him.”

Kira extended her hand. It disappeared in Stepan Timoshenko’s tanned fist.

At the door she turned and asked softly: “Why are you doing this?”

He was not looking at her; he was looking out the window. He answered: “I’ve gone through the war in the Baltic Fleet. Admiral Kovalensky was blinded in service in the Baltic Fleet. He was not the worst commander we had.... Get out of here!”

Lydia said: “She twists on her mattress all night long. You’d think we had mice in the house. I can’t sleep.”

Galina Petrovna said: “I believe you’re a student, Kira Alexandrovna? Or am I mistaken? You haven’t been at the Institute for three days. Victor said so. Would you condescend to inform us what kind of new foolishness is this that’s come over you?”

Alexander Dimitrievitch said nothing. He awakened with a start, for he had dozed off, a half-filled saccharine tube in his hand.

Kira said nothing.

Galina Petrovna said: “Look at those circles under her eyes. No respectable girl looks like that.”

“I knew it!” Lydia yelled. “I knew it! She’s put eight saccharine crystals into that tube again!”

On the evening of the fourth day, the door bell rang.

Kira did not raise her eyes from the saccharine tube. Lydia, curious about every ringing bell, went to open the door.

Kira heard a voice asking: “Is Kira at home?”

Then the saccharine tube clattered to the floor, breaking into splinters, and Kira was at the anteroom doorway, her hand at her throat.

He smiled, the corners of his lips drooping arrogantly. “Good evening, Kira,” he said calmly.

“Good evening, Leo.”

Lydia stared at them.

Kira stood at the door, her eyes holding his, her lips paralyzed. Galina Petrovna and Alexander Dimitrievitch stopped counting the saccharine.

Leo said: “Get your coat, Kira, and come on.”

She said: “Yes, Leo,” and took her coat off the hanger on the wall, moving like a somnambulist.

Lydia coughed discreetly. Leo looked at her. His glance brought a warm, wistful smile to Lydia’s lips; it always did that to women; yet there was nothing in his eyes except that when he glanced at a woman his eyes told her that he was a man and she was a woman and he remembered it.

Lydia gathered courage to disregard the lack of an introduction; but she did not know how to start and she gazed helplessly at the handsomest male ever to appear in their anteroom, and she threw bluntly the question that was on her mind: “Where do you come from?”

“From jail,” Leo answered with a courteous smile.

Kira had buttoned her coat. Her eyes were fixed on him, as if she did not know that others were present. He took her arm with the gesture of an owner, and they were gone.

“Well, of all the unmannered ...” Galina Petrovna gasped, jumping up. But the door was closed.

To the sleigh driver outside, Leo gave an address.

“Where is that?” he repeated her question, his lips in her fur collar, as the sleigh jerked forward. “That’s my home.... Yes, I got it back. They had it sealed since my father’s arrest.”

“When did you ...”

“This afternoon. Went to the Institute to get your address; then — home and made a fire in the fireplace. It was like a grave, hadn’t been heated for two months. It will be warm for us by now.”

The door they entered bore the red seal of the G.P.U. The seal had been broken; two red scabs of wax remained, parting to let them enter.

They walked through a dark drawing room. The fireplace blazed, throwing a red glow on their feet and over their reflection in the mirror of a parquet floor. The apartment had been searched. There were papers strewn over the parquet, and overturned chairs. There were crystal vases on malachite stands; one vase was broken; the splinters sparkled on the floor in the darkness, little red flames dancing and winking through them, as if live coals had rolled out of the fireplace.

In Leo’s bedroom, a light was burning, a single lamp with a silver shade, over a black onyx fireplace. A last blue flame quivered on dying coals and made a purple glow on the silver bedspread.

Leo threw his coat in a corner. He unbuttoned her coat and took it off; without a word, he unbuttoned her dress; she stood still and let him undress her.

He whispered into the little warm hollow under her chin: “It was torture. Waiting. Three days — and three nights.”

He threw her across the bed. The purple glow quivered over her body. He did not undress. He did not turn out the light.

Kira looked at the ceiling; it was a silvery white far away. Light was coming in through the gray satin curtains. She sat up in bed, her breasts stiff in the cold. She said: “I think it’s already tomorrow.”

Leo was asleep, his head thrown back, one arm hanging over the edge of the bed. Her stockings were on the floor, her dress — on a bed post. Leo’s eyelashes moved slowly; he looked up and said: “Good morning, Kira.”

She stretched her arms and crossed them behind her head, and threw her head back, shaking the hair off her face, and said: “I don’t think my family will like it. I think they’ll throw me out.”

“You’re staying here.”

“I’ll go to say good-bye.”

“Why go back at all?”

“I suppose I must tell them something.”

“Well, go. But don’t take long. I want you here.”

They stood like three pillars, towering and silent, at the dining-room table. They had the red, puffed eyes of a sleepless night. Kira stood facing them, leaning against the door, indifferent and patient.

“Well?” said Galina Petrovna.

“Well what?” said Kira.

“You won’t tell us again that you were at Irina’s.”

“No.”

Galina Petrovna straightened her shoulders and her faded flannel bathrobe. “I don’t know how far your foolish innocence can go. But do you realize that people might think that ...”

“Certainly, I’ve slept with him.”

The cry came from Lydia.

Galina Petrovna opened her mouth and closed it.

Alexander Dimitrievitch opened his mouth and it remained open.

Galina Petrovna’s arm pointed at the door. “You’ll leave my house,” she said. “And you’ll never come back.”

“All right,” said Kira.

“How could you? A daughter of mine! How can you stand there and stare at us? Have you no conception of the shame, the disgrace, the depraved ...”

“We won’t discuss that,” said Kira.

“Did you stop to think it was a mortal sin? ... Eighteen years old and a man from jail! ... And the Church ... for centuries ... for your fathers and grandfathers ... all our Saints have told us that no sin is lower! You hear about those things, but God, my own daughter! ... The Saints who, for our sins ...”

“May I take my things,” Kira asked, “or do you want to keep them?”

“I don’t want one single thing of yours left here! I don’t want your breath in this room! I don’t want your name mentioned in this house!”

Lydia was sobbing hysterically, her head in her arms on the table. “Tell her to go, Mother!” she cried through sobs like hiccoughs. “I can’t stand it! Such women should not be allowed to live!”

“Get your things and hurry!” Galina Petrovna hissed. “We have but one daughter left! You little tramp! You filthy little street ...”

Lydia was staring with incredulous awe, at Kira’s legs.

Leo opened the door and took the bundle she had wrapped in an old bed sheet.

“There are three rooms,” he said. “You can rearrange things any way you want. Is it cold outside? Your cheeks are frozen.”

“It’s a little cold.”

“I have some hot tea for you — in the drawing room.”

He had set a table by the fireplace. Little red tongues flickered in the old silver. A crystal chandelier hung against the gray sky of a huge window. Across the street, a line stood at the door of a co-operative, heads bent; it was snowing.

Kira held her hands against the hot silver teapot and rubbed them across her cheeks. She said: “I’ll have to gather that glass. And sweep the floor. And ...”

She stopped. She stood in the middle of the huge room. She spread her arms out, and threw her head back, and laughed. She laughed defiantly, rapturously, triumphantly. She cried: “Leo! ...”

He held her. She looked up into his face and felt as if she were a priestess, her soul lost in the corners of a god’s arrogant mouth; as if she were a priestess and a sacrificial offering, both and beyond both, shameless in her laughter, choking, something rising within her, too hard to bear.

Then his eyes looked at her, wide and dark, and he answered a thought they had not spoken: “Kira, think what we have against us.”

She bent her head a little to one shoulder, her eyes round, her lips soft, her face serene and confident as a child’s; she looked at the window where, in the slanting mist of snow, men stood in line, motionless, hopeless, broken. She shook her head.

“We’ll fight it, Leo. Together. We’ll fight all of it. The country. The century. The millions. We can stand it. We can do it.”

He said without hope: “We’ll try.”

XI

THE REVOLUTION HAD COME TO A COUNTRY that had lived three years of war. Three years and the Revolution had broken railroad tracks, and scorched fields, and blown smokestacks into showers of bricks, and sent men to stand in line with their old baskets, waiting at the little trickle of life still dripping from provision centers. Forests stood in a silence of snow, but in the cities wood was a luxury; kerosene was the only fuel to burn; there was only one device to burn kerosene. The gifts of the Revolution were to come. But one — and the first — had been granted; that which in countless cities countless stomachs had learned to beg for the fire of their sustenance to keep the fire of their souls, the first badge of a new life, the first ruler of a free country: the PRIMUS.

Kira knelt by the table and pumped the handle of the little brass burner that bore the words: “Genuine Primus. Made in Sweden.” She watched the thin jet of kerosene filling a cup; then she struck a match and set fire to the kerosene in the cup, and pumped, and pumped, her eyes very attentive, the fire licking the black tubes with a tongue of soot, sending the odor of kerosene into her nostrils, until something hissed in the tubes and a wreath of blue flames sprang up, tense and hissing like a blow-torch. She set a pot of millet over the blue flames.

Then, kneeling by the fireplace, she gathered tiny logs, damp and slippery in her fingers, with an acrid odor of swamp and mildew; she opened the little door of the “Bourgeoise” and stacked the logs inside, and stuffed crumpled newspapers over them, and struck a match, blowing hard, bending low to the floor, her hair hanging over her eyes, whirls of smoke blowing back at her, rising high to the white ceiling, the crystals of the chandelier sparkling through gray fumes, gray ashes fluttering into her nostrils, catching on her eyelashes.

The “Bourgeoise” was a square iron box with long pipes that rose to the ceiling and turned at a straight angle into a hole cut over the fireplace. They had had to install a “Bourgeoise” in the drawing room, because they could not afford wood for the fireplace. The logs hissed in the box and, through the cracks in the corners, red flames danced and little whiffs of smoke fluttered once in a while, and the iron walls blazed a dull, overheated red, smelling of burned paint. The new little stoves were called “Bourgeoise,” for they had been born in the homes of those who could not afford full-sized logs to heat the full-sized stoves in their once luxurious homes.

Admiral Kovalensky’s apartment had seven rooms, but four of them had to be rented long ago. Admiral Kovalensky had had a partition built across a hall, which cut them off from the tenants. Now Leo owned three rooms, the bathroom and the front door; the tenants owned four rooms, the back door and the kitchen. Kira cooked on the Primus and washed dishes in the bathroom. At times, she heard steps and voices behind the partition, and a cat meowing; three families lived there, but she never had to meet them.

When Leo got up in the morning, he found a table set in the dining room, with a snow-white cloth and hot tea steaming, and Kira flitting about the table, her cheeks glowing, her eyes laughing, light and unconcerned, as if these things had happened all by themselves. From their first day together in her new home, she had stated her ultimatum: “When I cook — you’re not to see me. When you see me — you’re not to know that I’ve been cooking.”

She had always known that she was alive; she had never given much thought to the necessity of keeping alive. She found suddenly that that mere fact of keeping alive had grown into a complicated problem which required many hours of effort, the simple keeping alive which she had always haughtily, contemptuously taken for granted. She found that she could fight it only by keeping, fiercer than ever, that very contempt; the contempt which, once dropped, would bring all of life down to the little blue flame of the Primus slowly cooking millet for dinner. She found she could sacrifice all the hours the struggle required, if only it would never rise between Leo and her, if only life itself, the life that was Leo, were kept intact and untouched. Those wasted hours did not count; she would keep silent about them. She kept silent, a hidden spark in her eyes twinkling with the exhilaration of battle. It was a battle, the first blows of a vague, immense battle she could not name, but felt, the battle of the two of them, alone, against something huge and nameless, something rising, like a tide, around the walls of their house, something in those countless weary steps on the pavements outside, in those lines at the doors of co-operatives, the something that invaded their home with the Primus and the “Bourgeoise,” that held millet and damp logs and the hunger of millions of strange, distorted stomachs against two lives fighting for their right to their future.

After breakfast Leo buttoned his overcoat and asked: “Going to the Institute today?”

“Yes.”

“Need change?”

“A little.”

“Back for dinner?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be back at six.”

He went to the University, she went to the Institute. She ran, sliding along the frozen sidewalks, laughing at strangers, blowing at a red finger in the hole of her glove, jumping on tramways at full speed, disarming with a smile the husky conductoresses who growled: “You oughta be fined, citizen. You’ll get your legs cut off some day.”

She fidgeted at the lectures, and glanced at her neighbor’s wristwatch, when she could find a neighbor with a wristwatch. She was impatient to return home, as she had been when, a child in school, on her birthdays, she had known that presents awaited her at home. Nothing awaited her there now, but the Primus, and millet, and cabbage to chop for soup, and, when Leo returned, a voice that said behind the closed door: “I’m home,” and she answered indifferently: “I’m busy,” and laughed soundlessly, rapturously, in the soup steam.

After dinner he brought his books to the “Bourgeoise” and she brought hers. He was studying history and philosophy at the Petrograd State University. He also had a job. When, after two months, he returned to pick up the life his father’s execution had broken, he found the job still awaiting him. He was valuable to the “Gossizdat” — that State Publishing House. In the evenings, over a fire crackling in the “Bourgeoise,” he translated books from the English, German and French. He did not like the books. They were novels by foreign authors in which a poor, honest worker was always sent to jail for stealing a loaf of bread to feed the starving mother of his pretty, young wife who had been raped by a capitalist and committed suicide thereafter, for which the all-powerful capitalist fired her husband from the factory, so that their child had to beg on the streets and was run over by the capitalist’s limousine with sparkling fenders and a chauffeur in uniform.

But Leo could do the work at home, and it paid well, although when he received his money at the Gossizdat, it was accompanied by the remark: “We have deducted two and a half percent as your contribution to the new Red Chemical Society of Proletarian Defense. This is in addition to the five percent deduction for the Red Air Fleet, and three percent for the Liquidation of Illiteracy, and five percent for your Social Insurance, and ...”

When Leo worked, Kira moved soundlessly through the room, or sat silently over her drafts and charts and blueprints, and never interrupted him.

Sometimes they were interrupted by the Upravdom. He came in, his hat on the back of his head, and demanded their share of the house collection for frozen pipes, stuffed chimneys, electric bulbs for the stairs — “and someone’s swiped ‘em again” — leaking roof, broken cellar steps, and the house’s voluntary subscription to the Red Air Fleet.

When Kira and Leo spoke to each other, their words were brief, impersonal, their indifference exaggerated, their expressionless faces guarding a secret they both remembered.

But when they were alone in the gray and silver bedroom, they laughed together; their eyes, and their lips, and their bodies met hungrily. She did not know how many times they awakened in the night; nor where she felt his lips, nor whether his lips hurt her. She heard nothing in the silence but the sound of his breath. She crushed her body against his; then she laughed lazily and hid her face in the curve of her arm, and listened to his breath on her neck, on the lashes of her closed eyes. Then she lay still, her teeth in a muscle of his arm, drunk on the smell of his skin.

Leo had no relatives in Petrograd.

His mother had died before the revolution. He was an only son. His father had stood over vast wheat fields under a blue sky dropping into dark forests far away, and thought that some day these fields and the forests would be laid at the feet of a dark-haired, dark-eyed boy, and in his heart there was a glow brighter than the sun in the ripe wheat.

Admiral Kovalensky seldom appeared at Court functions; the deck of a ship felt steadier under his feet than the parquet of the royal palace. But when he appeared, the eyes of stunned, eager, envious faces followed the woman who moved slowly on his arm. His wife, born a countess of an ancient name, had the beauty of centuries gathered, line by line, in her perfect body. When she died, Admiral Kovalensky noticed the first gray on his temples; but deep in his heart, in words he dared not utter, he thanked God that death had chosen to take his wife rather than his son.

Admiral Kovalensky had but one voice with which he issued commands to his sailors and spoke to his son. Some said he was too kind with his sailors, and some said he was too stern with his son. But he worshipped the boy whose name foreign tutors had changed to “Leo” from the Russian “Lev”; and he was helpless before the slightest flicker of a wish in the boy’s dark, haughty eyes.

The tutors, and the servants, and the guests looked at Leo as they looked at the statue of Apollo in the Admiral’s study, with the same reverent hopelessness they felt from the white marble of a distant age. Leo smiled; it was the only order he had to give, the only excuse for any of his orders.

When his young friends related, in whispers, the latest French stories, Leo quoted Spinoza and Nietzsche; he quoted Oscar Wilde at the prim gatherings of his stern aunt’s Ladies’ Charity Club; he described the superiority of Western culture over that of Russia to the austere, gray-haired diplomats, friends of his father, rabid Slavophiles, and he greeted them with an impudent foreign “Allo”; once, when he went to confession, he made the old priest blush by revelations, at eighteen, which that venerable dignitary had not learned in his seventy years.

Resenting the portrait of the Czar in his father’s study and the Admiral’s unflinching, unreasoning loyalty, Leo attended a secret meeting of young revolutionists. But when an unshaved young man made a speech about men’s brotherhood and called him “comrade,” Leo whistled “God Save the Czar,” and went home.

He spent his first night in a woman’s bed at the age of sixteen. When he met her in sparkling drawing rooms, his face remained courteously expressionless while he bent to kiss her hand; and her stately, gray-haired husband did not suspect what lessons the cold, disdainful beauty he owned was giving to that slender, dark-haired boy.

Many others followed. The Admiral had to interfere once, to remind Leo that his own career could be compromised if his son were seen again leaving, at dawn, the palace of a famous ballerina whose royal patron’s name was mentioned in whispers.

The revolution found Admiral Kovalensky with black glasses over his unseeing eyes and St. George’s ribbon in his lapel; it found Leo Kovalensky with a slow, contemptuous smile, and a swift gait, and in his hand a lost whip he had been born to carry.

For two weeks Kira had no visitors and paid no visits. Then she called on Irina.

Maria Petrovna opened the door and muttered a greeting, confused, frightened, stepping back uncertainly.

The family was gathered in the dining room around a newly installed “Bourgeoise.” Irina jumped up with a glowing smile and kissed her cousin, which she had never done before.

“Kira, I’m so glad to see you! I thought you didn’t want to see any of us any more.”

Kira looked at a tall figure that had risen suddenly in a corner of the room. “How are you, Uncle Vasili?” she smiled.

Vasili Ivanovitch did not answer; he did not look at her; he turned and left the room.

A dark red flushed Irina’s cheeks and she bit her lips. Maria Petrovna twisted a handkerchief. Little Acia stared at Kira from behind a chair. Kira stood looking at the closed door.

“Those are nice felt boots you’re wearing, Kira,” Maria Petrovna muttered, although she had seen them many times. “Nice for cold weather. Such weather we’re having!”

“Yes,” said Kira, “it’s snowing outside.”

Victor came in, shuffling lazily in bedroom slippers, with a bathrobe thrown open over his pajamas; it was late afternoon, but his uncombed hair hung over red eyelids swollen by an interrupted sleep.

“Kira! What a pleasant surprise!” He bowed effusively, with outstretched hand. He held her hand and looked into her eyes with a bold, mocking stare as if the two of them shared a secret. “We didn’t expect you, Kira. But then, so many unexpected things happen, these days.” He did not apologize for his appearance; his careless swagger seemed to say that such an appearance could not be shocking to her. “Well, Kira, it isn’t Comrade Taganov, after all? Oh, don’t look surprised. One hears things at the Institute. However, Comrade Taganov is a useful friend to have. He has such an influential position. It’s handy, in case you have any friends — in jail.”

“Victor,” said Irina, “you look like a swine and talk it. Go wash your face.”

“When I’ll take orders from you, my dear sister, you may tell the news to the papers.”

“Children, children,” Maria Petrovna sighed helplessly.

“I have to go,” said Kira, “I just dropped in on my way to the Institute.”

“Oh, Kira!” Irina begged. “Please don’t go.”

“I have to. I have a lecture to attend.”

“Oh, hell!” said Irina. “They’re all afraid to ask you, but I’ll ask it before you go; what’s his name?”

“Leo Kovalensky.”

“Not the son of ...” gasped Maria Petrovna.

“Yes,” said Kira.

When the door closed after Kira, Vasili Ivanovitch came back. Maria Petrovna fumbled nervously for her nail buffer and busied herself with her manicure, avoiding his eyes. He added a log to the fire in the “Bourgeoise.” He said nothing.

“Father, what has Kira ...” Irina began.

“Irina, the subject is not open to argument.”

“The world’s all upside down,” said Maria Petrovna and coughed.

Victor looked at his father with a bright glance of mutual understanding. But Vasili Ivanovitch did not respond; he turned away deliberately; he had been avoiding Victor for many weeks.

Acia crouched in a corner behind the buffet, sniveling softly, hopelessly.

“Acia, come here,” Vasili Ivanovitch ordered.

She waddled toward him slowly, cringing, looking down at the tip of her nose, wiping her nose with her collar.

“Acia, why are your school reports as bad as ever?” Vasili Ivanovitch asked.

Acia did not answer and sniffled.

“What is it that’s happened to you again in arithmetic?”

“It’s the tractors.”

“The what?”

“The tractors. I didn’t know.”

“What didn’t you know?”

“The Selskosoyuz had twelve tractors and they divided them among six poor villages and how many did each village get?”

“Acia, how much is twelve divided by six?”

Acia stared at her nose and sniffled.

“At your age, Irina was always first in her class,” said Vasili Ivanovitch bitterly and turned away.

Acia ran to hide behind Maria Petrovna’s chair.

Vasili Ivanovitch left the room. Victor followed him to the kitchen. If Vasili Ivanovitch heard his steps following, he paid no attention. It was dark in the kitchen; the window pane was broken and the window had been covered with boards. Three narrow slits of light added three bright stripes to the long cracks of the floor. Vasili Ivanovitch’s shirts were piled under the sink. He bent slowly, and stuffed the shirts into a brass pan, and filled the pan with cold water. His big fist closed over a cake of bluish soap. Slowly, awkwardly, he rubbed the collar of a shirt. They had had to let the servant go; and Maria Petrovna was too weak to work.

“What’s the matter, Father?” Victor asked.

Vasili Ivanovitch answered without turning: “You know it.”

Victor protested too eagerly: “Why, Father, I haven’t the slightest idea! Have I done anything wrong lately?”

“Did you see that girl?”

“Kira? Yes. Why?”

“I thought I could trust in her as in my own soul. But it got her. The revolution got her. And — you’re next.”

“But, Father ...”

“In my days, a woman’s virtue wasn’t dragged in the gutter for every passerby.”

“But Kira ...”

“I suppose I’m old-fashioned. I was born that way and that’s the way I’ll die. But all of you young people are rotted before you’re ripe. Socialism, Communism, Marxism, and to hell with decency!”

“But I, Father ...”

“You.... It will get you in another way. I’ve been watching. Your friends for the last few weeks have been.... You came from a party this morning.”

“But surely you don’t object to a little party?”

“Who were the guests?”

“Some charming girls.”

“To be sure. Who else?”

Victor flicked a speck of dust off his sleeve and said: “A Communist or two.”

Vasili Ivanovitch said nothing.

“Father, let us be broad-minded. A little vodka with them can’t hurt me. But it can help me — a lot.”

Vasili Ivanovitch’s voice was stern as a prophet’s; bubbles gurgled in the cold water under his hands: “There are things with which one does not compromise.”

Victor laughed cheerfully and slipped his arm around the powerful, stooped shoulders: “Come on, old man, you and I can understand things together. You wouldn’t want me to sit down and fold my hands and surrender — because they hold the power, would you? Beat them at their own game — that’s what I’m going to do. Diplomacy — that’s the best philosophy of our days. It’s the century of diplomacy. You can’t object to that, can you? But you know me. It can’t touch me. It won’t get me. I’m still too much of a gentleman.”

Vasili Ivanovitch turned to him. A crack of light from the boarded window fell across his face. The face was not that of a prophet; the eyes under the heavy white brows were weary, helpless; the smile was timid. The smile was an effort; so were the words: “I know it, son. I trust you. I suppose — well, you know best. But these are strange days. And you — well, Irina and you are all I have left.”

Irina was the first visitor from Kira’s old world to her new home. Leo bowed gracefully, diffidently, but Irina looked straight at him, grinned and said openly:

“Well, I like you. But then, I expected to like you. And I hope you like me, because I’m the only one of your in-laws that you’ll see — for a long time. But they’ll all question me about you, you can be sure.”

They sat in the shadows of the large drawing room and talked about Rembrandt, whom Irina was studying; and about the new perfume Vava Milovskaia had received from a smuggler — real French perfume. Coty’s and fifty million rubles a bottle — and Irina had stolen a drop of it on her handkerchief — and Maria Petrovna had cried, smelling it; and about the American movie Irina had seen, in which women wore spangled gowns without sleeves — and there had been a shot of New York at night — real skyscrapers, floors and floors of lighted windows on the black sky — and she had stayed through two shows to see that shot, but it had been so brief — just a flash — she would like to draw New York.

She had picked up a book from the table and was sketching busily on the back of its white paper cover, her pencil flashing. When she finished, she threw the book to Kira across the room. Kira looked at the drawing: it was a sketch of Leo — standing erect, full figure, naked.

“Irina!”

“You may show it to him.”

Leo smiled, his lips drooping, looking at Irina inquisitively.

“That’s the state that fits you best,” she explained. “And don’t tell me that my imagination has flattered you — because it hasn’t. Clothes hide nothing from a — well, yes, an artist. Any objections?”

“Yes,” said Leo, “this book belongs to the Gossizdat.”

“Oh, well,” she tore the cover off swiftly, “tell them you’ve used the cover for a revolutionary poster.”

Alone with Kira for a moment, before leaving, Irina looked at her earnestly, curiously, almost timidly, and whispered: “Are you ... happy?”

Kira said indifferently: “I’m happy.”

Kira seldom spoke of what she thought; and more seldom — of what she felt. There was a man, however, for whom she made an exception, both exceptions. She made other exceptions for him as well, and wondered dimly why she made them. Communists awakened fear in her, a fear of her own degradation if she associated, talked or even looked at them; a fear not of their guns, their jails, their secret, watchful eyes — but of something behind their furrowed foreheads, something they had — or, perhaps, it was something they didn’t have, which made her feel as if she were alone in the presence of a beast, its jaws gaping; whom she could never force to understand. But she smiled confidently up at Andrei Taganov; and pressed tightly against the wall of an empty auditorium at the Institute, her eyes radiant, her smile timid and trusting, like a child appealing to a guiding hand, she said: “I’m happy, Andrei.”

He had not seen her for many weeks. He smiled warmly, quietly, looking down into her eager eyes. “I’ve missed you, Kira.”

“I’ve missed you, Andrei. I ... I’ve been busy.”

“I didn’t want to call on you. I thought you would prefer it if I never called at your house.”

“You see ...” Then she stopped. She could not tell him. She could not bring him to her new home — to Leo’s home. Andrei could be dangerous; he was a member of the G.P.U.; he had a duty to fulfill; it was best not to tempt that duty. So she said only: “Yes, Andrei, I’d rather you would never call ... at my house.”

“I won’t. But will you be more regular about your lectures? So that I can see you once in a while — and hear you say that you’re happy? I like to hear that.”

“Andrei, have you ever been happy?”

“I’ve never been unhappy.”

“Is that enough?”

“Well, I always know what I want. And when you know what you want — you go toward it. Sometimes you go very fast, and sometimes only an inch a year. Perhaps you feel happier when you go fast. I don’t know. I’ve forgotten the difference long ago, because it really doesn’t matter, so long as you move.”

“And if you want something toward which you can’t move?”

“I never did.”

“And if — on your way — you find a barrier that you don’t want to break?”

“I never have.”

She remembered suddenly: “Andrei, you haven’t even asked me why I’m happy.”

“Does it make any difference — so long as you are?”

He held her two hands, thin and trusting, in his five strong fingers.

The first signs of spring in Petrograd were tears and smiles: the men smiled, the houses dropped the tears. High on the roofs, the snow was melting, gray with city dust like dirty cotton, brittle and shining like wet sugar, and twinkling drops dripped slowly, trickled in little gurgling brooks from the mouths of drain pipes, and across the sidewalks, and into the gutters, rocking gently cigarette stubs and sunflower-seed shells. Men walked out of the houses and breathed deeply, and smiled, and did not know why they smiled, until they looked up and saw that above the roofs the sky was a feeble, hesitant, incredulous blue, a very pale blue, as if a painter had washed the color off his brush in a huge tub of water, and the water held only a drop of a promise.

Icy mush crunched under galoshes and the sun made white sparks in the black rubber toes; sleigh-runners grunted, cutting brown ridges; a voice yelled: “Saccharine, citizens!”; drops tapped the sidewalks steadily, persistently, like a soft, distant machine gun; a voice yelled: “Violets, citizens!”

Pavel Syerov bought a pair of new boots. He blinked in the sun down at Comrade Sonia and bought her a hot, shiny cabbage cake from a woman on a corner. She chewed it, smiling. She said: “At three o’clock — giving lecture at the Komsomol on ‘Our drive on the NEP front.’ At five o’clock — giving talk at the Club of the Rabfac, on ‘Proletarian Women and Illiteracy.’ At seven — discussion at the Party Club on ‘Spirit of the Collective.’ Why don’t you drop in at nine? Seems I never see you.”

He said: “Sonia, old pal, can’t take up your valuable time. People like you and me have no private life but that of our class duty.”

Lines stood at the doors of shoe stores; the trade unions were giving out cards for the purchase of galoshes.

Maria Petrovna stayed in bed most of the day and watched the sun on the glass of a closed window, and hid her handkerchiefs from the sight of all.

Comrade Lenin had had a second stroke and had lost his power of speech. Pravda said: “... no higher sacrifice to the cause of the Proletariat than a leader burning out his will, health and body in the superhuman effort of the responsibility placed upon his shoulders by the Workers and Peasants.”

Victor invited three Communist students to his room and they discussed the future of Proletarian Electrification. He let them out through the back door to avoid Vasili Ivanovitch.

England had treacherous designs on the Republic of Workers and Peasants. Teaching of English was prohibited in schools.

Acia had to study German, sniveling over the difference of “der,” “die,” “das,” trying to remember what it was that our German class brothers had done at Rapallo.

The boss at the Gossizdat said: “The city proletariat is marching tomorrow in a demonstration of protest against France’s policy in the Ruhr. I expect all our employees to take part, Comrade Kovalensky.”

Leo said: “I’ll stay in bed. I’m having a headache — tomorrow.”

Vasili Ivanovitch sold the shade off the lamp in the drawing room; he kept the lamp because it was the last one.

In the dark, warm evenings, churches overflowed with bowed heads, incense and candle light. Lydia prayed for Holy Russia and for the dull fear in her heart.

Andrei took Kira to the Marinsky Theater and they saw Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty” ballet. He left her at the house on Moika and she took a tramway to her other home. A light snow melted on her face, like rain.

Leo asked: “How’s your Communist boy friend?”

She asked: “Have you been lonely?”

He brushed the hair off her forehead and looked at her lips, in the deliberate tension of refusing himself a kiss. He answered: “I would like to say no. But you know it’s yes.”

His warm lips gathered the cold spring rain off hers.

The year 1923, like any other, had a spring.

XII

KIRA HAD WAITED IN LINE for three hours to get the bread at the Institute Co-operative. It was dark when she stepped down from the tramway, her loaf pressed tightly under her arm. At distant corners, lanterns made snakes of light wiggle in black puddles. She walked straight ahead, her shoes splashing through the water, kicking little icicles that clinked like glass. When she turned the corner of her street, a hurrying shadow whistled to her in the darkness.

“Allo!” called Irina’s voice. “And whom do I remind you of when I say that?”

“Irina! What are you doing here at this hour?”

“Just left your house. Waited for you for an hour. Had given up hope.”

“Well, come on back.”

“No,” said Irina, “maybe it’s better if I tell you here. I ... well, I came to tell you something. And ... well, maybe Leo won’t like it, and he’s home, and ...” Irina hesitated, which was unusual for her.

“What is it?”

“Kira, how’s ... how’re your finances?”

“Why, splendid. Why do you ask that?”

“It’s just ... you see ... well, if I’m too presumptuous, tell me to shut up.... Don’t be angry.... You know I’ve never mentioned them before ... but it’s your family.”

Kira peered in the darkness at Irina’s worried face. “What about them?”

“They’re desperate, Kira. Just desperate. I know Aunt Galina’d kill me if she knew I told you, but.... You see, the saccharine man got arrested as a speculator. They sent him to jail for six years. And your folks ... well, what is there left to do? You know. Last week Father brought them a pound of millet. If we only could.... But you know how things are with us. Mother so sick. And nothing much left for the Alexandrovsky market but the wallpaper. I don’t think they have a thing in the house — your folks. I thought maybe you ... maybe you would like to know.”

“Here,” said Kira, “take this bread. We don’t need it. We’ll buy some from a private store. Tell them you’ve found, borrowed or stolen it, or anything. But don’t tell them it’s from me.”

On the following day, Galina Petrovna rang the door bell. Kira was not at home. Leo opened the door and bowed graciously.

“I believe it is my ... mother-in-law?” he asked.

“That’s what it would like to be,” Galina Petrovna stated.

His smile disarmed her; it was infectious; she smiled.

When Kira came in, there were tears. Galina Petrovna crushed her in her arms, before a word was said, and sobbed: “Kira, my child! .... My dear child! ... God forgive us our sins! ... These are hard days.... These are very hard days.... After all, who are we to judge? ... Everything’s gone to pieces.... What difference does it all make? If we can just forget, and pull the pieces together, and ... God show us the way. We’ve lost it....”

When she released Kira, and powdered her nose from a little envelope full of potato flour, she muttered: “About that bread, Kira. We didn’t use it all. I hid it. I was afraid — maybe you need it yourself. I’ll bring it back if you do. We took only a small slice; your father was so hungry.”

“Irina talks too much,” said Kira. “We don’t need the bread, Mother. Don’t worry. Keep it.”

“You must come and see us,” said Galina Petrovna. “Both of you. Let by-gones be by-gones. Of course, I don’t see why you two don’t get ... Oh, well, it’s your business. Things aren’t what they were ten years ago.... You must visit us, Leo — I may call you Leo, may I not? Lydia is so anxious to meet you.”

One could buy bread in the private stores. But the price made Kira hesitate. “Let’s go to a railroad station,” she said to Leo.

Railroad terminals were the cheapest and most dangerous markets of the city. There were strict rules against private “speculators” who smuggled food from the villages. But the speculators in ragged overcoats dared long rides on roofs and buffers, miles on foot down slimy mud roads, lice and typhus on trains, and — on return — the vigilance of government agents. Food slinked into the city in dusty boots, in the linings of vermin-infested coats, in bundles of soiled underwear. The starved city awaited every train. After its arrival, in the dark side streets around the depot, crystal goblets and lace chemisettes were exchanged furtively for hunks of lard and mouldy sacks of flour.

Arm in arm, Kira and Leo walked to the Nikolaevsky station. Drops tapped the sidewalk. The sun dripped to the sidewalk with every drop. Leo bought a bunch of violets on a corner. He pinned it to Kira’s shoulder, a purple tuft, young and fragrant on her old black coat. She smiled happily and kicked an icicle in a puddle, splashing water at the passersby, laughing.

The train had arrived. They made their way through an eager crowd that pushed them aside and drove them forward, and stuck elbows into their stomachs, and heels on their toes. Soldiers watched the descending passengers, silent, alert, suspicious.

A man stepped down from the train. He had a peculiar nose; it was so short and turned up so sharply that his two wide, slanting nostrils were almost vertical; under the nostrils there was a wide space and a heavy mouth. His stomach shivered like gelatin as he stepped down. His coat seemed too ragged, his boots too dirty.

Soldiers seized his arms. They were going to search him. He whined softly: “Comrades, brothers! So help me God, you’re wrong. I’m nothing but a poor peasant, brothers, nothing but the poorest peasant. Never heard of speculating. But I’m a responsible citizen, too. I’ll tell you something. If you let me go, I’ll tell you something.”

“What can you tell, you son of a bitch?”

“See that woman there? She’s a speculator. I know. I’ll tell you where she’s hiding food. I seen her.”

Strong hands seized the woman. Her arms were like a skeleton’s in the soldiers’ fists; gray hair hung over her eyes from under an old hat with a black feather; the shawl held on her sunken chest by an ancient mosaic pin shook silently, convulsively, a thin, nervous shudder, like that of a window at the distant sound of an explosion. She moaned, showing three yellow teeth in a dark mouth: “Comrades.... It’s my grandson.... I wasn’t going to sell.... It’s for my grandson.... Please, let me go, comrades ... my grandson — he’s got the scurvy.... Has to eat.... Please, comrades.... The scurvy.... Please....”

The soldiers dragged her away. Her hat was knocked off. They did not stop to pick it up. Someone stepped on the black feather.

The man with the vertical nostrils watched them go. His wide red lips grinned.

Then he turned and saw Kira looking at him. He winked mysteriously, in understanding, and pointed with a jerk of his head to the exit. He went out; Kira and Leo followed him, puzzled.

In a dark alley by the station, he looked cautiously, winked again and opened his coat. The ragged coat had a smooth lining of heavy, expensive fur, with the suffocating odor of carnation oil used by all travelers of means as protection against lice on trains. He unfastened some unseen hooks in the depth of the fur. His arm disappeared in the lining and returned with a loaf of bread and a smoked ham. He smiled. His lips and the lower part of his face smiled; the upper part — the short nose, the light, narrow eyes — remained strangely immobile, as if paralyzed.

“Here you are, citizens,” he said boastfully. “Bread, ham, anything you wish. No trouble. We know our business.”

The next moment, Kira was running down the street, fleeing wildly, senselessly from a feeling she could not explain.

“Just a little party, Kira darling,” said Vava Milovskaia over the telephone. “Saturday night.... Shall we say about ten o’clock? ... And you’ll bring Leo Kovalensky, of course? I’m simply dying to meet him.... Oh, just fifteen or twenty people.... And Kira, here’s something a little difficult: I’m inviting Lydia, and ... could you bring a boy for her? You see, I have just so many boys and girls on my list, and they’re all in couples, and — well, boys are so hard to get nowadays ... and ... well, you know how it is, and I thought maybe you knew someone — anyone....”

“Anyone? Do you care if he’s a Communist?”

“A Communist? How thrilling! Is he good-looking? ... Certainly, bring him.... We’re going to dance.... And we’re going to have refreshments. Yes, food. Oh, yes.... And, oh, Kira, I’m asking every guest to bring one log of wood. One apiece.... To heat the drawing room. It’s so large we couldn’t affo ... You don’t mind? ... So sweet of you. See you Saturday night.”

Parties were rare in Petrograd in 1923. It was Kira’s first. She decided to invite Andrei. She was a little tired of the deception, a little bewildered that it had gone so far. Leo knew all about Andrei; Andrei knew nothing about Leo. She had told Leo of her friendship; he had not objected; he smiled disdainfully when she spoke of Andrei, and inquired about her “Communist boy friend.” Andrei knew no one in Kira’s circle and no gossip had reached him. He never asked questions. He kept his promise and never called on her. They met at the Institute. They talked of mankind, and its future, and its leaders; they talked of ballet, tramways and atheism. By a silent agreement, they never spoke of Soviet Russia. It was as if an abyss separated them, but their hands and their spirits were strong enough to clasp over the abyss.

The grim lines of his tanned face were like an effigy of a medieval saint; from the age of the Crusades he had inherited the ruthlessness, the devotion, and also the austere chastity. She could not speak of love to him; she could not think of love in his presence; not because she feared a stern condemnation; but because she feared his sublime indifference.

She did not want to conceal it forever. The two men had to meet. She feared that meeting, a little. She remembered that one of them was the son of an executed father; the other one — a member of the G.P.U. Vava’s party was a convenient occasion: the two would meet; she would watch their reac tions; then, perhaps, she could bring Andrei to her house; and if, at the party, he heard the truth about her — well, she thought, so much the better.

Meeting him in the library of the Institute, she asked: “Andrei, would a bourgeois party frighten you?”

“Not if you’ll be there to protect me — if that’s an invitation.”

“I’ll be there. And it is an invitation. Saturday night. Lydia and I are going. And two men. You’re one of them.”

“Fine — if Lydia is not too afraid of me.”

“The other one — is Leo Kovalensky.”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t know his address then, Andrei.”

“I didn’t ask you, Kira. And it does not matter.”

“Call for us at nine-thirty, at the house on Moika.”

“I remember your address.”

“My ... oh, yes, of course.”

Vava Milovskaia met her guests in the anteroom.

Her smile was radiant; her black eyes and black curls sparkled like the patent leather of the narrow belt around her slim waistline; and the delicate patent leather flowers on her shoulder — the latest Soviet fashion — sparkled like her eyes.

The guests entered, logs of wood under their arms. A tall, stern maid in black, with stiff white apron and cap, silently received the logs.

“Kira! Lydia! Darlings! So glad! How are you?” Vava fluttered.

“I’ve heard so much about you, Leo, that I’m really frightened,” she acknowledged the introduction, her hand in Leo’s; even Lydia understood Leo’s answering glance; as to Vava, she caught her breath and stepped back a little, and looked at Kira. But Kira paid no attention.

To Andrei, Vava said: “So you’re a Communist? I think that’s charming. I’ve always said that Communists were just like other people.”

The large drawing room had not been heated all winter. The fire had just been lit. A fretful smoke struggled up the chimney, escaping back into the room once in a while. A gray fog hung over the neatly polished mirrors, the freshly dusted tables proudly displaying careful rows of worthless knick-knacks; a damp odor of mildewed wood rose to destroy the painful dignity of a room too obviously prepared for guests.

The guests sat huddled in corners, shivering under old shawls and sweaters, tense and self-conscious and too carelessly nonchalant in their old best clothes. They kept their arms pressed to their sides to hide the holes in their armpits; elbows motionless on their knees — to hide rubbed patches; feet deep under chairs — to hide worn felt boots. They smiled vacantly without purpose, laughed too loudly at nothing in particular, timid and uncomfortable and guiltily conscious of a forbidden purpose, the forgotten purpose of gaiety. They eyed the fireplace wistfully, longing and reluctant to seize upon the best seats by the fire. Everybody was cold and everybody wanted desperately to be gay.

The only one whose bright, loud gaiety seemed effortless was Victor. His wide stride bounced from group to group, offering the tonic of a ringing voice and a resplendent smile: “This way, ladies and gentlemen.... Move over to this lovely fire. We’ll be warm in an instant.... Ah! my charming cousins, Kira and Lydia! ... Delighted, Comrade Taganov, delighted! ... Here’s a lovely armchair, Lydia darling, I save it specially for you.... Rita dear, you remind me of the heroine in the new Smirnov novel. Read it? Magnificent! Literature emancipated from outworn conceptions of form. A new woman — the free woman of the future.... Comrade Taganov, that project for the electrification of the entire R.S.F.S.R. is the most stupendous undertaking in the history of mankind. When we consider the amount of electrical power per citizen to be found in our natural resources.... Vava, these patent leather flowers are the latest word in feminine elegance. I understand that the most famous couturier of Paris has ... I quite agree with you, Boris. Schopenhauer’s pessimism is entirely outmoded in the face of the healthy, practical philosophical conceptions of the rising proletariat and, no matter what our personal political convictions may be, we must all be objective enough to agree that the proletariat is the ruling class of the future....”

With perfect assurance, Victor assumed the role of host. Vava’s dark eyes, that rested on him every time she flitted through the room, sanctioned his right by a long, adoring glance. She flew into the anteroom at every sound of the door bell, returning with a couple that smiled shyly, rubbing their cold hands, hiding the worn seams of their clothes. The solemn maid followed silently, carrying the logs as if she were serving a dish, and piled them neatly by the fireplace.

Kolya Smiatkin, a blond, chubby young man with a pleasant smile, who was filing clerk in the Tobacco Trust, said timidly: “They say ... er ... I heard ... I’m afraid there’s going to be a reduction of staffs in our office — next month. Everybody’s whispering about it. Maybe I’ll get fired this time. Maybe not. Makes you feel sort of uncomfortable.”

A tall gentleman with a gold pince-nez and the intense eyes of an undernourished philosopher said lugubriously: “I have an excellent job in the archives. Bread almost every week. Only I’m afraid there’s a woman after the job — a Communist’s mistress — and ...”

Someone nudged him and pointed at Andrei, who stood by the fireplace, smoking. The tall gentleman coughed and looked uncomfortable.

Rita Eksler was the only woman in the room who smoked. She lay stretched on a davenport, her legs high on its arm, her skirt high above her knees, red bangs low over pale green eyes, painted lips puckered insolently around a cigarette. Many things were whispered about her. Her parents had been killed in the revolution. She had married a commander of the Red Army and divorced him two months later. She was homely and used her homeliness with such skillful, audacious emphasis that the most beautiful girls feared her competition.

She stretched lazily and said, her voice slow, husky: “I’ve heard something amusing. A boy friend of mine wrote from Berlin ...” All eyes turned to her, eagerly, reverently. “... and he tells me they have cafés in Berlin that are open all night — all night, elegant, eh? — they call them ‘Nacht Local.’ And in a famous, very naughty ‘Nacht Local,’ a famous dancer — Rikki Rey — danced with sixteen girls and with nothing on. I mean, positively nothing. So she got arrested. And the next night, she and her girls appeared in a military number, and they wore little chiffon trunks, two gold strings crossed over their breasts, and huge fur hats. And they were considered dressed. Elegant, eh?”

She laughed huskily at the awed crowd, but her eyes were on Leo; they had been on Leo ever since he had entered the room. Leo’s answer was a straight, mocking glance of understanding that insulted and encouraged Rita at the same time.

An anemic girl who sat sulkily in a corner, miserably hiding her feet and heavy felt boots, said with a dull stare, incredulous of her own words: “Abroad ... I heard ... they say they don’t have provision cards, or cooperatives, or anything, you just go into a store just when you feel like it and just buy bread or potatoes or anything, even sugar. Me, I don’t believe it myself.”

“And they say you buy your clothes without a trade-union order — abroad.”

“We have no future,” said the philosopher with the gold pince-nez. “We have lost it in materialistic pursuits. Russia’s destiny has ever been of the spirit. Holy Russia has lost her God and her Soul.”

“Did you hear about poor Mitya Vessiolkin? He tried to jump off a moving tramway, and he fell under, but he was lucky: just one hand cut off.”

“The West,” said Victor, “has no inner significance. The old civilization is doomed. It is filling new forms with a worn-out content that can no longer satisfy anyone. We may suffer hardships, but we are building something new. On our side — we have the future.”

“I have a cold,” said the anemic girl. “Mother got a union order for galoshes and there were none my size and we lost our turn and we have to wait three months and I got a cold.”

“Vera Borodina had her Primus explode on her. And she’s blind. And her face — you’d think she’d been in the war.”

“I bought myself a pair of galoshes in a private store,” Kolya Smiatkin said with a touch of pride. “And now I’m afraid but what I was too hasty. What with the reductions of staffs and....”

“Vava, may I add wood to the fire? It’s still rather ... cold.”

“The trouble with these days,” said Lydia, “is that there’s no spiritual enlightenment. People have forgotten the simple faith.”

“We had a reduction of staffs last month, but they didn’t touch me. I’m socially active. I’m teaching a class of illiterates — free — an hour every evening — as club duty — and they know I’m a conscientious citizen.”

“I’m vice-secretary of our club library,” said Kolya Smiatkin. “Takes three evenings a week — and no pay — but that kept me through the last reduction. But this time, I’m afraid it’s me or another guy — and the other guy, he’s vice-secretary of two libraries.”

“When we have a reduction of staffs,” said the anemic girl, “I’m afraid they’re going to throw out all the wives or husbands whose mates have employment. And Misha has such a fine job with the Food Trust. So we’re thinking ... I’m afraid we’ll have to get divorced. Oh, that’s nothing. We can still go on living together. It’s being done.”

“My career is my duty to society,” said Victor. “I have selected engineering as the profession most needed by our great republic.”

He threw a glance at the fireplace to make sure that Andrei had heard.

“I’m studying philosophy,” said Leo, “because it’s a science that the proletariat of the R.S.F.S.R. does not need at all.”

“Some philosophers,” said Andrei slowly, in the midst of a sudden, stunned silence, “may need the proletariat of the R.S.F.S.R.”

“Maybe,” said Leo. “And maybe I’ll escape abroad, and sell my services to the biggest exploiter of a millionaire — and have an affair with his beautiful wife.”

“Without a doubt,” said Victor, “you’ll succeed in that.”

“Really,” Vava said hastily, “I think it’s still cold and we had better dance. Lydia darling?”

She threw a cajoling glance of inquiry at Lydia. Lydia sighed with resignation, rose and took the seat at the upright piano. She was the only accomplished musician in the crowd. She had a suspicion about the reason of her popularity at all the rare parties that were still being given. She rubbed her cold fingers and struck the piano keys with ferocious determination. She played “John Gray.”

Historians will write of the “Internationale” as the great anthem of the revolution. But the cities of the revolution had their own hymn. In days to come, the men of Petrograd will remember those years of hunger and struggle and hope — to the convulsive rhythm of “John Gray.”

It was called a fox-trot. It had a tune and a rhythm such as those of the new dances far across the border, abroad. It had very foreign lyrics about a very foreign John Gray whose sweetheart Kitty spurned his love for fear of having children, as she told him plainly. Petrograd had known sweeping epidemics of cholera; it had known epidemics of typhus, which were worse; the worst of its epidemics was that of “John Gray.”

Men stood in line at the co-operatives — and whistled “John Gray.” At the recreation hour in school, young couples danced in the big hall, and an obliging pupil played “John Gray.” Men hung on the steps of speeding tramways, humming desperately “John Gray.” Workers’ clubs listened attentively to a lecture on Marxism, then relaxed while a comrade showed his skill on a piano out of tune, playing “John Gray.”

Its gaiety was sad; its abrupt rhythm was hysterical; its frivolity was a plea, a moan for that which existed somewhere, forever out of reach. Through winter nights red flags whistled in the snowdrifts and the city prayed hopelessly with the short, sharp notes of “John Gray.”

Lydia played fiercely. Couples shuffled slowly across the drawing room in an old-fashioned two-step. Irina, who had no voice, sang the words, half singing, half coughing them out, in a husky moan, as she had heard a German singer do in vaudeville:

“John Gray

Was brave and daring,

Kitty

Was very pretty.

Wildly

John fell in love with

Kitty.

Passion’s

Hard to restrain —

He made

His feelings plain,

But Kat

Said ‘No’ to that!”

Kira danced in Leo’s arms. He whispered, looking down at her: “We would dance — like this — in a place of champagne glasses — and spangled gowns — and bare arms — a place called ‘Nacht Local.’ ”

She closed her eyes, and the strong body that led her expertly, imperiously, seemed to carry her to that other world she had seen, long ago, by a dark river that murmured the “Song of Broken Glass.”

Vava undertook to teach Andrei to dance and dragged him out into the crowd. He followed obediently, smiling, like a tiger that could not hurt a kitten. He was not a bad pupil, she thought. She felt very brave, very daring at the thought that she was actually corrupting a stern Communist. She regretted that the corruption could go no further. It was annoying to meet a man in whom her beauty awakened no response, who looked at her with calm, steady eyes, as he looked at Lydia, as he looked at the anemic girl in the felt boots.

Lydia played “Destiny Waltz.” Andrei asked Kira to dance. Leo glanced at him with his cold smile, but said nothing and walked away from them.

“Vava’s a good teacher,” Kira whispered, as Andrei whirled her into the crowd, “but hold me tighter. Oh, yes, much tighter.”

“Destiny Waltz” was slow and soft; it stopped for a breathless second once in a while and swung into rhythm again, slowly, rocking a little, as if expecting soft, billowing satin skirts to murmur gently in answer, in a ball-room such as did not exist any longer.

Kira looked up into a grave face that was smiling half ironically, half shyly. She pressed her head to his breast; her eyes flashed up at him one swift glance, like a spark; then she jerked her head back; her tousled hair caught on a button of his coat and a few strands remained entwined around the button.

Andrei felt a very soft silk in his arms and, under the silk, a very slender body. He looked down at her open collar and saw a faint shadow parting the flesh. He did not look down again.

Leo danced with Rita, their eyes meeting in a silent understanding, her body pressed to his expertly, professionally. Vava whirled, smiling proudly at every couple she passed, her hand resting triumphantly, possessively on Victor’s shoulder. Kolya Smiatkin watched Vava timidly, wistfully; he was afraid to ask her for a dance: he was shorter than Vava. He knew that everybody knew of his hopeless, doggish devotion to her and that they laughed at him; he could not help it. The anemic girl’s felt boots made the chandelier tremble, its fringe of glass beads ringing softly; once she stepped on Vava’s sparkling patent leather pump. A thoughtful guest added a log to the fire; it hissed and smoked; someone had not been conscientious and had brought a damp log.

At two A.M. Vava’s mother stuck a timid, pallid face through the crack of a half-opened door and asked the guests if they would “Like to have some refreshments.” The eager rush to the dining room cut a waltz short in the middle.

In the dining room, a long table stood frozen in a solemn splendor of white and silver, crystal sparkling in a blinding light, delicate forks laid out with formal precision. Costly dishes of milky-white porcelain offered slices of black bread with a suspicion of butter, slices of dried fish, potato-skin cookies, sauerkraut and tea with sticky brown candy instead of sugar.

Vava’s mother smiled hospitably: “Please take one of everything. Don’t be afraid. There’s enough. I’ve counted them.”

Vava’s father sat, beaming broadly, at the head of the table. He was a doctor who specialized in gynecology. He had not been successful before the revolution; after the revolution, two facts had helped his rise: the fact that, as a doctor, he belonged to the “Free Professions” and was not considered an exploiter, and the fact that he performed certain not strictly legal operations. Within a couple of years he had found himself suddenly the most prosperous member of his former circle and of many circles above.

He sat, his two fists holding his lapels, leaning back comfortably, his round stomach bulging under a heavy gold chain, costly watch-charms tinkling and shuddering with the muscles of his stomach. His narrow eyes disappeared in the thick folds of a white flesh. He smiled warmly at his guests; he was very proud of the rare, enviable position of host, a host who could afford to offer food; he relished the feeling of a patron and benefactor to the children of those before whom he had bowed in the old days, the children of the industrial magnate Argounov, of Admiral Kovalensky. He made a mental note to donate some more to the Red Air Fleet in the morning.

His smile widened when the maid entered sullenly, carrying a silver tray with six bottles of rare old wine — a token of gratitude from one of his influential patients. He poured, filling crystal glasses, chuckling amiably: “Good old stuff. Real prewar stuff. Bet you kids never tasted anything like it.” The glasses were passed down the long table, from hand to hand.

Kira sat between Leo and Andrei. Andrei raised his glass gravely, steadily, like a warrior. “Your health, Kira,” he said.

Leo raised his glass lightly, gracefully, like a diplomat at a foreign bar. “Since you’re toasted by my class superior, Kira,” he said, “I’ll drink to our charming hostess.”

Vava answered with a warm, grateful smile. Leo raised his glass to her and drank looking at Rita.

When they returned to the drawing room, the dying fire had to be revived. Lydia played again. A few couples danced lazily. Vava sang a song about a dead lady whose fingers smelt of incense. Kolya Smiatkin gave an impersonation of a drunk. Victor told anecdotes. Others followed his example; some of the anecdotes were political; cautious glances were thrown at Andrei; words stopped halfway and the teller stammered, blushing.

At five A.M. everyone was exhausted; but no one could go home before daylight; it was too dangerous. The city militia was helpless against burglars and holdup men. No citizen dared to cross a street after midnight.

Doctor Milovsky and his wife retired, leaving the young guests to await the dawn. The stern, starched maid dragged into the drawing room mattresses borrowed from all the neighbors. The mattresses were lined up against the wall. The maid left. Vava turned out the light.

The guests settled down comfortably, in couples. Nothing pierced the darkness but a last glow of the fireplace, a few red dots of cigarettes, a few whispers, a few suspicious sounds that were not whispers. The unwritten law of parties dictated that no one should be too curious in these last, weary and most exciting hours of a party.

Kira felt Andrei’s hand on her arm. “I think they have a balcony,” he whispered. “Let’s go out.”

Following him, Kira heard a sigh and something that sounded like a very passionate kiss from the corner where Vava nestled in Victor’s arms.

It was cold on the balcony. The street lay silent like a tunnel under a vault slowly turning gray. Frozen puddles looked like splinters of glass panes on the pavement. Windows looked like puddles frozen on the walls. A militia-man leaned against a lamp post. A flag bent over the street. The flag did not move; neither did the man.

“It’s funny,” said Andrei, “I never thought I would, but I do like dancing.”

“Andrei, I’m angry at you.”

“Why?”

“This is the second time that you haven’t noticed my best dress.”

“It’s beautiful.”

The door behind them squealed on its rusty hinges. Leo stepped out on the balcony, a cigarette hanging in the corner of his mouth. He asked: “Is Kira nationalized state property, too?”

Andrei answered slowly: “Sometimes I think it would be better for her if she were.”

“Well, until the Party passes the proper resolution,” said Leo, “she isn’t.”

They returned into the warm darkness of the drawing room. Leo drew Kira down on the mattress by his side; he said nothing; she drowsed, her head on his shoulder. Rita moved away with a little shrug. Andrei stood by the balcony door, smoking.

At eight A.M. the window curtains were pulled aside. A dull white sky spread over the roofs, like soapy water. Vava muttered good-byes to her guests at the door; she swayed a little, weary circles under her eyes, one dark lock hanging to the tip of her nose, her lipstick smeared over her chin. The guests divided into groups, to walk together in clusters as long as possible.

In the cold dawn, ice breaking under their feet, Andrei took Kira aside for a moment. He pointed at Leo, who was helping Lydia over a puddle a few steps ahead of them. “Do you see him often?” he asked.

The question told her that he had not learned the truth; the tone of the question — that she would not tell him.

Lights burned in the windows of barred, padlocked shops. Many doors carried a notice:

“Comrade burglars, please don’t bother. There’s nothing inside.”

XIII

IN THE SUMMER, PETROGRAD WAS A FURNACE.

The wooden bricks of the pavements cracked into black gashes, dry as an empty river bed. The walls seemed to breathe of fever and the roofs smelt of burned paint. Through eyes hazy in a white glare, men looked hopelessly for a tree in the city of stone. When they found a tree, they turned away: its motionless leaves were gray with parched dust. Hair stuck to foreheads. Horses shook flies off their foaming nostrils. The Neva lay still; little drops of fire played lazily on the water, like clusters of spangles, and made the men on the bridges feel hotter.

Whenever they could, Kira and Leo went away for a day in the country.

They walked hand in hand in the stripes of sun and pine shadows. Like columns of dark brick, like sinewy bodies sunburnt to bronze and peeling in strips of light bark, the pines guarded the road and dropped, jealously, through a heavy tangle of malachite, a few rays, a few strips of soft blue. On the green slopes of ditches, little purple dots of violets bent to a patch of yellow sand; and only the crystal luster of the sand showed water over it. Kira took off her shoes and stockings. Soft dust and pine needles between her toes, she kicked the little black balls of fallen pine cones. Leo swung her slippers at the end of a dry branch, his white shirt unbuttoned, his sleeves rolled above his elbows. Her bare feet pattered over the boards of an old bridge. Through the wide cracks, she saw sparks swimming like fish scales down the stream and polliwogs wiggling in swarms of little black commas.

They sat alone in a meadow. Tall grass rose like a wall around them, over their heads; a hot blue sky descended to the sharp, green tips; the sky seemed to smell of clover. A cricket droned like an electric engine. She sat on the ground; Leo lay stretched, his head on her lap. He chewed the end of a long grass stem; the movement of his hand, holding it, had the perfection of a foreign cigarette ad. Once in a while, she bent down to kiss him.

They sat on a huge tree root over a river. The spreading stars of ferns on the slope below looked like a jungle of dwarf palms. The white trunk of a birch tree sparkled in the sun, its leaves like a waterfall that streamed down, green drops remaining suspended in the air, trembling, turning silver and white and green again, dropping once in a while to be swept away by the current. Kira leaped over the rocks, roots and ferns as swift, agile and joyous as an animal. Leo watched her. Her movements were sharp, angular, inexpressibly graceful in that contradiction of all grace, not the soft, fluent movements of a woman, but the broken, jerking, precise, geometrical movements of a futuristic dancer. He watched her perched on a dead tree trunk, looking down into the water, her hands at straight angles to her arms, her elbows at straight angles to her body, her body at a straight angle to her legs, a wild, broken little figure, tense, living, like a lightning in shape. Then he sprang up, and ran after her, and held her, breaking the straight angles into a straight line crushed against him. The dead trunk hanging over the stream creaked perilously. She laughed, that strange laughter of hers which was too joyous to be gay, a laughter that held a challenge, and triumph, and ecstasy. Her lips were moist, glistening.

When they returned to the city, the stifling dusk met them with posters, and banners, and headlines, four letters flaming over the streets:

U.S.S.R.

The country had a new name and a new constitution. The All-Union Congress of Soviets had just decided so. Banners said:

THE UNION OF SOCIALIST SOVIET REPUBLICS IS THE KERNEL FOR THE FUTURE GROWTH OF A WORLD STATE

Demonstrations marched through the hot, dusty streets, red kerchiefs mopping sweating foreheads.

OUR POWER IS IN THE TIGHT WELDING OF THE COLLECTIVE!

A column of children, drums beating, marched into the sunset: a layer of bare legs, and a layer of blue trunks, and a layer of white shirts, and a layer of red ties; the kindergarten of the Party, the “Pioneers.” Their high, young voices sang:

“To the greedy bourgeois’ sorrow

We shall light our fire tomorrow,

Our world fire of blood....”

Once, Kira and Leo attempted to spend a night in the country.

“Certainly,” said the landlady. “Certainly, citizens, I can let you have a room for the night. But first you must get a certificate from your Upravdom as to where you live in the city, and a permit from your militia department, and then you must bring me your labor books, and I must register them with our Soviet here, and our militia department, and get a permit for you as transient guests, and there’s a tax to pay, and then you can have the room.”

They stayed in the city.

Galina Petrovna had made a bold decision and taken a job. She taught sewing in a school for workers’ children. She rocked through dusty miles in a tramway across the city to the factory district; she watched little grimy hands fashioning shirts and aprons and, sometimes, letters on a red banner; she talked of the importance of needlework and of the Soviet government’s constructive policy in the field of education.

Alexander Dimitrievitch slept most of the day. When he was awake, he played solitaire on the ironing board in the kitchen — and mixed painstakingly an imitation milk of water, starch and saccharine for Plutarch, the cat he had found in a gutter.

When Kira and Leo came to visit them, there was nothing to talk about. Galina Petrovna spoke too shrilly and too fast — about the education of the masses and the sacred calling of the intelligentsia in serving their less enlightened brothers. Lydia talked about the things of the spirit. Alexander Dimitrievitch said nothing. Galina Petrovna had long since dropped all hints related to the institution of marriage. Only Lydia was flustered when Leo spoke to her; she blushed, embarrassed and thrilled.

Kira visited them because Alexander Dimitrievitch watched her silently when she came, with a feeble shadow of a smile as if, had it not been for a dull haze suddenly grown between him and the life around him, he would have been glad to see her.

Kira sat on a window sill and watched the first autumn rain on the sidewalk. Glass bubbles sprang up in an ink puddle, a ring around each bubble, and floated for a brief second, and burst helplessly like little volcanoes. Rain drummed dully against all the pavements of the city; it sounded like the distant purring of a slow engine with just one thin trickle of water through the rumble, like a faucet leaking somewhere close by.

One single figure walked in the street below. An old collar raised between hunched shoulders, hands in pockets, arms pressed tightly to his sides, he walked away — a lonely shadow, swaying a little — into the city of glistening roofs under a fog of thin, slanting rain.

Kira did not turn on the light. Leo found her in the darkness by the window. He pressed his cheek to hers and asked: “What’s the matter?”

She said softly: “Nothing. Just winter coming. A new year starting.”

“You’re not afraid, are you, Kira? We’ve stood it so far.”

“No,” said Kira. “I’m not afraid.”

The new year was started by the Upravdom.

“It’s like this, Citizen Kovalensky,” he said, shifting from foot to foot, crumpling his cap in both hands and avoiding Leo’s eyes. “It’s on account of the Domicile Norm. There’s a law about as how it’s illegal for two citizens to have three rooms, on account of overcrowding conditions seeing as there are too many people in the city, and there are overcrowding conditions and no place to live. The Gilotdel sent me a tenant with an order for a room, and he’s a good proletarian, and I got to give him one of your rooms. He can take the dining room and you can keep the other two. Also, this ain’t the time when people could live in seven rooms as some people used to.”

The new tenant was a meek, elderly little man who stammered, wore glasses and worked as bookkeeper for the shoe factory “Red Skorohod.” He left early in the morning and came home late at night. He cooked on his own Primus and never had any visitors.

“I won’t be in the way, Citizen Argounova,” he had said. “I won’t be in the way at all. It’s just only as regards the bathroom. If you’ll let me take a bath once a month — I’ll be most grateful. As to the other necessities, there’s a privy in the back yard, if you’ll excuse the mention. I won’t mind. I won’t annoy a lady.”

They moved their furniture out of the dining room into their remaining quarters and nailed the connecting door. When Kira cooked, in the drawing room, she asked Leo to remain in the bedroom.

“Self-preservation,” she told him, “for both of us.”

Andrei had spent the summer on a Party mission in the villages of the Volga.

He met Kira again at the Institute on the first day of the new semester. His suntan was a little deeper; the lines at the corners of his mouth were not a wound nor a scar, but looked like both.

“Kira, I knew I’d be glad to see you again. But I didn’t know that I’d be so ... happy.”

“You’ve had a hard summer, haven’t you, Andrei?”

“Thank you for your letters. They’ve kept me cheerful.”

She looked at the grimness of his lips. “What have they done to you, Andrei?”

“Who?” But he knew that she knew. He did not look at her, but he answered: “Well, I guess everybody knows it. The villages — that’s the dark spot on our future. They’re not conquered. They’re not with us. They have a red flag over the local Soviet and a knife behind their backs. They bow, and they nod, and they snicker in their beards. They stick pictures of Lenin over the barns where they hide their grain from us. You’ve read in the papers about the Clubhouse they burned and the three Communists they burned in it — alive. I was there the next day.”

“Andrei! I hope you got them!”

He could not restrain a smile: “Why, Kira! Are you saying that about men who fight Communism?”

“But ... but they could have done it to you.”

“Well, nothing happened to me, as you see. Don’t look at that scar on my neck. Just grazed. The fool wasn’t used to firearms. His aim wasn’t very good.”

The boss of the Gossizdat had five pictures on the walls of his office: one of Karl Marx, one of Trotsky, one of Zinoviev and two of Lenin. On his desk stood two small plaster busts: of Lenin and Karl Marx. He wore a high-collared peasant blouse of expensive black satin.

He looked at his manicured fingernails; then he looked at Leo. “I feel certain, Comrade Kovalensky, that you will welcome this opportunity to do your duty in our great cultural drive, as we all do.”

Leo asked: “What do you want?”

“This organization has taken the honorary post of ‘Cultchef ’ to a division of the Baltfleet. You understand what I mean, of course? In line with the new — and brilliant — move of the Party toward a wider spread of education and Proletarian Culture, we have accepted the position of ‘Cultural Chief’ to a less enlightened unit, as all institutions of note have done. We are thus responsible for the cultural advancement of our brave brothers of the Baltic Fleet. Such is our modest contribution to the gigantic rise of the new civilization for the new ruling class.”

“Fine,” said Leo. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“I think it is obvious, Comrade Kovalensky. We are organizing a free night school for our protégés. With your knowledge of foreign languages — I had a class of German in mind, twice a week — Germany is the cornerstone of our future diplomacy and the next step of the world revolution — and a class of English, once a week. Of course, you are not to expect any financial remuneration for this work, your services are to be donated, inasmuch as this is not an undertaking of the government, but our strictly voluntary gift to the State.”

“Since the beginning of the revolution,” said Leo, “I haven’t been buying gifts for anyone, neither for my friends — nor otherwise. I can’t afford them.”

“Comrade Kovalensky, did it ever occur to you to consider what we think of men who merely work for their pay and take no part in social activity in their spare time?”

“Did it ever occur to you that I have a life to live — in my spare time?”

The man at the desk looked at the five pictures on his walls. “The Soviet State recognizes no life but that of a social class.”

“I don’t think we shall go into a discussion of the subject.”

“In other words, you refuse to do your share?”

“I do.”

“Very well. This service is not compulsory. Oh, not in the least. Its meaning and novelty is the free will of those participating. I was merely thinking of your own good when I made the offer. I thought, in view of certain events in your past, that you’d be only too glad to.... Never mind. However, I must call to your attention the fact that Comrade Zoubikov of the Communist Cell had been rather unpleasant about a man of your social past on our pay roll. And when he hears about this....”

“When he does,” said Leo, “tell him to come to me. I’ll give him a free lesson — if he cares for the subject.”

Leo came home earlier than usual.

The blue flame of the Primus hissed in the gathering dusk. Kira’s white apron was a white spot bending over the Primus.

Leo threw his cap and brief case on the table. “That’s that,” he said. “I’m out.”

Kira stood holding a spoon. She asked: “You mean ... the Gossizdat?”

“Yes. Fired. Reduction of staffs. Getting rid of the undesirable element. Told me I had a bourgeois attitude. I’m not social-minded.”

“Well ... well, it’s all right. We’ll get along.”

“Of course, it’s all right. Think I care about their damn job? This affects me no more than a change in weather.”

“Certainly. Now take your coat off and wash your hands, and we’ll have dinner.”

“Dinner? What do you have there?”

“Beet soup. You like it.”

“When did I say I liked it? I don’t want any dinner. I’m not hungry. I’m going to the bedroom to study. Please don’t disturb me.”

“I won’t.”

Left alone, Kira took a towel and lifted the cover of the pan and stirred the soup, slowly, deliberately, longer than it required. Then she took a plate from the shelf. As she was carrying it to the table, she saw that the plate was trembling. She stopped and, in the dusk, whispered, addressing herself for the first time in her life, as if speaking to a person she had never met before: “Now, Kira, you don’t. You don’t. You don’t.”

She stood and held the plate over the table and stared down, all her will in her eyes, as if a great issue depended on the plate. Presently the plate stopped trembling.

When he had stood in line for an hour, he smoked a cigarette.

When he had stood for two hours, he began to feel that his legs were numb.

When he had stood for three hours, he felt that the numbness had risen to his throat, and he had to lean against a wall.

When his turn came, the editor looked at Leo and said: “I don’t see how we can use you, citizen. Of course, our publication is strictly artistic. But — Proletarian Art, I may remind you. Strictly class viewpoint. You do not belong to the Party — nor is your social standing suitable, you must agree. I have ten experienced reporters — Party members — on my waiting list.”

She really didn’t have to fry fish in lard, Kira decided. She could use sunflower-seed oil. If she bought good oil it would leave no odor and it was cheaper. She counted the money out carefully over the co-operative counter and walked home, cautiously watching the heavy yellow liquid in a greasy bottle.

The secretary said to Leo: “Sorry you had to wait so long, citizen, but the comrade editor is a very busy man. You can go in now.”

The comrade editor leaned back in his chair; he held a bronze paper knife; the knife tapped the edge of a desk calendar bearing a picture of Lunacharsky, People’s Commissar of Education and Art; the editor’s voice sounded like a knife cutting paper:

“No. No opening. None expected. Plenty of proletarians starving and you bourgeois asking for a job. I’m a proletarian myself. Straight from the work-bench. I’ve been jobless — in the old days. But your bourgeois class brothers had no pity. It’ll do you good to learn how it feels on your own hide.”

“It’s a misunderstanding, citizens. Help interview hours are from nine to eleven, Thursday only.... An hour and a half? Well, how did I know what you were sitting here for? Nobody asked you to sit.”

When he came home in the evenings, he was silent.

Kira served dinner and he sat down at the table and ate. She had given great care to the dinner. He said nothing. He did not look into the steady gray eyes across the table, nor at the lips that smiled gently. He offered no complaint and no consolation.

Sometimes, for many long moments, he stood before the crystal vase on the malachite stand, the one that had not been broken, and looked at it, his eyes expressionless, his hands in his pockets, a cigarette hanging in the corner of his mouth; he stood without moving, without blinking, the smoke alone stirring slowly, swaying. Then he smiled and the cigarette fell to the floor, and burned, smoking, a dark ring widening on the parquet; but he did not notice it; and Kira did not notice it, for her eyes were fixed, wide and frightened, on Leo’s icy, sardonic smile.

“Any past experience, citizen?”

“No.”

“Party member?”

“No.”

“Sorry. No opening. Next.”

It was Monday and the job had been promised to him for Monday. Leo stood before the little wizened office manager and knew that he should smile gratefully. But Leo never smiled when he knew he should. And perhaps it would have been useless. The office manager met him with a worried, apologetic look and avoided his eyes.

“So sorry, citizen. Yes, I promised you this job, but — you see, the big boss’s cousin came from Moscow and she’s unemployed, and.... Unforeseen circumstances, citizen. You know — man proposes and God disposes.... Come again, citizen.”

Kira went to the Institute less frequently.

But when she sat in a long, cold room and listened to lectures about steel, and bolts, and kilowatts, she straightened her shoulders as if a wrench had tightened the wires of her nerves. She looked at the man who sat beside her; at times she wondered whether those words about steel beams and girders were not about his bones and muscles, a man for whom steel had been created, or, perhaps, it was he that had been created for steel, and concrete, and white heat; she had long since forgotten where Andrei Taganov’s life ended and that of engines began.

When he questioned her solicitously, she answered: “Andrei, any circles under my eyes are nothing but your own imagination. And you’ve never been in the habit of thinking about my eyes.”

When Leo sat down at the table, Kira’s smile was a little forced.

“You see, there’s no dinner tonight,” she explained softly. “That is, no real dinner. Just this bread. The co-operative ran out of millet before my turn came. But I got the bread. That’s your portion. And I’ve fried some onions in sunflower-seed oil. They’re very good on the bread.”

“Where’s your portion?”

“I’ve ... eaten it already. Before you came.”

“How much did you get this week?”

“Oh ... well ... they gave us a whole pound, imagine? Instead of the usual half. Nice, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Very. Only I’m not hungry. I’m going to bed.”

The little man next to Leo in line had an uncomfortable laugh, a servile, hissing sound at his palate, that did not reach his throat, as if he repeated mirthlessly the printed letters: “h-ee-h-ee.”

“I see you’re looking at the red handkerchief in my breast pocket, citizen, hee-hee,” he whispered confidentially into Leo’s ear. “I’ll let you in on a secret. It’s no handkerchief at all. See? Just a little silk rag. When you go in, they think at first glance that it’s a Party badge or something, hee-hee. Then they see it ain’t, but still there’s the psychological effect, hee-hee. Helps — if they have an opening for a job.... Go on. Your turn. Lord Jesus Christ! It’s dark outside already. How time flies in lines, citizen. Hee-hee.”

At the University co-operative, the student in line ahead of Leo said aloud to a companion, both wearing Party badges: “Funny, isn’t it? the way some citizens neglect their lectures, but you’re sure to find them in line for food rations.”

Leo said to the clerk behind the counter, trying to make his voice pleading and making it only wooden, expressionless: “Comrade clerk, would you mind if I tear next week’s coupon off, too? I’ll keep it and present it to you for my bread next week. You see, I have ... there’s someone at home and I want to tell her that I got a two weeks’ ration and ate my half on the way home, so that she’ll eat all of this piece.... Thank you, comrade.”

The burly office manager led Leo down a narrow corridor into an empty office with Lenin’s picture on the wall, and closed the door carefully. He had a friendly smile and heavy cheeks.

“More privacy here, citizen. It’s like this, citizen. A job’s a rare thing, nowadays. A very rare thing. Now, a comrade that’s got a responsible position and has jobs to hand out — he’s got something valuable to hand out, hasn’t he? Now then, a comrade that’s got a responsible position isn’t making much of a salary these days. And things are expensive. One’s got to live. A fellow that gets a job has something to be grateful for, hasn’t he? ... Near broke, you say? Well, what do you want here, you bum? Expecting us proletarians to give jobs to every stray bourgeois?”

“English, German and French? Valuable, very valuable, citizen. We do need teachers for classes of languages. Are you a Union member? ... Not any Trade Union? ... Sorry, citizen, we employ only Union members.”

“So you want to join the Union of Pedagogues? Very well, citizen. Where are you working?”

“I’m not working.”

“You cannot join the Union if you’re not working.”

“I can’t get a job if I’m not a Union member.”

“If you have no job, you can’t become a Union member. Next!”

“Half a pound of linseed oil, please. The one that’s not too rancid, please, if you can.... No, I can’t take sunflower-seed oil, it’s too expensive.”

“Kira! What are you doing here in your nightgown?”

He raised his head from the book. A single bulb over the table left shadows in the corners of the drawing room and in the circles under Leo’s eyes. Kira’s white nightgown trembled in the darkness.

“It’s after three ...” she whispered.

“I know it. But I have to study. There’s a draft here. Please go back to bed. You’re trembling.”

“Leo, you’ll wear yourself out.”

“Well, and if I do? That’ll be the end of it, so much the quicker.”

He guessed the look of the eyes he could not see in the darkness. He got up and gathered the trembling white shadow in his arms.

“Kira, of course I don’t mean it.... Just one kiss, if you go back to bed.... Even your lips are cold.... If you don’t go, I’ll carry you back.”

He lifted her in two arms, still strong and firm and warm through her nightgown. He carried her back into the bedroom, his head pressed close to hers, whispering: “Just a few more pages and I’ll be with you. Go to sleep. Good night. Don’t worry.”

“In my duty of Upravdom, Citizen Argounova, I gotta tell you. Laws is laws. The rent’s raised on account of neither of you citizens being a Soviet employee. That puts you in the category of persons living off an income.... How do I know what income? Laws is laws.”

Behind him, men stood in line; men cringing, shrinking, crouching; hollow chests and hunched shoulders; yellow hands clasped and trembling; a few last convulsions in the depths of extinguished souls; eyes staring with a forlorn hopelessness, a dull horror, a crushed plea; a line like that at a stock yard. He stood among them, tall, straight, young, a god’s form with lips that were still proud.

A streetwalker passed by and stopped; and looked, startled, at that man among the others; and winked an invitation. He did not move, only turned his head away.

XIV

A HOUSE COLLAPSED, EARLY ONE afternoon. The front wall crashed, with a shower of bricks, in a white cloud of limey dust. Coming back from work, the inhabitants saw their bedrooms exposed to the cold light of the street, like tiers of stage settings; an upright piano, caught by a naked beam, hung precariously high over the pavement. There were a few weary moans, but no astonishment; houses, long since in need of repair, collapsed without warning all over the city. Old bricks were piled high over the tramway rails and stopped traffic. Leo got a job for two days, clearing the street. He worked, bending and rising, bending and rising, through many hours, a numb ache in his spine, red dust on bleeding fingers stiff and raw in the cold.

The Museum of the Revolution had an exhibition in honor of the visiting delegates of a Swedish Trade Union. Kira got a job lettering cardboard inscriptions. She bent through four long evenings, eyes dull, hands trembling over a ruler, painfully tracing even black letters that said: “WORKERS STARVING IN THE TENEMENTS OF THE CAPITALISTIC EXPLOITERS OF 1910,” “WORKERS EXILED TO SIBERIA BY THE CZARIST GENDARMES OF 1905.”

Snow grew in white drifts in the gutters, under basement windows. Leo shovelled snow for three nights, his breath fluttering in spurts of white vapor, icicles sparkling on the old scarf wound tightly around his neck.

A citizen of no visible means of support, who owned an automobile and a five-room apartment, and who held long, whispered conversations with officials of the Food Trust, decided that his children had to speak French. Kira gave lessons twice a week, dully explaining the “passé imparfait” to two haggard brats who wiped their noses with their fingers, her voice hoarse, her head swimming, her eyes avoiding the buffet where glossy white muffins sparkled with brown, well-buttered crusts.

Leo helped a proletarian student who had an examination to pass. He explained slowly the laws of capital and interest to a sleepy fellow who scratched his knuckles, for he had the itch.

Kira washed dishes two hours a day, bending over a greasy tub that smelt of old fish, in a private restaurant — until it failed.

They disappeared for hours every day and when they came home they never asked each other in what lines they had stood, what streets they had trudged wearily to what doors closed brusquely before them. At night, Kira lighted the “Bourgeoise” and they sat silently, bent over their books. They still had things to study and one goal to remember, if all the others had to be forgotten: to graduate. “It doesn’t matter,” Kira had said. “Nothing matters. We mustn’t think. We mustn’t think at all. We must remember only that we have to be ready and then ... maybe ... maybe we’ll find a way to go abro....” She had not finished. She could not pronounce the word. That word was like a silent, secret wound deep in both of them.

Sometimes they read the newspapers. Comrade Zinoviev, president of the Petrograd Soviet, said: “The world revolution is not a matter of years, comrades, not a matter of months, but a matter of days now. The flame of a Proletarian Uprising will sweep the Earth, wiping out forever the Curse of World Capitalism.”

There was also an interview with Comrade Biriuchin, third stoker on a Red battleship. Comrade Biriuchin said: “Well, and then we gotta keep the machines oiled, and again we gotta look out for rust, seeing as how it’s up to us to watch over the people’s engines, and we being conscientious proletarians, we do our share, on account of we don’t care for no nonsense outside of good, practical work, and again, there’s the foreign bourgeois watching us, and ...”

Sometimes they read the magazines.

“... Masha looked at him coldly.

“ ‘I fear that our ideologies are too far apart. We are born into different social classes. The bourgeois prejudices are too deep-rooted in your consciousness. I am a daughter of the toiling masses. Individual love is a bourgeois prejudice.’

“ ‘Is this the end, Masha?’ he asked hoarsely, a deathly pallor spreading on his handsome, but bourgeois face.

“ ‘Yes, Ivan,’ said she, ‘it is the end. I am the new woman of a new day.’ ”

There was also poetry to read:

“... My heart is a tractor raking the soil,

My soul is smoke from the factory oil....”

Once they went to a motion picture.

It was an American film. In the bright glare of showcases, clusters of shadows stood gazing wistfully at the breath-taking, incredible, foreign stills; big snowflakes crashed into the glass; the eager faces smiled faintly, as if with the same thought, the thought that glass — and more than glass — protected this distant, miraculous world from the hopeless Russian winter.

Kira and Leo waited, jammed in the crowd of the foyer. When a show ended and the doors were opened, the crowd tore forward, knocking aside those who tried to come out, squeezing in through the two narrow doors, painfully, furiously, with a brutal despair, like meat ground through a tight grinder.

The title of the picture shivered in huge white letters:

“THE GOLDEN OCTOPUS” DIRECTED BY REGINALD MOORE CENSORED BY COMRADE M. ZAVADKOV

The picture was puzzling. It trembled and flickered, showing a hazy office where blurred shadows of people jerked convulsively. An English sign on the office wall was misspelled. The office was that of an American Trade Union where a stern comrade entrusted the hero — a blondish, dark-eyed young man — with the recovery of documents of vast importance to the Union, stolen by a capitalist.

“Hell!” whispered Leo. “Do they also make pictures like that in America?”

Suddenly, as if a fog had lifted, the photography cleared. They could see the soft line of lipstick and every hair of the long lashes of a beautiful, smiling leading lady. Men and women in magnificently foreign clothes moved gracefully through a story that made no sense. The subtitles did not match the action. The subtitles clamored in glaring white letters about the suffering of “our American brothers under the capitalistic yoke.” On the screen, gay people laughed happily, danced in sparkling halls, ran down sandy beaches, their hair in the wind, the muscles of their young arms taut, glistening, monstrously healthy. A woman left her room wearing a white dress and emerged on the street in a black suit. The hero had suddenly grown taller, thinner, very blond and blue-eyed. His trim full-dress suit was surprising on a toiling Trade Union member; and the papers he was seeking through the incoherent jumble of events seemed suspiciously close to something like a will for his uncle’s inheritance.

A subtitle said: “I hate you. You are a blood-sucking capitalistic exploiter. Get out of my room!”

On the screen, a man was bending over the hand of a delicate lady, pressing it slowly to his lips, while she looked at him sadly, and gently stroked his hair.

The end of the picture was not shown. It finished abruptly, as if torn off. A subtitle concluded: “Six months later the bloodthirsty capitalist met his death at the hands of striking workers. Our hero renounced the joys of a selfish love into which the bourgeois siren had tried to lure him, and he dedicated his life to the cause of the World Revolution.”

“I know,” said Kira, when they were leaving the theater. “I know what they’ve done! They’ve shot that beginning here, themselves. They’ve cut the picture to pieces!”

An usher who heard her, chuckled.

Sometimes the door bell rang and the Upravdom came in to remind them of the house meeting of all tenants on an urgent matter. He said: “No exceptions, citizens. Social duty comes above all. Every tenant gotta attend the meeting.”

Then Kira and Leo filed into the largest room of the house, a long, bare room with one electric bulb in the ceiling, in the apartment of a street-car conductor who had offered it graciously for the social duty. Tenants came bringing their own chairs and sat chewing sunflower seeds. Those who brought no chairs sat on the floor and chewed sunflower seeds.

“Seeing as how I’m the Upravdom,” said the Upravdom, “I declare this meeting of the tenants of the house Number — on Sergievskaia Street open. On the order of the day is the question as regards the chimneys. Now, comrade citizens, seeing as how we are all responsible citizens and conscious of the proper class consciousness, we gotta understand that this ain’t the old days when we had landlords and didn’t care what happened to the house we lived in. Now this is different, comrades. Owing to the new régime and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and seeing as how the chimneys are clogged, we gotta do something about it, seeing as how we’re the owners of the house. Now if the chimneys are clogged, we’ll have the house full of smoke, and if we have the house full of smoke, it’s sloppy, and if we’re sloppy, that’s not true proletarian discipline. And so, comrade citizens ...”

Housewives fidgeted nervously, sniffing the odor of burning food. A fat man in a red shirt was twiddling his thumbs. A young man with a mouth hanging open, was scratching his head.

“... and the special assessment will be divided in proportion to the.... Is that you, Comrade Kira Argounova, trying to sneak out? Well, you better don’t. You know what we think of people that sabotage their social duties.... And the special assessment will be divided in proportion to the social standing of the tenants. The workers pay three per cent and the Free Professions ten, and the Private Traders and unemployed — the rest. Who’s for — raise your hands.... Comrade secretary, count the citizens’ hands.... Who’s against — raise your hands.... Comrade Michliuk, you can’t raise your hand for and against on the one and same proposition....”

Victor’s visit was unexpected and inexplicable.

He stretched his hands to the “Bourgeoise,” rubbed them energetically, smiled cheerfully at Kira and Leo.

“Just passing by and thought I’d drop in.... It’s a charming place you have here. Irina’s been telling me about it.... She’s fine, thank you.... No, Mother’s not so well. The doctor said there’s nothing he can do if we don’t send her south. And who can think of affording a trip these days? ... Been busy at the Institute. Re-elected to Students’ Council.... Do you read poetry? Just read some verses by a woman. Exquisite delicacy of feeling.... Yes, it’s a lovely place you have here. Pre-revolutionary luxury.... You two are quite the bourgeois, aren’t you. Two huge rooms like these. No trouble with the Domicile Norm? We’ve had two tenants forced upon us last week. One’s a Communist. Father’s just gritting his teeth. Irina has to share her room with Acia, and they fight like dogs.... What can one do? People have to have a roof over their heads.... Yes, Petrograd is an overcrowded city, Petrograd certainly is.”

She came in, a red bandana on her hair, streaks of powder on her nose, a bundle tied in a white sheet in her hand, one black stocking hanging out of the bundle. She asked: “Where’s that drawing room?”

Kira asked, startled: “What do you want, citizen?”

The girl did not answer. She opened the first door she saw, which led to the tenant’s room. She slammed it shut. She opened the other door and walked into the drawing room.

“That’s it,” she said. “You can get your ‘Bourgeoise’ out — and your dishes and other trash. I have my own.”

“What do you want, citizen?” Kira repeated.

“Oh, yes,” said the girl. “Here.”

She handed to Kira a crumpled scrap of paper with a big official stamp. It was an order from the Gilotdel, giving Citizen Marina Lavrova the right to occupy the room known as “drawing room” in apartment Number 22, house Number — on Sergievskaia Street; it requested the present occupants to vacate the room immediately, removing only “personal effects of immediate necessity.”

“Why, it’s impossible!” Kira gasped.

The girl laughed. “Get going, citizen, get going.”

“Listen, you. Get out of here peacefully. You won’t get this room.”

“No? Who’s going to stop me? You?”

She walked to a chair, saw Kira’s apron on it, threw it to the floor and put her bundle on the chair.

Slamming the door behind her, Kira raced up the stairs, three floors up, to the Upravdom’s apartment, and stood panting, knocking at the door ferociously.

The Upravdom opened the door and listened to her story, frowning.

“Order from the Gilotdel?” he said. “That’s funny they didn’t notify me. That’s irregular. I’ll put the citizen in her proper place.”

“Comrade Upravdom, you know very well it’s against the law. Citizen Kovalensky and I are not married. We’re entitled to separate rooms.”

“You sure are.”

Kira had been paid for a month of lessons the day before. She took the little roll of bills from her pocket and, without looking at it, without counting, thrust it all into the Upravdom’s hand.

“Comrade Upravdom, I’m not in the habit of begging for help, but please, oh! please, get her out. It would ... it would simply mean the end for us.”

The Upravdom slipped the bills into his pocket furtively, then looked straight at Kira, openly and innocently, as if nothing had happened. “Don’t you worry, Citizen Argounova. We know our duty. We’ll fix the lady. We’ll throw her out on her behind in the gutter where she belongs.”

He slammed his hat over one ear and followed Kira downstairs.

“Look here, citizen, what’s all this about?” the Upravdom asked sternly.

Citizen Marina Lavrova had taken her coat off and opened her bundle. She wore a tailored white shirt, an old skirt, a necklace of imitation pearls, and slippers with very high heels. She had piled underwear, books and a teapot in a jumble on the table.

“How do you do, Comrade Upravdom?” she smiled pleasantly. “We might as well get acquainted.”

She took a little wallet from her pocket and handed it to him, open, showing a little card. It was a membership card of the Communist Union of Youth — the Komsomol.

“Oh,” said the Upravdom. “Oh.” He turned to Kira: “What do you want, citizen? You have two rooms and you want a toiling girl to be thrown out on the streets? The time is past for bourgeois privileges, citizen. People like you had better watch their step.”

Kira and Leo appealed the case in the People’s Court.

They sat in a bare room that smelt of sweat and of an unswept floor. Lenin and Karl Marx, without frames, bigger than life-size, looked at them from the wall. A cotton strip said: “Proletarians of the wo ...” The rest was not to be seen, for the end of the strip had become untacked and swayed, curled like a snake, in a draft.

The president magistrate yawned and asked Kira: “What’s your social position, citizen?”

“Student.”

“Employed?”

“No.”

“Member of a Trade Union?”

“No.”

The Upravdom testified that although Citizen Argounova and Citizen Kovalensky were not in the state of legal matrimony, their relations were those of “sexual intimacy,” there being only one bed in their rooms, of which, he, the Upravdom, had made certain, and which made them for all purposes “same as married,” and the Domicile Norm allowed but one room to a married couple, as the Comrade Judge well knew; furthermore, “the room known as drawing room” together with their bedroom gave the citizens in question three square feet of living space over the prescribed norm; furthermore, the citizens in question had been, of late, quite irregular about their rent.

“Who was your father, Citizen Argounova?”

“Alexander Argounov.”

“The former textile manufacturer and factory owner?”

“Yes.”

“I see. Who was your father, Citizen Kovalensky?”

“Admiral Kovalensky.”

“Executed for counter-revolutionary activities?”

“Executed — yes.”

“Who was your father, Citizen Lavrova?”

“Factory worker, Comrade Judge. Exiled to Siberia by the Czar in 1913. My mother’s a peasant, from the plow.”

“It is the verdict of the People’s Court that the room in question rightfully belongs to Citizen Lavrova.”

“Is this a court of justice or a musical comedy?” Leo asked.

The presiding magistrate turned to him solemnly: “So-called impartial justice, citizen, is a bourgeois prejudice. This is a court of class justice. It is our official attitude and platform. Next case!”

“Comrade Judge!” Kira appealed. “How about the furniture — our furniture?”

“You can’t pull all that furniture into one room.”

“No, but we could sell it. We’re ... we’re quite hard up.”

“So? You would sell it for profit and a proletarian girl, who didn’t happen to accumulate any furniture, would have to sleep on the floor? ... Next case!”

“Tell me one thing,” Kira asked Citizen Lavrova. “How did you happen to get an order for that particular room of ours? Who told you about it?”

Citizen Lavrova gave an abrupt giggle with a vague stare. “One has friends,” was all she answered.

She had a pale face with a short nose and small, pouting lips that looked chronically discontented. She had light, bluish eyes, cold and suspicious. Her hair curled in vague ringlets on her forehead and she always wore tiny earrings, a brass circle close around the lobe of her ear, with a tiny imitation turquoise. She was not sociable and talked little. But the door bell rang continuously in the hands of visitors to Comrade Lavrova. Her friends called her Marisha.

In Leo’s gray and silver bedroom, a hole was pierced over the black onyx fireplace — for the pipe of the “Bourgeoise.” Two shelves on his wardrobe were emptied for dishes, silverware and food. Bread crumbs rolled down into their underwear and the bed sheets smelt of linseed oil. Leo’s books were stacked on the dresser; Kira’s — under the bed. Leo whistled a fox-trot, arranging his books. Kira did not look at him.

After some hesitation, Marisha surrendered the painting of Leo’s mother, which hung in the drawing room. But she kept the frame; she put a picture of Lenin in it. She also had pictures of Trotsky, Marx, Engels and Rosa Luxemburg; also — a poster representing the Spirit of the Red Air Fleet. She had a gramophone. Late into the night, she played old records, of which her favorite was a song about Napoleon’s defeat in Russia — “It roared, it flamed, the fire of Moscow.” When she was tired of the gramophone, she played the “Dog’s Waltz” on the grand piano.

The bathroom had to be reached through the bedroom. Marisha kept shuffling in and out, wearing a faded, unfastened bathrobe.

“When you have to go through, I wish you’d knock,” Kira told her.

“What for? It’s not your bathroom.”

Marisha was a student of the University Rabfac.

The Rabfacs were special workers’ faculties with an academic program a little less exacting than that of the University, with a program of revolutionary sciences a great deal more exacting, and with an admission on the strictest proletarian basis.

Marisha disliked Kira, but spoke to Leo at times. She flung the door open so that her posters rustled on the walls, and yelled imperiously: “Citizen Kovalensky, can you help me with this damn French history? What century did they burn Martin Luther in? Or was that Germany? Or did they burn him?”

At other times she flung the door open and announced to no one in particular: “I’m going to the Komsomol Club to meeting. If Comrade Rilenko comes, tell him he’ll find me at the Club. But if that louse Mishka Gvozdev comes, tell him I’ve gone to America. You know who he is — the little one with the wart on his nose.”

She came in, a cup in her hand: “Citizen Argounova, can I borrow some lard? Didn’t know I was all out of it.... Nothing but linseed oil? How can you eat that stinking stuff? Well, gimme half a cup.”

Going out at seven in the morning, passing through her room, Leo found Marisha asleep, her head on a table littered with books. Marisha jerked, awakening with a start at the sound of his steps.

“Oh, damnation!” she yawned, stretching. “It’s this paper I have to read at the Marxist Circle tonight, for our less enlightened comrades — on the ‘Social Significance of Electricity as a Historical Factor.’ Citizen Kovalensky, who the hell is Edison?”

Late at night they could hear her coming home. She slammed the door and threw her books on a chair, and they could hear the books scattering over the floor, and her voice intermingled with the deep, adolescent basso of Comrade Rilenko: “Aleshka, pal, be an angel. Light that damn Primus. I’m starving.”

Aleshka’s steps shuffled across the room, and the Primus hissed.

“You’re an angel, Aleshka. Always said you were an angel. I’m tired like a dray-horse. The Rabfac this morning; the Komsomol Club at noon; a committee on day-nurseries in factories at one-thirty; the Marxist Circle at two; demonstration against Illiteracy at three — and do my feet sweat! — lecture on Electrification at four; at seven — editors’ board of the Wall Newspaper — I’m gonna be editor; meeting of the women houseworkers at seven-thirty or something; conference on our comrades in Hungary at.... You can’t say your girl friend ain’t class-minded and socially active, Aleshka, you really can’t say it.”

Aleshka sat at the piano and played, “John Gray.”

Once, in the middle of the night, Kira was awakened by someone slinking furtively into the bathroom. She caught a glimpse of an undressed boy with blond hair. There was no light in Marisha’s room.

One evening, Kira heard a familiar voice behind the door. A man was saying: “Of course, we’re friends. You know we are. Perhaps — perhaps there’s more — on my part — but I do not dare to hope. I’ve proven my devotion to you. You know the favor I’ve done you. Now, do one for me. I want to meet that Party friend of yours.”

Passing through Marisha’s room, on her way out, Kira stopped short. She saw Victor sitting on the davenport, holding Marisha’s hand. He jumped up, his temples reddened.

“Victor! Were you coming to see me or ...” Her voice broke off; she understood.

“Kira, I don’t want you to think that I ...” Victor was saying.

Kira was running out of the room, out of the lobby, down the stairs.

When she told Leo about it, he threatened to break every bone in Victor’s body. She begged him to keep quiet. “If you raise this issue, his father will know. It will break Uncle Vasili and he’s so unhappy as it is. What’s the use? We won’t get the room back.”

In the Institute co-operative, Kira met Comrade Sonia and Pavel Syerov. Comrade Sonia was chewing a crust of bread broken off the loaf she had received, Pavel Syerov looked as trim as a military fashion plate. He smiled effusively: “How are you, Comrade Argounova? We don’t see you so often at the Institute these days.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“We don’t see you with Comrade Taganov any more. You two haven’t quarreled, have you?”

“Why does that interest you?”

“Oh, it’s of no particular interest to me personally.”

“But it does interest us as a Party duty,” Comrade Sonia remarked sternly. “Comrade Taganov is a valuable Party worker. Naturally, we are concerned, for his friendship with a woman of your social origin might hurt his Party standing.”

“Nonsense, Sonia, nonsense,” Pavel Syerov protested with sudden eagerness. “Andrei’s Party standing is too high. Nothing can hurt it. Comrade Argounova doesn’t have to worry and break off a lovely friendship.”

Kira looked at him fixedly and asked: “But his Party standing does worry you because it’s so high, doesn’t it?”

“Why, Comrade Taganov is a very good friend of mine and ...”

“Are you a very good friend of his?”

“A peculiar question, Comrade Argounova.”

“One does hear peculiar things nowadays, doesn’t one? Good day, Comrade Syerov.”

Marisha came in when Kira was alone. Her little pouting mouth was swollen: her eyes were red, swollen with tears. She asked sullenly: “Citizen Argounova, what do you use to keep from having children?”

Kira looked at her, startled.

“I’m afraid I’m in trouble,” Marisha wailed. “It’s that damn louse Aleshka Rilenko. Said I’d be bourgeois if I didn’t let him.... Said he’d be careful. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?”

Kira said she didn’t know.

For three weeks, Kira worked secretly on a new dress. It was only her old dress, but slowly, painfully, awkwardly, she managed to turn it inside out. The blue wool was smooth and silky on the inside; it looked almost fresh. It was to be a surprise for Leo; she worked on it at night when he had gone to bed. She put a candle on the floor and opened the big mirror door of the wardrobe and used it as a screen, crouching on the floor behind it, by the candle. She had never learned how to sew. Her fingers moved slowly, helplessly. She wiped drops of blood on her petticoat, when she pricked her finger with the needle. Her eyes felt as if tiny needles pricked them continuously from behind the lids; and her lids felt so heavy that when she blinked they stayed closed and it took an effort to pull them open to the huge yellow glare of the candle. Somewhere in the darkness, behind the yellow glare, Leo breathed heavily in his sleep.

The dress was ready on the day when she met Vava in the street. Vava was smiling happily, mysteriously once in a while, for no apparent reason, smiling at a secret thought of her own. They walked home together, and Vava could not resist it any longer: “Won’t you come in, Kira?” she begged. “For just a second? I have something to show you. Something — from abroad.”

Vava’s room smelt of perfume and clean linen. A big teddy-bear with a pink bow sat on the white lace cover of her bed.

Vava opened a parcel carefully wrapped in tissue paper. She handled the objects inside with a frightened reverence, with delicate, trembling fingers. The parcel contained two pairs of silk stockings and a black celluloid bracelet.

Kira gasped. She extended her hand. She hesitated. She touched a stocking with her finger tips, caressing it timidly, like the fur of a priceless animal.

“It’s smuggled,” Vava whispered. “A lady — father’s patient — her husband’s in the business — they smuggled it from Riga. And the bracelet — that’s their latest fashion abroad. Imagine? Fake jewelry. Isn’t it fascinating?”

Kira held the bracelet reverently on the palm of her hand; she did not dare to slip it on.

Vava asked suddenly, timidly, without smiling: “Kira, how’s Victor?”

“He’s fine.”

“I ... I haven’t seen him for some time. Well, I know, he’s so busy. I’ve given up all my dates, waiting for him to.... Oh, well, he’s such an active person.... I’m so happy over these stockings. I’ll wear them when ... when he comes. I just had to throw out my last silk pair this morning.”

“You ... threw them out?”

“Why, yes. I think they’re still in the waste basket. They’re ruined. One has a big run in the back.”

“Vava ... could I have them?”

“What? The torn ones? But they’re no good.”

“It’s just ... just for a joke.”

Kira went home, clutching a soft little ball in her pocket. She kept her hand in her pocket. She could not let it go.

When Leo came in, that evening, his hand opened the door and flung his brief case into the room. The brief case opened, spilling the books over the floor. Then he came in.

He did not take his coat off; he walked straight to the “Bourgeoise” and stood, his blue hands extended to the fire, rubbing them furiously. Then he took his coat off and threw it across the room at a chair; it missed the chair and fell to the floor; he didn’t pick it up. Then he asked: “Anything to eat?”

Kira stood facing him, silent, motionless in the splendor of her new dress and carefully mended real silk stockings. She said softly: “Yes. Sit down. Everything’s ready.”

He sat down. He had looked at her several times. He had not noticed. It was the same old blue dress; but she had trimmed it carefully with bands and buttons of black oilcloth which looked almost like patent leather. When she served the millet and he dipped his spoon hungrily into the steaming yellow mush, she stood by the table and, raising her skirt a little, swung her leg forward into the circle of light, watching happily the shimmering, tight silk. She said timidly: “Leo, look.”

He looked and asked curtly: “Where did you get them?”

“I ... Vava gave them to me. They ... they were torn.”

“I wouldn’t wear other people’s discarded junk.”

He did not mention the new dress. She did not call it to his attention. They ate silently.

Marisha had had an abortion. She moaned, behind the closed door. She shuffled heavily across the room, cursing aloud the midwife who did not know her business.

“Citizen Lavrova, will you please clean the bathroom? There’s blood all over the floor.”

“Leave me alone. I’m sick. Clean it yourself, if you’re so damn bourgeois about your bathroom.”

Marisha slammed the door, then opened it again, cautiously: “Citizen Argounova, you won’t tell your cousin on me, will you? He doesn’t know about ... my trouble. He’s — a gentleman.”

Leo came home at dawn. He had worked all night. He had worked in caissons for a bridge under construction, deep on the bottom of a river on the point of freezing.

Kira had waited for him. She had kept a fire in the “Bourgeoise.”

He came in, oil and mud on his coat, oil and sweat on his face, oil and blood on his hands. He swayed a little and held onto the door. A strand of hair was glued across his forehead.

He went into the bathroom. He came out, asking: “Kira, do I have any clean underwear?”

He was naked. His hands were swollen. His head drooped to one shoulder. His eyelids were blue.

His body was white as marble and as hard and straight; the body of a god, she thought, that should climb a mountainside at dawn, young grass under his feet, a morning mist on his muscles in a breath of homage.

The “Bourgeoise” was smoking. An acrid fog hung under the electric bulb. The gray rug under his feet smelt of kerosene. Black drops of soot fell slowly, with a soft thud, from a joint of the stove pipes to the gray rug.

Kira stood before him. She could say nothing. She took his hand and raised it to her lips.

He swayed a little. He threw his head back and coughed.

Leo was late. He had been detained at a University lecture. Kira waited, the Primus hissing feebly, keeping his dinner hot.

The telephone rang. She heard a child’s voice, trembling, panicky, gulping tears between words: “Is that you, Kira? ... It’s Acia ... Kira, please come over immediately, right away.... I’m scared.... There’s something wrong.... I think it’s Mother.... There’s no one home but Father — and he won’t call, and he won’t speak, and I’m scared.... There’s nothing to eat in the house.... Please, Kira, I’m so scared.... Please come over. Please, Kira....”

With all the money she had, Kira bought a bottle of milk and two pounds of bread in a private store, on her way over.

Acia opened the door. Her eyes were slits in a purple, swollen face. She grabbed Kira’s skirt and sobbed dully, convulsively, her shoulders shaking, her nose buried in Kira’s hem.

“Acia! What happened? Where’s Irina? Where’s Victor?”

“Victor’s not home. Irina’s gone for the doctor. I called a tenant and he said to get the hell out. I’m scared....”

Vasili Ivanovitch sat by his wife’s bed. His hands hung limply between his knees and he did not move. Maria Petrovna’s hair was spilled over the white pillow. She breathed, hissing, the white coverlet rising and falling jerkily. On the white coverlet there was a wide, dark stain.

Kira stood helplessly, clutching the milk bottle in one hand, the bread in the other. Vasili Ivanovitch raised his head slowly and looked at her.

“Kira ...” he said indifferently. “... Milk.... Would you mind heating it? ... It might help....”

Kira found the Primus. She heated the milk. She held a cup to the trembling blue lips. Maria Petrovna swallowed twice and pushed the cup away.

“Hemorrhage ...” said Vasili Ivanovitch. “Irina’s gone for the doctor. He has no phone. No other doctor will come. I have no money. The hospital won’t send anyone — we’re not Trade Union members.”

A candle burned on the table. Through a sickly, yellow haze, a dusty fog more than a light, three tall, bare, curtainless windows stared like black gashes. A white pitcher lay upturned on a table, slowly dripping a few last drops into a dark puddle on the floor. A yellow circle shivered on the ceiling, over the candle, and a yellow glow shivered on Maria Petrovna’s hands, as if her skin were trembling.

Maria Petrovna whined softly: “I’m all right ... I’m all right ... I know I’m all right.... Vasili just wants to frighten me.... No one can say I’m not all right.... I want to live ... I’ll live.... Who said I won’t live?”

“Of course, you will, Aunt Marussia. You’re all right. Just lie still. Relax.”

“Kira, where’s my nail buffer? Find my nail buffer. Irina’s lost it again. I told her not to touch it. Where’s my nail buffer?”

Kira opened a drawer in search of the buffer. A sound stopped her. It was like pebbles rolling on a hard floor, like water gurgling through a clogged pipe and like an animal howling. Maria Petrovna was coughing. A dark froth ran down her white chin.

“Ice, Kira!” Vasili Ivanovitch cried. “Have we any ice?”

She ran, stumbling, down a dark corridor, to the kitchen. A thick coating of ice was frozen over the edge of the sink. She broke some off with the sharp, rusty blade of an old knife, cutting her hands. She came back, running, water dripping from the ice between her fingers.

Maria Petrovna howled, coughing: “Help me! Help me! Help me!”

They rolled the ice into a towel and put it on her chest. Red stains spread on her nightgown.

Suddenly she jerked herself up. The ice rolled, clattering, to the floor. A long pink strand of froth hung on her lower lip. Her eyes were wide with a horror beyond all human dignity. She was staring at Kira. She screamed:

“Kira! I want to live! I want to live!”

She fell back. Her hair jerked like snakes on the pillow and lay still. Her arm fell over the edge of the bed and lay still. A red bubble grew over her open mouth and burst in a spurt of something black and heavy, gurgling like the last drop through the clogged pipe. She did not move. Nothing moved on the bed but the black that slithered slowly down the skin of her throat.

Kira stood still.

Someone seized her hand. Vasili Ivanovitch buried his face in her hip and sobbed. He sobbed without a sound. She saw the gray hair shaking on his neck.

Behind a chair in a corner, Acia crouched on the floor and whined softly, monotonously.

Kira did not cry.

When she came home, Leo was sitting by the Primus, heating her dinner. He was coughing.

They sat at a small table in a dark corner of the restaurant. Kira had met Andrei at the Institute and he had invited her for a cup of tea with “real French pastry.” The restaurant was almost empty. From the sidewalk outside, a few faces stared through the window, dull, incredulous faces watching those who could afford to sit in a restaurant. At a table in the center, a man in a huge fur coat was holding a dish of pastry for a smiling woman who hesitated in her choice, her fingers fluttering over the glistening chocolate frostings, a diamond glistening on her finger. The restaurant smelt of old rubber and stale fish. A long, sticky paper tube dangled from the central chandelier, brown with glue, black-dotted with dead flies. The tube swayed every time the kitchen door was opened. Over the kitchen door hung a picture of Lenin trimmed with bows of red crêpe paper.

“Kira, I almost broke my word. I was going to call on you. I was worried. I still am. You look so ... pale. Anything wrong, Kira?”

“Some ... trouble ... at home.”

“I had tickets for the ballet — ‘Swan Lake.’ I waited for you, but you missed all your lectures.”

“I’m sorry. Was it beautiful?”

“I didn’t go.”

“Andrei, I think Pavel Syerov is trying to make trouble for you in the Party.”

“He probably is. I don’t like Pavel Syerov. While the Party is fighting speculators, he patronizes them. He’s been known to buy a foreign sweater from a smuggler.”

“Andrei, why doesn’t your Party believe in the right to live while one is not killed?”

“Do you mean Syerov or — yourself?”

“Myself.”

“In our fight, Kira, there is no neutrality.”

“You may claim the right to kill, as all fighters do. But no one before you has ever thought of forbidding life to those still living.”

She looked at the pitiless face before her; she saw two dark triangles in the sunken cheeks; the muscles of his face were taut. He was saying: “When one can stand any suffering, one can also see others suffer. This is martial law. Our time is dawn. There is a new sun rising, such as the world has never seen before. We are in the path of its first rays. Every pain, every cry of ours will be carried by these rays, as on a gigantic radius, down the centuries; every little figure will grow into an enormous shadow that will wipe out decades of future sorrow for every minute of ours.”

The waiter brought the tea and pastry.

There was a convulsive little jerk in Kira’s fingers as she raised a piece of pastry to her mouth, an involuntary, frightened hurry which was not mere greed for a rare delicacy.

“Kira!” Andrei gasped and dropped his fork. “Kira!”

She stared at him, frightened.

“Kira! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Andrei ... I don’t know what you’re talking ab ...” she tried to say, but knew what he had guessed.

“Wait! Don’t eat that. Waiter! A bowl of hot soup right away. Then — dinner. Everything you have. Hurry! ... Kira, I didn’t know ... I didn’t know it was that bad.”

She smiled feebly, helplessly: “I tried to find work....”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I know you don’t believe in using Party influence to help friends.”

“Oh, but this ... Kira ... this!” It was the first time she had ever seen him frightened. He jumped up: “Excuse me a moment.”

He strode across the room to a telephone. She could hear splinters of conversation: “Comrade Voronov. Urgent.... Andrei Taganov.... Conference? Interrupt it! ... Comrade Voronov? ... who has to be ... immediately.... Yes ... I don’t care. Make one.... Yes ... No ... No! ... Tomorrow morning.... Yes.... Thank you, comrade. Good-bye.”

Andrei came back to the table. He smiled down at her startled, incredulous face. “Well, you go to work tomorrow. In the office of the ‘House of the Peasant. ’ It’s not very much of a job, but it’s one I could get for you right away — and it won’t be hard. Be there at nine. Ask for Comrade Voronov. He’ll know who you are. And — here.” He opened his wallet and, emptying it, pressed a roll of bills into her hand.

“Oh, Andrei! I can’t!”

“Well, maybe you can’t — for yourself. But you can — for someone else. Isn’t there someone at home who needs it — your family?”

She thought of someone at home who needed it. She took the money.

XV

WHEN KIRA SLEPT, HER HEAD FELL BACK on the pillow, so that the faint starlight outside made a white triangle under her chin. Her lashes lay still on pale, calm cheeks. Her lips breathed softly, half open, like a child’s, with the hint of a smile in the corners, trusting and expectant, timid and radiantly young.

The alarm clock rang at six-thirty A.M. It had been ringing at six-thirty A.M. for the last two months.

Her first movement of the day was a convulsive leap into an icy precipice. She seized the alarm clock after its first hysterical shriek and turned it off — to let Leo sleep; then stood swaying, shivering, the sound of the alarm still ringing in her ears like an insult, a dark hatred in her body, a cry rising in every muscle like the pain of a great illness, calling her back into bed, her head too heavy for her body, the cold floor like fire under her bare feet.

Then she staggered blindly, groping in the darkness, into the bathroom. Her eyes wouldn’t open. She reached for the bathtub faucet; it had been running slowly, gurgling in the darkness, all night; it had to be left running or the pipes would freeze. Eyes closed, she slapped cold water over her face with one hand; with the other, she leaned unsteadily on the edge of the bathtub, to keep from falling forward head first.

Then her eyes opened and she pulled her nightgown off, steam rising from her wet arms in the frozen air, while she tried to smile, her teeth chattering, telling herself that she was awake now and the worst was over.

She dressed and slipped back into the bedroom. She did not turn on the light. She could see the black silhouette of the Primus on the table against the dark blue of the window. She struck a match, her body shielding the bed from the little flare of light. She pumped the handle nervously. The Primus wouldn’t light. The clock ticked in the darkness, the precious fleeting seconds hurrying her on. She pumped furiously, biting her lips. The blue flame sprang up at last. She put a pan of water over the flame.

She drank tea with saccharine and chewed slowly a piece of dry bread. The window before her was frozen into a solid pattern of white ferns that sparkled softly; beyond the window it was still night. She sat huddled by the table, afraid to move, trying to chew without a sound. Leo slept restlessly. He turned uneasily; he coughed, a dry, choking cough smothered by the pillow; he sighed once in a while in his sleep, a raucous sigh that was almost a moan.

She pulled on her felt boots, her winter coat, wound an old scarf around her throat. She tiptoed to the door, threw a last glance at the pale blue in the darkness that was Leo’s face, and brushed her lips with her finger tips in a soundless kiss. Then she opened the door very slowly and as slowly closed it again behind her.

The snow was still blue outside. Above the roofs, the blue darkness receded in circles, so that far away down the sky one could guess a paler blue if one looked hard. Somewhere beyond the houses, a tramway shrieked like an early bird of prey.

Kira bent forward, gathered her hands into her armpits, in a tight, shivering huddle against the wind. The cold caught her breath with a sharp pain in her nostrils. She ran, slipping on the frozen sidewalks, toward the distant tramway.

A line waited for the tramway. She stood, bent to the wind and silent as the others. When the tramway came, yellow squares of light in space, shaking toward them through the darkness, the line broke. There was a swift whirlpool at the narrow door, a rustle of crushed bodies; the yellow squares of lighted windows filled speedily with shadows pressed tightly together, and Kira was left outside as the bell rang and the tramway tore forward. There was half an hour to wait for the next one; she would be late; if she were late, she would be fired; she ran after the tramway, leaped, caught a brass handle; but there was no room on the steps; her feet were dragged down the frozen ground as the tramway gained speed; someone’s strong arm seized her shoulder blade and pulled her up; her one foot found space on the steps; a hoarse voice roared into her ear: “You — insane, citizen? That’s how so many get killed!”

She hung in a cluster of men on the tramway steps, holding on with one hand and one foot, watching the streaked snow speed by on the ground, pressing herself with all her strength into the cluster of bodies, when a passing truck came too close and threatened to grind her off the tramway steps.

The “House of the Peasant” occupied someone’s former mansion. It had a stairway of pale pink marble with a bronze balustrade, lighted by a huge stained-glass window where purple grapes and pink peaches rolled out of golden cornucopias. A sign was posted over the stairs: COMRADES! DO NOT SPIT ON THE FLOOR.

There were other signs: a huge sickle and hammer of gilded papier-mâché, a poster with a peasant woman and a sheaf of wheat, more posters of sheafs, golden sheafs, green sheafs, red sheafs, a picture of Lenin, a peasant grinding under foot a spider with the head of a priest, a picture of Trotsky, a peasant and a red tractor, a picture of Karl Marx, “Proletarians of the World, Unite!” “Who does not toil, shall not eat!” “Long live the reign of workers and poor peasants!” “Comrade peasants, crush the hoarders in your midst!”

A new movement had been started in a blare of newspapers and posters for “a closer understanding between workers and peasants, a wider spread of city ideas through the country,” a movement called “The Clamping of City and Village.” The “House of the Peasant” was dedicated to such clamping. There were posters of workers and peasants shaking hands, of a worker and a peasant woman, also of a peasant and a working woman, of work bench and plow, of smokestacks and wheat fields, “Our future lies in the Clamping of City and Village!,” “Comrades, strengthen the Clamping!,” “Comrades, do your share for the Clamping!,” “Comrades, what have you done for the Clamping?”

The posters rose like foam from the entrance door, up the stairway, to the office. In the office there were carved marble columns and partitions of unpainted wood; also — desks, files, pictures of proletarian leaders and a typewriter; also — Comrade Bitiuk, the office manager, and five office workers, among them Kira Argounova.

Comrade Bitiuk was a tall woman, thin, gray-haired, military and in strict sympathy with the Soviet Government; her chief aim in life was to give constant evidence of how strict that sympathy was, even though she had graduated from a women’s college and wore on her breast an old-fashioned watch on a bow of burnished silver.

Her four office workers were: a tall girl with a long nose and a leather jacket, who was a Party member and could make Comrade Bitiuk shudder at her slightest whim, and knew it; a young man with a bad complexion, who was not a Party member yet, but had made an application and was a candidate, and never missed a chance to mention it; and two young girls who worked merely because they needed the wages: Nina and Tina. Nina wore earrings and answered the telephone; Tina powdered her nose and ran the typewriter. A habit which had sprung from nowhere and spread over the country, which even Party members could not check or resist, for which no one was responsible nor could be punished, referred to all products of local inefficiency as “Soviet”; there were “Soviet matches” that did not light, “Soviet kerchiefs” that tore the first time worn, “Soviet shoes” with cardboard soles. Young women like Nina and Tina were called “Soviet girls.”

There were many floors and many offices in the “House of the Peasant.” Many feet hurried up and down its many corridors in a steady drone of activity. Kira never learned just what that activity was, nor who worked in the building, besides those in her office and the imposing Comrade Voronov whom she had seen once on her first day in the “House of the Peasant.”

As Comrade Bitiuk reminded them constantly, the “House of the Peasant” was “the heart of a gigantic net whose veins poured the beneficial light of the new Proletarian Culture into the darkest corners of our farthest villages.” It represented the hospitable arms of the city open wide in welcome to all peasant delegations, all comrades from the villages who came to the city. It stood there as their guide and teacher, as the devoted servant of their cultural and spiritual needs.

From her desk, Kira watched Comrade Bitiuk gushing into the telephone: “Yes, yes, comrade, it’s all arranged. At one o’clock the comrade peasants of the Siberian delegation go to the Museum of the Revolution — the history of our Revolutionary movement from its first days — an easy, visualized course in Proletarian history — within two hours — very valuable — and we have made arrangements for a special guide. At three o’clock the comrade peasants go to our Marxist Club where we have arranged a special lecture on the ‘Problems of the Soviet City and Village.’ At five o’clock the comrade peasants are expected at a club of the Pioneers where the children have called a special meeting in their honor — there will be a display of physical culture drills by the dear little tots. At seven o’clock the comrade peasants go to the opera — we have reserved two boxes at the Marinsky Theater — where they will hear ‘Aïda.’ ”

When Comrade Bitiuk hung up the receiver, she whirled around in her chair, snapping a military command: “Comrade Argounova! Do you have the requisition for the special lecturer?”

“No, Comrade Bitiuk.”

“Comrade Ivanova! Have you typed that requisition?!”

“What requisition, Comrade Bit ... ?”

“The requisition for the special lecturer for the delegation of the comrade peasants from Siberia!”

“But you didn’t tell me to type any requisitions, Comrade Bitiu ...”

“I wrote it myself and put it on your desk.”

“Oh, yes, sure, oh, that’s what it was for? Oh, well, I saw it, but I didn’t know I was to type it, Comrade Bitiuk. And my typewriter ribbon is torn.”

“Comrade Argounova, do you have the approved requisition for a new typewriter ribbon for Comrade Ivanova’s typewriter?”

“No, Comrade Bitiuk.”

“Where is it?”

“In Comrade Voronov’s office.”

“What is it doing there?”

“Comrade Voronov hasn’t signed it yet.”

“Have the others signed?”

“Yes, Comrade Bitiuk. Comrade Semenov has signed it, and Comrade Vlassova, and Comrade Pereverstov. But Comrade Voronov has not returned it yet.”

“Some people do not realize the tremendous cultural importance of the work we’re doing!” Comrade Bitiuk raged, but noticing the cold, suspicious stare of the girl in the leather jacket, who heard this criticism of a higher official, she hastened to correct herself. “I meant you, Comrade Argounova. You do not show sufficient interest in your work nor any proletarian consciousness. It’s up to you to see that this requisition is signed.”

“Yes, Comrade Bitiuk.”

Through the hours, thin and pale in her faded dress, Kira filed documents, typewritten documents, certificates, reports, accounts, requisitions that had to be filed where no one ever looked at them again; she counted books, columns of books, mountains of books, fresh from the printers, ink staining her fingers, books in red and white paper covers to be sent to Peasant Clubs all over the country: “What you can do for the Clamping,” “The Red Peasant,” “The work-bench and the plow,” “The ABC of Communism,” “Comrade Lenin and Comrade Marx.” There were many telephone calls; there were many people coming in and going out, to be called “comrades” and “citizens”; there were many times to repeat mechanically, like a well-wound gramophone, imitating Comrade Bitiuk’s enthusiastic inflations: “Thus, comrade, you will be doing your share for the Clamping,” and “The cultural progress of the Proletariat, comrade, requires that ...”

Sometimes a comrade peasant came into the office in person. He stood behind the low, unpainted partition, timidly crumpling his fur cap in one hand, scratching his head with the other. He nodded slowly, his bewildered eyes staring at Kira without comprehension, as she told him: “... and we have arranged an excursion for the comrades of your delegation through the Winter Palace where you can see how the Czar lived — an easy, visualized lesson in class tyranny — and then ...”

The peasant mumbled in his blond beard: “Now, about that grain shortage matter, comrade....”

“Then, after the excursion, we have a special lecture arranged for you on ‘The Doom of Capitalism.’ ”

When the comrade peasant left, Nina or Tina snooped cautiously around the place where he had stood, inspecting the wooden railing. Once, Kira saw Nina cracking something on her thumb nail.

This morning, on her way up to the office, Kira stopped on the stair landing and looked at the Wall Newspaper. The “House of the Peasant,” like all institutions, had a Wall Newspaper written by the employees, edited by the local Communist Cell, pasted in a prominent spot for all comrades to read; the Wall Newspapers were to “stimulate the social spirit and the consciousness of collective activity”; they were devoted to “local news of social importance and constructive proletarian criticism.”

The Wall Newspaper of the “House of the Peasant” was a square meter of typewritten strips pasted on a blackboard with headlines in red and blue pencil. There was a prominent editorial on “What each one of us comrades here does for the Clamping,” there was a humorous article on “How we’ll puncture the foreign Imperialist’s belly,” there was a poem by a local poet about “The Rhythm of Toil,” there was a cartoon by a local artist, representing a fat man in a high silk hat sitting on a toilet. There were many items of constructive proletarian criticism:

“Comrade Nadia Chernova is wearing silk stockings. Time to be reminded that such flaunting of luxury is unproletarian, Comrade Chernova.”

“A certain comrade in a high position has lately allowed his position to go to his head. He has been known to be curt and rude to young members of the Komsomol. This is a warning, comrade * * * Many a better head has been known to fall when the time came for a reduction of staffs.”

“Comrade E. Ovsov indulges in too much talk when asked about business. This leads to a waste of valuable time and is not at all in the spirit of proletarian efficiency.”

“A certain comrade whom many will recognize, neglects to turn off the light when leaving the rest-room. Electricity costs money to the Soviet State, comrade.”

“We hear that Comrade Kira Argounova is lacking in social spirit. The time is past, Comrade Argounova, for arrogant bourgeois attitudes.”

She stood very still and heard her heart beating. No one dared to ignore the mighty pointing finger of the Wall Newspaper. All watched it carefully and a little nervously, all bowed reverently to its verdict, from Nina and Tina up to Comrade Voronov himself. The Wall Newspaper was the voice of Social Activity. No one could save those branded as “anti-social element,” not even Andrei Taganov. There had been talk of a reduction of staffs. Kira felt cold. She thought that Leo had had nothing but millet for dinner the night before. She thought of Leo’s cough.

At her desk, she watched the others in the room, wondering who had reported her to the Wall Newspaper, who and why. She had been so very careful. She had never uttered a word of criticism against the Soviets. She had been as loyally enthusiastic in her work as Comrade Bitiuk herself, or as nearly as she could imitate her. She had been careful never to argue, nor to answer sharply, nor to make an enemy of anyone. Her fingers counting rapidly volumes of the works of Karl Marx, she asked herself helplessly, desperately: “Am I still different? Am I different from them? How do they know I’m different? What have I done? What is it I haven’t done?”

When Comrade Bitiuk left the office, which happened frequently, work stopped. The staff congregated around Tina’s typewriter. There were eager whispered conferences about the co-operative that gave the loveliest printed calico that made the loveliest blouses, about the Nepman’s stand in the market that sold cotton stockings “so thin it’s just like silk,” and about lovers, particularly Tina’s lovers. Tina was considered the prettiest in the office, and the most successful with men. No one had ever seen her little nose without its whitish coat of powder; there was a strong suspicion in the office that she blackened her eyelashes; and several different masculine figures had been seen waiting to take her home after work. The girl with the leather jacket, being a Party member, was the undisputed leader and final authority in all their discussions; but in matters of romance, she conceded first rank to Tina. She listened with a superior, condescending smile that did not hide her eager curiosity, while Tina whispered breathlessly:

“... And Mishka rang the bell and here was Ivashka in his underdrawers and I hear Elena Maximovna — that’s the tenant in the next room — I hear Elena Maximovna say: ‘A guest for you, Tina,’ and before I know it, here’s Mishka walking right in and Ivashka in his underdrawers — and you should’ve seen Mishka’s face, honest, it was better than a comedy show — and I think quick and I say: ‘Mishka dear, this is Ivan, the neighbor, he lives with Elena Maximovna and he wasn’t feeling well, so he came in for an aspirin tablet,’ and you should’ve seen Ivashka’s face, and Elena Maximovna she says: ‘Sure, he lives with me. Come on back to my room, darling.’ And do you think that louse Ivashka refused?”

The young man who was a Party candidate did not join these conversations, but stayed modestly at his desk, listening intently and remarking once in a while: “You comrades women! I bet you say things that a serious citizen who is a Party candidate shouldn’t even hear.”

They giggled, flattered, and rewarded him with friendly glances.

Kira stayed at her desk and went on with her work, and did not listen. She never talked to anyone outside of business matters. If any glances were thrown at her occasionally, they were not friendly.

She wondered with a cold feeling of panic whether that was what they resented, whether that was her arrogant bourgeois attitude. She needed this job. Leo needed this job. She had made up her mind to keep it. She would keep it.

She rose and walked casually to Tina’s desk. The little group noticed her presence by a few cold, astonished glances and went on with their whispers.

She waited for a pause and said suddenly, irrelevantly, forcing all of the artificial enthusiasm she had learned into her flat, unsteady voice: “Funny thing happened last night. My boy friend — he quarreled with me because ... because he had seen me coming home with another man ... and he ... he bawled me out terribly ... and I told him it was an old-fashioned bourgeois attitude of proprietorship, but he ... well ... he quarreled with me....”

She felt her blouse sticking to the cold spot between her shoulder blades. She tried to make her voice as gaily flippant as Tina’s. She tried to believe the story she was inventing; it was strange to think of the fantastic boy friend offered to those prying, hostile eyes, and of the Leo whom Irina had drawn naked as a god.

“... and he bawled me out terribly....”

“Uh-huh,” said Nina.

The girl in the leather jacket said nothing.

“In the Kouznetzky market,” said Tina, “I’ve seen them selling lipstick, the new Soviet lipstick of the Cosmetic Trust. Cheap, too. Only they say it’s dangerous to use it. It’s made from horse fat and the horses died of glanders.”

At twelve-thirty the office closed for lunch. At twelve-twenty-five, Comrade Bitiuk said: “I shall remind you once more, comrades, that at one-thirty, instead of reporting back to the office, you are to report at the Smolny Institute to take part in the demonstration of all the workers of Petrograd in honor of the delegation of the British Trade Unions. The office will be closed this afternoon.”

Kira spent her lunch hour standing in line at the co-operative to get bread on her employee’s ration card. She stood motionless, in a blank stupor; a movement or a thought seemed too far away, far in a world where she did not belong any longer. The locks of hair under her old hat were white with frost. She thought that somewhere beyond all these many things which did not count, was her life and Leo. She closed her eyes for one swift second of rest with nothing but his name. Then she opened her eyes and watched dully, through lids heavy with white-frosted lashes, puffy sparrows picking horse dung in the snow.

She had brought her lunch with her — a piece of dried fish wrapped in paper. She ate it, because she knew she had to eat. When she got the bread — a two-pound brown square that was still fresh — she smelled its comforting, warm odor and chewed slowly a piece of crust; the rest, tucked firmly under her arm, was for Leo.

She ran after a tramway and leaped on just in time for the long ride to the Smolny Institute at the other end of the city, for the demonstration of all the workers of Petrograd in honor of the delegation of the British Trade Unions.

Nevsky looked as if it were a solid spread of heads motionless on a huge belt that rolled slowly, carrying them forward. It looked as if red banners, swollen like sails between two poles, were swimming slowly over motionless heads, the same heads of khaki caps, fur caps, red kerchiefs, hats, khaki caps, red kerchiefs. A dull beating filled the street from wall to wall, up to the roofs, the crunching, creaking, drumming roll of many feet against frozen cobblestones.

Tramways stopped and trucks waited on corners to let the demonstration pass. A few heads appeared at windows, stared indifferently at the heads below and disappeared again: Petrograd was used to demonstrations.

WE, TOILERS OF PETROGRAD, GREET OUR BRITISH CLASS BROTHERS! WELCOME TO THE LAND OF THE SOVIETS WHERE LABOR IS FREE!

THE WOMEN OF THE STATE TEXTILE PLANT NUMBER 2 PLEDGE THEIR SUPPORT TO ENGLAND’S PROLETARIAT IN ITS STRUGGLE WITH IMPERIALISTS

Kira marched between Nina and Comrade Bitiuk. Comrade Bitiuk had changed her hat to a red kerchief for the occasion. Kira marched steadily, shoulders thrown back, head high. She had to march here to keep her job; she had to keep her job for Leo; she was not a traitor, she was marching for Leo — even though the banner above her, carried by Tina and the Party candidates, said:

WE, SOVIET PEASANTS, STAND AS ONE FOR OUR BRITISH CLASS BROTHERS!

Kira could not feel her feet any longer; but she knew that she was walking, for she was moving ahead like the others. Her hands felt as if her mittens were filled with boiling water. She had to walk. She was walking.

Somewhere in the long snake that uncoiled slowly down Nevsky, someone’s hoarse, loud voice began to sing the “Internationale.” Others joined. It rolled in raucous, discordant waves down the long column of weary throats choked by frost.

On the Palace Square, now called Square of Uritzki, a wooden amphitheater had been erected. Against the red walls and mirror-like windows of the Winter Palace, on the wooden stand draped in red bunting, stood the delegation of the British Trade Unions. The workers of Petrograd slowly marched past. The British class brothers stood, a little stiff, a little embarrassed, a little bewildered.

Kira’s eyes saw but one person: the woman delegate of the British Trade Unions. She was tall, thin, not young, with the worried face of a school teacher. But she wore a tan sports coat and that coat yelled louder than the hurrahs of the crowd, louder than the “Internationale,” that it was foreign. With firm, pressed folds of rich material, trim, well-fitted, serene, that coat did not moan, like all those others around Kira, of the misery of the muscles underneath. The British comrade wore silk stockings; a rich, brownish sheen, tight on feet in trim, new, well-polished brown shoes.

And suddenly Kira wanted to scream and to hurl herself at the stand, and to grab these thin, glittering legs and hang on with her teeth as to an anchor, and be carried away with them into their world which was possible somewhere, which was now here, close, within hearing of a cry for help.

But she only swayed a little and closed her eyes.

The demonstration stopped. It stood, knocking heels together to keep warm, listening to speeches. There were many speeches. The comrade woman of the British Trade Unions spoke. A hoarse interpreter bellowed her words into the Square red and khaki with heads packed tightly together.

“This is a thrilling sight. We were sent here by England’s workers to see for ourselves and to tell the world the truth about the great experiment you are conducting. We shall tell them that we saw the great masses of Russian toilers in a free and magnificent expression of loyalty to the Soviet Government.”

For one insane second, Kira wondered if she could tear through the crowd, rush up to that woman and yell to her, to England’s workers, to the world, the truth they were seeking. But she thought of Leo at home, marble pale, coughing. It was Leo against the truth to a world which would not listen. Leo won.

At five P.M. a glittering limousine whisked the delegates away and the demonstration broke up. It was growing dark. Kira had time for a lecture at the Institute.

The cold, badly lighted auditoriums were a tonic to her, with the charts, drafts and prints on the walls, showing beams and girders and cross sections that looked precise, impersonal and unsullied. For a short hour, even though her stomach throbbed with hunger, she could remember that she was to be a builder who would build aluminum bridges and towers of steel and glass; and that there was a future.

After the lecture, hurrying out through dim corridors, she met Comrade Sonia.

“Ah, Comrade Argounova,” said Comrade Sonia. “We haven’t seen you for a long time. Not so active in your studies any more, are you? And as to social activity — why, you’re the most privately individualistic student we’ve got.”

“I ...” Kira began.

“None of my business, Comrade Argounova, I know, none of my business. I was just thinking of things one hears nowadays about things the Party may do about students who are not social-minded. Don’t give it a thought.”

“I ... you see ...” Kira knew it wiser to explain. “I’m working and I’m very active socially in our Marxist Club.”

“So? You are, are you? We know you bourgeois. All you’re active for is to keep your measly jobs. You’re not fooling anyone.”

When Kira entered the room, Marisha jumped up like a spring unwinding: “Citizen Argounova! You keep your damn cat in your own room or I’ll wring her neck!”

“My cat? What cat? I have no cat.”

“Well, who’s done this? Your boy friend?” Marisha was pointing to a puddle in the middle of her room. “And what’s that? An elephant?” She raged as a meow and a pair of gray, furry ears emerged from under a chair.

“It’s not my cat,” said Kira.

“Where’s she come from, then?”

“How do I know?”

“You never know anything!”

Kira did not answer and went to her room. She heard Marisha in the little hall off the lobby, pounding at the partition that separated them from the other tenants. She heard her yelling: “Hey, you there! Your God-damn cat’s torn a board loose and here she is, crapping all over the place! You take her away or I’ll gut her alive and report you to the Upravdom!”

Leo was not at home. The room was dark, cold as a cellar. Kira switched on the light. The bed was not made; the blanket was on the floor. She lighted the “Bourgeoise,” blowing at the damp logs, her eyes swelling. The pipes were leaking. She hung a tin can on a wire to catch the dripping soot.

She pumped the Primus. It would not light; its tubes were clogged again. She searched all over the room for the special wire cleaner. She could not find it. She knocked at the door.

“Citizen Lavrova, have you taken my Primus cleaner again?” There was no answer. She flung the door open. “Citizen Lavrova, have you taken my Primus cleaner?”

“Aw, hell,” said Marisha. “Stingy, aren’t you, of a little Primus cleaner? Here it is.”

“How many times do I have to ask you, Citizen Lavrova, not to touch any of my things in my absence?”

“What are you gonna to do about it? Report me?”

Kira took the Primus cleaner and slammed the door.

She was peeling potatoes when Leo came in.

“Oh,” he said, “you’re home?”

“Yes. Where have you been, Leo?”

“Any of your business?”

She did not answer. His shoulders were drooping and his lips were blue. She knew where he had been; and that he had not succeeded.

She went on peeling the potatoes. He stood with his hands extended to the “Bourgeoise,” his lips twisted with pain. He coughed. Then he turned abruptly and said: “Same thing. You know. Since eight this morning. No opening. No job. No work.”

“It’s all right, Leo. We don’t have to worry.”

“No? We don’t, do we? You’re enjoying it, aren’t you, to see me living off you? You’re glad to remind me that I don’t have to worry while you’re working yourself into a scarecrow of a martyr?”

“Leo!”

“Well, I don’t want to see you work! I don’t want to see you cook! I don’t ... Oh, Kira!” He seized her and put his head on her shoulder, and buried his face in her neck, over the blue flame of the Primus. “Kira, you forgive me, don’t you?”

She patted his hair with her cheek, for her hands were sticky with potato peelings. “Of course.... Dearest.... Why don’t you lie down and rest? Dinner will be ready in just a little while.”

“Why don’t you let me help you?”

“Now there’s an argument that we’ve closed long ago.”

He bent down to her, lifting her chin. She whispered, shuddering a little: “Don’t, Leo. Don’t kiss me — here.” She held out her dirty hands over the Primus.

He did not kiss her. A bitter little smile of understanding jerked one corner of his mouth. He walked to the bed and fell down.

He lay so still, his head thrown back, one arm hanging to the floor, that she felt uncomfortable. Once in a while, she called softly: “Leo,” just to see him open his eyes. Then she wished she hadn’t called: she did not want his eyes to stay open, watching her fixedly. She — who had so carefully closed the door between them so that he might not see her as she did not want to be seen — she stood before him now, bent over a Primus, in an aura of kerosene and onion smell, her hands slimy with raw mud, her hair hanging down in sticky strands over a nose shiny without powder, her eyes and nostrils red on a white face, her body sagging limply under a filthy apron she had no time to wash, her movements heavy and slurred, not the sharp play of muscles, but the slothful fall of limbs pushed by a weariness beyond control.

And when dinner was ready and they sat facing each other across the table, she thought with a pain which would not become a habit, that he — whom she wanted to face, looking young, erect, vibrant with all of her worship — he now looked into eyes swollen with smoke and at a pale mouth that smiled an effort she could not hide.

They had millet, potatoes, and onions fried in linseed oil. She was so hungry that her arms were limp. But she could not touch the millet. She felt suddenly an uncontrollable revulsion, a hatred that could let her starve rather than swallow one more spoonful of the bitter stuff she had eaten, it seemed, all her life. She wondered dully whether there was a place on earth where one could eat without being sick of every mouthful; a place where eggs and butter and sugar were not a sublime ideal longed for agonizingly, never attained.

She washed the dishes in cold water, grease floating over the pan. Then she pulled on her felt boots. “I have to go out, Leo,” she said with resignation. “It’s the Marxist Club night. Social activity, you know.”

He did not answer; he did not look at her as she went out.

The Marxist Club held its sessions in the library of the “House of the Peasant.” The library was like all the other rooms in the building except that it had more posters and fewer books; and the books were lined on shelves, instead of being stacked in tall columns ready for shipping.

The girl in the leather jacket was chairman of the Club; the employees of the “House of the Peasant” were members. The Club was dedicated to “political self-education” and the study of “historical revolutionary philosophy”; it met twice a week; one member read a thesis he had prepared, the others discussed it.

It was Kira’s turn. She read her thesis on “Marxism and Leninism.”

“Leninism is Marxism adapted to Russian reality. Karl Marx, the great founder of Communism, believed that Socialism was to be the logical outcome of Capitalism in a country of highly developed Industrialism and with a proletariat attuned to a high degree of class-consciousness. But our great leader, Comrade Lenin, proved that ...”

She had copied her thesis, barely changing the words, from the “ABC of Communism,” a book whose study was compulsory in every school in the country. She knew that all her listeners had read it, that they had also read her thesis, time and time again, in every editorial of every newspaper for the last six years. They sat around her, hunched, legs stretched out limply, shivering in their overcoats. They knew she was there for the same reason they were. The girl in the leather jacket presided, yawning once in a while.

When Kira finished, a few hands clapped drowsily.

“Who desires to make comments, comrades?” the chairman inquired.

A young girl with a very round face and forlorn eyes, said lisping, showing eagerly her active interest: “I think it was a very nice thesis, and very valuable and instructive, because it was very nice and clear and explained a valuable new theory.”A consumptive and intellectual young man with blue eyelids and a pince-nez, said in the professional manner of a scientist: “I would make the following criticism, Comrade Argounova: when you speak of the fact that Comrade Lenin allowed a place for the peasant beside the industrial worker in the scheme of Communism, you should specify that it is a poor peasant, not just any kind of a peasant, because it is well known that there are rich peasants in the villages, who are hostile to Leninism.”

Kira knew that she had to argue and defend her thesis; she knew that the consumptive young man had to argue to show his activity; she knew that he was no more interested in the discussion than she was, that his blue eyelids were weary with sleeplessness, that he clasped his thin hands nervously, not daring to glance at his wristwatch, not daring to let his thoughts wander to the home and its cares that awaited him somewhere.

She said dully: “When I mention the peasant beside the worker in Comrade Lenin’s theory, it is to be taken for granted that I mean the poor peasant, as no other has a place in Communism.”

The young man said drowsily: “Yes, but I think we should be scientifically methodical and say: poor peasant.”

The chairman said: “I agree with the last speaker. The thesis should be corrected to read: poor peasant. Any other comments, comrades?”

There were none.

“We shall thank Comrade Argounova for her valuable work,” said the chairman. “Our next meeting will be devoted to a thesis by Comrade Leskov on ‘Marxism and Collectivism.’ I now declare this meeting closed.”

With a convulsive jerk and a clatter of chairs, they rushed out of the library, down the dark stairs, into the dark streets. They had done their duty. The evening — or what was left of it — belonged to them now.

Kira walked fast and listened to her own footsteps, listened blankly, without thought; she could think now, but after so many hours of such a tremendous effort not to think, not to think, to remember only not to think, thoughts seemed slow to return; she knew only that her steps were beating, fast, firm, precise, until their strength and their hope rose to her body, to her heart, to the throbbing haze in her temples. She threw her head back, as if she were resting, swimming on her back, close under a clear black sky, with stars at the tip of her nose, and roof tops with snow clean in the frozen starlight like white virgin mountain peaks.

Then she swung forward with the sharp, light movements of Kira Argounova’s body and she whispered to herself, as she had talked to herself often in the last two months: “Well, it’s war. It’s war. You don’t give up, do you, Kira? It’s not dangerous so long as you don’t give up. And the harder it gets the happier you should be that you can stand it. That’s it. The harder — the happier. It’s war. You’re a good soldier, Kira Argounova.”

When Leo put his arms around her and whispered into her hair: “Oh, yes, yes, Kira. Tonight. Please!” she knew that she could not refuse any longer. Her body, suddenly limp again, cried for nothing but sleep, an endless sleep. It horrified her, that reluctant surrender, numb, lifeless, without response.

He held her body close to his, and his skin was warm under the cold blanket. His skin was warm, and soothing, and she closed her eyes.

“What’s the matter, Kira?”

She smiled and forced all of her last strength into her lips in the hollow of his collar bone, into her arms locked around his body. Her arms relaxed and one hand slipped, soft and weak, over the edge of the bed. She jerked her eyes open, she loved him, she wanted him, she wanted to want him — she screamed to herself almost aloud. He was kissing her body, but she was thinking of what they thought of her thesis, of Tina and the girl in the leather jacket, of the probable reduction of staffs — and suddenly she was seized with revulsion for his soft, hungry lips, because something in her, or of her, or around her was too unworthy of him. But she could keep awake a little while longer and she stiffened her body as for an ordeal, all her thoughts of love reduced to a tortured hurry to get it over with.

It was past midnight and she did not know whether she had been asleep or not. Leo breathed painfully on the pillow beside her, his forehead clammy with cold perspiration. In the haze of her mind, one thought stood out clearly: the apron. That apron of hers was filthy; it was loathsome; she could not let Leo see her wearing it another day; not another day.

She crawled out of bed and slipped her coat over her nightgown; it was too cold and she was too tired to dress. She put the pan of cold water on the bathroom floor, and fell down by its side and crammed the apron, the soap and her hands into a liquid that felt like acid.

She did not know whether she was quite awake and she did not care. She knew only that the big yellow grease spot wouldn’t come off, and she rubbed, and she rubbed, and she rubbed, with the dry, acrid, yellow soap, with her nails, with her knuckles, soap suds on the fur cuffs of her coat, huddled on the floor, her breasts panting against the tin edge of the pan, her hair falling down, down into the suds, beyond the narrow crack of the bathroom door a tall blue window sparkling with frost, her knuckles raw, the skin rubbed off, beyond the bedroom door someone in Marisha’s room playing “John Gray” on a piano with a missing key, the pain growing in her back, the soap suds brown and greasy over purple hands.

They saved the money for many months and on a Sunday evening they bought two tickets to see “Bajadere,” advertised as the “latest sensation of Vienna, Berlin and Paris.”

They sat, solemn, erect, reverent as at a church service, Kira a little paler than usual in her gray silk dress, Leo trying not to cough, and they listened to the wantonest operetta from over there, from abroad.

It was very gay nonsense. It was like a glance straight through the snow and the flags, through the border, into the heart of that other world. There were colored lights, and spangles, and crystal goblets, and a real foreign bar with a dull glass archway where a green light moved slowly upward, preceding every entrance — a real foreign elevator. There were women in shimmering satin from a place where fashions existed, and people dancing a funny foreign dance called “Shimmy,” and a woman who did not sing, but barked words out, spitting them contemptuously at the audience, in a flat, hoarse voice that trailed suddenly into a husky moan — and a music that laughed defiantly, panting, gasping, hitting one’s ears and throat and breath, an impudent, drunken music, like the challenge of a triumphant gaiety, like the “Song of Broken Glass,” a promise that existed somewhere, that was, that could be.

The public laughed, and applauded, and laughed. When the lights went on after the final curtain, in the procession of cheerful grins down the aisles many noticed with astonishment a girl in a gray silk dress, who sat in an emptying row, bent over, her face in her hands, sobbing.

XVI

AT FIRST THERE WERE WHISPERS.

Students gathered in groups in dark corners and jerked their heads nervously at every approaching newcomer, and in their whispers one heard the words: “The Purge.”

In lines at co-operatives and in tramways people asked: “Have you heard about the Purge?”

In the columns of Pravda there appeared many mentions of the deplorable state of Red colleges and of the coming Purge.

And then, at the end of the winter semester, in the Technological Institute, in the University and in all the institutes of higher education, there appeared a large notice with huge letters in red pencil:

THE PURGE

The notice directed all students to call at the office, receive questionnaires, fill them out promptly, have their Upravdom certify to the truth of the answers and return them to the Purging Committee. The schools of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics were to be cleaned of all socially undesirable persons. Those found socially undesirable were to be expelled, never to be admitted to any college again.

Newspapers roared over the country like trumpets: “Science is a weapon of the class struggle! Proletarian schools are for the Proletariat! We shall not educate our class enemies!”

There were those who were careful not to let these trumpets be heard too loudly across the border.

Kira received her questionnaire at the Institute, and Leo — his at the University. They sat silently at their dinner table, filling out the answers. They did not each much dinner that night. When they signed the questionnaires, they knew they had signed the death warrant of their future; but they did not say it aloud and they did not look at each other.

The main questions were:

Who were your parents?

What was your father’s occupation prior to the year 1917?

What was your father’s occupation from the year 1917 to the year 1921?

What is your father’s occupation now?

What is your mother’s occupation?

What did you do during the civil war?

What did your father do during the civil war?

Are you a Trade Union member?

Are you a member of the All-Union Communist Party?

Any attempt to give a false answer was futile; the answers were to be investigated by the Purging Committee and the G.P.U. A false answer was to be punished by arrest, imprisonment or any penalty up to the supreme one.

Kira’s hand trembled a little when she handed to the Purge Committee the questionnaire that bore the answer:

What was your father’s occupation prior to the year 1917?

Owner of the Argounov Textile Factory.

What awaited those who were to be expelled, no one dared to think; no one mentioned it; the questionnaires were turned in and the students waited for a call from the committee, waited silently, nerves tense as wires. In the long corridors of the colleges, where the troubled stream of students clotted into restless clusters, they whispered that one’s “social origin” was most important — that if you were of “bourgeois descent,” you didn’t have a chance — that if your parents had been wealthy, you were still a “class enemy,” even though you were starving — and that you must try, if you could, at the price of your immortal soul, if you had one, to prove your “origin from the work-bench or the plough.” There were more leather jackets, and red kerchiefs, and sunflower-seed shells in the college corridors, and jokes about: “My parents? Why, they were a peasant woman and two workers.”

It was spring again, and melting snow drilled the sidewalks, and blue hyacinths were sold on street corners. But those who were young had no thought left for spring and those who still thought were not young any longer.

Kira Argounova, head high, stood before the Purge Committee of the Technological Institute. At the table, among the men of the committee whom she did not know, sat three persons she knew: Comrade Sonia, Pavel Syerov, Andrei Taganov.

It was Pavel Syerov who did most of the questioning. Her questionnaire lay on the table before him. “So, Citizen Argounova, your father was a factory owner?”

“Yes.”

“I see. And your mother? Did she work before the revolution?”

“No.”

“I see. Did you employ servants in your home?”

“Yes.”

“I see.”

Comrade Sonia asked: “And you’ve never joined a Trade Union, Citizen Argounova? Didn’t find it desirable?”

“I have never had the opportunity.”

“I see.”

Andrei Taganov listened. His face did not move. His eyes were cold, steady, impersonal, as if he had never seen Kira before. And suddenly she felt an inexplicable pity for him, for that immobility and what it hid, although he showed not the slightest sign of what it hid.

But when he asked her a question suddenly, even though his voice was hard and his eyes empty, the question was a plea: “But you’ve always been in strict sympathy with the Soviet Government, Citizen Argounova, haven’t you?”

She answered very softly: “Yes.”

Somewhere, around a lamp, late in the night, amid rustling papers, reports and documents, a committee was holding a conference.

“Factory owners were the chief exploiters of the Proletariat.”

“Worse than landowners.”

“Most dangerous of class enemies.”

“We are performing a great service to the cause of the Revolution and no personal feelings are to interfere with our duty.”

“Order from Moscow — children of former factory owners are in the first category to be expelled.”

A voice asked, weighing every word: “Any exceptions to that rule, Comrade Taganov?”

He stood by a window, his hands clasped behind his back. He answered: “None.”

The names of those expelled were typewritten on a long sheet of paper and posted on a blackboard in the office of the Technological Institute.

Kira had expected it. But when she saw the name on the list: “Argounova, Kira,” she closed her eyes and looked again and read the long list carefully, to make sure.

Then she noticed that her brief case was open; she clasped the catch carefully; she looked at the hole in her glove and stuck her finger out, trying to see how far it would go, and twisted an unraveled thread into a little snake and watched it uncoil.

Then she felt that someone was watching her. She turned. Andrei stood alone in a window niche. He was looking at her, but he did not move forward, he did not say a word, he did not incline his head in greeting. She knew what he feared, what he hoped, what he was waiting for. She walked to him, and looked up at him, and extended her hand with the same trusting smile he had known on the same young lips, only the lips trembled a little.

“It’s all right, Andrei. I know you couldn’t help it.”

She had not expected the gratitude, a gratitude like pain, in his low voice when he answered: “I’d give you my place — if I could.”

“Oh, it’s all right.... Well ... I guess I won’t be a builder after all.... I guess I won’t build any aluminum bridges.” She tried to laugh. “It’s all right, because everybody always told me one can’t build a bridge of aluminum anyway.” She noticed that it was harder for him to smile than for her. “And Andrei,” she said softly, knowing that he did not dare to ask it, “this doesn’t mean that we won’t see each other any more, does it?”

He took her hand in both of his. “It doesn’t, Kira, if ...”

“Well, then, it doesn’t. Give me your phone number and address, so I can call you, because we ... we won’t meet here ... any more. We’re such good friends that — isn’t it funny? — I’ve never even known your address. All’s for the best. Maybe ... maybe we’ll be better friends now.”

When she came home, Leo was sprawled across the bed, and he didn’t get up. He looked at her and laughed. He laughed dryly, monotonously, senselessly.

She stood still, looking at him.

“Thrown out?” he asked, rising on a wavering elbow, his hair falling over his face. “Don’t have to tell me. I know. You’re kicked out. Like a dog. So am I. Like two dogs. Congratulations, Kira Alexandrovna. Hearty proletarian congratulations!”

“Leo, you’ve ... you’ve been drinking!”

“Sure. To celebrate. All of us did. Dozens and dozens of us at the University.

A toast to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.... Many toasts to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.... Don’t stare at me like that.... It’s a good old custom to drink at births, and weddings, and funerals.... Well, we weren’t born together, Comrade Argounova.... And we’ve never had a wedding, Comrade Argounova.... But we might yet see the other.... We might ... yet ... the other ... Kira....”

She was on her knees by the bed, gathering to her breast a pale face with a contorted wound of a mouth, she was brushing damp hair off his forehead, she was whispering: “Leo ... dearest ... you shouldn’t do that.... Now’s the time you shouldn’t.... We have to think clearly now....” She was whispering without conviction. “It’s not dangerous so long as we don’t give up.... You must take care of yourself, Leo.... You must spare yourself....”

His mouth spat out: “For what?”

Kira met Vasili Ivanovitch in the street.

It took an effort not to let her face show the change of his. She had seen him but once since Maria Petrovna’s death, and he had not looked like that. He walked like an old man. His clear, proud eyes darted at every face, a bitter look of suspicion, and hatred, and shame. His wrinkled, sinewy hands tottered uncertainly in useless movements, like an old woman’s. Two lines were slashed from the corners of his lips to his chin, lines of such suffering that one felt guilty of intrusion for having seen and guessed.

“Kira, glad to see you again, glad to see you,” he muttered, his voice, his words clinging to her helplessly. “Why don’t you come over any more? It’s sort of lonesome, at home. Or ... or maybe you’ve heard ... and don’t want to come?”

She had not heard. But something in his voice told her not to ask him what it was that she could have heard. She said with her warmest smile: “Why, no, Uncle Vasili, I’ll be glad to come. It’s just that I’ve been working so hard. But I’ll be over tonight, may I?”

She did not ask about Irina and Victor, and whether they, too, had been expelled. As after an earthquake, all were looking around cautiously, counting the victims, afraid to ask questions.

That night, after dinner, she called on the Dunaevs. She had persuaded Leo to go to bed; he had a fever; his cheekbones flamed with bright red spots; she had left a jug of cold tea by the bed and told him that she would be back early.

At a bare table without table cloth, under a lamp without a shade, Vasili Ivanovitch sat reading an old volume of Chekhov. Irina, her hair uncombed, sat drawing senseless figures on a huge sheet of paper. Acia slept, fully dressed, curled in an armchair in a dark corner. A rusty “Bourgeoise” smoked.

“Allo,” said Irina, her lips twisting. Kira had never seen her smile like that.

“Would you like some tea, Kira? Hot tea? Only ... only we have no saccharine left.”

“No, thank you, Uncle Vasili, I’ve just had dinner.”

“Well?” said Irina. “Why don’t you say it? Expelled?”

Kira nodded.

“And Leo, too?”

Kira nodded.

“Well? Why don’t you ask? Oh, I’ll tell you myself: sure, I’m out. What could you expect? Daughter of the wealthy Court Furrier!”

“And — Victor?”

Irina and Vasili Ivanovitch exchanged a glance, a strange glance. “No,” Irina answered slowly, “Victor is not expelled.”

“I’m glad, Uncle Vasili. That’s good news, isn’t it?” She knew the best way to cheer her uncle: “Victor’s such a talented young man, I’m glad they’ve spared his future.”

“Yes,” Vasili Ivanovitch said slowly, bitterly. “Victor is such a talented young man.”

“She had a white lace gown,” Irina said hysterically, “and, really, she has a gorgeous voice — oh — I mean — I’m speaking of the new production of ‘La Traviata’ at the Mikhailovsky Theater — and you’ve seen it, of course? Oh, well, you must see it. Old classics are ... old classics are ...”

“Yes,” said Vasili Ivanovitch, “old classics are still the best. In those days, they had culture, and moral values, and ... and integrity....”

“Really,” said Kira, nervous and bewildered, “I’ll have to see ‘La Traviata.’ ”

“In the last act,” said Irina, “in the last act, she.... Oh, hell!” She threw her drawing board down with a crash that awakened Acia, who sat up staring, blinking. “You’ll hear it sooner or later: Victor has joined the Party!”

Kira was holding the book of Chekhov and it clattered down to the floor. “He ... what?”

“He joined the Party. The All-Union Communist Party. With a red star, a Party ticket, a bread card, and his hand in all the blood spilled, in all the blood to come!”

“Irina! How ... how could he get admitted?”

She was afraid to look at Vasili Ivanovitch. She knew she should not ask questions, questions that were like knives turned in a wound; but she could not resist it.

“Oh, it seems he had it planned for a long time. He’s been making friends — carefully and judiciously. He’s been a candidate for months — and we never knew it. Then — he got admitted. Oh, they accepted him all right — with the kind of sponsors he had selected to vouch for his proletarian spirit, even though his father did sell furs to the Czar!”

“Did he know this — the purge, I mean — was coming?”

“Oh, don’t be silly. It isn’t that. Of course, he didn’t know that in advance. He’s aiming higher than merely to keep his place at the Institute. Oh, my brother Victor is a brilliant young man. When he wants to climb — he knows the stepping stones.”

“Well,” Kira tried to smile, to say for Vasili Ivanovitch’s sake, without looking at him, “it’s Victor’s business. He knows what he wants. Is he ... is he still here?”

“If it were up to me, he ...” Irina checked herself abruptly. “Yes. The swine’s still here.”

“Irina,” Vasili Ivanovitch said wearily, “he’s your brother.”

Kira changed the subject; but it was not easy to keep up a conversation. Half an hour later, Victor came in. The dignity of his expression and the red star in his lapel were very much in evidence.

“Victor,” Kira said. “I hear you’re a good Communist, now.”

“I have had the honor of joining the All-Union Communist Party,” Victor answered, “and I’ll have it understood that the Party is not to be referred to lightly.”

“Oh,” said Kira. “I see.”

But it happened that she did not see Victor’s extended hand when she was leaving.

At the door, in the lobby, Irina whispered to her: “At first, I thought Father would throw him out. But ... with Mother gone ... and all ... and you know how he’s always been crazy about Victor ... well, he thinks he’ll try to be broad-minded. I think it will break him.... For God’s sake, Kira, come often. He likes you.”

Because there was no future, they hung on to the present.

There were days when Leo sat for hours reading a book, and hardly spoke to Kira, and when he spoke his smile held a bitter, endless contempt for himself, for the world, for eternity.

Once, she found him drunk, leaning against the table, staring intently at a broken glass on the floor.

“Leo! Where did you get it?”

“Borrowed it. Borrowed it from our dear neighbor Comrade Marisha. She always has plenty.”

“Leo, why do you?”

“Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I? Who in this whole damn world can tell me why I shouldn’t?”

But there were days when a new calm suddenly cleared his eyes and his smile. He waited for Kira to come home from work and when she entered he drew her hastily into his arms. They could sit through an evening without a word, their presence, a glance, the pressure of a hand drugging them into security, making them forget the coming morning, all the coming mornings.

Arm in arm, they walked through silent, luminous streets in the white nights of spring. The sky was like dull glass glowing with a sunless radiance from somewhere beyond. The could look at each other, at the still, sleepless city, in the strange, milky light. He pressed her arm close to his, and when they were alone on a long street dawn-bright and empty, he bent to kiss her.

Kira’s steps were steady. There were too many questions ahead; but here, beside her, were the things that gave her certainty: his straight, tense body, his long, thin hands, his haughty mouth with the arrogant smile that answered all questions. And, sometimes, she felt pity for those countless nameless ones somewhere around them who, in a feverish quest, were searching for some answer, and in their search crushed others, perhaps even her; but she could not be crushed, for she had the answer. She did not wonder about the future. The future was Leo.

Leo was too pale and he was silent too often. The blue on his temples looked like veins in marble. He coughed, choking. He took cough medicine, which did not help, and refused to see a doctor.

Kira saw Andrei frequently. She had asked Leo if he minded it. “Not at all,” he had answered, “if he’s your friend. Only — would you mind? — don’t bring him here. I’m not sure I can be polite ... to one of them.”

She did not bring Andrei to the house. She telephoned him on Sundays and smiled cheerfully into the receiver: “Feel like seeing me, Andrei? Two o’clock — Summer Garden — the quay entrance.”

They sat on a bench, with the oak leaves fighting the glare of the sun above their heads, and they talked of philosophy. She smiled sometimes when she realized that Andrei was the only one with whom she could think and talk about thoughts.

They had no reason for meeting each other. Yet they met, and made dates to meet again, and she felt strangely comfortable, and he laughed at her short summer dresses, and his laughter was strangely happy.

Once, he invited her to spend a Sunday in the country. She had stayed in the city all summer; she could not refuse. Leo had found a job for Sunday: breaking the wooden bricks of pavements, with a gang repairing the streets. He did not object to her excursion.

In the country, she found a smooth sea sparkling in the sun; and a golden sand wind-pleated into faint, even waves; and the tall red candles of pines, their convulsed roots naked to the sand and wind, pine cones rolling to meet the sea shells.

Kira and Andrei had a swimming race, which she won. But when they raced down the beach in their bathing suits, sand flying from under their heels, spurting sand and water at the peaceful Sunday tourists, Andrei won. He caught her and they rolled down together, a whirl of legs, arms and mud, into the lunch basket of a matron who shrieked with terror. They disentangled themselves from each other and sat there screaming with laughter. And when the matron struggled to her feet, gathered her lunch and waddled away, grumbling something about “this vulgar modern youth that can’t keep their love-affairs to themselves,” they laughed louder.

They had dinner in a dirty little country restaurant, and Kira spoke English to the waiter who could not understand a word, but bowed low and stuttered and spilled water all over the table in his eagerness to serve the first comrade foreigner in their forgotten corner. When they were leaving, Andrei gave him twice the price of their dinner. The waiter bowed to the ground, convinced that he was dealing with genuine foreigners. Kira could not help looking a little startled. Andrei laughed when they went out: “Why not? Might as well make a waiter happy. I make more money than I can spend on myself anyway.”

In the train, as it clattered into the evening and the smoke of the city, Andrei asked: “Kira, when will I see you again?”

“I’ll call you.”

“No. I want to know now.”

“In a few days.”

“No. I want a definite day.”

“Well, then, Wednesday night?”

“All right.”

“After work, at five-thirty, at the Summer Garden.”

“All right.”

When she came home, she found Leo asleep in a chair, his hands dust-streaked, smears of dust on his damp, flushed face, his dark lashes blond with dust, his body limp with exhaustion.

She washed his face and helped him to undress. He coughed.

The two evenings that followed were long, furious arguments, but Leo surrendered: He promised to visit a doctor on Wednesday.

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.

Kira slammed hers, too. She decided to forget Andrei Taganov.

It took a month, but at the end of a month, she was convinced that the door of the State sanatoriums was locked to Leo and that she could not unlock it.

There were private sanatoriums in the Crimea. Private sanatoriums cost money. She would get the money.

She made an appointment to see Comrade Voronov and asked for an advance on her salary, an advance of six months — just enough to start him off. Comrade Voronov smiled faintly and asked her how she could be certain that she would be working there another month, let alone six.

She called on Doctor Milovsky, Vava’s father, her wealthiest acquaintance, whose bank account had been celebrated by many envious whispers. Doctor Milovsky’s face got very red and his short, pudgy hands waved at Kira hysterically, as if shooing off a ghost: “My dear little girl, why, my dear little girl, what on earth made you think that I was rich or something? Heh-heh. Very funny indeed. A capitalist or something — heh-heh. Why, we’re just existing, from hand to mouth, living by my own toil like proletarians one would say, barely existing, as one would say — that’s it — from hand to mouth.”

She knew her parents had nothing. She asked if they could try to help. Galina Petrovna cried.

She asked Vasili Ivanovitch. He offered her his last possession — Maria Petrovna’s old fur jacket. The price of the jacket would not buy a ticket to the Crimea. She did not take it.

She knew Leo would resent it, but she wrote to his aunt in Berlin. She said in her letter: “I am writing, because I love him so much — to you, because I think you must love him a little.” No answer came.

Through mysterious, stealthy whispers, more mysterious and stealthy than the G.P.U. who watched them sharply, she learned that there was private money to be lent, secretly and on a high percentage, but there was. She learned a name and an address. She went to the booth of a private trader in a market, where a fat man bent down to her nervously across a counter loaded with red kerchiefs and cotton stockings. She whispered a name. She named a sum.

“Business?” he breathed. “Speculation?”

She knew it best to say yes. Well, he told her, it could be arranged. The rates were twenty-five per cent a month. She nodded eagerly. What security did the citizen have to offer? Security? Surely she knew they didn’t lend it on her good looks? Furs or diamonds would do; good furs and any kind of diamonds. She had nothing to offer. The man turned away as if he had never spoken to her in his life.

On her way back to the tramway, through the narrow, muddy passages between the market stalls, she stopped, startled; in a little prosperous-looking booth, behind a counter heavy with fresh bread loaves, smoked hams, yellow circles of butter, she saw a familiar face: a heavy red mouth under a short nose with wide, vertical nostrils. She remembered the train speculator of the Nikolaevsky station, with the fur-lined coat and the smell of carnation oil. He had progressed in life. He was smiling at the customers, from under a fringe of salami.

On her way home, she remembered someone who had said: “I make more money than I can spend on myself.” Did anything really matter now? She would go to the Institute and try to see Andrei.

She changed tramways for the Institute. She saw Andrei. She saw him coming down the corridor and he was looking straight at her, so that her lips moved in a smile of greeting; but he turned abruptly and slammed the door of an auditorium behind him.

She stood frozen to the spot for a long time.

When she came home, Leo was standing in the middle of the room, a crumpled paper in his hand, his face distorted by anger.

“So you would?” he cried. “So you’re meddling in my affairs now? So you’re writing letters? Who asked you to write?”

On the table, she saw an envelope with a German stamp. It was addressed to Leo. “What does she say, Leo?”

“You want to know? You really want to know?”

He threw the letter at her face.

She remembered only the sentence: “There is no reason why you should expect any help from us; the less reason since you are living with a brazen harlot who has the impudence to write to respectable people.”

On the first rainy day of autumn, a delegation from a Club of Textile Women Workers visited the “House of the Peasant.” Comrade Sonia was an honorary member of the delegation. When she saw Kira at the filing cabinet in Comrade Bitiuk’s office, Comrade Sonia roared with laughter: “Well, well, well! A loyal citizen like Comrade Argounova in the Red ‘House of the Peasant’!”

“What’s the matter, comrade?” Comrade Bitiuk inquired nervously, obsequiously. “What’s the matter?”

“A joke,” roared Comrade Sonia, “a good joke!”

Kira shrugged with resignation; she knew what to expect.

When a reduction of staffs came to the “House of the Peasant” and she saw her name among those dismissed as “anti-social element,” she was not surprised. It made no difference now. She spent most of her last salary to buy eggs and milk for Leo, which he would not touch.

In the daytime, Kira was calm, with the calm of an empty face, an empty heart, a mind empty of all thoughts but one. She was not afraid: because she knew that Leo had to go south, and he would go, and she could not doubt it, and so she had nothing to fear.

But there was the night.

She felt his body, icy and moist, close to hers. She heard him coughing. Sometimes in his sleep, his head fell on her shoulder, and he lay there, trusting and helpless as a child, and his breathing was like a moan.

She saw the red bubble on Maria Petrovna’s dying lips, and she heard her screaming: “Kira! I want to live! I want to live!”

She could feel Leo’s breath in hot, panting gasps on her neck.

Then, she was not sure whether it was Maria Petrovna or Leo screaming when it was too late: “Kira! I want to live! I want to live!”

Was she going insane? It was so simple. She just needed money; a life, his life — and money.

“I make more money than I can spend on myself.”

“Kira! I want to live! I want to live!”

She made one last attempt to get money.

She was walking down a street slippery with autumn rain, yellow lights melting on black sidewalks. The doctor had said every week counted; every day counted now. She saw a resplendent limousine stopping in the orange cube of light at a theater entrance. A man stepped out; his fur coat glistened like his automobile fenders. She stood in his path. Her voice was firm and clear:

“Please! I want to speak to you. I need money. I don’t know you. I have nothing to offer you. I know it isn’t being done like this. But you’ll understand, because it’s so important. It’s to save a life.”

The man stopped. He had never heard a plea that was a command. He asked, squinting one eye appraisingly: “How much do you need?”

She told him.

“What?” he gasped. “For one night? Why, your sisters don’t make that in a whole career!”

He could not understand why the strange girl whirled around and ran across the street, straight through the puddles, as if he were going to run after her.

She made one last plea to the State.

It took many weeks of calls, letters, introductions, secretaries and assistants, but she got an appointment with one of Petrograd’s most powerful officials. She was to see him in person, face to face. He could do it. Between him and the power he could use stood only her ability to convince him.

The official sat at his desk. A tall window rose behind him, admitting a narrow shaft of light, creating the atmosphere of a cathedral. Kira stood before him. She looked straight at him; her eyes were not hostile, nor pleading; they were clear, trusting, serene; her voice was very calm, very simple, very young.

“Comrade Commissar, you see, I love him. And he is sick. You know what sickness is? It’s something strange that happens in your body and then you can’t stop it. And then he dies. And now his life — it depends on some words and a piece of paper — and it’s so simple when you just look at it as it is — it’s only something made by us, ourselves, and perhaps we’re right, and perhaps we’re wrong, but the chance we’re taking on it is frightful, isn’t it? They won’t send him to a sanatorium because they didn’t write his name on a piece of paper with many other names and call it a membership in a Trade Union. It’s only ink, you know, and paper, and something we think. You can write it and tear it up, and write it again. But the other — that which happens in one’s body — you can’t stop that. You don’t ask questions about that. Comrade Commissar, I know they are important, those things, money, and the Unions, and those papers, and all. And if one has to sacrifice and suffer for them, I don’t mind. I don’t mind if I have to work every hour of the day. I don’t mind if my dress is old — like this — don’t look at my dress, Comrade Commissar, I know it’s ugly, but I don’t mind. Perhaps, I haven’t always understood you, and all those things, but I can be obedient and learn. Only — only when it comes to life itself, Comrade Commissar, then we have to be serious, don’t we? We can’t let those things take life. One signature of your hand — and he can go to a sanatorium, and he doesn’t have to die. Comrade Commissar, if we just think of things, calmly and simply — as they are — do you know what death is? Do you know that death is — nothing at all, not at all, never again, never, no matter what we do? Don’t you see why he can’t die? I love him. We all have to suffer. We all have things we want, which are taken away from us. It’s all right. But — because we are living beings — there’s something in each of us, something like the very heart of life condensed — and that should not be touched. You understand, don’t you? Well, he is that to me, and you can’t take him from me, because you can’t let me stand here, and look at you, and talk, and breathe, and move, and then tell me you’ll take him — we’re not insane, both of us, are we, Comrade Commissar?”

The Comrade Commissar said: “One hundred thousand workers died in the civil war. Why — in the face of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics — can’t one aristocrat die?”

Kira walked home very slowly and looked at the dark city; she looked at the glistening pavements built for many thousands of old shoes; at the tramways for men to ride in; at the stone cubes into which men crawled at night; at the posters that cried of what men dreamed and of what men ate; and she wondered whether any of those thousands of eyes around her saw what she saw, and why it had been given her to see.

Because:

In a kitchen on the fifth floor, a woman bent over a smoking stove and stirred cabbage in a kettle, and the cabbage smelt, and the woman blinked, and groaned with the pain in her back, and scratched her head with the spoon,

Because:

In a corner saloon, a man leaned against the bar and raised a foaming glass of beer, and the foam spilled over the floor and over his trousers, and he belched and sang a gay song,

Because:

In a white bed, on white sheets stained with yellow, a child slept and sniveled in its sleep, its nose wet,

Because:

On a sack of flour in the basement, a man tore a woman’s pants off, and bit into her throat, and they rolled, moaning, over the sacks of flour and potatoes,

Because:

In the silence of stone walls slowly dripping frozen dampness, a figure knelt before a gilded cross, and raised trembling arms in exaltation, and knocked a pale forehead against a cold stone floor,

Because:

In the roar of machines whirling lightnings of steel and drops of burning grease, men swung vigorous arms, and panted, heaving chests of muscles glistening with sweat, and made soap,

Because:

In a public bath, steam rose from brass pans, and red, gelatinous bodies shook scrubbing themselves with the soap, sighing and grunting, trying to scratch steaming backs, and murky water and soap suds ran down the floor into the drain —

— Leo Kovalensky was sentenced to die.

XVII

IT WAS HER LAST CHANCE AND SHE HAD TO TAKE IT.

A modest house stood before her, on a modest street that lay deserted in the darkness. An old landlady opened the door and looked at Kira suspiciously: Comrade Taganov did not receive women visitors. But she said nothing and shuffled, leading Kira down a corridor, then stopped, pointed at a door and shuffled away.

Kira knocked.

His voice said: “Come in.”

She entered.

He was sitting at his desk and he was about to rise, but he didn’t. He sat looking at her, and then rose very slowly, so slowly that she wondered how long she stood there, at the door, while he was rising, his eyes never leaving her.

Then, he said: “Good evening, Kira.”

“Good evening, Andrei.”

“Take your coat off.”

She was suddenly frightened, uncomfortable, uncertain; she lost all the bitter, hostile assurance that had brought her here; obediently, she took off her coat and threw her hat on the bed. It was a large, bare room with whitewashed walls, a narrow iron bed, one desk, one chair, one chest of drawers, no pictures, no posters, but books, an ocean of books and papers and newspapers, running over the desk, over the chest, over the floor.

He said: “It’s cold tonight, isn’t it?”

“It’s cold.”

“Sit down.”

She sat by the desk. He sat on the bed, his hands clasping his knees. She wished he would not look at her like that, every second of every long minute. But he said calmly: “How have you been, Kira? You look tired.”

“I am a little tired.”

“How is your job?”

“It isn’t.”

“What?”

“Reduction of staffs.”

“Oh, Kira, I’m sorry. I’ll get you another one.”

“Thanks. But I don’t know whether I need one. How is your job?”

“The G.P.U.? I’ve been working hard. Searches, arrests. You still aren’t afraid of me, are you?”

“No.”

“I don’t like searches.”

“Do you like arrests?”

“I don’t mind — when it’s necessary.”

They were silent, and then she said: “Andrei, if I make you uncomfortable — I’ll go.”

“No! Don’t go. Please don’t go.” He tried to laugh. “Make me uncomfortable? What makes you say that? I’m just ... just a little embarrassed ... this room of mine ... it’s in no condition to receive such a guest.”

“Oh, it’s a nice room. Big. Light.”

“You see, I’m home so seldom, and when I am, I just have time to fall in bed, without noticing what’s around me.”

“Oh.”

They were silent.

“How is your family, Kira?”

“They are fine, thank you.”

“I often see your cousin, Victor Dunaev, at the Institute. Do you like him?”

“No.”

“Neither do I.”

They were silent.

“Victor has joined the Party,” said Kira.

“I voted against him. But most of them were eager to admit him.”

“I’m glad you voted against him. He’s the kind of Party man I despise.”

“What kind of Party man don’t you despise, Kira?”

“Your kind, Andrei.”

“Kira ...” It began as a sentence, but stopped on the first word.

She said resolutely: “Andrei, what have I done?”

He looked at her, and frowned, and looked aside, shaking his head slowly: “Nothing.” Then he asked suddenly: “Why did you come here?”

“It’s been such a long time since I saw you last.”

“Two months, day after tomorrow.”

“Unless you saw me at the Institute three weeks ago.”

“I saw you.”

She waited, but he did not explain, and she tried to ignore it, her words almost a plea: “I came because I thought ... because I thought maybe you wanted to see me.”

“I didn’t want to see you.”

She rose to her feet.

“Don’t go, Kira!”

“Andrei, I don’t understand!”

He stood facing her. His voice was flat, harsh as an insult: “I didn’t want you to understand. I didn’t want you to know. But if you want to hear it — you’ll hear it. I never wanted to see you again. Because ...” His voice was like a dull whip. “Because I love you.”

Her hands fell limply against the wall behind her. He went on: “Don’t say it. I know what you’re going to say. I’ve said it to myself again and again and again. I know every word. But it’s useless. I know I should be ashamed, and I am, but it’s useless. I know that you liked me, and trusted me, because we were friends. It was beautiful and rare, and you have every right to despise me.”

She stood pressed to the wall, not moving.

“When you came in, I thought ‘Send her away.’ But I knew that if you went away, I’d run after you. I thought ‘I won’t say a word.’ But I knew that you’d know it before you left. I love you. I know you’d think kindlier of me if I said that I hate you.”

She said nothing; she cringed against the wall, her eyes wide, her glance holding no pity for him, but a plea for his pity.

“You’re frightened? Do you see why I couldn’t face you? I knew what you felt for me and what you could never feel. I knew what you’d say, how your eyes would look at me. When did it start? I don’t know. I knew only that it must end — because I couldn’t stand it. To see you, and laugh with you, and talk of the future of humanity — and think only of when your hand would touch mine, of your feet in the sand, the little shadow on your throat, your skirt blowing in the wind. To discuss the meaning of life — and wonder if I could see the line of your breast in your open collar!”

She whispered: “Andrei ... don’t....”

It was not an admission of love, it was the confession of a crime: “Why am I telling you all this? I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m really saying it to you. I’ve been crying it to myself so often, for such a long time! You shouldn’t have come here. I’m not your friend. I don’t care if I hurt you. All you are to me is only this: I want you.”

She whispered: “Andrei ... I didn’t know....”

“I didn’t want you to know. I tried to stay away from you, to break it. You don’t know what it’s done to me. There was one search. There was a woman. We arrested her. She rolled on the floor, in her nightgown, at my feet, crying for mercy. I thought of you. I thought of you there, on the floor, in your nightgown, crying for pity as I have been crying to you so many months. I’d take you — and I wouldn’t care if it were the floor, and if those men stood looking. Afterward, perhaps I’d shoot you, and shoot myself — but I wouldn’t care — because it would be afterward. I thought I could arrest you — in the middle of the night — and carry you wherever I wanted — and have you. I could do it, you know. I laughed at the woman and kicked her. My men stared at me — they had never seen me do that. They took the woman to jail — and I found an excuse to run away, to walk home alone — thinking of you.... Don’t look at me like that. You don’t have to be afraid that I’d do it.... I have nothing to offer you. I cannot offer you my life. My life is twenty-eight years of that for which you feel contempt. And you — you’re everything I’ve always expected to hate. But I want you. I’d give everything I have — everything I could ever have — Kira — for something you can’t give me!”

He saw her eyes open wide at a thought he could not guess. She breathed: “What did you say, Andrei?”

“I said, everything I have for something you can’t....”

It was terror in her eyes, a terror of the thought she had seen for a second so very clearly. She whispered, trembling: “Andrei ... I’d better go.... I’d better go now.”

But he was looking at her fixedly, approaching her, asking in a voice suddenly very soft and low: “Or is it something you ... can ... Kira?”

She was not thinking of him; she was not thinking of Leo; she was thinking of Maria Petrovna and of the red bubble on dying lips. She was pressed to the wall, cornered, her ten fingers spread apart on the white plaster. His voice, his hope were driving her on. Her body rose slowly against the wall, to her full height, higher, on tiptoe, her head thrown back, so that her throat was level with his mouth when she threw at him:

“I can! I love you.”

She wondered how strange it was to feel a man’s lips that were not Leo’s.

She was saying: “Yes ... for a long time ... but I didn’t know that you, too ...” and she felt his hands and his mouth, and she wondered whether this was joy or torture to him and how strong his arms were. She hoped it would be quick.

The street light beyond the window made a white square and a black cross on the wall above the bed. Against the white square, she could see his face on the pillow; he did not move. Her arm, stretched limply against his naked body, felt no movement but the beating of his heart.

She threw the blanket off, and sat up, crossing her arms over her breasts, her hands clutching her bare shoulders.

“Andrei, I’m going home.”

“Kira! Not now. Not tonight.”

“I have to go.”

“I want you here. Till morning.”

“I have to go. There’s ... there’s my family.... Andrei, we’ll have to keep this very secret.”

“Kira, will you marry me?”

She did not answer. He felt her trembling. He pulled her down and tucked the blanket under her chin.

“Kira, why does that frighten you?”

“Andrei ... Andrei ... I can’t....”

“I love you.”

“Andrei ... there’s my family. You’re a Communist. You know what they are. You must understand. They’ve suffered so much. If I marry you — it would be too much for them. Or if they learn — about this. We can spare them. Does it ... does it make any difference to us?”

“No. Not if you want it that way.”

“Andrei!”

“Yes, Kira?”

“You’ll do anything I want?”

“Anything.”

“I want only one thing: secrecy. Complete secrecy. You promise?”

“Yes.”

“You see ... with me — there’s my family. With you — there’s the Party. I’m not ... I’m not the kind of a ... mistress your Party would approve. So it’s better ... You see, it’s a dangerous thing we’re doing. A very dangerous thing. I want to try not to let it ... not to let it break our lives.”

“Break our lives? Kira!” He was laughing happily, pressing her hand to his lips.

“It’s better if no one — not a soul anywhere — knows this, but you and I.”

“No, Kira, I promise, no one will know but you and I.”

“And now I’ll go.”

“No. Please don’t go tonight. Just tonight. You can explain to them somehow — make up a reason. But stay. I can’t let you go.... Please, Kira.... Just to see you here when I awaken.... Good night ... Kira....”

She lay very still for a very long time, until he was asleep. Then she slipped noiselessly out of bed and, holding her breath, her bare feet soundless on the cold floor, she dressed hurriedly. He did not hear her open the door and slip out.

There was a wind whistling down the long, empty streets and a sky like pencil lead. She walked very fast. She knew there was something she had to escape and she tried to hurry. The dead, dark glass panes were watching her, following her, rows and rows of them, on guard along her way. She walked faster. Her steps beat too loudly and the houses of the whole city threw echoes back at her, echoes screaming something. She walked faster. The wind whirled her coat, raising it high over her knees, hurling it between her legs. She walked faster. She passed the poster of a worker with a red banner; the worker was laughing.

Suddenly she was running, like a shivering streak between dark shop windows and lamp posts, her coat whistling, her steps beating like a machine gun, her legs flashing and blending, like the spokes of a wheel, into one circle of motion carrying her forward. She was running or flying or being rocketed through space by something outside her body, and she knew it was all right, everything was all right if only she could run faster and faster and faster.

She came panting up the stairs. At the door, she stopped. She stopped and stood looking at the door knob, panting. And suddenly she knew that she could not go in; that she could not take her body into Leo’s room, into his bed, close to his body. She ran her finger tips over the door, feeling it, caressing it uncertainly, for she could come no closer to him.

She sat down on the steps. She felt as if she could hear him — somewhere behind that door — sleeping, breathing with effort. She sat there for a long time, her eyes empty.

When she turned her head and saw that the square of the window on the landing was a dark, bright blue which was not night any longer, she got up, took her key and went in. Leo was asleep. She sat by the window, gathered into a tight huddle. He would not know what time she had come home.

Leo was leaving for the south.

His bag was packed. His ticket was bought. His place was reserved in a private sanatorium in Yalta and a month paid for in advance.

She had explained about the money: “You see, when I wrote to your aunt in Berlin, I also wrote to my uncle in Budapest. Oh, yes, I have an uncle in Budapest. You’ve never heard him mentioned because ... you see ... there’s a family quarrel behind it — and he left Russia before the war, and my father forbade us ever to mention his name. But he’s not a bad fellow, and he always liked me, so I wrote him, and that’s what he sent, and he said he’d help me as long as I need it. But please don’t ever mention it to my family, because Father would — you understand.”

She wondered dimly how simple and easy it was to lie.

To Andrei, she had mentioned her starving family. She did not have to ask: he gave her his whole monthly salary and told her to leave him only what she could spare. She had expected it, but it was not an easy moment when she saw the bills in her hand; then, she remembered the comrade commissar and why one aristocrat could die in the face of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics — and she kept most of the money, with a hard, bright smile.

It had not been easy to convince Leo to go. He said he would not let her — or her uncle — keep him. He said it tenderly and he said it furiously. It took many hours and many evenings. “Leo — your money or my money or anyone’s money — does it really matter? Who made it matter? But you want to live. I want you to live. So much is still possible to us. You love me. Don’t you love me enough to live for me? I know it will be hard. Six months. All winter. I’ll miss you. But we can do it.... Leo, I love you. I love you. I love you. So much is still possible!”

She won.

His train was to leave at eight-fifteen in the evening. At nine, she would meet Andrei; she had asked him to take her to the opening of a new cabaret.

Leo was silent when they left their room, and in the cab on the way to the station. She went into the car with him to see the wooden bench on which he was to sleep for many nights; she had brought a pillow for him and a warm plaid blanket. Then, they stepped out again and waited on the platform by the car. They had nothing to say.

When the first bell rang, Leo said: “Please, Kira, don’t let’s have any nonsense when the train starts. I won’t look out of the window. No waving, or running after the train, or anything like that.”

“No, Leo.”

She looked at a poster on a steel pillar; it promised a huge orchestra, foreign fox-trots and delicious food at the grand opening of the new cabaret, at nine o’clock tonight. She said, wondering, bewildered, a little frightened, as if realizing it for the first time: “Leo ... at nine o’clock tonight ... you won’t be here any more.”

“No. I won’t.”

The third bell rang.

He seized her roughly and held her lips in a long, choking kiss, as long as the train whistle that wailed shrilly. He whispered: “Kira ... my own only one.... I love you.... I love you so much....”

He leaped to the steps of the car as it started moving, and disappeared inside. He did not come to the window.

She stood and heard iron chains stretching, wheels grinding rails, the engine panting far ahead, white steam spreading slowly under the steel vaults. The yellow squares of windows were suddenly pulled past her. The station smelt of carbolic acid. A faded red banner hung on a steel girder. The windows were streaming faster and faster, melting into a yellow line. There was nothing ahead but steel, steam, smoke and, under an arch very far away, a piece of sky black as a hole.

And suddenly she understood that it was a train, and that Leo was on the train, and that the train was leaving her. And something beyond terror, immense and unnameable, something which was not a human feeling, seized her. She ran after the train. She grasped an iron handle. She wanted to stop it. She knew that there was something huge and implacable moving over her, which she had to stop, which she alone was to stop, and couldn’t. She was jerked forward, falling, she was whirled along down the wooden planks of the platform, and then a husky soldier in a peaked khaki cap with a red star grabbed her by the shoulders, and tore her off the handle, and threw her aside, pushing her away from the train with his elbow in her breast.

He roared:

“What do you think you’re doing, citizen?”