We the Living Page 6

  "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 o
ften, 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 aba
ndoned 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.