We the Living

  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.