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 dign
ity: "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 cu
be 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?"