——III——
The Strastnoy Island library was in the former chapel. Here, prisoners and guards off duty were allowed to spend their long days, to try and forget that their days had twenty-four hours—all of them alike.
The sacred emblems and ikons which could be removed had been taken down. But the old paintings on the walls could not be removed. Many centuries ago, the unknown hand of a great artist had spent a lifetime of dreary days immortalizing his soul on the chapel’s walls. None could tell what dark secret, what sorrow had thrown him out of the world into its last, forgotten outpost. But all the power and passion, all the fire and rebellious agony of his tortured spirit had been poured into the somber colors on the walls, into majestic figures of a magnificent life, the life his eyes had seen and renounced. And the bodies of tortured saints silently cried of his ecstasy, his doubt, his hunger.
Through three narrow slits of windows, a cold haze of light streamed into the library, like a gray fog rolling in from the sea. It left the shadows of centuries to doze in the dark, vaulted corners. It threw white blotches on the rough, unpainted boards of bookshelves that cut into the angels’ snowy wings, into the foreheads of saintly patriarchs; on the procession following the cross-bearing Jesus to the Golgotha; and above it—on the red letters on a strip of white cotton: PROLETARIANS OF THE WORLD UNITE!
Tall candles in silver stands at the altar had to be lighted in the daytime. Their little red flames stood immobile, each candle transformed into a chandelier by the myriads of tiny reflections in the gilded halos of carved saints; they burned without motion, without noise, a silent, resigned service in memory of the past—around a picture of Lenin.
Above, on the vaulted ceiling, the unknown artist had placed his last work. A figure of Jesus floated in the clouds, His robe whiter than snow. He looked down with a sad, wise smile, His arms outstretched in silent invitation and blessing.
The library was the creation of Comrade Fedossitch, who liked to talk of “our duty to the new culture.” The murals did not harmonize with his new culture and Comrade Fedossitch had tried to improve them. He had painted a red flag into the raised hand of Saint Vladimir as that first Christian ruler converted his people to the new faith; he had painted a sickle and hammer on Moses’ tablets. But the ancient glazing that protected the murals, its secret lost with the monks, did not take fresh paint well. The red flag ran down the wall and peeled off in pieces. So Comrade Fedossitch had given up the idea of artistic alterations. He had compromised by tacking over Saint Vladimir’s stomach a bright-red poster bearing a soldier and an airplane, and the inscription: COMRADES! DONATE TO THE RED AIR-FLEET!
On the shelves were
The Constitution of the U.S.S.R., The ABC of Communism,
the first volume of a novel, a book of verse without a cover, a
Ladies’ Guide to Fine Needlework,
a manual of arithmetical problems for the first grade, and others.
Joan had brought a radio. She walked into the library carrying it under her arm, a square box with an awkward loudspeaker.
The men in the room rose, bowing to her, smiling a timid welcome. It was different from her first entrance into the library a week ago. Then they had ignored her, as if the door had opened to admit her and no one had entered the room; they had stepped out of her way, cautiously and speedily, as if she were a poisonous plant they did not care to touch. She had won them and none of them could say that she had tried. It was her fluffy, childish hair, and her wise, mysterious smile, and her eyes so defiantly open that they concealed her thoughts by exposing them, and her slow, leisurely steps that carried her down the monastery halls like a vision from these men’s pasts, like the women they had left far behind in the years that had gone, in the halls of mansions that had crumbled.
An old surgeon and a former Senator did not greet her, however. They were playing chess on a corner of the long library table, where a chessboard had been traced on the unpainted wooden boards with cheap purple ink. The chess figures had been modeled out of stale bread. The Senator had a long black beard; he never shaved; he talked little and had trouble in shifting his eyes: they always looked straight into one spot for hours. He did not raise his head when Joan entered; neither did the surgeon.
An old general who wore a patched jacket and St. George’s ribbon did not greet her, either. He was sitting alone, by a window, bending, his eyes squinting painfully in the dim light, busily carving wooden toys.
And still another man did not move when she entered: Michael sat alone under a tall candle reading a book for the third time. He turned a page and bent lower when the door opened to admit her.
“Good morning, Miss Harding,” a prisoner who had been a Count greeted her. “How lovely you are today! May I help you? What is this?”
“Good morning,” said Joan. “It’s a radio.”
“A radio!”
They surrounded her, stunned, eager, curious, looking at that box from somewhere where history, which had stopped for them, was still marching forward.
“A radio!” said the Count, adjusting his monocle. “So I’m not going to die without seeing one, after all.”
“What’s a radio, anyway?” asked an old professor.
Comrade Fedossitch, who had been painting a poster while sitting alone at a table in a corner, put his brush down and looked up, resentfully, frowning.
Joan put the radio down on the altar, under Lenin’s picture. She said:
“This will cheer us all a little.”
“A charming thought.” The Count clicked his heels gallantly. “And what a charming gown! We of the old world said that woman was the flower of creation—and clothes the petals.”
“Nothing can extinguish the torch of human progress,” the gray-haired professor said solemnly. His hair was white as the angels’ wings on the walls, and his eyes sad and innocent as theirs.
A tall young convict, his blond hair disheveled over a face still pale from fifty lashes he had received, said softly, his hesitant fingers touching the radio timidly:
“I haven’t heard any music . . . for three years.”
“The first concert,” Joan announced, “on Strastnoy Island.”
The radio coughed, hissed, as if clearing its throat. Then—the first notes of music dropped into the chapel like pebbles cutting into a deep, stagnant pool, tearing in sweet agony the virginal air that had never been disturbed by the sound of life.
“The hand of fate draws an eternal trace,
I see your face again so close to mine . . .”
It was a woman’s voice singing a song of memories, with a poignant joy as a shadow softening its sorrow, slow and resigned, like an autumn day, still breathing of a past sunshine, but giving it up without thunder, without a storm, with just one teardrop of a first, cold rain.
It rolled into the tortured murals, into the bookshelves and posters and candles from the world outside where life breathed and sent them one faint draught. And they stood, their mouths and their hearts open, gasping for the draught, reverent as at a sacred mass, hearing the music more with a strange, contracted spot in their breasts than with their ears.
They did not speak until the voice of the radio announcer had told them that it was a station in Leningrad. Then, the blond youth broke the silence:
“That was beautiful, Miss Harding. Almost . . .” A violent cough interrupted him, shaking his thin shoulders. “Almost as beautiful as you are. . . . Thank you. . . .”
He grasped her hand and pressed it to his lips, and held it there longer than mere gratitude dictated.
“Leningrad,” the Count remarked, adjusting his monocle, an effort bringing back to his lips his old nonchalant smile. “It was St. Petersburg in my day. Funny how time flies. . . . The quays of the Neva were all white. The snow squealed under the sleighs. We had music, too, at the Aquarium. Champagne that sparkled like music, and girls that sparkled like champagne. . . .”
“I’m from Moscow,” said the professor. “I gave lectures . . . at the University. ‘The History of Aesthetics’—that was my last course. . . .”
“I’m from the Volga,” said the blond youth. “We were building a bridge across the Volga. It gleamed in the sun—like a steel knife that was to slash across the river’s body.”
“When Mademoiselle Collette danced at the Aquarium,” said the Count, “we threw gold coins on the table.”
“Young students listened to me,” the professor whispered. “Rosy cheeks . . . bright eyes. . . . Young Russia. . . .”
“It was to be the longest bridge in the world. . . . Perhaps, someday . . . I might go back and . . .” He did not finish; he coughed.
“I have faith in Russia.” The professor spoke solemnly, like a prophet. “Our Saint Russia has known dark years before and has risen triumphant. What if we have to fall on the way as dry leaves swept by a torrent? Russia will live.”
“It seems to me, citizen”—Comrade Fedossitch rose slowly, frowning, approaching Joan—“that it must be against the law to play this here radio of yours.”
“Is it, Comrade Fedossitch?”
“Well, if you ask me, it is. But then, I don’t have the say. It may be all right for Comrade Kareyev. It was against the law to let a female citizen in here. But then, how could they refuse anything to such a worthy comrade as Commandant Kareyev?”
He walked out, slamming the door. Five years ago, in Nijni Kolimsk, Comrade Fedossitch had been a candidate for the post of Commandant of Strastnoy Island. But the GPU had chosen Comrade Kareyev.
“I gather,” said the Count, following Fedossitch with his eyes, “that the male citizen does not care for the fine art of music. And I observe that he is not alone. How about you, Volkontzev? Not interested?”
“I’ve heard music before,” Michael answered abruptly, turning a page.
“I think that men who let some pet prejudice of theirs stand against the most wonderful woman in the world,” said the young engineer, “ought to be thrown into the pit.”
“Leave him alone,” said the Count. “I’m sure Miss Harding will excuse his unreasonable antipathy.”
“But will she forgive mine?” a hoarse voice asked.
They all turned to the sound.
The old general got up, looking straight at Joan, a timid, awkward apology in his old, stubborn face. He made a step forward, came back, picked up his wooden toy; then walked to her, clutching his precious work in his big, stubby fingers.
“I’m sorry, Miss Harding”—he clicked his heels in bast shoes, as if hoping to hear the old sound of military spurs—“if I’ve been rather . . . Can you forget?”
“Certainly, General.” Joan smiled, her smile warm as a caress, and extended her hand.
The general quickly transferred the toy to his left hand and shook hers in a tight grasp.
“That . . .” He indicated the box from which the soft tune of a folk song floated into the room. “Is that played in St. Petersburg?”
“Yes.”
“I’m from St. Petersburg. Eleven years. I’ve left my wife there. And Iura, my grandson. He’s the grandest little fellow. He was two years old when I left. He had blue eyes, just like . . . like my son.”
He stopped suddenly. Joan noticed the awkward silence that none of the men seemed willing to break.
The Count proved to be the bravest.
“What are you making now, General? A new one?” he asked, pointing at the toy. “You know, Miss Harding, our general is a proud old man. We have a little workshop here where we’re allowed to make things: boots, baskets, and such. When the boat comes, they collect it all and take it away, to the cities. They bring us cigarettes, woolen scarfs, socks—in exchange. The boots are the most profitable to make. But the general won’t make boots.”
“No one shall say,” the general interrupted proudly, “that a general of the Army of his Imperial Majesty stooped to making boots.”
“He makes wooden toys, instead,” the Count explained. “He invents them himself.”
“This is a new one.” The general smiled eagerly. “I’ll show you.”
He raised the toy and pulled a little stick; a wooden peasant and bear armed with hammers struck an anvil in turn, jerking awkwardly. As the tiny hammers knocked rhythmically through the music, the Count whispered into Joan’s ear:
“Don’t ever mention his son. He was a captain in the old army. The reds hanged him—before his father’s eyes.”
“You see,” the general was explaining, “I’m always thinking that my toys go out into the world and children play with them, little chubby, rosy fellows, like Iura. . . . And sometimes, I think, wouldn’t it be funny if one of the toys fell into his hands, and . . . But then, how stupid of me! . . . Eleven years . . . he’s a full-grown young man, by now. . . .”
“Checkmate, Doctor,” the Senator’s raucous voice boomed suddenly. “Were you paying any attention to the game? Or am I going to lose the last man I can speak to?”
He shot a dark, significant glance at the general, and left the room, slamming the door.
“Poor fellow,” sighed the general. “You mustn’t be angry at him, Miss Harding. He won’t speak to anyone that speaks to you. He’s not quite sane.”
“He can’t forgive you,” explained the Count, “for what he presumes to be your . . . shall we say ethical differences? . . . with his code. . . . You see, he shot his own daughter—and also the Bolshevik who had attacked her.”
Comrade Fedossitch found Commandant Kareyev inspecting the guard posts on the wall.
“I’m taking the liberty to report to the Comrade Commandant”—he saluted—“that there are unlawful doings going on in the library.”
“What’s the trouble?”
“It’s the comrade woman. She’s playing music.”
“On what?”
“On a radio.”
“Well, isn’t that great? I haven’t heard one for five years.”
When Commandant Kareyev entered, there was a strange, tense silence in the library. The men were surrounding Joan. She knelt by the radio, turning the dial slowly, listening intently, frowning in concentration. He felt the suspense and stopped at the door.