We the Living (71 page)

She laughed, her shoulders shaking, stepping close to him. She screamed at his face:

“Why do you stand there? Why don’t you speak? Are you wondering why you’ve never known what I was? Well, here I am! Here’s what’s left after you took him, after you reached for the heart of my life—and do you know what that is? Do you know what it meant when you reached for my highest reverence . . .”

She stopped short. She gasped, a choked little sound, as if he had slapped her. She slammed the back of her hand against her mouth. She stood in silence, her eyes staring at something she had seen suddenly, clearly, full for the first time.

He smiled, very slowly, very gently. He stretched out his hands, palms up, shrugging sadly an explanation she did not need.

She moaned: “Oh, Andrei! . . .”

She backed away from him, her terrified eyes holding his.

He said slowly: “Kira, had I been in your place, I would have done the same—for the person I loved—for you.”

She moaned, her hand at her mouth: “Oh, Andrei, Andrei, what have I done to you?”

She stood before him, her body sagging, looking suddenly like a frightened child with eyes too big for its white face.

He approached her and took her hand from her mouth and held it in his steady fingers. He said, and his words were like the steps of a man making an immense effort to walk too steadily: “You’re done me a great favor by coming here and telling me what you’ve told. Because, you see, you’ve given me back what I thought I’d lost. You’re still what I thought you were. More than I thought you were. Only . . . it’s not anything you’ve done to me . . . it’s what you had to suffer and I . . . I gave you that suffering, and all those moments were to you . . . to you . . .”

His voice broke. Then he shook his head, and his voice was firm as a doctor’s: “Listen, child, we won’t talk any more. I want you to keep silent for a little while, quite silent, even silent inside, you understand? Don’t think. Try not to think. You’re trembling. You have to rest. Here. I want you to sit down and just sit still for a few minutes.”

He led her to a chair, and her head fell on his shoulder, and she whispered: “But . . . Andrei . . . You . . .”

“Forget that. Forget everything. Everything will be all right. Just sit still and don’t think.”

He lifted her gently and put her down on a chair by the fire. She did not resist. Her body was limp; her dress was pulled high above her knees. He saw her legs trembling. He took his leather jacket and wrapped it around her legs. He said: “This will keep you warm. It’s cold here. The fire hasn’t been on long enough. Now sit still.”

She did not move. Her head fell back against the edge of the chair; her eyes were closed; one arm hung limply by her side, and the pink glow of the fire twinkled softly on her motionless hand.

He stood in the darkness by the fireplace and looked at her. Somewhere in the Club someone was playing the “Internationale.”

He did not know how long he had stood there, when she stirred and raised her head. He asked: “Do you feel better now?”

Her head moved feebly, trying to nod.

He said: “Now let’s put your coat on and I’ll take you home. I want you to go to bed. Rest and don’t think of anything.”

She did not resist. Her head bent, she watched his fingers buttoning her coat. Then she raised her head, and her eyes looked into his. His eyes smiled at her, in quiet understanding, as he had smiled on their first meetings at the Institute.

He helped her down the long, frozen stairs. He called a sleigh at the garden gate and gave the address of her home, Leo’s home. He buttoned the fur blanket over her knees, and his arm held her as the sleigh tore forward. They rode in silence.

When the sleigh stopped, he said: “Now I want you to rest for a few days. Don’t go anywhere. There’s nothing you can do. Don’t worry about . . . him. Leave that to me.”

The snow was deep at the curb by the sidewalk. He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the door and up the stairs. She whispered, and there was no sound, but he saw the movements of her lips: “. . . Andrei. . . .”

He said: “Everything will be all right.”

He returned to the sleigh, alone. He gave the driver the address of the Party Club, where his comrades were waiting for a report on the agrarian situation.

“. . . and you’ve locked us airtight, airtight till the blood vessels of our spirits burst! You’ve taken upon your shoulders a burden such as no shoulders in history have ever carried! You said that your end justified your means. But your end, comrades? What is your end?”

The chairman of the Club struck his desk with his gavel. “Comrade Taganov, I’m calling you to order!” he cried. “You will kindly confine your speech to the report on the agrarian situation.”

A wave of motion rippled through the crowded heads, down the long, dim hall, and whispers rose, and somewhere in the back row someone giggled.

Andrei Taganov stood on the speaker’s platform. The hall was dark. A single bulb burned over the chairman’s desk. Andrei’s black leather jacket merged into the black wall behind him. Three white spots stood out, luminous in the darkness: his two long, thin hands and his face. His hands moved slowly over a black void; his face had dark shadows in the eyesockets, in the hollows of the cheekbones. He said, his voice dull, as if he could not hear his own words:

“Yes, the agrarian situation, comrades . . . In the last two months, twenty-six Party members have been assassinated in our outlying village districts. Eight clubhouses have been burned. Also three schools and a Communal Farm storehouse. The counter-revolutionary element of village hoarders has to be crushed without mercy. Our Moscow chief cites the example of the village Petrovshino where, upon their refusal to surrender their leaders, the peasants were lined in a row and every third one was shot, while the rest stood waiting. The peasants had locked three Communists from the city in the local Club of Lenin and boarded the windows on the outside and set fire to the house. . . . The peasants stood and watched it burn and sang, so they would hear no cries. . . . They were wild beasts. . . . They were beasts run amuck, beasts crazed with misery. . . . Perhaps there, too—in those lost villages somewhere so far away—there, too, they have girls, young and straight and more precious than anything on earth, who are driven into the last hell of despair, and men who love them more than life itself, who have to stand by and see it and watch it and have no help to offer! Perhaps they too . . .”

“Comrade Taganov!” roared the chairman. “I’m calling you to order!”

“Yes, Comrade Chairman. . . . Our Moscow chief cites the . . . What was I saying, Comrade Chairman? . . . Yes, the hoarders’ element in the villages . . . Yes . . . The Party has to take extraordinary measures against the counter-revolutionary element in the villages, that threatens the progress of our great work among the peasant masses. . . . Our great work. . . . We came as a solemn army and forbade life to the living. We thought everything that breathed knew how to live. Does it? And aren’t those who know how to live, aren’t they too precious to be sacrificed in the name of any cause? What cause is greater than those who fight for it? And aren’t those who know how to fight, aren’t they the cause itself and not the means?”

“Comrade Taganov!” roared the chairman. “I’m calling you to order!”

“I’m here to make a report to my Party comrades, Comrade Chairman. It’s a very crucial report and I think they should hear it. Yes, it’s about our work in the villages, and in the cities, and among the millions, the living millions. Only there are questions. There are questions that must be answered. Why should we be afraid if we can answer them? But if we can’t. . . ? If we can’t? . . . Comrades! Brothers! Listen to me! Listen, you consecrated warriors of a new life! Are we sure we know what we are doing? No one can tell men what they must live for. No one can take that right—because there are things in men, in the best of us, which are above all states, above all collectives! Do you ask: what things? Man’s mind and his values. Look into yourself, honestly and fearlessly. Look and don’t tell me, don’t tell any one, just tell yourself: what are you living for? Aren’t you living for yourself and only for yourself? Call it your aim, your love, your cause—isn’t it still
your
cause? Give your life, die for your ideal—isn’t it still
your
ideal? Every honest man lives for himself. Every man worth calling a man lives for himself. The one who doesn’t—doesn’t live at all. You cannot change it. You cannot change it because that’s the way man is born, alone, complete, an end in himself. No laws, no Party, no G.P.U. will ever kill that thing in man which knows how to say ‘I.’ You cannot enslave man’s mind, you can only destroy it. You have tried. Now look at what you’re getting. Look at those whom you allow to triumph. Deny the best in men—and see what will survive. Do we want the crippled, creeping, crawling, broken monstrosities that we’re producing? Are we not castrating life in order to perpetuate it?”

“Comrade Ta . . .”

“Brothers! Listen! We have to answer this!” The two luminous white hands flew up over a black void, and his voice rose, ringing, as it had risen in a dark valley over the White trenches many years ago. “We have to answer this! If we don’t—history will answer it for us. And we shall go down with a burden on our shoulders that will never be forgiven! What is our goal, comrades? What are we doing? Do we want to feed a starved humanity in order to let it live? Or do we want to strangle its life in order to feed it?”

“Comrade Taganov!” roared the chairman. “I deprive you of speech!”

“I . . . I . . .” panted Andrei Taganov, staggering down the platform steps. “I have nothing more to say. . . .”

He walked out, down the long aisle, a tall, gaunt, lonely figure. Heads turned to look at him. Somewhere in the back row someone whistled through his teeth, a long, low, sneering triumphant sound.

When the door closed after him, someone whispered:

“Let Comrade Taganov wait for the next Party purge!”

COMRADE SONIA SAT AT THE TABLE, IN a faded lavender kimono, with a pencil behind her ear. The kimono did not meet in front, for she had grown to proportions that could not be concealed any longer. She bent under the lamp, running through the pages of a calendar; she seized the pencil once in a while, jotting hurried notes down on a scrap of paper, and bit the pencil, a purple streak spreading on her lower lip, for the pencil was indelible.

Pavel Syerov lay on the davenport, his stocking feet high on its arm, reading a newspaper, chewing sunflower seeds. He spat the shells into a pile on a newspaper spread on the floor by the davenport. The shells made a little sizzling sound, leaving his lips. Pavel Syerov looked bored.

“Our child,” said Comrade Sonia, “will be a new citizen of a new state. It will be brought up in the free, healthy ideology of the proletariat, without any bourgeois prejudices to hamper its natural development.”

“Yeah,” said Pavel Syerov without looking up from his newspaper.

“I shall have it registered with the Pioneers, the very day it’s born. Won’t you be proud of your living contribution to the Soviet future, when you see it marching with other little citizens, in blue trunks and with a red kerchief around its neck?”

“Sure,” said Pavel Syerov, spitting a shell down on the newspaper.

“We’ll have a real Red christening. You know, no priests, only our Party comrades, a civil ceremony, and appropriate speeches. I’m trying to decide on a name and . . . Are you listening to me, Pavel?”

“Sure,” said Syerov, sticking a seed between his teeth.

“There are many good suggestions for new, revolutionary names here in the calendar, instead of the foolish old saints’ names. I’ve copied some good ones. Now what do you think? If it’s a boy, I think Ninel would be nice.”

“What the hell’s that?”

“Pavel, I won’t tolerate such language and such ignorance! You haven’t given a single thought to your child’s name, have you?”

“Well, say, I still have time, haven’t I?”

“You’re not interested, that’s all, don’t you fool me, Pavel Syerov, and don’t you fool yourself thinking I’ll forget it!”

“Aw, come on, now, Sonia, really, you know, I’m leaving the name up to you. You know best.”

“Yes. As usual. Well, Ninel is our great leader Lenin’s name—reversed. Very appropriate. Or we could call him Vil—that’s for our great leader’s initials—Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin. See?”

“Yeah. Well, either one’s good enough for me.”

“Now, if it’s a girl—and I hope it’s a girl, because the new woman is coming into her own and the future belongs, to a greater extent than you men imagine, to the free woman of the proletariat—well, if it’s a girl, I have some good names here, but the one I like best is Octiabrina, because that would be a living monument to our great October Revolution.”

“Sort of . . . long, isn’t it?”