We the Living (35 page)

She waited for a pause and said suddenly, irrelevantly, forcing all of the artificial enthusiasm she had learned into her flat, unsteady voice: “Funny thing happened last night. My boy friend—he quarreled with me because . . . because he had seen me coming home with another man . . . and he . . . he bawled me out terribly . . . and I told him it was an old-fashioned bourgeois attitude of proprietorship, but he . . . well . . . he quarreled with me. . . .”

She felt her blouse sticking to the cold spot between her shoulder blades. She tried to make her voice as gaily flippant as Tina’s. She tried to believe the story she was inventing; it was strange to think of the fantastic boy friend offered to those prying, hostile eyes, and of the Leo whom Irina had drawn naked as a god.

“. . . and he bawled me out terribly. . . .”

“Uh-huh,” said Nina.

The girl in the leather jacket said nothing.

“In the Kouznetzky market,” said Tina, “I’ve seen them selling lipstick, the new Soviet lipstick of the Cosmetic Trust. Cheap, too. Only they say it’s dangerous to use it. It’s made from horse fat and the horses died of glanders.”

At twelve-thirty the office closed for lunch. At twelve-twenty-five, Comrade Bitiuk said: “I shall remind you once more, comrades, that at one-thirty, instead of reporting back to the office, you are to report at the Smolny Institute to take part in the demonstration of all the workers of Petrograd in honor of the delegation of the British Trade Unions. The office will be closed this afternoon.”

Kira spent her lunch hour standing in line at the co-operative to get bread on her employee’s ration card. She stood motionless, in a blank stupor; a movement or a thought seemed too far away, far in a world where she did not belong any longer. The locks of hair under her old hat were white with frost. She thought that somewhere beyond all these many things which did not count, was her life and Leo. She closed her eyes for one swift second of rest with nothing but his name. Then she opened her eyes and watched dully, through lids heavy with white-frosted lashes, puffy sparrows picking horse dung in the snow.

She had brought her lunch with her—a piece of dried fish wrapped in paper. She ate it, because she knew she had to eat. When she got the bread—a two-pound brown square that was still fresh—she smelled its comforting, warm odor and chewed slowly a piece of crust; the rest, tucked firmly under her arm, was for Leo.

She ran after a tramway and leaped on just in time for the long ride to the Smolny Institute at the other end of the city, for the demonstration of all the workers of Petrograd in honor of the delegation of the British Trade Unions.

Nevsky looked as if it were a solid spread of heads motionless on a huge belt that rolled slowly, carrying them forward. It looked as if red banners, swollen like sails between two poles, were swimming slowly over motionless heads, the same heads of khaki caps, fur caps, red kerchiefs, hats, khaki caps, red kerchiefs. A dull beating filled the street from wall to wall, up to the roofs, the crunching, creaking, drumming roll of many feet against frozen cobblestones.

Tramways stopped and trucks waited on corners to let the demonstration pass. A few heads appeared at windows, stared indifferently at the heads below and disappeared again: Petrograd was used to demonstrations.

Kira marched between Nina and Comrade Bitiuk. Comrade Bitiuk had changed her hat to a red kerchief for the occasion. Kira marched steadily, shoulders thrown back, head high. She had to march here to keep her job; she had to keep her job for Leo; she was not a traitor, she was marching for Leo—even though the banner above her, carried by Tina and the Party candidates, said:

Kira could not feel her feet any longer; but she knew that she was walking, for she was moving ahead like the others. Her hands felt as if her mittens were filled with boiling water. She had to walk. She was walking.

Somewhere in the long snake that uncoiled slowly down Nevsky, someone’s hoarse, loud voice began to sing the “Internationale.” Others joined. It rolled in raucous, discordant waves down the long column of weary throats choked by frost.

On the Palace Square, now called Square of Uritzki, a wooden amphitheater had been erected. Against the red walls and mirror-like windows of the Winter Palace, on the wooden stand draped in red bunting, stood the delegation of the British Trade Unions. The workers of Petrograd slowly marched past. The British class brothers stood, a little stiff, a little embarrassed, a little bewildered.

Kira’s eyes saw but one person: the woman delegate of the British Trade Unions. She was tall, thin, not young, with the worried face of a school teacher. But she wore a tan sports coat and that coat yelled louder than the hurrahs of the crowd, louder than the “Internationale,” that it was
foreign
. With firm, pressed folds of rich material, trim, well-fitted, serene, that coat did not moan, like all those others around Kira, of the misery of the muscles underneath. The British comrade wore silk stockings; a rich, brownish sheen, tight on feet in trim, new, well-polished brown shoes.

And suddenly Kira wanted to scream and to hurl herself at the stand, and to grab these thin, glittering legs and hang on with her teeth as to an anchor, and be carried away with them into their world which was possible somewhere, which was now here, close, within hearing of a cry for help.

But she only swayed a little and closed her eyes.

The demonstration stopped. It stood, knocking heels together to keep warm, listening to speeches. There were many speeches. The comrade woman of the British Trade Unions spoke. A hoarse interpreter bellowed her words into the Square red and khaki with heads packed tightly together.

“This is a thrilling sight. We were sent here by England’s workers to see for ourselves and to tell the world the truth about the great experiment you are conducting. We shall tell them that we saw the great masses of Russian toilers in a free and magnificent expression of loyalty to the Soviet Government.”

For one insane second, Kira wondered if she could tear through the crowd, rush up to that woman and yell to her, to England’s workers, to the world, the truth they were seeking. But she thought of Leo at home, marble pale, coughing. It was Leo against the truth to a world which would not listen. Leo won.

At five P.M. a glittering limousine whisked the delegates away and the demonstration broke up. It was growing dark. Kira had time for a lecture at the Institute.

The cold, badly lighted auditoriums were a tonic to her, with the charts, drafts and prints on the walls, showing beams and girders and cross sections that looked precise, impersonal and unsullied. For a short hour, even though her stomach throbbed with hunger, she could remember that she was to be a builder who would build aluminum bridges and towers of steel and glass; and that there was a future.

After the lecture, hurrying out through dim corridors, she met Comrade Sonia.

“Ah, Comrade Argounova,” said Comrade Sonia. “We haven’t seen you for a long time. Not so active in your studies any more, are you? And as to social activity—why, you’re the most privately individualistic student we’ve got.”

“I . . .” Kira began.

“None of my business, Comrade Argounova, I know, none of my business. I was just thinking of things one hears nowadays about things the Party may do about students who are not social-minded. Don’t give it a thought.”

“I . . . you see . . .” Kira knew it wiser to explain. “I’m working and I’m very active socially in our Marxist Club.”

“So? You are, are you? We know you bourgeois. All you’re active for is to keep your measly jobs. You’re not fooling anyone.”

When Kira entered the room, Marisha jumped up like a spring unwinding: “Citizen Argounova! You keep your damn cat in your own room or I’ll wring her neck!”

“My cat? What cat? I have no cat.”

“Well, who’s done this? Your boy friend?” Marisha was pointing to a puddle in the middle of her room. “And what’s that? An elephant?” She raged as a meow and a pair of gray, furry ears emerged from under a chair.

“It’s not my cat,” said Kira.

“Where’s she come from, then?”

“How do I know?”

“You never know anything!”

Kira did not answer and went to her room. She heard Marisha in the little hall off the lobby, pounding at the partition that separated them from the other tenants. She heard her yelling: “Hey, you there! Your God-damn cat’s torn a board loose and here she is, crapping all over the place! You take her away or I’ll gut her alive and report you to the Upravdom!”

Leo was not at home. The room was dark, cold as a cellar. Kira switched on the light. The bed was not made; the blanket was on the floor. She lighted the “Bourgeoise,” blowing at the damp logs, her eyes swelling. The pipes were leaking. She hung a tin can on a wire to catch the dripping soot.

She pumped the Primus. It would not light; its tubes were clogged again. She searched all over the room for the special wire cleaner. She could not find it. She knocked at the door.

“Citizen Lavrova, have you taken my Primus cleaner again?” There was no answer. She flung the door open. “Citizen Lavrova, have you taken my Primus cleaner?”

“Aw, hell,” said Marisha. “Stingy, aren’t you, of a little Primus cleaner? Here it is.”

“How many times do I have to ask you, Citizen Lavrova, not to touch any of my things in my absence?”

“What are you gonna to do about it? Report me?”

Kira took the Primus cleaner and slammed the door.

She was peeling potatoes when Leo came in.

“Oh,” he said, “you’re home?”

“Yes. Where have you been, Leo?”