The wardrobe smelled of a fine French perfume. He saw a woman’s dresses hanging in a row.
“What’s the matter, Comrade Taganov?” asked Leo.
Andrei was holding a red dress.
It was a plain red dress with a patent leather belt, four buttons, a round collar and a huge bow.
Andrei held it spread out in his two hands and looked at it. The red cloth spurted in small puffs between his fingers.
Then his eyes moved, slowly, a glance like a weight grating through space, to the line of clothes in the wardrobe. He saw a black velvet dress he knew, a coat with a fur collar, a white blouse.
He asked: “Whose are these?”
“My mistress’s,” Leo answered, his eyes fixed on Andrei’s face, pronouncing the word with a mocking contempt that suggested the infamy of obscenity.
Andrei’s face had no expression, no human meaning. He looked down at the dress, his lashes like two black crescents on his sunken cheeks. Then he straightened the dress slowly and, cautiously, a little awkwardly, as if it were of breakable glass, hung it back in the wardrobe.
Leo chuckled, his eyes dark, his mouth twisted: “A disappointment, isn’t it, Comrade Taganov?”
Andrei did not answer. He took the dresses out slowly, one by one, and ran his fingers through the pockets, through the soft folds that smelled of a French perfume.
“I say you can’t, citizen!” The guard’s voice roared suddenly behind the door. “You can’t go in now!”
There was the sound of a struggle behind the door, as if an arm had pushed a body aside.
A voice screamed, and it was not a woman’s voice, it was not a female’s voice, it was the ferocious howl of an animal in mortal agony: “Let me in there! Let me in!”
Andrei looked at the door and walked to it slowly and threw it open.
Andrei Taganov and Kira Argounova stood face to face.
He asked slowly, evenly, the syllables falling like measured drops of water: “Citizen Argounova, do you live here?”
She answered, her head high, her eyes holding his, the sound of her voice like his: “Yes.”
She stepped into the room; the soldier closed the door.
Andrei Taganov turned very slowly, his right shoulder drooping, every tendon of his body pulled to the effort of the motion, very cautiously, as if a knife had been thrust between his shoulder blades and he had to move carefully, not to disturb it. His left arm hung unnaturally, bent at the elbow, his fingers half-closed as if holding something they could not spill.
He turned to the soldiers and said: “Search that cabinet — and the boxes in the corner.”
Then he walked back to the open wardrobe; his steps and the logs of the fireplace creaked in the silence.
Kira leaned against the wall, her hat in her hand. The hat slipped out of her fingers and fell to the floor, unnoticed.
“I’m sorry, dearest,” said Leo. “I hoped it would be over before you came back.”
She was not looking at Leo. She was looking at the tall figure in a leather jacket with a holster on his hip.
Andrei walked to her dresser, and opened the drawers, and she saw her underwear in his hands, white batiste nightgowns, lace ruffles crumpled in his steady, unhurried fingers.
“Look through the davenport pillows,” Andrei ordered the soldiers, “and lift that rug.”
Kira stood pressed against the wall, her knees sagging, her hips, arms and shoulder blades holding her upright.
“That will be all,” Andrei ordered the soldiers. He closed the last drawer, evenly, without sound.
He took his brief case from the table and turned to Leo. He said, his mouth opening strangely, his upper lip motionless and only the lower one moving to form the sounds: “Citizen Kovalensky, you’re under arrest.”
Leo shrugged and reached silently for his coat. His mouth was drooping contemptuously, but he noticed that his fingers were trembling. He threw his head up, and flung his words at Andrei: “I’m sure this is the most pleasant duty you’ve ever performed, Comrade Taganov.”
The soldiers picked up their bayonets, kicking aside the things on the cluttered floor.
Leo walked to the mirror and adjusted his tie, his coat, his hair, with the meticulous precision of a man dressing for an important social engagement. His fingers were not trembling any longer. He folded his handkerchief neatly and slipped it into his breast pocket.
Andrei stood waiting.
Leo stopped before Kira on his way out. “Aren’t you going to say good-bye, Kira?” he asked.
He took her in his arms and kissed her. It was a long kiss. Andrei stood waiting.
“I have only one last favor to ask, Kira,” Leo whispered. “I hope you’ll forget me.”
She did not answer.
A soldier threw the door open. Andrei walked out and Leo followed. The soldier closed the door behind them.
XIII
LEO HAD BEEN LOCKED IN a cell at the G.P.U. Andrei had come home. At the gate of the palace garden, a Party comrade, hurrying into the Club, had stopped him.
“You’re giving us a report on the agrarian situation tonight, Comrade Taganov, aren’t you?” he had asked.
“Yes,” Andrei had answered.
“At nine o’clock, isn’t it? We’re all looking forward to it, Comrade Taganov. See you at nine.”
“Yes,” Andrei had answered.
He had walked slowly through the deep snow of the garden, up the long stairs, to his dark room.
A Club window was lighted in the palace and a yellow square fell across the floor. Andrei took off his cap, his leather jacket, his gun. He stood by the fireplace, kicking gray coals with his toe. He threw a log on the coals and struck a match.
He sat on a box by the fire, his hands hanging limply between his knees, his hands and his forehead pink in the darkness.
He heard steps on the landing outside, then a hand knocking sharply. He had not locked the door. He said: “Come in.”
Kira came in. She slammed the door behind her and stood in the archway of his room. He could not see her eyes in the darkness; black shadows swallowed her eyes and forehead; but the red glow fell on her mouth, and her mouth was wide, loose, brutal.
He rose and stood silently, looking at her.
“Well?” she threw at him savagely. “What are you going to do about it?”
He said slowly: “If I were you, I’d get out of here.”
She leaned against the archway, asking: “And if I don’t?”
“Get out of here,” he repeated.
She tore her hat off and flung it aside, she threw her coat off and dropped it to the floor.
“Get out, you — ”
“ — whore?” she finished for him. “Certainly. I just want to be sure you know that that’s what I am.”
He asked: “What do you want? I have nothing to say to you.”
“But I have. And you’ll listen. So you’ve caught me, haven’t you, Comrade Taganov? And you’re going to have your revenge? You came with your soldiers, with a gun on your hip, Comrade Taganov of the G.P.U., and you arrested him? And now you’re going to use all your influence, all your great Party influence, to see that he’s put before the firing squad, aren’t you? Perhaps you’ll even ask for the privilege of giving the order to fire? Go ahead! Have your revenge. And this is mine. I’m not pleading for him. I have nothing to fear any more. But, at least, I can speak. And I’ll speak. I have so much to say to you, to all of you, and I’ve kept silent for so long that it’s going to tear me to pieces! I have nothing to lose. But you have.”
He said: “Don’t you think it’s useless? Why say anything? If you have any excuses to offer ...”
She laughed, a human laughter that did not sound human, that did not sound like laughter: “You fool! I’m proud of what I’ve done! Hear me! I don’t regret it! I’m proud of it! So you think I loved you, don’t you? I loved you, but I was unfaithful to you, on the side, as most women are? Well, then, listen: all you were to me, you and your great love, and your kisses, and your body, all they meant was only a pack of crisp, white, square, ten-ruble bills with a sickle and hammer printed in the corner! Do you know where those bills went? To a tubercular sanatorium in the Crimea. Do you know what they paid for? For the life of a man I loved long before I ever saw you, for the life of a body that had possessed mine before you ever touched it — and now you’re holding him in one of your cells and you’re going to shoot him. Why not? It’s fair enough. Shoot him. Take his life. You’ve paid for it.”