He wheeled about and gasped: “Kira! In the snow without a coat!”
He seized her arm and jerked her back into the house, into the dim little lobby at the foot of the stairs.
“Go back! Immediately!” he ordered.
“Andrei ...” she stammered. “I ... I ...”
In the light of a lamp post from across the street, she saw him smiling slowly, gently, and his hand brushed the wet snowflakes off her hair. “Kira, don’t you think it’s better — like this?” he whispered. “If we don’t say anything — and just leave it to ... to our silence, knowing that we both understand, and that we still have that much in common?”
“Yes, Andrei,” she whispered.
“Don’t worry about me. You’ve promised that, you know. Go back now. You’ll catch cold.”
She raised her hand, and her fingers brushed his cheek slowly, barely touching it, from the scar on his temple to his chin, as if her trembling finger tips could tell him something she could not say. He took her hand and pressed it to his lips and held it for a long time. A car passed in the street outside; through the glass door, the sharp beam of a headlight swept over their faces, licked the wall and vanished.
He dropped her hand. She turned and walked slowly up the stairs. She heard the door opening and closing behind her. She did not look back.
When she returned to her room, Leo was telephoning. She heard him saying: “Allo, Tonia? ... Yes, I just got out.... I’ll tell you all about it.... Sure, come right over.... Bring some. I haven’t got a drop in the house....”
Andrei Taganov was transferred from the G.P.U. to the job of librarian in the library of the Lenin’s Nook of the Club of Women Houseworkers in the suburb Lesnoe.
The clubhouse was a former church. It had old wooden walls that let the wind through, to rustle the bright posters inside; a slanting beam of unpainted wood in the center, supporting a roof ready to cave in; a window covered with boards over the dusty remnants of a glass pane; and a cast-iron “Bourgeoise” that filled the room with smoke. There was a banner of red calico over the former altar, and pictures of Lenin on the walls, pictures without frames, cut out of magazines: Lenin as a child, Lenin as a student, Lenin addressing the Petrograd Soviet, Lenin in a cap, Lenin without a cap, Lenin in the Council of People’s Commissars, Lenin in his coffin. There were shelves of books in paper covers, a sign that read: “Proletarians of the World, Unite!” and a plaster bust of Lenin with a scar of glue across his chin.
Andrei Taganov tried to hold on.
At five o’clock, when store windows made yellow squares in the snow and the lights of tramways rolled like colored beads high over the dark streets, he left the Technological Institute and rode to Lesnoe, sitting at the window of a crowded tramway, eating a sandwich, for he had no time to eat dinner. From six to nine, he sat alone in the library of the Lenin’s Nook of the Club of Women Houseworkers, wrote card indexes, glued torn covers, added wood to the “Bourgeoise,” numbered books, dusted shelves, and said when a woman’s figure in a gray shawl waddled in, shaking snow off her heavy felt-boots:
“Good evening, comrade.... No, ‘The A B C of Communism’ is not in. I have your reservation, comrade.... Yes, this is a very good book, Comrade Samsonova, very instructive and strictly proletarian.... Yes, Comrade Danilova, it is recommended by the Party Council as indispensable to the political education of a conscientious worker.... Please, comrade, do not draw pictures on library books in the future.... Yes, I know, comrade, the stove isn’t very good, it always smokes this way.... No, we don’t carry any books on birth control.... Yes, Comrade Selivanova, it is advisable to get acquainted with all of Comrade Lenin’s works in order to understand our great leader’s ideology.... Please close the door, comrade.... Sorry, comrade, we have no rest-room.... No, we have no books by Mussolini.... No, we carry no love stories, Comrade Ziablova.... No, Comrade Ziablova, I can’t take you to the Club dance Sunday.... No, ‘The A B C of Communism’ is not in, comrade....”
In the offices of the G.P.U. they whispered: “Let Comrade Taganov wait for the next Party purge.”
Comrade Taganov did not wait for the next Party purge.
On a Saturday evening, he stood in line at the district co-operative for his food rations. The co-operative smelled of kerosene and rotted onions. There was a barrel of sauerkraut by the counter, a sack of dried vegetables, a can of linseed oil, and bars of bluish Joukov soap. A kerosene lamp smoked on the counter. A line of customers stretched across the long, bare room. There was only one clerk; he had a sty over his left eye and he looked sleepy.
A little man stood in line ahead of Andrei. His coat collar was loose, with a greenish, greasy patch at the nape of his neck. His neck was thin and wrinkled, with an Adam’s apple like a chicken’s craw. He fingered his ration card nervously and fidgeted, peering past the line at the counter. He sniffled sonorously, for he had a cold, and scratched his Adam’s apple.
He turned and grinned amicably up at Andrei. “Party comrade?” he asked, pointing a gnarled finger at the red star on Andrei’s lapel. “Me, too, comrade. Sure, Party member. Here’s my star, too. Cold weather we’re having, comrade. Awfully cold weather. I hope the dried vegetables aren’t all gone before our turn comes, comrade. They’re wonderful for making soup Julienne. Really should have meat for it, though, but I’ll tell you a nice little trick: just let them soak overnight, then boil them in plain water, and when it’s almost ready drop in a spoonful of sunflower-seed oil, just one spoonful, and it makes such nice grease spots float on the surface, just the same as if you had meat, never tell the difference. Yes, I sure like soup Julienne. Hope they’re not all gone before our turn comes. He’s not very fast, that clerk. Only I’m not complaining. No, please, don’t think I’m complaining, comrade.”
He peered at the counter, fingered his card, counted the coupons, scratched his Adam’s apple, and whispered confidentially: “Only I hope the vegetables aren’t all gone. And another thing: I wish they would give us all the stuff in the same place. We wait for the general products here, and tomorrow two hours at the bread store, and day after-tomorrow here again for kerosene. Still, I don’t mind. Next week, they say, we’re going to get lard. That will be a holiday, won’t it? That’s something to look forward to, isn’t it?”
When Andrei’s turn came, the clerk shoved the rations at him, seized his card impatiently and growled: “What the hell’s the matter, citizen? Your coupon’s half torn off.”
“I don’t know,” said Andrei. “I must have torn it accidentally.”
“Well, I could have refused to accept it, you know. Not supposed to be half torn off. I got no time to check on all of you mugs. See that it’s right, next month.”
“Next ... month?” said Andrei.
“Yeah, and next year, too, or else go empty-bellied.... Next!”
Andrei walked out of the co-operative with a pound of sauerkraut, a pound of linseed oil, a bar of soap and two pounds of dried vegetables for soup Julienne.
He walked slowly, and the streets were white with a hard, polished snow, and men’s heels cut sharp ridges, creaking. Snow sparkled like salt crystals in the white circles of lamp posts; and in the yellow cones of light at store windows, snow twinkled like splinters of powdered fire. Under a soft, glassy fuzz of frost, a poster showed a husky giant in a red blouse, raising two arms imperiously, triumphantly to the red letters:
WE ARE THE BUILDERS OF A NEW HUMANITY!
Andrei’s steps were steady, calm. Andrei Taganov was always calm when he had reached a decision.
He turned on the light, when he entered his room, and put his packages on the table. He took off his cap and jacket, and hung them on a nail in the corner. A strand of hair fell across his forehead; he brushed it back with a long, slow movement. He had left a few coals smouldering in the fireplace and the room was hot. He took off his coat and straightened the wrinkled sleeves of his shirt.