Kira Argounova stood without moving and listened attentively. She listened to every word. Her eyes held a question she hoped the world could answer.
Over the vast field, the sky was turning a dark, dirty, grayish blue, and in a window far away the first little yellow spark of light twinkled, greeting the early winter dusk. The voice of the last speaker had died, smothered in the thick mist of frost which one could not see, but felt flowing down heavily from the darkness above. The red coffin had been closed and had disappeared in the earth, and the grave had been filled, and a slab of red granite had risen over it. And suddenly the gray sea had shuddered, and the ranks were broken, and dark streams of men rolled swiftly into side streets, as if a dam had burst open. And far away, dying in the frozen twilight, the military band struck up the “Internationale,” the song of the living, like the marching of thousands of feet, measured and steady, like soldiers’ feet drumming a song upon the earth.
Then Kira Argounova walked slowly toward the new grave.
The Field was empty. The sky was descending, locking a frozen blue vault over the city. Through a crack in the vault, a single steely dot twinkled feebly. The houses far away were not houses any longer but flat, broken shadows of thin black paper pasted in a narrow strip against a brownish glow that had been red. Little lights trembled in little holes pierced through the paper. The Field was not in a city. The empty, quiet silence of a countryside hung over a white desert where whirls of snow rose in the wind, melting into thin white powder.
A lonely little figure stood over a granite tombstone.
Snowflakes fluttered lazily down on her bowed head, on the lashes of her eyes. Her lashes glistened with snowflakes, but without tears. She looked at the words cut into the red granite:
GLORY ETERNAL TO THE VICTIMS OF THE REVOLUTION
ANDREI TAGANOV
1896-1925
She wondered whether she had killed him, or the revolution had, or both.
XVI
LEO SAT ALONE BY THE FIREPLACE, SMOKING. A cigarette hung limply in his hand, then slipped out of his fingers; he did not notice it. He took another cigarette and held it unlighted for a long time, not noticing it. Then he glanced around for a match, and could not find it, even though the box lay on the arm of his chair. Then he picked up the match box and stared at it, puzzled, for he had forgotten what he wanted.
He had spoken little in the past two weeks. He had kissed Kira violently, once in a while, too violently, and she had felt his effort, and she had avoided his lips and his arms.
He had left home often and she had never asked him where he went. He had been drinking too often and too much, and she had not said whether she noticed it. When they had been alone together, they had sat silently, and the silence had spoken to her, louder than any words, of something which was an end. He had been spending the last of their money and she had not questioned him about the future. She had not questioned him about anything, for she had been afraid of the answer she knew: that her fight was lost.
When Kira came home from the funeral, Leo did not rise to his feet, but sat by the fireplace, not moving. He looked at her with a slow, curious, heavy glance between heavy eyelids.
Silently, she took off her coat and hung it in her wardrobe. She was taking off her hat when a sound made her turn: Leo was laughing; it was a hard, bitter, brutal laughter.
She looked at him, her eyes wide: “Leo, what’s the matter?”
He asked her fiercely: “Don’t you know?”
She shook her head.
“Well, then,” he asked, “do you want to know how much I know?”
“How much ... you know ... about what, Leo?”
“I don’t suppose this is a good time to tell you, is it? Right after your lover’s funeral?”
“My ...”
He rose and approached her, and stood, his hands in his pockets, looking down at her with the arrogantly contemptuous look she worshipped, with the scornful, drooping smile; but his arched lips moved slowly to form three words: “You little bitch!”
She stood straight, without moving, her face white. “Leo ...”
“Shut up! I don’t want to hear a sound out of you! You rotten little ... I wouldn’t mind it, if you were like the rest of us! But you, with your saintly airs, with your heroic speeches, trying to make me walk straight, while you were ... you were rolling under the first Communist bum who took the trouble to push you!”
“Leo, who ...”
“Shut up! ... No! I’ll give you a chance to speak. I’ll give you a chance to answer just one word. Were you Taganov’s mistress? Were you? Yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“All the time I was away?”
“Yes.”
“And all the time since I came back?”
“Yes. What else did they tell you, Leo?”
“What else did you want them to tell me?”
“Nothing.”
He looked at her; his eyes were suddenly cold, clear, weary.
“Who told you, Leo?”
“A friend of yours. Of his. Our dear comrade, Pavel Syerov. He dropped in on his way back from the funeral. He just wanted to congratulate me on the loss of my rival.”
“Was it ... was it a hard blow to you, Leo?”
“It was the best piece of news I’d heard since the revolution. We shook hands and had a drink together, Comrade Syerov and I. Drank to you and your lover, and any other lovers you may have. Because, you see, that sets me free.”
“Free ... from what, Leo?”
“From a little fool who was my last hold on self-esteem! A little fool I was afraid to face, afraid to hurt! Really, you know, it’s funny. You and your Communist hero. I thought he had lied, making a great sacrifice by saving me for you. And he was just tired of you, he probably wanted to get you off his hands, for some other whore. So much for the sublime in the human race.”
“Leo, we don’t have to discuss him, do we?”
“Still love him?”
“That doesn’t make any difference to you — now — does it?”
“None. None whatever. I won’t even ask whether you had ever loved me. That, too, doesn’t make any difference. I’d rather think you hadn’t. That will make it easier for the future.”
“The future, Leo?”
“Well, what did you plan it to be?”
“I ...”
“Oh, I know! Get a respectable Soviet job and rot over a Primus and a ration card, and keep holy something in your fool imagination — your spirit or soul or honor — something that never existed, that shouldn’t exist, that is the worst of all curses if it ever did exist! Well, I’m through with it. If it’s murder — well — I don’t see any blood. But I’m going to have champagne, and white bread, and silk shirts, and limousines, and no thoughts of any kind, and long live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!”
“Leo ... what ... are you going to do?”
“I’m going away.”
“Where?”
“Sit down.”
He sat down at the table. His one hand lay in the circle of light under the lamp, and she noticed how still and white it was, with a net of blue veins that did not seem alive. She stood, watching it, until one finger moved. Then she sat down. Her face was expressionless. Her eyes were a little wide. He noticed her lashes — little needles of shadow on her cheeks — and the lashes were dry.
“Citizen Morozov,” said Leo, “has left town.”
“Well?”
“He’s left Tonia — he wants no connections that could be investigated. But he’s left her a nice little sum of money — oh, quite nice. She’s going for a rest and vacation in the Caucasus. She has asked me to go with her. I’ve accepted the job. Leo Kovalensky, the great gigolo of the U.S.S.R.!”