“Leo!”
She stood before him — and he saw terror in her eyes, such naked, raw terror that he opened his mouth, but could not laugh.
“Leo ... not that!”
“She’s an old bitch. I know. I like it better that way. She has the money and she wants me. Just a business deal.”
“Leo ... you ... like a ...”
“Don’t bother about the names. You can’t think of any as good as the ones I’ve thought of myself.”
He noticed that the folds of her dress were shivering and that her hands were flung back unnaturally, as if leaning on space, and he asked, rising: “You’re not going to be fool enough to faint, are you?”
She said, drawing her shoulders together: “No, of course not.... Sit down.... I’m all right....”
She sat on the edge of the table, her hands clutching it tightly, and she looked at him. His eyes were dead and she turned away, for she felt that those eyes should be closed. She whispered: “Leo ... if you had been killed in the G.P.U.... or if you had sold yourself to some magnificent woman, a foreigner, young and fresh and ...”
“I wouldn’t sell myself to a magnificent woman, young and fresh. I couldn’t. Not yet. In a year — I probably will.”
He rose and looked at her and laughed softly, indifferently: “Really, you know, don’t you think it’s not for you to express any depths of moral indignation? And since we both are what we are, would you mind telling me just why you kept me on while you had him? Just liked to sleep with me, like all the other females? Or was it my money and his position?”
Then she rose, and stood very straight, very still, and asked: “Leo, when did you tell her that you’d go with her?”
“Three days ago.”
“Before you knew anything about Andrei and me?”
“Yes.”
“While you still thought that I loved you?”
“Yes.”
“And that made no difference to you?”
“No.”
“If Syerov had not come here today, you’d still go with her?”
“Yes. Only then I’d have to face the problem of telling you. He spared me that. That’s why I was glad to hear it. Now we can say good-bye without any unnecessary scenes.”
“Leo ... please listen carefully ... it’s very important ... please do me a last favor and answer this one question honestly, to the best of your knowledge: if you were to learn suddenly — it doesn’t matter how — but if you were to learn that I love you, that I’ve always loved you, that I’ve been loyal to you all these years — would you still go with her?”
“Yes.”
“And ... if you had to stay with me? If you learned something that ... that bound you to stay and ... and to struggle on — would you try it once more?”
“If I were bound to — well, who knows? I might do what your other lover did. That’s also a solution.”
“I see.”
“And why do you ask that? What is there to bind me?”
She looked straight at him, her face raised to his, and her hair fell back off a very white forehead, and only her lips moved as she answered with the greatest calm of her life: “Nothing, Leo.”
He sat down again and clasped his hands and stretched them out, shrugging: “Well, that’s that. Really, I still think you’re wonderful. I was afraid of hysterics and a lot of noise. It’s ended as it should have ended.... I’m leaving in three days. Until then — I can move out of here, if you want me to.”
“No. I’d rather go. Tonight.”
“Why tonight?”
“I’d rather. I can share Lydia’s room, for a while.”
“I haven’t much money left, but what there is, I want you to ...”
“No.”
“But ...”
“Please, don’t. I’ll take my clothes. That’s all I need.”
She was packing a suitcase, her back turned to him, when he asked suddenly: “Aren’t you going to say anything? Have you nothing to say?”
She turned and looked at him calmly, and answered: “Only this, Leo: it was I against a hundred and fifty million people. I lost.”
When she was ready to go, he rose and asked suddenly, involuntarily: “Kira ... you loved me, once, didn’t you?”
She answered: “When a person dies, one does not stop loving him, does one?”
“Do you mean Taganov or ... me?”
“Does it make any difference, Leo?”
“No. May I help you to carry the suitcase downstairs?”
“No, thank you. It’s not heavy. Good-bye, Leo.”
He took her hand, and his face moved toward hers, but she shook her head, and he said only: “Good-bye, Kira.”
She walked out into the street, leaning slightly to her left, her right arm pulled down by the weight of the suitcase. A frozen fog hung like cotton over the street, and a lamp post made a sickly, yellow blot spilled in the fog. She straightened her shoulders and walked slowly, and the white earth cracked under her feet, and the line of her chin was parallel with the earth, and the line of her glance parallel with her chin.
To her family, three silent, startled faces, Kira explained quietly and Galina Petrovna gasped: “But what happened to ...”
“Nothing. We’re just tired of each other.”
“My poor, dear child! I ...”
“Please don’t worry about me, Mother. If you’ll forgive me the inconvenience, Lydia, it will be only for a little while. I couldn’t have found another room for just a few weeks.”
“Why certainly! Why, I’ll be only too glad to have you, Kira, after all you’ve done for us. But why for a few weeks? Where are you going after that?”
She answered and her voice had the intensity of a maniac’s:
“Abroad.”
On the following morning, Citizen Kira Argounova filed an application for a foreign passport. She had several weeks to wait for an answer.
Galina Petrovna moaned: “It’s insanity, Kira! Sheer insanity! In the first place, they won’t give it to you. You have no reasons to show why you want to go abroad, and with your father’s social past and all.... And even if you do get the passport — then what? No foreign country will admit a Russian and I can’t say that I blame them. And if they admit you — what are you going to do? Have you thought of that?”
“No,” said Kira.
“You have no money. You have no profession. How are you going to live?”
“I don’t know.”
“What will happen to you?”
“I don’t care.”
“But why are you doing it?”
“I want to get out.”
“But you’ll be all alone, lost in a wide world, with not a ...”
“I want to get out.”
“... with not a single friend to help you, with no aim, no future, no ...”
“I want to get out.”
On the evening of his departure, Leo came to say good-bye. Lydia left them alone in her room.
Leo said: “I couldn’t go, Kira, after parting as we did. I wanted to say good-bye and ... Unless you’d rather ...”
She said: “No. I’m glad you came.”
“I wanted to apologize for some of the things I said to you. I had no right to say them. It’s not up to me to blame you. Will you forgive me?”
“It’s all right, Leo. I have nothing to forgive.”
“I wanted to tell you that ... that ... Well, no, there’s nothing to tell you. Only that ... we have a great deal to ... remember, haven’t we?”
“Yes, Leo.”
“You’ll be better off without me.”
“Don’t worry about me, Leo.”
“I’ll be back in Petrograd. We’ll meet again. We’ll meet when years have passed, and years make such a difference, don’t they?”
“Yes, Leo.”