“Mother, I’m not arguing, am I? So let’s drop the subject.”
Kira returned home later than usual from her excursions. There were people she had to see in dark side streets, slipping furtively up dark stairs through unlighted doorways. There were bills to be slipped into stealthy hands and whispers to be heard from lips close to her ear. It would cost more than she could ever save to be smuggled out on a boat, she learned, and it would be more dangerous. She had a better chance if she tried it alone, on foot, across the Latvian border. She would need white clothes. People had done it, dressed all in white, crawling through the snow in the winter darkness. She sold her watch and paid for the name of the station and the village, and for a square inch of tissue paper with the map of the place where a crossing was possible. She sold the fur coat Leo had given her and paid for a forged permit to travel.
She sold her cigarette lighter, her silk stockings, her French perfume. She sold all her new shoes and her dresses. Vava Milovskaia came to buy the dresses. Vava waddled in, shuffling heavily in worn-out felt boots. Vava’s dress had a greasy patch across the chest, and her matted hair looked uncombed. Her face was puffed, a coarse white powder had dried in patches on her nose, and her eyes were encircled in heavy blue bags. When she took off her clothes, slowly, awkwardly, to try on the dresses, Lydia noticed the swelling at her once slender waistline.
“Vava, darling! What, already?” Lydia gasped.
“Yes,” said Vava indifferently, “I’m going to have a baby.”
“Oh, darling! Oh, congratulations!” Lydia clasped her hands.
“Yes,” said Vava, “I’m going to have a baby. I have to be careful about eating and I take a walk every day. When it’s born, we’re going to register it with the Pioneers.”
“Oh, no, Vava!”
“Oh, why not? Why not? It has to have a chance, doesn’t it? It has to go to school, and to the University, maybe. What do you want me to do? Bring it up as an outcast? ... Oh, what’s the difference? Who knows who’s right? ... I don’t know any more. I don’t care.”
“But, Vava, your child!”
“Lydia, what’s the use? ... I’ll get a job after it’s born, I’ll have to. Kolya is working. It will be the child of Soviet employees. Then, later, maybe they’ll admit it into the Communist Union of Youth.... Kira, that black velvet dress — it’s so lovely. It looks almost ... almost foreign. I know it’s too tight for me now ... but afterwards ... maybe I’ll get my figure back. They say you do.... Of course, you know, Kolya isn’t making very much, and I don’t want to take anything from Father, and ... But Father gave me a present for my birthday, fifty rubles, and I think I should ... I could never buy anything like it anywhere.”
She bought the velvet dress and two others.
To Galina Petrovna, Kira had explained: “I don’t need those dresses. I don’t go anywhere. And I don’t like to keep them.”
“Memories?” Galina Petrovna had asked.
“Yes,” Kira had said. “Memories.”
She did not have much money after everything was sold. She knew that she would need every ruble. She could not buy a white coat. But she had the white bear rug that she had bought from Vasili Ivanovitch long ago. She took it secretly to a tailor and ordered it made into a coat. The coat came out as a short jacket that did not reach down to her knees. She would need a white dress. She could not buy one. But she still had Galina Petrovna’s white lace wedding gown. When she was alone at home, she took her old felt boots into the kitchen and painted them white with lime. She bought a pair of white mittens and a white woolen scarf. She bought a ticket to a town far out of the way, far from the Latvian border.
When everything was ready, she sewed her little roll of money into the lining of the white fur jacket. She would need it there — if she crossed the border.
On a gray winter afternoon, she left the house when no one was at home. She did not say good-bye. She left no letter. She walked down the stairs and out into the street as if she were going to the corner store. She wore an old coat with a matted fur collar. She carried a small suitcase. The suitcase contained a white fur jacket, a wedding gown, a pair of boots, a pair of mittens, a scarf.
She walked to the station. A brownish mist hung over the roof tops, and men walked, bent to the wind, huddled, their hands in their armpits. A white frost glazed the posters, and the bronze cupolas of churches were dimmed in a silvery gray. The wind whirled little coils in the snow, and kerosene lamps stood in store windows, melting streaks on the frozen white panes.
“Kira,” a voice called softly on a corner.
She turned. It was Vasili Ivanovitch. He stood under a lamp post, hunched, the collar of his old coat raised to his red ears, an old scarf twisted around his neck, two leather straps slung over his shoulders, holding a tray of saccharine tubes.
“Good evening, Uncle Vasili.”
“Where are you going, Kira, with that suitcase?”
“How have you been, Uncle Vasili?”
“I’m all right, child. It may seem a strange business to find me in, I know, but it’s all right. Really, it’s not as bad as it looks. I don’t mind it at all. Why don’t you come to see us, sometimes, Kira?”
“I ...”
“It’s not a grand place, ours, and there’s another family in the same room, but we’re getting along. Acia will be glad to see you. We don’t have many visitors. Acia is a nice child.”
“Yes, Uncle Vasili.”
“It’s such a joy to watch her growing, day by day. She’s getting better at school, too. I help her with her lessons. I don’t mind standing here all day, because then I go home, and there she is. Everything isn’t lost, yet. I still have Acia’s future before me. Acia is a bright child. She’ll go far.”
“Yes, Uncle Vasili.”
“I read the papers, too, when I have time. There’s a lot going on in the world. One can wait, if one has faith and patience.”
“Uncle Vasili ... I’ll tell them ... over there ... where I’m going ... I’ll tell them about everything ... it’s like an S.O.S.... And maybe ... someone ... somewhere ... will understand....”
“Child, where are you going?”
“Will you sell me a tube of saccharine, Uncle Vasili?”
“Why, no, I won’t sell it to you. Take it, child, if you need it.”
“Certainly not. I was going to buy it anyway from someone else,” she lied. “Don’t you want me for a customer? It may bring you luck.”
“All right, child.”
“I’ll take this nice big one with the big crystals. Here you are.”
She slipped the coin into his hand and the tube of saccharine into her pocket.
“Well, good-bye, Uncle Vasili.”
“Good-bye, Kira.”
She walked away without looking back. She walked through the dusk, through gray and white streets, under grayish banners bending down from old walls, grayish banners that had been red. She walked through a wide square where the tramway lights twinkled, springing out of the mist. She walked up the frozen steps of the station, without looking back.
XVII
THE TRAIN WHEELS KNOCKED AS if an iron chain were jerked twice, then rumbled dully, clicking, then gave two sharp broken jerks again. The wheels tapped like an iron clock ticking swiftly, knocking off seconds and minutes and miles.
Kira Argounova sat on a wooden bench by the window. She had her suitcase on her lap and held it with both hands, her fingers spread wide apart. Her head leaned back against the wooden seat and trembled in a thin little shudder, like the dusty glass pane. Her lids drooped heavily over her eyes fixed on the window. She did not close her eyes. She sat for hours without moving, and her muscles did not feel the immobility, or she did not feel her muscles any longer.