“Heavy are our sins,” Maria Petrovna sighed. “Is that stuff poisonous?”
“No, it’s harmless. Just sweet. The dessert of the revolution.”
“Vasili sold the mosaic table from the drawing room.... Fifty million rubles and four pounds of lard. I made an omelet with the egg powder we got at the co-operative. They can’t tell me they made that powder out of fresh eggs.”
“... sixteen, seventeen, eighteen ... they say their NEP is a failure, Marussia ... nineteen, twenty ... they’re going to return houses to owners before long.”
Maria Petrovna took a little nail buffer out of her bag and went on talking, polishing her nails mechanically; her hands had always been her pride; she was not going to neglect them, even though she did think, at times, that they had changed a little.
“Did you hear about Boris Koulikov? He was in a hurry and he tried to jump into a crowded tramway at full speed. Both legs cut off.”
“Marussia! What’s the matter with your eyes?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been crying so much lately ... and for no reason at all.”
“There’s no spiritual comfort these days, Aunt Marussia,” Lydia sighed, “... fifty-eight, fifty-nine.... Those pagans! Those sacrilegious apostates! They’ve taken the gold ikons from the churches — to feed their famine somewhere. They’ve opened the sacred relics ... sixty-three, sixty-four, sixty-five ... We’ll all be punished, for they defy God.”
“Irina lost her ration card,” sighed Maria Petrovna. “She gets nothing for the rest of this month.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Lydia coldly. “Irina is not to be trusted.”
Lydia disliked her cousin ever since Irina, following her custom of expressing her character judgments in sketches, had drawn Lydia in the shape of a mackerel.
“What’s that on your handkerchief, Marussia?” Galina Petrovna asked.
“Oh ... nothing ... sorry ... it’s a dirty one.... I can’t sleep at night any more, it seems. Seems my nightgown is always so hot and sticky. I’m so worried about Victor. Now he’s bringing the strangest fellows into the house. They don’t remove their caps in the drawing room and they shake ashes all over the carpet. I think they’re ... Communists. Vasili hasn’t said a word. And it frightens me. I know what he thinks.... Communists in the house!”
“You’re not the only ones,” said Lydia and threw a dark glance at Kira. Kira was stuffing crystals into a glass tube.
“You try and speak to Victor and he says: ‘Diplomacy is the highest of the Arts.’ ... Heavy are our sins!”
“You’d better do something about that cough, Marussia.”
“Oh, it’s nothing. Nothing at all. Just the cold weather. Doctors are fools and don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Kira counted the little crystals in the palm of her hand. She tried not to breathe or swallow; when she did, the white powder, seeping through her lips and nostrils, bit her throat with the pain of a piercing, metallic sweetness.
Maria Petrovna was coughing: “Yes, Nina Mirskaia.... Imagine! Not even a Soviet registration wedding. And her father, God rest his soul, was a bishop.... Just sleeping together like cats.”
Lydia cleared her throat and blushed.
Galina Petrovna said: “It’s a disgrace. This new love freedom will ruin the country. But, thank God, nothing like this will ever happen to us. There still are some families with some standards left.”
The bell rang.
“It’s Father,” said Lydia and hurried to open the door. It was Andrei Taganov.
“May I see Kira?” he asked, shaking snow off his shoulders.
“Oh! ... Well, I can’t stop you,” Lydia answered haughtily.
Kira rose, when he entered the dining room, her eyes wide in the darkness.
“Ah! ... Well, what a surprise!” said Galina Petrovna, her hand holding a half-filled box, trembling, the saccharine tablets rolling out. “That is ... yes ... a most pleasant.... How are you tonight? ... Ah! ... Yes.... May I present? Andrei Fedorovitch Taganov — my sister, Maria Petrovna Dunaeva.”
Andrei bowed; Maria Petrovna looked, astonished, at the box in her sister’s hand.
“May I speak to you, Kira?” Andrei asked. “Alone?”
“Excuse us,” said Kira. “This way, Andrei.”
“I daresay,” gasped Maria Petrovna, “to your room? Why, modern youth behaves almost like ... like Communists.”
Galina Petrovna dropped the box; Lydia kicked her aunt’s ankle. Andrei followed Kira to her room.
“We have no light,” said Kira, “just that street lamp outside. Sit down here, on Lydia’s bed.”
Andrei sat down. She sat on her mattress on the floor, facing him. The street light from beyond the window made a white square on the floor, with Andrei’s shadow in the square. A little red tongue flickered in space, high in the corner of Lydia’s ikons.
“It’s about this morning,” said Andrei. “About Syerov.”
“Yes?”
“I wanted to tell you that you don’t have to worry. He had no authority to question you. No one can issue an order to question you — but me. The order won’t be issued.”
“Thank you, Andrei.”
“I know what you think of us. You’re honest. But you’re not interested in politics. You’re not an active enemy. I trust you.”
“I don’t know his address, Andrei.”
“I’m not asking whom you know. Just don’t let them drag you into anything.”
“Andrei, do you know who that man is?”
“Do you mind if we don’t discuss it, Kira?”
“No. But will you allow me one question?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“Why are you doing this for me?”
“Because I trust you and I think we’re friends. Though don’t ask me why we are, because I don’t know that myself.”
“I know that. It’s because ... you see, if we had souls, which we haven’t, and if our souls met — yours and mine — they’d fight to the death. But after they had torn each other to pieces, to the very bottom, they’d see that they had the same root. I don’t know if you can understand it, because, you see, I don’t believe in souls.”
“I don’t either. But I understand. And what is the root?”
“Do you believe in God, Andrei?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. But that’s a favorite question of mine. An upside-down question, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if I asked people whether they believed in life, they’d never understand what I meant. It’s a bad question. It can mean so much that it really means nothing. So I ask them if they believe in God. And if they say they do — then, I know they don’t believe in life.”
“Why?”
“Because, you see, God — whatever anyone chooses to call God — is one’s highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It’s a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it.”
“You’re a strange girl.”
“You see, you and I, we believe in life. But you want to fight for it, to kill for it, even to die — for life. I only want to live it.”
Behind the closed door, Lydia, tired of counting saccharine, rested by playing the piano. She played Chopin.
Andrei said suddenly: “You know, that’s beautiful.”
“What’s beautiful, Andrei?”
“That music.”
“I thought you didn’t care for music.”
“I never have. But, somehow, I like this, now, here.”
They sat in the darkness and listened. Somewhere below, a truck turned a corner. The window panes trembled with a thin, tense shudder. The light square with Andrei’s shadow rose from the floor, swept, like a fan, across the walls, and froze at their feet again.