Lydia, the Argounovs’ elder daughter, had to sit in the aisle, next to the boots, on a bundle; but she made it a point to let every passenger in the car understand that she was not used to such mode of traveling. Lydia did not condescend to hide outward signs of social superiority, of which she proudly displayed three: a jabot of tarnished gold lace on her faded velvet suit, a pair of meticulously darned silk gloves and a bottle of eau-de-cologne. She took the bottle out at rare intervals to rub a few drops on her carefully groomed hands, and hid it promptly, noticing the sidewise, yearning glance of her mother from behind the French novel.
It had been four years since the Argounov family left Petrograd. Four years ago Argounov’s textile factory on the outskirts of the capital was nationalized in the name of the people. In the name of the people the banks were declared national property. Argounov’s safe-deposit boxes were broken open and emptied. The luminous collars of rubies and diamonds, which Galina Petrovna paraded proudly in sparkling ball-rooms and kept prudently locked afterwards, passed into unknown hands, never to be seen again.
In the days when the shadow of a growing, nameless fear descended upon the city, hanging like a heavy mist on unlighted street corners, when sudden shots rang in the night, trucks bristling with bayonets rumbled down the cobblestones, and store windows crashed with a sonorous ringing of glass; when the members of the Argounovs’ social set suddenly melted away, like snowdrops over a bonfire; when the Argounov family found themselves in the halls of their stately granite mansion, with a considerable sum of cash, a few last pieces of jewelry, and a constant terror at every sound of the door bell — a flight from the city stood before them as their only course of action.
In those days the thunder of the revolutionary struggle had died in Petrograd, in the resigned hopelessness of Red victory, but in the south of Russia it still roared on the fields of civil war. The south was in the hands of the White Army. That army was thrown in disjoined troops across the vast country, divided by miles of broken railroad tracks and unknown, desolated villages; that army carried three-colored banners, an impatient, bewildered contempt of the enemy — and no realization of his importance.
The Argounovs left Petrograd for the Crimea, there to await the capital’s liberation from the Red yoke. Behind them, they left drawing rooms with tall mirrors reflecting blazing crystal chandeliers; perfumed furs and thoroughbred horses on sunny winter mornings; plate-glass windows that opened on the avenue of stately mansions, the Kamenostrovsky, Petrograd’s exclusive thorough-fare. They met four years of crowded summer shacks where piercing Crimean winds whistled through porous stone walls; of tea with saccharine, and onions fried in linseed oil; of nightly bombardments and fearful mornings when only the red flags or the three-colored banners in the streets announced into whose hands the town had passed.
The Crimea changed hands six times. Nineteen twenty-one saw the end of the struggle. From the shores of the White Sea to those of the Black, from the border of Poland to the yellow rivers of China, the red banner rose triumphantly to the sound of the “Internationale” and the clicking of keys, as the world’s doors closed on Russia.
The Argounovs had left Petrograd in autumn, calmly and almost cheerfully. They had considered their trip an unpleasant, but short annoyance. They had expected to be back in the spring. Galina Petrovna had not allowed Alexander Dimitrievitch to take a winter fur coat along. “Why, he thinks it’s going to last a year!” she had laughed, referring to the Soviet government.
It had lasted five years. In 1922, with a silent, dull resignation, the family took the train back to Petrograd, to start life all over again, if a start were still possible.
When they were in the train and the wheels screeched and tore forward for the first time, in that first jerk toward Petrograd, they looked at one another, but said nothing. Galina Petrovna was thinking of their mansion on Kamenostrovsky and whether they could get it back; Lydia was thinking of the old church where she had knelt every Easter of her childhood, and that she would visit it on her first day in Petrograd; Alexander Dimitrievitch was not thinking; Kira remembered suddenly that when she went to the theater, her favorite moment was the one when the lights went out and the curtain shivered before rising; and she wondered why she was thinking of that moment.
Kira’s table was between two wooden benches. Ten heads faced one another — like two tense, hostile walls, swaying as the train rocked — ten weary, dusty white spots in the semi-darkness: Alexander Dimitrievitch and the faint glint of his gold pince-nez, Galina Petrovna, her face whiter than the white pages of her book, a young Soviet official with glimmers of light in his new leather brief case, a bearded peasant in a smelly sheepskin coat, who scratched himself continuously, a haggard woman with sagging breasts, who was counting constantly, hysterically her packages and children; and facing them — two of the bare-footed, uncombed children, and a soldier, his head bent, his yellow bast shoes resting on the alligator suitcase of a fat lady in a fur coat, the only passenger with a suitcase and with pink, glossy cheeks, and next to her the sallow, freckled face of a dissatisfied woman with a man’s jacket, bad teeth and a red kerchief on her hair.
Through the broken window, a ray of light came in over Kira’s head. Dust danced in the ray and it stopped on three pairs of boots swinging down from the upper berth where three soldiers huddled together. Above them, high over the upper berth, a consumptive young fellow was curled on the baggage rack, his chest crushed against the ceiling, asleep, snoring raucously, breathing with effort. Under the travelers’ feet the wheels knocked as if a load of rusty iron crashed and then splinters rolled, clattering down three steps, and another crash and splinters clattering, and another crash and splinters clattering, and over the travelers’ heads a man’s breath whistled like air hissing out of a punctured balloon; the man stopped at times to moan weakly; the wheels went on clattering.
Kira was eighteen years old and she thought of Petrograd.
The faces around her spoke of Petrograd. She did not know whether the sentences hissed into the dusty air were spoken in one hour, or one day, or through the two weeks in the rocking haze of dust, sweat and fear. She did not remember — because she did not listen.
“In Petrograd they have dried fish, citizens.”
“And sunflower-seed oil.”
“Sunflower-seed oil! Not real?”
“Stepka, don’t scratch your head at me, scratch in the aisle! ... At our co-operative in Petrograd, they gave potatoes. A bit frozen, but real potatoes.”
“Have you ever tried pancakes of coffee grounds with treacle, citizens?”
“Mud up to your knees, in Petrograd.”
“You stand in line for three hours at the co-operative and maybe you get food.”
“But they have NEP in Petrograd.”
“What’s that?”
“Never heard? You’re not a conscientious citizen.”
“Yes, comrades, Petrograd and NEP and private stores.”
“But if you’re not a speculator, you’ll starve, but if you are, you can go in and buy anything you want, but if you buy you’re a speculator, and then look out, but if you’re not a speculator you have no money for a private store and then you stand in line at the co-operative.”
“At the co-operative they give millet.”
“Empty bellies are empty bellies with everybody but the lice.”
“You stop scratching, citizen.”
Someone on the upper berth said: “I’d like buckwheat porridge when I get to Petrograd.”