When the music ended, they returned to the dining room. Lydia still sat at the piano. Andrei said hesitantly: “It was beautiful, Lydia Alexandrovna. Would you play it again?”
Lydia jerked her head proudly. “I’m sorry,” she said, rising brusquely. “I’m tired.” And she left the room with the step of a Jeanne d’Arc.
Maria Petrovna cringed in her chair, as if trying to squeeze herself out of Andrei’s sight. When her cough attracted his eyes, she muttered: “I’ve always said that our modern youth does not follow sufficiently the example of the Communists.”
When Kira accompanied him to the door, Andrei said: “I don’t think I should call on you, Kira. It makes your family uncomfortable. It’s all right, I understand. Will I see you at the Institute?”
“Yes,” said Kira. “Thank you, Andrei. Good night.”
Leo stood on the steps of the empty mansion. He did not move when he heard Kira’s feet hurrying across the snow; he stood motionless, his hands in his pockets.
When she was beside him, their eyes met in a glance that was more than a kiss. Then, his arms crushed her with the violence of hatred, as if he wanted to grind their coats into shreds against each other.
Then he said: “Kira....”
There was some odd, disturbing quality in the sound of his voice. She tore his cap off; she raised herself on tiptoe to reach his lips again, her fingers in his hair.
He said: “Kira, I’m going away.”
She looked at him, very quietly, her head bent a little to one shoulder, in her eyes — a question, but no understanding.
“I’m going away tonight. Forever. To Germany.”
She said: “Leo....” Her eyes were wide, but not frightened.
He spoke as if biting into every word, as if all his hatred and despair came from these sounds, not their meaning: “I’m a fugitive, Kira. A counter-revolutionary. I have to leave Russia before they find me. I’ve just received the money — from my aunt in Berlin. That’s what I’ve been waiting for. They smuggled it to me.”
She asked: “The boat leaves tonight?”
“A smugglers’ boat. They smuggle human flesh out of this wolf-trap. And desperate souls, like mine. If we’re not caught — we land in Germany. If we’re caught — well, I don’t suppose it’s a death sentence for everybody, but I’ve never heard of a man who was spared.”
“Leo, you don’t want to leave me.”
He looked at her with a hatred more eloquent than tenderness. “Sometimes I’ve found myself wishing they would catch the boat and bring me back.”
“I’m going with you, Leo.”
He was not startled. He asked: “Do you understand the chance you’re taking?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know that it’s your life at stake if we don’t reach Germany, and perhaps also if we do?”
“Yes.”
“The boat leaves in an hour. It’s far. We have to start right away. From here. No time to get any luggage.”
“I’m ready.”
“You can’t tell anyone. You can’t telephone any farewells.”
“I don’t have to.”
“All right. Come on.”
He picked up his cap and walked to the street, swiftly, silently, without looking at her or noticing her presence. He called a sleigh. The only words he spoke were an address to the driver. The sharp runners cut into the snow, and the sharp wind into their faces.
They turned a corner, past a house that had collapsed; snow-dusted bricks had rolled far out into the street; the ray of a lamp post behind the house pierced the empty rooms; the skeleton of an iron bed hung high somewhere in the ray of light. A newsboy barked hoarsely: “Pravda! ... Krasnaya Gazeta!” to an empty street.
Leo whispered: “Over there ... there are automobiles ... and boulevards ... and lights....”
An old man stood in a doorway, snow gathering in the brim of his frayed hat, his head hanging down on his breast, asleep over a tray of home-made cookies.
Kira whispered: “... lipstick and silk stockings....”
A stray dog sniffed at a barrel of refuse under the dark window of a co-operative.
Leo whispered: “... champagne ... radios ... jazz bands.”
Kira whispered: “... like the ‘Song of Broken Glass’ ...”
A man moaned, blowing on his hands: “Saccharine, citizens!”
A soldier cracked sunflower seeds and sang about the little apple.
Posters followed them, as if streaming slowly from house to house, red, orange, white, arms, hammers, wheels, levers, lice, airplanes.
The noise of the city was dying behind them. A factory raised tall black chimneys to the sky. Over the street, on a rope from roof to roof, like a barrier, a huge banner clicked, fighting the wind, twisting in furious contortions, yelling to the street and the wind:
PROLETAR ... OUR COLLECTI ... CLASS WELD ... STRUG ... FREED ... FUTURE ...
Then their eyes met, and the glance was like a handshake. Leo smiled; he said: “I couldn’t ask you to do this. But I think I knew you’d come.”
They stopped at a fence on an unpaved street. Leo paid the driver. They started to walk slowly. Leo watching cautiously till the sleigh disappeared around a corner. Then he said: “We have two miles to walk to the sea. Are you cold?”
“No.”
He took her hand. They followed the fence down a wooden sidewalk. A dog howled somewhere. A bare tree whistled in the wind.
They left the sidewalk. Snow rose to their ankles. They were in an open field, walking toward a bottomless darkness.
She moved with quiet precision, as one moves in the face of the inevitable. He held her hand. Behind them, the red glow of the city breathed into the sky. Ahead of them, the sky bent to the earth, or the earth rose to the sky, and their bodies were cutting the two apart.
Snow rose to their calves. The wind blew against them. They walked bent forward, their coats like sails fighting a storm, cold tightening the skin of their cheeks.
Beyond the snow was the world; beyond the snow was that consummate entity to which the country behind them bowed reverently, wistfully, tragically: Abroad. Life began beyond the snow.
When they stopped, the snow ended abruptly. They looked into a black void without horizon or sky. From somewhere far below, they heard a swishing, slapping sound, as if someone were emptying pails of water at regular intervals. Leo whispered: “Keep quiet.”
He was leading her down a narrow, slippery path, in someone’s footprints. She distinguished a vague shape floating on the void, a mast, a tiny spark, like a dying match.
There were no lights on the ship. She did not notice the husky figure in their path until the ray of a flashlight struck Leo’s face, licked his shoulder, stopped on hers, and was gone. She saw a black beard and a hand holding a gun. But the gun was lowered.
Leo’s hand crinkled in his pocket and slipped something to the man. “Another fare,” Leo whispered. “This girl goes with me.”
“We have no cabins left.”
“That’s all right. Mine’s enough.”
They stepped onto boards that rocked softly. Another figure rustled up from nowhere and led them to a door. Leo helped Kira down the companion-way. There was a light below deck and furtive shadows; a man with a trim beard and the Cross of St. George on his breast looked at them silently; in a doorway, a woman wrapped in a coat of tarnished brocade watched them fearfully, clutching a little wooden box in her hands, the hands trembling.
Their guide opened a door and pointed inside with a jerk of his head.
Their cabin was only a bed and a narrow strip of space between cracked, unpainted walls. A board cut a corner off as a table. A smoked lantern hung over the table, and a yellow, shivering spot of light. The floor rose and fell softly, as if breathing. A shutter was locked over the porthole.