Leo closed the door and said: “Take your coat off.”
She obeyed. He took his coat off and threw his cap down on the table. He wore a heavy black sweater, tight around his arms and shoulders. It was the first time that they had seen each other without overcoats. She felt undressed. She moved away a little.
The cabin was so small that even the air enveloping her seemed a part of him. She backed slowly to the table in the corner.
He looked down at her heavy felt boots, too heavy for her slim figure. She followed his glance. She took her boots off and threw them across the cabin.
He sat down on the bed. She sat at the table, hiding her legs with their tight black cotton stockings under the bench, her arms pressed closely to her sides, her shoulders hunched, her body gathered tightly, as if cringing from the cold, the white triangle of her open collar luminous in the semi-darkness.
Leo said: “My aunt in Berlin hates me. But she loved my father. My father ... is dead.”
“Shake the snow off your shoes, Leo. It’s melting on the floor.”
“If it weren’t for you, I’d have taken a boat three days ago. But I could not go away without seeing you. So I waited for this one. The other boat disappeared. Shipwrecked or caught — no one knows. They didn’t reach Germany. So you’ve saved my life — perhaps.”
When they heard a low rumble and the boards creaked louder and the flame in the lantern fluttered against the smoked glass, Leo sprang up, blew out the light and opened the shutter over the porthole. Their faces close together in the little circle, they watched the red glow of the city moving away. The red glow died; then there were only a few lights left between earth and sky; and the lights did not move, but shrank slowly into stars, then into sparks, then into nothing. She looked at Leo; his eyes were wide with an emotion she had never seen in them before. He asked slowly, triumphantly:
“Do you know what we’re leaving?”
Then his hands closed over her shoulder and his lips forced hers apart, and she felt as if she were leaning back against the air, her muscles feeling the weight of his. Her arms moved slowly over his sweater, as if she wanted to feel his body with the skin of her arms.
Then he released her, closed the shutter and lighted the lantern. The match spluttered with a blue flame. He lighted a cigarette and stood by the door, without looking at her, smoking.
She sat down by the table, obediently, without a word or a question, her eyes not leaving him.
Then he crushed the cigarette against the wall and approached her, and stood silently, his hands in his pockets, his mouth a scornful arc, his face expressionless.
She rose slowly, obediently, looking up at him. She stood still as if his eyes were holding her on a leash.
He said: “Take your clothes off.”
She said nothing, and did not move her glance away from his, and obeyed.
He stood watching her. She did not think of the code of her parents’ world. But that code came back once, for an instant, when she saw her skirt on the floor; then, in defiance, she regretted that her underwear was not silk, but only heavy cotton.
She unfastened the strap of her slip and let it fall under her breast. She was about to unfasten the other strap, but he tore her off the ground, and then she was arched limply in space, her hair hanging over his arm, her breast at his mouth.
Then they were on the bed, her whole weight on his hand spread wide between her naked shoulder blades. Then he blew out the lantern. She heard his sweater falling to the floor.
Then she felt his legs like a warm liquid against hers. Her hair fell over the edge of the bed. Her lips parted as in a snarl.
X
WHEN KIRA AWAKENED, LEO’S HEAD WAS RESTING on her one breast; a sailor was looking at the other.
She jerked the blanket up to her chin and Leo awakened. They stared up together.
It was morning. The door was open. The sailor stood on the threshold; his shoulders were too wide for the door and his fist was closed over a gun at his belt; his leather jacket was open over a striped sweater and his mouth was open in a wide grin over two resplendent white stripes of teeth; he stooped a little, for his blue cap touched the top of the doorway; the cap bore a red five-pointed Soviet star.
He chuckled: “Sorry to disturb you, citizens.”
Kira, her eyes glued to the red star, the star that filled her eyes, but could not reach her brain, muttered foolishly, softly, as a child: “Please go away. This is our first ...” Her voice choked, as the red star reached her brain.
The sailor chuckled: “Well, you couldn’t have selected a worse time, citizen. You couldn’t have.”
Leo said: “Get out of here and let us dress.”
His voice was not arrogant, nor pleading; it was such an implacable command that the sailor obeyed as if at the order of a superior officer. He closed the door behind him.
Leo said: “Lie still till I gather your things. It’s cold.”
He got out of bed and bent for her clothes, naked as a statue and as unconcerned. A gray light came through a crack of the closed shutter.
They dressed silently. The ceiling trembled under hurrying steps above. Somewhere a woman’s voice was howling in sobs, like a demented animal. When they were dressed, Leo said: “It’s all right, Kira. Don’t be afraid.”
He was so calm that for an instant she welcomed the disaster that let her see it. Their eyes met for a second; it was a silent sanction of what they both remembered.
He flung the door open. The sailor was waiting outside. Leo said evenly: “Any confessions you want. I’ll sign anything you write — if you let her go.” Kira opened her mouth; Leo’s hand closed it brutally. He continued: “She had nothing to do with it. I’ve kidnapped her. I’ll stand trial for it, if you wish.”
Kira screamed: “He’s lying!”
Leo said: “Shut up.”
The sailor said: “Shut up, both of you.”
They followed him. The woman’s howls were deafening. They saw her crawling on her knees after two sailors who held her little wooden box; the box was open; the jewels sparkled through the sailors’ fingers; the woman’s hair hung over her eyes and she howled into space.
At an open cabin door, Leo suddenly jerked Kira forward so that she passed without seeing it. Inside the cabin, men were bending over a motionless body on the floor; the body’s hand was clutching the handle of a dagger in the heart, under the Cross of St. George.
On deck, the gray sky descended to the tip of the mast and steam breathed with commands from the lips of men who had taken control of the boat, men from the coast guard ship that rose and fell as a huge shadow in the fog, a red flag stirring feebly on its mast.
Two sailors held the arms of the black-bearded smugglers’ captain. The captain was staring at his shoes.
The sailors looked up at the giant in the leather jacket, waiting for orders. The giant took a list out of his pocket and held it under the captain’s beard; he pointed with his thumb, behind his shoulder, at Leo, and asked: “Which one is him?”
The captain’s nose pointed to a name. Kira saw the giant’s eyes widen in a strange expression she could not understand.
“Who’s the girl?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” the captain answered. “She’s not on our passenger list. She came at the last minute — with him.”
“Seventeen of them counter-revolutionary rats that tried to sneak out of the country, Comrade Timoshenko,” said a sailor.