“Kira! What a pleasant surprise!” He bowed effusively, with outstretched hand. He held her hand and looked into her eyes with a bold, mocking stare as if the two of them shared a secret. “We didn’t expect you, Kira. But then, so many unexpected things happen, these days.” He did not apologize for his appearance; his careless swagger seemed to say that such an appearance could not be shocking to her. “Well, Kira, it isn’t Comrade Taganov, after all? Oh, don’t look surprised. One hears things at the Institute. However, Comrade Taganov is a useful friend to have. He has such an influential position. It’s handy, in case you have any friends — in jail.”
“Victor,” said Irina, “you look like a swine and talk it. Go wash your face.”
“When I’ll take orders from you, my dear sister, you may tell the news to the papers.”
“Children, children,” Maria Petrovna sighed helplessly.
“I have to go,” said Kira, “I just dropped in on my way to the Institute.”
“Oh, Kira!” Irina begged. “Please don’t go.”
“I have to. I have a lecture to attend.”
“Oh, hell!” said Irina. “They’re all afraid to ask you, but I’ll ask it before you go; what’s his name?”
“Leo Kovalensky.”
“Not the son of ...” gasped Maria Petrovna.
“Yes,” said Kira.
When the door closed after Kira, Vasili Ivanovitch came back. Maria Petrovna fumbled nervously for her nail buffer and busied herself with her manicure, avoiding his eyes. He added a log to the fire in the “Bourgeoise.” He said nothing.
“Father, what has Kira ...” Irina began.
“Irina, the subject is not open to argument.”
“The world’s all upside down,” said Maria Petrovna and coughed.
Victor looked at his father with a bright glance of mutual understanding. But Vasili Ivanovitch did not respond; he turned away deliberately; he had been avoiding Victor for many weeks.
Acia crouched in a corner behind the buffet, sniveling softly, hopelessly.
“Acia, come here,” Vasili Ivanovitch ordered.
She waddled toward him slowly, cringing, looking down at the tip of her nose, wiping her nose with her collar.
“Acia, why are your school reports as bad as ever?” Vasili Ivanovitch asked.
Acia did not answer and sniffled.
“What is it that’s happened to you again in arithmetic?”
“It’s the tractors.”
“The what?”
“The tractors. I didn’t know.”
“What didn’t you know?”
“The Selskosoyuz had twelve tractors and they divided them among six poor villages and how many did each village get?”
“Acia, how much is twelve divided by six?”
Acia stared at her nose and sniffled.
“At your age, Irina was always first in her class,” said Vasili Ivanovitch bitterly and turned away.
Acia ran to hide behind Maria Petrovna’s chair.
Vasili Ivanovitch left the room. Victor followed him to the kitchen. If Vasili Ivanovitch heard his steps following, he paid no attention. It was dark in the kitchen; the window pane was broken and the window had been covered with boards. Three narrow slits of light added three bright stripes to the long cracks of the floor. Vasili Ivanovitch’s shirts were piled under the sink. He bent slowly, and stuffed the shirts into a brass pan, and filled the pan with cold water. His big fist closed over a cake of bluish soap. Slowly, awkwardly, he rubbed the collar of a shirt. They had had to let the servant go; and Maria Petrovna was too weak to work.
“What’s the matter, Father?” Victor asked.
Vasili Ivanovitch answered without turning: “You know it.”
Victor protested too eagerly: “Why, Father, I haven’t the slightest idea! Have I done anything wrong lately?”
“Did you see that girl?”
“Kira? Yes. Why?”
“I thought I could trust in her as in my own soul. But it got her. The revolution got her. And — you’re next.”
“But, Father ...”
“In my days, a woman’s virtue wasn’t dragged in the gutter for every passerby.”
“But Kira ...”
“I suppose I’m old-fashioned. I was born that way and that’s the way I’ll die. But all of you young people are rotted before you’re ripe. Socialism, Communism, Marxism, and to hell with decency!”
“But I, Father ...”
“You.... It will get you in another way. I’ve been watching. Your friends for the last few weeks have been.... You came from a party this morning.”
“But surely you don’t object to a little party?”
“Who were the guests?”
“Some charming girls.”
“To be sure. Who else?”
Victor flicked a speck of dust off his sleeve and said: “A Communist or two.”
Vasili Ivanovitch said nothing.
“Father, let us be broad-minded. A little vodka with them can’t hurt me. But it can help me — a lot.”
Vasili Ivanovitch’s voice was stern as a prophet’s; bubbles gurgled in the cold water under his hands: “There are things with which one does not compromise.”
Victor laughed cheerfully and slipped his arm around the powerful, stooped shoulders: “Come on, old man, you and I can understand things together. You wouldn’t want me to sit down and fold my hands and surrender — because they hold the power, would you? Beat them at their own game — that’s what I’m going to do. Diplomacy — that’s the best philosophy of our days. It’s the century of diplomacy. You can’t object to that, can you? But you know me. It can’t touch me. It won’t get me. I’m still too much of a gentleman.”
Vasili Ivanovitch turned to him. A crack of light from the boarded window fell across his face. The face was not that of a prophet; the eyes under the heavy white brows were weary, helpless; the smile was timid. The smile was an effort; so were the words: “I know it, son. I trust you. I suppose — well, you know best. But these are strange days. And you — well, Irina and you are all I have left.”
Irina was the first visitor from Kira’s old world to her new home. Leo bowed gracefully, diffidently, but Irina looked straight at him, grinned and said openly:
“Well, I like you. But then, I expected to like you. And I hope you like me, because I’m the only one of your in-laws that you’ll see — for a long time. But they’ll all question me about you, you can be sure.”
They sat in the shadows of the large drawing room and talked about Rembrandt, whom Irina was studying; and about the new perfume Vava Milovskaia had received from a smuggler — real French perfume. Coty’s and fifty million rubles a bottle — and Irina had stolen a drop of it on her handkerchief — and Maria Petrovna had cried, smelling it; and about the American movie Irina had seen, in which women wore spangled gowns without sleeves — and there had been a shot of New York at night — real skyscrapers, floors and floors of lighted windows on the black sky — and she had stayed through two shows to see that shot, but it had been so brief — just a flash — she would like to draw New York.
She had picked up a book from the table and was sketching busily on the back of its white paper cover, her pencil flashing. When she finished, she threw the book to Kira across the room. Kira looked at the drawing: it was a sketch of Leo — standing erect, full figure, naked.
“Irina!”
“You may show it to him.”
Leo smiled, his lips drooping, looking at Irina inquisitively.
“That’s the state that fits you best,” she explained. “And don’t tell me that my imagination has flattered you — because it hasn’t. Clothes hide nothing from a — well, yes, an artist. Any objections?”
“Yes,” said Leo, “this book belongs to the Gossizdat.”