An anemic girl who sat sulkily in a corner, miserably hiding her feet and heavy felt boots, said with a dull stare, incredulous of her own words: “Abroad ... I heard ... they say they don’t have provision cards, or cooperatives, or anything, you just go into a store just when you feel like it and just buy bread or potatoes or anything, even sugar. Me, I don’t believe it myself.”
“And they say you buy your clothes without a trade-union order — abroad.”
“We have no future,” said the philosopher with the gold pince-nez. “We have lost it in materialistic pursuits. Russia’s destiny has ever been of the spirit. Holy Russia has lost her God and her Soul.”
“Did you hear about poor Mitya Vessiolkin? He tried to jump off a moving tramway, and he fell under, but he was lucky: just one hand cut off.”
“The West,” said Victor, “has no inner significance. The old civilization is doomed. It is filling new forms with a worn-out content that can no longer satisfy anyone. We may suffer hardships, but we are building something new. On our side — we have the future.”
“I have a cold,” said the anemic girl. “Mother got a union order for galoshes and there were none my size and we lost our turn and we have to wait three months and I got a cold.”
“Vera Borodina had her Primus explode on her. And she’s blind. And her face — you’d think she’d been in the war.”
“I bought myself a pair of galoshes in a private store,” Kolya Smiatkin said with a touch of pride. “And now I’m afraid but what I was too hasty. What with the reductions of staffs and....”
“Vava, may I add wood to the fire? It’s still rather ... cold.”
“The trouble with these days,” said Lydia, “is that there’s no spiritual enlightenment. People have forgotten the simple faith.”
“We had a reduction of staffs last month, but they didn’t touch me. I’m socially active. I’m teaching a class of illiterates — free — an hour every evening — as club duty — and they know I’m a conscientious citizen.”
“I’m vice-secretary of our club library,” said Kolya Smiatkin. “Takes three evenings a week — and no pay — but that kept me through the last reduction. But this time, I’m afraid it’s me or another guy — and the other guy, he’s vice-secretary of two libraries.”
“When we have a reduction of staffs,” said the anemic girl, “I’m afraid they’re going to throw out all the wives or husbands whose mates have employment. And Misha has such a fine job with the Food Trust. So we’re thinking ... I’m afraid we’ll have to get divorced. Oh, that’s nothing. We can still go on living together. It’s being done.”
“My career is my duty to society,” said Victor. “I have selected engineering as the profession most needed by our great republic.”
He threw a glance at the fireplace to make sure that Andrei had heard.
“I’m studying philosophy,” said Leo, “because it’s a science that the proletariat of the R.S.F.S.R. does not need at all.”
“Some philosophers,” said Andrei slowly, in the midst of a sudden, stunned silence, “may need the proletariat of the R.S.F.S.R.”
“Maybe,” said Leo. “And maybe I’ll escape abroad, and sell my services to the biggest exploiter of a millionaire — and have an affair with his beautiful wife.”
“Without a doubt,” said Victor, “you’ll succeed in that.”
“Really,” Vava said hastily, “I think it’s still cold and we had better dance. Lydia darling?”
She threw a cajoling glance of inquiry at Lydia. Lydia sighed with resignation, rose and took the seat at the upright piano. She was the only accomplished musician in the crowd. She had a suspicion about the reason of her popularity at all the rare parties that were still being given. She rubbed her cold fingers and struck the piano keys with ferocious determination. She played “John Gray.”
Historians will write of the “Internationale” as the great anthem of the revolution. But the cities of the revolution had their own hymn. In days to come, the men of Petrograd will remember those years of hunger and struggle and hope — to the convulsive rhythm of “John Gray.”
It was called a fox-trot. It had a tune and a rhythm such as those of the new dances far across the border, abroad. It had very foreign lyrics about a very foreign John Gray whose sweetheart Kitty spurned his love for fear of having children, as she told him plainly. Petrograd had known sweeping epidemics of cholera; it had known epidemics of typhus, which were worse; the worst of its epidemics was that of “John Gray.”
Men stood in line at the co-operatives — and whistled “John Gray.” At the recreation hour in school, young couples danced in the big hall, and an obliging pupil played “John Gray.” Men hung on the steps of speeding tramways, humming desperately “John Gray.” Workers’ clubs listened attentively to a lecture on Marxism, then relaxed while a comrade showed his skill on a piano out of tune, playing “John Gray.”
Its gaiety was sad; its abrupt rhythm was hysterical; its frivolity was a plea, a moan for that which existed somewhere, forever out of reach. Through winter nights red flags whistled in the snowdrifts and the city prayed hopelessly with the short, sharp notes of “John Gray.”
Lydia played fiercely. Couples shuffled slowly across the drawing room in an old-fashioned two-step. Irina, who had no voice, sang the words, half singing, half coughing them out, in a husky moan, as she had heard a German singer do in vaudeville:
“John Gray
Was brave and daring,
Kitty
Was very pretty.
Wildly
John fell in love with
Kitty.
Passion’s
Hard to restrain —
He made
His feelings plain,
But Kat
Said ‘No’ to that!”
Kira danced in Leo’s arms. He whispered, looking down at her: “We would dance — like this — in a place of champagne glasses — and spangled gowns — and bare arms — a place called ‘Nacht Local.’ ”
She closed her eyes, and the strong body that led her expertly, imperiously, seemed to carry her to that other world she had seen, long ago, by a dark river that murmured the “Song of Broken Glass.”
Vava undertook to teach Andrei to dance and dragged him out into the crowd. He followed obediently, smiling, like a tiger that could not hurt a kitten. He was not a bad pupil, she thought. She felt very brave, very daring at the thought that she was actually corrupting a stern Communist. She regretted that the corruption could go no further. It was annoying to meet a man in whom her beauty awakened no response, who looked at her with calm, steady eyes, as he looked at Lydia, as he looked at the anemic girl in the felt boots.
Lydia played “Destiny Waltz.” Andrei asked Kira to dance. Leo glanced at him with his cold smile, but said nothing and walked away from them.
“Vava’s a good teacher,” Kira whispered, as Andrei whirled her into the crowd, “but hold me tighter. Oh, yes, much tighter.”
“Destiny Waltz” was slow and soft; it stopped for a breathless second once in a while and swung into rhythm again, slowly, rocking a little, as if expecting soft, billowing satin skirts to murmur gently in answer, in a ball-room such as did not exist any longer.
Kira looked up into a grave face that was smiling half ironically, half shyly. She pressed her head to his breast; her eyes flashed up at him one swift glance, like a spark; then she jerked her head back; her tousled hair caught on a button of his coat and a few strands remained entwined around the button.
Andrei felt a very soft silk in his arms and, under the silk, a very slender body. He looked down at her open collar and saw a faint shadow parting the flesh. He did not look down again.