“Who was your father, Citizen Argounova?”
“Alexander Argounov.”
“The former textile manufacturer and factory owner?”
“Yes.”
“I see. Who was your father, Citizen Kovalensky?”
“Admiral Kovalensky.”
“Executed for counter-revolutionary activities?”
“Executed — yes.”
“Who was your father, Citizen Lavrova?”
“Factory worker, Comrade Judge. Exiled to Siberia by the Czar in 1913. My mother’s a peasant, from the plow.”
“It is the verdict of the People’s Court that the room in question rightfully belongs to Citizen Lavrova.”
“Is this a court of justice or a musical comedy?” Leo asked.
The presiding magistrate turned to him solemnly: “So-called impartial justice, citizen, is a bourgeois prejudice. This is a court of class justice. It is our official attitude and platform. Next case!”
“Comrade Judge!” Kira appealed. “How about the furniture — our furniture?”
“You can’t pull all that furniture into one room.”
“No, but we could sell it. We’re ... we’re quite hard up.”
“So? You would sell it for profit and a proletarian girl, who didn’t happen to accumulate any furniture, would have to sleep on the floor? ... Next case!”
“Tell me one thing,” Kira asked Citizen Lavrova. “How did you happen to get an order for that particular room of ours? Who told you about it?”
Citizen Lavrova gave an abrupt giggle with a vague stare. “One has friends,” was all she answered.
She had a pale face with a short nose and small, pouting lips that looked chronically discontented. She had light, bluish eyes, cold and suspicious. Her hair curled in vague ringlets on her forehead and she always wore tiny earrings, a brass circle close around the lobe of her ear, with a tiny imitation turquoise. She was not sociable and talked little. But the door bell rang continuously in the hands of visitors to Comrade Lavrova. Her friends called her Marisha.
In Leo’s gray and silver bedroom, a hole was pierced over the black onyx fireplace — for the pipe of the “Bourgeoise.” Two shelves on his wardrobe were emptied for dishes, silverware and food. Bread crumbs rolled down into their underwear and the bed sheets smelt of linseed oil. Leo’s books were stacked on the dresser; Kira’s — under the bed. Leo whistled a fox-trot, arranging his books. Kira did not look at him.
After some hesitation, Marisha surrendered the painting of Leo’s mother, which hung in the drawing room. But she kept the frame; she put a picture of Lenin in it. She also had pictures of Trotsky, Marx, Engels and Rosa Luxemburg; also — a poster representing the Spirit of the Red Air Fleet. She had a gramophone. Late into the night, she played old records, of which her favorite was a song about Napoleon’s defeat in Russia — “It roared, it flamed, the fire of Moscow.” When she was tired of the gramophone, she played the “Dog’s Waltz” on the grand piano.
The bathroom had to be reached through the bedroom. Marisha kept shuffling in and out, wearing a faded, unfastened bathrobe.
“When you have to go through, I wish you’d knock,” Kira told her.
“What for? It’s not your bathroom.”
Marisha was a student of the University Rabfac.
The Rabfacs were special workers’ faculties with an academic program a little less exacting than that of the University, with a program of revolutionary sciences a great deal more exacting, and with an admission on the strictest proletarian basis.
Marisha disliked Kira, but spoke to Leo at times. She flung the door open so that her posters rustled on the walls, and yelled imperiously: “Citizen Kovalensky, can you help me with this damn French history? What century did they burn Martin Luther in? Or was that Germany? Or did they burn him?”
At other times she flung the door open and announced to no one in particular: “I’m going to the Komsomol Club to meeting. If Comrade Rilenko comes, tell him he’ll find me at the Club. But if that louse Mishka Gvozdev comes, tell him I’ve gone to America. You know who he is — the little one with the wart on his nose.”
She came in, a cup in her hand: “Citizen Argounova, can I borrow some lard? Didn’t know I was all out of it.... Nothing but linseed oil? How can you eat that stinking stuff? Well, gimme half a cup.”
Going out at seven in the morning, passing through her room, Leo found Marisha asleep, her head on a table littered with books. Marisha jerked, awakening with a start at the sound of his steps.
“Oh, damnation!” she yawned, stretching. “It’s this paper I have to read at the Marxist Circle tonight, for our less enlightened comrades — on the ‘Social Significance of Electricity as a Historical Factor.’ Citizen Kovalensky, who the hell is Edison?”
Late at night they could hear her coming home. She slammed the door and threw her books on a chair, and they could hear the books scattering over the floor, and her voice intermingled with the deep, adolescent basso of Comrade Rilenko: “Aleshka, pal, be an angel. Light that damn Primus. I’m starving.”
Aleshka’s steps shuffled across the room, and the Primus hissed.
“You’re an angel, Aleshka. Always said you were an angel. I’m tired like a dray-horse. The Rabfac this morning; the Komsomol Club at noon; a committee on day-nurseries in factories at one-thirty; the Marxist Circle at two; demonstration against Illiteracy at three — and do my feet sweat! — lecture on Electrification at four; at seven — editors’ board of the Wall Newspaper — I’m gonna be editor; meeting of the women houseworkers at seven-thirty or something; conference on our comrades in Hungary at.... You can’t say your girl friend ain’t class-minded and socially active, Aleshka, you really can’t say it.”
Aleshka sat at the piano and played, “John Gray.”
Once, in the middle of the night, Kira was awakened by someone slinking furtively into the bathroom. She caught a glimpse of an undressed boy with blond hair. There was no light in Marisha’s room.
One evening, Kira heard a familiar voice behind the door. A man was saying: “Of course, we’re friends. You know we are. Perhaps — perhaps there’s more — on my part — but I do not dare to hope. I’ve proven my devotion to you. You know the favor I’ve done you. Now, do one for me. I want to meet that Party friend of yours.”
Passing through Marisha’s room, on her way out, Kira stopped short. She saw Victor sitting on the davenport, holding Marisha’s hand. He jumped up, his temples reddened.
“Victor! Were you coming to see me or ...” Her voice broke off; she understood.
“Kira, I don’t want you to think that I ...” Victor was saying.
Kira was running out of the room, out of the lobby, down the stairs.
When she told Leo about it, he threatened to break every bone in Victor’s body. She begged him to keep quiet. “If you raise this issue, his father will know. It will break Uncle Vasili and he’s so unhappy as it is. What’s the use? We won’t get the room back.”
In the Institute co-operative, Kira met Comrade Sonia and Pavel Syerov. Comrade Sonia was chewing a crust of bread broken off the loaf she had received, Pavel Syerov looked as trim as a military fashion plate. He smiled effusively: “How are you, Comrade Argounova? We don’t see you so often at the Institute these days.”