“What’s the matter, comrade?” Comrade Bitiuk inquired nervously, obsequiously. “What’s the matter?”
“A joke,” roared Comrade Sonia, “a good joke!”
Kira shrugged with resignation; she knew what to expect.
When a reduction of staffs came to the “House of the Peasant” and she saw her name among those dismissed as “anti-social element,” she was not surprised. It made no difference now. She spent most of her last salary to buy eggs and milk for Leo, which he would not touch.
In the daytime, Kira was calm, with the calm of an empty face, an empty heart, a mind empty of all thoughts but one. She was not afraid: because she knew that Leo had to go south, and he would go, and she could not doubt it, and so she had nothing to fear.
But there was the night.
She felt his body, icy and moist, close to hers. She heard him coughing. Sometimes in his sleep, his head fell on her shoulder, and he lay there, trusting and helpless as a child, and his breathing was like a moan.
She saw the red bubble on Maria Petrovna’s dying lips, and she heard her screaming: “Kira! I want to live! I want to live!”
She could feel Leo’s breath in hot, panting gasps on her neck.
Then, she was not sure whether it was Maria Petrovna or Leo screaming when it was too late: “Kira! I want to live! I want to live!”
Was she going insane? It was so simple. She just needed money; a life, his life — and money.
“I make more money than I can spend on myself.”
“Kira! I want to live! I want to live!”
She made one last attempt to get money.
She was walking down a street slippery with autumn rain, yellow lights melting on black sidewalks. The doctor had said every week counted; every day counted now. She saw a resplendent limousine stopping in the orange cube of light at a theater entrance. A man stepped out; his fur coat glistened like his automobile fenders. She stood in his path. Her voice was firm and clear:
“Please! I want to speak to you. I need money. I don’t know you. I have nothing to offer you. I know it isn’t being done like this. But you’ll understand, because it’s so important. It’s to save a life.”
The man stopped. He had never heard a plea that was a command. He asked, squinting one eye appraisingly: “How much do you need?”
She told him.
“What?” he gasped. “For one night? Why, your sisters don’t make that in a whole career!”
He could not understand why the strange girl whirled around and ran across the street, straight through the puddles, as if he were going to run after her.
She made one last plea to the State.
It took many weeks of calls, letters, introductions, secretaries and assistants, but she got an appointment with one of Petrograd’s most powerful officials. She was to see him in person, face to face. He could do it. Between him and the power he could use stood only her ability to convince him.
The official sat at his desk. A tall window rose behind him, admitting a narrow shaft of light, creating the atmosphere of a cathedral. Kira stood before him. She looked straight at him; her eyes were not hostile, nor pleading; they were clear, trusting, serene; her voice was very calm, very simple, very young.
“Comrade Commissar, you see, I love him. And he is sick. You know what sickness is? It’s something strange that happens in your body and then you can’t stop it. And then he dies. And now his life — it depends on some words and a piece of paper — and it’s so simple when you just look at it as it is — it’s only something made by us, ourselves, and perhaps we’re right, and perhaps we’re wrong, but the chance we’re taking on it is frightful, isn’t it? They won’t send him to a sanatorium because they didn’t write his name on a piece of paper with many other names and call it a membership in a Trade Union. It’s only ink, you know, and paper, and something we think. You can write it and tear it up, and write it again. But the other — that which happens in one’s body — you can’t stop that. You don’t ask questions about that. Comrade Commissar, I know they are important, those things, money, and the Unions, and those papers, and all. And if one has to sacrifice and suffer for them, I don’t mind. I don’t mind if I have to work every hour of the day. I don’t mind if my dress is old — like this — don’t look at my dress, Comrade Commissar, I know it’s ugly, but I don’t mind. Perhaps, I haven’t always understood you, and all those things, but I can be obedient and learn. Only — only when it comes to life itself, Comrade Commissar, then we have to be serious, don’t we? We can’t let those things take life. One signature of your hand — and he can go to a sanatorium, and he doesn’t have to die. Comrade Commissar, if we just think of things, calmly and simply — as they are — do you know what death is? Do you know that death is — nothing at all, not at all, never again, never, no matter what we do? Don’t you see why he can’t die? I love him. We all have to suffer. We all have things we want, which are taken away from us. It’s all right. But — because we are living beings — there’s something in each of us, something like the very heart of life condensed — and that should not be touched. You understand, don’t you? Well, he is that to me, and you can’t take him from me, because you can’t let me stand here, and look at you, and talk, and breathe, and move, and then tell me you’ll take him — we’re not insane, both of us, are we, Comrade Commissar?”
The Comrade Commissar said: “One hundred thousand workers died in the civil war. Why — in the face of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics — can’t one aristocrat die?”
Kira walked home very slowly and looked at the dark city; she looked at the glistening pavements built for many thousands of old shoes; at the tramways for men to ride in; at the stone cubes into which men crawled at night; at the posters that cried of what men dreamed and of what men ate; and she wondered whether any of those thousands of eyes around her saw what she saw, and why it had been given her to see.
Because:
In a kitchen on the fifth floor, a woman bent over a smoking stove and stirred cabbage in a kettle, and the cabbage smelt, and the woman blinked, and groaned with the pain in her back, and scratched her head with the spoon,
Because:
In a corner saloon, a man leaned against the bar and raised a foaming glass of beer, and the foam spilled over the floor and over his trousers, and he belched and sang a gay song,
Because:
In a white bed, on white sheets stained with yellow, a child slept and sniveled in its sleep, its nose wet,
Because:
On a sack of flour in the basement, a man tore a woman’s pants off, and bit into her throat, and they rolled, moaning, over the sacks of flour and potatoes,
Because:
In the silence of stone walls slowly dripping frozen dampness, a figure knelt before a gilded cross, and raised trembling arms in exaltation, and knocked a pale forehead against a cold stone floor,
Because:
In the roar of machines whirling lightnings of steel and drops of burning grease, men swung vigorous arms, and panted, heaving chests of muscles glistening with sweat, and made soap,
Because:
In a public bath, steam rose from brass pans, and red, gelatinous bodies shook scrubbing themselves with the soap, sighing and grunting, trying to scratch steaming backs, and murky water and soap suds ran down the floor into the drain —
— Leo Kovalensky was sentenced to die.
XVII
IT WAS HER LAST CHANCE AND SHE HAD TO TAKE IT.
A modest house stood before her, on a modest street that lay deserted in the darkness. An old landlady opened the door and looked at Kira suspiciously: Comrade Taganov did not receive women visitors. But she said nothing and shuffled, leading Kira down a corridor, then stopped, pointed at a door and shuffled away.