Kira looked at Leo’s tall black figure in his immaculate dinner clothes, as she had looked at herself in the medieval wedding gown: as if he were a being from many centuries away, and it seemed strange to see him standing by the table with the Primus.
He took Antonina Pavlovna’s arm with a gesture that belonged in a foreign film scene, and they left. When the door had closed behind them in Lavrov’s room, Kira heard Lavrov’s wife grunting: “And they say private traders don’t make no money.”
“Dictatorship of the Proletariat!” Lavrov growled and spat loudly.
Kira put on her old coat. She was not going to the excursion guides’ meeting. She was going to the pavilion in a lonely palace garden.
A fire was burning in Andrei’s fireplace. The logs creaked with sharp little explosions, long hulks broken into checks of an even, transparent, luminous red, and little orange flames swayed, fluttering, meeting, curving softly, dying suddenly, leaping up again, little blue tongues licking glowing coals; over the logs, as if suspended motionless in the air, long red flames tapered into the darkness of the chimney; yellow sparks shot upward, dying against black sooted bricks. An orange glow danced, trembling, on the white brocaded walls, on the posters of Red soldiers, smokestacks and tractors. One of Leda’s feet drooped over the edge of the mantelpiece, its toes pink in the glow.
Kira sat on a box before the fireplace. Andrei sat at her feet, his face was buried in her knees; his hand caressed slowly the silken arch of her foot; his fingers dropped to the floor and came back to her tight silk stocking.
“... and then, when you’re here,” he whispered, “it’s worth all the torture, all the waiting.... And then I don’t have to think any more....”
He raised his head. He looked at her and pronounced words she had never heard from him before: “I’m so tired....”
She held his head, her two hands spread on his temples. She asked: “What’s the matter, Andrei?”
He turned away, to the fire. He said: “My Party.” Then he whirled back to her. “You know it, Kira. Perhaps you knew it long ago. You were right. Perhaps you’re right about many things, those things we’ve tried not to discuss.”
She whispered: “Andrei, do you want to discuss it — with me? I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You can’t hurt me. Don’t you think I can see it all, myself? Don’t you think I know what that great revolution of ours has come to? We shoot one speculator and a hundred others hire taxis on Nevsky every evening. We raze villages to the ground, we fire machine guns into rows of peasants crazed with misery, when they kill a Communist. And ten of the avenged victim’s Party brothers drink champagne at the home of a man with diamond studs in his shirt. Where did he get the diamonds? Who’s paying for the champagne? We don’t look into that too closely.”
“Andrei, did you ever think that it was you — your Party — who drove the men you call speculators into what they are doing — because you left them no choice?”
“I know it.... We were to raise men to our own level. But they don’t rise, the men we’re ruling, they don’t grow, they’re shrinking. They’re shrinking to a level no human creatures ever reached before. And we’re sliding slowly down into their ranks. We’re crumbling, like a wall, one by one. Kira, I’ve never been afraid. I’m afraid, now. It’s a strange feeling. I’m afraid to think. Because ... because I think, at times, that perhaps our ideals have had no other result.”
“That’s true! The fault was not in men, but in the nature of your ideals. And I ... No, Andrei, I won’t speak about it. I wish I could help you. But of all people, I’m the one who can help you least. You know it.”
He laughed softly: “But you are helping me, Kira. You’re the only one in this whole world who’s helping me.”
She whispered: “Why?”
“Because, no matter what happens, I still have you. Because, no matter what human wreckage I see around me, I still have you. And — in you — I still know what a human being can be.”
“Andrei,” she whispered, “are you sure you know me?”
He whispered, his lips in her hand so that she heard the words as if she were gathering them, one by one, in the hollow of her palm: “Kira, the highest thing in a man is not his god. It’s that in him which knows the reverence due a god. And you, Kira, are my highest reverence....”
“It’s me,” a voice whispered behind the door, “Marisha. Let me in, Irina.”
Irina unlocked the door, cautiously, uncertainly. Marisha stood on the threshold with a loaf of bread in her hand.
“Here,” she whispered, “I brought you something to eat. Both of you.”
“Marisha!” Irina screamed.
“Keep quiet!” Marisha whispered with a cautious glance down the corridor. “Sure, I know. But don’t worry. My mouth’s shut. Here, take this. It’s my own bread ration. No one will notice. I know why you didn’t eat any breakfast this morning. But you can’t keep that up.”
Irina seized her arm, jerked her into the room, closed the door and giggled hysterically: “I ... You see ... oh, Marisha, I didn’t expect it of you to ...” Her hair hung over one eye, the other eye was full of tears.
Marisha whispered: “I know how it is. Hell! You love him.... Well, I don’t know anything officially, so I don’t have to tell anything, if they ask me. But for God’s sake don’t keep him here long. I’m not so sure about Victor.”
“Do you think he ... suspects?”
“I don’t know. He’s acting mighty queer. And if he knows — I’m afraid of him, Irina.”
“It’s just till tonight,” Irina whispered, “he’s leaving ... tonight.”
“I’ll try to watch Victor for you.”
“Marisha ... I can’t thank you ... I ...”
“Oh, hell! Nothing to cry about.”
“I’m not crying ... I ... It’s just ... I haven’t slept for two nights and ... Marisha, you’re so ... I thank you and ...”
“Oh, that’s all right. Well, so long. I won’t hang around here.”
When the door closed, Irina listened cautiously till Marisha’s steps died down the corridor; then she stood listening for other sounds, trembling; the house was silent. She locked the door and tiptoed across the room, and slipped noiselessly into the little storage closet that opened by her bed. Sasha sat on an old trunk in the closet, watching a sparrow behind a dusty glass pane on the sill of a tiny window high under the ceiling.
“Irina,” he whispered, his eyes on the window, “I think I’d better go now.”
“Why, of course not! I won’t let you.”
“Listen, I’ve been here for two days. I didn’t intend to do that. I’m sorry I gave in to you. If anything happens — do you know what they’ll do to you for this?”
“If anything happens to you,” she whispered, slipping her arm around his big, stooped shoulders, “I don’t care what they do to me.”
“I was to expect it some day. But you ... I don’t want to drag you into it.”
“Listen, nothing will happen. I have your ticket for Baku. And the clothes. Victor has a Party meeting tonight. We’ll sneak out safely. And, anyway, you can’t go now, in broad daylight. The street is watched.”
“I almost wish I had let them take me without ever coming here. Irina, I’m so sorry!”
“Darling, I’m so glad!” She laughed soundlessly. “I really think I’ve saved you. They’ve arrested everyone of your group. I’ve pumped that out of Victor. Everyone but you.”