“A little ...” Morozov began.
“... drunk,” Leo finished for him, shrugging.
“Plenty drunk, if you ask me.” Morozov’s freckles disappeared in a red flush of anger. “Just so drunk that I get up this morning and find him sprawled on the davenport in the lobby, full dress and all, and you couldn’t have awakened him with an earthquake.”
“Well,” Leo asked indifferently, “what of it?”
“It was a grand party,” said Antonina Pavlovna. “And how Leo can spend money! It was thrilling to watch. Really, Leo darling, you were too reckless, though.”
“What did I do? I don’t remember.”
“Well, I didn’t mind it when you lost so much on the roulette, and it was cute when you paid them ten rubles for every cheap glass you broke, but really you didn’t have to give the waiters hundred-ruble tips.”
“Why not? Let them see the difference between a gentleman and the Red trash of today.”
“Yes, but you didn’t have to pay the orchestra fifty rubles to shut up every time they played something you didn’t like. And then, when you chose the prettiest girl in the crowd, whom you’d never seen before, and you offered her any price she named to undress before the guests, and you stuck those hundreds down her décolleté ...”
“Well,” Leo shrugged, “she had a beautiful body.”
“Let’s go, Leo,” said Kira.
“Wait a minute, Lev Sergeievitch,” Morozov said slowly, putting his saucer down. “Just where did you get all that money?”
“I don’t know,” said Leo. “Tonia gave it to me.”
“Antonina, where did you ...”
“Oh?” Antonina Pavlovna raised her eyebrows and looked bored. “I took that package you had under the waste basket.”
“Tonia!” Morozov roared, jumping up, so that the dishes rattled on the table. “You didn’t take that!”
“Certainly I took it,” Antonina Pavlovna tilted her chin defiantly. “And I’m not accustomed to being reproached about money. I took it and that’s that, so what are you going to do about it?”
“My God! Oh, my God! Oh, my Lord in Heaven!” Morozov grasped his head and nodded, rocking like a toy with a broken spring. “What are we going to do? That was the money we owe Syerov. It was due yesterday. And we haven’t got another ruble on hand ... and Syerov ... well, if I don’t deliver it today, he’ll kill me.... What am I going to do? ... He won’t be kept waiting and ...”
“Oh, he won’t, eh?” Leo chuckled coldly. “Well, he’ll wait and he’ll like it. Stop whining like a mutt. What are you afraid of? He can do nothing to us and he knows it.”
“I’m surprised at you, Lev Sergeievitch,” Morozov growled, his freckles drowned in red. “You get your fair share, don’t you? Do you think it was honorable to take ...”
“Honorable?” Leo laughed resonantly, his gayest, lightest, most insulting laughter. “Are you speaking to me? My dear friend, I’ve acquired the great privilege of not having to worry about that word at all. Not at all. In fact, if you find something particularly dishonorable — you may be sure I’ll do it. The lower — the better. I wish you a good day.... Come on, Kira.” He looked around uncertainly: “Where the hell’s my hat?”
“Don’t you remember, Leo?” Antonina Pavlovna reminded him gently. “You lost it on the way home.”
“That’s right, I did. Well, I’ll buy another one. Buy three of them. So long.”
Kira called a sleigh and they rode home in silence.
When they were alone in their room, Leo said brusquely: “I won’t have any criticism from you or anybody else. And you, particularly, have no complaints to make. I haven’t slept with any other woman, if that’s what you’re worried about, and that’s all you have to know.”
“I wasn’t worried, Leo. I have no complaints to make and no criticism. But I want to speak to you. Will you listen?”
He said: “Sure,” indifferently, and sat down.
She knelt before him and slipped her arms around him and shook her hair back, her eyes wide, intent, her voice tense with the calm of a last effort: “Leo, I can’t reproach you. I can’t blame you. I know what you’re doing. I know why you’re doing it. But listen: it’s not too late; they haven’t caught you; you still have time. Let’s make an effort, a last one: let’s save all we can and apply for a foreign passport. Let’s run to the point of the earth that’s the farthest from this damned country.”
He looked into her flaming eyes with eyes that were like mirrors which could not reflect a flame any longer. “Why bother?” he asked.
“Leo, I know what you’ll say. You have no desire to live. You don’t care any more. But listen: do it without desire. Even if you don’t believe you’ll ever care again. Just postpone your final judgment on yourself; postpone it till you get there. When you’re free in a human country again — then see if you still want to live.”
“You little fool! Do you think they give foreign passports to men with my record?”
“Leo, we have to try. We can’t give up. We can’t go on for one minute without that hope ahead of us. Leo, it can’t get you! I won’t let it get you!”
“Who? The G.P.U.? How are you going to stop it?”
“No! Not the G.P.U. Forget the G.P.U. There’s something worse, much worse. It got Victor. It got Andrei. It got Mother. It won’t get you.”
“What do you mean, it got Victor? Are you comparing me to that bootlicking rat, that ...”
“Leo, the bootlicking and all those things — that’s nothing. There’s something much worse that it’s done to Victor, underneath, deeper, more final — and the bootlicking, it’s only a consequence. It does that. It kills something. Have you ever seen plants grown without sunlight, without air? I won’t let it do that to you. Let it take a hundred and fifty million living creatures. But not you, Leo! Not you, my highest reverence ...”
“What an exaggerated expression! Where did you get that?”
She stared at him, repeating: “Where did I ...”
“Really, Kira, sometimes I wonder why you’ve never outgrown that tendency to be so serious about everything. Nothing is getting me. Nothing is doing anything to me. I’m doing what I please, which is more than you can say about anyone else these days.”
“Leo, listen! There’s something I want to do — to try. We have a lot of things to untangle, you and I both. And it’s not easy. Let’s try to slash it all off, at once.”
“By doing what?”
“Leo, let’s get married.”
“Huh?” He stared at her incredulously.
She repeated: “Let’s get married.”
He threw his head back and laughed. He laughed resonantly, a clear, light, icy laughter, as he had laughed at Andrei Taganov, as he had laughed at Morozov. “What’s this, Kira? The make-an-honest-woman-of-you nonsense?”
“No, it’s not that.”
“Rather late for the two of us, isn’t it?”
“Why not, Leo?”
“What for? Do we need it?”
“No.”
“Then why do it?”
“I don’t know. But I’m asking it.”
“That’s not reason enough to do something senseless. I’m not in a mood to become a respectable husband. If you’re afraid of losing me — no scrap of paper, scribbled by a Red clerk, is going to hold me.”
“I’m not afraid of losing you. I’m afraid that you will lose yourself.”
“But a couple of rubles at the Zags and the Upravdom’s blessing will save my soul, is that it?”
“Leo, I have no reasons to offer. But I’m asking it.”
“Are you delivering an ultimatum?”
She said softly, with a quiet smile of surrender and resignation: “No.”