We the Living

by Ayn Rand

  At two A.M. Vava's mother stuck a timid, pallid face through the crack of a half-opened door and asked the guests if they would "Like to have some refreshments." The eager rush to the dining room cut a waltz short in the middle.

  In the dining room, a long table stood frozen in a solemn splendor of white and silver, crystal sparkling in a blinding light, delicate forks laid out with formal precision. Costly dishes of milky-white porcelain offered slices of black bread with a suspicion of butter, slices of dried fish, potato-skin cookies, sauerkraut and tea with sticky brown candy instead of sugar.

  Vava's mother smiled hospitably: "Please take one of everything. Don't be afraid. There's enough. I've counted them."

  Vava's father sat, beaming broadly, at the head of the table. He was a doctor who specialized in gynecology. He had not been successful before the revolution; after the revolution, two facts had helped his rise: the fact that, as a doctor, he belonged to the "Free Professions" and was not considered an exploiter, and the fact that he performed certain not strictly legal operations. Within a couple of years he had found himself suddenly the most prosperous member of his former circle and of many circles above.

  He sat, his two fists holding his lapels, leaning back comfortably, his round stomach bulging under a heavy gold chain, costly watch-charms tinkling and shuddering with the muscles of his stomach. His narrow eyes disappeared in the thick folds of a white flesh. He smiled warmly at his guests; he was very proud of the rare, enviable position of host, a host who could afford to offer food; he relished the feeling of a patron and benefactor to the children of those before whom he had bowed in the old days, the children of the industrial magnate Argounov, of Admiral Kovalensky. He made a mental note to donate some more to the Red Air Fleet in the morning.

  His smile widened when the maid entered sullenly, carrying a silver tray with six bottles of rare old wine--a token of gratitude from one of his influential patients. He poured, filling crystal glasses, chuckling amiably: "Good old stuff. Real prewar stuff. Bet you kids never tasted anything like it." The glasses were passed down the long table, from hand to hand.

  Kira sat between Leo and Andrei. Andrei raised his glass gravely, steadily, like a warrior. "Your health, Kira," he said.

  Leo raised his glass lightly, gracefully, like a diplomat at a foreign bar. "Since you're toasted by my class superior, Kira," he said, "I'll drink to our charming hostess."

  Vava answered with a warm, grateful smile. Leo raised his glass to her and drank looking at Rita.

  When they returned to the drawing room, the dying fire had to be revived. Lydia played again. A few couples danced lazily. Vava sang a song about a dead lady whose fingers smelt of incense. Kolya Smiatkin gave an impersonation of a drunk. Victor told anecdotes. Others followed his example; some of the anecdotes were political; cautious glances were thrown at Andrei; words stopped halfway and the teller stammered, blushing.

  At five A.M. everyone was exhausted; but no one could go home before daylight; it was too dangerous. The city militia was helpless against burglars and holdup men. No citizen dared to cross a street after midnight.

  Doctor Milovsky and his wife retired, leaving the young guests to await the dawn. The stern, starched maid dragged into the drawing room mattresses borrowed from all the neighbors. The mattresses were lined up against the wall. The maid left. Vava turned out the light.

  The guests settled down comfortably, in couples. Nothing pierced the darkness but a last glow of the fireplace, a few red dots of cigarettes, a few whispers, a few suspicious sounds that were not whispers. The unwritten law of parties dictated that no one should be too curious in these last, weary and most exciting hours of a party.

  Kira felt Andrei's hand on her arm. "I think they have a balcony," he whispered. "Let's go out."

  Following him, Kira heard a sigh and something that sounded like a very passionate kiss from the corner where Vava nestled in Victor's arms.

  It was cold on the balcony. The street lay silent like a tunnel under a vault slowly turning gray. Frozen puddles looked like splinters of glass panes on the pavement. Windows looked like puddles frozen on the walls. A militia-man leaned against a lamp post. A flag bent over the street. The flag did not move; neither did the man.

  "It's funny," said Andrei, "I never thought I would, but I do like dancing."

  "Andrei, I'm angry at you."

  "Why?"

  "This is the second time that you haven't noticed my best dress."

  "It's beautiful."

  The door behind them squealed on its rusty hinges. Leo stepped out on the balcony, a cigarette hanging in the corner of his mouth. He asked: "Is Kira nationalized state property, too?"

  Andrei answered slowly: "Sometimes I think it would be better for her if she were."

  "Well, until the Party passes the proper resolution," said Leo, "she isn't."

  They returned into the warm darkness of the drawing room. Leo drew Kira down on the mattress by his side; he said nothing; she drowsed, her head on his shoulder. Rita moved away with a little shrug. Andrei stood by the balcony door, smoking.

  At eight A.M. the window curtains were pulled aside. A dull white sky spread over the roofs, like soapy water. Vava muttered good-byes to her guests at the door; she swayed a little, weary circles under her eyes, one dark lock hanging to the tip of her nose, her lipstick smeared over her chin. The guests divided into groups, to walk together in clusters as long as possible.

  In the cold dawn, ice breaking under their feet, Andrei took Kira aside for a moment. He pointed at Leo, who was helping Lydia over a puddle a few steps ahead of them. "Do you see him often?" he asked.

  The question told her that he had not learned the truth; the tone of the question--that she would not tell him.

  Lights burned in the windows of barred, padlocked shops. Many doors carried a notice:

  "Comrade burglars, please don't bother. There's nothing inside."

  XIII

  IN THE SUMMER, PETROGRAD WAS A FURNACE.

  The wooden bricks of the pavements cracked into black gashes, dry as an empty river bed. The walls seemed to breathe of fever and the roofs smelt of burned paint. Through eyes hazy in a white glare, men looked hopelessly for a tree in the city of stone. When they found a tree, they turned away: its motionless leaves were gray with parched dust. Hair stuck to foreheads. Horses shook flies off their foaming nostrils. The Neva lay still; little drops of fire played lazily on the water, like clusters of spangles, and made the men on the bridges feel hotter.

  Whenever they could, Kira and Leo went away for a day in the country.

  They walked hand in hand in the stripes of sun and pine shadows. Like columns of dark brick, like sinewy bodies sunburnt to bronze and peeling in strips of light bark, the pines guarded the road and dropped, jealously, through a heavy tangle of malachite, a few rays, a few strips of soft blue. On the green slopes of ditches, little purple dots of violets bent to a patch of yellow sand; and only the crystal luster of the sand showed water over it. Kira took off her shoes and stockings. Soft dust and pine needles between her toes, she kicked the little black balls of fallen pine cones. Leo swung her slippers at the end of a dry branch, his white shirt unbuttoned, his sleeves rolled above his elbows. Her bare feet pattered over the boards of an old bridge. Through the wide cracks, she saw sparks swimming like fish scales down the stream and polliwogs wiggling in swarms of little black commas.

  They sat alone in a meadow. Tall grass rose like a wall around them, over their heads; a hot blue sky descended to the sharp, green tips; the sky seemed to smell of clover. A cricket droned like an electric engine. She sat on the ground; Leo lay stretched, his head on her lap. He chewed the end of a long grass stem; the movement of his hand, holding it, had the perfection of a foreign cigarette ad. Once in a while, she bent down to kiss him.

  They sat on a huge tree root over a river. The spreading stars of ferns on the slope below looked like a jungle of dwarf palms. The white trunk of a birch tree sparkled in
the sun, its leaves like a waterfall that streamed down, green drops remaining suspended in the air, trembling, turning silver and white and green again, dropping once in a while to be swept away by the current. Kira leaped over the rocks, roots and ferns as swift, agile and joyous as an animal. Leo watched her. Her movements were sharp, angular, inexpressibly graceful in that contradiction of all grace, not the soft, fluent movements of a woman, but the broken, jerking, precise, geometrical movements of a futuristic dancer. He watched her perched on a dead tree trunk, looking down into the water, her hands at straight angles to her arms, her elbows at straight angles to her body, her body at a straight angle to her legs, a wild, broken little figure, tense, living, like a lightning in shape. Then he sprang up, and ran after her, and held her, breaking the straight angles into a straight line crushed against him. The dead trunk hanging over the stream creaked perilously. She laughed, that strange laughter of hers which was too joyous to be gay, a laughter that held a challenge, and triumph, and ecstasy. Her lips were moist, glistening.

  When they returned to the city, the stifling dusk met them with posters, and banners, and headlines, four letters flaming over the streets: U.S.S.R.

  The country had a new name and a new constitution. The All-Union Congress of Soviets had just decided so. Banners said: THE UNION OF SOCIALIST SOVIET REPUBLICS IS THE KERNEL FOR THE FUTURE GROWTH OF A WORLD STATE

  Demonstrations marched through the hot, dusty streets, red kerchiefs mopping sweating foreheads.

  OUR POWER IS IN THE TIGHT WELDING OF THE COLLECTIVE!

  A column of children, drums beating, marched into the sunset: a layer of bare legs, and a layer of blue trunks, and a layer of white shirts, and a layer of red ties; the kindergarten of the Party, the "Pioneers." Their high, young voices sang: "To the greedy bourgeois' sorrow

  We shall light our fire tomorrow,

  Our world fire of blood. . . ."

  Once, Kira and Leo attempted to spend a night in the country.

  "Certainly," said the landlady. "Certainly, citizens, I can let you have a room for the night. But first you must get a certificate from your Upravdom as to where you live in the city, and a permit from your militia department, and then you must bring me your labor books, and I must register them with our Soviet here, and our militia department, and get a permit for you as transient guests, and there's a tax to pay, and then you can have the room."

  They stayed in the city.

  Galina Petrovna had made a bold decision and taken a job. She taught sewing in a school for workers' children. She rocked through dusty miles in a tramway across the city to the factory district; she watched little grimy hands fashioning shirts and aprons and, sometimes, letters on a red banner; she talked of the importance of needlework and of the Soviet government's constructive policy in the field of education.

  Alexander Dimitrievitch slept most of the day. When he was awake, he played solitaire on the ironing board in the kitchen--and mixed painstakingly an imitation milk of water, starch and saccharine for Plutarch, the cat he had found in a gutter.

  When Kira and Leo came to visit them, there was nothing to talk about. Galina Petrovna spoke too shrilly and too fast--about the education of the masses and the sacred calling of the intelligentsia in serving their less enlightened brothers. Lydia talked about the things of the spirit. Alexander Dimitrievitch said nothing. Galina Petrovna had long since dropped all hints related to the institution of marriage. Only Lydia was flustered when Leo spoke to her; she blushed, embarrassed and thrilled.

  Kira visited them because Alexander Dimitrievitch watched her silently when she came, with a feeble shadow of a smile as if, had it not been for a dull haze suddenly grown between him and the life around him, he would have been glad to see her.

  Kira sat on a window sill and watched the first autumn rain on the sidewalk. Glass bubbles sprang up in an ink puddle, a ring around each bubble, and floated for a brief second, and burst helplessly like little volcanoes. Rain drummed dully against all the pavements of the city; it sounded like the distant purring of a slow engine with just one thin trickle of water through the rumble, like a faucet leaking somewhere close by.

  One single figure walked in the street below. An old collar raised between hunched shoulders, hands in pockets, arms pressed tightly to his sides, he walked away--a lonely shadow, swaying a little--into the city of glistening roofs under a fog of thin, slanting rain.

  Kira did not turn on the light. Leo found her in the darkness by the window. He pressed his cheek to hers and asked: "What's the matter?"

  She said softly: "Nothing. Just winter coming. A new year starting."

  "You're not afraid, are you, Kira? We've stood it so far."

  "No," said Kira. "I'm not afraid."

  The new year was started by the Upravdom.

  "It's like this, Citizen Kovalensky," he said, shifting from foot to foot, crumpling his cap in both hands and avoiding Leo's eyes. "It's on account of the Domicile Norm. There's a law about as how it's illegal for two citizens to have three rooms, on account of overcrowding conditions seeing as there are too many people in the city, and there are overcrowding conditions and no place to live. The Gilotdel sent me a tenant with an order for a room, and he's a good proletarian, and I got to give him one of your rooms. He can take the dining room and you can keep the other two. Also, this ain't the time when people could live in seven rooms as some people used to."

  The new tenant was a meek, elderly little man who stammered, wore glasses and worked as bookkeeper for the shoe factory "Red Skorohod." He left early in the morning and came home late at night. He cooked on his own Primus and never had any visitors.

  "I won't be in the way, Citizen Argounova," he had said. "I won't be in the way at all. It's just only as regards the bathroom. If you'll let me take a bath once a month--I'll be most grateful. As to the other necessities, there's a privy in the back yard, if you'll excuse the mention. I won't mind. I won't annoy a lady."

  They moved their furniture out of the dining room into their remaining quarters and nailed the connecting door. When Kira cooked, in the drawing room, she asked Leo to remain in the bedroom.

  "Self-preservation," she told him, "for both of us."

  Andrei had spent the summer on a Party mission in the villages of the Volga.

  He met Kira again at the Institute on the first day of the new semester. His suntan was a little deeper; the lines at the corners of his mouth were not a wound nor a scar, but looked like both.

  "Kira, I knew I'd be glad to see you again. But I didn't know that I'd be so . . . happy."

  "You've had a hard summer, haven't you, Andrei?"

  "Thank you for your letters. They've kept me cheerful."

  She looked at the grimness of his lips. "What have they done to you, Andrei?"

  "Who?" But he knew that she knew. He did not look at her, but he answered: "Well, I guess everybody knows it. The villages--that's the dark spot on our future. They're not conquered. They're not with us. They have a red flag over the local Soviet and a knife behind their backs. They bow, and they nod, and they snicker in their beards. They stick pictures of Lenin over the barns where they hide their grain from us. You've read in the papers about the Clubhouse they burned and the three Communists they burned in it--alive. I was there the next day."

  "Andrei! I hope you got them!"

  He could not restrain a smile: "Why, Kira! Are you saying that about men who fight Communism?"

  "But . . . but they could have done it to you."

  "Well, nothing happened to me, as you see. Don't look at that scar on my neck. Just grazed. The fool wasn't used to firearms. His aim wasn't very good."

  The boss of the Gossizdat had five pictures on the walls of his office: one of Karl Marx, one of Trotsky, one of Zinoviev and two of Lenin. On his desk stood two small plaster busts: of Lenin and Karl Marx. He wore a high-collared peasant blouse of expensive black satin.

  He looked at his manicured fingernails; then he looked at Leo. "I feel
certain, Comrade Kovalensky, that you will welcome this opportunity to do your duty in our great cultural drive, as we all do."

  Leo asked: "What do you want?"

  "This organization has taken the honorary post of 'Cultchef ' to a division of the Baltfleet. You understand what I mean, of course? In line with the new--and brilliant--move of the Party toward a wider spread of education and Proletarian Culture, we have accepted the position of 'Cultural Chief' to a less enlightened unit, as all institutions of note have done. We are thus responsible for the cultural advancement of our brave brothers of the Baltic Fleet. Such is our modest contribution to the gigantic rise of the new civilization for the new ruling class."

  "Fine," said Leo. "What do you want me to do about it?"

  "I think it is obvious, Comrade Kovalensky. We are organizing a free night school for our proteges. With your knowledge of foreign languages--I had a class of German in mind, twice a week--Germany is the cornerstone of our future diplomacy and the next step of the world revolution--and a class of English, once a week. Of course, you are not to expect any financial remuneration for this work, your services are to be donated, inasmuch as this is not an undertaking of the government, but our strictly voluntary gift to the State."

  "Since the beginning of the revolution," said Leo, "I haven't been buying gifts for anyone, neither for my friends--nor otherwise. I can't afford them."

  "Comrade Kovalensky, did it ever occur to you to consider what we think of men who merely work for their pay and take no part in social activity in their spare time?"

  "Did it ever occur to you that I have a life to live--in my spare time?"

  The man at the desk looked at the five pictures on his walls. "The Soviet State recognizes no life but that of a social class."

  "I don't think we shall go into a discussion of the subject."