by Ayn Rand
"Oh! . . . You can't, Kira?"
"No. I can't. Now don't look tragic. Here, I brought you something to cheer you up."
She took a small toy from her pocket, a glass tube that ended in a bulb filled with a red liquid in which a little black figure floated, trembling.
"What's that?"
She held the bulb in her closed fist, but the little figure did not move. "I can't do it. You try. Hold it this way."
She closed his fingers over the bulb. No expression, no movement of his told it to her, but she knew that he was not indifferent to the touch of her fingers on his, that all of the past winter had not made him accustomed and indifferent. The red liquid in the sealed tube spurted up suddenly in furious, boiling bubbles; the little black, horned figure jumped ecstatically up and down through the storm.
"See? They call it American Resident. I bought it on a street corner. Cute, isn't it?"
He smiled and watched the imp dancing. "Very cute. . . . Kira, why can't you come tonight?"
"It's . . . some business that I have to attend. Nothing important. Do you mind?"
"No. Not if it's inconvenient for you. Can you stay now?"
"Only for a little while." She tore her coat off and threw it on the bed.
"Oh, Kira!"
"Like it? It's your own fault. You insisted on a new dress."
The dress was red, very plain, very short, trimmed in black patent leather: a belt, four buttons, a flat round collar and a huge bow. She stood, leaning against the door, slouching a little, suddenly very fragile and young, a child's dress clinging to a body that looked as helpless and innocent as a child's, her tangled hair thrown back, her skirt high over slender legs pressed closely together, her eyes round and candid, but her smile mocking and confident, her lips moist, wide. He stood looking at her, frightened by a woman who looked more dangerous, more desirable than he had ever known.
She jerked her head impatiently: "Well? You don't like it?"
"Kira, you are . . . the dress is . . . so lovely. I've never seen a woman's dress like that."
"What do you know about women's dresses?"
"I looked through a whole magazine of Paris fashions at the Censorship bureau yesterday."
"You looking through a fashion magazine?"
"I was thinking of you. I wanted to know what women liked."
"And what did you learn?"
"Things I'd like you to have. Funny little hats. And slippers like sandals--with nothing but straps. And jewelry. Diamonds."
"Andrei! You didn't tell that to your comrades at the Censorship bureau, did you?"
He laughed, still looking at her intently, incredulously: "No. I didn't."
"Stop staring at me like that. What's the matter? Are you afraid to come near me?"
His fingers touched the red dress. Then his lips sank suddenly into the hollow of her naked elbow.
He sat in the deep niche of the window sill and she stood beside him, in the tight circle of his arms. His face was expressionless, and only his eyes laughed soundlessly, cried to her soundlessly what he could not say.
Then he was talking, his face buried in the red dress: "You know, I'm glad you came now, instead of tonight. There were still so many hours to wait. . . . I've never seen you like this. . . . I've tried to read and I couldn't. . . . Will you wear this dress next time? Was that your own idea, this leather bow? . . . Why do you look so . . . so much more grownup in a childish dress like this? . . . I like that bow. . . . Kira, you know, I've missed you so terribly. . . . Even when I'm working I . . ."
Her eyes were soft, pleading, a little frightened: "Andrei, you shouldn't think of me when you're working."
He said slowly, without smiling: "Sometimes, it's only thoughts of you that help me--through my work."
"Andrei! What's the matter?"
But he was smiling again: "Why don't you want me to think of you? Remember, last time you were here, you told me about that book you read with a hero called Andrei and you said you thought of me? I've been repeating it to myself ever since, and I bought the book. I know it isn't much, Kira, but . . . well . . . you don't say them often, things like that."
She leaned back, her hands crossed behind her head, mocking and irresistible: "Oh, I think of you so seldom I've forgotten your last name. Hope I read it in a book. Why, I've even forgotten that scar, right there, over your eye." Her finger was following the line of the scar, sliding down his forehead, erasing his frown; she was laughing, ignoring the plea she had understood.
"Kira, would it cost so very much to install a telephone in your house?"
"But they . . . we . . . have no electrical connections in the apartment. It's really impossible."
"I've wished so often that you had a phone. Then I could call you . . . once in a while. Sometimes, it's so hard to wait, just wait for you."
"Don't I come here as often as you wish, Andrei?"
"It isn't that. Sometimes . . . you see . . . I want just a look at you . . . the same day you've been here . . . sometimes even a minute after you've left. It's that feeling that you're gone and I have no way of calling, of finding you, no right to approach the house where you live, as if you had left the city. Sometimes, I look at all the people in the streets--and it frightens me--that feeling that you're lost somewhere among them--and I can't get to you, I can't scream to you over all those heads."
She said, implacably: "Andrei, you've promised never to call at my house."
"But wouldn't you allow me to telephone, if we could arrange it?"
"No. My parents might guess. And . . . oh, Andrei, we have to be careful. We have to be so careful--particularly now."
"Why particularly now?"
"Oh, no more than usual. It isn't so hard, is it, that one condition, just to be careful--for my sake?"
"No, dear."
"I'll come often. I'll still be here when you'll become tired of me."
"Kira, why do you say that?"
"Well, you'll be tired of me, some day, won't you?"
"You don't think that, do you?"
She said hastily: "No, of course not. . . . Well, of course, I love you. You know it. But I don't want you to feel . . . to feel that you're tied to me . . . that your life . . ."
"Kira, why don't you want me to say that my life . . ."
"This is why I don't want you to say anything."
She bent and closed his mouth with a kiss that hurt it.
Beyond the window, some club member in the palace was practicing the "Internationale," slowly, with one hand, on a sonorous concert piano.
Andrei's lips moved hungrily over her throat, her hands, her shoulders. He tore himself away with an effort. He made himself say lightly, gaily, as an escape, rising: "I have something for you, Kira. It was for tonight. But then . . ."
He took a tiny box from a drawer of his desk, and pressed it into her hand. She protested helplessly: "Oh, Andrei, you shouldn't. I've asked you not to. With all you've done for me and . . ."
"I've done nothing for you. I think you're too unselfish. It has always been your family. I've had to fight to have you get this dress."
"And the stockings, and the lighter, and . . . Oh, Andrei, I'm so grateful to you, but . . ."
"But don't be afraid to open it."
It was a small, flat bottle of real French perfume. She gasped. She wanted to protest. But she looked at his smile and she could only laugh happily: "Oh, Andrei!"
His hand moved slowly in the air, without touching her, following the line of her neck, her breast, her body, cautiously, attentively, as if modeling a statue.
"What are you doing, Andrei?"
"Trying to remember."
"What?"
"Your body. As you stand--just now. Sometimes when I'm alone, I try to draw you in the air--like this--to feel as if you were standing before me."
She pressed herself closer to him. Her eyes were growing darker; her smile seemed slow and heavy. She said, extending the perfume bottle: "You must open it. I want
you to give me the first drop--yourself." She drew him down to her side, on the bed. She asked: "Where will you put it?"
His finger tips moist with the bewildering fragrance from another world, he pressed them timidly into her hair.
She laughed defiantly: "Where else?"
His finger tips brushed her lips.
"Where else?"
His hand drew a soft line down her throat, stopping abruptly at the black patent leather collar.
Her eyes holding his, she jerked her collar, tearing the snaps of her dress open. "Where else?"
He was whispering, his lips on her breast: "Oh, Kira, Kira, I wanted you--here--tonight. . . ."
She leaned back, her face dark, challenging, pitiless, her voice low: "I'm here--now."
"But . . ."
"Why not?"
"If you don't . . ."
"I do. That's why I came."
And as he tried to rise, her arms pulled him down imperiously. She whispered: "Don't bother to undress. I haven't the time."
He could forgive her the words, for he had forgotten them, when he saw her exhausted, breathing jerkily, her eyes closed, her head limp in the curve of his arm. He was grateful to her for the pleasure he had given her.
He could forgive anything, when she turned to him suddenly at the door, gathering her coat over the wrinkled red dress, when she whispered, her voice pleading, wistful and tender: "You won't miss me too much till next time, will you? . . . I . . . I've made you happy, haven't I?"
She ran swiftly up the stairs to her apartment, the home that had been Admiral Kovalensky's. She unlocked the door, looking impatiently at her wristwatch.
In the former drawing room, Marisha Lavrova was busy, standing over a Primus, stirring a kettle of soup with one hand, holding a book in the other, memorizing aloud: "The relationships of social classes can be studied on the basis of the distribution of the economic means of production at any given historical . . ."
Kira stopped beside her. "How's the Marxist theory, Marisha?" she interrupted loudly, tearing her hat off, shaking her hair. "Do you have a cigarette? Smoked my last one on the way home."
Marisha nodded with her chin toward the dresser. "In the drawer," she answered. "Light one for me, too, will you? How's things?"
"Fine. Wonderful weather outside. Real summer. Busy?"
"Uh-uh. Have to give a lecture at the Club tomorrow--on Historical Materialism."
Kira lighted two cigarettes and stuck one into Marisha's mouth.
"Thanks," Marisha acknowledged, swirling the spoon in the thick mixture. "Historical Materialism and noodle soup. That's for a guest," she winked slyly. "Guess you know him. Name's Victor Dunaev."
"I wish you luck. You and Victor both."
"Thanks. How's everything with you? Heard from the boy friend lately?"
Kira answered reluctantly: "Yes. I received a letter. . . . And a telegram."
"How's he getting along? When's he coming back?"
It was as if Kira's face had frozen suddenly into a stern, reverent calm, as if Marisha were looking again at the austere Kira of eight months ago. She answered:
"Tonight."
II
A TELEGRAM LAY ON THE TABLE BEFORE Kira. It contained four words:
"Arriving June fifth. Leo."
She had read it often; but two hours remained till the arrival of the Crimean train and she could still re-read it many times. She spread it out on the gray, faded satin cover of the bed and knelt by its side, carefully smoothing every wrinkle of the paper. It had four words: a word for every two months past; she wondered how many days she had paid for every letter, she did not try to think of how many hours and of what the hours had been.
But she remembered how many times she had cried to herself: "It doesn't matter. He'll come back--saved." It had become so simple and so easy: if one could reduce one's life to but one desire--life could be cold, clear and bearable. Perhaps others still knew that there were people, streets, and feelings; she didn't; she knew only that he would come back saved. It had been a drug and a disinfectant; it had burned everything out and left her icy, limpid, smiling.
There had been her room--suddenly grown so empty that she wondered, bewildered, how four walls could hold such an enormous void. There had been mornings when she awakened to stare at a day as dim and hopeless as the gray square of snow clouds in the window, and it took her a tortured effort to rise; days when each step across the room was a conquest of will, when all the objects around her, the Primus, the cupboard, the table, were enemies screaming to her of what they had shared with her, of what they had lost.
But Leo was in the Crimea where every minute was a ray of sunlight, and every ray of sunlight--a new drop of life.
There had been days when she fled from her room to people and voices, and fled from the people, for she found herself suddenly still lonelier, and she fled to wander through the streets, her hands in her pockets, her shoulders hunched, watching the sleigh runners, the sparrows, the snow around the lights, begging of them something she could not name. Then she returned home, and lighted the "Bourgeoise," and ate a half-cooked dinner on a bare table, lost in a dim room, crushed under the huge sound of the logs crackling, the clock ticking on a shelf, hoofs crunching snow beyond the window.
But Leo drank milk and ate fruit with skins bursting into fresh, sparkling juice.
There had been nights when she buried her head under the blanket and her face in the pillow, as if trying to escape from her own body, a body burning with the touch of a stranger's hands--in the bed that had been Leo's.
But Leo was lying on a beach by the sea and his body was growing suntanned.
There had been moments when she saw, in sudden astonishment, as if she had not grasped it before, just what she was doing to her own body; then she closed her eyes, for behind that thought was another one, more frightening, forbidden: of what she was doing to another man's soul.
But Leo had gained five pounds and the doctors were pleased.
There had been moments when she felt as if she were actually seeing the downward movement of a smiling mouth, the swift, peremptory wave of a long, thin hand, seeing them for a second briefer than lightning, and then her every muscle screamed with pain, so that she thought that she was not alone to hear it.
But Leo wrote to her.
She read his letters, trying to remember the inflection of his voice as it would pronounce each word. She spread the letters around her and sat in the room as with a living presence.
He was coming back, cured, strong, saved. She had lived eight months for one telegram. She had never looked beyond it. Beyond the telegram, there was no future.
The train from the Crimea was late.
Kira stood on the platform, motionless, looking at the empty track, two long bands of steel that turned to brass far away, in the clear, summer sunset beyond the terminal vaults. She was afraid to look at the clock and learn that which she had feared: that the train was hopelessly, indefinitely late. The platform trembled under the grating wheels of a heavy baggage truck. Somewhere in the long steel tunnel, a voice cried mournfully at regular intervals, the same words that blended into one, like the call of a bird in the dusk: "Grishka shove it over." Boots shuffled lazily, aimlessly past her. Across the tracks a woman sat on a bundle, her head drooping. The glass panes above were turning a desolate orange. The voice called plaintively: "Grishka shove it over. . . ."
When Kira went to the office of the station commandant, the executive answered briskly that the train would be quite late; unavoidable delay; a misunderstanding at a junction; the train was not expected till tomorrow morning.
She stood on the platform for a little while longer, aimlessly, reluctant to leave the place where she had almost felt his presence. Then she walked out slowly, walked down the stairs, her arms limp, her feet lingering unsteadily on every step she descended.
Far down at the end of the street, the sky was a flat band of bright, pure, motionless yellow, like the spilled yoke o
f an egg, and the street looked brown and wide in a warm twilight. She walked away slowly.
She saw a familiar corner, passed it, then came back and swerved into another direction, toward the house of the Dunaevs. She had an evening that had to be filled.
Irina opened the door. Her hair was wild, uncombed, but she wore a new dress of black and white striped batiste, and her tired face was powdered neatly.
"Well, Kira! Of all people! What a rare surprise! Come in. Take your coat off. I have something--someone--to show you. And how do you like my new dress?"
Kira was laughing suddenly. She took off her coat: she wore a new dress of black and white striped batiste. Irina gasped: "Oh . . . oh, hell! When did you get it?"
"About a week ago."
"I thought that if I got the plain stripes, I wouldn't see so many of them around, but the first time I wore it, I met three ladies in the same dress, within fifteen minutes. . . . Oh, what's the use? . . . Oh, well, come on!"
In the dining room the windows were open, and the room felt spacious, fresh with the soft clatter of the street. Vasili Ivanovitch got up hastily, smiling, dropping tools and a piece of wood on the table. Victor rose gracefully, bowing. A tall, blond, husky young man jumped up and stood stiffly, while Irina announced: "Two little twins from the Soviet reformatory! . . . Kira, may I present Sasha Chernov? Sasha--my cousin, Kira Argounova."
Sasha's hand was big and firm, and his handshake too strong. He grinned shyly, a timid, candid, disarming grin.
"Sasha, this is a rare treat for you," said Irina. "A rare guest. The recluse of Petrograd."
"Of Leningrad," Victor corrected.
"Of Petrograd," Irina repeated. "How are you, Kira? I hate to admit how glad I am to see you."
"I'm delighted to meet you," Sasha muttered. "I've heard so much about you."
"Without a doubt," said Victor, "Kira is the most talked about woman in the city--and even in Party circles." Kira glanced at him sharply; but he was smiling pleasantly: "Glamorous women have always been an irresistible theme for admiring whispers. Like Madame de Pompadour, for instance. Charm refutes the Marxist theory: it knows no class distinctions."
"Shut up," said Irina. "I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm sure it's something rotten."
"Not at all," said Kira quietly, holding Victor's eyes. "Victor is very complimentary, even though he does exaggerate."
