We the Living

by Ayn Rand

  "I'll be afraid only on a day that will never come," said Kira. "The day when I give up."

  "I've given up," said Irina, "and I'm not afraid. Only there's something I would like to understand. And I don't think anyone can explain it. You see, I know it's the end for me. I know it, but I can't quite believe it, I can't feel it. It's so strange. There's your life. You begin it, feeling that it's something so precious and rare, so beautiful that it's like a sacred treasure. Now it's over, and it doesn't make any difference to anyone, and it isn't that they are indifferent, it's just that they don't know, they don't know what it means, that treasure of mine, and there's something about it that they should understand. I don't understand it myself, but there's something that should be understood by all of us. Only what is it, Kira? What?"

  Political convicts traveled in a separate car; men with bayonets stood at its doors. Irina and Sasha sat facing each other on hard wooden benches; they had traveled together part of the way, but they were approaching a junction where Irina was to be transferred to another train. The car windows were black and lustrous, as if sheets of dusty patent leather had been pasted behind the glass panes; only the fluffy, wet stars of snow, smashing against the glass, showed that there was an earth beyond the panes, and wind, and a black sky. A lantern trembled high under the ceiling, as if every knock of the wheels under the floor kicked the yellow flame out, and it fluttered and came back again, shivering, clutching the little stub of candle. A boy in an old green student's cap, alone by a window, sang softly, monotonously, through his teeth, and his voice sounded as if he were grinning, although his cheeks were motionless: "Hey, little apple!

  Where are you rolling?"

  Sasha held Irina's hands. She was smiling, her chin buried in an old woolen scarf. Her hands were cold. A white vapor fluttered at her lips as she whispered: "We must not think of it as ten years. It sounds so long, doesn't it? But it really isn't. You know, some philosopher said that time is only an illusion or something like that. Who was it that said it? Well, it doesn't matter. Time can pass very quickly, if one stops thinking of it. We'll still be young, when we'll . . . when we'll be free. So let's promise each other not to think of anything else. Now, promise?"

  "Yes," he whispered, looking at her hands. "Irina, if only I hadn't . . ."

  "And that's something you've already promised me never to mention again, not even to yourself. Darling, don't you see that it's really easier for me--this way--than to have remained at home, with you sent here alone? This way, I'll feel that we have something in common, that we're sharing something. Aren't we?"

  He buried his face in her hands and said nothing.

  "And listen," she whispered, bending down to his blond hair, "I know it won't always be easy to remain cheerful. Sometimes one thinks: oh, what's the use of remaining brave just for one's pride's sake? So let's agree on this: we'll both be brave for each other. When you feel the worst, just smile--and think that you're doing something for me. And I'll do the same. That will keep us together. And you know, it's very important to remain cheerful. We'll last longer."

  "What for?" he asked. "We won't last long enough anyway."

  "Sasha, what nonsense!" She pulled his head up by a strand of hair, looking straight into his eyes, as if she believed her every word. "Two strong, healthy creatures like us! And, anyway, I'm sure those stories are exaggerated--if you mean the hunger and the consumption. Nothing is ever as bad as it's painted."

  The wheels grated under the floor, slowing down.

  "Oh, God!" Sasha moaned. "Is that the station?"

  The car jerked forward and the wheels went on knocking under the floor, like a mallet striking faster and faster.

  "No," Irina whispered breathlessly, "not yet."

  The student by the window wailed, as if he were grinning, to the rhythm of the wheels: "Hey, little apple,

  Where are you rolling?"

  And he repeated, slowly, biting into every word, as if the words were an answer to a question, and the question itself, and a deadly certainty of some silent thought of his own: "Hey . . . little . . . apple . . . where . . . are . . . you . . . rolling?"

  Irina was whispering: "Listen, here's something we can do: we can look at the moon, sometimes--and, you know, it's the same moon everywhere--and we would be looking at the same thing together that way, you see?"

  "Yes," said Sasha, "it will be nice."

  "I was going to say the sun, but I don't suppose there will be much sun there, so . . ." A cough interrupted her; she coughed dully, shaking, pressing her hand to her mouth.

  "Irina!" he cried. "What's that?"

  "Nothing," she smiled, blinking, catching her breath. "Just a little cold I caught. Those G.P.U. cells weren't heated too well."

  A lantern swam past the window. Then there was nothing but the silent snowflakes splattering against the glass, but they sat, frozen, staring at the window.

  Irina whispered: "I think we're approaching."

  Sasha sat up, erect, his face the color of brass, darker than his hair, and said, his voice changed, firm: "If they let us write to each other, Irina, will you . . . every day?"

  "Of course," she answered gaily.

  "Will you . . . draw things in your letters, too?"

  "With pleasure. . . . Here," she picked a small splinter of coal from the window ledge, "here, I'll draw something for you, right now."

  With a few strokes, swift and sure as a surgeon's scalpel, she sketched a face on the back of her seat, an imp's face that grinned at them with a wide, crescent mouth, with eyebrows flung up, with one eye winking mischievously, a silly, infectious, irresistible grin that one could not face without grinning in answer.

  "Here," said Irina, "he'll keep you company after . . . after the station. . . ."

  Sasha smiled, answering the imp's smile. And suddenly throwing his head back, clenching his fists, he cried, so that the student by the window shuddered and looked at him: "Why do they talk of honor, and ideals, and duty to one's country? Why do they teach us . . ."

  "Darling, not so loud! Don't think useless thoughts. There are so many useless thoughts in the world!"

  At the station, another train was waiting on a parallel track. Guards with bayonets escorted some of the prisoners out. Sasha held Irina, and her bones creaked in his huge arms, and he kissed her lips, her chin, her hair, her neck, and he made a sound that was not quite a moan and not quite a beast's growl. He whispered hoarsely, furiously, into her scarf, blushing, choking, words he had always been reluctant to utter: "I . . . I . . . I love you. . . ."

  A guard touched her elbow; she tore herself away from Sasha and followed the guard down the aisle. At the door, Sasha pushed the guard aside, savagely, insanely, and seized Irina again, and held her, not kissing her, looking at her stupidly, his long hands crushing the body of the wife he had never possessed.

  The guard tore her away from him and pushed her out through the door. She leaned back for a second, for a last look at Sasha. She grinned at him, the homely, silly grin of her imp, her nose wrinkled, one eye winking mischievously. Then the door closed.

  The two trains started moving at once. Pressed tightly to the glass pane, Sasha could see the black outline of Irina's head in the yellow square of a window in the car on the next track. The two trains rolled together, iron mallets striking faster and faster under the floor, the glow of the station swimming slowly back over the dark floor of the car that Sasha was watching. Then the grayish patch of snow between them grew wider. He could still touch the other train with his outstretched arm if the window were open, he thought; then he could still touch it if he were to fling his whole body straight to the other train; then he could reach it no longer, even were he to leap out. He tore his eyes from that other window and watched the white stretch that was growing between them, his fingers on the glass, as if he wanted to seize that white stretch and hold it, and pull with his whole strength, and stop it. The tracks were flying farther and farther apart. At the level of his eyes he could
now see the bluish, steely gleams of wheels whirling down narrow bands in the snow. Then he did not look at the snow any longer. His glance clung to the tiny yellow square with a black dot that was a human figure, far away. And as the yellow square shrank swiftly, his eyes would not let it go, and he felt his glance being pulled, stretched, with a pain as excruciating as a wrenched nerve. Across an endless waste of snow, two long caterpillars crawled apart; two thin, silvery threads preceded each; the threads led, disappearing, into a black void. Sasha lost sight of the window; but he could still see a string of yellow spots that still looked square, and above them something black moving against the sky, that looked like car roofs. Then there was only a string of yellow beads, dropping into a black well. Then, there was only the dusty glass pane with patent leather pasted behind it, and he was not sure whether he still saw a string of sparks somewhere or whether it was something burned into his unblinking, dilated eyes.

  Then there was only the imp left, on the back of the empty seat before him, grinning with a wide, crescent mouth, one eye winking.

  IX

  COMRADE VICTOR DUNAEV, ONE OF OUR YOUNGEST and most brilliant engineers, has been assigned to a job on the Volkhovstroy, the great hydroelectric project of the Soviet Union. It is a responsible post, never held previously by one of his years.

  The clipping from Pravda lay in Victor's glistening new brief case, along with a similar one from the Krasnaya Gazeta, and, folded carefully between them, a clipping from the Moscow Izvestia, even though it was only one line about "Comrade V. Dunaev."

  Victor carried the brief case when he left for the construction site on Lake Volkhov, a few hours ride from Petrograd. A delegation from his Party Club came to see him off at the station. He made a short, effective speech about the future of proletarian construction, from the platform of the car, and forgot to kiss Marisha when the train started moving. The speech was reproduced in the Club's Wall Newspaper on the following day.

  Marisha had to remain in Petrograd; she had her course at the Rabfac to finish and her social activities; she had suggested timidly that she would be willing to give them up and accompany Victor; but he had insisted on her remaining in the city. "My dear, we must not forget," he had told her, "that our social duties come first, above all personal considerations."

  He had promised to come home whenever he was back in the city. She saw him once, unexpectedly, at a Party meeting. He explained hurriedly that he could not come home with her, for he had to take the midnight train back to the construction site. She said nothing, even though she knew that there was no midnight train.

  She had developed a tendency to be too silent. At the Komsomol meetings, she made her reports in a strident, indifferent voice. When caught off guard, she sat staring vacantly ahead, her eyes puzzled.

  She was left alone in the big, empty rooms of the Dunaev apartment. Victor had talked intimately to a few influential officials, and no tenants had been ordered to occupy their vacant rooms. But the silence of the apartment frightened Marisha, so she spent her evenings with her family, in her old room, next to Kira's.

  When Marisha appeared, her mother sighed and muttered some complaint about the rations at the co-operative, and bent silently over her mending. Her father said: "Good evening," and gave no further sign of noticing her presence. Her little brother said: "You here again?" She had nothing to say. She sat in a corner behind the grand piano, reading a book until late at night; then she said: "Guess I'll be going," and went home.

  One evening, she saw Kira crossing the room hurriedly on her way out. Marisha leaped to her feet, smiling eagerly, hopefully, although she did not know why, nor what she hoped for, nor whether she had anything to say to Kira. She made a timid step forward and stopped: Kira had not noticed her and had gone out. Marisha sat down slowly, still smiling vacantly.

  Snow had come early. It grew by Petrograd's sidewalks in craggy mountain ranges, veined with thin, black threads of soot, spotted with brown clods and cigarette stubs and greenish, fading rags of newspapers. But under the walls of the houses, snow grew slowly, undisturbed, soft, white, billowing, pure as cotton, rising to the top panes of basement windows.

  Above the streets, window sills hung as white, overloaded shelves. Cornices sparkled, trimmed with the glass lace of long icicles. Into an icy, summer-blue sky little billows of pink smoke rose slowly, melting like petals of apple blossoms.

  High on the roofs, snow gathered into menacing white walls behind iron railings. Men in heavy mittens swung shovels high over the city and hurled huge, frozen white clods, as rocks, down to the pavements below; they crashed with a dull thud and a thin white cloud. Sleighs whirled sharply to avoid them; hungry sparrows, their feathers fluffed, scattered from under the muffled, thumping hoofs.

  On street corners, huge cauldrons stood encased in boxes of unpainted boards. Men with shovels swung the snow up into the cauldrons, and narrow streams of dirty water gurgled from under the furnaces, running by the curb, long black threads cutting white streets.

  At night, the furnaces blazed open in the darkness, little purplish-orange fires low over the ground, and ragged men slipped out of the night, bending to extend frozen hands into the red glow.

  Kira walked soundlessly through the palace garden. A narrow track of footprints, half-buried under a fresh white powder, led through the deep snow to the pavilion; Andrei's footprints, she knew; few visitors ever crossed that garden. Tree trunks stood bare, black and dead like telegraph poles. The palace windows were dark; but, far at the end of the garden, showing through the stiff, naked branches, a bright yellow square hung in the darkness and a little patch of snow was golden-pink under Andrei's window.

  She rose slowly up the long marble stairway. There was no light; her foot searched uncertainly for every frozen, slippery step. It was colder than in the street outside, the dead, damp, still cold of a mausoleum. Hesitantly, her hand followed the broken marble rail. She could see nothing ahead; it seemed as if the steps would never end.

  When she came to a break in the railing, she stopped. She called helplessly, with a little note of laughter in her frightened voice: "Andrei!"

  A wedge of light split the darkness above as he flung the door open. "Oh, Kira!" He rushed down to her, laughing apologetically: "I'm so sorry! It's those broken electric wires."

  He swung her up into his arms and carried her to his room, while she laughed: "I'm sorry, Andrei, I'm getting to be such a helpless coward!"

  He carried her to the blazing fireplace. He took off her coat and hat, his fingers wet with snow melting on her fur collar. He made her sit down by the fire, removed her mittens and rubbed her cold fingers between his strong palms; he unfastened her new felt overshoes, and took them off, shaking snow that sizzled on the bright red coals.

  Then he turned silently, took a long, narrow box, dropped it in her lap and stood watching her, smiling. She asked: "What is this, Andrei?"

  "Something from abroad."

  She tore the paper and opened the box. Her mouth fell open without a sound. The box held a nightgown of black chiffon, so transparent that she saw the flames of the fireplace dancing through its thin black folds, as she held it high in frightened, incredulous fingers. "Andrei . . . where did you get that?"

  "From a smuggler."

  "Andrei! You--buying from a smuggler?"

  "Why not?"

  "From an . . . illegal speculator?"

  "Oh, why not? I wanted it. I knew you'd want it."

  "But there was a time when . . ."

  "There was. Not now." Her fingers wrinkled the black chiffon as if they were empty. "Well?" he asked. "Don't you like it?"

  "Oh, Andrei!" she moaned. "Andrei! Do they wear things like that abroad?"

  "Evidently."

  "Black underwear? How--oh, how silly and how lovely!"

  "That's what they do abroad. They're not afraid of doing silly things that are lovely. They consider it reason enough to do things because they're lovely."

  She laughed: "An
drei, they'd throw you out of the Party if they heard you say that."

  "Kira, would you like to go abroad?"

  The black nightgown fell to the floor. He smiled calmly, bending to pick it up: "I'm sorry. Did I frighten you, Kira?"

  "What . . . what did you say?"

  "Listen!" He was kneeling suddenly by her side, his arms around her, his eyes intent with a reckless eagerness she had never seen in them before. "It's an idea I've had for some time . . . at first, I thought it was insane, but it keeps coming back to me. . . . Kira, we could . . . You understand? Abroad . . . forever. . . ."

  "But, Andrei . . ."

  "It can be done. I could still manage to be sent there, get an assignment, some secret mission for the G.P.U. I'd get you a passport to go as my secretary. Once across the border--we'd drop the assignment, and our Red passports, and our names. We'd run away so far they'd never find us."

  "Andrei, do you know what you're saying?"

  "Yes. Only I don't know what I'd do there. I don't know--yet. I don't dare to think about it, when I'm alone. But I can think of it, I can talk of it when you're here with me. I want to escape before I see too much of what I see around us. To break with all of it at once. It would be like starting again, from the beginning, from a total void. But I'd have you. The rest doesn't matter. I'd grow to understand what I'm just beginning to learn from you now."

  "Andrei," she stammered, "you, who were the best your Party had to offer the world . . ."

  "Well, say it. Say I'm a traitor. Maybe I am. And maybe I've just stopped being one. Maybe I've been a traitor all these years--to something greater than what the Party ever offered the world. I don't know. I don't care. I feel as if I were naked, naked and empty and clear. Because, you see, I feel certain of nothing in that involved mess they call existence, of nothing but you." He noticed the look in her eyes and asked softly: "What's the matter, Kira? Have I said anything to frighten you?"

  She whispered without looking at him: "No, Andrei."

  "It's only what I said once--about my highest reverence--remember?"

  "Yes . . ."

  "Kira, will you marry me?"