The room was warm and full of the satisfying smell of oil. Irina’s voice was mesmeric. She talked about the Agricultural Front, about the Five Year Plan, about the necessity for communizing everything—The Collectivized Farm was essential—resistance to Collectivization must cease—only by way of the Collective Farm could true Socialism be established and the needs of the Proletariat satisfied. At the mention of the Collective Farm a slight glaze filmed the eyes of the listeners. Elizabeth was aware that Irina no longer held them spell-bound. Some deep, instinctive resistance made itself felt.
As Irina paused on a period, Akulina said in a bitter whisper, “Cock-a-doodle-doo! When a hen takes to crowing she’s ready for the pot!”
Her neighbour on the bench, a little bent old woman, gave a brief cackle of laughter. She stared inquisitively past Akulina and Yuri at Stefan and the new wife he had brought home. She chuckled again and poked Akulina with her elbow.
“Those crowing ones don’t always catch the men,” she said.
Akulina snorted. Whatever else Varvara was, she was at least quiet in the house. She said so, not troubling whether her words travelled beyond old Masha or not.
The little old woman giggled.
“To have that one in the house would be like having an earthquake there!” She indicated Irina with a jerk of her chin.
A boy with a wild, thin face had jumped up on a bench in the front of the hall and was talking fervently but not very audibly about the Young Communist movement. The fidgeting had begun again, and a buzz of talk. The two old ladies continued their conversation with a good deal of enjoyment.
Irina remained upon the platform. Standing beneath the portrait of Lenin, she surveyed the inattentive audience with an air of disdainful impatience.
“Looks at us as if we weren’t good enough to tread on!” was Akulina’s comment.
Masha nodded.
“She’d have had your Stefan fast enough if she could have got him. It wasn’t for want of trying if she didn’t. What’s this girl like that he’s married? She looks a quiet one, as you say.”
“Oh, she’s quiet.” Akulina’s tone was disparaging in the extreme.
“Any dowry?”
“Who has a dowry nowadays, when we’re all stripped to the bone? Three cows I had, as you know—and how we’re going to get the one that’s left through the winter—”
“Is she any good in the house?” pursued old Masha.
Yuri had gone to sleep. From across him Stephen caught enough of the women’s conversation to make him uneasy. Masha was the most inquisitive old woman in the village, and would undoubtedly pass on all she could glean to her six daughters-in-law, and all her neighbours. The gleaning would be well garnished.
The Young Communist was still addressing a completely inattentive room. Stephen thought it was time to make a diversion. He jumped on the bench and began to sing The Red Flag in a fine rolling baritone. At the first note Irina’s expression changed. Exaltation replaced disdain. Springing to the front of the platform, she joined in the song. It was immediately taken up by all the younger part of the audience.
The trivial nursery-rhyme tune went with a swing. Elizabeth’s fancy gave it its original German words. The deserted lover naïvely addresses a fire-tree:
“O fir-tree, oh, fir-tree,
How green are your leaves—”
He contrasts them with his sweetheart’s fickle behaviour:
“O maiden, O maiden,
How false is your heart!
You swore to me when I was lucky.
Now I am poor, you throw me over.
O maiden, O maiden,
How false is your heart!”
It was a far cry from this pastoral simplicity to the angry passions of The Red Flag, yet these had an ugly naïveté of their own.
She looked up at Stephen towering above her, and thought how strange it was to see him swinging his arms in time to the rhythm and throwing a world of revolutionary fervour into his fine voice.
When the song was finished, there were cries of “More!” and “Go on, Stefan!” A girl of about seventeen began to sing, but she was hushed down. Stefan was evidently a popular performer, and there were demands for favourite songs. In response to one of these he gave a highly dramatic rendering of a folk-song about a man who was hunted down by a wolf. It was rather a blood-curdling performance, and old Yuri woke up to mutter, and mumble disapproval.
When the last “Yoi-hoi!” had died away, Stephen jumped down from the bench, to find Irina at his elbow. Elizabeth had seen her leave her place on the platform and make her way towards them with an uneasy sense of danger. When she saw her standing by Stephen, the thought of how well matched they were passed through her mind like a draught of cold air. She was as finely made for a woman as he for a man. Her head rose above his shoulder, while her dark hair and eyes and warm, vivid pallor were in perfect contrast to his blue eyes and ruddy colouring.
Irina addressed him at once with an air of intimacy.
“That was well sung! We have missed you here—I have missed you. There are many things which I would like to discuss with you. You have not been in Moscow?”
He shook his head.
“Oh no. Have you?”
Irina dropped her voice.
“Yes—and there is much to tell you. There are great developments coming.” Her eyes glowed as she spoke. “But we can’t speak of that here. We must meet and talk.”
As she spoke, the schoolmaster came nervously up. At close quarters he was astonishingly like an ant. His hands moved continually like antennae. His long bony neck would have looked better in a collar. He had with him a female ant, whom Elizabeth immediately guessed to be his wife. They wore the same large convex glasses and cut their hair in exactly the same way, but the eyes behind the female glasses were less worried and more watchful. They shook hands with Stephen, and next moment Elizabeth was being presented as Varvara Ivanovna and his wife. Behind his fatuous smile of the new-made husband, Stephen watched her with apprehension. Would she pass? Or would there be something which would set Irina’s keen wits to work—guessing?
He looked, and saw a pale mask with vacant eyes and a mouth that dropped at the corners. When the schoolmaster and his wife spoke to her, she fingered her skirts and looked down.
Stephen nudged her.
“Where are your manners? You should say how-do-you-do to my good friends Anton Ilyitch and Anna Stefanovna.” Then, over her head, he explained, “She has never seen so much company before.”
Through her down-dropped eyelids Elizabeth was aware of Irina’s scrutiny. She smiled a faint, empty smile, hung her head, and twined her fingers in her skirt. It would be as well not to show more of her hands than she could help. They were roughened by work, but they were too small and fine for a peasant. She did not like Irina’s silence. She was more aware of it than of the conversation between Stephen and the others.
Irina broke it at last.
“Are your parents alive?”
Elizabeth shook her head. Strangely and suddenly the question touched a hidden spring of pain. Her parents had died in the same year ten years ago when she was only fourteen. Such an old wound to hurt again in this keen way. No acting could have served her like the tears which came stinging to her eyes. Some of them brimmed over and rolled down her cheeks. She lifted a fold of her skirt and wiped them away.
“They are dead?” said Irina. “It is very foolish of you to cry. Old people are a burden to the State. It is we who are young who have to fight in the battle of World Revolution.” She turned to Stephen. “I am going now, and you can walk back with me. Anton and Anna will not be home just yet, so we can talk undisturbed.”
“Look at that!” said old Masha in a scandalized whisper. “Not a week married, and she carries him off as bold as you please, and his wife stands there as limp as a bit of potato-peeling and lets her do it! Why, I’d have had my two hands full of her hair if it had been me! What’s the matter with her? Isn’t she right in
the head?”
Akulina shrugged her shoulders.
“She’s a poor creature, and the Lord knows why Stefan picked her. But that’s a man all over—so long as the girl’s his own picking, she’s all right for him.”
Elizabeth sat down on the end of the bench. Under the twisted folds of her skirt her hands were clenched. Her anger surprised her. She tried to argue it down, but it remained. If she were really Stephen’s wife, she could not be angrier. It was a self-evident absurdity that she should be angry at all. She had no longer the slightest inclination to weep. Her eyes were dry and hot. She made her face as blank as possible and stared sullenly down into her lap.
Stephen walked over the frozen snow with Irina. She lodged in the schoolmaster’s house, an arrangement which was the source of much watchful suspicion on the part of the schoolmaster’s wife, and of a mixture of self-conscious terror and vanity in the schoolmaster himself. That so beautiful a person as Irina, and one who was said to have the ear of influential Comrades in Moscow, should have her name linked with his, that Anna should make him jealous scenes about her, was both flattering and alarming.
Irina began to talk about him at once.
“Anton is becoming quite intolerable. Because I discuss things with him he seems to think that I am in love with him. And as for Anna, she’s so jealous that I should not be surprised if she became insane.”
Stephen wondered if she was as cold-blooded as she sounded.
“Perhaps it would be better not to make her jealous.”
“Jealousy is madness,” said Irina calmly. “I am not responsible for Anna’s fancies. I am glad that you are back, so that I may have someone rational to talk to.”
“I do not think I shall be here for long,” said Stephen.
“You move about too much. Soon it will not be so easy to do that. There is to be an internal passport system. That is to get rid of the remnants of the proscribed classes, who have swarmed like parasites into the towns. Everyone will have to have papers, and it will not be so easy to get about.”
“Yes, I have heard that. It will be a very good thing,” said Stephen indifferently.
Did she mean anything? Was it a warning? An internal passport system was going to make his work about a hundred times more difficult and dangerous than it was already. It was going to make getting Elizabeth out of the country something very near an impossibility. The answer to that was, “Hurry, hurry, hurry! Get a move on! Get her away and over the border before they can get their passports going.”
Irina said, “You are very silent.”
That wouldn’t do. No, by gum, it wouldn’t. He said the first thing that came into his head.
“Sometimes one doesn’t want to talk.”
“When one is with a friend—yes, I have felt that too. In a true friendship like ours, where there is a common ideology, words are not necessary, yet sometimes they give one pleasure. You do not imagine—” She broke off without finishing her sentence.
“What were you going to say?”
“It was about Anton. I do not wish you to think that I have a particular friendship for him. Physically, he repels me.”
Stephen was not surprised to hear it, but he found the trend of the conversation a little alarming.
“Whereas you,” said Irina in a clear ringing tone which she did not attempt to lower—“you, of course, have always attracted me.”
This being one of those remarks to which it is difficult to think of a suitable answer, Stephen made no answer at all. If Irina meant to make love to him, it was going to be a damned difficult situation to handle—difficult, but neither so difficult nor so dangerous as an inquisition upon Elizabeth.
Irina’s clear voice flowed on.
“I would not accept a marriage relationship which was founded on physical attraction alone—you must not think that of me. There must be community of ideas and a common devotion to Soviet Socialist ideals. I should consider a union of these three elements necessary for happiness in marriage. In fact, they constitute love as I understand it.”
“That is very well put,” said Stephen.
“Yes,” said Irina. “We have that community of ideas—I have often noticed it. Why did you marry this girl Varvara, with whom you have not an idea in common? I do not mind telling you that it has lowered you very much in my esteem.”
They had arrived at the schoolmaster’s house. Irina opened the door, walked in, and began to light the lamp. When the wick flared it threw her shadow upon the opposite wall. It hung there, very tall and black, like something that menaced them both. She slipped the chimney over the flame, straightened herself, and went on as calmly as if there had been no interruption.
“Is your marriage a registered one?”
Stephen shook his head. Lies were awkward things and apt to trip one up. He told no more of them than he could help. The fact that his marriage was unregistered would shock no one except a few of the older people in the village.
“Perhaps we shall register it—I don’t know.”
“Why do you not come in and shut the door? Whether you register your marriage or not is nothing to me—you must understand that.”
“How could it be?”
Irina looked at him with contempt.
“Now you are not being honest. When two people are friends, the bad conduct of one must concern the other.”
“I am sorry you should think my conduct bad,” said Stephen in his most matter-of-fact voice. He did not wish to have a scene with Irina, but he could see that she was heading that way. Perhaps it would be better to have it out with her and get it over.
Her eyes flashed dark fire.
“You make a low animal marriage like that, and you do not expect me to think your conduct bad?”
“A man must marry some time.”
Irina lifted her head. The shadow moved behind her on the wall.
“And you choose this Varvara for your life-companion. What a companion!”
“I had better go,” said Stephen.
He turned to the door, but she was there before him. She leaned against it with outspread arms and barred his way.
“Irina—let me go!”
Her arms fell. She said,
“You have gone already.”
As this, unfortunately, was not the literal truth, he was obliged to wait until she chose to let him pass.
“Our marriage would have been a true companionship.” There was no flush upon the even whiteness of her skin, but her eyes blazed. “Did you not know that I would have been your wife?”
“Come, Irina!” said Stephen. “What is the good of all this? Since I have a wife, we cannot be married.”
“A wife!” said Irina bitterly. “A half-witted creature whom you picked up no one knows where!”
“Come, come,” he said—“she is my wife. There is no use in this.”
The fire went out of Irina’s eyes.
“Why did you do it?” she said.
Stephen shrugged his big shoulders.
“How can I tell you that?”
There was a moment of silence. She stepped away from the door and stood at the table with her shoulder turned to Stephen. In a lower voice than he had ever heard her use she said,
“The wife of a kulak said to me last year, ‘It is my turn to-day, but it will be yours to-morrow.’ They were turning her out of her house. She said to me, ‘You’ll be unhappy some day.’”
For the first time Stephen felt moved. He said,
“I’m sorry, Irina.”
She went on speaking as if she had not heard him.
“Another person’s conduct should not be able to make one unhappy. That is a weakness.” She looked suddenly over her shoulder and said, “Do you love me?”
Stephen said, “No.”
“Why?”
“How can I say? I don’t know why.”
She beat with the flat of her hand on the table.
“Do you love—her?”
He made a gesture with
his hands.
“Irina, what is the good of asking such questions? You are hurting yourself, and you are hurting me. Let us be good comrades as we were before.”
“No—that is impossible.”
“Why should it be impossible?”
She turned away from him and looked down at her own hands. Then quite suddenly she faced him again.
“Divorce her!” she said.
Stephen turned on his heel and went out.
CHAPTER VIII
Akulina was grumbling when Stephen came home.
“Click-clack and waste of time—that’s what I call your meeting! And wanton behaviour on the top of that! Idleness breeds mischief! I’ve no patience with it. These winter evenings when the beasts are bedded, young women ought to be weaving, not standing up on a platform making eyes at the men. And as for you, Stefan, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You’ll be in trouble if you don’t mind what you’re doing, and you won’t be the first—no, nor the last either. And her to come in here and tell me to take down the blessed ikon! As if it wasn’t enough that we don’t light the lamp in front of it any more—and I hope Those above don’t hold it up against us! And as if that wasn’t enough, in she comes and says, ‘You ought to take it down and have a picture like mine.’ And I can well believe that there are doings in any room of hers which she wouldn’t want a blessed saint to be looking at! But praise God that’s not the case in this house, and never will be whilst I’m in it!”
Akulina tossed her head and began to clatter about the stove. She opened the narrow door and a red glow shone from it. Stephen brought wood without speaking and stoked the fire. Akulina banged the door again.
“Superstition!” she said. “Oh, that’s a great word with them—isn’t it? Superstition, superstition, superstition—everything’s superstition you can’t see with your two eyes every day of the week and twice on Sundays! Cackling geese! I could tell them a few things—yes, that I could! Why, there was what happened to my own father, and my mother never let him hear the last of it, though it happened before they were married.”
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