by Ayn Rand
“If I found that the climate here wasn’t good for my lifeblood, I’d flee to the end of the world—if I were free.”
Kareyev looked at him. Then he looked slowly up, at the old flag fighting the wind between the clouds and the snow. He said thoughtfully, irrelevantly, pointing up:
“Look at that red flag. Red against the white snow. Doesn’t look well together.”
“The flag has faded,” the engineer said slowly. “The snow has taken its color away.”
“It was of cheap material. Good stuff keeps its color—in all weather.”
“It’s due for a change, Commandant. It has served its time.”
He climbed up the ladder. He turned again to look down at the man before him. He spoke suddenly, with an impetuous fire, with the solemn gravity of a prophet, his voice clear, vibrant in the wind:
“A thousand years from now, Commandant, whether the world is red as this flag or white as the snow, who will care that a certain Communist on a speck of an island gave up the very blood of his heart—for the glory of the world revolution?”
Joan’s door was left open. Commandant Kareyev passed by. He hesitated. She saw him and called:
“Good morning.”
“Good morning,” he answered.
“Won’t you come in? We’re not parting like enemies, are we?”
“Of course not.”
“Maybe you’ll help me to pack? Here, can you fold this blue velvet dress for me?”
She handed him the dress she had worn the night before, his favorite one. He folded it; he handed it back to her; he said brusquely:
“I’m sorry. I can’t help you much. I’m busy.”
He walked away. In the corridor, Comrade Fedossitch stopped him. Comrade Fedossitch bowed. Comrade Fedossitch said gently:
“The boat is waiting for Frances Volkontzeva, Comrade Commandant.”
“Well?”
“Do I understand it correctly that she is going away free, that she is not to be arrested for her counterrevolutionary, treacherous plan?”
“She is going away free.”
“I should think our duty is to send her to the GPU in Nijni Kolimsk. I should think hers is a serious offense against the State, punishable by . . .”
“Someday, Comrade Fedossitch, you may be Commandant of this island. Someday. Not yet.”
Commandant Kareyev saw Joan again in the library. She was saying goodbye to the convicts. She was leaving the radio to them to remember her by, she said. She noticed him at the door, but did not turn.
A strange thing happened. The pale, bearded Senator, who had never looked at her, got up. He walked straight to her, took her hand, and raised it to his lips in the most courtly manner.
“I want to tell you, Citizen Volkontzeva,” he said in his hoarse, dead voice, “that you are a great woman.”
“Thank you, Senator,” she answered. “Only, when I go away, I shall not be Citizen Volkontzeva any more. I’m going as Joan Harding.”
Commandant Kareyev hurried away. Outside, on the wharf, the pockmarked, one-eyed captain was leaning on the rail of the boat, smoking his pipe. He looked at the sky and called:
“Almost noon, Comrade Commandant. The woman ready?”
“Not yet,” Kareyev answered.
Soundlessly, as a shadow, Comrade Fedossitch suddenly stood at his elbow. Comrade Fedossitch saluted and said sweetly:
“Of course, Comrade Commandant, there’s no question of our loyalty to you. All this will never be known. But I was just thinking that if one of us Party members here decided to go and tell the GPU about the aristocrat who got away . . .”
“The emergency motorboat is at the service of the first one who wants to go,” said Kareyev. “Ask me for the key when you need it.”
A guard came running down the hill, saluting, reporting breathlessly:
“Citizen Volkontzeva wants to see you, Comrade Commandant!”
Kareyev ran up to the monastery, through the snow, leaping two steps at once. The guard looked after him, surprised. Comrade Fedossitch nodded slowly.
Joan’s trunk was closed.
“I think it’s time,” she said calmly when Kareyev entered. “Will you have the men take my trunk down?”
“You’ll have to wait a little,” he answered desperately. “The boat isn’t ready.”
Then he went to his room and slammed the door. She listened at the wall of her cell, but could not hear a sound.
Then she heard his steps again. She opened her door.
He fell at her feet, as if all strength had gone out of his body and spirit.
“You won’t go alone . . . you won’t go alone . . .” was all he could whisper.
She stroked his head, smiling, kissing his hair. She whispered:
“Dear . . . we’ll be so happy . . . so happy . . .”
He buried his face in the folds of her dress. He did not speak. His hands clasped her legs, holding her, in a desperate panic of fear that she would vanish from his fingers, disappear forever. She whispered:
“It will be easy. . . . Tonight. We’ll take the motorboat. The three of us.”
“You won’t leave me . . . you’ll never leave me.”
“No, dear, never. . . . Tell the captain to go.”
“And they’ll play the ‘Song of Dancing Lights’ . . . just for the two of us. . . .”
“Get the motorboat ready.”
“I’ll buy you little satin slippers. Lined with soft pink feathers. I’ll slip them myself on your bare feet. . . .”
“Destroy the wireless, so they can’t give an alarm.”
The wind had chased the clouds. A red, shivering line panted soundlessly over the sea where the sun had drowned. Red stains died slowly in the snow of the cupolas.
The convicts had finished their supper. Commandant Kareyev could hear the clinking of dishes in the kitchen. But there was no sound of voices. He knew what they were all thinking. When he walked through the corridors, he saw all eyes turn away from him with a forced indifference; and he felt these eyes staring at him behind his back.
Passing by the guard room, he heard Comrade Fedossitch. Comrade Fedossitch was speaking to his friend, the head of the guards. He noticed Kareyev and did not lower his voice.
“. . . silver, carpets, wine . . . that’s what bourgeois luxuries lead to. I never approved of the idea of bringing the bitch here. I knew she was a White.”
Commandant Kareyev passed, without entering.
Comrade Fedossitch followed him.
“The Comrade Commandant inspected the motorboat today,” he remarked. “Anything wrong with it?”
“No. But it’s going to be used.”
“Ah . . . when?”
“Tomorrow. Citizen Volkontzeva is under arrest. She’ll be sent to the GPU in the morning.”
“Alone?”
“No. With a trusted escort. Maybe—you.”
He turned to go.
“If Citizen Volkontzeva is under arrest”—Comrade Fedossitch hunched his shoulders more ingratiatingly than ever—“will you want me to put a guard at her door?”
“If I were you, I’d be careful, Comrade Fedossitch. Someone else here might find himself with a guard at his door.”
When it had grown dark, Commandant Kareyev approached the steps of the tower that guarded the wireless. There were no candles on the stairway. There was no glass in the windows. Snow gathered on the steps, blown in by the wind. He could distinguish the windows by the twinkling stars; the walls of the tower were black as the sky.
He went up slowly, carefully, trying to muffle the sound of snow creaking under his feet.
On the first landing he saw a shadow against the stars. The shadow coughed hoarsely, heaving its shallow chest.
“Good evening, Comrade Fedossitch,” said the Commandant. “What are you doing here?”
“Just taking a stroll, Comrade Commandant. Like yourself.”
“Have a cigarette?”
Kareyev struck a match. Their
eyes met for a second over the quivering little flame. The wind blew it out. The two red lighted dots remained in the darkness.
“There’s a strong wind tonight,” said Comrade Fedossitch, “and the sea is rough. Dangerous for sailing.”
“The cold isn’t good for your lungs, Comrade Fedossitch. You should be careful of things that aren’t good for you.”
“I never mind it in the line of my duty. Good Communists don’t let anything stand in the way of their duty. Good Communists like you and me.”
“It’s a pretty late hour for any duty you may have to perform.”
“True, Comrade Commandant. I don’t have as many responsibilities as you have. And, speaking of responsibilities, did it ever occur to you that it’s a bit careless the way we leave our wireless in a lonely tower where anyone can reach it?”
Commandant Kareyev made a step forward and ordered slowly:
“Go back to your room. And stay there.”
Comrade Fedossitch barred the stairs with his body, his outstretched arms touching the walls.
“You won’t go up!” he hissed.
“Get out of my way!” Commandant Kareyev whispered.
“You won’t get that wireless, you traitor!”
Commandant Kareyev’s hand seized the long sinewy throat; his other hand pulled the gun out of Comrade Fedossitch’s belt. He kicked him, and the comrade tumbled down several steps. When he straightened himself he felt Commandant Kareyev’s gun in his back.
“Go down, rat. If you open your mouth—I shoot.”
Comrade Fedossitch did not make a sound. Commandant Kareyev led him down to the yard. He blew his whistle.
“Citizen Fedossitch is under arrest,” he said to the guards calmly, “for insubordination. Take him into the pit.”
Comrade Fedossitch did not say a word. He choked, coughing, his shoulders heaving convulsively. The guards led him away, and Commandant Kareyev followed.
In a dark, clammy, low-vaulted room, the guards opened a heavy stone trapdoor with an old brass ring. They tied a rope around Comrade Fedossitch’s waist. In the light of a smoked lantern, its flame swaying in a draft, his face was the color of a shell with damp, greenish pearls on his forehead. The guards unrolled the rope, lowering him into the pit. They heard his cough growing fainter as he went down. Commandant Kareyev stood watching.
The wireless room was high up in the tower. No one could hear, in the yard below, when the wireless set cracked, breaking in Commandant Kareyev’s strong hands. He made sure the parts were crushed beyond repair. He had to hold them up to the starlight to see. He did not strike a match. The wind blew the hair from his wet forehead.
Commandant Kareyev opened Joan’s door soundlessly, without knocking.
“Come on,” he whispered. “All’s ready.”
She had been waiting, wrapped in a warm coat, a fur collar tight under her chin, a fur cap over her blond curls.
“Don’t make any noise,” he ordered. “We’ll go down and get Volkontzev.”
She raised her smiling lips for a kiss. He kissed them calmly, tenderly. There was no hesitation in his movements, no doubt in his eyes. He was the Communist Kareyev who had fought in the civil war.
Michael was sitting on his cot when the door of his cell was thrown open. He jumped up. Joan entered first. Commandant Kareyev followed. Michael stood, his dark eyes a silent question. Kareyev threw to him a fur-lined leather jacket.
“Put this on,” he ordered. “And don’t make any noise. And follow.”
“Where?” Michael asked.
“You’re escaping. And so am I. The three of us.”
Michael’s wide eyes did not leave Joan.
“I suppose you understand the bargain,” said Commandant Kareyev. “It’s your life in exchange for your woman.”
“Supposing,” Michael asked, “I don’t accept the bargain?”
Joan stood facing him, her back to Kareyev. Her voice was calm, indifferent; but her eyes were trying silently, desperately to make Michael understand.
“There are things you don’t understand, Michael. And some that you forget.”
“The three of us,” said Kareyev, “have an account to settle, Volkontzev. And we can settle it better on free ground. Are you afraid to go?”
Michael shrugged and put on the jacket slowly.
“But aren’t you afraid of the settlement, Commandant?” he asked.
“Come on,” said Joan. “We have no time to talk.”
“You’d better take this,” said Kareyev, slipping a gun into Michael’s hand. “We may need it.”
Michael looked at him for a second, in silent appreciation of his trust; then he took the gun.
The head of the guards was having a night inspection of his staff in the yard back of the monastery, according to Commandant Kareyev’s orders. There were no red lanterns moving on the walls.
Through the thunder of the waves, no one could hear the roar of the motorboat as it shot out into the darkness.
The waves rose high as swelling breasts heaving convulsively. The moon dropped long blotches of a cold, silver fire into the water and the sea tore it into glimmering rags. The stars drowned in the water, and knocking furiously against each other, the waves tried to throw them back in white, gleaming sprays.
The waves rose slowly and hung over the boat, motionless as walls of black, polished glass. Then a white foam burst on their crest, as if a cork had popped, and roared down the black side, throwing the boat up, out of the water, to land on the boiling crest of another mountain.
Commandant Kareyev bent over the wheel. His eyebrows made one straight line across his face and his eyes held one straight line ahead, into the darkness. He could feel every muscle of his body tensed to the will of his fingers that clutched the wheel like claws. The loops of his bent arms worked as the wings, as the nerves of the boat. He had lost his cap. His hair rose straight in the wind like a pennant.
“Volkontzev! Hold Joan!” he yelled once.
Joan looked back at the island. She saw it for the last time as a lonely black shadow, with a faint silver glow in its cupolas, that speeded away, disappearing behind the peaks of the waves.
At midnight, they saw red sparks gleaming faintly ahead. Kareyev swerved to the right, speeding away from the twinkling village. The boat crushed into the soft bottom and stopped. Kareyev carried Joan ashore.
A deserted beach ran into a forest of tall pines, silent, asleep, their branches heavy with snow. A mile to their left was the village; to their right, many miles down the white beach, the searchlight of a coast guard station revolved slowly, groping the sea.
A little lane wound itself on the outskirt of the forest. Snow had covered all tracks. Only two deep ruts left by peasants’ wheels still remained like rails cut into the frozen ground.
Commandant Kareyev walked first; Joan followed. Michael came last, his hand on his gun.
They walked in silence. The wind had died. The moon beyond the forest threw long, black shadows of pine trees over the lane and far out across the beach. Farther, by the water, the snow gleamed, throwing up a hard, blue light.
A low branch bent under its white load, shuddered, powdering them with frozen dust. A white rabbit stuck its long ears from behind a shrub and darted into the forest, a leaping, soundless snowball.
They selected a lonely house on the outskirts of the village. Commandant Kareyev knocked at the door. A dog barked somewhere, choking in a long alarming howl.
A sleepy peasant opened the door fearfully, a sheepskin coat trembling on his shoulders, his eyes blinking over a candle.
“Who goes there?”
“Official business, comrade,” said Kareyev. “We need two good horses and a sleigh.”
“So help me God, Comrade Chief,” the peasant whined, bowing, making the sign of the cross with a freckled hand, “we have no horses, so help me God. We’re poor people, Comrade Chief.”
One of Commandant Kareyev’s hands crumpled significantly a wad of paper
money; the other one closed over the butt of his gun.
“I said we needed two good horses and a sleigh,” he repeated slowly. “And we need them quickly.”
“Yes, Comrade Chief, yes, sir, as you wish.”
Bowing, chewing nervously his long, reddish beard, the peasant led them to the stables behind his house, the candle dripping wax on his trembling hand.
Commandant Kareyev selected the horses. Michael gathered straw from the stable floor and filled the bottom of the sleigh around Joan’s feet, wrapping them in an old fur blanket. Commandant Kareyev jumped to the driver’s seat. He threw the wad of bills into the red beard. He warned:
“This is confidential official business, comrade. If you breathe a word about it—it’s the Revolutionary Tribunal for you. Understand?”
“Yes, sir, Comrade Chief, the Lord bless you, yes, sir . . .” the peasant muttered, bowing.
He was still bowing when the sleigh flashed out of his yard in a cloud of snow.
——VII——
At midnight, the head of the guards sneaked noiselessly to the door of the pit. He listened cautiously; he heard no sound in the monastery. He pulled the trapdoor open and called down, raising his lantern over the pit:
“Are you there, Grisha?”
“Is it . . .” came from far below, in a gust of coughing, “. . . you, Makar?”
“It is. Wanted to know how you were getting along, pal.”
At the bottom of a deep well with icicles sparkling in the crevices of its stone walls, Comrade Fedossitch huddled in the straw, his thin fingers at his throat, his eyes like two black puddles in his livid face. He hissed, a growl that ended in a moan:
“It took you long enough to get curious.”
“His orders. Said not to come near you.”
“Seen him around in the last few hours?”
“No.”
“Let me out!”
“Are you in your right mind, Grisha? Against his orders?”
“You blind fool! See if you can find him. Or the woman. Or the motorboat.”
“Lord help us, Grisha! Do you think . . .”
“Hurry! Go and see! Then let me out!”
