We the Living (19 page)

Leo stood on the steps of the empty mansion. He did not move when he heard Kira’s feet hurrying across the snow; he stood motionless, his hands in his pockets.

When she was beside him, their eyes met in a glance that was more than a kiss. Then, his arms crushed her with the violence of hatred, as if he wanted to grind their coats into shreds against each other.

Then he said: “Kira. . . .”

There was some odd, disturbing quality in the sound of his voice. She tore his cap off; she raised herself on tiptoe to reach his lips again, her fingers in his hair.

He said: “Kira, I’m going away.”

She looked at him, very quietly, her head bent a little to one shoulder, in her eyes—a question, but no understanding.

“I’m going away tonight. Forever. To Germany.”

She said: “Leo. . . .” Her eyes were wide, but not frightened.

He spoke as if biting into every word, as if all his hatred and despair came from these sounds, not their meaning: “I’m a fugitive, Kira. A counter-revolutionary. I have to leave Russia before they find me. I’ve just received the money—from my aunt in Berlin. That’s what I’ve been waiting for. They smuggled it to me.”

She asked: “The boat leaves tonight?”

“A smugglers’ boat. They smuggle human flesh out of this wolf-trap. And desperate souls, like mine. If we’re not caught—we land in Germany. If we’re caught—well, I don’t suppose it’s a death sentence for everybody, but I’ve never heard of a man who was spared.”

“Leo, you don’t want to leave me.”

He looked at her with a hatred more eloquent than tenderness. “Sometimes I’ve found myself wishing they would catch the boat and bring me back.”

“I’m going with you, Leo.”

He was not startled. He asked: “Do you understand the chance you’re taking?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know that it’s your life at stake if we don’t reach Germany, and perhaps also if we do?”

“Yes.”

“The boat leaves in an hour. It’s far. We have to start right away. From here. No time to get any luggage.”

“I’m ready.”

“You can’t tell anyone. You can’t telephone any farewells.”

“I don’t have to.”

“All right. Come on.”

He picked up his cap and walked to the street, swiftly, silently, without looking at her or noticing her presence. He called a sleigh. The only words he spoke were an address to the driver. The sharp runners cut into the snow, and the sharp wind into their faces.

They turned a corner, past a house that had collapsed; snow-dusted bricks had rolled far out into the street; the ray of a lamp post behind the house pierced the empty rooms; the skeleton of an iron bed hung high somewhere in the ray of light. A newsboy barked hoarsely:
“Pravda! . . . Krasnaya Gazeta!”
to an empty street.

Leo whispered: “Over there . . . there are automobiles . . . and boulevards . . . and lights. . . .”

An old man stood in a doorway, snow gathering in the brim of his frayed hat, his head hanging down on his breast, asleep over a tray of home-made cookies.

Kira whispered: “. . . lipstick and silk stockings. . . .”

A stray dog sniffed at a barrel of refuse under the dark window of a co-operative.

Leo whispered: “. . . champagne . . . radios . . . jazz bands.”

Kira whispered: “. . . like the ‘Song of Broken Glass’ . . .”

A man moaned, blowing on his hands: “Saccharine, citizens!”

A soldier cracked sunflower seeds and sang about the little apple.

Posters followed them, as if streaming slowly from house to house, red, orange, white, arms, hammers, wheels, levers, lice, airplanes.

The noise of the city was dying behind them. A factory raised tall black chimneys to the sky. Over the street, on a rope from roof to roof, like a barrier, a huge banner clicked, fighting the wind, twisting in furious contortions, yelling to the street and the wind:

Then their eyes met, and the glance was like a handshake. Leo smiled; he said: “I couldn’t ask you to do this. But I think I knew you’d come.”

They stopped at a fence on an unpaved street. Leo paid the driver. They started to walk slowly. Leo watching cautiously till the sleigh disappeared around a corner. Then he said: “We have two miles to walk to the sea. Are you cold?”

“No.”

He took her hand. They followed the fence down a wooden sidewalk. A dog howled somewhere. A bare tree whistled in the wind.

They left the sidewalk. Snow rose to their ankles. They were in an open field, walking toward a bottomless darkness.

She moved with quiet precision, as one moves in the face of the inevitable. He held her hand. Behind them, the red glow of the city breathed into the sky. Ahead of them, the sky bent to the earth, or the earth rose to the sky, and their bodies were cutting the two apart.

Snow rose to their calves. The wind blew against them. They walked bent forward, their coats like sails fighting a storm, cold tightening the skin of their cheeks.

Beyond the snow was the world; beyond the snow was that consummate entity to which the country behind them bowed reverently, wistfully, tragically: Abroad. Life began beyond the snow.

When they stopped, the snow ended abruptly. They looked into a black void without horizon or sky. From somewhere far below, they heard a swishing, slapping sound, as if someone were emptying pails of water at regular intervals. Leo whispered: “Keep quiet.”

He was leading her down a narrow, slippery path, in someone’s footprints. She distinguished a vague shape floating on the void, a mast, a tiny spark, like a dying match.

There were no lights on the ship. She did not notice the husky figure in their path until the ray of a flashlight struck Leo’s face, licked his shoulder, stopped on hers, and was gone. She saw a black beard and a hand holding a gun. But the gun was lowered.

Leo’s hand crinkled in his pocket and slipped something to the man. “Another fare,” Leo whispered. “This girl goes with me.”

“We have no cabins left.”

“That’s all right. Mine’s enough.”

They stepped onto boards that rocked softly. Another figure rustled up from nowhere and led them to a door. Leo helped Kira down the companion-way. There was a light below deck and furtive shadows; a man with a trim beard and the Cross of St. George on his breast looked at them silently; in a doorway, a woman wrapped in a coat of tarnished brocade watched them fearfully, clutching a little wooden box in her hands, the hands trembling.

Their guide opened a door and pointed inside with a jerk of his head.

Their cabin was only a bed and a narrow strip of space between cracked, unpainted walls. A board cut a corner off as a table. A smoked lantern hung over the table, and a yellow, shivering spot of light. The floor rose and fell softly, as if breathing. A shutter was locked over the porthole.

Leo closed the door and said: “Take your coat off.”

She obeyed. He took his coat off and threw his cap down on the table. He wore a heavy black sweater, tight around his arms and shoulders. It was the first time that they had seen each other without overcoats. She felt undressed. She moved away a little.

The cabin was so small that even the air enveloping her seemed a part of him. She backed slowly to the table in the corner.

He looked down at her heavy felt boots, too heavy for her slim figure. She followed his glance. She took her boots off and threw them across the cabin.

He sat down on the bed. She sat at the table, hiding her legs with their tight black cotton stockings under the bench, her arms pressed closely to her sides, her shoulders hunched, her body gathered tightly, as if cringing from the cold, the white triangle of her open collar luminous in the semi-darkness.

Leo said: “My aunt in Berlin hates me. But she loved my father. My father . . . is dead.”

“Shake the snow off your shoes, Leo. It’s melting on the floor.”

“If it weren’t for you, I’d have taken a boat three days ago. But I could not go away without seeing you. So I waited for this one. The other boat disappeared. Shipwrecked or caught—no one knows. They didn’t reach Germany. So you’ve saved my life—perhaps.”

When they heard a low rumble and the boards creaked louder and the flame in the lantern fluttered against the smoked glass, Leo sprang up, blew out the light and opened the shutter over the porthole. Their faces close together in the little circle, they watched the red glow of the city moving away. The red glow died; then there were only a few lights left between earth and sky; and the lights did not move, but shrank slowly into stars, then into sparks, then into nothing. She looked at Leo; his eyes were wide with an emotion she had never seen in them before. He asked slowly, triumphantly:

“Do you know what we’re leaving?”

Then his hands closed over her shoulder and his lips forced hers apart, and she felt as if she were leaning back against the air, her muscles feeling the weight of his. Her arms moved slowly over his sweater, as if she wanted to feel his body with the skin of her arms.

Then he released her, closed the shutter and lighted the lantern. The match spluttered with a blue flame. He lighted a cigarette and stood by the door, without looking at her, smoking.

She sat down by the table, obediently, without a word or a question, her eyes not leaving him.

Then he crushed the cigarette against the wall and approached her, and stood silently, his hands in his pockets, his mouth a scornful arc, his face expressionless.

She rose slowly, obediently, looking up at him. She stood still as if his eyes were holding her on a leash.

He said: “Take your clothes off.”

She said nothing, and did not move her glance away from his, and obeyed.

He stood watching her. She did not think of the code of her parents’ world. But that code came back once, for an instant, when she saw her skirt on the floor; then, in defiance, she regretted that her underwear was not silk, but only heavy cotton.

She unfastened the strap of her slip and let it fall under her breast. She was about to unfasten the other strap, but he tore her off the ground, and then she was arched limply in space, her hair hanging over his arm, her breast at his mouth.

Then they were on the bed, her whole weight on his hand spread wide between her naked shoulder blades. Then he blew out the lantern. She heard his sweater falling to the floor.

Then she felt his legs like a warm liquid against hers. Her hair fell over the edge of the bed. Her lips parted as in a snarl.

WHEN KIRA AWAKENED, LEO’S HEAD WAS RESTING on her one breast; a sailor was looking at the other.

She jerked the blanket up to her chin and Leo awakened. They stared up together.

It was morning. The door was open. The sailor stood on the threshold; his shoulders were too wide for the door and his fist was closed over a gun at his belt; his leather jacket was open over a striped sweater and his mouth was open in a wide grin over two resplendent white stripes of teeth; he stooped a little, for his blue cap touched the top of the doorway; the cap bore a red five-pointed Soviet star.

He chuckled: “Sorry to disturb you, citizens.”

Kira, her eyes glued to the red star, the star that filled her eyes, but could not reach her brain, muttered foolishly, softly, as a child: “Please go away. This is our first . . .” Her voice choked, as the red star reached her brain.

The sailor chuckled: “Well, you couldn’t have selected a worse time, citizen. You couldn’t have.”

Leo said: “Get out of here and let us dress.”

His voice was not arrogant, nor pleading; it was such an implacable command that the sailor obeyed as if at the order of a superior officer. He closed the door behind him.

Leo said: “Lie still till I gather your things. It’s cold.”

He got out of bed and bent for her clothes, naked as a statue and as unconcerned. A gray light came through a crack of the closed shutter.

They dressed silently. The ceiling trembled under hurrying steps above. Somewhere a woman’s voice was howling in sobs, like a demented animal. When they were dressed, Leo said: “It’s all right, Kira. Don’t be afraid.”

He was so calm that for an instant she welcomed the disaster that let her see it. Their eyes met for a second; it was a silent sanction of what they both remembered.

He flung the door open. The sailor was waiting outside. Leo said evenly: “Any confessions you want. I’ll sign anything you write—if you let her go.” Kira opened her mouth; Leo’s hand closed it brutally. He continued: “She had nothing to do with it. I’ve kidnapped her. I’ll stand trial for it, if you wish.”

Kira screamed: “He’s lying!”

Leo said: “Shut up.”

The sailor said: “Shut up, both of you.”

They followed him. The woman’s howls were deafening. They saw her crawling on her knees after two sailors who held her little wooden box; the box was open; the jewels sparkled through the sailors’ fingers; the woman’s hair hung over her eyes and she howled into space.

At an open cabin door, Leo suddenly jerked Kira forward so that she passed without seeing it. Inside the cabin, men were bending over a motionless body on the floor; the body’s hand was clutching the handle of a dagger in the heart, under the Cross of St. George.

On deck, the gray sky descended to the tip of the mast and steam breathed with commands from the lips of men who had taken control of the boat, men from the coast guard ship that rose and fell as a huge shadow in the fog, a red flag stirring feebly on its mast.

Two sailors held the arms of the black-bearded smugglers’ captain. The captain was staring at his shoes.

The sailors looked up at the giant in the leather jacket, waiting for orders. The giant took a list out of his pocket and held it under the captain’s beard; he pointed with his thumb, behind his shoulder, at Leo, and asked: “Which one is him?”