“I’m sure the Crimea has helped your health,” Leo said hastily, coldly.
“Ah, there’s no other place like it! It is a bit of paradise. The dark, velvet sky, the diamond stars, the sea, and that divine moonlight! You know, I’ve wondered why you remained so indifferent to its magic spell. I thought you were essentially unromantic. Of course, I can understand the reason — now.”
She threw a swift glance at Kira. The glance froze, as if seized and held by Kira’s fixed eyes. Then Antonina Pavlovna’s lips slithered into a cold smile and she turned away, sighing: “You men are strange creatures. To understand you is a whole science in itself and the first duty of every real woman. I’ve mastered it thoroughly in the bitter classroom of experience!” She sighed wearily, with a deprecatory shrug. “I’ve known heroic officers of the White Army. I’ve known brutal, iron commissars.” She laughed shrilly. “I confess it openly. Why not? We are all moderns here.... I’ve known many people who misunderstood me. But I do not mind. I can forgive them. You know — noblesse oblige.”
Kira sat on the arm of a chair, watching the toes of her old slippers, studying her fingernails, while they talked. It was dark beyond the window, when Antonina Pavlovna glanced at a diamond-studded wristwatch.
“Oh, how late it is! It’s been so delightful that I haven’t noticed the time at all. I must hurry home. Koko is probably getting melancholy without me, the poor child.”
She opened her bag, took out a little mirror and, holding it delicately in two straight fingers, inspected her face carefully through narrowed eyes. She took out a little scarlet bottle with a tiny brush and smeared a purplish blot over her lips.
“Delightful stuff,” she explained, showing the bottle to Kira, “infinitely better than lipstick. I notice you don’t use much lipstick, Kira Alexandrovna. I would recommend it strongly. As woman to woman, one should never neglect one’s appearance, you know. Particularly,” she laughed, a friendly, intimate laughter, “particularly when one has such valuable property to guard.”
At the door in the lobby, Antonina Pavlovna turned to Leo: “Don’t worry about this coming winter, Leo. With my connections ... Koko, of course, knows the highest ... why, I’d be afraid to whisper some of the names he knows and ... of course, Koko is putty in my hands. You must meet him, Leo. We can do a lot for you. I shall see to it that a magnificent young man like you is not lost in this Soviet swamp.”
“Thank you, Tonia. I appreciate your offer. But I hope that I’m not quite lost — yet.”
“Just what is his position?” Kira asked suddenly.
“Koko? He’s assistant manager of the Food Trust — officially,” Antonina Pavlovna winked mysteriously with a brief chuckle, lowering her voice; then, waving a hand with a diamond that flashed a swift spark in the light of an electric bulb, she drawled: “Au revoir, mes amis. I shall see you soon.”
Slamming the chain over the door, Kira gasped: “Leo, I’m surprised!”
“By what?”
“That you can be acquainted with such an unspeakable ...”
“I do not presume to criticize your friends.”
They were passing through Marisha’s room. In a corner by the window, Marisha raised her head from her book and looked at Leo curiously, startled by the tone of his voice. They crossed the room and Leo slammed the door behind them.
“You could have been civil, at least,” he stated.
“What do you mean?”
“You could have said a couple of words — every other hour.”
“She didn’t come to hear me talk.”
“I didn’t invite her. And she’s not a friend of mine. You didn’t have to be so tragic about it.”
“But, Leo, where did you pick that up?”
“That was in the same sanatorium and it happened to have foreign books, which is a rare treat when you have to spend your days reading Soviet trash. That’s how we got acquainted. What’s wrong with that?”
“But, Leo, don’t you see what she’s after?”
“Of course I do. Are you really afraid she’ll get it?”
“Leo!”
“Well, then, why can’t I speak to her? She’s a harmless fool who’s trying to amount to something. And she really does have connections.”
“But to associate with that type of person....”
“She’s no worse than the Red trash one has to associate with, these days. And, at least, she’s not Red.”
“Well, as you wish.”
“Oh, forget it, Kira. She’ll never come again.”
He was smiling at her, suddenly, warmly, his eyes bright, as if nothing had happened, and she surrendered, her hands on his shoulders, whispering: “Leo, don’t you see? Nothing of that type should even dare to look at you.”
He laughed, patting her cheek: “Let her look. It won’t hurt me.”
Leo had said: “Write to your uncle in Budapest at once. Thank him and tell him not to send us money any longer. I’m well. We’ll struggle on our own. I have written down the exact sum of everything you sent me. Have you kept track of what you spent here, as I asked? We’ll have to start repaying him — if he’s patient, for the devil alone knows how long it will take.”
She had whispered: “Yes, Leo,” without looking at him.
He had noticed her gold wristwatch and frowned: “Where did that come from?”
She had said: “It’s a present. From ... Andrei Taganov.”
“Oh, really? So you’re accepting presents from him?”
“Leo!” She had whirled upon him defiantly, then she had pleaded: “Why not, Leo? It was my birthday and I couldn’t hurt his feelings.”
He had shrugged contemptuously: “Oh, I don’t mind. It’s your own business. Personally, I wouldn’t feel comfortable wearing something paid for with G.P.U. money.”
She had hidden the cigarette lighter, and the silk stockings, and the perfume. She had told Leo that the red dress had been made for his return. He wondered why she did not like to wear it.
She spent most of her days in the halls of the Winter Palace, saying to the gaping excursionists: “... and it is the duty of every conscientious citizen to be acquainted with the history of our revolutionary movement in order to become a trained, enlightened fighter in the ranks of the World Revolution — our highest goal.”
In the evenings, she tried to tell Leo: “I have to go out tonight. I’ve promised Irina ...” or: “I really must go out tonight. It’s a meeting of Excursion Workers.” But he made her stay at home.
She looked into the mirror, sometimes, and wondered about the eyes people had told her were so clear, so honest.
She did not go out at night. She could not tear herself away. She could not satisfy the hunger of looking at him, of sitting silently, huddled in an armchair, watching him move across the room. She would watch the lines of his body as he stood at a window, turned away from her, his hands spread on his waistline, holding his back, his body leaning lightly backward against his hands, one tense, sunburned muscle of his neck showing under dark, dishevelled hair, thrilling as a suggestion, a promise of his face which she could not see. Then she would rise and walk hesitantly toward him and let her hand run slowly down the hard tendon of his neck, without a word, without a kiss.
Then she could think, with a cold wonder, of another man who was waiting for her somewhere.