She had learned to keep from thinking; she remembered only that he was Leo and that she had no life beyond the sound of his voice, the movements of his hands, the lines of his body — and that she had to stand on guard between him and the something immense, unnameable which was moving slowly toward him, which had swallowed so many. She would stand on guard; nothing else mattered; she never thought of the past; the future — no one around her thought of the future.
She never thought of Andrei; she never allowed herself to wonder what the days, perhaps the years, ahead of them would have to be. She knew that she had gone too far and could not retreat. She was wise enough to know that she could not leave him; she was brave enough not to attempt it. In averting a blow he would not be able to stand, she was paying him, silently, for what she had done. Some day, she felt dimly, she would have to end the payment; the day when, perhaps, a passage abroad would open for Leo and her; then she would end it without hesitation, since Leo would need her; then Leo would be safe; nothing else mattered.
“Kira?” a gay voice called from the bathroom, when she entered their room.
Leo came out, a towel in his hand, naked from the waist up, shaking drops of water off his face, throwing tangled hair off his forehead, smiling.
“I’m glad you’re back, Kira. I hate to come home and not find you here.”
He looked as if he had just stepped out of a stream on a hot summer day, and one could almost see the sun sparkling in the drops of water on his shoulders. He moved as if his whole body were a living will, straight, arrogant, commanding, a will and a body that could never bend because both had been born without the capacity to conceive of bending.
She stood still, afraid to approach him, afraid to shatter one of the rare moments when he looked what he could have been, what he was intended to be.
He approached her and his hand closed over her throat and he jerked her head back to hold her lips to his. There was a contemptuous tenderness in his movement, and a command, and hunger; he was not a lover, but a slave owner. Her arms holding him, her mouth drinking the glistening drops on his skin, she knew the answer, the motive for all her days, for all she had to bear and forget in those days, the only motive she needed.
Irina came to visit Kira, once in a while, on the rare evenings she could spare from her work at the Club. Irina laughed sonorously, and scattered cigarette ashes all over the room, and related the latest, most dangerous political anecdotes, and drew caricatures of all their acquaintances on the white table cloth.
But on the evenings when Leo was busy at the store, when Kira and Irina sat alone at a lighted fireplace, Irina did not always laugh. Sometimes, she sat silently for long minutes and when she raised her head and looked at Kira, her eyes were bewildered, pleading for help. Then she whispered, looking into the fire:
“Kira, I ... I’m afraid.... I don’t know why, it’s only at times, but I’m so afraid.... What’s going to happen to all of us? That’s what frightens me. Not the question itself, but that it’s a question you can’t ask anyone. You ask it and watch people, and you’ll see their eyes, and you’ll know that they feel the same thing, the same fear, and you can’t question them about it, but if you did, they couldn’t explain it, either ... You know, we’re all trying so hard not to think at all, not to think beyond the next day, and sometimes even not beyond the next hour.... Do you know what I believe? I believe they’re doing it deliberately. They don’t want us to think. That’s why we have to work as we do. And because there’s still time left after we’ve worked all day and stood in a few lines, we have the social activities to attend, and then the newspapers. Do you know that I almost got fired from the Club, last week? I was asked about the new oil wells near Baku and I didn’t know a damn thing about them. Why should I know about the oil wells near Baku if I want to earn my millet drawing rotten posters? Why do I have to memorize newspapers like poems? Sure, I need the kerosene for the Primus. But does it mean that in order to have kerosene in order to cook millet, I have to know the name of every stinking worker in every stinking well where the kerosene comes from? Two hours a day of reading news of state construction for fifteen minutes of cooking on the Primus? ... Well, and there’s nothing we can do about it. If we try, it’s worse. Take Sasha, for instance ... Oh, Kira! I’m ... I’m so afraid! ... He ... he ... Well, I don’t have to lie to you. You know what he’s doing. It’s a secret organization of some kind and they think they can overthrow the government. Set the people free. His duty to the people, Sasha says. And you and I know that any one of that great people would be only too glad to betray them all to the G.P.U. for an extra pound of linseed oil. They have secret meetings and they print things and distribute them in the factories. Sasha says we can’t expect help from abroad, it’s up to us to fight for our own freedom.... Oh, what can I do? I would like to stop him and I have no right to stop him. But I know they’ll get him. Remember the students they sent to Siberia last spring? Hundreds, thousands of them. You’ll never hear from any of them again. He’s an orphan, hasn’t a soul in the world, but me. I would try to stop him, but he won’t listen, and he’s right, only I love him. I love him. And he’ll go to Siberia some day. And what’s the use? Kira! What’s the use?”
Sasha Chernov turned the corner of his street, hurrying home. It was a dark October evening and the little hand that seized his coat belt seemed to have shot suddenly out of nowhere. Then he distinguished a shawl thrown over a little head and a pair of eyes staring up at him, huge, unblinking, terrified.
“Citizen Chernov,” the girl whispered, her trembling body pressed to his legs, stopping him, “don’t go home.”
He recognized his neighbor’s daughter. He smiled and patted her head, but, instinctively, stepped aside, into the shadow of a wall. “What’s the matter, Katia?”
“Mother said ...” the girl gulped, “mother said to tell you not to come home.... There are strange men there.... They’ve thrown your books all over the room....”
“Thank your mother for me, kid,” Sasha whispered and whirled about and disappeared behind the corner. He had had time to catch sight of a black limousine standing at the door of his house.
He raised his collar and walked swiftly. He walked into a restaurant and telephoned. A strange man’s voice answered gruffly. Sasha hung up without a word; his friend had been arrested.
They had had a secret meeting, that night. They had discussed plans, agitation among the workers, a new printing press. He grinned a little at the thought of the G.P.U. agents looking at the huge pile of anti-Soviet proclamations in his room. He frowned; tomorrow the proclamations would have been distributed into countless hands in Petrograd’s factories.
He jumped into a tramway and rode to another friend’s house. Turning the corner, he saw a black limousine at the door. He hurried away.
He rode to a railroad terminal and telephoned again, a different number. No one answered.
He walked, shuffling through a heavy slush, to another address. He saw no light in the window of his friend’s room. But he saw the janitor’s wife at the back yard gate, whispering excitedly to a neighbor. He did not approach the house.
He blew at his frozen, gloveless hands. He hurried to one more address. There was a light in the window for which he was looking. But on the window sill stood a vase of peculiar shape and that had been the danger signal agreed upon.
He took another tramway. It was late and the tramway was almost empty; it was lighted too brightly. A man in a military tunic entered at the next stop. Sasha got out.