We the Living

by Ayn Rand

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.

  X

  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?"

  The captain's nose pointed to a name. Kira saw the giant's eyes widen in a strange expression she could not understand.

  "Who's the girl?" he asked.

  "Don't know," the captain answered. "She's not on our passenger list. She came at the last minute--with him."

  "Seventeen of them counter-revolutionary rats that tried to sneak out of the country, Comrade Timoshenko," said a sailor.

  Comrade Timoshenko chuckled, and his fist struck the muscles under his striped sweater. "Thought you could get away, eh?--from Stepan Timoshenko of the Red Baltfleet?"

  The captain stared at his shoes.

  "Keep your eyes and your guns ready," said Comrade Timoshenko. "Any funny business--shoot their guts out."

  He grinned up at the fog, his teeth gleaming, his tanned neck open to the cold, and walked away, whistling.

  When the two ships began to move, Comrade Timoshenko came back. He passed by Leo and Kira in the crowd of prisoners on the wet, glistening deck, and stopped, looking at them for a second, an inexplicable expression in his dark, round eyes. He passed and came back and said aloud to no one in particular, his thumb pointing at Kira: "The girl's all right. He kidnapped her."

  "But I'm telling you . . ." Kira began.

  "Make your little whore keep quiet," Timoshenko said slowly; and there was something like understanding in the glance he exchanged with Leo.

  They saw the skyline of Petrograd rise like a long, low string of houses stretched in a single row at the edge of an immense, frozen sky. The dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral, a pale gold ball sliced in half, looked like a weary moon setting in the smoke of chimneys.

  Leo and Kira sat on a coil of ropes. Behind them, a pock-marked sailor smoked a cigarette, his hand on his gun.

  They did not hear the sailor move away. Stepan Timoshenko approached them. He looked at Kira and whispered:

  "When we land--there'll be a truck waiting. The boys will be busy. I just have a hunch they'll have their backs turned. When they do--you start going--and keep going."

  "No," said Kira, "I'll stay with him."

  "Kira! You . . ."

  "Don't be a damn little fool. You can't help him."

  "You won't get any confessions from him--for my sake."

  Timoshenko chuckled: "He has no confessions to make. And I don't want children mixed in with something they don't understand a damn about. See that she's gone when we reach the truck, citizen."

  Kira looked into the dark, round eyes; they leaned close to her and words hissed, in a whisper, through the white teeth: "It's easier to get one--than two--out of the G.P.U. I'll be there around four this afternoon. Come and ask for Stepan Timoshenko. Maybe I'll have news for you. No one'll hurt you. Gorokhovaia 2."

  He did not wait for an answer. He walked away and slapped the pock-marked sailor in the jaw for leaving the prisoners alone.

  Leo whispered: "Do you want to make it harder for me? You'll go. Also--you'll stay away from Gorokhovaia 2."

  When houses rose close over the mast, he kissed her. It was hard to tear her lips off his, as hard as off frozen glass.

  "Kira, what's your name?" he whispered.

  "Kira Argounova. And yours?"

  "Leo Kovalensky."

  "At Irina's. We talked and didn't notice the time and it was too late to come home."

  Galina Petrovna sighed indifferently, her nightgown trembling on her shoulders in the cold a
nteroom. "And why this homecoming at seven in the morning? I suppose you awakened your Aunt Marussia and poor Marussia with her cough. . . ."

  "I couldn't sleep. Aunt Marussia didn't hear me."

  Galina Petrovna yawned and shuffled back to her bedroom. Kira had stayed overnight at her cousin's several times; Galina Petrovna had not been worried.

  Kira sat down and her hands fell limply. There were so many hours to wait till four in the afternoon. She should be terrified, she thought, and she was; but under the terror there was something without name or words, a hymn without sound, something that laughed, even though Leo was locked in a cell on Gorokhovaia 2. Her body still felt as if it were holding him close to her.

  House number 2 on Gorokhovaia Street was a pale green, the color of pea soup. Its paint and plaster were peeling. Its windows had no curtains and no iron bars. The windows looked quietly upon a quiet side street. It was the Petrograd Headquarters of the G.P.U.

  There were words that people did not like to mention; they felt a superstitious fear in uttering their sounds, as when they spoke of a desolate cemetery, a haunted house, the Spanish Inquisition, Gorokhovaia 2. Many nights had passed over Petrograd; in the nights there had been many steps, many ringing door bells, many people gone never to be seen again; the flow of a silent terror swelled over the city, hushing voices to whispers; the flow had a heart, from which it came, to which it returned; that heart was Gorokhovaia 2.

  It was a building like any of its neighbors; across the street, behind similar windows, families were cooking millet and playing the gramophone; at its corner, a woman was selling cakes; the woman had pink cheeks and blue eyes; the cakes had a golden crust and smelt of warm grease; a poster on a lamp post advertised the new cigarette of the Tobacco Trust. But as Kira walked toward that building, she saw people passing by its green walls without looking up, with tensely casual expressions, their steps hurrying involuntarily, as if afraid of their presence, of their eyes, of their thoughts. Behind the green walls was that which no one wanted to know.

  The door was open. Kira walked in, her hands in her pockets, slouching deliberately, indifferently. There was a wide stairway inside, and corridors, and offices. There were many people, hurrying and waiting, as in all Soviet government buildings; there were many feet shuffling down bare floors, but not many voices. On the faces--there were no tears. Many doors were closed; the faces were set and closed like the doors.

  Kira found Stepan Timoshenko sitting on a desk in an office and he grinned at her.

  "It's just as I thought," he said. "They have nothing on him. It's just his father. Well, that's past. Had they got him two months ago--it would've been the firing squad and not many questions asked. But now--well, we'll see."

  "What has he done?"

  "Him? Nothing. It's his father. Heard of the conspiracy of Professor Gorsky, two months ago? The old fool wasn't in it--how could he, being blind?--but he hid Gorsky in his house. Well, he paid for it."

  "Who was Leo's father?"

  "Old Admiral Kovalensky."

  "The one who . . ." Kira gasped and stopped.

  "Yeah. The one who was blinded in the war--and was shot."

  "Oh!"

  "Well, I wouldn't have done it--not that time. But I'm not the only one to have the say. Well, you don't make a revolution with white gloves on."

  "But if Leo had nothing to do with it, why . . ."

  "At the time--they'd have shot anyone that knew anyone in the conspiracy. Now--they've cooled off. It's past. He's lucky that way. . . . Don't stare like a little fool. If you'd worked here, you'd know what difference time, and days, and hours can make here. Well, that's the way we work. Well, what damn fool thinks that a revolution is all perfumed with cologne?"

  "Then--you can let him . . ."

  "I don't know. I'll try. We'll investigate. Then there's the business of trying to leave the country illegally. But that--I think I can. . . . We don't fight children. Especially fool children who find time for love right on a spewing volcano."

  Kira looked into the round eyes; they had no expression; but the big mouth was grinning; he had a short nose that turned up, and wide, insolent nostrils.

  "You're very kind," she said.

  "Who's kind?" he laughed. "Stepan Timoshenko of the Red Baltfleet? Do you remember the October days of 1917? Ever heard of what went on in the Baltic fleet? Don't shudder like a cat. Stepan Timoshenko was a Bolshevik before a lot of these new punks had time to dry the milk behind their ears."

  "Can I see him?"

  "No. Not a chance. No visitors allowed to that bunch."

  "But then . . ."

  "But then you go home and stay there. And don't worry. That's all I wanted to tell you."

  "I have a friend who has connections, I think, who could . . ."

  "You keep your mouth shut and don't drag no connections into this. Sit still for two or three days."

  "That long!"

  "Well, that's not as long as never seeing him again. And don't worry, we'll keep him locked up for you--with no women around."

  He got off the desk, and grinned. Then his lips fell into a straight line; he towered over Kira, looking straight into her eyes, and his eyes were not gay. He said: "When you get him back, keep your claws on him. If you haven't any--grow some. He's not an easy stud. And don't try to leave the country. You're in this Soviet Russia; you may hate it, and you may choke, but in Soviet Russia you'll stay. I think you have the claws for him. Watch him. His father loved him."

  Kira extended her hand. It disappeared in Stepan Timoshenko's tanned fist.

  At the door she turned and asked softly: "Why are you doing this?"

  He was not looking at her; he was looking out the window. He answered: "I've gone through the war in the Baltic Fleet. Admiral Kovalensky was blinded in service in the Baltic Fleet. He was not the worst commander we had. . . . Get out of here!"

  Lydia said: "She twists on her mattress all night long. You'd think we had mice in the house. I can't sleep."

  Galina Petrovna said: "I believe you're a student, Kira Alexandrovna? Or am I mistaken? You haven't been at the Institute for three days. Victor said so. Would you condescend to inform us what kind of new foolishness is this that's come over you?"

  Alexander Dimitrievitch said nothing. He awakened with a start, for he had dozed off, a half-filled saccharine tube in his hand.

  Kira said nothing.

  Galina Petrovna said: "Look at those circles under her eyes. No respectable girl looks like that."

  "I knew it!" Lydia yelled. "I knew it! She's put eight saccharine crystals into that tube again!"

  On the evening of the fourth day, the door bell rang.

  Kira did not raise her eyes from the saccharine tube. Lydia, curious about every ringing bell, went to open the door.

  Kira heard a voice asking: "Is Kira at home?"

  Then the saccharine tube clattered to the floor, breaking into splinters, and Kira was at the anteroom doorway, her hand at her throat.

  He smiled, the corners of his lips drooping arrogantly. "Good evening, Kira," he said calmly.

  "Good evening, Leo."

  Lydia stared at them.

  Kira stood at the door, her eyes holding his, her lips paralyzed. Galina Petrovna and Alexander Dimitrievitch stopped counting the saccharine.

  Leo said: "Get your coat, Kira, and come on."

  She said: "Yes, Leo," and took her coat off the hanger on the wall, moving like a somnambulist.

  Lydia coughed discreetly. Leo looked at her. His glance brought a warm, wistful smile to Lydia's lips; it always did that to women; yet there was nothing in his eyes except that when he glanced at a woman his eyes told her that he was a man and she was a woman and he remembered it.

  Lydia gathered courage to disregard the lack of an introduction; but she did not know how to start and she gazed helplessly at the handsomest male ever to appear in their anteroom, and she threw bluntly the question that was on her mind: "Where do you come from?"
<
br />   "From jail," Leo answered with a courteous smile.

  Kira had buttoned her coat. Her eyes were fixed on him, as if she did not know that others were present. He took her arm with the gesture of an owner, and they were gone.

  "Well, of all the unmannered . . ." Galina Petrovna gasped, jumping up. But the door was closed.

  To the sleigh driver outside, Leo gave an address.

  "Where is that?" he repeated her question, his lips in her fur collar, as the sleigh jerked forward. "That's my home. . . . Yes, I got it back. They had it sealed since my father's arrest."

  "When did you . . ."

  "This afternoon. Went to the Institute to get your address; then--home and made a fire in the fireplace. It was like a grave, hadn't been heated for two months. It will be warm for us by now."

  The door they entered bore the red seal of the G.P.U. The seal had been broken; two red scabs of wax remained, parting to let them enter.

  They walked through a dark drawing room. The fireplace blazed, throwing a red glow on their feet and over their reflection in the mirror of a parquet floor. The apartment had been searched. There were papers strewn over the parquet, and overturned chairs. There were crystal vases on malachite stands; one vase was broken; the splinters sparkled on the floor in the darkness, little red flames dancing and winking through them, as if live coals had rolled out of the fireplace.

  In Leo's bedroom, a light was burning, a single lamp with a silver shade, over a black onyx fireplace. A last blue flame quivered on dying coals and made a purple glow on the silver bedspread.

  Leo threw his coat in a corner. He unbuttoned her coat and took it off; without a word, he unbuttoned her dress; she stood still and let him undress her.

  He whispered into the little warm hollow under her chin: "It was torture. Waiting. Three days--and three nights."

  He threw her across the bed. The purple glow quivered over her body. He did not undress. He did not turn out the light.

  Kira looked at the ceiling; it was a silvery white far away. Light was coming in through the gray satin curtains. She sat up in bed, her breasts stiff in the cold. She said: "I think it's already tomorrow."

  Leo was asleep, his head thrown back, one arm hanging over the edge of the bed. Her stockings were on the floor, her dress--on a bed post. Leo's eyelashes moved slowly; he looked up and said: "Good morning, Kira."