We the Living by Ayn Rand
On the screen, a man was bending over the hand of a delicate lady, pressing it slowly to his lips, while she looked at him sadly, and gently stroked his hair.
The end of the picture was not shown. It finished abruptly, as if torn off. A subtitle concluded: "Six months later the bloodthirsty capitalist met his death at the hands of striking workers. Our hero renounced the joys of a selfish love into which the bourgeois siren had tried to lure him, and he dedicated his life to the cause of the World Revolution."
"I know," said Kira, when they were leaving the theater. "I know what they've done! They've shot that beginning here, themselves. They've cut the picture to pieces!"
An usher who heard her, chuckled.
Sometimes the door bell rang and the Upravdom came in to remind them of the house meeting of all tenants on an urgent matter. He said: "No exceptions, citizens. Social duty comes above all. Every tenant gotta attend the meeting."
Then Kira and Leo filed into the largest room of the house, a long, bare room with one electric bulb in the ceiling, in the apartment of a street-car conductor who had offered it graciously for the social duty. Tenants came bringing their own chairs and sat chewing sunflower seeds. Those who brought no chairs sat on the floor and chewed sunflower seeds.
"Seeing as how I'm the Upravdom," said the Upravdom, "I declare this meeting of the tenants of the house Number--on Sergievskaia Street open. On the order of the day is the question as regards the chimneys. Now, comrade citizens, seeing as how we are all responsible citizens and conscious of the proper class consciousness, we gotta understand that this ain't the old days when we had landlords and didn't care what happened to the house we lived in. Now this is different, comrades. Owing to the new regime and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and seeing as how the chimneys are clogged, we gotta do something about it, seeing as how we're the owners of the house. Now if the chimneys are clogged, we'll have the house full of smoke, and if we have the house full of smoke, it's sloppy, and if we're sloppy, that's not true proletarian discipline. And so, comrade citizens . . ."
Housewives fidgeted nervously, sniffing the odor of burning food. A fat man in a red shirt was twiddling his thumbs. A young man with a mouth hanging open, was scratching his head.
". . . and the special assessment will be divided in proportion to the. . . . Is that you, Comrade Kira Argounova, trying to sneak out? Well, you better don't. You know what we think of people that sabotage their social duties. . . . And the special assessment will be divided in proportion to the social standing of the tenants. The workers pay three per cent and the Free Professions ten, and the Private Traders and unemployed--the rest. Who's for--raise your hands. . . . Comrade secretary, count the citizens' hands. . . . Who's against--raise your hands. . . . Comrade Michliuk, you can't raise your hand for and against on the one and same proposition. . . ."
Victor's visit was unexpected and inexplicable.
He stretched his hands to the "Bourgeoise," rubbed them energetically, smiled cheerfully at Kira and Leo.
"Just passing by and thought I'd drop in. . . . It's a charming place you have here. Irina's been telling me about it. . . . She's fine, thank you. . . . No, Mother's not so well. The doctor said there's nothing he can do if we don't send her south. And who can think of affording a trip these days? . . . Been busy at the Institute. Re-elected to Students' Council. . . . Do you read poetry? Just read some verses by a woman. Exquisite delicacy of feeling. . . . Yes, it's a lovely place you have here. Pre-revolutionary luxury. . . . You two are quite the bourgeois, aren't you. Two huge rooms like these. No trouble with the Domicile Norm? We've had two tenants forced upon us last week. One's a Communist. Father's just gritting his teeth. Irina has to share her room with Acia, and they fight like dogs. . . . What can one do? People have to have a roof over their heads. . . . Yes, Petrograd is an overcrowded city, Petrograd certainly is."
She came in, a red bandana on her hair, streaks of powder on her nose, a bundle tied in a white sheet in her hand, one black stocking hanging out of the bundle. She asked: "Where's that drawing room?"
Kira asked, startled: "What do you want, citizen?"
The girl did not answer. She opened the first door she saw, which led to the tenant's room. She slammed it shut. She opened the other door and walked into the drawing room.
"That's it," she said. "You can get your 'Bourgeoise' out--and your dishes and other trash. I have my own."
"What do you want, citizen?" Kira repeated.
"Oh, yes," said the girl. "Here."
She handed to Kira a crumpled scrap of paper with a big official stamp. It was an order from the Gilotdel, giving Citizen Marina Lavrova the right to occupy the room known as "drawing room" in apartment Number 22, house Number--on Sergievskaia Street; it requested the present occupants to vacate the room immediately, removing only "personal effects of immediate necessity."
"Why, it's impossible!" Kira gasped.
The girl laughed. "Get going, citizen, get going."
"Listen, you. Get out of here peacefully. You won't get this room."
"No? Who's going to stop me? You?"
She walked to a chair, saw Kira's apron on it, threw it to the floor and put her bundle on the chair.
Slamming the door behind her, Kira raced up the stairs, three floors up, to the Upravdom's apartment, and stood panting, knocking at the door ferociously.
The Upravdom opened the door and listened to her story, frowning.
"Order from the Gilotdel?" he said. "That's funny they didn't notify me. That's irregular. I'll put the citizen in her proper place."
"Comrade Upravdom, you know very well it's against the law. Citizen Kovalensky and I are not married. We're entitled to separate rooms."
"You sure are."
Kira had been paid for a month of lessons the day before. She took the little roll of bills from her pocket and, without looking at it, without counting, thrust it all into the Upravdom's hand.
"Comrade Upravdom, I'm not in the habit of begging for help, but please, oh! please, get her out. It would . . . it would simply mean the end for us."
The Upravdom slipped the bills into his pocket furtively, then looked straight at Kira, openly and innocently, as if nothing had happened. "Don't you worry, Citizen Argounova. We know our duty. We'll fix the lady. We'll throw her out on her behind in the gutter where she belongs."
He slammed his hat over one ear and followed Kira downstairs.
"Look here, citizen, what's all this about?" the Upravdom asked sternly.
Citizen Marina Lavrova had taken her coat off and opened her bundle. She wore a tailored white shirt, an old skirt, a necklace of imitation pearls, and slippers with very high heels. She had piled underwear, books and a teapot in a jumble on the table.
"How do you do, Comrade Upravdom?" she smiled pleasantly. "We might as well get acquainted."
She took a little wallet from her pocket and handed it to him, open, showing a little card. It was a membership card of the Communist Union of Youth--the Komsomol.
"Oh," said the Upravdom. "Oh." He turned to Kira: "What do you want, citizen? You have two rooms and you want a toiling girl to be thrown out on the streets? The time is past for bourgeois privileges, citizen. People like you had better watch their step."
Kira and Leo appealed the case in the People's Court.
They sat in a bare room that smelt of sweat and of an unswept floor. Lenin and Karl Marx, without frames, bigger than life-size, looked at them from the wall. A cotton strip said: "Proletarians of the wo . . ." The rest was not to be seen, for the end of the strip had become untacked and swayed, curled like a snake, in a draft.
The president magistrate yawned and asked Kira: "What's your social position, citizen?"
"Student."
"Employed?"
"No."
"Member of a Trade Union?"
"No."
The Upravdom testified that although Citizen Argounova and Citizen Kovalensky were not in the state of legal matrimony,
"Who was your father, Citizen Argounova?"
"Alexander Argounov."
"The former textile manufacturer and factory owner?"
"Yes."
"I see. Who was your father, Citizen Kovalensky?"
"Admiral Kovalensky."
"Executed for counter-revolutionary activities?"
"Executed--yes."
"Who was your father, Citizen Lavrova?"
"Factory worker, Comrade Judge. Exiled to Siberia by the Czar in 1913. My mother's a peasant, from the plow."
"It is the verdict of the People's Court that the room in question rightfully belongs to Citizen Lavrova."
"Is this a court of justice or a musical comedy?" Leo asked.
The presiding magistrate turned to him solemnly: "So-called impartial justice, citizen, is a bourgeois prejudice. This is a court of class justice. It is our official attitude and platform. Next case!"
"Comrade Judge!" Kira appealed. "How about the furniture--our furniture?"
"You can't pull all that furniture into one room."
"No, but we could sell it. We're . . . we're quite hard up."
"So? You would sell it for profit and a proletarian girl, who didn't happen to accumulate any furniture, would have to sleep on the floor? . . . Next case!"
"Tell me one thing," Kira asked Citizen Lavrova. "How did you happen to get an order for that particular room of ours? Who told you about it?"
Citizen Lavrova gave an abrupt giggle with a vague stare. "One has friends," was all she answered.
She had a pale face with a short nose and small, pouting lips that looked chronically discontented. She had light, bluish eyes, cold and suspicious. Her hair curled in vague ringlets on her forehead and she always wore tiny earrings, a brass circle close around the lobe of her ear, with a tiny imitation turquoise. She was not sociable and talked little. But the door bell rang continuously in the hands of visitors to Comrade Lavrova. Her friends called her Marisha.
In Leo's gray and silver bedroom, a hole was pierced over the black onyx fireplace--for the pipe of the "Bourgeoise." Two shelves on his wardrobe were emptied for dishes, silverware and food. Bread crumbs rolled down into their underwear and the bed sheets smelt of linseed oil. Leo's books were stacked on the dresser; Kira's--under the bed. Leo whistled a fox-trot, arranging his books. Kira did not look at him.
After some hesitation, Marisha surrendered the painting of Leo's mother, which hung in the drawing room. But she kept the frame; she put a picture of Lenin in it. She also had pictures of Trotsky, Marx, Engels and Rosa Luxemburg; also--a poster representing the Spirit of the Red Air Fleet. She had a gramophone. Late into the night, she played old records, of which her favorite was a song about Napoleon's defeat in Russia--"It roared, it flamed, the fire of Moscow." When she was tired of the gramophone, she played the "Dog's Waltz" on the grand piano.
The bathroom had to be reached through the bedroom. Marisha kept shuffling in and out, wearing a faded, unfastened bathrobe.
"When you have to go through, I wish you'd knock," Kira told her.
"What for? It's not your bathroom."
Marisha was a student of the University Rabfac.
The Rabfacs were special workers' faculties with an academic program a little less exacting than that of the University, with a program of revolutionary sciences a great deal more exacting, and with an admission on the strictest proletarian basis.
Marisha disliked Kira, but spoke to Leo at times. She flung the door open so that her posters rustled on the walls, and yelled imperiously: "Citizen Kovalensky, can you help me with this damn French history? What century did they burn Martin Luther in? Or was that Germany? Or did they burn him?"
At other times she flung the door open and announced to no one in particular: "I'm going to the Komsomol Club to meeting. If Comrade Rilenko comes, tell him he'll find me at the Club. But if that louse Mishka Gvozdev comes, tell him I've gone to America. You know who he is--the little one with the wart on his nose."
She came in, a cup in her hand: "Citizen Argounova, can I borrow some lard? Didn't know I was all out of it. . . . Nothing but linseed oil? How can you eat that stinking stuff? Well, gimme half a cup."
Going out at seven in the morning, passing through her room, Leo found Marisha asleep, her head on a table littered with books. Marisha jerked, awakening with a start at the sound of his steps.
"Oh, damnation!" she yawned, stretching. "It's this paper I have to read at the Marxist Circle tonight, for our less enlightened comrades--on the 'Social Significance of Electricity as a Historical Factor.' Citizen Kovalensky, who the hell is Edison?"
Late at night they could hear her coming home. She slammed the door and threw her books on a chair, and they could hear the books scattering over the floor, and her voice intermingled with the deep, adolescent basso of Comrade Rilenko: "Aleshka, pal, be an angel. Light that damn Primus. I'm starving."
Aleshka's steps shuffled across the room, and the Primus hissed.
"You're an angel, Aleshka. Always said you were an angel. I'm tired like a dray-horse. The Rabfac this morning; the Komsomol Club at noon; a committee on day-nurseries in factories at one-thirty; the Marxist Circle at two; demonstration against Illiteracy at three--and do my feet sweat!--lecture on Electrification at four; at seven--editors' board of the Wall Newspaper--I'm gonna be editor; meeting of the women houseworkers at seven-thirty or something; conference on our comrades in Hungary at. . . . You can't say your girl friend ain't class-minded and socially active, Aleshka, you really can't say it."
Aleshka sat at the piano and played, "John Gray."
Once, in the middle of the night, Kira was awakened by someone slinking furtively into the bathroom. She caught a glimpse of an undressed boy with blond hair. There was no light in Marisha's room.
One evening, Kira heard a familiar voice behind the door. A man was saying: "Of course, we're friends. You know we are. Perhaps--perhaps there's more--on my part--but I do not dare to hope. I've proven my devotion to you. You know the favor I've done you. Now, do one for me. I want to meet that Party friend of yours."
Passing through Marisha's room, on her way out, Kira stopped short. She saw Victor sitting on the davenport, holding Marisha's hand. He jumped up, his temples reddened.
"Victor! Were you coming to see me or . . ." Her voice broke off; she understood.
"Kira, I don't want you to think that I . . ." Victor was saying.
Kira was running out of the room, out of the lobby, down the stairs.
When she told Leo about it, he threatened to break every bone in Victor's body. She begged him to keep quiet. "If you raise this issue, his father will know. It will break Uncle Vasili and he's so unhappy as it is. What's the use? We won't get the room back."
In the Institute co-operative, Kira met Comrade Sonia and Pavel Syerov. Comrade Sonia was chewing a crust of bread broken off the loaf she had received, Pavel Syerov looked as trim as a military fashion plate. He smiled effusively: "How are you, Comrade Argounova? We don't see you so often at the Institute these days."
"I've been busy."
"We don't see you with Comrade Taganov any more. You two haven't quarreled, have you?"
"Why does that interest you?"
"Oh, it's of no particular interest to me personally."
"But it does interest us as a Party duty," Comrade Sonia remarked sternly. "Comrade Taganov is a valuable Party worker. Naturally, we are concerned, for his friendship with a woman of your social origin might hurt his Party sta
"Nonsense, Sonia, nonsense," Pavel Syerov protested with sudden eagerness. "Andrei's Party standing is too high. Nothing can hurt it. Comrade Argounova doesn't have to worry and break off a lovely friendship."
Kira looked at him fixedly and asked: "But his Party standing does worry you because it's so high, doesn't it?"
"Why, Comrade Taganov is a very good friend of mine and . . ."
"Are you a very good friend of his?"
"A peculiar question, Comrade Argounova."
"One does hear peculiar things nowadays, doesn't one? Good day, Comrade Syerov."
Marisha came in when Kira was alone. Her little pouting mouth was swollen: her eyes were red, swollen with tears. She asked sullenly: "Citizen Argounova, what do you use to keep from having children?"
Kira looked at her, startled.
"I'm afraid I'm in trouble," Marisha wailed. "It's that damn louse Aleshka Rilenko. Said I'd be bourgeois if I didn't let him. . . . Said he'd be careful. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?"
Kira said she didn't know.
For three weeks, Kira worked secretly on a new dress. It was only her old dress, but slowly, painfully, awkwardly, she managed to turn it inside out. The blue wool was smooth and silky on the inside; it looked almost fresh. It was to be a surprise for Leo; she worked on it at night when he had gone to bed. She put a candle on the floor and opened the big mirror door of the wardrobe and used it as a screen, crouching on the floor behind it, by the candle. She had never learned how to sew. Her fingers moved slowly, helplessly. She wiped drops of blood on her petticoat, when she pricked her finger with the needle. Her eyes felt as if tiny needles pricked them continuously from behind the lids; and her lids felt so heavy that when she blinked they stayed closed and it took an effort to pull them open to the huge yellow glare of the candle. Somewhere in the darkness, behind the yellow glare, Leo breathed heavily in his sleep.
The dress was ready on the day when she met Vava in the street. Vava was smiling happily, mysteriously once in a while, for no apparent reason, smiling at a secret thought of her own. They walked home together, and Vava could not resist it any longer: "Won't you come in, Kira?" she begged. "For just a second? I have something to show you. Something--from abroad."