Michael Mitchell: Archive

She led two excursions on the following day. Coming home, she told Leo that she would be dismissed if she did not attend a guides' meeting that evening. She put on her red dress. On the stair-landing, she kissed Leo lightly, as he stood watching her go: she waved to him, vaulting down the stairs, with a cold, gay chuckle. On a street corner, she opened her purse, took out the little French bottle and pressed a few drops of perfume into her hair. She leaped into a tramway at full speed and stood hanging onto a leather strap, watching the lights swim past. When she got off, she walked, lightly, swiftly, with a cold, precise determination, toward the palace that was a Party Club.

She ran soundlessly up the crumbling marble stairway of the pavilion. She knocked sharply at the door.

When Andrei opened the door, she laughed, kissing him: "I know, I know, I know... Don't say it... I want to be forgiven first, and then I'll explain."

He whispered happily: "You're forgiven. You don't have to explain."

She did not explain. She did not let him utter a complaint. She whirled around the room, and he tried to catch her, and the cloth of her coat felt cold in his hands, cold and fragrant of summer night air. He could whisper only: "Do you know that it's been two weeks since..." But he did not finish the sentence.

Then she noticed that he was dressed for the street. "Were you going out, Andrei?"

"Oh... yes, I was, but it's not important."

"Where were you going?"

"Just to a Party Cell meeting."

"A Party Cell meeting? And you say it's not important? But you can't miss that."

"Yes, I can. I'm not going."

"Andrei, I'd rather come tomorrow and let you..."

"No."

"Well, then, let's go out together. Take me to the European roof."

"Tonight?"

"Yes. Now."

He did not want to refuse. She did not want to notice the look in his eyes.

They sat at a white table in the roof garden on top of the European Hotel. They sat in a dim corner, and they could see nothing of the long room but the naked white back of a woman a few tables away, with a little strand of golden hair curling at the nape of her neck, escaping from the trim, lustrous waves of her coiffure, with a little golden shadow between her shoulder blades, her long fingers holding a glass with a liquid the color of her hair, swaying slowly; and beyond the woman, beyond a haze of yellow lights and bluish, rippling smoke, an orchestra played fox-trots from "Bajadere," and the violinists swayed to the rhythm of the golden glass.

Andrei said: "It's been two weeks, Kira, and... and you probably need it." He slipped a roll of bills into her hand, his monthly salary.

She whispered, pushing it back, closing his fingers over the bills: "No, Andrei... Thank you... But I don't need it. And... and I don't think I'll need it again..."

"But..."

"You see, I get so many excursions to lead, and Mother got more classes at the school, and we all have clothes and everything we need, so that..."

"But, Kira, I want you to..."

"Please, Andrei! Don't let's argue. Not about that... Please... Keep it... If... if I need it, I'll tell you."

"Promise?"

"Yes."

The violins rumbled dully, heavily, and suddenly the music burst out like a firecracker, so that the swift, laughing notes could almost be seen as sparks shooting to the ceiling.

"You know," said Kira, "I shouldn't ask you to bring me here. It's not a place for you. But I like it. It's only a caricature and a very poor little one at that, but still it's a caricature of what Europe is. Do you know that music they're playing? It's from 'Bajadere'. I saw it. They're playing it in Europe, too. Like here... almost like here."

"Kira," Andrei asked, "that Leo Kovalensky, is he in love with you or something?"

She looked at him, and the reflection of an electric light stood still as two sparks in her eyes and as a bright little oval on her patent leather collar. "Why do you ask that?"

"I saw your cousin, Victor Dunaev, at a club meeting and he told me that Leo Kovalensky was back, and he smiled as if the news should mean something to me. I didn't even know that Kovalensky had been away."

"Yes, he's back. He's been away somewhere in the Crimea, for his health, I think. I don't know whether he's in love with me, but Victor was in love with me once, and he's never forgiven me for that."

"I see. I don't like that man."

"Victor?"

"Yes. And Leo Kovalensky, too. I hope you don't see him often. I don't trust that type of man."

"Oh, I see him occasionally."

The orchestra had stopped playing.

"Andrei, ask them to play something for me. Something I like. It's called the 'Song of Broken Glass'."

He watched her as the music burst out again, splattering sparks of sound. It was the gayest music he had ever heard; and he had never seen her look sad; but she sat, motionless, staring helplessly, her eyes forlorn, bewildered.

"It's very beautiful, this music, Kira," he whispered, "why do you look like that?"

"It's something I liked... long ago... when I was a child... Andrei, did you ever feel as if something had been promised to you in your childhood, and you look at yourself and you think 'I didn't know, then, that this is what would happen to me' -- and it's strange, and funny, and a little sad?"

"No, I was never promised anything. There were so many things that I didn't know, then, and it's so strange to be learning them now... You know, the first time I brought you here, I was ashamed to enter. I thought it was no place for a Party man. I thought..." he laughed softly, apologetically, "I thought I was making a sacrifice for you. And now I like it."

"Why?"

"Because I like to sit in a place where I have no reason to be, no reason but to sit and look at you across the table. Because I like those lights on your collar. Because you have a very stern mouth -- and I like that -- but when you listen to that music, your mouth is gay, as if it were listening, too. And all those things, they have no meaning for anyone on earth but me, and when I've lived a life where every hour had to have a purpose, and suddenly I discover what it's like to feel things that have no purpose but myself, and I see suddenly how sacred a purpose that can be, so that I can't even argue, I can't doubt, I can't fight it, and I know, then, that a life is possible whose only justification is my own joy -- then everything, everything else suddenly seems very different to me."

She whispered: "Andrei, you shouldn't talk like that. I feel as if I were taking you away from your own life, from everything that has been your life."

"Don't you want to feel it?"

"But doesn't it frighten you? Don't you think sometimes that it may bring you to a choice you have no right to make?"

He answered with so quiet a conviction that the word sounded light, unconcerned, with a calm beyond earnestness: "No." He leaned toward her across the table, his eyes serene, his voice soft and steady: "Kira, you look frightened. And, really, you know, it's not a serious question. I've never had many questions to face in my life. People create their own questions, because they're afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it -- walk. I joined the Party because I knew I was right. I love you because I know I'm right. In a way, you and my work are the same. Things are really very simple."

"Not always, Andrei. You know your road. I don't belong on it."

"That's not in the spirit of what you taught me."

She whispered helplessly: "What did I teach you?"

The orchestra was playing the "Song of Broken Glass". No one sang it. Andrei's voice sounded like the words of that music. He was saying: "You remember, you said once that we had the same root somewhere in both of us, because we both believed in life? It's a rare capacity and it can't be taught. And it can't be explained to those in whom that word -- life -- doesn't awaken the kind of feeling that a temple does, or a military march, or the statue of a perfect body. It is for that feeling that I joined a Party which, at the time, could lead me only to Siberia. It is for that feeling that I wanted to fight against the most senseless and useless of monsters standing in the way of human life -- and that's something we call now humanity's politics. And so my own existence was only the fight and the future. You taught me the present."

She made a desperate attempt. She said slowly, watching him: "Andrei, when you told me you loved me, for the first time, you were hungry. I wanted to satisfy that hunger."

"And that's all?"

"That's all."

He laughed quietly, so quietly that she had to give up. "You don't know what you're saying, Kira. Women like you don't love only like that."

"What are women like me?"

"What temples are, and military marches, and..."

"Let's have a drink, Andrei."

"You want a drink?"

"Yes. Now."

"All right."

He ordered the drinks. He watched the glow of the glass at her lips, a long, thin, shivering line of liquid light between fingers that looked golden in its reflection. He said: "Let's drink a toast to something I could never offer but in a place like this: to my life."

"Your new life?"

"My only one."

"Andrei, what if you lose it?"

"I can't lose it."

"But so many things can happen. I don't want to hold your life in my hands."

"But you're holding it."

"Andrei, you must think... once in a while... that it's possible that... What if anything should happen to me?"

"Why think about it?"

"But it's possible."

She felt suddenly as if the words of his answer were the links of a chain she would never be able to break: "It's also possible for every one of us to have to face a death sentence some day. Does it mean that we have to prepare for it?"

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We The Living

Ayn Rand