VI
Two voices were speaking in the dark—Liuba’s, intimate, tentative, sensitive, with delicate intonations of private apprehension such as a woman’s voice always gains in the dark—and his, hard, quiet, distant. He spoke his words too precisely, too harshly—the only sign of intoxication not quite passed away.
“Are your eyes open?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you thinking about something?”
“Yes.”
Silence—and the dark. Then again the thoughtful, vigilant voice of the woman.
“Tell me something more about your comrades, will you?”
“What for? … They—they were.”
He said were as the living speak of the dead, or as the dead might speak of the living, and through the even course of his calm and almost indifferent narration it resounded like a funeral knell, as though he were an old man telling his children the heroic tale of a long departed past. And, in the darkness, before the girl’s enchanted eyes, there rose the image of a little group of young men, pitifully young, bereft of father and mother, and hopelessly hostile both to the world they were fighting and to the world they were fighting for. Having travelled by dream to the distant future, to the land of brotherly men as yet unborn, they lived their short lives like pale bloodstained shadows or spectres, the scarecrows of humanity. And their lives were stupidly short—the gallows awaited every one of them, or penal servitude, or insanity—nothing else to look forward to but prison, the scaffold, or the madhouse. And there were women among them. …
Liuba started and raised herself on her elbows.
“Women? What do you mean, darling?”
“Young, gentle girls, still in their teens. They follow in the steps of the men, manfully, daringly, die with them. …”
“Die! Oh my God!” she cried, clutching his shoulder.
“What? Are you touched by this?”
“Never mind, darling. I sometimes. … Go on with your story! Go on!”
And he went on with his story, and there happened a wonderful thing. Ice was turned into fire. Through the funeral notes of his requiem speech, suddenly rang for the girl, her eyes wide open now and burning, the gospel of a new, joyous, and mighty life. Tears rose in her eyes and dried there as in a furnace; she was excited to the pitch of rebellion, eager for every word. Like a hammer upon glowing iron, his words were forging in her a new responsive soul. Steadily, regularly, it fell—beating the soul ever to a finer temper—and suddenly, in the suffocating stench of that room, there spoke aloud a new and unknown voice, the voice of a human being.
“Darling, am I not also a woman?”
“What do you mean?”
“I also might go with Them?”
He did not reply, and in his silence he seemed to her so remarkable and so great (he had been Their comrade, had lived with Them) that it felt uncomfortable to be lying beside him, embracing him. She moved away a little and left only a hand touching him, so that the contact might be less; and forgetting her hatred of the Fine, her tears and curses, and the long years of inviolable solitude in the depths—overcome by the beauty and self-denial of Their lives—her face flushed with excitement, and she was ready to weep at the terrible thought that They might not accept her.
“Dear, but will they take me? My God, if they won’t! What do you think? Tell me they’ll take me—they won’t be squeamish! They won’t say: You are impossible, you are vile, you have sold yourself! Answer me!”
Silence—and then a reply that rejoiced.
“Yes, they will! Why not, indeed?”
“Oh, my darling. But. …”
“Fine people, they are!” The man’s voice had the finality of a big fat full stop, but the girl triumphantly repeated, with a touching confidence:
“Yes! They are fine!”
And so radiant was her smile that it seemed as if the very darkness smiled in sympathy and some little stars strayed in as well, little blue points of light. For a new truth had reached her—one that brought not fear, but joy.
Then the shy suppliant voice.
“Let us go to them, dear? You’ll take me with you? You won’t be ashamed of having such a companion? For they’ll accept me, won’t they? Just as you did when you came here? Surely you were driven here for some purpose! But—to stay here—you would simply drop into the cesspool. As for me, I—I—I will try. Why don’t you say anything?”
Grim silence again, in which could be heard the beating of two hearts—one rapid, hurried, excited; the other hard and slow, strongely slow.
“Would you be shamed to go back with such as me?”
A stern prolonged silence, and then a reply, solid and inflexible as unpolished rock:
“I am not going back. I don’t want to be fine.”
Silence. Then presently:
“They are gentlemen,” he said, and his voice sounded solitary and strained.
“Who?” she asked, dully.
“They—Those who were.”
A long silence—this time as though a bird had thrown itself down and was falling, whirling through the air on its pliant wings, but unable to reach the earth, unable to strike the ground and lie at rest.
In the dark he knew that Liuba, silently, carefully, making the least stir possible, passed over him; was busying herself with something.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t like lying there like that. I want to get dressed.”
Then she must have put something on and sat down; for the chair creaked ever so little; and it became so still—as silent as though the room were empty. The stillness lasted a long time; and then the calm, serious voice spoke:
“I think, Liuba, there is still one cognac left on the table. Take a drink and come and lie down again.”