The Early Ayn Rand

The woman stood on deck and looked at the island, too. She wore a plain, black coat. It did not look expensive, but it was too plain, and fitted too well, and showed a slim, young body, not the kind that Commandant Kareyev had seen tramping wearily the dark streets of Russian cities. Her hand held her fur collar tightly under her chin. Her hand had long, slender fingers. There was a quiet curiosity in her large, wide eyes, and such an indifferent calm that Commandant Kareyev would not believe she was looking at the island. No one had ever looked at it like that. But she did.

He watched her walking down the gangplank. The fact that her steps were steady, light, assured was astonishing; the fact that she looked like a woman who belonged in exquisite drawing rooms was startling; but the fact that she was beautiful was incredible. There had been some mistake: she was not the woman sent to him.

He bowed curtly. He asked:

"What are you doing here, citizen?"

"Commandant Kareyev?" she inquired. Her voice had a strange, slow, indifferent calm — and a strange foreign accent.

"Yes."

"I thought you were expecting me."

"Oh."

Her cool eyes looked at him as they had looked at his island. She had nothing of the smiling, inviting, professional charm he had expected. She was not smiling. She did not seem to notice his astonishment. She did not seem to find the occasion unusual at all. She said:

"My name is Joan Harding."

"English?"

"American."

"What are you doing in Russia?"

She took a letter from her pocket and handed it to him. She said:

"Here is my letter of introduction from the GPU at Nijni Kolimsk."

He took the letter, but did not open it. He said curtly:

"All right. Come this way, Comrade Harding."

He walked up the hill, to the monastery, stiff, silent, without offering a hand to help her up the old stone steps, without looking back at her, followed by the eyes of all the men on the landing and by the unusual, long-forgotten sound of French heels. The room he had prepared for her was a small cube of gray stone. There was a narrow iron cot, a table, a candle on the table, a chair, a small barred window, a stove of red bricks built in the wall. There was nothing to greet her, nothing to show that a human being had been expected to enter that room, only a thin red line of fire trembling in the crack of the stove's iron door.

"Not very comfortable," said Commandant Kareyev. "This place wasn't built for women. It was a monastery — before the revolution. The monks had a law that a woman's foot could not touch this ground. Woman was sin."

"You have a better opinion of women, haven't you, Comrade Kareyev?"

"I'm not afraid of being a sinner."

She looked at him. She spoke slowly, and he knew she was answering something he had not said:

"The only sin is to miss the things you want most in life. If they're taken from you, you have to reclaim them — at any price."

"If this is the price you're paying for whatever it is you want, it's pretty high, you know. Sure it's worth it?"

She shrugged lightly:

"I've been accustomed to rather high-priced things."

"So I notice, Comrade Harding."

"Call me Joan."

"It's a funny name."

"You'll get used to it."

"What are you doing in Russia?"

"In the coming months — anything you wish me to do."

It was not a promise nor an invitation; it was said as an efficient secretary might have said it, and more coldly, more impersonally than that; as one of the guards might have said it, awaiting orders; as if the sound of her voice added that the words meant nothing — to him or to her.

He asked:

"How do you happen to be in Russia at all?"

She shrugged lazily. She said:

"Questions are so boring. I've answered so many of them at the GPU before they sent me here. The GPU officials were satisfied. I'm sure you never disagree with them, do you?"

He watched her as she took her hat off, and threw it down on the table, and shook her hair. Her hair was short, blond, and stood like a halo over her face. She walked to the table and touched it with her finger. She took out a small lace handkerchief and wiped the dust off the table. She dropped the handkerchief to the floor. He looked at it. He did not pick it up.

He watched her thoughtfully. He turned to go. At the door he stopped and faced her suddenly.

"Do you," he asked, "whoever you are, understand what you're here for?"

She looked straight into his eyes, a long, quiet, disconcerting look, and her eyes were mysterious because they were too calm and too open.

"Yes," she said slowly, "I understand." The letter from the GPU said:

Comrade Kareyev,