The Early Ayn Rand

It was long after midnight, and the monastery towers had dissolved into the black sky, and only the smoking lanterns of the guards floated over the darkness, when a hand knocked on Joan's door. She had not been sleeping. She was standing at a bare stone wall, under the faint square of a barred window, and the lighted candle tore out of the darkness the white spots of her hands and bowed face. The wax of the candle had frozen in long rivulets across the table. She hesitated for only a second. She tightened the folds of her long, black robe and opened the door.

It was not Commandant Kareyev; it was Michael.

He put his hand on the door so that she could not close it. His lips were determined, but his eyes were desperate, tortured, pleading.

"Keep quiet," he whispered. "I've got to see you alone."

"Get out of here," she ordered, in a whisper. "At once."

"Frances," he begged, "this... all this isn't possible. I can't understand... I've got to hear a word, a..."

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. Let me close this door."

"Frances, I have to... I can't... I must know the reason you..."

"If you don't go, I'll call Commandant Kareyev."

"Oh, you will?" He raised his head defiantly. "Well, let me see you do it."

She opened her door wider and called:

"Comrade Kareyev!"

She did not have to call twice. He threw his door open and faced them, hand on the gun at his belt.

"I didn't come here to be annoyed by your prisoners, Comrade Kareyev," she said evenly.

Commandant Kareyev did not say a word. He blew his whistle. Down the long corridor, the echoes of their heavy boots pounding against the vaults, two guards ran to his summons.

"Into the pit," he ordered, pointing at Michael.

Michael's eyes were not desperate any longer. A contemptuous smile pulled down the corners of his mouth. His hand went to his forehead in a military salute to Joan.

She stood, motionless, until the guards' footsteps died in the darkness beyond the stairs, leading Michael away. Then, Kareyev entered her room and closed the door. He looked at her throat, white against the black robe.

"After all," said Commandant Kareyev, "he had the right idea."

He did not know whether the soft warmth under his hands was the velvet or the body under the velvet. For one short second, it seemed to him that her eyes had lost their hard calm, that they were helpless and frightened and childish, like the fluffy blond hair that fell over his arm. But he did not care, for then her lips parted in a smile and his closed them again.

------II------

Joan was unpacking her trunks. She was hanging her clothes on a row of nails. Just enough light crawled in through the barred window to make the satins and laces glimmer, shivering and surprised, in the stone niche built for monks' robes.

The light seemed to rise out of the sea and the sky hung over it, a dead gray reflecting feebly a borrowed glow. The leaden waves moved restlessly; they did not run towards the shore; they seemed to boil and knock against each other, furious whitecaps flashing up and disappearing instantly, as if the sea, a huge tank, had been shaken and its waters stirred, swaying against unseen walls.

From her window, Joan could watch the statue of St. George on a cornice. His huge, awkward face looked straight at the far horizon, without bending towards the dragon under his horse's hoofs. The dragon's head hung over the sea, limp under centuries of threat from a heavy stone spear, as if the last drops of blood had been drained through its gaping mouth into the waves far below.

Joan was hanging a shawl to cover the niche, a square piece of old linen heavy with crosses of embroidery. Commandant Kareyev entered when she struck her finger with the hammer, trying to drive a nail into the hard wooden frame around the niche.

"It's your fault," she said, a little smile softening her lips in a wordless greeting. "You promised to help me."

He took her hand without hesitation, possessively, and looked, worried, at the little red spot.

"I'm sorry. Here, I'll nail it for you."

"You've left me alone three times this morning," she complained.

"Sorry. I had to go. A disturbance down there. One of the fools chopped his toe off."

"Accident?"

"No. Madness. Thought he'd be sent to the mainland to a hospital."

"Didn't you send him?"

"No. Had the doctor tend to him. The doctor's a useful prisoner to have; been a surgeon at the Medical Academy in St. Petersburg. He's cauterizing the idiot's foot now — with red iron... What's all this here?"

"My clothes."

"Why do you have so many?"

"Why do you carry that gun?"

"That's my profession."

"That" — she pointed to the niche — "is mine."

"Oh." He looked at the clothes, at her, frowned. "Yes, and a paying one... And if it paid so well, why did you come here?"

"I was tired. I heard about you — and liked it."

"What did you hear?"

"I heard that you were the loneliest man in this republic."

"I see. Pity?"

"No. Envy.”

She bent and took out of the trunk a dress of soft, dark satin.