The Early Ayn Rand

Tall candles in silver stands at the altar had to be lighted in the daytime. Their little red flames stood immobile, each candle transformed into a chandelier by the myriads of tiny reflections in the gilded halos of carved saints; they burned without motion, without noise, a silent, resigned service in memory of the past — around a picture of Lenin-Above, on the vaulted ceiling, the unknown artist had placed his last work. A figure of Jesus floated in the clouds, His robe whiter than snow. He looked down with a sad, wise smile, His arms outstretched in silent invitation and blessing.

The library was the creation of Comrade Fedossitch, who liked to talk of "our duty to the new culture." The murals did not harmonize with his new culture and Comrade Fedossitch had tried to improve them. He had painted a red flag into the raised hand of Saint Vladimir as that first Christian ruler converted his people to the new faith; he had painted a sickle and hammer on Moses' tablets. But the ancient glazing that protected the murals, its secret lost with the monks, did not take fresh paint well. The red flag ran down the wall and peeled off in pieces. So Comrade Fedossitch had given up the idea of artistic alterations. He had compromised by tacking over Saint Vladimir's stomach a bright-red poster bearing a soldier and an airplane, and the inscription: COMRADES! DONATE TO THE RED AIR-FLEET!

On the shelves were The Constitution of the U.S.S.R., The ABC of Communism, the first volume of a novel, a book of verse without a cover, a Ladies' Guide to Fine Needlework, a manual of arithmetical problems for the first grade, and others.

Joan had brought a radio. She walked into the library carrying it under her arm, a square box with an awkward loudspeaker.

The men in the room rose, bowing to her, smiling a timid welcome. It was different from her first entrance into the library a week ago. Then they had ignored her, as if the door had opened to admit her and no one had entered the room; they had stepped out of her way, cautiously and speedily, as if she were a poisonous plant they did not care to touch. She had won them and none of them could say that she had tried. It was her fluffy, childish hair, and her wise, mysterious smile, and her eyes so defiantly open that they concealed her thoughts by exposing them, and her slow, leisurely steps that carried her down the monastery halls like a vision from these men's pasts, like the women they had left far behind in the years that had gone, in the halls of mansions that had crumbled.

An old surgeon and a former Senator did not greet her, however. They were playing chess on a corner of the long library table, where a chessboard had been traced on the unpainted wooden boards with cheap purple ink. The chess figures had been modeled out of stale bread. The Senator had a long black beard; he never shaved; he talked little and had trouble in shifting his eyes: they always looked straight into one spot for hours. He did not raise his head when Joan entered; neither did the surgeon.

An old general who wore a patched jacket and St. George's ribbon did not greet her, either. He was sitting alone, by a window, bending, his eyes squinting painfully in the dim light, busily carving wooden toys.

And still another man did not move when she entered: Michael sat alone under a tall candle reading a book for the third time. He turned a page and bent lower when the door opened to admit her.

"Good morning, Miss Harding," a prisoner who had been a Count greeted her. "How lovely you are today! May I help you? What is this?"

"Good morning," said Joan. "It's a radio."

"A radio!"

They surrounded her, stunned, eager, curious, looking at that box from somewhere where history, which had stopped for them, was still marching forward.

"A radio!" said the Count, adjusting his monocle. "So I'm not going to die without seeing one, after all."

"What's a radio, anyway?" asked an old professor.

Comrade Fedossitch, who had been painting a poster while sitting alone at a table in a corner, put his brush down and looked up, resentfully, frowning.

Joan put the radio down on the altar, under Lenin's picture. She said:

"This will cheer us all a little."

"A charming thought." The Count clicked his heels gallantly. "And what a charming gown! We of the old world said that woman was the flower of creation — and clothes the petals."

"Nothing can extinguish the torch of human progress," the gray-haired professor said solemnly. His hair was white as the angels' wings on the walls, and his eyes sad and innocent as theirs.

A tall young convict, his blond hair disheveled over a face still pale from fifty lashes he had received, said softly, his hesitant fingers touching the radio timidly:

"I haven't heard any music... for three years."

"The first concert," Joan announced, "on Strastnoy Island."