The Early Ayn Rand

"What are you making now, General? A new one?" he asked, pointing at the toy. "You know, Miss Harding, our general is a proud old man. We have a little workshop here where we're allowed to make things: boots, baskets, and such. When the boat comes, they collect it all and take it away, to the cities. They bring us cigarettes, woolen scarfs, socks — in exchange. The boots are the most profitable to make. But the general won't make boots."

"No one shall say," the general interrupted proudly, "that a general of the Army of his Imperial Majesty stooped to making boots."

"He makes wooden toys, instead," the Count explained. "He invents them himself."

"This is a new one." The general smiled eagerly. "I'll show you."

He raised the toy and pulled a little stick; a wooden peasant and bear armed with hammers struck an anvil in turn, jerking awkwardly. As the tiny hammers knocked rhythmically through the music, the Count whispered into Joan's ear:

"Don't ever mention his son. He was a captain in the old army. The reds hanged him — before his father's eyes."

"You see," the general was explaining, "I'm always thinking that my toys go out into the world and children play with them, little chubby, rosy fellows, like Iura... And sometimes, I think, wouldn't it be funny if one of the toys fell into his hands, and... But then, how stupid of me!... Eleven years... he's a full-grown young man, by now..."

"Checkmate, Doctor," the Senator's raucous voice boomed suddenly. "Were you paying any attention to the game? Or am I going to lose the last man I can speak to?"

He shot a dark, significant glance at the general, and left the room, slamming the door.

"Poor fellow," sighed the general. "You mustn't be angry at him, Miss Harding. He won't speak to anyone that speaks to you. He's not quite sane."

"He can't forgive you," explained the Count, "for what he presumes to be your... shall we say ethical differences?... with his code... You see, he shot his own daughter — and also the Bolshevik who had attacked her."

Comrade Fedossitch found Commandant Kareyev inspecting the guard posts on the wall.

"I'm taking the liberty to report to the Comrade Commandant" — he saluted — "that there are unlawful doings going on in the library."

"What's the trouble?"

"It's the comrade woman. She's playing music." "On what?" "On a radio."

"Well, isn't that great? I haven't heard one for five years."

When Commandant Kareyev entered, there was a strange, tense silence in the library. The men were surrounding Joan. She knelt by the radio, turning the dial slowly, listening intently, frowning in concentration. He felt the suspense and stopped at the door.

"I think I have it," Joan's triumphant voice greeted a faint rumble from the loudspeaker.

A blast of jazz music exploded into the room, like a skyrocket bursting out of the loudspeaker, rising and breaking into flaming colors under the dark vaults.

"Abroad," said one of the men, breathlessly, reverently, as if he were saying: "Heaven."

The music was the end of a dance. It finished abruptly in a burst of applause. It was an unusual sound to enter the library. The men grinned and applauded, too.

A nasal Oriental voice spoke an announcement in French. Joan translated:

"This is the Cafe Electric, Tokyo, Japan. We are now going to hear the lightest, gayest, maddest tune that ever conquered the capitals of Europe: the 'Song of Dancing Lights.'"

It was a challenge, it was an insulting burst of laughter right into the grim face of Strastnoy Island. It was like a ray of light split by a mirror, its sparkling bits sent flying, dancing over the dark, painted walls. It was the halting, drifting, irregular raving of a music drunk on its own gaiety. It was the voice of streetlights on a blazing boulevard under a dark sky, of electric signs, of automobile headlights, of diamond buckles on dancing feet.

Still kneeling by the radio, like a solemn priestess to that hymn of living, Joan spoke. She spoke to the men, but her eyes were on Commandant Kareyev. He stood at the door. At one side of him was a painting of a saint burning at the stake, his face distorted into a smile of insane ecstasy, renouncing the pleasures and the tortures of the flesh for the glory of his heaven; at the other side — a poster of a huge machine with little ant-sized men, sweating at its gigantic levers, and the inscription: "Our duty is our sacrifice to the red collective of the Communistic State!"

Joan was speaking:

"Somewhere, they are dancing to this music. It's not very far. It's on this same earth. Over there, the man is holding the woman in his arms. They, too, have a duty. It's a duty to look into each other's eyes and smile at life an answer beyond all doubts, all questions, all sorrows."

Her head thrown back, her body on the dark altar steps, tense, listening to the song with its every muscle, seemed a sacrificial offering to the Deity she was serving. The candlelight drowned in her hair, golden as the saints' halos.