The Early Ayn Rand

She spoke slowly, without changing her voice, her words lazy, indifferent: "I won't take that boat, Michael. Someone else is taking it." "Who's taking it?" "You."

He stared at her, speechless.

"Keep working on that fire," she ordered.

He obeyed. She bent over him, whispering quickly, eagerly:

"Listen carefully. You'll get on board. You'll hide in the hold. The Commandant won't make his inspection rounds tonight, I'll see to that."

"But..."

"Here are the keys to the outside door and the gate. There's only one guard on the wall who can see the landing. Watch him. At midnight he'll be removed."

"How?"

"Leave that to me. When you see him go — hurry to the boat."

"And you?"

"I'm staying here."

He stared at her. She added:

"I'm staying here just a little longer. To keep him from discovering your escape. Don't worry. There's no danger. He'll never know who helped you."

He took her hand. "Frances..."

"Dearest, not a word. Please! I've lived three long months for just this night. We can't weaken now. We can't retreat. It's our last battle. You understand?"

He nodded slowly. She whispered:

"I'll join you in a free country where we'll take these last two years of our lives, and seal them, and never open them again."

"But I'd like to read again about what you've done."

"There's only one thing I want you to read and remember, only one thing that I'll write over these years: I love you."

They heard Kareyev's steps outside. Michael went out as he entered. Joan stood at the open door of the stove where a bright flame whistled merrily. She said to Michael, aloud:

"Thank you, this will warm the room. I'll feel much better — tonight."

"We wander in the darkness," said the professor. "Man has lost sight of beauty. There is a great beauty on this earth of ours. A beauty one's spirit can approach only bare-headed. But how many of us ever get a glimpse of it?"

Commandant Kareyev's window was a long, thin, blue cut in the darkness of his room. The moonlight made a long, thin band across the floor, checkered into panes, pointed as the door of an ancient cathedral. In the darkness by the window, Joan's head was leaning against the back of an armchair, her face a pale white with soft blue shadows under her cheekbones, with a glowing blue patch in the triangle under her chin thrown back, her mouth dark and soft and tender, glistening with a few lost sparks of moonlight. The darkness swallowed her body and only her hands were white on her knees, and in her hands lay the face of Commandant Kareyev at her feet. He did not move. The light of a single candle on the table did not reach them. He whispered, his dark hair brushing her white wrists:

"... and then, someday, you may want to leave me..."

She shook her head slowly.

"You may be lonely here in winter. The sea freezes. The nights are so long."

"Nights like this?"

He looked at the window, smiling.

"Lovely, isn't it? I've never noticed that before. As if... as if it were a night for just the two of us."

Somewhere, far downstairs, an old clock slowly chimed twelve. She repeated softly at the last stroke:

"Yes... for just the two... of us. Let's step outside. It's lovely."

Commandant Kareyev wrapped her winter cloak around her shoulders. The huge collar of fluffy gray fox swallowed her head, rising over the tips of her blond curls.

On the gallery outside, a soft silver glow streamed from the heavy, sparkling fringe of icicles on the cornices above their heads. A guard with a lantern passed slowly on the wall before them. Beyond the wall rose the black funnel of the boat.

Commandant Kareyev looked at her. It had been his first wine in five years. It had been his first celebration. He drew her closer. His hand slipped under the fluffy fox collar. She jerked herself away.

------V------

The island was blue under the moon, blue-white, sparkling like hard clean sugar. Dark shadows cut black holes in the snow, with sharp gaping edges. The sky, a black precipice above, twinkled with a white foam of stars floating over its smooth surface, as the foam that crashed furiously against the island, leaping in silver sprays high over the top of the walls. On the black precipice of the sea below floated the white shadows of the first ice.

The lights were out in the monastery. The entrance door had been locked for the night. The gray flag fought the wind on the tower.

Michael sat on his cot in the darkness and watched the wall outside. A guard walked there slowly, back and forth. His lantern seemed a little red eye winking at Michael. His muffler flapped in the wind.

Michael's roommate, the old professor, had gone to bed. But he could not sleep. He sighed in the darkness, and made the sign of the cross.

"Aren't you going to bed, Michael?"

"Not yet."

"Why do you keep your coat on?"

"I'm cold."

"That's funny. I feel stuffy in here... Well, goodnight."

"Goodnight."

The professor turned to the wall. Then he sighed. Then he turned to Michael again.