We the Living (1936) by Ayn Rand

Author:Ayn Rand [Rand, Ayn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Historic Fiction, Political, Russia
ISBN: 9781101137666
Google: LLT79HlUzfoC
Amazon: B002PA0LWA
Publisher: Signet
Published: 1983-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

Its glass door was severely, immaculately polished, but the latch on its garden gate was broken. Weeds grew over what had been gravelled walks, and cigarette stubs rocked softly in an abandoned fountain, around a dejected marble cupid with a greenish patch of rust across its stomach, at the dry mouth of an urn.

Kira hurried down deserted walks, through a thick, neglected green tangle that drowned the clatter of tramways outside; blue pigeons fluttered lazily into the branches at the sound of her steps, and a bee rocked on a heavy purple tuft of clover. A giant regiment of oaks stood with arms outstretched, hiding the palace from the eyes of the street.

In the depths of the garden stood a small two-storied wing linked to the palace by the bridge of a short gallery. The windows of the first floor were broken and a sparrow sat on a sharp glass edge, jerking its head sidewise to look into the mouldy, deserted rooms. But on a window sill of the second floor lay a pile of books.

The heavy, hand-carved door was not locked. Kira went in and swung impatiently up the long stairway. It was a very long stairway. It rose to the second floor in a straight line, an endless flight of bare stone steps, cracked and crumbling in little trails of gravel. The stairway had had a magnificent white balustrade; but the balustrade was broken; empty holes gaped over the jagged stumps of marble columns and their white bodies still lay at the foot of the stairs. Hollow echoes rolled against the walls, against the murals of graceful white swans on blue lakes, of rose garlands, of sensual nymphs fleeing from grinning satyrs; the murals were faded and cut by gashes of peeling plaster.

Kira knocked at the door on the top of the stairs.

Andrei Taganov opened it and stepped back, astonished; his eyes widened in the slow, incredulous glance of a man looking at a miracle that could not become habitual; he forgot to move, he stood before her, the collar of a white shirt thrown open at his sunburnt throat.

“Kira!”

She laughed, a clear, metallic laughter: “How are you, Andrei?”

His hands closed slowly, softly over her shoulders, so softly that she could not feel his hands, only their strength, their will holding her, bending her backward; but his lips on hers were brutal, uncontrollable. His eyes were closed; hers were open, looking indifferently up at the ceiling.

“Kira, I didn’t expect you till tonight.”

“I know. But you won’t throw me out, will you?”

She stepped aside, preceding him through the dim little lobby into his room, throwing her bag on a chair, her hat on a table, with imperious familiarity.

She alone knew why Andrei Taganov had had to economize, that winter; why he had given up his room and moved into an abandoned wing of the palace, which the Party Club could not use and had given to him free of rent.

It had been the secret love nest of a prince.

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