The Early Ayn Rand

"... and Vassia had another fight with Victor... over politics... and Irina got nothing but dried fish at the University... this week... no bread... and I made a nightgown out of the old blanket... old... rips if you breathe on it... and Acia needs galoshes... and Vassia won't take a Soviet job, won't hear of it... Yes, I take cough medicine... Did you hear about Boris Koulikov? In a hurry, tried to jump on a crowded tramway — at full speed — both legs cut off... Acia's learning to spell at school and what words do they teach it with? Marxism and Proletariat and Electrification..."

On the floor crumbled sheets of Pravda rustled underfoot:

"Comrades! True Proletarians have no will but that of the collective. The iron will of the Proletariat, the victorious class, will lead humanity into..."

And Kira stood by a window, her hand on the dark, cold glass, and her body felt young, cold and hard as the glass, and she thought that one could stand a lot, and forget a lot, if one kept clear and firm one final aim and cause. She did not know what the aim was; but she did not ask herself the question, for the aim was beyond questions and doubts; she knew only that she was awaiting it. Perhaps, it was the twenty-eighth of October.

Kira's Viking

There was only one book Kira remembered. She was ten years old when she read it. It was the story of a Viking. It was written in English. Her governess gave it to her. She heard later that the author had died very young. She had not remembered his name; in later years, she had never been able to find it.

She did not remember the books she read before it; she did not want to remember the ones she read after.

The Viking had a body against which the winds broke like a caress. The Viking's step was like the beating of waves upon the rocks: steady and irrevocable. The Viking's eyes never looked farther than the point of his sword; but there was no boundary for the point of his sword.

The Viking's ship had patched sails and blade-scarred flanks; and a banner that had never been lowered. There was on the ship a crew of men whose hearts froze at a home-fire; whose heads never bowed but to the Viking's voice. Among the northern rocks of his homeland, the ship lay hidden in a harbor no one dared to enter.

The ship had to be hidden, for high in the mountains was a city surrounded by gray walls, where, at night, a smoked lantern burned by the locked gates and a lonely cat walked down the old stone wall. In the city there was a King, and when he passed in the street, the people bowed so low that wrinkled foreheads left marks in the soft dust. The King hated the Viking.

The King hated him, for when peaceful lights twinkled in his subjects' homes and smoke rose over houses where mothers cooked the evening meal, the Viking watched the city from a high cliff, and the wind carried the smoke high into the mountains, but not high enough to reach the Viking's feet. The King hated him, for walls fell at a motion of the Viking's hand, and when he walked in their ruins, the sun made a crown over his head, but he walked, light and straight, without noticing its weight.

So the King had promised a reward for the Viking's head. And in the narrow streets, on the doorsteps slippery with onion peelings, the people waited and hoped for the reward, so that they could have a big supper.

Far down in a deep valley was a temple that the sun-rays reached but one hour each day; and where the rays struck the temple was a tall window of dark painted glass. When the sun pierced the window, the huge shadow of a tortured saint spread over the backs of those who knelt in prayer, and the gold of the sun turned red as the blood of suffering. The Priest of the temple hated the Viking. The Priest hated him, for the Viking laughed under the cold, black vaults and his laugh sounded as if the painted window had been broken. The Priest hated him, for the Viking looked at heaven only when he bent for a drink over a mountain brook, and there, overshadowing the sky, he saw his own picture-So the Priest had promised forgiveness of all sins for the Viking's head. And skinning their knees on the temple steps, the people waited and hoped for the forgiveness, so that they could sleep safely with their neighbor's wife-Far away in the polar seas, where the bridges of northern lights connected the waves and the clouds, and no ship dared to break the connection, stood the sacred city. From a long distance, sailors had seen its white walls rising to the snows of the mountains. But they did not look at the city in spring, for when the spring sun struck the white walls, their blaze sent many a sailor home — blind.