Only a brick and of no use unless cemented to other bricks just like it.”
Occupation: STUDENT.
From somewhere in the aristocratic Middle Ages, Kira had inherited the conviction that labor and effort were ignoble. She had gone through school with the highest grades and the sloppiest composition books. She burned her piano etudes and never darned her stockings. She climbed to the pedestals of statues in the parks to kiss the cold lips of Greek gods—but slept at symphony concerts. She sneaked out through a window when guests were expected, and she could not cook a potato. She never went to church and seldom read a newspaper.
But she had chosen a future of the hardest work and most demanding effort. She was to be an engineer. She had decided it with her first thought about the vague thing called future. And that first thought had been quiet and reverent, for her future was consecrated, because it was her future. She had played with mechanical toys, which were not intended for girls, and had built ships and bridges and towers; she had watched rising steel and bricks and steam. Over Lydia’s bed hung an ikon, over Kira’s—the picture of an American skyscraper. Even though those who listened smiled incredulously, she spoke about the houses she would build of glass and steel, about a white aluminum bridge across a blue river—“but, Kira, you can’t make a bridge of aluminum”—about men and wheels and cranes under her orders, about a sunrise on the steel skeleton of a skyscraper.
She knew she had a life and that it was her life. She knew the work which she had chosen and which she expected of life. The other thing which she expected, she did not know, for it had no name, but it had been promised to her, promised in a memory of her childhood.
When the summer sun sank behind the hills, Kira sat on a high cliff and watched the fashionable casino far down by the river. The tall spire of the music pavilion pierced the red sky. The slim, black shadows of women moved against the orange panels of the lighted glass doors. An orchestra played in the pavilion. It played gay, sparkling tunes from musical comedies. It threw the fire of electric signs, of ringing glasses, of shining limousines, of nights in Europe’s capitals—into the dark evening sky over a silent river and a rocky hill with prehistorical trees.
The light tunes of casinos and beer-gardens, sung all over Europe by girls with sparkling eyes and swaying hips, had a significance for Kira that no one else ever attached to them. She heard in them a profound joy of life, so profound that it could be as light as a dancer’s feet. And because she worshipped joy, Kira seldom laughed and did not go to see comedies in theaters. And because she felt a profound rebellion against the weighty, the tragic, the solemn, Kira had a solemn reverence for those songs of defiant gaiety.
They came from the strange world where grownups moved among colored lights and white tables, where there was so much that she could not understand and so much that was awaiting her. They came out of her future.
She had selected one song as her, Kira’s, own: it was from an old operetta and was called “The Song of Broken Glass.” It had been introduced by a famous beauty of Vienna. There had been a balustrade on the stage, overlooking a drop with the twinkling lights of a big city, and a row of crystal goblets lined along the balustrade. The beauty sang the number and one by one, lightly, hardly touching them, kicked the crystal goblets and sent them flying in tingling, glittering splinters—around the tight, sheer stockings on the most beautiful legs in Europe.
There were sharp little blows in the music, and waves of quick, fine notes that burst and rolled like the thin, clear ringing of broken glass. There were slow notes, as if the cords of the violins trembled in hesitation, tense with the fullness of sound, taking a few measured steps before the leap into the explosion of laughter.
The
Occupation: STUDENT.
From somewhere in the aristocratic Middle Ages, Kira had inherited the conviction that labor and effort were ignoble. She had gone through school with the highest grades and the sloppiest composition books. She burned her piano etudes and never darned her stockings. She climbed to the pedestals of statues in the parks to kiss the cold lips of Greek gods—but slept at symphony concerts. She sneaked out through a window when guests were expected, and she could not cook a potato. She never went to church and seldom read a newspaper.
But she had chosen a future of the hardest work and most demanding effort. She was to be an engineer. She had decided it with her first thought about the vague thing called future. And that first thought had been quiet and reverent, for her future was consecrated, because it was her future. She had played with mechanical toys, which were not intended for girls, and had built ships and bridges and towers; she had watched rising steel and bricks and steam. Over Lydia’s bed hung an ikon, over Kira’s—the picture of an American skyscraper. Even though those who listened smiled incredulously, she spoke about the houses she would build of glass and steel, about a white aluminum bridge across a blue river—“but, Kira, you can’t make a bridge of aluminum”—about men and wheels and cranes under her orders, about a sunrise on the steel skeleton of a skyscraper.
She knew she had a life and that it was her life. She knew the work which she had chosen and which she expected of life. The other thing which she expected, she did not know, for it had no name, but it had been promised to her, promised in a memory of her childhood.
When the summer sun sank behind the hills, Kira sat on a high cliff and watched the fashionable casino far down by the river. The tall spire of the music pavilion pierced the red sky. The slim, black shadows of women moved against the orange panels of the lighted glass doors. An orchestra played in the pavilion. It played gay, sparkling tunes from musical comedies. It threw the fire of electric signs, of ringing glasses, of shining limousines, of nights in Europe’s capitals—into the dark evening sky over a silent river and a rocky hill with prehistorical trees.
The light tunes of casinos and beer-gardens, sung all over Europe by girls with sparkling eyes and swaying hips, had a significance for Kira that no one else ever attached to them. She heard in them a profound joy of life, so profound that it could be as light as a dancer’s feet. And because she worshipped joy, Kira seldom laughed and did not go to see comedies in theaters. And because she felt a profound rebellion against the weighty, the tragic, the solemn, Kira had a solemn reverence for those songs of defiant gaiety.
They came from the strange world where grownups moved among colored lights and white tables, where there was so much that she could not understand and so much that was awaiting her. They came out of her future.
She had selected one song as her, Kira’s, own: it was from an old operetta and was called “The Song of Broken Glass.” It had been introduced by a famous beauty of Vienna. There had been a balustrade on the stage, overlooking a drop with the twinkling lights of a big city, and a row of crystal goblets lined along the balustrade. The beauty sang the number and one by one, lightly, hardly touching them, kicked the crystal goblets and sent them flying in tingling, glittering splinters—around the tight, sheer stockings on the most beautiful legs in Europe.
There were sharp little blows in the music, and waves of quick, fine notes that burst and rolled like the thin, clear ringing of broken glass. There were slow notes, as if the cords of the violins trembled in hesitation, tense with the fullness of sound, taking a few measured steps before the leap into the explosion of laughter.
The
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