“Perhaps because so many ikons, so many churches, were smashed and burned,” he said, “that we made of Pushkin an ikon and a church. He must express our spirit, must stand for us and speak for us. Indeed he has been made even a hero of the Revolution, with mausoleum of his own, though in this no one has believed, not even schoolchildren, not anyway those who can read.”

The gray hadn’t been in his hair before and it was now; it was the same gray as the shiny bland gray suit he wore, what was that stuff, was it sharkskin? Why would he wear that? A soft knit shirt beneath it, buttoned to the neck. Something has happened he had said to her, not surprised or afraid, but changed.

“So hard to make Pushkin hero. You know what our great critic Belinsky said of Evgeny Onegin, that it was encyclopedia of Russian life. We all were taught to say this. Encyclopedia of Russian life. But he is like encyclopedia only in his even-handedness. All things are alike to him; he does not choose one thing over another; the alphabet of his eyes and his ears alone bring things together, this next to that. He is trivial; even his earliest defenders said this, so exasperated with him. Everything interests him, everything delights him. He becomes the Tsar’s soldier and also the Cossack that the soldier kills; he delights in death’s energy and meat pies at a feast, little too salty, then some slim-waisted wineglasses too that remind him of his old love, whom he then must address. He is like his heroine Natalya Pavlovna in Count Nulin…”

He read, and Kit thought she remembered the lines, when he had tried to make her see what Pushkin saw:

Natalya Pavlovna tried to give

The letter all her attention

But soon she was distracted

By an old goat and a mutt

In a fight beneath her window,

And she attended calmly to that;

And three ducks were splashing in a puddle,

And an old woman was crossing the yard

To hang her laundry on the fence.

It looked like it might soon rain…

“This is why Pushkin is our poet,” he said. “Not because he expresses our spirit, d’Roshin spirit: but because he exactly does not. He is everything that Russia, in his age and now in ours, is not: he cares for everything and yet for nothing in particular, everything gladdens him, he approves and does not judge. He was dark man, you know: Negro, in fact. He lived short life that ended in disaster. But he shines brightly; the smile of Pushkin is a white light in our darkness, always.”

In the Castle the television was on over the counter, and when Kit and Jackie came in they could tell that almost everyone there was watching it. The East North Street men were all there, all watching. She slipped in beside Saul, and turned to see the President above them, speaking.

“What is it?” Kit asked.

“Cuba,” Saul said.

The transformation of Cuber into an important strategic base, by the presence of these large, long-range and clearly offensive weapons of sudden mass destruction, constitutes a threat to the peace and security of all the Americas. He had that air he always seemed to Kit to have, that he was somehow only pretending, no matter how earnestly he spoke; as though he knew better, knew how it would all come out. This sudden, clandestine decision to station strategic weapons for the first time outside Soviet soil is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country.

“Not like our missiles in Turkey, huh,” Saul said. “Or Italy. What the hell does he think.”

Kit looked over all the upturned faces, the students and the others, the two Greek brothers who ran the place, all looking and listening.

We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth—but neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced. He said that he was ordering a strict naval quarantine around the island of Cuba, and ships would be stopped and shipments of offensive weapons turned back; he said that there would be continued surveillance of the island, and that if work was found to be going forward on the missile sites, then further actions would be necessary, and that he had ordered the armed forces to be prepared for all eventualities. The United States, he said, would regard a nuclear missile launched from Cuba as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union. And then for a moment he turned his pages and gazed out: gazed at us, though of course he couldn’t see us.

The path we have chosen is full of hazards, he said. Many months of sacrifice and self-discipline lie ahead—months in which our patience and our will will be tested. He called upon Khrushchev to withdraw the missiles immediately. He said our goal was not peace at the expense of freedom, but peace and freedom. God willing, he said, that goal would be achieved.

He said Thank you and good night. And after a moment he was gone.

There was a soft swell of voices then in the place. From somewhere came a spectral wail or moan of grief or terror, and people turned in their chairs or on their stools to see who had made it. We had all been so afraid of this, for so long; we had been so sure it would happen, so sure it couldn’t.

“Bastards,” said Max softly. “Sonsa bitches.” Rodger put his hand over Max’s where it lay on the table.

“Gotta remember,” Jackie said. “They’ve been firing off those bombs for twenty years. So far the world’s still here. I mean this might mean war. But it don’t mean we’ll necessarily get hit.”

“Of course we will,” Saul said. “In the first exchange. Those missile silos to the west. That’s exactly where their missiles are aimed. The firestorm will reach at least as far as this. Easily,” he said. His small thick fingers circling his glass were still. “Easily.”

“So it’s the end,” Rodger said. “It is, after all.”

“It’s not the end, necessarily,” Jackie said; and he glanced at Kit, as though she should not hear these things, too young or vulnerable.

“Well if it ain’t the end,” Rodger said, “it’ll do till the real end comes along.”

“I have to go,” Kit whispered to Jackie, and she slid from the booth and went to the back and into the little toilet and the wooden stall with the scarred walls varnished a hundred times. Jim + Jean 4 Ever. Bobby I Love U. Jackie had told her how the scratchings in boys’ toilets were all about sex; these were always about love, eager hopeless love. She had thought of writing John Keats ½ + Easeful Death. In a heart cartouche, struck through by an arrow.

Death.

What she knew, all of a sudden and for sure, was that she wouldn’t hide. No matter what, she wouldn’t go down into the shelters they had made to put people in. The shame of that would be worse than the death they were going to inflict, it was like the shame she felt hiding under her desk in grade school, hands clasped over the tender back of her head, her butt in the air with all the others, while Sister watched. No never. She would stay up on the earth’s surface and wait.

She knew something else. She had wondered if, when death came near her, she would in her fear want a priest, if she would ask for forgiveness. And now death was near and she knew she wouldn’t: Death couldn’t change her back to what she had been, or the world either. I am myself alone. If she were sent down then into his hell, well fine: better to be there than to grovel, to beg or praise. Praise for this? No not for this.