Rand closes chapter sixteen in We The Living with this query.
The Comrade Commissar said: “One hundred thousand workers died in the civil war. Why-in the face of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics-can’t one aristocrat die?”
Kira walked home very slowly and looked at the dark city; she looked at the glistening pavements built for many thousands of old shoes; at the tramways for men to ride in; at the stone cubes into which men crawled at night; at the posters that cried of what men dreamed and of what men ate; and she wondered whether any of those thousands of eyes around her saw what she saw, and why it had been given her to see.
Because:
In a kitchen on the fifth floor, a woman bent over a smoking stove and stirred cabbage in a kettle, and the cabbage smelt, and the woman blinked, and groaned with the pain in her back, and scratched her head with the spoon,
Because:
In a corner saloon, a man leaned against the bar and raised a foaming glass of beer, and the foam spilled over the floor and over his trousers, and he belched and sang a gay song,
Because:
In a white bed, on white sheets stained with yellow, a child slept and sniveled in its sleep, its nose wet,
Because:
On a sack of flour in the basement, a man tore a woman’s pants off, and bit into her throat, and they rolled, moaning, over the sacks of flour and potatoes,
Because:
In the silence of stone walls slowly dripping frozen dampness, a figure knelt before a gilded cross, and raised trembling arms in exaltation, and knocked a pale forehead against a cold stone floor,
Because:
In the roar of machines whirling lightnings of steel and drops of burning grease, men swung vigorous arms, and panted, heaving chests of muscles glistening with sweat, and made soap,
Because:
In a public bath, steam rose from brass pans, and red, gelatinous bodies shook scrubbing themselves with the soap, sighing and grunting, trying to scratch steaming backs, and murky water and soap suds ran down the floor into the drain—
—Leo Kovalensky was sentenced to die.
