ALEXANDER DIMITRIEVITCH KEPT HIS SAVINGS SEWN IN his undershirt.  He had developed the habit of raising his hand to his heart once in a while, as if he had gas pains; he felt the roll of bills; he liked the security under his fingertips.  When he needed money, he cut the heavy seam of white thread and sighed as the load grew lighter.  On November sixteenth, he cut the seam for the last time.

The special tax on private traders for the purpose of relieving the famine on the Volga had to be paid, even though it closed the little textile store in the bakery shop.  Another private enterprise had failed.

Alexander Dimitrievitch had expected it.  They opened on every corner, fresh and hopeful like mushrooms after a rain; and, like mushrooms, they faded before their first morning was over.  Some men were successful.  He had seen them: men in resplendent new fur coats, with white, flabby cheeks that made him think of butter for breakfast, and eyes that made him raise his hand, nervously, to the roll over his heart.  These men were seen in the front rows at the theaters; they were seen leaving the new confectioners' with round white cake boxes the price of which could keep a family for two months; they were seen hiring taxis - and paying for them.  Insolent street children called them "Nepmen"; their cartoons adorned the pages of Red newspapers - with scornful denunciations of the new vultures of NEP; but their warm fur hats were seen in the windows of automobiles rocketing the highest Red officials through the streets of Petrograd.  Alexander Dimitrievitch wondered dully about their secrets.  But the dreaded word "speculator" gave him a cold shudder; he lacked the talents of a racketeer.

He left the empty bakery boxes; but he carried home his faded cotton sign.  He folded it neatly and put it away in a drawer where he kept old stationery with the embossed letterhead of the Argounov textile factories.

"I will not become a Soviet employee if we all starve," said Alexander Dimitrievitch.

Galina Petrovna moaned that something had to be done.  Unexpected help appeared in the person of a former bookkeeper from the Argounov factory.

He wore glasses and a soldier's coat and he was not careful about shaving.  But he rubbed. his hands diffidently and he knew how to respect authority under all circumstances.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk, Alexander Dimitrievitch, sir," he wailed.  "This is no life for you.  Now, if we get together... if you just invest a little, I'll do all the work...."

They formed a partnership.  Alexander Dimitrievitch was to manufacture soap; the unshaved bookkeeper was to sell it; had an excellent corner on the Alexandrovsky market.

"What?  How to make it?" he enthused.  "Simple as an omelet.  I'll get you the greatest little soap recipe.  Soap is the stuff of the moment.  The public hasn't had any for so long they'll tear it out of your hands.  We'll put them all out of business.  I know a place where we can get spoiled pork fat.  No good for eating - but just right for soap."

Alexander Dimitrievitch spent his last money to buy spoiled pork fat.  He melted it in a big brass laundry tub on the kitchen stove.  He bent over the steaming fumes, blinking, his shirt sleeves rolled above his elbows, stirring the mixture with a wooden paddle.  The kitchen door had to be kept open; there was no other stove to heat the apartment.  The bitter, musty odor of a factory basement rose, with the whirling steam of a laundry, to the streaked ceiling.  Galina Petrovna chopped the spoiled pork fat on the kitchen table, delicately crooking her little finger, clearing her throat noisily.