The interpreter frowned at Milly, who brushed a tear from her cheek and then led the blinking Olga from the room. Outside, the hallway lights strained Milly’s eyes, and she closed them for a step.
“I’ll see him at that camp,” Milly said in Russian, to both Olga and the investigator.
Olga patted her hand.
“He’ll be fine. He’s a strong boy.”
Milly shook her head, then caught herself and walked silently from the prison. Zhenya was hopeful, but that wasn’t the same thing as strong. And Milly seemed to be losing her hope day by day. Nothing she had ever hoped for had worked out, and she left a wake of shattered dreams, or lives, behind her. She didn’t have Zhenya’s optimism. But she knew he needed her, and she would hold on to that. They maneuvered their way through the crowd pressing quietly into the prison, and a man waiting in line held the door open as they left.
14
BEFORE
NOVEMBER 1932
MILLY PLACED HER hands on her hips, but still the woman managed to back her into one of the towering rubber plants that filled the small bedroom. The wide leaf tapped Milly’s elbow, as if requesting her attention.
“You have no right to be here!” The woman jabbed a finger into Milly’s chest as she yelled in fierce Russian.
“I have the right,” Milly said, her words limping as she struggled to find them quickly enough. She’d give this scheming woman her due. Milly had finally found a room to stay in, had paid that driver the atrocious sum of nearly thirty-five dollars in rubles to haul her trunk and couch, and now this woman was trying to kick her out, because she wanted Milly’s room for herself.
“My landlady rented it to me,” Milly said, trying for a calm tone that might gain her a few more inches of standing room.
“She is a speculator.” The woman’s round face turned red, and Milly wondered if she was enjoying herself, getting to unload all her pent-up frustration on poor, Russian-hobbled Milly.
“I know you have a …” She paused and tried to choose the right adjective. “Room that is small. But Citizen Andreyeva’s son bought three rooms, and then he was … in the Red Army. It is fair. They rent this house because they must.” She shrugged as if it was all an unfortunate misunderstanding. And really, Milly did feel for the angry woman, who was the house committee chief for the building, yet whose whole family was crammed into a tiny room in this same apartment while Milly only had her landlady’s plants to share space with. She glanced over at the window, where a purple-leafed spiderwort crept across the windowsill.
“I will call the Moscow chief of militia!” The woman did finally step back, and she lifted her round chin, pleased with herself.
“I would like that,” Milly said. Then she added in English, “He’s a swell guy. Let me borrow his car once for a story.”
“What?” The woman’s eyes narrowed.
“Please. Call him.” Milly smiled.
“Citizen. Do you think the laws here are made for your comfort?” And without waiting for an answer, the house committee chief walked out and slammed the door behind her.
Milly sighed and collapsed onto her little couch, the daybed she used for sitting and sleeping. The flimsy mattress bowed around her, and she would have liked to fall straight asleep, except she had to go to work soon. She wished she could figure out a way to write a story about Moscow’s crowded housing that would get past the censors, or that wouldn’t get her in trouble when it was time to renew her visa.
A tepid knock sounded at the door, and Milly didn’t bother responding. Her landlady, Ivanna Andreyeva, opened the door and poked her gray-haired head in.
“She won’t give up,” Ivanna Andreyeva said, her eyes round and sad.
“She wants more space. Is understandable.”
“Maybe your lawyer … ?” The old woman held her hands, pleading, in front of her chest.
“At work?” Every workplace had a lawyer, or so it seemed. But Milly shook her head. “He’s very busy.”
“Please ask. For us both.”
Milly sighed. She didn’t want to go back to Anna Louise’s apartment like a forlorn puppy, especially after her last two weeks there, when Anna Louise had spent every night from midnight to two a.m. yelling at someone on the telephone then crying for the hour afterward in heaving sobs. Milly had gone out the first night to comfort her but only received a teacup thrown at her head for her troubles. She ducked and scurried back to her room. Anna Louise was as glad to see her go as she was to leave, she guessed. And here, in this private room, Milly might finally get more time with Zhenya, once she registered him as an overnight guest with the house committee. That would be worth whatever effort the registration took.
That afternoon at work, Milly found the newspaper’s lawyer in Borodin’s office, and she tried to interrupt, but the lawyer waved her off. The two men were in deep consultation about something—probably some political complication. Milly was glad she didn’t have to manage the ins and outs of whose version of socialism they were celebrating today. Axelrod still watched her with a sharp eye, and her decisions would never pass muster with him.
She sat down at her desk and stared at the typewriter, wondering if she could sneak in a letter to one of her pals in San Francisco, when Seema Jones came to sit by her. Anna Louise had hired her a few weeks earlier.
“I’ve got a story for you.” Seema handed Milly a typed page. “I want you to go through the edits with me, so I can learn. You know I’m an art student.” She flashed a dazzling smile before turning her long face serious.
“You should ask your boyfriend, the famous writer.” Milly nudged Seema, then picked up the paper. She liked the younger woman, who had come over that summer with a group of other black Americans to star in a movie. But after a few months of what was essentially a paid vacation in Russia, the film never materialized. Others in the crew had gone home or, like the poet Langston Hughes, continued to roll around Moscow, but Seema wanted a job. She didn’t quite know how to write a yarn, but she had good instincts. Milly was happy to go over the editing with her.
“Who’s Wallace?” Seema picked up a stray letter on Milly’s desk and frowned.
“Give it here.” Milly’s cheeks burned. “He’s just a fella from back home.”
“Just a fella? That’s not what those pink cheeks are telling me.” Seema winked a long-lashed eye and handed back the letter. “I thought you had a Russian boyfriend.”
“I do.” She still hadn’t told her colleagues that she had married Zhenya. They wouldn’t understand, and she wasn’t sure she did either, yet. Milly folded the letter into her pocketbook, slung over her chair. “But there’s no harm in a few extra friends. Especially across the world, right?”
Milly had expected the other woman to laugh, but instead Seema turned her curved lips into a slight frown.
“If you say so,” she said.
“Oh hell, Seema, it’s not like that. Look, if you want to talk about men, let’s have a drink of something fizzy after we’re done with work.”
“If you can get my edits done quickly enough.” Seema smiled. “Boris is coming to fetch me later.” Boris Pilnyak, a famous writer, was already smitten with his American girlfriend, from what Milly could see.
Milly nodded, though she was disappointed. With Ruth gone a year now, Milly was lonely. But friendships can’t be forced.
“Another time. Let’s get those edits done, all right?”
The night went quickly, with lots of stories to review and an endless number of teeth-gritting translation mistakes from the Russian stories to catch. Seema was long gone by the time Milly left the office, and Milly considered going to that bar by herself. She buttoned her dog fur coat, then decided against it.
She was bundled against the cold and already four blocks from the office by the time she remembered her landlady’s request to solicit the lawyer’s help. She stopped on the dark street, and the winter air burned her nostrils as she considered walking back. She pulled her scarf up over
her mouth so she could try to breathe some steam into her face. He had probably gone home by now. Lawyers didn’t need to stay and put the paper to bed. She could ask him the next day.
But the next morning, a banging sounded on Milly’s flimsy door, and she pulled her pillow over her head.
“Go away!” she yelled in Russian, then in English.
There was silence. She smiled and nestled herself deeply into her covers.
Then, the doorknob clicked, and the door swung open. The house committee chief held a small skeleton key aloft while she grinned, and behind her Ivanna Andreyeva cringed.
“You are no longer registered in this residence,” the committee chief said, articulating each word with care. “Your presence here is illegal. You are required to leave, Citizen.” Her teeth met in an expression that was part smile, part snarl.
FIVE HOURS LATER, Milly was standing outside Zhenya’s door. Her trunk was beside her, but she hadn’t been able to manage to haul the little couch up the stairs on her own. It languished outside the building door, where she prayed no one would take it.
Milly knocked again, tears forming in her eyes. She had never expected that simply being, having a place to sleep, would be so difficult. She knew her friends in San Francisco were desperate for work, but here she had a job. She earned money.
Yet still no one wanted her.
She wiped her damp cheek with the back of her gloved wrist and knocked a third time.
Victor opened the door.
Milly stepped back.
“Victor, I didn’t know you …” She fumbled for the right word in Russian, though she wasn’t sure she could complete the thought in English either.
He stared at her. His brown hair was disheveled and he wore a sweater that looked two sizes too large.
“Is Zhenya home?” Milly tried to stand straight.
“No.” Victor coughed. “I think he had a rehearsal for his scene.”
“Could you help me?” Her voice quavered, and she pointed down the stairs. “My sleeping couch is on the street.”
“You’re moving in?” He ran his fingers through his hair.
“I don’t know,” Milly said. “Please?”
“Yes, of course.” He walked back into the apartment, leaving the door open, and pulled his boots from a small pile of things next to Luba’s desk. “Put your trunk there,” he said, pointing next to the closed door to Zhenya’s room. “Olga Ivanova is sleeping.” Then he trotted down the stairs.
Milly dragged her trunk into the apartment as quietly as she could, and when she finished, she sat on its closed top. Within a few minutes, Victor came, panting, into the room.
“You’re sure it was on the street?”
Milly jumped to her feet. That couch cost her two months’ wages.
“Yes, I—right by the door.”
Victor smiled and clapped a hand on her shoulder.
“I am only joking. I came to ask your help in getting it up the stairs.” He looked at her, his brown eyes darting back and forth between hers. “I am sorry, I had not meant to alarm you.”
“It’s fine,” Milly said. She lifted her glasses to rub her eyes.
After they squeezed the sleeping couch up the stairs and alongside Luba’s cot, they sat at the small kitchen table. Outside, the sky was glistening with a steel sheen that promised snow. Victor dropped coals into the samovar.
“Are you living here now?” Milly asked. She had been so busy recently, at least a week had passed since she had visited Zhenya at his apartment.
Victor bit his lip, then poured the tea into glasses.
“No. Or at least, I hope not. I have slept here the past two nights because a woman in my room has been very sick. Coughing blood. I did not want to stay there. But I had nowhere else to go.” He gestured toward Luba’s part of the front room, where Milly could now see a pallet of blankets folded on the floor.
“I do not want her to die,” he said. “But I want to live in my room. I share it with this woman and her brother, and they are neat and pleasant roommates. My books are there.” He shook his head, as if in disbelief.
“Building socialism is hard,” she said, and they both nodded, staring at the still-empty glasses. It was what they had to say, but she believed it too, most days. Wrenching society from its foundations, breaking its habits, and teaching new ways—that was all hard. Victor then stood and poured the tea and water.
“I want to believe in it, though,” Milly said as he worked. “My friend George Hyde, he lost his job three months ago. In America. He couldn’t find a newspaper to take him on. And last week, he put a hose on the car tailpipe. He breathed the air inside until he died.” She picked at the wooden grain of the table. “My other friend sent me a wire about it.”
“That is sad.” Victor handed her the tea glass, and their fingers brushed when she grasped the handle. His hands were rough and dry.
“I have to believe we can do better than that for one another,” she said.
Victor pressed his lips together, then took a sip of tea. Milly watched the knot in his throat bob as he swallowed. He had a sort of rough masculinity at times, when viewed at the right angle.
“What?” He held the tea glass near his lips.
“You love him, don’t you.”
His face flamed red.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He pressed the glass to the table, and the tea nearly sloshed out.
“I think you do,” Milly said, her voice husky. “But he won’t have you now. Is that right? Because of me.”
“I’m not talking to you about this,” Victor said. He stood.
“Even if you lurk around, you won’t have his heart. You won’t.” The anger that surged up behind her hot words singed her throat even more than the scalding tea, and the force of it surprised her.
“He loves me,” she added.
“What do you know about love?” Victor lifted one side of his delicate nose, then grabbed his coat and left the apartment.
“Some nerve,” Milly muttered. Then she sighed and pressed her eyes shut.
“Dammit,” she said. She paused, then took both glasses to the small sink to wash them. She didn’t know what else to do.
15
NOW
APRIL 15, 1934
ZHENYA HAD BEEN imprisoned for over a month, and yet there were moments when Milly could forget and believe he had never been taken. Her work in the newsroom helped. Milly was gnawing at a pencil in her mouth as she wondered how to unkink the particularly bad sentence in front of her, one of the translated pieces that may as well have been left in Russian. If only being in charge of half the translators meant she could fire a quarter of them. The mail delivery boy, a teenager with a splotched face and scars on his knuckles, dropped two letters on her desk before moving on to toss three for Seema.
Milly spat out the pencil and grabbed the letters. Any breath of news from her friends in San Francisco was like an ocean breeze to her, no matter how difficult their news was. The important thing was that a friend had taken the time to write.
The first letter was from a woman she used to write with in San Francisco, and Milly read it so fast she hardly absorbed her friend’s stories about her toddling boy, or the gossip about their mutual newspaper friends. She could read it at length and savor it later.
She picked up the second letter and frowned. This wasn’t from America, as she had assumed. The return address on the preprinted envelope was for OGPU headquarters. Her hands trembled as she opened and read it, twice to make sure she understood.
Her application to have Zhenya’s case reviewed had been accepted. She had an appointment the following afternoon.
THE NEXT DAY, she arrived an hour before the appointed time, in case there was a line to wait in. But she was the only person who presented herself to the senior prosecutor’s secretary, so she sat in his room with the filing cabinets, where she had met him before, and tried to read the book she had stuffed into her purse when she ran out
of her room at the New Moscow Hotel—Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Her attention kept wandering to the creaking of the floorboards above, or the furious tapping of the secretary’s typewriter, or the urgent whispers that flitted by in the hallway behind her. What fates were being made and unmade here while she tried to read a frivolous novel? She closed the book and set it aside.
Exactly an hour after her arrival, the senior prosecutor opened his door and stuck his narrow head out. He looked around, frowned when he saw Milly, then opened the door wider.
“Citizen Bennett?”
Both Milly and the secretary answered yes simultaneously. Milly glared at the young man, then stood and walked toward Rosonov’s inner office.
“Come in, then,” he said. He turned away and marched to sit behind his desk. The room was large with two tall windows looking out onto the street. The door shut behind her with a heavy thud.
“Do you have a comment to make?”
Milly opened then closed her mouth.
She took a deep breath, and as she exhaled, she saw a photograph of a stern-faced woman and two children on the bookshelf behind Rosonov.
“You understand marriage, Prosecutor,” she said. “You may not see your family much, not with the long hours you work here, but you know your wife. You know how she spends her days, looking down on the playground in the courtyard from your window. In the House of Government, I’m guessing. With no curtains because those are bourgeois, though I’ll bet she asks you to buy some for the privacy. But you refuse, as you should. You know your wife will listen.” She watched him closely as she spoke, and from the twitch in his eye at the mention of the large apartment complex where the senior-most officials lived, she suspected she had guessed correctly. It wasn’t hard.
“I know my husband,” she continued. “Even when we didn’t see each other often, I know how he spent his time, who he loved, what he dreamed of. I can tell you, the charges are false. He can’t be guilty of homosexuality.” She had memorized the speech earlier, and now she feared she said it too fast. She wasn’t sure, either, that what she said was true, but she would say it if that’s what Zhenya needed.
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