“They’ve arrested Zinoviev and Kamenev,” he said, his voice flat.
Milly whistled. “They’re high up. Do you think they ordered Kirov killed?”
Borodin rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“They’re left oppositionists, the most senior ones since Trotsky left.” Borodin glanced around the newsroom, but no one was nearby. “Don’t you see what that means? Either they’re responsible, and they were making a move against the Party leadership, or they’re not responsible, and Party leadership is cleaning house.”
“And either way, there will be more arrests.”
Borodin gave a wry smile.
“Do we write about it?” she asked.
“What do you think?” He rocked back on his heels, and she couldn’t tell if he was testing her or really asking her opinion. Right after the murder, Anna Louise had left to travel again, so maybe he did need a sounding board.
“I think we write something short, with no commentary. So our readers know.”
He nodded slowly.
“You write it,” he said.
She gulped.
“Can’t we get something translated?”
“No. I want to get this right, not to sound like we’re coughing up a three-day-old hair ball. You write it. You can call the police to confirm the facts.” He scribbled a phone number on his pad and then tore it out to give to her.
She pressed the paper between her fingertips, as if he had handed her a magical feather on a windy day. She wouldn’t let him down.
“By tomorrow night,” he added, then walked away.
Milly looked at the paper to make sure she could read it, then folded it carefully into her own notebook. The assignment would be one more thing to talk to Lindesay about, at least. She so rarely wrote about politics now, she was more nervous than she wanted to let Borodin know. But if he let her write more sensitive pieces, maybe she could parlay that into more international correspondent work for the wire services.
She looked at the clock. Two hours to finish the slew of editing she had to do tonight, plus write up that story about the poetry competition. She’d better hurry. Though maybe she’d be better off if Lindesay had to wait a little. The thought made her smile.
23
MARCH 1935
MARION MERRIMAN, the new secretary after the girl from Boston gave up on Moscow, dropped a sheaf of papers on Milly’s desk.
“Come on,” Marion said. “Let’s get out of here. If I have one more lunch in the cafeteria downstairs I’m going to turn into a potato.”
“There could be worse fates,” Milly said without looking up from the copy she was editing. “At least men like to eat potatoes.”
“Not my Bob,” Marion began, but then pressed her lips shut. “Come on, lunch is on me. We’ll have a piece of honey cake each at that little place around the corner.”
Milly set the editing aside, and Marion’s sweet face was looking down at her with a hopeful smile. The two women were like champagne and moonshine, with Marion’s refined finishing school mannerisms and Milly’s sailor’s tongue, but she had had stranger friends over the years. Marion seemed to like and admire her, and these days, that sort of affection was a gift.
“What the hell.” Milly grabbed her handbag from under her desk. “I do like honey cake. Better than cabbage, that’s for sure.”
They passed Borodin’s office, where he waved at Milly.
“You’ve finished already?”
“Nearly,” she said. “Just taking a quick break.”
He frowned.
“I’ll be back in time,” she said, her voice thin. Back in December, when she had called the police to confirm the details about the arrests following Kirov’s murder, she had somehow botched the interview. Or so she concluded, at least, because the police had called the censors, who called Borodin into a meeting at their offices. The conversation, as he called it, had lasted an entire day. Milly didn’t see him until the next, when he summoned her to his office, opened his mouth to explain, then scowled.
“If you could learn to be diplomatic,” was all he said.
Since then, she had felt like she was walking on hand-carved matryoshka dolls, thin and round. It was tiring.
“We can’t be late,” he said, but waved her away.
Outside, the wind stirred up wisps of fallen snowflakes, but the sky was so clear Milly could almost imagine warmth.
“That sun’s a treat,” she said through the scarf wrapped around her neck.
“See, you’re already glad you came,” Marion replied.
“Being outside helps me wake up.” Milly tugged her collar closer around the neck.
“Tired?”
“Can’t sleep these days.” She glanced at Marion, who was watching the oncoming traffic, waiting to cross. Her full lips were pressed together in thought, and she looked like a confection. No wonder her handsome economist husband adored her.
When they reached the café, Marion steered Milly to the back, where they claimed a small table.
“Talk,” Marion said. “Though you’ll have to order for us. My Russian’s nonexistent.”
“I know it, baby doll,” Milly said with a husky laugh. Marion was hopeless on the phones in the office, though she was game to try.
“My sob story isn’t one for a proper married lady,” Milly said, tracing her fingers on the tabletop. A dark ring was scorched into the wood, as if someone had rested a hot pan directly on the surface.
“I want to listen to what you have to say. It’s about Ursula’s husband, isn’t it? Everyone knows she’s been carrying on with the Swede.”
Milly looked at her fingers splayed on the table.
“And everyone knows I’ve been carrying on with Lindesay. I’ve heard the gossip, in whispers. People calling me a hussy.”
Marion frowned. “It’s not that bad,” she said in a timid voice.
Milly waved away her effort to soften the blow.
“Ursula left her husband, and Lindesay was going to move in with me.” She had tried to listen to her better angels, but once she and Lindesay fell into bed together, she was pulled under like a child dragged by the riptide. He was intoxicating, and she couldn’t get enough. “Said he loved me, wanted to fight to be with me.”
A waiter came, and Milly was grateful for the interruption. She ordered two coffees and two cakes.
“You were saying?” Marion extended her hand to tap her still-gloved fingertips briefly against Milly’s forearm.
Milly shrugged.
“These old bones were foolish enough to think he meant it. In the end, he went running right back to her. Hasn’t even responded to my letter asking him to send my belongings back … my mother’s picture, my books.” Her throat threatened to close up again. She had trusted him enough to bring one of the only two pictures she had of her mother to his house when Ursula moved out.
“Anyway, that’s about it. I’m in a washed-up state. Can’t sleep, can’t hardly eat.” She waved a fork at the square piece of cake the waiter had deposited.
“You’re better than him,” Marion said.
“You got lucky young—be glad of it. I’ve made a hash of my life.” Milly set her fork down and looked straight at Marion. “Don’t tell anyone. Not even Bob. Please? I’ve had enough of people talking about me. I want this all to go away.”
“Of course.” Marion set her fork down too and looked at her hands, then up at Milly. “I’m lonely here, Milly. You know this city, these people, the Americans and the Russians, better than anyone I know. I’m hoping you’ll …”
She trailed off. Milly smiled, then took a big bite of cake. Marion was some thirteen years younger than her, and she didn’t know if they could be friends. But she didn’t mind trying.
“It’s good cake, Marion. Thanks.” Milly wasn’t used to this sort of kindness, and she blinked back her tears.
That night, Milly stood at the window of her fifth-floor room in the New Moscow Hotel. She opened the window. The cold
cut through her nightgown and made her eyes water. Soon the tears streaking her face would freeze, she guessed. He had cast her off, like some whore he had used and paid. Maybe she deserved it. Maybe she deserved to be lonely. She was a terrible wife, a low friend, a mediocre writer … The world didn’t need her. She stared down the five stories to the courtyard below. Would she die right away? Or lie there in misery until she froze to death? She pinched her eyes shut and felt the pain of the tears biting into her cheeks as they froze.
She closed the window.
When, two weeks later, Lindesay forwarded a telegram from the New York Times requesting a story on Moscow’s lilac saleswomen, without any commentary from him, she held the paper over the sink and burned it. She wasn’t sure what he hoped to get from her, but whatever it was, she wasn’t selling. Earlier, while she was at work, he had dropped at the hotel her weekend case, her mother’s photograph, and most of the books she had left scattered about his rooms. With no letter, no word of explanation. He had been a good tumble, Milly told herself, and tried to believe that’s all she had needed. She looked at the ashes smearing the white porcelain. She didn’t need his story leads either. Finally, after long last, she was going to write her book. Except this time it wouldn’t be a plaster of paris mold of someone else’s life, like her failed effort with the clown Durov. This time, she was going to write her own story. Yes, that was it, the story of her years in Moscow, and her efforts to help her husband. Milly rushed to grab a notebook and jot down a few ideas. She couldn’t tell everything, sure, but American readers would be glad to learn how this country could both envision a better world for the masses while failing in its promise for a few. She frowned. Maybe that wasn’t the story. She doodled a little flower in the corner, then some speckles of salt along a sidewalk. Well, the end hadn’t happened yet. She could leave that part for later.
On the streetcar on the way into the newsroom, Milly crammed herself between an old woman with two curling chin hairs and a middle-aged man who smelled of onions. As she steadied herself to prepare for the jolt of the car, she heard the stout conductor, a woman of about fifty or so, tell the teenaged boy behind her that his ticket expired at the next stop. He muttered something Milly couldn’t hear, and the car lurched forward. When it stopped again, a block later, the boy held still.
“Hey, boy!” the conductor called. “Pay another fare or get off.”
The boy said nothing.
“You heard me!” she called, then hopped off the crowded car so she could run along the platform back to the entrance where the boy stood. His cheeks were pale but flushed at the center, and he scowled.
“Pay another fare,” she said.
“Try and make me,” he said. “I haven’t got a coin.”
Milly dug into her purse but came up empty.
The woman leapt onto the streetcar and tried to pull him out through the open door. By now, nearly everyone on the car had turned to watch the tussle. The conductor blew her whistle to summon any nearby militia, but no one came. Milly looked out the fogged window and saw only blurred pedestrians walking past.
“I won’t get off,” the boy said, his expression unchanged. “You can’t force me.”
The car then jerked forward as the driver, oblivious, proceeded to the next stop. The conductor fell against the boy then, red-faced, reached up, snatched the frayed cap from his head, and threw it out an open window.
The streetcar erupted.
“How dare you?” yelled the old woman next to Milly.
“What right do you have to go throwing away citizens’ caps?” called someone else.
“She took his hat!” a man exclaimed.
“Some nerve!” Milly added, a pulse of adrenaline racing through her at joining the incensed crowd.
“You should have found a militiaman,” the middle-aged man next to Milly said to the conductor. “Let the militia give him the fine.”
“You can’t take things into your own hands,” the old woman added, though Milly could feel the crowd’s throbbing desire to do so, the pulse of the mob waiting beneath the frustrated surface. Her heart raced.
Milly’s stop came, and after she got off, she thought she saw a plainclothes police officer inside the car, writing down the conductor’s badge number. He was NKVD, surely. The energy of the streetcar had faded, quiescent, and Milly shivered and held her pocketbook close to her. The woman shouldn’t have thrown the hat, sure. But she didn’t deserve that kind of attention. Milly hadn’t heard what the labor camps for women looked like, and she didn’t know if harassing a teenager would qualify to send someone.
Two years ago she would have scoffed at the notion that the Soviet state would do such a thing.
Four years ago she wouldn’t have believed that she could watch such a thing happen and walk away. Milly frowned, and a weight tugged at her heart. She needed to send Zhenya his package this month, and she hadn’t yet bought his cured sausages. She stopped on the sidewalk. There were no stores around, and behind her was the conductor, descended from the streetcar and staring at the NKVD officer’s little notebook.
Milly walked up to them.
“Excuse me,” she said in her mildest, most accent-laden Russian. “Where is the nearest All-Union store?”
The officer blinked as he looked at her, while the conductor’s face grew even paler.
“Oh, you are the conductor who helped me the other day,” Milly said, and grabbed the woman’s pasty hand. Milly took a breath and willed herself to improvise. The conductor’s mouth fell slack. “Actually, you helped the three young comrades, and in doing so, helped me.”
Milly turned to face the officer. “Three Komsomol youths were lost on the streetcar, and they’d run out of fare. I was going to pay for them, but I had run out of coins too. The conductor, of course, couldn’t let them ride for free. So she gave her own coins.” Milly mimed reaching into her pocket and pulling out three coins.
The two Russians stood silently, and Milly took a surprised step back.
“I have interrupted something! I’m sorry. What a dumb American. But I am glad to tell this conductor again that she is an excellent comrade.”
Milly nodded her head at both of them, then excused herself.
Well, she hoped that would help.
It would make a good story in her book, at least, she thought with a half-smile as she hugged her coat against the angry wind.
24
NOVEMBER 1935
IT WAS THE night before the eighteenth anniversary of the revolution, and Milly stood guard at the door of the Moscow Daily News office.
“Thanks, Joe,” she said when Joe Baird handed her a wine punch, the third or fourth he’d snuck out of the party for her. Behind him, the party roared so loud in the newsroom’s converted ballroom that she couldn’t hear the songs streaming from the beat-up phonograph.
“Had to fight ’em off, have you?”
“You know I like a good brawl.” She winked at the word play. She had asked to be the door keeper, partly so that if Lindesay and Ursula came, she’d be the first to know. She had seen him a few times around in the past seven months, and it no longer hurt like a sucker punch to see the newly faithful Ursula hanging on his arm. Not that Milly held any of it against the other woman—she had been entitled to her fling with the Swede, and she was entitled to try to win her husband back. All Milly wanted now was to show Lindesay that his rough treatment of her didn’t matter. She was fine, fine.
A tall man appeared at the top of the stairs at the end of the hallway, and Milly’s heart skipped. Light hair, long neck—but no, it wasn’t Zhenya. She had tried to visit Zhenya over the past summer, but she couldn’t shake a permission out of the NKVD. She even tried writing Orlov, the father of the girl who she had taught two years ago, and the man to whom she figured she owed her first visitor’s pass. But her letters went unanswered, and the summer ticked past.
The man approached the door, and Milly put her hands on her hips.
“State your b
usiness, citizen,” she said in Russian.
He laughed. “The name’s Hermann. I am a geneticist.” He waved his wrist in a flourish that was nearly a bow. “Sam invited me.”
“Proceed.” She flexed one elbow back, like a door swinging open. He gave her an appreciative look up and down, then strode past. She liked the implicit praise, but she wasn’t sure she liked being subject to appraisal in the first place. Soon, she knew, she wouldn’t pass muster. She’d be too old. And after that, they wouldn’t even bother to try to judge her. She wasn’t sure which was worse. She drank half the wine punch in her glass, then hollered into the din of the party that Joe must have sucked all the alcohol out. Inside, the crowd had launched into revolutionary songs. Milly hummed along, reminding herself of Anna Louise and her incessant droning, but she didn’t feel like singing. Two years ago she had belted out the songs with the best of them, especially the Italian songs, but now humming was the best she could manage. She wondered if Zhenya got a break on Revolution Day. She hoped so.
She took off her glasses to rub a smudge from the lens, and when she put them back on, Lindesay was walking down the hallway, alone. Milly threw back the rest of her wine punch, but there was no more than a swallow left in the dish.
“Ticket, Mr. Parrott?” she said, trying not to sound too harsh. A man could be angry after a breakup, could hold a grudge, but not a woman. Milly didn’t want to seem bitter, on top of all the other gossip she had earned.
“Joe invited me,” Lindesay said. He stuck his hands into his pockets and looked her full in the face, then beyond her, at the party. His mouth tightened in what might have been disgust, and Milly’s hand rose to her throat. She wanted a witty retort, something glamorous and casual, but she felt old and gummed up.
“Joe’s a lousy dance partner,” she said finally. “But he’s yours if you want him. Tell him Bennett needs another drink.” Or three. But she wouldn’t have Lindesay see that.
A couple came down the hall behind him, and Lindesay let them sweep him into the party. Milly didn’t ask them about who invited them, and she didn’t care. She’d done well enough managing Lindesay, but she still felt a wreck.
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