Our Woman in Moscow

by Beatriz Williams

  I first met Herbert when I was seventeen years old, just before Iris and I graduated from Chapin. He was the father of a friend of mine, we’ll call her Rosie. Nice girl, Rosie. She and I performed in the school play together, that spring of our senior year. We put on The Pirates of Penzance—she played Mabel and I played the major-general, twirling my mustache to great acclaim—and Herbert hosted a little cast party afterward at his handsome Park Avenue apartment, in the course of which he cornered me on the roof terrace and asked me if anyone had ever told me I should model for photographs, that he was the president of maybe the biggest modeling agency in the world and he would love nothing more than to launch my career as a world-famous fashion model.

  Now, even at seventeen I was no idiot. I understood that I was no more than ordinarily pretty, not the stuff of the world famous, and what was more, I perfectly comprehended the nature of the proposal Herbert was laying out for me. Finally, and most importantly, I was seventeen years old and had no intention of losing my virginity to Rosie Hudson’s portly, red-nosed fifty-four-year-old father, and long story short, Herbert found a more gullible girl to keep him company that night, and I lost my virginity some years later to a genuine Russian prince, I kid you not.

  By the age of twenty-three, however, I took a less romantic view of sexual relations, and a greater interest in what lay underneath the skin of another person. Chance placed Herbert next to me at a dinner party one evening, where I discovered that Rosie Hudson’s lascivious father spoke four languages, collected Tintoretto, and had trained as an architect before his own chance encounter—those peculiar, dazzling points of inflection that determine our fate—led to the creation of the Herbert Hudson Modeling Agency. Then he said enough about him, what about me. I told him about Rome, about my brief spell as a fashion model—he laughed and said I must have caused a real sensation among his Italian colleagues—and about the war and my opinions on it. He walked me home through the New York drizzle. He was between wives at the moment, he told me, and I said I hoped he didn’t mean to audition me for the role, because I wasn’t cut out to be anybody’s wife. He laughed some more and said he couldn’t afford me, anyway, and because I happened to stand at a crossroads in my life, because I was sick and tired of gorgeous, faithless young men, I agreed to go to dinner with him the following Saturday. We went out to dinner eight times before we slept together, which was probably a record for me if I bothered to count, but it was not until after we drifted apart that he offered me a job as his secretary.

  So whatever people might say about me—and they say a lot—I haven’t been sleeping with my boss, at least not since he became my boss. And if I feel myself entitled to a glass of his private reserve from time to time—why, it’s only because I am.

  I sling down the scotch and clean the glass myself. By the time I’m done with all the housekeeping, I’ve got twenty-eight minutes to make my way to the Fifth Avenue apartment of my aunt Vivian and uncle Charlie, and I’m unlikely to find a taxi at this hour. I should skedaddle right out the door, but I don’t. I leave Herbert’s office and lock the door behind me—walk to my desk to retrieve my pocketbook from the lower right-hand drawer—but I don’t continue straight to the glass doors that open to the elevator lobby.

  Instead I sit in my chair and reach deep into the open drawer for the hidden compartment at the back. To be clear, I inherited this interesting secret from the previous owner of the desk—whoever he was—so I can’t take credit or blame. Still, it’s there, and it’s sometimes useful, and on the few occasions when I have nothing better to do, I ponder what my predecessor kept in there. Booze, probably. Prohibition was the mother of so many inventions.

  But I came of age after the blessed repeal, so I don’t have much use for this compartment. Just money or jewelry, when I need a temporary stash for either. And now this thing. This slim rectangle featuring a photograph of St. Basil’s Cathedral on one side and a short, handwritten note on the other, which I haven’t read.

  This foreign postcard, which I received about a week ago, here at the office.

  Now I stare at this flat cliché rendering of the onion-shaped domes, the black-and-white stonework, and consider whether I dare to turn it over and read the message on the other side. Whether I’m better off tearing that postcard to shreds and dropping it in the wastebasket for the night janitor to consign to oblivion.

  In the end, I turn it over, if only to confirm the suspicion that Sumner Fox has planted in my head. The funny thing is, I’m not surprised at all by what it says. I’ve always known it would come to this. I’ve always known Iris would wind up in the worst kind of trouble there is, ever since Sasha Digby walked into her life on a spring day in 1940 and smashed us all to pieces.

  Iris

  Late March 1940

  Rome, Italy

  The woman flailed against the giant who held her against his ribs. His hands snatched at her waist and her naked thigh with such force, his fingers sank into the tender flesh. How she fought him! With one hand, she pushed his head from her breast. Her curls flew into the air. But she didn’t stand a chance, did she? Not a chance in the world against all that bulging muscle, all that solid, masculine bone.

  Iris couldn’t strip her gaze away. She stood hypnotized before the white limbs—the living skin—the long, curling ropes of hair. The robes that fell from waist and hip and shoulder. If she reached out to touch the marble, she would surely find it warm beneath her fingers. She’d feel the thrum of emotion—fear, desire, revulsion, passion, triumph—inside her own pulse. Once a week she visited the gallery, sometimes twice, and she couldn’t decide whether it was hatred or rapture that drew her back to this particular statue. Whether she was mesmerized by the beauty of the human shapes—the struggling Proserpina, the mighty Pluto; whether she was repulsed by the violence, by Proserpina’s helpless struggle; whether she was ashamed because she couldn’t stop staring into this intimate, brutal act. She wanted to stop it somehow, to wrest Proserpina from Pluto’s arms. But sometimes she caught herself in Pluto’s thoughts, so consumed by lust for this tender flesh that he couldn’t let her go—he couldn’t survive without Proserpina’s warmth in his cold, dark underworld, even though she hated him.

  Some other visitors trickled around her. Iris didn’t really notice them. That was why she visited in the middle of the week, or on a rainy afternoon, so there weren’t as many people around to witness her in her trance, or to wonder why the small, young American virgin couldn’t turn away from that riot of licentious marble. Today was a Tuesday, and a delicate spring rain pattered on the windows. Also, there was a war on, didn’t you know. Only Americans went on vacations anymore, and even Americans weren’t exactly thick on the ground. So nobody bothered Iris, and Iris didn’t bother anybody, and when at last she broke the trance and turned to leave the gallery, she almost missed the bright blond head studying The Rape of Proserpina from the other side.

  Almost, but not quite. You couldn’t really miss a mane like that, especially in Italy—sleek and gold, propped up high on a pink neck, its pink ears tucked neatly back. Iris couldn’t see the rest of him very well, hidden on the other side of all that writhing stone, and anyway she was on her way out and pretending not to look. All she could make out was a tall suit of dark blue, and a hand shoved in a trouser pocket, before she passed out of the room.

  That was all. A glimpse of a golden head and a blue suit. So why did Iris feel as if she’d lost something precious, as she stood before another sinuous Bernini in the next room? A maiden who held the radiant sun in her hand as some invisible force pulled away the drapery that covered her.

  He was just a stranger in a museum. She was never going to see him again, anyway.

  But as Iris moved from room to magnificent room, she did see him again. And again! Well, maybe that was to be expected. They were floating down the same river, after all—following the same prescribed path around the ground floor of the Villa Borghese, taking in the masterpieces one by one. That head bobbed
in and out, moving above the little clusters of other visitors, and Iris now saw the body it was connected to, tall and lean and long armed. The beautiful tailoring of his blue suit made the most of his rangy shoulders. When he stopped to contemplate a painting or a statue or an ancient Roman bowl, or the gorgeous decoration of the ceiling, he shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and tilted his head thoughtfully.

  Once, Iris passed him straight on, when she left a room just as he was entering. She had just an instant to see his face, which was plain and no-nonsense, a prominent brow over a pair of wide-set eyes, maybe thirty years old. So near as Iris could tell, he didn’t notice her, but then she took care not to catch herself looking at him, either. Were they playing a game, or not?

  Oh, of course they weren’t. It was all in her head. A silly, lightning infatuation. For a stranger! Iris stared at a David holding out the severed head of Goliath. The last room on the ground floor, and it was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon.

  A woman stood next to Iris’s right shoulder, a man to her left. The woman stepped away, and for a minute or two, Iris and the man contemplated the painting in silence.

  “We seem to be interested by the same pieces,” the man said.

  Iris startled and looked to her side.

  The man with the golden hair.

  He stared straight ahead. He had a long, sharp nose and a firm jaw.

  “Do we?” Iris said.

  “Pluto and Proserpina,” he said, tactfully avoiding the word Rape. “Truth Revealed by Time. David and Goliath.”

  “Isn’t everyone interested by those? They’re the masterpieces.”

  He nodded to the painting in front of them. “You’d think the artist would model David after his own face, if he were going to model himself at all, but actually that’s Caravaggio on the Goliath.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  The man turned his head and looked at her sheepishly. Beneath those heavy brows his eyes were very blue, almost ultramarine. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to condescend. I was just trying to make conversation.” He smiled. “We’ve met, you know.”

  “Have we?”

  “Don’t remember?” He stuck out one enormous, bony hand. “Sasha Digby. I work with your brother, at the embassy.”

  “Oh! Of course.” She shook the hand.

  “Party last month? At the ambassador’s residence? You were there with Harry and your sister. Of course you don’t remember. It was the end of the evening before I introduced myself. I guess we all had a little too much champagne.”

  Iris tried to recall the party, but Mr. Digby was right. She had drunk a lot of champagne that night, and she wasn’t used to it. Her memories of the evening were . . . well, kaleidoscopic was a nice way to put it.

  “I’m awfully sorry. I should remember you.”

  He laughed. “Yes, I do stick out in a crowd, don’t I?”

  “It’s just that I don’t usually have so much to drink. They kept refilling my glass when I wasn’t looking.”

  “Ah, well, they do it on purpose. Without wine there would be no diplomacy. Anyway, I should have introduced myself earlier.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I’m shy, Miss Macallister.”

  “No, you’re not! Didn’t you just walk up to me and introduce yourself?”

  “Only after spending an hour wandering around after you, working up the nerve.”

  “Oh,” Iris said.

  Mr. Digby looked at his watch. “Say, I’d ask you to coffee, but I’ve got a silly appointment coming up.”

  “Then you shouldn’t be late.”

  “No, I can’t, I’m afraid. But I’m glad I spotted you here. I mean, I’m not surprised to see you in a place like this. I knew there was something different about you.”

  His ears were pink. A bright raspberry stain covered his cheekbones.

  “I’m glad too, Mr. Digby,” she said.

  “Sasha.”

  “Sasha. I’m Iris.”

  “I know.” He glanced again at his watch. “I’m late. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude.”

  “Go. Don’t be late.”

  “You’ll remember me at the next party?”

  She shook his hand a second time. “I certainly will.”

  After Sasha Digby rushed off, Iris floated upstairs to the first floor. (Not to be confused with the ground floor—this was Italy, after all.) Because marble was so extraordinarily heavy, you didn’t find any mesmerizing Bernini statuary up there, just paintings and ancient Roman artifacts and some splendidly decorated rooms. Iris knew them all well. She came here often. A gallery like that was like an opium den for her, packed with pleasure and revelation.

  Today, however, she drifted from room to room and didn’t notice a thing. Her heart skipped and raced. She was bubbling over with some giddy froth of emotion she hardly dared to name. It was like the way a child felt on Christmas Eve, if Christmas were a tall, golden-haired man who already knew your name, who thought you were different from the other girls, who’d spent an hour working up the nerve just to say hello. She stopped in front of a painting of a woman who held a small, perfect unicorn in her lap, like a cat, and she stared at that woman and thought, I know exactly how you feel!

  The rain let up. Sunshine lit the windows, the watery sunshine of springtime. Iris looked out onto the gardens below, the manicured hedges in their perfect, symmetrical designs. She could almost smell the damp green scent of the dripping leaves, the wet gravel, the rich earth. A patch of blue hung above. Everything glittered, so new and promising.

  On a bench along one of the side paths sat a man and a woman, part hidden by the pattern of hedges. The man wore an overcoat and a fedora. The woman wore a raincoat and a plain, round black hat. They had crossed their legs, his right and her left, to form an intimate V. They seemed to be talking to each other, even though they were staring straight ahead, into the hedge across the path. The man was long and lean, and his suit was dark blue underneath his unbuttoned overcoat. Iris couldn’t see his hair beneath that fedora, nor the color of his eyes or the shape of his nose. She couldn’t even see the pinkness of his neck.

  But she saw his hands, folded on top of his thigh, bony and enormous.

  After a minute or two, the man rose and held out his hand to the woman, who took it and rose too. They walked off together, down the gravel path and out of sight behind a line of plane trees.

  From the Borghese Gardens, it was a reasonably short walk down the grand, curving Via Vittorio Emmanuel to the US embassy, where Iris’s brother, Harry, worked, processing visas for desperate Jews (though never nearly enough).

  Farther down the road, and around a corner or two, Iris’s twin sister, Ruth, was modeling dresses for some fashion magazine. Unlike Iris, Ruth was tall, blond, and angular, as Aryan as they came, and she’d made quite a stir among the Italian houses since the two of them joined Harry in Rome last October. Ruth had said something over breakfast about the Spanish Steps, if the weather cleared, so they were probably setting up the cameras and the lights right now. Ruth told Iris she could come and watch, if she wanted. Iris said Sure, maybe. (When Ruth turned away to sip her coffee, Iris rolled her eyes.)

  But Iris had to go somewhere. The zing of the Villa Borghese had gone flat for her, and God knew she couldn’t go walking around the gardens. With her luck, she’d run bang into Sasha Digby and his female companion. Maybe she’d find a café somewhere and order an espresso and take out her sketchbook. She marched out the entrance of the villa—nodded to the porter, who recognized her—down the steps, clickety clack, and no sooner did her foot hit the gravel than what do you know, a raindrop hit her smack on the nose.

  By the time she reached the traffic whizzing down the Via Pinciana, the rain had decided it meant business. Iris stopped to open her umbrella and imagined the photography crew at the Spanish Steps rushing to pack up their equipment, while beautiful Ruth leapt for cover beneath a nearby awning.

  Iris didn’t even notice the moto
rcycle tearing around the bend in the road until she stepped off the sidewalk to cross to the other side.

  Ruth

  June 1952

  New York City

  To be clear, my dinner engagement with Aunt Vivian and Uncle Charlie already existed in my appointment book before Sumner Fox paid me a visit this afternoon, so it’s not as if I’ve sought them out particularly to talk things over. It’s a regular appointment, dinner at their apartment on Fifth Avenue on the second Thursday of the month, assuming everybody’s in town—not because we’re particularly close but because none of us can figure out a way to break the habit without causing offense. Families, you know.

  I’m only five minutes late when I hurry into the lobby and wave hello to the doorman—he’s got a thing for me, always lets me run straight up—but Aunt Vivian isn’t amused. She kisses me on both cheeks and says something snide about the sliding morals of the young.

  “That’s rich, coming from you,” I reply.

  Uncle Charlie stands at the liquor cabinet, mixing my martini. He’s always glad to see me, even if he doesn’t approve of career girls. He hands me the drink and asks if anything’s the matter, because I’m looking a little pale.

  “Oh, nothing your martinis can’t fix, Uncle Charlie.” I collapse on a chair and light a cigarette. “Just an FBI agent turning up, asking about Iris.”

  “Iris? The FBI? What the hell do they want with her, after all these years?”

  “Ask your wife. The agent says they already spoke to Aunt Vivian.”

  “Vivian? What’s this?”

  Aunt Vivian flicks the ash from her cigarette. “It’s nothing, Charlie. I told them exactly what I imagine Ruth told them—nothing at all. There’s been no word from Iris in four years. I can’t imagine why they’re looking into the whole mess again.”