Our Woman in Moscow

by Beatriz Williams

  “Maybe they’ve found some trace of her,” I said.

  “Well, they’re not going to find out anything new from you.”

  I gaze across the room at the windows that overlook Central Park, where sunset’s begun to gather in the skies above New Jersey. “It’s a funny thing, though. She sent me a postcard a week ago.”

  Aunt Vivian nearly drops her glass. “A postcard? From Iris?”

  “Claims to be, anyway.”

  “From where?”

  “Moscow.”

  Uncle Charlie swears. “I’ll be damned! They defected! I knew it! Didn’t I say he’d defect, the damn Communist?”

  “What did the postcard say?” Aunt Vivian asks calmly.

  “You don’t seem all that surprised.”

  She shrugs. I rise and cross the room to the sofa where I flung my pocketbook. I rummage around until I find the postcard tucked inside. “Dear Ruth,” I read. “Things are awfully busy here in Moscow. We’re expecting another baby in July. More soon. Love always, Iris.”

  “That’s strange,” Aunt Vivian says.

  “Strange? That’s putting it mildly.”

  “I mean it doesn’t sound like Iris at all. She doesn’t talk like that, let alone write like that. What did the FBI fellow say?”

  I tuck the postcard back in my pocketbook. “I didn’t tell him.”

  Uncle Charlie sputters into his scotch. “You’re not saying you lied to a federal investigator, are you? Ruth? Are you?”

  “I might have. I don’t remember one way or another.”

  “Sure you don’t,” says Aunt Vivian.

  “As your lawyer—”

  “Oh, shimmy off that high horse, Uncle Charlie. You’d have done the same. Iris and I may not be the closest of pals—”

  Aunt Vivian snorts.

  “—but I’m no snitch, not even to my worst enemy.”

  “It’s hardly snitching to tell the nice FBI man you’ve received a postcard from your sister in Moscow,” says my aunt. “Under the circumstances.”

  “Please. Something’s fishy, or he wouldn’t have turned up now, after all these years. Digby’s gotten her into a mess of some kind, and I don’t just mean having another baby.”

  “What kind of mess?” demands my uncle. “They’ve already defected. What more mess could there be?”

  I dangle my glass at him. “You know, these martinis are really terrific. I don’t suppose you’ll allow me another before dinner?”

  When Uncle Charlie rises to refill the martini glass, Aunt Vivian sits back in her chair and drags from her cigarette. “Odd, about that postcard. Is she really having another baby, do you think?”

  “I suppose she must be. Unless it’s some kind of code, but why write something obviously false? I mean, they must have censors or something, watching the mail.”

  “You know she has a terrible time having babies. I don’t know why she allows that man near her anymore.”

  “Love finds a way, I guess.”

  Aunt Vivian watches the movements of her husband’s arms as he mixes and shakes at the liquor cabinet. “He drinks, you know.”

  “Everybody drinks, Aunt Vivian.”

  “Maybe she’s finally leaving him.”

  “Then why defect with him in the first place?”

  “I don’t know. Tell me, why did they defect? You did stay with them in England, that summer before they left. You and the girls.”

  Aunt Vivian sits back in her chair and crosses her long legs. “Never mind. Tell me about this FBI man.”

  “What’s there to tell? He looks the part, if that’s what you mean. Sumner Fox. Do you remember him, Uncle Charlie? He played football somewhere.”

  “Sumner Fox. Christ. The Sumner Fox?”

  “How many could there be?”

  He hands me the glass. I lick the drops from the edges.

  “He played fullback for Yale, mid-’30s,” says Uncle Charlie.

  “Then what happened?”

  “Flew torpedo bombers off a carrier in the Pacific. Crashed on an island somewhere and spent the rest of the war in a Japanese prison camp. Don’t you read the newspapers?”

  “Only the news I like.”

  “Well?” says Aunt Vivian. “Is he handsome?”

  I throw up my hands. “For the last time. Not every girl needs a husband. For God’s sake, look what it’s done to you! No offense intended, Uncle Charlie.”

  He settles in his chair and picks up a newspaper. “None taken.”

  Now, I forgot to mention that Aunt Vivian and Uncle Charlie have children of their own. Three of them, to be exact, all of whom come tumbling into the dining room at the appointed hour and spoil our hard-won cynicism. Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve always liked Tiny best. Pepper and Vivian are so goddamn exhausting and far too much like me. Tiny turned thirteen a few weeks ago and her personality’s changing by the minute. She’s always been a serious child, always worried about beggars and stray animals and the atom bomb, and now she spends all her time buried in schoolbooks and newspapers. At dinner she’s awfully quiet while her sisters yammer on about Singin’ in the Rain, which they’ve just seen for the ninth time, and how Pepper’s going to be an actress when she grows up. Over dessert, I ask Tiny what’s wrong, and she says she’s been worried about the missing diplomats.

  Which missing diplomats? I ask.

  “The Englishmen,” she tells me. “Mr. Burgess and Mr. Maclean. They’ve been gone a year now. Didn’t you see the story in the Times?”

  I don’t know what she’s talking about, of course, and I’m just drunk enough not to pay much attention when she tells me. What’s a pair of British diplomats to me?

  Still, something bothers me about the incident, though I can’t say what. Coming so adjacent to the postcard and the FBI visit, possibly. When I stagger home to my apartment in Sutton Place, I stop by the little grocery around the corner to buy the usual quart of milk, and at the last instant I pick up a newspaper, too.

  Mike the doorman nods as I swing through the revolving door. I collect my mail from the slot and climb the stairs as a form of exercise, as is my habit, in order to maintain my maidenly figure. Inside my apartment, I pour the milk into a glass and spread out the newspaper on the table. The story about the diplomats appears on page 7, below the fold.

  still no word from missing british diplomats, runs the headline.

  A year has now passed since the disappearance of Mr. Guy Burgess and Mr. Donald Maclean, both of the British Foreign Office, caused an international uproar, and the British government admitted yesterday there is still no definitive word on their fate. The two men were last seen boarding a pleasure cruise aboard the ship Falaise in the English Channel on Friday, May 25th of last year and went ashore during a brief stop at the French port of Saint Malo, at which passports are generally not checked, according to the French government. Clothing and personal effects of both men were discovered in their cabin when the schooner returned to port at Southampton the following Sunday morning, and the alarm was raised when Mr. Maclean did not report to work as usual on Monday morning. His wife, Mrs. Melinda Maclean, who was then expecting their third child in a matter of weeks, apparently saw nothing amiss and did not inform his superiors at the Foreign Office until . . .

  By now my memory is jogged. Burgess and Maclean—of course. What a fuss that was. I recall—now, don’t laugh—my first thought was one of pity for poor Mrs. Maclean. At the time, it was perfectly clear to my dirty mind that the two missing diplomats had, in fact, run off together to liberate themselves from the disapproval of a Puritan world.

  A year later, though, other details strike me. I don’t know, maybe I didn’t notice them before. For one thing, there’s something odd about this business of the passports, and the clothing and personal effects left inside the cabin of the good ship Falaise. Why not take them with you? And my God, what kind of monster skips out on two children and a wife so very pregnant as that, unless he absolutely has to? Sex is lovely, all righ
t, but surely Maclean could not have been so deficient in basic decency, even if he was a diplomat.

  I fold the paper back up and finish the milk, and it’s not until I wash the glass and return to the table that I turn my attention to the day’s mail. I’m not much of a correspondent, I’m afraid, and I tend to receive few letters of a personal nature. Just the usual brusque envelopes from banks and charities and insurance companies, the occasional missive from some government department of this or that, hardly the kind of communication you rip open with trembling fingers.

  So I’m surprised to discover a slim, light envelope tucked between the usual correspondence, marked PAR AVION on one side. I flip it over and find no return address, just my own name in beautiful handwriting, and my own address. I don’t think to look at the postmark before I open it. Tug out a single, tissuelike sheet of airmail paper, folded over once, and unfold it. A square black-and-white photograph falls out, three children posing against a fence in what seems to be a zoo.

  I return to the letter itself and begin to read.

  Dearest Ruth,

  I’m so sorry not to have written sooner. The time has simply slipped away from me. I thought perhaps you might like to see how your sweet nephews and niece are growing, so I took this photo of the children at the local zoo.

  I’m writing to ask if you wouldn’t mind coming out here to lend me a hand with the baby’s arrival. I am so drained by the pregnancy, and as you remember, these ordeals are always difficult for me. I know you’re busy with your own work, and I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need your help so desperately.

  Your loving sister,

  Iris

  P.S. Our apartment here reminds me so much of the one we shared in Rome, all those years ago. Do you remember how happy we were then? I was just thinking of what you said to me that last day. Am I too late to admit that you were right?

  Iris

  April 1940

  Rome, Italy

  Ruth was matter-of-fact, as you would expect. “All things considered, you’re pretty lucky. A broken ankle is nothing.”

  “Don’t forget the stitches,” said Harry.

  “Still, the ankle’s the worst part, because she can’t walk. Thank goodness that fellow was there to snatch her out of the way. What’s his name again, Harry?”

  “Digby. Sasha Digby. Works in the visa section with me.”

  “Well, I’ll be sure to write him a note.” Ruth patted the blanket covering Iris’s leg. “Where is he, anyway?”

  “Digby? He’s gone back to the embassy. He’s a hard worker, stays late every night.” Harry took out his cigarette case.

  “Put that away,” Ruth said. “We’re in a hospital.”

  “So?”

  “So what if you light up an oxygen container by accident?”

  Harry flicked his Zippo lighter. “I’ll take my chances, all right? If ever a man needed a cigarette . . .”

  Ruth turned back to Iris. “What were you thinking, pumpkin? I mean honestly. Isn’t it just like you to cross the street without looking first. Head in the clouds.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Of course you didn’t mean to. You never do. Harry, what about this Digby fellow? Would it be all right to ask him to dinner or something? I feel something’s called for.”

  “Sure, why not? He’s a good man. They say—”

  A soft knock sounded on the door. A blond head poked around the edge.

  “Hello? Mind if I join you? Nurse said it was family only, but I talked my way through.”

  “Digby! Man of the hour. Come on in, it’s a real party.”

  Sasha Digby stepped inside the room, looking exceptionally tall and golden. He lifted his hands, which both held bottles of champagne. “Managed to smuggle these in for the invalid. How is she?”

  “Just fine,” Iris croaked.

  “Broken ankle, sixteen stitches, and black and blue all over,” said Ruth. “Otherwise she’s just fine. Thanks to you.”

  “Just grateful I happened along at the right instant.” Sasha looked tenderly at Iris with his ultrablue eyes. “Fright of my life when I saw you step off that curb.”

  Possibly Iris was going to die of humiliation. She lay there on her white hospital sheets—in her green hospital pajamas—trapped beneath Sasha Digby’s sympathetic blue gaze. Thank God she hadn’t looked in a mirror yet. Meanwhile, Ruth was still wearing the tangerine dress from the fashion shoot, scarlet lips, blond hair curled and glossy.

  “I’m so sorry,” Iris said.

  “Sorry? Sorry for what? I’m sorry.” He held out his hand to Ruth across the bed. “Sasha Digby. We met at the reception a couple of weeks ago.”

  Ruth half rose from her armchair to take his hand. “What reception was that?”

  “You remember, Ruthie. At the residence.” Harry winked at Sasha. “Too sauced, I guess.”

  “No, I remember now. Right at the end, wasn’t it?”

  Sasha shrugged his rangy shoulders, set down one of the champagne bottles, and removed the foil from the other. “I arrived late, I’m afraid. Cups anywhere?”

  “What are we celebrating, exactly?” Ruth asked.

  “We are celebrating life, Miss Macallister.” Sasha eased out the cork with the gentlest of pops. “The fact that we’re all still in it.”

  Harry, having scrounged cups from the tray on the bedside table, held one out beneath the neck of the bottle. “I’ll drink to that.”

  Sasha poured champagne into each glass—Harry ducked into the corridor and came back with a third and a fourth—and everybody cried joyously, To life!

  Iris spent a week and a half in the hospital, because the nice Italian doctor didn’t trust her not to overdo it on her broken ankle, which he’d set with such care and attention. In all that time, she never once looked in the mirror, although she read four novels and sketched portraits for all the nurses.

  Nearly every day, right around noon, Sasha Digby arrived with a bouquet of flowers. Each time, it was a new variety—tulips, lilies, orange blossom, roses the most beautiful shade of blush pink. He pulled up a chair and asked how she was feeling, told her the news, shared funny stories about Harry in the embassy—a real clown, your brother, but a good man, smarter than he lets on—and that kind of thing. Day by day their conversation went a little deeper, edged a little closer to the intimate. Exactly one week after the accident, Sasha folded up the Herald-Tribune—he was reading aloud a review of an art exhibition recently opened in Florence—and said, “I’m awfully sorry about your mother. Harry told me what happened.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You must miss her.”

  “It’s not as bad as it used to be. She wasn’t herself after Da—after our father died. My grandparents raised us, really. And then our aunt got married and took over a little.”

  “That would be Vivian Schuyler, wouldn’t it?”

  Iris was startled enough to look him right in the eyes. “How did you know?”

  “Oh, small world. I guess you’ve met my mother, Elsie Adams. She’s a van der Wahl by birth. Practically grew up with your uncle.”

  Iris felt a little dizzy. “Then you know everybody back home.”

  “Oh, not everybody. We moved around when I was young. My father’s in the oil business. He and my mother divorced when I was ten or eleven, I guess.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We all have our sorrows, don’t we? Yours greater than mine, I think.”

  “It doesn’t matter how great they are. Sorrow’s sorrow.”

  He sat back in his chair.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “You.”

  But he caressed the word. Iris looked at the window and then down at her lap. She thought Ruth would handle this so much better. Ruth would know what to say. Ask him about himself, that’s what Ruth would tell her to do, if Ruth could whisper in her ear right now.

  “Sasha.” Iris paused. “That’s not your real name, is it?”

  �
�Hold on a moment.”

  Sasha set aside the newspaper and walked to the door, which he closed without a sound. He crossed the room to the window, opened it halfway, sat back down, and lit a cigarette. Only when he’d taken a long drag and exhaled again did he contemplate the ceiling and say, “My real name—and you can’t tell a soul—promise me, Iris.”

  “I promise.”

  “Cross your heart.”

  Iris crossed her heart.

  He leaned his head toward her and spoke in a stage whisper. “Cornelius Alexander Digby.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “Named for my father, who was named for my grandfather. Father being the old throwback he was, there wasn’t any question of naming me something else. But my mother insisted on calling me Sasha. Probably it’s why they divorced, in the end. The affairs he could pretend not to notice, but the nickname just rankled.”

  Iris couldn’t help laughing. It was the tone of his voice, as if he were gossiping about film stars or something, not his own parents. She thought it was almost worth breaking her ankle to sit in a private room with this tall Apollo and laugh, the way you laughed with a friend of long standing—someone you trusted. Then the laughter died away. Iris glanced at his face—the thoughtful way he dragged on his cigarette, looking at her.

  “You’d better put that out,” she said. “The nurse will come back any minute, especially if she sees the door closed.”

  “Oh, hang the nurse.” But he rose anyway and stubbed out the cigarette on the windowsill.

  “You’re awfully sweet to visit me like this. I hope you’re not feeling guilty.”

  “I am feeling guilty, but that’s not the reason I visit you.” He tossed the spent cigarette out the window and came to sit on the edge of the bed. With his thumb he brushed the bruise on her cheek. “You have a black eye, did you know that?”

  Iris gasped and threw her hand up to cover the eye in question. “Nobody told me!”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve seen worse. It wasn’t a direct hit. Anyway, you still look beautiful.” Now he touched the bandage on her forehead that covered eight stitches near her hairline. “The thing about growing up everywhere, you don’t feel you belong anywhere. You see things, terrible things, people living—no, existing, hardly even that—just surviving in the most abject conditions, and when you return to a place like East Hampton, for example, and the Schuylers and the van der Wahls playing endless tennis at the club, drinking endless silly cocktails and having conversations that—well, you know what I mean, don’t you? It’s as if they can’t see anything beyond their little world and the little people in it—”