Our Woman in Moscow

by Beatriz Williams

  “Yes, I know!” she said eagerly.

  Sasha let out a long sigh, almost like relief. “I thought you would. Anyway, that’s why I come to visit you. I knew—when I saw you at that party, the very first moment—I thought I recognized it.”

  “Recognized what?”

  “You were different, that’s all. You’d understand.”

  Before Iris could ask what she was supposed to understand—she thought she knew, but she wanted to hear him say it—Sasha made a tiny, sad smile, smacked his palm against his thigh, and stood up.

  “I’ve got to be back at the embassy, I’m afraid. Say, when do they let you out of here? I’d go nuts, if I were you.”

  “Soon, I hope.”

  He stared down at her face, and for a moment Iris thought he might bend down and kiss her. Then he did—so swiftly that later she’d wonder if she only imagined it.

  “See you tomorrow?” he said.

  But he didn’t come back the next day, or the next. Iris stared at the vases of flowers, all lined up on the metal nightstand next to the bed, and wondered if Sasha regretted that instant of intimacy. Maybe he’d realized he’d shared too much of himself, or worried he’d led her to think he was in love with her, when of course he wasn’t. How could he be? They hardly knew each other.

  On the second Friday after the accident, Ruth carried in a pair of crutches and announced that the hospital was kicking Iris out to make room for some poor slob having his appendix removed. She helped Iris change into a dress, brushed her hair, applied some lipstick. She packed up Iris’s things, including all the vases of flowers—she shoved them all into one vase, as if they weren’t important—and carried them capably out the door and down the corridor to the taxi waiting outside the hospital, while Iris hobbled along beside her, small and mortified and crippled.

  Six months had passed since Iris and Ruth arrived in Rome, and still Iris caught her breath whenever they turned the corner of Via dei Polacchi and their apartment came into view. They were here because of Harry. Last September, on the first anniversary of Mother’s death, Harry had sent a telegram that went something like

  HAIL SISTERS STOP STATE DEPT REQUESTS YOURS TRULY REMAIN ROME ANOTHER YEAR STOP HOW ABOUT YOU JOIN ME STOP YOURS EVER HARRY

  Iris had looked at Ruth and Ruth had looked at Iris. The two of them lived together in the family’s old apartment in Sutton Place, and it happened to be a chill, rainy, hopeless Thursday, and they had been counting the days until Harry would return home from his two years’ overseas assignment in Rome, the standard Foreign Service appointment. Now Europe had declared another war on itself, and Harry wasn’t coming home, and Iris thought she couldn’t stand another New York winter like the last one, all raw and grief-frozen, Ruth going out nightly to anesthetize her sorrow while the empty apartment echoed with memories. Should we go? Ruth asked, and Iris said, But there’s a war on, and Ruth answered, Not in Italy, and at least we’d all be together. What she didn’t say, but what they both understood, was that their parents would have wanted it that way—the three of them together.

  The next day Ruth and Iris had walked down to the steamship office and booked passage (second class) for Rome, and when they arrived three weeks later Italy was still so warm and fragrant and vivid, Iris felt like a flower coming to life after a year of winter. She would sit on a bench overlooking the Tiber, say, or a chair in some darling café, and close her eyes to imagine her petals unfurling to the sun. They had taken this apartment on Via dei Polacchi—two bedrooms, a tiny bathroom and a tiny kitchen, and a parlor with a tiny balcony overlooking a tiny courtyard—and every morning Iris opened her eyes to the ancient fresco on the ceiling and thought, I am in Rome!

  Because she’d been away for a week, the street looked new—the building just a bit unfamiliar. She’d forgotten that particular smell of stone and paint and sunshine. Spring had invaded every corner, and Ruth had planted flowers in all the chipped terra-cotta pots, so the balcony and the windows had come back to colorful life.

  The apartment was on the second floor (Italian style) and Ruth followed behind patiently with the flowers and the carpetbag while Iris climbed both flights, step by step, planting her crutches on each stair before she hoisted herself up.

  When they arrived at the door at last, Iris imagined she heard a noise, but still she was perfectly shocked when Ruth swung the door open and everybody yelled SURPRISE!

  What a swell party! All of Harry’s embassy friends were there, and all their neighbors, and several people Iris didn’t even recognize, and Sasha Digby’s golden head floated above them all. The guests drank wine or gin and tonic and nibbled from the platters of cheese and crackers and prosciutto. Say what you would, Ruth had always known how to throw a real bash.

  In the center of the room squatted a big, comfortable, secondhand armchair and a mismatched footrest (I took up a collection, Ruth said) where Iris propped her ankle in its plaster cast and sat like a queen on a throne. Everyone took a turn in the stool next to her, refilled her drink and her plate, and wished her well. By evening, she was drunk and sick from too much cheese and utterly happy. The guests filed out, and pretty soon only Harry and Ruth and Iris and Sasha Digby remained. Ruth sat on the stool while Sasha and Harry sprawled on the floor. The apartment was a shambles and reeked of wine. A bottle of cheap Chianti stood on the floor and Harry kept refilling everyone’s glass, except for Ruth, who drank gin and tonic. Iris said how perfectly lovely it had been, hadn’t it been a perfectly lovely afternoon? Couldn’t they just spend all their afternoons like this?

  Ruth stretched her long legs. “Not once Hitler invades France. Then all hell’s going to break loose, isn’t it?”

  “Is he really going to invade? Everybody’s been so well behaved.”

  “Pumpkin, it’s a war, remember? Of course he’s going to invade. Isn’t he, boys? I’m shocked he hasn’t launched across the French border already. It’s already April.”

  Harry lifted his thumb and forefinger to the corner of his mouth and solemnly zipped his lips.

  “Sasha?” Ruth reached out with her toe and nudged his knee. “What’ve you got to say about Hitler? Anyone have the nerve to stop him?”

  “I don’t know.” Sasha finished his wine and lit another cigarette.

  “Irritable, are we?”

  “Not at all. I just think there’s no point speculating.”

  “Just because your old buddy Stalin’s abandoned the anti-Fascist cause—”

  “Don’t talk garbage, Ruth. Christ.”

  Ruth rattled the ice in her glass. “Sasha’s a Communist.”

  Harry snorted. “Says who.”

  “No, it’s true. He’s been to Spain and everything. Haven’t you, Sasha?”

  Harry looked at Sasha. “Digby? I didn’t know that.”

  “I was working for a newspaper,” Sasha said witheringly.

  Ruth laughed and collected her cigarette from the edge of the ashtray. “Anyway, ask him about the dialectic and the failures of capitalism. He’ll tell you all about it.”

  Iris looked at Harry lounging on his elbow—Sasha glaring at Ruth—Ruth in her red silk dress, calmly smoking a cigarette, tiny smile at the corner of her mouth. “It sounds as if everyone’s been having a terrific time together.”

  “Don’t be cross. We’ve gone out for a few laughs, that’s all. Haven’t we, Harry?”

  Harry leaned back until he lay on the floor, arms crossed contentedly over his stomach, smoke trailing from the cigarette between his fingers.

  “Anyway,” Ruth said, “last night Sasha tried to stick up for Stalin and got his intellect all tied up in knots. This treaty’s put him in a real pickle.”

  “What treaty?” Iris asked

  “The Molotov treaty. Don’t you read the newspapers? Nazis and Soviets in bed together. It goes against everything, doesn’t it?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Sasha snapped.

  “You see what I mean?”

  “Aw, lay off him, Ruth,” H
arry said from the floor. “Everybody was a Communist in college. You grow out of it, that’s all.”

  “But has he grown out of it? That’s the question.”

  “You’re deliberately misrepresenting me,” said Sasha. “All I said was that capitalism has its problems, that’s obvious, and at least the Soviet system shows a way forward.”

  “Yes, a shining way forward, all us good little workers marching in lockstep, dressed alike and thinking alike. If you ask me, communism and fascism aren’t all that far apart.”

  “You’re wrong. They couldn’t be further apart.”

  “They’re coming at tyranny from different angles, that’s all. But you both end up in the same place.”

  Iris looked at Sasha’s pink, angry face. He opened his mouth, glanced at Harry, and stuffed a cigarette between his lips instead.

  “I think communism sounds very noble,” Iris said. “I don’t think it’s wrong to have ideals.”

  “Of course not. You can make a beautiful argument for communism, right until you put it into practice and end up with bolshevism.” Ruth crossed her ankles—she’d toed off her shoes long ago—and admired her long, elegant feet. “How many heretics has Stalin purged this year, Sasha?”

  Sasha stood up and stalked to the kitchen.

  “You shouldn’t,” Iris said.

  “Oh, he’s all right. He’s just the type of fellow who doesn’t like having his opinions challenged.”

  “Where’d you hear that about Stalin?” asked Harry. “Purges, I mean.”

  “Because you get a lot of Communists in my line of work. Artist types and all that. And a lot of them know a lot of Russians who disappeared, the last few years.” Ruth snapped her fingers. “Just like that.”

  “But there must be some explanation,” Iris exclaimed. “Maybe they went to work on a farm or something.”

  “Oh, honey.” Ruth looked at Iris the way you might look at a kitten.

  Harry sat up. “The reason I ask is because we’ve heard a lot of rumors, too. So if any of your friends might have information—”

  “I’m not a snitch, Harry Macallister, and neither are my friends.”

  “I don’t mean snitching. I mean it’s something we need to know about.”

  “A snitch is a snitch, that’s all. The lowest of the low.” Ruth rose gracefully to her feet and bent to stub out her cigarette in the ashtray next to Iris. When she straightened, she caught sight of Sasha, who stood in the kitchen doorway holding a glass of either water or gin, just watching the three of them. Iris couldn’t tell the color of his face, and whether he was still mad. She wished she could jump up and run to him and put her arms around him.

  “I guess I ought to be going,” he said.

  “No, don’t. I’m sorry. I’m a troublemaker, that’s all.” Ruth held out her hand. “Friends?”

  He took her hand and shook it briefly. “Friends, sure.”

  “Aw, don’t let her bust your chops, Digby. Nobody thinks you’re some kind of goddamn Red.”

  “’Sall right.” Sasha swallowed back the rest of whatever was in his glass, and Iris decided it was probably gin, after all. He turned to her and smiled. His eyes were awfully blue and not that steady. He made an extravagant bow before her and lifted her hand from her lap. “Pleasure to see you out of the sick bay and looking so smashing, Miss Macallister.”

  “I do not look smashing. I look smashed.”

  Sasha kissed the back of her hand. “When the soul is as beautiful as yours, madam, the face needs no adornment.”

  “Digby! You dog. Stay away from my sister with that kind of malarkey.”

  “Oh, be quiet, Harry,” said Ruth. “Can’t you see he’s being sincere?”

  Iris stared at the rumpled gold hair and the loose collar—the blue eyes beneath the slight overhang of his brows. His lips were wet with gin. He still hadn’t let go of her hand.

  “He’s just teasing,” she said softly.

  Sasha winked and straightened. “What do you say, Macallister? Are you maybe headed to the Gallo d’Oro?”

  “I’m game if you are. Ruth?”

  Ruth leaned her elbows on the back of Iris’s armchair, pure dynamite in her red dress, barefoot and long limbed and just shapely enough. Her red lipstick had long since faded to pink, but on Ruth it looked natural instead of cheap. Smashing—that was Ruth, not Iris. Not exactly beautiful, but striking in a way that was better than beauty and—more importantly—photographed extremely well. The tendons rippled in her throat as she finished her drink. “You two go without me. I can’t leave poor Iris alone on her first night home, and anyway, I’ve got to clean up after you swine.”

  “Oh, don’t stay on my account!” Iris exclaimed.

  Ruth sent Sasha a funny look and tapped out another cigarette from the pack next to the ashtray. “Believe me,” she said, “I’m not.”

  Of course, the telephone did eventually ring and some friend or another persuaded Ruth to go out after all. Iris fell asleep at eleven o’clock to an empty apartment and woke up after ten hours of monumental slumber, rich with dreams. She checked the other bedroom, where Ruth lay on the bed atop the covers, facedown, wearing nothing but her satin slip.

  Iris hobbled into the kitchen on her crutches and made coffee. While the percolator got going, she found an overlooked glass or two, and a piece of discarded cheese crawling with ants. She cleaned them up. On her way past the front door, she spied a small white note on the floorboard. It was addressed to her and went like this:

  Dolce Iris, is it too much trouble to meet a fellow for coffee in some scurvy dive where we won’t be interrupted by motorcycles or siblings? I propose the Vespri Siciliani on Via del Plebiscito at 11. It’s only a short walk from your place but if you’d rather not, no hard feelings. I’ll wait until noon. Yours ever, S.

  Ruth

  June 1952

  New York City

  Nine mornings out of ten, I’m the first person to report for duty at the Herbert Hudson Modeling Agency, and the day after Sumner Fox’s visit I believe I set some kind of record, charging through the glassy lobby at twelve minutes to seven—this in a business where people regularly stagger to their desks at eleven o’clock, still drunk from the night before.

  I flip on the lights and make coffee, and when the coffee’s good and hot I sit at my desk, light a cigarette, and flip through the morning papers, because nothing distracts you from your woes like the woes of other people.

  But my luck is out, I guess. First off, my eye catches some headline to do with those missing English diplomats. one year later, maclean wife and children carry on, it laments. I suck down some coffee and turn the page, but you know how it is when a particular item of news fascinates you. You can turn the page, all right; you can force your attention on all kinds of worthy stories about corruption at City Hall and the plight of refugees in some war-stricken country you’ve never heard of. But your brain wants what it wants, does it not?

  Eventually I give in. I flip back to the column on Maclean’s family—a blurred photograph of the Maclean children ducking through the school gates, one of his wife, Melinda (who happens to be American, it seems), gazing haughtily from the doorway of their house in the English suburbs. I learn that Mrs. Maclean, who delivered their third child only three weeks after her husband’s disappearance, gives short shrift to any insinuations that Maclean has defected to the Soviet Union. “I will not admit that my husband, the father of my children, is a traitor to his country,” she insists.

  Herbert walks in at half past eight. I rise to take his coat and hat and usher him into his office. Bring him his coffee and cigarettes and arrange myself in the chair before his desk for our usual morning chat.

  Most people are not aware that Herbert Hudson suffered a stroke in the summer of 1945, in between the capitulation of Hitler and the capitulation of Tito. I’m telling you now so you’ll understand why his attention wanders from time to time, as we review the day ahead, and why he sometimes sticks the wrong w
ord in the middle of a sentence or two. I figure as long as I understand his meaning, who cares about the delivery?

  This morning Herbert’s having a little trouble lighting his cigarette—the right side of his body being a touch clumsier than the left, though you’d have to know him extremely well to notice—so I lean forward and help to steady his hand until the end of the cigarette flares comfortably orange. He nods his thanks and asks how Barbara’s getting along.

  “The headshots are out of sight.” I rummage through the manila folder in my lap. “Bunny said she was an absolute professional, instincts and everything.”

  Herbert removes the cigarette from his mouth and brings the photograph up close. He studies her for some time. Herbert’s got an eye, stroke or not—I mean his aesthetics never missed a beat. And I don’t mean dirty, either; Herbert always could separate his libido from his professional judgment. For example. You can take a girl who absolutely drips sex appeal, or a girl so beautiful she might have been sent on loan from the archangel choir, and stick this girl in front of a camera and get absolutely nothing. I would put my sister in that category, by the way; not that Iris is as beautiful as the angels, maybe, but she has looks—at least she did, before she dropped all those kids—and also this winsome, sugar-cookie appeal that makes you want to tuck her into your arms and (if you’re a man, I guess) sire ten thousand children with her. But in photographs she looks so ordinary she’s almost plain. There’s simply no angle and no light that translates her particular beauty into two flat dimensions.