Our Woman in Moscow

by Beatriz Williams

  “I don’t have time for lunch!”

  “You must eat, however. So we meet and have lunch and discuss things in rational manner. Good-bye.”

  He hangs up, and the once-familiar noise of an Italian dial tone buzzes in my ear. I set the receiver in the cradle and attempt to collect my thoughts, which are still mired in the confusion of deep sleep. I had no right to sleep like that, just as I have no right to eat a leisurely lunch in an Italian café with a man who was once my lover. I need to get to Moscow—I need to find Iris with an urgency that’s only grown stronger during the night, as if some part of my brain has turned into a ticking clock.

  But Orlovsky’s right. I must eat—I must sleep—and anyway I can’t do anything until we find a way inside the Soviet Union.

  I head upstairs and open my suitcase.

  “You look much better,” Orlovsky tells me, when the waiter’s opened the first bottle of wine and poured our glasses.

  “You, on the other hand, look worse. What’s happened to you?”

  He shrugs. “Life. War. You know we lost two sons—”

  “Oh, damn. I hadn’t heard. I’m so sorry.”

  “War kills the young, this is fact of life. Laura prayed to God, but I am not believer. I believe in fate, that is all.” He sips his wine and offers me a cigarette. We spend some time lighting up, enjoying the first drag. He waves away the smoke that gathers between us and says, “Enrico died in Albania. Mario at Palermo. So Giovanni is now our only son. Five girls and one boy. His mother spoils him.”

  “Of course she does.” I’m now filled only with pity for Orlovsky’s wife. Still, I can’t resist adding, “But at least she had the new baby to comfort her.”

  He looks at me in surprise. “But you did not know this? Baby died two days after he was born. His heart, doctors said to us. He had weak heart.”

  “Oh, God. What a heel I am.”

  “No, it is I who am heel, bambina. It is I who am brought to learn humility before will of fate. I thought I was tremendous man. I have wife and children and beautiful mistress, all because I am great fellow, I am like God. Whole world moves in magnificent circle around me. I am immortal!” He pulls on the cigarette. “So fate strikes me down. One by one, my children die. Is greatest agony man can endure. Why not kill me instead? No, fate tortures me first, because I am proud, because I play with hearts of women like you play with cards.”

  “That’s not true. That has nothing to do with it. Your children didn’t deserve to die because of you. You didn’t deserve for them to die.”

  “Ah, you are generous with me, bambina cara. Always you are generous.”

  The conversation’s become morbid, and the wine turns sour in my mouth. “What about your daughters? Are any of them married?”

  “Yes, Elvira and Renata, they marry nice Italian boys. I have two grandchildren, girl and boy.”

  I lift my glass. “Cheers to that, anyway.”

  “And my little Donna, she is spending summer in Russia with my parents, near Sochi. You know Sochi?”

  “It’s by the Black Sea, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Is beautiful there, like resort. She will come home tanned and happy, with Russian boyfriend.” He shakes his head. “Is terrible burden, children. Always they take your heart with them, wherever they go.”

  “I wouldn’t know. But my sister has a fourth on the way, I hear.”

  “Ah, yes.” He stubs out the cigarette. “Let us talk about your sister for a minute.”

  The waiter returns at that instant and refills the wine. Orlovsky orders fish; I order lamb. When he departs, Orlovsky lights another cigarette and says, in an undertone, “I have spoken to person who can help you.”

  “Someone at the embassy?”

  “You understand, you cannot simply dance into Moscow and find your sister and dance home again. Do you know what is the KGB?”

  “It’s the Soviet spy agency, isn’t it?”

  “Is more than that. Is everywhere. When you step off airplane—no, before. When you buy ticket to Moscow, they are watching. Listening. You go nowhere, see nothing, say nothing that KGB does not know.”

  “Then I’ll just have to find a way around them.”

  Orlovsky lays his palm on the table. His eyes blaze, although he keeps his voice at the same low monotone, so we might be speaking of the weather. “Oh, you are so clever! Like me, you believe you can outsmart fate—you can outsmart KGB. You know nothing! They will kill anybody—innocents—because to KGB man, all is in service to revolution, to world communism. So you find sister—by some miracle of God—so you visit sister? They take sister to Moscow Centre. They do interrogation—KGB interrogation, they study how to do this, they are scientific—they maybe even torture her, if they want confession. Maybe they take her son, they say we will kill your son unless you confess.”

  “That won’t happen. I’m an American citizen, I’ll go to the US consulate and kick up such a fuss—”

  “This is your plan? Your plan to cause major diplomatic incident? You think Soviets care what American newspapers think? I tell you now, they will lie. They will say, oh, this woman is spy—she is agent of American intelligence. They will insist on their lies until gullible people of America—yes, gullible people of entire world believe them. Ruth Macallister, she is terrible spy, she is guilty one. Then what happens? You disappear. Nobody ever know what happen to you.”

  “That’s not true. The United States would never let that happen to one of its citizens.”

  “Bambina. Bambina cara. Let me explain to you. United States government cannot help you if you do this idiot thing and go to Moscow. You are too small—Soviet Union too big. Soviet Union will kill anybody—it will kill millions brazenly. Stalin killed millions in Ukraine, did you know this?”

  “Millions? That’s impossible.”

  “Not impossible. Starvation. He creates famine so people starve, so they have nothing left but Soviet state.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Because I listen.” He touches his ear. “Friends. Family. They have to whisper, they cannot shout this or some nosy neighbor denounce them, their own children denounce them. If you are not good little Communist, if you do not recite daily catechism—and catechism sometimes change with no warning, so you must pay attention—then comes knock on your door.” He knocks twice on the table with the hand holding the cigarette, which by now has burned almost to a stub. “Do you see? In this terrible war—this war between communism and liberal democracy—communism will win, because it does not care how many lives it devours.”

  I make a hushing movement with my hand, because the waiter has just arrived with our lunch. Anyway, Orlovsky’s become overwrought with his daily catechisms and his starving millions. I already know what evil looks like; I’ve seen the photographs out of Dachau and Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.

  We eat our lunch, just like any couple. The restaurant is only half full and the other diners are mostly young people, tanned and happy and unscarred, too young to have fought in the war. Naturally, Orlovsky would choose a place like this. He loves young, beautiful people, especially women. His gaze flicks around the room without even noticing what he does—resting on that face, those legs, this bosom—subconscious, pleasurable assessments. The waiter clears away the plates and brings tiny cups of espresso. Over the rim, I notice a man sitting at a table in the corner, reading a newspaper. I can’t see his face, but he has a slim build and long, elegant fingers that grip the edges of the newspaper.

  I return my attention to Orlovsky. “If you think it’s such a terrible idea, why are you helping me?”

  “First, because I know I cannot stop you, and if you must go, you need all help I can find you.”

  “Second?”

  He smiles a wan, toothy grin. “Because I am Russian, bambina. I cannot resist lost cause.”

  We walk back to Orlovsky’s atelier in the hot sunshine. There’s a whiff of sewage in the air, and my dress sticks to my back. As we stroll d
own the sidewalk, flashes of memory return to me—things I haven’t remembered in years. The tobacco shop on the corner, where Orlovsky once stopped to buy cigarettes, and the tobacconist mistook me for his daughter. The florist where he used to buy me flowers, and the mysterious palazzo a street away from the atelier that always intrigued me, because it was so austere on the outside, like a medieval fortress, and not even Orlovsky knew whom it belonged to. As we turn the corner and stop on the curb to allow a taxi to race by, I catch a glimpse of a slim man ducking into the shelter of a doorway, holding a newspaper under his arm.

  When we cross the street, I look over my shoulder. But nobody’s there, after all.

  We reach the atelier. Orlovsky unlocks the iron-studded door. He ushers me inside first, and as he turns to follow me, he seems to look both ways, up and down the sidewalk, before he steps into the vestibule and closes and locks the door behind him.

  “When do we meet this friend of yours?” I ask.

  Orlovsky replaces the walking stick in the stand and puts his hand to the small of my back. “Is here already. He said not to waste any time.”

  “Good. I agree.”

  I say this bravely to stifle a tremor of panic. We climb the stairs, which spiral upward in a pleasant medieval way. The damp, cool smell of the stones wafts by. I find myself wondering who he is, this contact of Orlovsky’s, and what he does. Is he some kind of double agent nested inside the Soviet embassy? A disaffected Italian Communist?

  All these possibilities whirl through my mind as we reach the first floor and walk down the hallway, at the end of which lies the studio that runs the width of the courtyard below. None of them comes close to the truth. The man who looks up from the drafting table, who scrapes the chair back and stands politely, is a man I already know.

  “Miss Macallister,” says Sumner Fox. “You’d better take a seat. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

  Iris

  July 1948

  London

  At half past six the next morning, the boys burst into the room and jumped on the bed.

  “Mama! Daddy! I lost a tooth!” Kip said.

  Next to her, Sasha groaned and rolled on his stomach. Iris’s head throbbed. She must have drunk more champagne than she realized last night. She glanced at Sasha—out cold—and sat up painfully. “You lost a tooth! Where?”

  He showed her.

  “There was blood all over his nightshirt and Mrs. Betts put it to soak!” Jack announced.

  “The tooth or the nightshirt?”

  “The nightshirt, of course! You look awful, Mama.”

  “Not as awful as Daddy,” she said.

  “Does this mean we don’t have to go to church?” Kip asked, bouncing a little.

  Iris swung her feet to the floor and stared at her toes.

  “I don’t know, darling, but I guess we’d better start breakfast, just in case.”

  Even though Sasha was an atheist, the family went to church most Sundays, a habit they established when they moved to London. Sasha said it was important for the boys to have a proper religious education, so they could disavow God from a position of confidence when they were old enough to reason things out for themselves. Besides, you met a lot of important people at church on a Sunday.

  So Iris rolled out of bed and trudged to the bathroom to make herself a little more human. On the way back to the bedroom, she picked up Sasha’s discarded clothes and hung them in his wardrobe. Sasha himself hadn’t moved. He sprawled on his stomach, hair in disorder, perfectly naked—thank God for the blankets. There was just enough light that she could see his face, so relaxed it was almost angelic, relieved of all its sins. Iris remembered what Philip had said last night—the hearings—and wondered why Sasha hadn’t said anything to her about them. Because he wasn’t worried about anything this woman might reveal in her testimony, or because he was?

  She tucked the blanket around him and headed down the hall toward the kitchen, where the boys were making the usual joyful racket—take that, Mrs. Bannister in the downstairs flat—as Mrs. Betts flitted around the room getting breakfast. Jack spotted Iris first.

  “Mama! Mrs. Betts said I could have hot cocoa with breakfast! Because it’s Sunday!”

  “That sounds like an awful good idea.”

  “Good morning, Mrs. D,” Mrs. Betts said cheerfully. “Coffee’s in the pot.”

  Iris sat in the chair next to Jack and reached for the coffeepot. “You’re an angel.”

  “I’ve gone ahead and laid out their suits for church. Master Kip’s going to need a new jacket soon, he’s grown that fast. I do believe he’ll be tall, like his father.”

  Mrs. Betts had come to them through some reference at the embassy. She was about fifty, extremely slender, with blue eyes and graying blond hair she kept tidy in an old-fashioned bun. She’d previously worked for a large, wealthy, traditional English household, and Iris couldn’t break her of certain habits, like calling a seven-year-old boy Master Kip. Still, she appreciated the efficiency with which Mrs. Betts approached her job. Some of the other wives complained about the help—this was a common pastime, apparently—and how you couldn’t get a housemaid to cook or mind the children, or a cook to clean the parlor or wash the laundry; ask for a housekeeper and you’d get a woman who expected to run the other servants, not to do any real work herself. But Mrs. Betts did. Iris considered the family lucky to have her. Mrs. Betts could get away with murder and keep her job, but she only asked for a half day off every week, Sunday morning to Sunday afternoon, so she could visit her mother in Clapham.

  She was untying her apron right now.

  “Breakfast is all laid out in the dining room as usual, Mrs. D. Anything else before I’m off?”

  “No, thank you, Mrs. Betts.”

  “You’re certain of that? You’re looking a bit pale, if I may.”

  Iris looked up. Mrs. Betts had folded her apron over her arm, and she gazed down on Iris with an expression of motherly concern.

  “I’m all right, thank you. The party went a little late, that’s all.”

  “So it did. I believe I heard Mr. D arriving home at seven minutes past five.”

  Iris turned back to Jack and urged a mouthful of egg. “I appreciate your concern, Mrs. Betts, but I’m really quite well. It’s part of Mr. Digby’s job to attend these functions.”

  Mrs. Betts made a noise of disapproval. “Well, I’ll be off now. Oh—good morning, Mr. Digby.”

  Sasha’s voice rang from the doorway. “Good morning, Mrs. Betts. Off for your half day, I guess. Coffee?”

  “There’s Mrs. D pouring your cup this instant. Pale though she is.” With this parting shot, Mrs. Betts swept out the door and clattered down the hall.

  Sasha kissed the top of Iris’s head. “I suppose it’s my fault you’re pale?”

  “She’s just a mother hen, that’s all.”

  “So she should be. Somebody needs to look after you when I’m not around. Boys? You’re looking after your mother when Daddy’s at work, aren’t you?”

  Kip looked up from his magazine. “Yes, Daddy.”

  “I helped Mama make the bed yesterday!” Jack cried.

  “That’s the ticket. Good boy.” Sasha plopped into the chair and reached for his coffee cup. A cigarette trailed from his left hand. He wore a creased dressing gown and his hair was rumpled like a pile of old straw; he smelled of bed, of perspiration, of booze, of worry. It was a smell Iris had come to associate with him ever since the war ended, as if the absence of a real enemy had evaporated his vital spirit. On the other hand, here he was—up and out of bed, drinking coffee with his family when any ordinary man would sleep the entire morning off. So there must be something left of him still, right? The man she loved.

  Iris handed him the cream. “Church today?”

  Sasha looked at his wristwatch and swore.

  They attended services at St. Barnabas, just around the corner on Addison Road. As Sasha pointed out, the Anglican church was just about the same in
character and temperament as the Episcopal church in America, in which both of them had been raised, so their immortal souls shouldn’t be materially damaged by the experience. Iris had asked him what exactly he meant by immortal soul, since he didn’t believe in God, and he told her to be a good wife and not ask so many questions. At the time, she thought he was only being ironic.

  Iris wasn’t sure whether she believed in God or not, but she experienced the Sunday services at St. Barnabas in a different way than she used to experience church at home. For one thing, when Iris was a child, they hardly ever went to church, rallying themselves for Christmas and Easter and weddings and funerals but not for the ordinary, quotidian rites. Churchgoing was a social obligation, undertaken against your personal inclinations, not a spiritual wellspring. When Iris had attended church, she hadn’t paid much attention, and when she did pay attention, the words floated past her ears like a pleasant music.

  Now Iris had Kip and Jack, and raising children seemed to have unplugged some emotional drain inside her. When the priest offered her the wine and said The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation, she sometimes had to hold back sobs. Ridiculous! Then he laid his hand on Kip’s blond curls and said, Christ’s blessing be upon you, and the tide of desperate gratitude nearly choked her.

  Why? She wasn’t religious. She didn’t give much thought to Christianity once she stepped outside the church and went about her daily life. If she did, she would typically question the foundational tenets of faith, not confirm them. Sometimes she thought it was the idea of salvation that moved her. She didn’t feel saved, exactly, but the older she got, the more she felt the terrible weight of all the hundred faults and mistakes—sins, let’s call them—she was liable to commit in a given week, and it nearly broke her with gratitude just to imagine, for an instant, that somebody knew them all and forgave her for them.

  On this particular Sunday, however, Iris suffered from too much champagne and too little sleep the night before. Drag herself to church? Not on your life. Her sins could wait until next week, when they’d be properly ripened.