Subotin cocked a groomed eyebrow.
She bit her lip. Why was she relapsing into defending Mikhoels, when she was supposed to be condemning him? The truth was that she had not at the time seen what Mikhoels was doing as wrong. He had been deluged by letters from suffering people. How could the man who had served as the heart and voice of Jews in the Soviet Union all through the war refuse to help them once the war had ended? But to defend him wouldn’t cause his resurrection, would it? It would only bring harm to her. How long ago, it seemed, had she told herself that she “would not distort or exaggerate,” that she would be a clear mirror and say nothing that might imperil another person. Now she knew all those airy promises were worthless. Whatever information she gave him, Subotin would rework to serve his version, just as she herself had reworked articles in the American press for her bulletins. Leon was right: better to throw dirt on a covered grave.
On the subject of Itzik Feffer, she allowed herself a harsher tone. She told Subotin that Feffer had treated being selected to sail to America with Mikhoels as a personal triumph rather than an assignment. That he’d lorded this “achievement” over other members of the JAFC. She was careful not to accuse Feffer of any actual crimes—he might still be alive. But no matter how much she disparaged his character, quoting gossip she had heard from others, Subotin did not look satisfied. His expression was bored as he continued to record what she said. Then he brought up the Crimean Plot. As Subotin described it, the conspiracy involved leaders of the JAFC who “promised” parts of the Crimean Peninsula as a beachhead for imperialist military actions to the Americans with whom they had contact. According to “information possessed by the investigation,” the leaders of the Jewish cabal had already started distributing key positions of this imperialist foothold among themselves. He now expected Florence to tell him which positions had been distributed secretly, and who would hold them.
She wanted to press a hand to her mouth. Why, the idea would make a cat laugh! She had never heard of such a plot. It implied that a tiny group of poets had coordinated a plan to topple the mighty Soviet government. She’d known only of a suggestion, floated briefly and entirely publicly, of settling Jewish refugees who’d lost their homes in Crimea. She tried to study Subotin’s face to determine if he believed what he was saying. If he did, he was surely a fanatic willing to believe anything; but if he didn’t, it meant only that he was a total cynic, and so her efforts to dissuade him would be just as pointless. As all of these thoughts darted through her head at lightning speeds, strategy and philosophy became mixed. Who was more dangerous, a fanatic who believed hideous falsehoods, or a cynic who only pretended but was willing to make them true if it was necessary? She reminded herself that she could not get embroiled now in a denial of the existence of this alleged plot. Her only way out was to claim to know nothing of it, to tell Subotin that the Jewish Committee members were a cozy little gang, and if such a plot existed, she would have had no knowledge of it.
As soon as she said as much, Florence could see that her answer was less than pleasing.
“I see,” he said, without putting down his steel pen, “you tell me they carp and backstab and elbow each other for power out in the open, yet when it comes to this plot you suddenly claim they were ‘a cozy little gang.’ ”
He was telling her that he’d given her rope to play dumb long enough.
“I only meant I know nothing about it. I’m not ruling out that they talked of this plan to others.”
“Others, such as…Seldon Parker?”
She’d heard the name in her head even before he spoke it. How could she have been so stupid as to think he would demand nothing of her if she continued to act foolish and naïve? Of course, Subotin had had a target picked out for her all along.
“Yes, it’s true,” she said, “that we shared two small rooms in Kuibyshev with Seldon Parker, in evacuation. We did not do this by choice. As you can guess, housing was nearly impossible to come by in Kuibyshev. We were assigned our quarters. When we were evacuated, we were living twenty to a room in a frozen schoolhouse. So when the SovInformBuro offered us the two rooms, we were grateful. Seldon lived in the smaller of the two. We saw him every day, shared meals and so on. As for how well we came to know him—that is a different question. He’s a difficult person to get to know. He is very private and plays his cards close to his vest. What I mean is, he’s quite gregarious, well spoken, and so on; he can give a good toast, tell a joke. But sometimes I had the feeling I did not know him very well at all. I am not sure how to explain this.”
But her denials would not save her, that much she knew. She needed strategy, as Leon said, not just tactics. She could hear Leon’s words in her head. They were all tied with the same rope and would all get pulled into the same noose.
At this moment, Seldon’s plan for escape no longer struck Florence as mad. It offered as much chance for survival as would doing nothing. The question now—and this was the only part of the game over which, she believed, she still had any control—was how to stall Parker’s arrest. How to suggest to Subotin that she might wheedle out of Seldon Parker the necessary information he was after.
“He did have a…special talent,” she said now, and permitted a small smile to cross her face.
She could see, under Subotin’s immobile mask, a subtle but not imperceptible uptick in interest. “What was it?” he said, sternly.
“He could always obtain alcohol. You may think this was easy, but vodka was quite expensive in evacuation, and no one could get his hands on wine. At the bazaar it was five hundred rubles a bottle! One could get it by other than the official means, but that isn’t something I’ve ever known very much about. In any case, he always had a way of getting it—vodka, Georgian wine, even sherry. I don’t know how, but it made him very popular among the higher-ups in the committee. I’m sure they weren’t suffering from any lack of rations. But Seldon was always good for a bottle.”
“You’re saying he drank with them.”
“He did, occasionally. He liked the good life. In this way he made friends inside the committee. I know he liked to stay up drinking with some of them. What sorts of things got spoken during those wet hours, I can’t say exactly. Sometimes he dropped hints. Once, he said that Feffer told him he was finally going to ‘get a little relief, see a little paradise,’ when he visited America. He’d quote little things people might say when they drank.”
“And you never asked him more?”
“He prided himself on knowing these people personally, calling them friends. I’m no gossip, and I don’t like to flatter people by rising to their bait when they show off.”
“It seems to me that a person who talks that way is asking you to ask.”
Hook. Bait. Swallow. She’d gotten him.
It was a risk, she knew, to suggest that Seldon might have inside information on any plot—real or imagined—hatched up by the committee. A suggestion like that was cause enough for the NKVD to move in and arrest him. And yet her instincts told Florence that if they’d wanted to arrest Seldon they would have done it by now. No, whatever elaborate fraud this “investigation” was concocting, it still needed some credible information with which to pry out further confessions. It alarmed her how instinctively she’d started to understand how this crude and unsophisticated game was played. Great lies would be ransomed with small truths.
“I suppose,” she said, “I could ask him now. It was three years ago. It would take some work for me to get Parker to talk about those times. But, then, he does enjoy telling stories.”
“How you do it is up to you,” Subotin said flatly. Still, she perceived an undertone of encouragement in his affected indifference.
She had bought herself time.
—
FOR SEVERAL DAYS THERE was no light in the stairwell. It seemed to Florence that every few weeks the naked bulb in their building’s entry got unscrewed and stolen, either by the inhabitants or by the courtyard adolescents. After a while, the
housing committee simply ceased replacing it. The February nights were long and she had to maneuver her way home through the courtyard in grainy darkness. This evening, with the shadows of the trees darkening the entrance further, her only means of navigation was touching her toe to the snow-crusted footpath. She managed warily, clutching her two string bags of groceries and regretting having gone out so late to the outdoor market to buy the bruised vegetables that were sold off cheaply at the end of the day. She crossed the threshold of the vestibule, her eyes still unadjusted to the near-perfect gloom. Florence stopped. Inside the vestibule’s damp cavern, she had a sense she was not alone. She strained to hear what she’d thought was the rasping of a shoe, a breath. But in the predatory stillness could be heard only her own shallow, frightened breathing. No, she had not been mistaken. Whoever was lurking at the edge of the darkness had chosen this moment to break his inertness and move toward her.
She sought an escape—the door or else the stairs—but could not tell which way was which. The person was clutching her arm. An instinctive spasm took hold of her: the string bag full of onions in her free hand traced an arc in the air like the shot of a medieval mace. Her scream broke the breath-heavy silence and she lashed again with her bag of onions at the intruder. She felt him let go of her arm and she scrambled as fast as she could, falling up and over the first two stairs until she was able to grip the railing and lift herself up to the first landing.
It was then that Florence heard the whimper. She glanced down, and there, in a streak of weak moonlight, she saw the lean figure crumpled at the bottom of the stairs.
“Seldon?”
A groan.
Her footsteps clattered back down the stairs. “Oh heavens, have I hurt you?”
“My gut will recover. Not sure about my pride.” He had on a fur cap with the ear flaps pulled down.
“Why didn’t you say it was you?”
“I might have, if you hadn’t belted me with that sack of…what are these?”
“Our dinner.” On her hands and knees Florence tried to pat around for the onions that had rolled away.
“Leon told me not to come strolling in unannounced anymore. I said I would be down here at half past seven. I’ve been standing here for close to an hour.”
Now Florence remembered her own directive to Leon. “I left him with Yulik. He must have forgotten,” she said guiltily.
Seldon held what loose onions he’d found as, half limping, he followed Florence up the stairs. She fit the key into the lock and opened the door to the common hall. No one was in the corridor, thank goodness. A light was burning in the kitchen, at the corridor’s end. Someone was there, clinking pans and pots. Seldon set his load down and began to slip off his boots.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t bother!” she hissed.
She ought to have said nothing at all, because just then Essie stuck her head out and peered into the corridor. Her apron was dusted with flour.
“Florence! Just who I want to see.”
“You’re up late baking,” she said, trying with all her power to sound like a person whose nerves were not flayed and raw.
“I completely forgot that I promised to make a napoleon torte for one of the girls at work. She’s leaving on maternity. And I ran out of condensed milk. Oh, hello, Seldon,” Essie said, spotting him by the cloak rack. Her eyes squinted suspiciously behind her slightly flour-dusted glasses. “Haven’t seen you here in a while.”
“Good evening, Essie.”
To Florence she said, “You wouldn’t have a can of the condensed stuff in your cupboard?”
“I’ll take a look.”
Florence tried to hide her impatience as she looked for the condensed milk, with Essie waiting in the doorway. Standing on a chair, she felt around on the top shelf where she kept the dry foods, macaroni, sugar, soap. Yulik was turning in his cot, sleeping fitfully. Seldon had joined Leon, and the two were lighting cigarettes by the window, which they’d cracked open. She found the can and gave it to Essie.
“You saved me. I’ll get you two cans next week.”
“One will do.”
“Well, then.” She looked around and smiled wanly at the men. “Ciao.”
Florence dropped the hook in the eye and latched the door. They were all aware of the child asleep, and talked quietly. There was a new development in the plan Seldon had worked out with Hank Kelly, the man from the embassy, who had promised to help him. There was to be a party in about seven weeks for all of the embassy staff and their families, at a lodge in the village of Uspenskoye, where some of the foreign embassies apparently had their dachas. To this rural outing, the embassy staffs would be shuttled by turns in official cars. Kelly predicted that, with so many guests being ferried and some of the drivers off duty, he would be able to take the wheel of his own car as a volunteer driver. On the afternoon of the party, they would all dress in their best clothing—“your Sunday finest”—and take a trolley out as far as they could to the station of Usovo, and wait there for Kelly to pick them up in his automobile on the way from Uspenskoye. He would drive them back to the embassy compound. Kelly would provide them with the names of several embassy workers, including an actual staff couple and their child. Kelly’s official ID should suffice at the security point. Once everyone was behind the safety of the embassy walls, an appeal on their behalf could begin.
“But what if the guards stop us and ask for documents?”
Kelly had told Seldon that it was unlikely that the guard would check anyone’s papers but his. If, however, theirs were requested, Seldon and Florence were to begin arguing like a married couple, in the queen’s best English, about who had been entrusted to bring the family’s documents.
“Speak like you have a fat plum in your mouth and they’ll never suspect you’re not English,” he advised her.
“What about Yulik?”
“Best that he not say a word. Dress him in a foppy little sailor suit. Something starched and fresh. That goes for the rest of us. Flora, get a new dress made if you have to, and buy new shoes.”
“Shall I get a set of tails?” Leon said with a sense of doom. But Seldon did not blanch at this. “Some fresh trouser braces and a new hat would be advisable,” he said, then added, “Now, listen to me carefully. You are to pack only the essentials. A day bag. No suitcases.”
“Wait, wait,” Florence interrupted. “How can we know—even if everything goes as this…this Kelly says, how can we be sure the embassy won’t toss us back out? We’re Soviet nationals, after all.”
“According to this country’s laws, yes. But we were all issued our new passports illegally, which means we never stripped ourselves of our previous citizenships. It was chicanery. They poached our passports and that’s that. You have a child, for heaven’s sake! It would be heartless for them to toss you out.”
“People will know we’re missing.”
“Leave everything in the apartment just as it is. Tell your neighbors you’re taking a short holiday. By the time anyone notices, we’ll be on a train to Finland with new papers.”
They sat talking over the plan in cautious whispers meant less to keep the child from waking up than to keep themselves from being alarmed by their own audacity. They spoke calmly, as though they were discussing the plans and fates of other people. Even after Seldon gave them all the information he had, they went over the details for the better part of two hours, until a light knocking on the door finally broke the inertia.
Florence tiptoed to the door and in Russian inquired who was there. “Me,” came the taut treble of Essie’s voice. Florence unlatched the lock and found Essie holding a platter with several pieces of napoleon torte, her eyes scanning the room. “Oh, Seldon, you’re still here.” Essie’s surprise seemed as feigned as the occasion of her visit. She made an effort to smile. “I thought if you were still up, you might have a taste. I made more than I need.”
As though waking from a trance, Seldon rose to his feet. He donned his coat and took a squa
re of torte off Essie’s tray. Turning to address Leon and Florence, he said, “I ought to be out of your hair at this hour.” Then, taking a bite of the torte, he looked with surprise at Essie. “Umm. Terrifically tasty.”
“I put rum in, just a splash.”
“That must be it.”
And bending his head in salute, he took his leave.
—
IN THE UNINTERRUPTED FLOW of days that followed, Florence went out and bought new clothes and fabrics. For herself she purchased a pleated tartan skirt, which she hemmed to below the knee, a wide-brimmed hat, and short matching gloves. For Leon she was able to find a button-up vest and striped tie. For Yulik she bought a pair of checkered flannel pants, which she intended to shorten on her sewing machine into a pair of knickerbockers like those she’d seen in foreign magazines, a style she had decided fit the pampered child of English diplomats. She worried about Yulik’s role in their scheme but told him nothing of the plan, allowing herself to hope that when the time came he would be prepared to play along. He understood English, after all, though at the age of five he already knew better than to speak it outside their room. Still, in private, Florence began speaking to him exclusively in English, correcting his pronunciation more forcibly than she ever had in the past, with an insistence he found odd and stifling at first, but that with time he began to accept in his usual good-natured way. In her mind she was now daily rehearsing the testimony she would give if the car was stopped by a Russian guard—“Why, on a short outing? I hardly imagined we’d need documents.” Alone in front of the small mirror by the door, she pronounced each word as crisply and carelessly as she imagined an Englishwoman might speak it. In this way she girded herself for their departure and at the same time tried not to think about the future. The whole thing could be called off at any moment. And yet, several times during the course of a day, she found herself slipping unconsciously across that invisible border between reality and fantasy, the present and the future—she and Leon, in the costumes she was so scrupulously assembling, and Julian still in his English schoolboy’s getup, with their new papers in hand, crossing into Latvia, then Finland, the lashing wind on the ship, the final passage across the ocean. The worst-case scenario she did not dare let herself imagine. If harrowing and unbearable punishments lay in store, there was no sense in trying to anticipate them. Strangely, it was no longer their imminent escape (still a month away) but her impending meeting with Subotin that kept Florence awake at night.
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