These were my directions.
Peter, it’s me.
Have you eaten lunch?
Not yet.
Good. The tension in his voice jumping through the line into my ear. He clears his throat as if there’s something stuck in it. I’ve ordered room service. Come up to 1412.
I pass through the lobby to the elevators. The lighting everywhere on the brown side of dim, as if the Great Depression never ended. The loiterers mostly out-of-town people, I would guess, Broadway ticket holders and old Jewish men in hats. This establishment not in danger of being mistaken for the Plaza, certainly, or the Pierre, or the famous Carlyle with that delightful black singer Bobby Short singing Cole Porter with martini in hand—not that I expected such luxuries. But then neither, I confess, did I quite envision A Diamond District Depot as my cabdriver referred to this establishment, with a cheery grimace, when I gave him the address. What diamonds I don’t know, I’m sure. The music in the elevator is jazz, at least, lifting my heart, while my nose does battle with the lingering odors of potato latkes and other fried traditions wafting up from the kitchens below.
* * *
—
Is this your regular hotel?
I don’t have a regular hotel, Peter says in a defensive tone. This isn’t something I’m in the habit of doing.
You have never stayed here before?
No.
I believe him. However, I can’t help pointing out, we are not really staying here, are we?
His only reply is to pull up the corner of the bedsheet so it covers more of his bare chest.
A moment later, to lighten the mood, I pull the same corner of sheet back down to his navel.
He tugs it up again…
I yank it down…
Both of us laughing now as I roll on top of him. And to my surprise—neither of us any sort of spring chicken—I feel him saluting me down there, battle-station ready. You again? I say with a cheeky smile, for we have been through this happy dance just a bit earlier, before the lunch of blinis and Bulgarian caviar sent up by room service; the bottle of French champagne with the flowers on the label; his attempt at calming his nerves by making small talk—Did you know Johnny Burnette of the Rock and Roll Trio used to be the elevator operator here?—his flinching when I tried to loosen his necktie because it looked as though it was strangling him; his fumbling his way through the relative delicacy of my new French brassiere to reach, hungrily, my middle-aged breasts, which had been waiting for him. And even as my body moves over him this second time, slower and more knowing than before, I find myself thrown back to our beginning together, that first summer on the porch of the cottage on Block Island, the crickets clamoring all around and Martha and little Jean—little Jean with her nightmares—asleep upstairs, and Peter grabbing my hair, twisting my head around, kissing me hard on the mouth, and running away.
Peter…
Oh, Jesus, he groans, as if he is dying.
* * *
—
Then it’s separate trains home to separate houses: late afternoon for me, early evening for him. I ride pressed in among the commuter types. Unshowered, fragrant with him, but otherwise well enough disguised. The fellow next to me—camel hair coat, English bulldogs on his necktie—politely offers me a section of his New York Times, which I politely decline.
Ravished and unclean, hardly caring where I am going, I sit with this happiness, my airy new friend, hanging on to its balloon string with both hands.
21 March
Ten minutes past noon my doorbell rings. At first wary—Yasha is at school and perhaps something has happened?—I am then quite astonished.
Peter.
Sorry, but I had to see you.
His overcoat already off, here in my foyer, followed by his suit jacket. Now his necktie, flapping shirttails, shoes hitting the floor.
We never make it upstairs. Afterward, I ask if he would like lunch or coffee while he’s here. He says he would like nothing more than to stay and stay, but he must go, he’ll just make the 1:15 train back to work.
Be careful who sees you, I warn him.
From his expression I can tell that he misunderstands and thinks I mean Martha or Jean, or perhaps local gossips. But that is not who I mean. There are things going on lately that I have told no one about, not even him, certain unknown individuals in the area who have no business paying attention to my doings yet pay attention all the same in ways they assume I do not recognize—they do not know that I am onto them, and I intend to keep it that way.
Dressed and ready to return to the office, Peter opens my front door. A taxi is already waiting at the curb; he must have called it while I was in the bathroom.
You know you make me very happy? he says, giving me a last kiss before departing.
And though I am not his wife, I straighten his tie for him and place my hand flat against his chest, just over his heart, wanting so much to feel the vivid life that thrums inside him at this very moment, silently beating my name.
24 March
In a recent issue of Partisan Review—sent to me out of respect, supposedly, by one of the editors—my former lover Alexsei Kapler gives the following brief interview concerning my defection:
When I heard of her departure I couldn’t believe it. I have my own ideas about Russian women; I have known many. And I believe something terrible, something abnormal must have happened to Svetlana. What she did is unforgivable.
29 March
Someone is watching me. All morning a black sedan of some American make—Chevy Monte Carlo? Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme?—has been parked on the other side of Wilson Road, about thirty degrees to the left of my front door. Inside a man wearing a tan raincoat and black heavy-framed eyeglasses appearing to read the newspaper, but more accurately using it to shield his face from my position at the window in Yasha’s room. Yasha, thank goodness, is at school. If he were here, God help me, I do not know what I would do.
Careful not to make myself visible through the windows, I go to the phone in my room and dial Peter’s office.
Good morning, Wardlow Jenks and Hayes, Peter Horvath’s office.
Beverly, I must speak to Peter right away.
I’m afraid he’s in a meeting, Mrs. Evans.
Please understand, it must be right this second. My life may be at stake.
Now a little pause. For Beverly the secretary already has ideas about me, this I know, theories honed from many such humorless exchanges in the past and her watchdog role in Peter’s affairs. I once imagined that she was in love with Peter to some pathological degree; but when finally I met her with her helmet of dull brown hair and her proper string of family pearls, I understood that her fighting over his turf was more likely a repressed form of class vanity. For all I know, her mother’s maiden name is Jenks.
Fortunately, she’s too well mannered to sigh out loud. I’ll see what I can do. Please hold.
This verb hold, once archaically tender, even romantic in its implications, now a chiseling tool designed to pry my client fingers off the phone. (To say nothing of the contradictory attack of the word please.) Followed by a most insistent piece of recorded Mozart, until Peter’s voice comes breaking through:
Beverly says your life is in danger? What the hell’s going on?
I tell him about the man with the black glasses and the fake newspaper in the Chevy Impala, Bel Air, Caprice…
Maybe he’s just waiting for the street cleaner, Peter suggests, no longer sounding much concerned.
I point out that today is not an official street-cleaning day on Wilson Road.
Or he had a fight with his wife and just feels like reading the newspaper in peace, Peter says. I’d put money on it.
I am the only house he’s watching like this.
Peter allows himself a very faint grunt of frustration. Okay…So wha
t would you like me to do?
Ask Dick Thompson.
I’d rather not bother Dick with something like this unless absolutely necessary.
Or Kennan. I have George’s number and will call myself.
Please don’t do that. I’ll call Dick. Wait by the phone. He hangs up.
Not feeling better yet, heart racing, I use the time to return to Yasha’s room and peek out the window again.
The black sedan is gone.
The phone rings. Dick says he’s sending someone over to check on the situation. He should be there in about twenty minutes.
It left.
What?
The car has driven away.
Peter’s silence now like a stone dropped from the heights of Olympus. I’ll tell Dick it was a false alarm, he says tersely.
What if the man goes to Yasha’s school and kidnaps him?
I promise you that’s not going to happen in a million years. I have to go now, Svetlana. I’ve already missed half my meeting. We’ll talk later.
3 April
I went down to Urken Hardware to buy a peephole for my front door. This was Dick Thompson’s idea of comfort for me after he finally heard from Peter about my alarming visitor the other day. Though Dick did not offer to pay for my peephole. What’s more, it strikes me that if peepholes are the best the CIA can come up with to protect its charges, the Cold War must not be going very well on this side of the ocean.
Mr. Urken himself came over to install the apparatus, complimented me on my new backyard swimming pool (covered with a tarpaulin ever since completion last fall), and as he was getting into his pickup truck to leave asked if I’d heard the news that my pool laborer, Nelson, was deported back to Guatemala last month. I said no, I had not heard, what a terrible disgusting thing for the American government—any government—to do to a nice hardworking man like that. And Mr. Urken, for his part, did not reply, did not in fact seem clear in his own mind that this deporting of my Nelson back to a country with the highest murder rate in the world was a terrible disgusting thing. And then he drove away.
I think I will take my hardware business somewhere else from now on. Although it may be difficult to fully separate from Urken; it is a complicated arrangement that we now have one way and another, all these installment payments I owe for my various pieces of home equipment. Very capitalist, indeed.
7 April
Mama, why are we here?
It’s a friend’s house, I explain to Yasha, curled up beside me in the front seat of the Dodge, which is parked, in the fading twilight, in a street unfamiliar to him, across from a house he does not know.
Is someone sick?
No, darling. Don’t worry. We’ll go home soon, I promise. Try and go back to sleep.
I watch my son until his eyes close again.
Across the road, in Peter’s house, lights have come on. That must be the kitchen, I realize.
And Martha, setting the table for dinner.
10 April
Seen through my new peephole, Dottie Carpenter looms larger and more influential than I recall from real life.
I consider not opening my door to her, but in truth my options are limited. She will have seen my shadow blocking the peephole; yes, my shadow, like a calling card with no person behind it.
Hello, Dottie. I do not smile.
How are you, Lana? I just thought I’d take the plunge and drop by. I haven’t seen you in weeks. Oh, and I brought this. She holds out something not previously captured by the peephole.
A home-baked apple pie.
I invite her in to tea. Will she take a spoonful of jam? She will. And a slice of her pie? Well, if I insist…She and Thomas have missed me at All Saints’. Am I truly all right? And Yasha? Truly? Yes, yes, and yes, I answer her. She hopes—doesn’t want to assume, of course, but hopes—that no feelings of lingering embarrassment or…or anything like that from my birthday dinner might be keeping me from expressing my faith at church? Because the last thing she or Thomas would ever want is to think that they might have somehow inadvertently…impeded…rather than encouraged—do I understand?—my faith in the Holy Spirit.
My faith is not impeded, I assure her. It is very much the same as it was before. More pie?
As soon as I can, I walk her out to the street. Practically hand her into her car.
Your son…I say.
Billy? What about him?
Please tell Billy from me that he is a brave boy. Please tell him that from Mrs. Evans.
Dottie Carpenter’s face hardens. And I am suddenly quite satisfied that this is the last truly personal exchange we will ever have together.
13 April
I’m being watched, Dick.
I don’t think so, Svetlana—we’ve checked it out carefully.
You think I’m inventing this black car?
Inventing? No. But you’re under a good deal of stress. And it’s natural that this stress might make you sensitive to certain…let’s just say, certain threats that understandably feel real but aren’t.
You agree with this, Peter?
A brief pause from Peter, weighing his words on a scale. I think Dick’s right, Svetlana.
You think he’s right. Then why would the same car always be parked so near my house?
Many possible reasons. And many possible cars, Dick answered. But believe me, Svetlana, the least likely of all the reasons—by far—is that the KGB is pursuing you in broad daylight. They’re not that stupid.
No, I agree. They’re not stupid.
Dick pats my hand and tries on a smile. Feel better?
A little, I reply, which is almost true.
Well, says Peter grimly. Why don’t we order?
Good idea, Dick agrees, scribbling his name and member number on a lined card with a truncated pencil. What’ll everyone have? Chicken pot pie’s always reliable. And the crab cakes. Lobster bisque is good too.
Just the bisque for me, thanks, Peter says.
Come on there, Pete. You’re too skinny to be on a diet. Dick is teasing his compatriot, I see, though Peter doesn’t smile. Suit yourself. Dick writes down the order. How about you, Svetlana?
Crab cakes, thank you, Dick. And one vodka martini, please.
Two sets of eyes, which they think I don’t notice, land on me at once. “1 Vodka martini,” Dick writes in his spy’s cryptic hand, along with iced teas for himself and Peter, and passes the card to a waiter in a beige jacket.
Our table sits in the corner of a high-ceilinged side room lit by brass chandeliers and one extremely tall window. Like most Party officials and mafia dons, Dick tends to position himself with walls protecting his back. His university club is said to have a number of authors and diplomats in its members book, rather than assassins or spies, though looking around the place I see no boldface names that immediately spring to mind. I confess I find it surprising that my CIA minder would ask me to lunch in a place of such public visibility—his usual preferred atmosphere being a bit more surreptitious, not to say cheaper—but then perhaps today’s setting reflects some accounting on his part of my own diminished celebrity in this country.
I think Jasper Penshaw is a member here, Peter remarks. Isn’t he, Dick? He turns to me. You remember Jasper and his wife, Raisa Malinov, from Block Island? They gave that dinner for you.
At the memory of that night on Block Island, Peter’s and my eyes connect across the table, two torn halves of a postcard suddenly fitted together. A method of mutual secret recognition, I suddenly recall, not unknown to KGB men and those poor Rosenbergs.
Dick, ever vigilant at reading others’ thoughts, segues as if on cue: Since we’re discussing transplanted Russians, I’ll get to the reason for our lunch today. Peter?
Peter, head still intertwined with mine on his island porch, appears taken aback by Dick’s sudden reve
rsal; then he recovers and, with a tender warning glance at me, pulls an envelope out of his briefcase and slides it across the table.
This was delivered to my office a few days ago.
Something in his voice; the sight of the envelope. And suddenly I am frightened.
It was addressed to me. Peter hesitates. But it concerns you and Josef.
The waiter, an emergency room Dionysus, has appeared beside our table with three glasses on a small round tray. Vodka martini?
For me. My hand shakes only a little as I swallow a third of the drink. Only then do I feel able to slip the letter from its cover and begin reading to myself:
“Dear Mr. Horvath: I am writing on behalf of Joseph G. Alliluyev, who has asked that I get in touch with his mother regarding his desire to visit the U.S.”
I stare at Peter.
Read the rest.
I put down the letter, nauseated from hope.
Svetlana, Dick steps in, whoever wrote this claims to be an American journalist, but he won’t identify himself. He’s passing on what he reports to be a confidential request from Josef that you obtain a three-month tourist visa for him. He says Josef teaches medicine at the First Moscow Institute and is divorced with a five-year-old son. Our sources have confirmed the latter facts.
Yes, Roman Smoluchowski told me.
Who? I notice Dick already scribbling down my good neighbor’s name—and suddenly we are back in the USSR, in any café or living room you care to name, and there is my father’s picture staring down at us from the wall.
It doesn’t matter, I tell him. Josef denounced me, you remember, the year I arrived here.
According to the letter, Peter explains, Josef now admits to being coerced into denouncing you by pressure from the Soviet government. But he says he’s fully changed his mind and wants to see you.
According to the letter, Dick repeats pointedly.
Peter reaches over then, because I have not moved a finger, and turns the envelope upside down so that a small photograph falls onto the table.
The Red Daughter Page 18