“How free are Americans who have no jobs and no money?” he asks. “How free are Negroes who do the same work but aren’t paid as well and aren’t allowed to sit in restaurants in the South or use the same facilities? How free are the prostitutes who work the steel mills in Gary? I bet they don’t feel free.”
“Are there no prostitutes in the Soviet Union? Or does the government pay them?” she asks.
“I wouldn’t know,” he says. “Still, I choose to live here. I want to live here and die here. With you.” His voice trails off. With her?
“I’m ready to hear what you promised you’d tell me.” Even if Weaver reveals something, will she pass it on to Charlie? The thought almost stops her, but she needs to know for herself. What can Weaver tell her that could possibly absolve him of what he did to her? “The carrot-and-stick thing is getting old,” she whispers.
“I know.” He blows out a puff of air, shuts his eyes for a moment. “Listen . . . back in ’46, when I broke it off with you, it wasn’t my choice, Roz.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I had to; that’s what I wanted to say. I was made to leave you.”
She sits there blinking.
“Even after the bomb, when you were so miserable, we loved each other, didn’t we? I was committed to you. I would never have left unless I had to. You must have known it didn’t feel right.”
She thinks of the days she couldn’t get out of bed, the morning she was fired at the Institute and sent away with a guard humiliating her as he escorted her out the door. And he’s claiming he didn’t choose to leave her?
“But you married another woman,” she says.
“I know that’s how it appeared.”
“It didn’t just look that way. You married her.”
“Nothing you think you know about that is true,” he insists.
It hurts to breathe as deeply as she needs to.
“Then explain it.” Her voice is trembling with compressed ire.
“I was forced to be with her.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. How is that possible? Who forced you?” Her anger is a horse that won’t respond to a sharp tug of the reins. She slugs down more Scotch and immediately chokes.
“You okay?” he asks. “Raise your hands. It gives your lungs more room to spasm.”
“Shut up,” she says, coughing, sputtering.
He looks upset. She tries to swallow some water but it doesn’t help. The coughing is making her cry and she scrabbles in her purse for a hankie to wipe her tears.
“Roz, listen,” he says after a while, when the gasping finally subsides. He leans forward, cups her cheek in his hand. “I got involved in something years ago like a fool, and I’m trying to free myself. It dictated everything I did for too many years. Including leaving you. But it won’t go on much longer. I can’t let it.”
“This ‘thing’ you got involved in—does it have to do with the Russians?” There. She’s said it aloud.
“I can’t tell you anything more. Right now, it’s dangerous for you to know even this much.”
“Come on.”
“I’m not joking. I will tell you. Just not until I’m freer . . . and then I’ll tell you everything.”
Charlie told her not to push Weaver. To give him time to open up. Can she believe a word he’s said? If he is involved with the Russians, he insists he’s trying to extricate himself. He wants no more. Can she have faith that any of it is true? She hates how much she longs to believe him. She hates how much she cares. Love can be so tenacious.
As they walk to her building after dinner, he gently takes her hand. Then grips it. She’s with a man who may have sold atomic secrets to the Russians, who may have betrayed her country. The fact that he says he wants out—is that enough?
When they open the door to her apartment, she reaches for the light switch, but he stops her. “It’s cooler in the dark,” he says.
“Yes. And prettier.”
Lake Shore Drive and the glow of the city are wavering in the last of the day’s heat like a mirage in the desert. The season has been a cornucopia of torrid days and shivery cold—a typical Chicago summer. Rosalind steps to the windows to open them farther. But as she cranks out the casements, Weaver comes up behind her, presses himself to her.
“God, I love you, you know.” He models her body with his hands, his lips near her ear. His breath torn and desirous. “All I’ve ever wanted is you.”
“Maybe you should leave and come back when you can tell me everything.”
“No. There isn’t time.” His voice breaks.
“What? What are you saying?”
“Shhhh.” Weaver nuzzles his face into her shoulder. His lips are dry and burning. Kissing her from her neck to her ear and back again, despite her clenched fists, her initial coolness, he sets off a sensation that sings from her lips to the nexus between her legs and sets loose a slippery, reckless desire.
“Let me in,” he whispers. “Please, let’s be together again.”
It’s been so long since she felt anything. The sudden craving is painful and gorgeous, a drug she’s ravenous for. Why not take this pleasure? Why can’t a woman be the hungry one and use a man to satisfy her own needs? She’s surprised to find herself turning, kissing him. As he gently unbuttons her clothes, she reaches for the fastening of his trousers. Her entire body feels electrified. She wants this. She needs this.
“My Rosalind,” he says. He pulls her close. His skin pressed to hers, the breadth of his chest against her naked breasts, his hands on her buttocks, all make her gasp. Nothing has felt this right for a long time. Pulling her down to the floor, he caresses her where she hasn’t been touched by anyone but herself in years. She is consumed by the swirling pleasure and mad with longing as he stops to draw a condom packet from his discarded trousers. When he enters her, they both cry out. It doesn’t take long for them to reach a crescendo: raucous, mutual, explosive. Afterward, his full weight pinning her to the carpet, she reflects on how Zeke warned her not to give herself away, and she smiles in the dark. I did it for me. All for me.
* * *
As a child Rosalind had little sense of herself as a physical being. They say children imitate the physicality of their mothers toward them and, by mirroring, learn to understand their own physical impact. While she is sure Louisa loved her, her sister far too often withheld love for even the smallest infraction. Roz recalls running to her sister for a hug and being pushed away, and then trying hard to remember what she’d done wrong. There were days Louisa hugged Rosalind and told her what a good girl she was. Then weeks where she was cool and distant.
So Rosalind soothed herself by living almost entirely in her own head. She liked blocks and numbers and puzzles. Solving was her savior, the best way to quietly soothe herself. In school, Rosalind was forced to play games and attend gym class. But she couldn’t wait until these physical interludes were over and she could get back to thinking, at which she felt more adept.
In fifth grade, her young gym teacher, Miss Mann, took her aside.
“Rosalind, you’re perfectly capable of hitting a baseball or doing the dance steps, but you won’t try. You’re graceful. You’re strong. But you have your head in the clouds. What’s stopping you?” Miss Mann asked.
The science teacher, Mr. Roberts, was waiting for Rosalind in the lab. She’d been looking forward to it all week. The faster Rosalind answered, the sooner she’d be able to don safety goggles, grab the Bunsen burner, and watch a ribbon of magnesium shoot blue-white flames.
“I just don’t see how those things will make my life better,” she said.
Miss Mann smiled.
“In fact, they’ll do something for you that your math and science and essays will never do.”
“What?” Roz asked. How absurd, she thought.
“I’m going to let you figure it out. It’s an
experiment. You have until two weeks from Friday to tell me your findings. Until then, every time you’re in gym class, or doing anything physical, I want you to think about what it’s giving you. I look forward to your discovery.”
Because Miss Mann set it up as an experiment, Rosalind readily took on the challenge. She kept notes, paid attention, treated it like real research. She observed the rush of energy that flowed through her muscles after dance class, how swimming left her both exhausted and calmer. How she was even good at volleyball when she paid attention. Really good. It was a revelation.
On the indicated Friday, Miss Mann pulled her aside again. “Are you ready to tell me what you’ve discovered about exercise?”
“I found out lots of good things,” she said and enumerated them. And then before she left the echoing gym, she asked, “Do I have to stop the experiment?”
That made the gym teacher laugh. Rosalind was one of Miss Mann’s favorite students after that.
But it wasn’t until Rosalind first made love to Weaver that she knew the exquisite extent to which her body could offer pleasure. Weaver woke her up to a physical incandescence she didn’t know was possible, and it was a great part of what made losing him so unbearable. Now, lying beneath him on the living room floor, she is washed in the sweet exhaustion of her release. She’s both wildly happy and terrified.
* * *
After a while Weaver gets up.
“I need a smoke,” he says. Rosalind yanks the afghan off the sofa and covers her nakedness, pulls one of the sofa pillows down to raise her head. He lights and puffs on his cigarette for a moment. But even in the dusky light, she notices his hands are shaking. His mouth looks odd.
“You okay?” she asks.
“I should go,” he says. “I would really like to stay, but I have a meeting in the morning. I’m sorry. This isn’t me wanting to escape you, darling. Not at all.”
She sits up and, wrapping the afghan tighter, watches him dress. Ducking into the bathroom, he comes back looking slick and handsome. The comb has drawn furrows into his dampened hair. His tie is perfect.
“Listen,” he says. Settling down on the sofa near her, he straightens her bangs with his fingertips. “I know it’s forward of me, but I stuck some condoms in the bedside drawer for future use. Are you offended?”
“No.” Now that she’s tasted from the well, she craves more. He must know it.
“Also, there’s something I need to give you.” He reaches into the breast pocket of his jacket and sets in her hand a small sealed manila envelope. In the half dark, she can just read Rosalind Porter penned across it in his perfect handwriting.
Her fingers identify something hard and odd-shaped beneath the manila skin.
“What is it?”
“A key.”
“To your apartment?”
He shakes his head.
“To a safe-deposit box. Put it away. Somewhere you won’t forget. If something happens to me, then you can open it. But not unless something happens. Promise.”
“If something happens? What sort of something?”
“Just put it away and don’t think about it, please.”
“You ask a lot.” She stares down at the tiny envelope. All that stands between her and something she wants to know is a wisp of golden paper and perhaps a ride on the bus to his bank. “Is this a test? To see if I can follow instructions?”
“I’ll know if you open it. I always know when you’re feeling guilty.”
It used to be true. But he hasn’t guessed anything about Szydlo. Maybe he doesn’t have that power over her anymore.
“Where is your safe-deposit box anyway?”
“The information is inside. Put it somewhere you won’t be thinking about it. Your own bank. Set up your own safe-deposit box.”
“And when I finally open yours, what will I find?”
“A note from me to you. Not to be read unless I’m gone. And things I needed to put on paper. Things that need to be told. It will tell you what to do with the information.”
“That’s cryptic. Are you planning on leaving the country?”
“I’m not planning anything like that.”
“But why all this spy stuff? Why not just hand me your precious note? Why put it in the bank?”
“Because if I make it hard enough, you’ll actually wait until something happens to me. And no one should read this until then.”
“Is something going to happen to you?”
“Look. Don’t let anyone have this key. No one. Not unless it’s time. My life depends on it.”
He means it. Utterly. His eyes in the wisp of the Lake Shore Drive lights are the color of an oak barrel. And terrified.
“Jesus. Okay . . .”
“Swear it.”
“I don’t want to swear it.”
“Swear it,” he says, snatching the envelope from her hand.
She looks at his face. It’s mapped with secrets.
“If you ever loved me, you’ll keep this promise. This is not a joke. It’s life and death.”
“Okay,” she says. “Give the envelope back.”
“Do you swear it?”
“I swear it.” He hands the envelope to her and she folds her fingers around it. It seems so small. So potent. A little bomb that practically pulses beneath her fingertips.
CHAPTER TEN
Charlie stands in the yard shivering. Snow is falling in flakes as fat as coat buttons. They whirl and land, then teeter and are picked up by the wind again. It’s his third winter in Japan and the coldest yet. A daily desperation prickles and pains him, grows more undeniable with each dawn. Every day is an insult. But today will hurt more than usual. This afternoon, the men stand staring at Dr. Firth, the only camp doctor, his hands tied behind his back, bound to the flagpole. Firth is a kind man. A gentle man. And the camp’s only source of medical care. Working without medications, without even bandages or real tools, he has done all he can to treat the injuries the Japanese inflict on the GIs every day. Men have been made to carry boxes with iconic red crosses emblazoned on them and the words “medical supplies” into the warehouse up by the train station. No one has ever seen those supplies again.
So, using torn rags, Firth’s stanched their blood. With a cadged sewing needle, he’s stitched their facial cuts. He’s even cut off gangrenous toes as hygienically as he could in such unhygienic conditions, with boiled kitchen knives (and a guard watching, taking them away immediately), and managed to save lives.
Now Firth’s eyes cannot hide a desperate gleam. There will be no one to stitch the doctor up. The rumor is that when one of the higher-ranked Japanese soldiers entered the infirmary this morning, Chin Scar, Old Glass Eye’s assistant, was sitting in a chair. He had the good doctor on his knees in front of him, and Chin Scar’s penis was in Dr. Firth’s mouth. Everyone knows Chin Scar likes men because he feels free to touch the GIs in an intimate way and loves to whisper lascivious-sounding Japanese into their ears. He is partial to good-looking men. Dr. Firth, even half-starved, is a particularly handsome man. A married man who speaks often of his beautiful wife, his family. If he’s been caught with Chin Scar, there’s no doubt Chin Scar forced himself on the doctor. And yet it’s Firth who will have to pay. Charlie has a sharp, roiling pain in his stomach. What will they do to Firth? Old Glass Eye comes out in front of the men with a particularly evil expression on his face.
“You watch,” he says to the men. “You eyes closed, you die too.” And then he makes a gesture for the GIs to step back. What the hell? From his back pants pocket, Old Glass Eye pulls a stick of dynamite, the kind they’ve been using at the dam site. With perverse showmanship, he waves the stick at the men. His eyes are glittering with delight. With menace. Two other guards come to either side of the doctor to force his mouth open. The doctor struggles, whipping his head from side to side. But in time, his mou
th is pried opened enough that the stick of dynamite can be thrust to the back of his throat. Old Glass Eye moves it in and out in a lurid gesture. Jesus! God! Charlie, who’s given up praying, starts to pray. The doctor gags and shakes his head, attempting to shove the TNT stick out of his mouth with his tongue. It’s lodged too deeply, merely waggles from the machinations of his tongue. And then Old Glass Eye pulls out a book of matches with a flourish, lights the stick, and runs like hell.
Charlie can feel the excruciating power of the explosion. The pressure on his eyeballs. The warm, wet substance as it lands on his face and hands and in his hair. Human flesh. The soul of a good man. “Noooooo!”
* * *
Hyperventilating, he leaps from his bed as though it’s on fire. As though he could outrun the black depths of his memory. Christ. He’s at Peggy’s and his screams could wake the neighborhood. Firth. Poor Firth!
He has no patience with his mind, which doesn’t seem strong enough to climb out of its prison, which forces him to relive the worst moments again and again. Children are sleeping upstairs with stuffed animals. Children who’ve never known fear and who he hopes will never know it. He tells himself he’s warm, dry, safe, healthy. He has a real bed. Real clothes. No lice. No beriberi. No more horrors. The horrors are behind him. He’d love to climb beneath the sheets again. But his wrinkled bed is a dangerous sea of fear and memories. A place a man could drown.
Instead, he brushes his teeth, slides on his shoes, dresses more warmly than he needs to for the temperature. Anything to stop the shivering. This late, two A.M., the sky outside his basement door is the flat gray of the Russian bullets Binder displays in his office. The streets echo; the air doesn’t move. But at least he’s a free man. It’s an American sky. He needs to move. He needs to breathe. He needs to escape.
On North Avenue, the light from Kaminski’s Bakery spills out onto the alleyway. Through the window, he can see clouds of flour. When Linda worked here, he used to kiss her neck and breathe in the wheaty smell. Every inch of this neighborhood is familiar. The world is recovering. “Everything’s okay,” he tells himself. “Keep breathing. Everything is okay.”
Atomic Love Page 11