Other times, he attempted to bait me, saying Borya had tried to turn himself in, in exchange for me. Once, a metal cart rolled down the hallway, knocking into a wall with a bang, and he joked that it was Boris, pounding on the walls of Lubyanka trying to get in.
Or he’d say Boris was spotted at an event, looking fine with his wife on his arm. “Unencumbered” was the word he used. Sometimes it was not his wife, but a pretty young woman. “French, I think.” I’d force myself to smile and say I was glad to hear he was happy and healthy.
Semionov never once laid a hand on me, nor even threatened to. But the violence was always there, his gentle demeanor always calculated. I had known men like him all my life and knew what they were capable of.
* * *
At night, my cellmates and I tied strips of musty linen around our eyes—a futile attempt to block out the lights that never shut off. Guards came and went. Sleep came and went.
On nights when sleep didn’t come at all, I’d breathe in and out, trying to settle my mind long enough to open a window to the baby growing inside me. I held my hand on my stomach, trying to feel something. Once, I thought I felt something small—as small as a bubble breaking. I held on to that feeling as long as I could.
As my belly grew, I was allowed to lie down an hour longer than the other women. I was also given one extra portion of kasha and the occasional serving of steamed cabbage. My cellmates gave me portions of their food as well.
Eventually, they gave me a bigger smock. My cellmates asked to touch my belly and feel the baby kick. His kicks felt like a promise of a life outside Cell No. 7. Our littlest prisoner, they’d coo.
* * *
The night began like the others. I was roused from bed by the poke of a truncheon and escorted to the interrogation room. I sat across from Semionov and was given a fresh sheet of paper.
Then there was a knock at the door. A man with hair so white it almost looked blue entered the room and told Semionov the meeting had been arranged. The man turned toward me. “You have asked for one, and now you have it.”
“I have?” I asked. “With whom?”
“Pasternak,” Semionov answered, his voice louder and harsher in the other man’s presence. “He’s waiting for you.”
I didn’t believe it. But when they loaded me into the back of a van with no windows, I let myself believe. Or rather, I couldn’t suppress the tiny hope. The thought of seeing him, even under those circumstances, was the most joy I’d felt since our baby’s first kick.
* * *
—
We arrived at another government building and I was led through a series of corridors and down several flights of stairs. By the time we reached a dark room in the basement, I was exhausted and sweaty and couldn’t help but think of Borya seeing me in such an ugly state.
I turned around, taking in the bare room. There were no chairs; there was no table. A lightbulb dangled from the ceiling. The floor sloped toward a rusted drain at its center.
“Where is he?” I asked, immediately realizing how stupid I’d been.
Instead of an answer, my escort suddenly pushed me through a metal door, which locked behind me. The smell assaulted me. It was sweet and unmistakable. Tables holding long forms under canvas came into focus. My knees buckled and I fell to the cold, wet floor. Was Boris under there? Is that why they’d brought me here?
The door opened again, after what could’ve been minutes or hours, and two arms lifted me to my feet. I was dragged back up the stairs, down more seemingly endless corridors.
We boarded a freight elevator at the end of one hall. The guard closed the cage and pulled the lever. Motors came to life and the elevator shook violently but did not move. The guard pulled the lever again and swung the cage open. “I keep forgetting,” he said with a smirk, pushing me out of the elevator. “It’s been out of service for ages.”
He turned to the first door on the left and opened it. Semionov was inside. “We’ve been waiting,” he said.
“Who is we?”
He knocked twice on the wall. The door opened again, and an old man shuffled inside. It took me a moment to realize it was Sergei Nikolayevich Nikiforov, Ira’s former English teacher—or a shadow of him. The normally fastidious teacher’s beard was wiry, his trousers falling off his slight frame, his shoes missing their laces. He reeked of urine.
“Sergei,” I mouthed. But he refused to look at me.
“Shall we begin?” Semionov asked. “Good,” he said without waiting for an answer. “Let’s go over this again. Sergei Nikolayevich Nikiforov, do you confirm the evidence you gave to us yesterday: that you were present during anti-Soviet conversations between Pasternak and Ivinskaya?”
I screamed but was quickly silenced by a slap from the guard standing next to the door. I was knocked against the tiled wall, but I felt nothing.
“Yes,” Nikiforov replied, his head still bowed.
“And that Ivinskaya informed you of her plan to escape abroad with Pasternak?”
“Yes,” Nikiforov said.
“It’s not true!” I cried. The guard lunged toward me.
“And that you listened to anti-Soviet radio broadcasts at the home of Ivinskaya?”
“That’s not…actually, no…I think—”
“So you lied to us, then?”
“No.” The old man raised his shaky hands to cover his face, letting out an unearthly whine.
I told myself to look away, but didn’t.
* * *
—
After Nikiforov’s confession, they took him away, and me back to Cell No. 7. I’m not sure when the pain began—I had been numb for hours—but at some point, my cellmates alerted the guard that my bedroll was soaked with blood.
I was taken to the Lubyanka hospital and as the doctor told me what I already knew, all I could think of was how my clothes still smelled like the morgue, like death.
* * *
“The witnesses’ statements have enabled us to uncover your actions: You have continued to denigrate our regime and the Soviet Union. You have listened to Voice of America. You have slandered Soviet writers with patriotic views and have praised to the skies the work of Pasternak, a writer with antiestablishment opinions.”
I listened to the judge’s verdict. I heard his words, and the number he gave. But I didn’t put the two together until I was taken back to my cell. Someone asked, and I answered: “Five years.” And it was only then that it hit me: five years in a reeducation camp in Potma. Five years, six hundred kilometers from Moscow. My daughter and son would be teenagers. My mother would be nearly seventy. Would she still be alive? Boris would have moved on—maybe having found a new muse, a new Lara. Maybe he already had.
* * *
—
The day after my sentencing, they gave me a moth-eaten winter coat and loaded me into the back of a canvas-topped truck filled with other women. We watched Moscow stream by through an opening in the back.
At one point, a group of schoolchildren crossed behind the truck, two by two. Their teacher called out for them to keep their eyes straight ahead, but a little boy turned and we made eye contact. For a moment, I imagined he was my own son, my Mitya, or maybe the baby I’d never known.
When the truck stopped, the guards yelled for us to get out and move quickly to the train that would take us to the Gulag. I thought of the early pages of Borya’s novel, of Yuri Zhivago boarding a train with his young family, seeking safety in the Urals.
The guards sat us on benches in a car without windows, and as the train rolled out, I closed my eyes.
Moscow radiates out in circles, like a pebble dropped into still water. The city expands from its red center to its boulevards and monuments to apartment buildings—each one taller and wider than the next. Then come the trees, then the countryside, then snow, then snow.
WEST
&
nbsp; Fall 1956
CHAPTER 2
THE APPLICANT
It was one of those humid days in the District, the air thick over the Potomac. Even in September, it still felt like breathing through a wet rag. As soon as I stepped out of the basement apartment I shared with my mother, I regretted wearing my gray skirt. With each step, all I could think was wool, wool, wool. By the time I boarded the number eight and took a seat in back, I could feel the sweat soaking through my white blouse. Worse yet, I felt as if there were two large sweat stains, one per cheek, on my behind. With our landlord threatening to raise our rent, I badly needed this job. Why hadn’t I worn linen?
After a bus transfer and another three blocks of chafing, I arrived at Foggy Bottom. Walking down E, I discreetly attempted to check my rear in a Peoples Drug window. But I couldn’t make anything out, on account of the sun’s glare and the fact that I wasn’t wearing my glasses.
I was twenty when I first saw an optometrist, but by that time, I was so used to life’s dulled edges, when I finally saw the world as it really is, everything was far too vivid. I could see every leaf on a tree and each pore on my nose. I could see each strand of white cat fur on every article of clothing, thanks to my upstairs neighbor’s cat, Miska. It all gave me a headache. I found myself preferring things as one fuzzy whole, not broken down by their clear parts, and so rarely wore my glasses. Or maybe I was just stubborn—I had an idea about how the world was, and anything contrary made me uneasy.
Passing a man on a bench, I could feel his eyes lingering. Was he looking at the way I slouched my shoulders and focused on the ground as I walked? I’d practiced correcting my posture by walking around my bedroom for hours with books on my head, but all the practice hadn’t fixed it. Whenever I felt a man’s gaze, I assumed he was looking at my awkward gait. The other possibility, that he might’ve found me attractive, never crossed my mind. It was always how I walked, or the homemade clothes I wore, or whether I accidentally stared too long at someone, as I’m prone to do. It was never that I was pretty. No, never that.
I picked up my pace, ducked into a diner, and went straight to the restroom.
No sweat stains, thank God. Everything else was another matter: my bangs were plastered to my forehead, the mascara my mother had told me looked like something a mail-order bride would wear had run, and the powder I’d delicately applied to what the Woolworth’s saleswoman called my “problem areas” was thick as Bisquick. I splashed my face with water and was about to towel it off when someone knocked on the door.
“Just a minute.”
The knocking continued.
“Occupied!”
The person on the other side jiggled the knob.
Cracking the door open, I stuck my dripping face out. “Be right out,” I told the man with a newspaper tucked under his arm, and slammed the door. Hiking up my skirt, I wedged a folded-up paper towel between my underwear and girdle and checked my watch: twenty-five minutes until my interview.
Sidney, my ex-boyfriend, if you could call him that, had first told me about the job opening one night over pizza and beers at the Bayou. He was one of those D.C. guys who pride themselves on being in the know, and he knew I’d been trying to land a government gig since graduating two years earlier. But entry-level positions had become scarce and you usually had to know someone who knew someone to get an in. Sidney was my in. He had a job at the State Department and heard about the open typist position from a friend of a friend. I knew it’d be a long shot, as my typing and shorthand skills were just okay and my only other work experience had been answering phones for an almost-retired litigator who wore ill-fitting suits. But Sidney said I was a shoo-in because he’d put in a word with someone he knew at the Agency. I suspected he didn’t really know anyone at the Agency with whom to put in a word, but I thanked him anyway. When Sidney leaned in for a kiss, I extended my hand and thanked him again.
I left the bathroom, relieved to see that the man with the newspaper was gone. I ordered a large Coca-Cola, and the little Greek man behind the counter gave it to me with a wink. “Rough start?” he asked. Nodding, I guzzled down the soda. “Thanks,” I said, sliding a nickel across the counter. He pushed it back with one finger. “My treat,” he said, and winked again.
* * *
—
I arrived fifteen minutes early at the black iron gates leading into the complex of large gray and red brick buildings on Navy Hill. Five minutes would’ve been respectable, but fifteen minutes early meant I had to walk around the block three times before entering. By then, I was a sweaty mess all over again. As I pushed the heavy door, I expected to be greeted with a blast of delicious air conditioning, but was hit only with more hot air.
After waiting in the inspection line, it was my turn to have my ID checked against the list of preapproved visitors. But as I went to get it, a white-haired man in round wire-rimmed glasses pushed past me, knocking into me and causing me to drop my handbag. My meager one-page résumé fell to the floor. The man who’d breezed past security turned and came back. He picked it up, handing me my now smudged and slightly embellished yet still meager list of accomplishments and qualifications with a “Here you go, miss.” Then he was off before I could respond.
* * *
—
In the elevator, I licked my fingertip and scratched at the smudge on my résumé. It only made it worse, and I cursed myself for not bringing an extra copy. I’d written it with the help of a book I checked out from the library titled How to Land the Job Fair and Square! I formatted the résumé per the book’s instructions, even paying extra for the heavier off-white paper stock. The smudged résumé was what the book would call “amateur hour.”
To make matters worse, in the process of picking it up, I’d caused the paper towel I’d inserted in the bathroom to ride up, and I could feel it pressing against the small of my back. I told myself not to think of it, which made me think of it even more.
“Where you headed?” the woman next to me asked, her finger hovering over the buttons.
“Oh,” I said. “Three. No, four.”
“Interview?”
I held up the smudged résumé.
“Typist?”
“How’d you know?”
“I’m pretty good at making quick assessments.” The woman extended her hand. She had wide-set eyes and full lips with waxy red lipstick that resembled two Swedish Fish. “Lonnie Reynolds,” she said. “Been at the Agency since before it was the Agency.” She seemed simultaneously proud and tired of that fact. When she shook my hand, I noticed a band of white skin on her ring finger. She noticed me notice the missing ring and held my gaze for an uncomfortable moment. The elevator dinged at the third floor.
“Any advice?” I asked as she stepped out.
“Type fast. Don’t ask questions. And don’t take any shit.” As two men got into the elevator, I heard her call out from behind them, “And that was Dulles who ran into you, by the way.”
Before I could ask who that was, the doors closed.
* * *
—
On the fourth floor, the receptionist greeted me by pointing to the row of plastic chairs lining the wall where two women were already seated. I took a seat and felt the paper towel shift. I cursed myself for not coming up earlier when I’d had the chance.
To my right was an older woman wearing a heavy green cardigan that looked about two decades old and a long brown corduroy skirt. She was dressed more like a schoolmarm than a shorthand typist, or what I’d envisioned a shorthand typist to look like, and I scolded myself for being so judgmental. She held her résumé on her lap, pinched between her index fingers and thumbs. Was she as nervous as I was? Was she coming back to work after her kids had left the nest? Had she started a new career, taking business classes at night, wanting to do something new? She looked at me and whispered “Good luck.” I smiled and told myself to knock
it off.
I checked the time on the wall clock as an excuse to check out the petite brunette seated to my left. She seemed just out of secretarial school—twenty, maybe, but she didn’t look a day over sixteen. Prettier than me, she wore a coat of glossy pink nail polish the color of ballet slippers. She had one of those hairstyles that looked as if it had taken a lot of time and bobby pins to achieve. And she wore an outfit that looked new: a long-sleeved dress with a white collar and hound’s-tooth heels. It was the kind of dress I would’ve seen in a department store window and wished I could buy instead of having to go home and draw it on a piece of paper so my mother could make me a knockoff. My own blasted wool skirt was a copy of a lovely gray one I’d seen on a mannequin in a Garfinckel’s widow display a year earlier.
I complained far too often that my clothes weren’t store-bought or even in fashion, but after the litigator had fully retired and let me go, Mama’s seamstress business was the only thing paying the rent for our basement apartment. She worked out of the dining room on an old Ping-Pong table we’d found on the curb. We removed the broken net and she positioned her pride and joy—a foot-pedal Vesta that was a gift from my father, and one of the only items she’d taken with her on the journey from Moscow—on the large green table. In Moscow, Mama had worked at a Bolshevichka factory, but she always had a black-market side business creating custom dresses and wedding gowns. She was a bulldog of a woman—in looks and temperament. She’d come to America during the last of the second wave of Russian immigrants to leave the Motherland. The borders were on the brink of closing, and if my parents had waited even a few more months, I’d have grown up behind the Iron Curtain instead of in the Land of the Free.
The Secrets We Kept Page 3