The Secrets We Kept

by Lara Prescott

  To give my days structure, I began visiting every bookstore, bookstall, library, and bouquiniste along the Seine, seeking out copies of Zhivago. Though I longed to read it, I hadn’t brought myself to do it. It was connected to them, to her, and I knew that to read it would bring back memories of things I didn’t want to think of, things that would make my heart pound when I woke up and found myself halfway around the world, alone. Yet I sought it all over Paris, spending the last of my funds accumulating a small tower of copies.

  When I could no longer afford books, I developed a new routine: sitting in my room all day, listening to my record, taking baths, and napping. I began subsisting on stale baguettes, apricot preserves, and warm Perrier. I kept the curtains drawn, and days passed without my even looking out the window.

  * * *

  —

  Eventually I ran out of money and began returning my copies of Zhivago one by one. And it was there—waiting in line at Le Mistral—that someone tapped me on the shoulder. “Bonsoir,” said the petite woman with finger-waved hair, dressed in an oyster-shell-pink pencil dress and black velvet pillbox hat. She picked up a copy of Lolita and smiled as if she knew me.

  “Do you know where the travel section is?” the woman asked, switching to English.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t.”

  “I’m looking for a book. About Beirut. Do you know where that might be?”

  She turned and left. I followed her out, tucking Zhivago back into my purse. I followed her past Square René Viviani. I wished I could stop and touch the famed locust tree for good luck, but we continued across la rue du Petit-Pont, past the church of Saint-Séverin, its Gothic gargoyles staring down at me. When we passed the church of Saint-Sulpice, I thought of Irina—what she must have looked like in that nun’s habit.

  I followed her into the Jardin du Luxembourg, and as we circumnavigated the octagonal basin, the woman spoke, her voice low and obscured by the fountain.

  “He checked in to a hotel in Beirut under the name Winston, as you said he would. Within an hour, he checked back out of the hotel—with help from two of our bellmen.” She paused. “We thought you might want to know.”

  What did Henry think when he heard the knock on the door? Did he have any sense of what was coming? Did he feel paralyzed? Did he scream? If so, did anyone hear him? I knew he hadn’t, but I wished, oh how I wished, that he thought of me when they took him.

  “That’s all,” the woman finished. She stopped to face me and kissed both my cheeks.

  “That’s all,” I said when she had gone.

  * * *

  —

  Back in my hotel room, the dead roses had been replaced by a fresh bouquet. I splashed water on my face and applied my red lipstick. I dressed in black slacks, a black blazer, and black leather kitten heels. I opened the curtains, blotted my lips, and assessed myself in the mirror.

  I’d been trained to spot a double. Calm under duress, above average in intelligence, transient, easily bored. Ambitious, but with short-term goals. Unable to form lasting relationships. They often defect because of their own interests—money, power, ideology, revenge. I knew these traits, was trained to look for them. So why had it taken so long for me to recognize them in myself?

  EAST

  October–December 1958

  CHAPTER 24

  The Muse

  The Rehabilitated Woman

  The Emissary

  The Mother

  THE EMISSARY

  He won, he won, he won. My thoughts matched my steps as I paced Little House waiting for Borya to arrive. The Nobel was his. Not Tolstoy’s or Gorky’s, not Dostoyevsky’s: Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was the second Russian writer ever to receive the Prize. His name would be marked in history, his legacy secured.

  And yet, should he accept it, I feared what else might come. The Nobel win was already an embarrassment to the State, and Boris’s accepting the Prize would be viewed as an even greater indignity. And the State did not like to be humiliated, especially at the hands of the West. So once the world looked away, once the headlines died down, then what? Who’d protect us? Who’d protect me?

  To still my nerves, I went outside to the small garden Borya had helped me plant. The morning rain had ceased and the clouds parted to reveal a light that bathed everything anew. Everything—how the magpies called out to each other, how a sunbeam warmed the neat row of cabbage, how the air felt against my exposed wrists and ankles—everything, every little thing, felt altered in the way it does when the world you’ve known is about to change.

  Borya approached, hat in hand. We met midway down the path and he kissed me. “I’ve sent the telegram to Stockholm,” he said.

  “Saying what?” I asked.

  “That I’ve accepted the Prize, and all that will come with it.”

  “You’ll go, then?” I asked. “To Stockholm?” For a moment, I allowed myself to imagine this absurd dream: me in a black gown made in Paris, tailored to fit my body like a second skin; Boris in his favorite gray suit he’d inherited from his father. I’d watch as he’d stand to accept the Prize. And while he was at the podium, I’d let the cheers from the audience come over me like a wave. At the banquet, we’d dine on filet de sole bourguignonne in the Blue Hall and he’d introduce me as the woman who’d inspired Lara, the woman the world had fallen in love with, just as he had.

  “That’s impossible,” he said, shaking his head. He took my hand, and without another word, we went inside and to my bedroom and made love in the slow and steady way we’d grown accustomed to.

  He spent most of the night with me, not leaving my bed until the blue light of morning peeked between my curtains. In that light, I saw new moles and black hairs and yellow marks on his back, then looked at my own skin. Our ages hit me as if jumping into a freezing river, and I wondered if we had anything left in us to sustain all that was to come.

  As I watched him leave my bed, I was seized with a deep longing for something I hadn’t lost yet, but knew I would soon.

  * * *

  After Boris sent his telegram to Stockholm, the Kremlin issued its official response to the Academy. “You and those who made this decision focused not on the novel’s literary or artistic qualities, and this is clear since it does not have any, but on its political aspects, since Pasternak’s novel presents Soviet reality in a perverted way, libels the socialist revolution, socialism, and the Soviet people.”

  Their message was clear: Boris’s defiance would not be tolerated. And it would not go unpunished.

  We were told couriers were going door to door, from Peredelkino to Moscow, summoning every poet, playwright, novelist, and translator to an emergency meeting of the Writers’ Union to address the issue of the Nobel. Attendance was mandatory.

  Some writers were undoubtedly elated that the narcissist, the overrated Poet on the Hill, was finally getting his due. Some, we were told, said justice should’ve been served long ago, the questions about why Boris had been spared by the hand of Stalin during the Great Terror still unresolved. Other writers were apparently nervous, knowing they’d have to fall in line to denounce their peer, their friend, their mentor—hoping their protests would appear genuine when they were called upon.

  Borya didn’t read the newspapers, but I did.

  They called him a Judas, a pawn who’d sold himself for thirty pieces of silver, an ally of those who hated our country, a malicious snob whose artistic merit was modest at best. They deemed Doctor Zhivago a weapon heralded by enemies of the State, and the Prize a reward from the West.

  Not everyone spoke out; most just kept quiet. Friends who previously sat rapt at Little House listening to Borya read from Zhivago made themselves scarce. They did not send letters of support, nor did they visit, nor did most admit to having a friendship with Borya when asked. It was these silences, the taped mouths of friends, that cut the deepest.


  One day, Ira returned from school with news that a student demonstration had taken place in Moscow. Borya was sitting in his red chair as Ira, still in her coat and squirrel hat, paced in front of him. “Professors told students that attendance was mandatory.”

  Borya stood up and put some wood into the stove. He faced the fire, warming his hands over the flame for a moment, before closing the metal door.

  “The administration handed out placards for us to carry, but I hid in the toilets with a friend until they left.” Her eyes looked to Borya’s for approval, but he didn’t return her gaze.

  “What did the placards say?” Borya asked.

  Ira took off her hat and held it in her hands. “I didn’t see them. Not up close.”

  * * *

  —

  The next day, a photograph of the “spontaneous demonstration” appeared in Literaturnaya Gazeta. A student held up a placard with a cartoon image of Borya reaching for a sack of American money with crooked fingers. Another placard stated in black block letters: THROW THE JUDAS OUT OF THE USSR! The article also printed a list of names of students who signed a letter condemning Doctor Zhivago.

  Ira held up the newspaper. “Half these students never signed it. At least they told me they hadn’t.”

  That night at dinner, Mitya asked if it was true that Borya was now richer than the greediest American. “The teacher said so in school. Are we rich now too?”

  “No, darling,” I told him.

  He rolled a kidney bean across his plate with his thumb. “Why not?”

  “Why should we be?”

  “He pays for our house. He gives us money. So if he has more, he should give us more.”

  “Where would you ever get an idea like that?”

  Ira shot her brother a look and he shrugged.

  “It makes sense though, Mama,” Ira said. “Suppose you should ask him?”

  “I won’t hear another word of it,” I told her, although I can’t pretend I hadn’t been thinking the same thing. “Now finish your dinner.”

  * * *

  It had been raining for five days when they met in the great White Hall of the Writers’ Union. With every seat filled, writers lined the walls. Borya was asked to attend, but I pleaded with him to stay home. “It will be an execution,” I said. He agreed that his presence would accomplish nothing and instead wrote a letter to be read:

  I still believe even after all this noise and all those articles in the press that it was possible to write Doctor Zhivago as a Soviet citizen. It’s just that I have a broader understanding of the rights and possibilities of a Soviet writer, and I don’t think I disparage the dignity of Soviet writers in any way. I would not call myself a literary parasite. Frankly, I believe that I have done something for literature. As for the Prize itself, nothing would ever make me regard this honor as a sham and respond to it with rudeness. I forgive you in advance.

  The hall echoed with jeers from the crowd. Then, one by one, each writer went to the podium to condemn Zhivago. The meeting lasted hours, every last person speaking out against him.

  The vote was unanimous, the punishment effective immediately: Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was expelled from the Soviet Writers’ Union.

  The next day, I gathered every book, every note, every letter, every early draft of the manuscript from my Moscow apartment. Mitya and I took them to Little House to burn. “They won’t take what’s mine again,” I told my son, as we gathered sticks from the forest. “I’d rather destroy everything.”

  “How can you be sure?” Mitya asked.

  “We’re going to need more wood,” I said, picking up a small log.

  Borya arrived as we placed the rocks we’d hauled up from the creek in a ring. “Has it all been for nothing?” he asked, in lieu of a greeting.

  “Of course not,” I said, and dumped a bucket of dry leaves atop the wood. “You’ve touched the hearts and minds of thousands.” I poured petrol onto the leaves.

  He circled the fire pit. “Why did I write it in the first place?”

  “Because you had to, remember?” Mitya said. “That’s what you told us. You said you were called to do it. Remember?”

  “It was nonsense. Utter nonsense.”

  “But you said—”

  “It doesn’t matter what I said then.”

  “When you handed it over to the Italians you said you wanted it to be read. Well, you’ve accomplished that.”

  “I’ve accomplished nothing but putting us in danger.”

  “You said the Prize would protect us. Do you no longer believe that? The whole world is watching, remember?”

  “I was wrong. It’s my execution that the whole world will watch.” He raked his hands through his hair. “Am I what they say I am? A narcissist, someone who thinks—no, believes—fully believes, that he has been chosen for this task? That I’m fated to spend my life attempting to express what’s in the hearts of men?” Borya paced frantically. “The sky is falling, and I sought to write instead of building a roof to protect myself and my loved ones. Has my selfishness no bounds? I’ve sat at my desk for so long. Is it true I’m out of touch? Could I even know what is in the hearts and minds of my countrymen? How could I have gotten it all so wrong? Why go on?”

  “We go on because that’s what we have to do,” I told him. Before I could get another word out to calm him, he launched into his plan.

  “It’s all too much. I won’t wait for them to come for me. I won’t wait for their black car to arrive. I won’t wait for them to drag me out into the street. To do to me what they did to Osip, to Titsian—”

  “And to me,” I added.

  “Yes, my love. I’ll never let them. I think it’s time we left this life.”

  I took a step back from him.

  “I’ve saved them, you know. The pills. I’ve saved the Nembutal I was given the last time I was in the hospital. Twenty-two. Eleven for each of us.”

  I didn’t know whether to believe him. Boris had threatened to kill himself before. Once, decades earlier, he even drank a bottle of iodine when his wife, before she was his wife, had refused him. He’d confessed to me later that he’d only sought her reaction, not his actual death. But this time, something in his voice, how he remained calm, made me think he might be serious.

  He reached for my hand. “We’ll take them tonight. It will cost them dearly. It will be a slap in the face.”

  Mitya rose to his feet. He was now taller than I, and almost as tall as Borya. Mitya, gentle Mitya, looked him in the eyes. “What are you talking about?” He looked at me. “Mama, what is he talking about?”

  “Leave us, Mitya.” I said.

  “I won’t!” He reared back as if he might hit Boris.

  For the first time, I realized that his was no longer the hand of a little boy, but of a young man. A well of guilt filled my chest. All these years, I’d put Borya first.

  “Nothing will happen.” I let go of Borya’s hand and took my son’s. “I assure you.” I pulled a fistful of kopeks from my pocket and asked him to get more petrol for the fire.

  He refused to take the money. “What is wrong with you? With both of you?”

  “Take it, Mitya. Go and get the petrol. I’ll be right along.”

  He grabbed the money and left, looking back to warn Borya with his burning stare.

  “It will be painless,” Borya said once Mitya was gone. “We’ll be together.” All this time, he’d been pretending the roaring whispers of condemnation weren’t upsetting him—that the microphones we suspected were planted in his house and mine were something to laugh about, that the negative reviews had no merit. He’d been focusing on a speck of white light at the tunnel’s end that, with the latest blow from the Writers’ Union, had faded to black.

  And he believed I’d follow him—that I’d take the pills, that I didn’t have the st
rength to go on alone. At one time, I might not have. In fact, I might have been the one to first suggest it. But not now. Now I could go on. I would go on. They could put him in the ground, but not me.

  I told him it would just give them what they wanted—that it was a weak man’s move. I said they’d gloat over their victory of the dead poet, the cloud dweller Stalin never finished off. Borya said he didn’t care about any of it as long as the pain would stop. “I can’t wait for their darkness to befall me. I’d rather step into the dark than be pushed,” he said.

  “Things are different now that Stalin is dead. They won’t shoot you in the street.”

  “You haven’t lived through it as I did. You didn’t see them pick off your friends, one by one. Do you know what it feels like to have been saved when your friends were murdered? To be the one left behind? They will come for me. I’m sure of it. They will come for us.”

  I asked him to wait one more day, saying I wanted to say goodbye to Ira and Mama, that I wanted one more sunrise. In reality, I had one last plan—and if that plan didn’t work, I knew he might still be talked off the ledge. And if that didn’t work, I knew another sun would come up anyway, and I’d go on. It’s what Russian women do. It’s in our blood.

  * * *

  —

  I found Mitya at the tavern near the train station, a small can of petrol at his side. I told him I’d never leave him. By the look in his eyes, I knew he didn’t believe me. I wept, telling him I was sorry, so sorry, and he told me he forgave me. But I could tell he said it only to get me to stop crying.