Our Woman in Moscow(111)

They stop in front of a low-roofed, rectangular building with no windows. A guard stands outside, motionless. The KGB woman nods to him—he steps aside. She opens the heavy metal door and says, After you, please.

Sasha ducks through the doorway into a small guardroom. Three metal doors line the opposite wall, each with a tiny barred window.

Sasha stops and asks for a cigarette.

The woman turns back to the door and asks the guard if he’s got any cigarettes. The guard reluctantly hands her one from a battered pack, along with a cheap lighter. She lights the cigarette for him and sticks it in the corner of his mouth. Sasha smokes it for a moment, staring at the wall.

The KGB woman looks in one window, then another. She smiles fondly and puts a finger over her mouth. “Sleeping,” she whispers.

Sasha doesn’t want to look. He doesn’t have the guts to see his children in a prison cell, his wife and newborn baby son in a prison cell. But he walks forward anyway. It’s his punishment, isn’t it? Too many sins to count, and they’re all coming due at once.

He looks through the window and lets out a small, anguished noise at the sight of Claire, curled up in a cot with Kip, who sleeps with one protective arm over his kid sister. Their clothes are dirty, their hair is matted. On the floor next to them sleeps Jack, rolled in a blanket. He’s lying on his back, and his mouth wears a strange, lurid grin.

Sasha can’t bear it—he can’t look away—he can’t stand it another second—he can’t move. The pain is like a magnet that holds him in place. Jack’s pale hair—oh God! Claire’s flushed cheeks, the trusting way she snuggles into her brother. How many thousand times has he held his daughter in his arms and kissed her sweet hair?

He tears himself away and leans his head against the cold wall. He never could wear the mask, could he? He never could keep it all inside. Not like this woman.

She stands there next to the wall, arms crossed. She could possibly order him to look inside the next cell, but she doesn’t. She has all the patience in the world. She waits for him to creep there himself, to bring his face near the bars of the window and open his eyes.

But it’s not Iris, after all. It’s Ruth.

She lies on a cot, long and golden, eyes open to the ceiling, arms crossed behind her head. She turns her face and looks at him, without a word, and the expression of her eyes is so deadly that he jerks away.

“Digby?” she calls after him. “Is that you?”

“Yes.”

“How’s Iris?”

“I don’t know,” he gasps, over his shoulder.

Ruth comes to the window. “She’s in the cell next to me. I called out but she didn’t answer. Can you just make sure she’s all right, please?”

He nods and steps to the third door and peers through the window before he can even prepare himself.

Iris.

She’s asleep on a cot, on her back. The baby, wrapped in a swaddle, rests in the crook of her elbow. Her breathing is rapid and shallow; her cheeks are flushed. Her short dark hair tumbles around her face.

How many times has Sasha seen his wife asleep with a newborn baby? Hundreds of times. All the memories dazzle him at once, colorful and brittle, in constant motion like a kaleidoscope. He can’t choose one.

He turns his head to the KGB woman and says, “She needs a doctor! She’s not well, she had a cesarean section three days ago!”

“She needs a doctor! Please!” echoes Ruth. She’s wrapped her hands around the bars of the window.

“Of course she’ll have a doctor,” says the KGB woman soothingly. “As soon as our dear Dubinin agrees to cooperate.”

“But I can’t cooperate! I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Ruth. “Are you not even human?”

For an instant Sasha thinks she meant him. But when he looks in her direction, she’s staring instead at the KGB woman. She speaks in a sore, frayed voice.

“You see what it does to your soul? This is what it makes you. It turns you into a brute with no soul, a stone for a heart, movements and classes instead of human beings. My sister is a person! She’s beautiful and loyal and she saved my life when we were kids. I’m not kidding. I had a stomachache and she made my parents take me to the doctor and they got my appendix out just in time. And I never thanked her. She needs to live. Please. She needs a doctor. She’s a human being!”

“That’s up to her husband.”

“My God! Who are you? Don’t you have a sister, don’t you have anyone you love? What if she were your own sister? What if she were your daughter?”

From Iris’s cell comes the sound of a baby crying. Sasha turns and bangs his forehead on the window bars. “Let me in! For God’s sake, let me hold him!”

Behind him, Ruth screams at the KGB woman. Iris stirs and turns to the crying baby in her arms. In his panic, Sasha can’t even remember the name. The name of his own son! He bangs the bars with such strength, the door rattles in its hinges. The baby bawls his heartbreaking newborn cry. Iris shushes him. A pair of hands grasp Sasha by the shoulders and haul him away from the door. He shouts his wife’s name, he sobs at each breath. He struggles against the arms that hold him, but they’re massive arms and he’s as weak as a kitten from the drive—his hands are handcuffed behind his back—he’s helpless. The guard drags him outside and the door clangs shut. He falls to his knees. The prison hut is soundproof—all those desperate cries and shouts are cut off like a faucet. Sasha tilts his head to the sky and stares disbelieving at the gray pattern of midnight clouds. He has the strange feeling that his chest and stomach have been cut open and his entrails are spilling onto the ground before him.