Our Woman in Moscow(17)

Herbert walks in at half past eight. I rise to take his coat and hat and usher him into his office. Bring him his coffee and cigarettes and arrange myself in the chair before his desk for our usual morning chat.

Most people are not aware that Herbert Hudson suffered a stroke in the summer of 1945, in between the capitulation of Hitler and the capitulation of Tito. I’m telling you now so you’ll understand why his attention wanders from time to time, as we review the day ahead, and why he sometimes sticks the wrong word in the middle of a sentence or two. I figure as long as I understand his meaning, who cares about the delivery?

This morning Herbert’s having a little trouble lighting his cigarette—the right side of his body being a touch clumsier than the left, though you’d have to know him extremely well to notice—so I lean forward and help to steady his hand until the end of the cigarette flares comfortably orange. He nods his thanks and asks how Barbara’s getting along.

“The headshots are out of sight.” I rummage through the manila folder in my lap. “Bunny said she was an absolute professional, instincts and everything.”

Herbert removes the cigarette from his mouth and brings the photograph up close. He studies her for some time. Herbert’s got an eye, stroke or not—I mean his aesthetics never missed a beat. And I don’t mean dirty, either; Herbert always could separate his libido from his professional judgment. For example. You can take a girl who absolutely drips sex appeal, or a girl so beautiful she might have been sent on loan from the archangel choir, and stick this girl in front of a camera and get absolutely nothing. I would put my sister in that category, by the way; not that Iris is as beautiful as the angels, maybe, but she has looks—at least she did, before she dropped all those kids—and also this winsome, sugar-cookie appeal that makes you want to tuck her into your arms and (if you’re a man, I guess) sire ten thousand children with her. But in photographs she looks so ordinary she’s almost plain. There’s simply no angle and no light that translates her particular beauty into two flat dimensions.

Of course, if you’re not interested in a modeling career, this is no hindrance at all. Miss Barbara Kingsley, on the other hand, is hell-bent on landing the cover of Vogue, and if this world were a just world she should, because those headshots aren’t just out of sight, they’re practically out of the whole goddamn universe. The best test shots we’ve ever taken. But this world is not a just world, and Barbara happens to be a Negro. So after a while Herbert sets down the photograph and sits back in his chair to smoke.

“Shame,” he says.

“You just watch. I’m going to make her a sensation, I tell you, if I have to sleep with every ad man and magazine editor in town.”

“America isn’t ready for a girl like that.”

“I’m counting on it. I say we use it to our advantage. She’ll be a surprise—she’ll be a scandal. The publicity, Herbert. Nothing ever got publicity because it was the same as what came before.” I reach over his desk and pluck back the photograph. “Besides, she’s drop-dead gorgeous. She’s got a look, Herbert. What was the first thing you taught me? The look is everything. The next look, not the same old. She’s the next look. She’s the face of the future.”

I’ll say this for Herbert, he’s no bigot—at least no more than we human animals can help, having bigotry bred into our blood, it seems. Certainly, he isn’t against a Negro model on principle, and the professional in him would have to be blind not to see Barbara Kingsley’s potential. But he doesn’t want the trouble, not at his age. And he doesn’t want me to have the trouble because he loves me.

“Besides, she needs this,” I continue, knowing Herbert to be kind of soft in the region of his heart. “She’s got a sick mother, comes from nothing. She’ll work hard and keep herself clean. She knows what’s at stake, she knows she’ll have to be better and smarter and cleaner than any other girl in the shop, and she’s willing to do whatever it takes. We’ve got a chance to make a real difference for her, Herbert.”

“Shit,” he says.

“Good. That’s settled. I’ll get the prints made and start working the phones today. And now I’ve got a question for you.”

Herbert makes a resigned gesture of his good arm.

“What’s your opinion of this McCarthy fellow?”

“McCarthy?”

“You know who I mean. The senator with the bee in his bonnet about the Communists, holds all the hearings. The Hollywood blacklist. Him.”

Herbert makes a noise of disgust.

“Me too.” I reach for his cigarettes and light one for myself. “But you know, there’s a grain of truth there. For example, I personally knew at least one Communist working for the US government. The foreign diplomatic service. He was stationed at embassies around the world. And I can’t say for certain he wasn’t passing on information to the Soviets, all that time.”

The funny thing is, Herbert makes no sign of surprise whatsoever. He just asks, “How do you know this fellow?”

“Met him when I was in Rome.”

“How do you know he’s still a Communist? A lot of us were Communists.”

“Herbert! You don’t say!”

He shrugs in his lopsided way. “Seemed like the humane way forward. Came to my senses when I saw what that goddamn thug Stalin was up to.”