Our Woman in Moscow(38)
The day after that, she cleaned.
Binding her head in a matronly scarf, Ruth put on her oldest dress and set to work with mop and brush and buckets full of soapy water. Iris watched her in amazement. Because they weren’t talking to each other, she couldn’t ask what had brought on this fit of domesticity. Was Ruth trying to scour the floorboards or something more elusive? All this ferocious hygiene, what did it mean? Ruth scrubbed silently on. The apartment took on the smell of lemons and vinegar. The radio scratched away on its shelf. At some point, Ruth stopped midstroke and lifted her head to listen. Iris folded up the magazine and walked to the radio, where she turned up the volume dial. A familiar Italian voice shouted into the bare, acidic stillness of the living room. Every time it paused for breath, some crowd roared to fill the void. To Iris’s ears, it was a joyless roar. You’d have thought those Fascists would be ecstatic to go to war against the plutocrats, but they weren’t. Something was missing. It was the roar of patriotic duty, not fervor. Iris thought of the two men in black shirts the other day and wondered if their voices made up some tiny part of that noise. She turned to the window and shut it, even though they couldn’t actually hear the crowd from here. Mussolini would be speaking from a balcony in the Palazzo Venezia, which was over a mile away and thankfully out of earshot.
The next day, Iris woke to the sound of Ruth rattling around the kitchen cabinets. She opened the shutters to the gray, warm sky, but the morning air didn’t revive her. The same sick despair clung to the organs in her middle. The same ache inside her chest.
Iris put on her dressing gown and wandered into the living room. She checked the front door—no folded note, no envelope pushed under the crack. Of course not. She turned her head to hear the noise from the open doorway to the kitchen, where Ruth seemed to be making coffee, by the clink of the percolator lid.
All around her, the apartment was bare. Ruth’s steamer trunk sat in the middle of the floor. Iris’s trunk sat against the wall next to her room, waiting to be filled. Today was the eleventh of June, and the SS Antigone departed from the pier in Civitavecchia at noon tomorrow.
Iris walked to the kitchen and stopped in the doorway. Ruth was slicing bread for toast and didn’t turn. The percolator made comforting noises nearby.
“Well?” said Ruth. “Out with it.”
“I was wondering if anyone’s called for me. Any letters or notes or anything.”
Ruth laid down the knife and turned her head. Her face was unexpectedly soft and full of sympathy.
“I’m sorry, pumpkin. Not that I know of.”
Iris nodded and walked toward her bedroom. She took hold of the handle of the steamer trunk and dragged it inside. She made her bed neatly and didn’t think about the April day when she slept with a man for the first time on this bed and decided she was in love. She figured it was best not to think about these things as you packed your clothes and shoes and your dear little objects, preparing to leave that man a few thousand miles behind you. There would be other men. Ruth seemed to flit from beau to beau without any travails of the heart. Iris folded her underthings into a bundle and imagined having sexual intercourse with a man who was not Sasha Digby. But this man continued stubbornly to be long and lanky, and his gold hair kept falling in his face as he made love to her. At least that face was blank. No eyes, no nose or mouth or chin—just a peculiar, blurred void that no amount of determined imagination could sketch in.
Harry took them out for a farewell dinner at their favorite restaurant. Ruth had insisted; Iris said she would rather not, but since she couldn’t come up with a plausible excuse, other than fatigue—the truth was, they had eaten here with Sasha once—off they went in their best dresses.
Harry wasn’t the most observant of men, and to be fair he’d been deeply distracted those past weeks, so it wasn’t until dessert that he noticed Iris hadn’t been saying much.
“Oh, our pumpkin’s got the blues, that’s all,” Ruth said.
“Aw, poor Iris. You’ll forget all about the bastard when you get home, believe me.”
Iris looked at Ruth. Ruth shrugged her shoulders.
“Don’t be silly,” Iris said. “I’m just tired, that’s all. I’ve been packing all day. I’ve forgotten about him already.”
Harry raised his glass. “Good for you. Take my advice, go home and find a nice American kid to fall in love with. You can’t trust these Italians anyway. Right, Ruthie?”
Ruth clinked her class against Harry’s. “Don’t I know it.”
“Too bad neither of you hit it off with Digby,” said Harry, lighting a cigarette. “I tried to lure him along tonight. No use.”
“Oh? What did he say?” Iris asked.
“Too busy, he said. Poor bastard’s been working night and day. Catches a few winks on the sofa and he’s back at his desk. I don’t know what they’ve got him doing, but it’s just about killing him.”
On the way home, Iris said to Ruth, “So you told Harry I was seeing some Italian fellow?”
“I didn’t say one way or another. I just let him reach his own conclusions. I’m no snitch, but I’m not a liar, either.”
Iris walked silently. Ruth rummaged in her pocketbook and lit a cigarette.
“Pumpkin, you’re taking this too hard. He’s a louse, all right? A dog in a manger. Do like Harry says. Find some nice, simple American kid when we get home. Some fellow who really appreciates you. I’ll help you. I’ve got a good eye.”