Our Woman in Moscow(52)



We eat our lunch, just like any couple. The restaurant is only half full and the other diners are mostly young people, tanned and happy and unscarred, too young to have fought in the war. Naturally, Orlovsky would choose a place like this. He loves young, beautiful people, especially women. His gaze flicks around the room without even noticing what he does—resting on that face, those legs, this bosom—subconscious, pleasurable assessments. The waiter clears away the plates and brings tiny cups of espresso. Over the rim, I notice a man sitting at a table in the corner, reading a newspaper. I can’t see his face, but he has a slim build and long, elegant fingers that grip the edges of the newspaper.

I return my attention to Orlovsky. “If you think it’s such a terrible idea, why are you helping me?”

“First, because I know I cannot stop you, and if you must go, you need all help I can find you.”

“Second?”

He smiles a wan, toothy grin. “Because I am Russian, bambina. I cannot resist lost cause.”



We walk back to Orlovsky’s atelier in the hot sunshine. There’s a whiff of sewage in the air, and my dress sticks to my back. As we stroll down the sidewalk, flashes of memory return to me—things I haven’t remembered in years. The tobacco shop on the corner, where Orlovsky once stopped to buy cigarettes, and the tobacconist mistook me for his daughter. The florist where he used to buy me flowers, and the mysterious palazzo a street away from the atelier that always intrigued me, because it was so austere on the outside, like a medieval fortress, and not even Orlovsky knew whom it belonged to. As we turn the corner and stop on the curb to allow a taxi to race by, I catch a glimpse of a slim man ducking into the shelter of a doorway, holding a newspaper under his arm.

When we cross the street, I look over my shoulder. But nobody’s there, after all.



We reach the atelier. Orlovsky unlocks the iron-studded door. He ushers me inside first, and as he turns to follow me, he seems to look both ways, up and down the sidewalk, before he steps into the vestibule and closes and locks the door behind him.

“When do we meet this friend of yours?” I ask.

Orlovsky replaces the walking stick in the stand and puts his hand to the small of my back. “Is here already. He said not to waste any time.”

“Good. I agree.”

I say this bravely to stifle a tremor of panic. We climb the stairs, which spiral upward in a pleasant medieval way. The damp, cool smell of the stones wafts by. I find myself wondering who he is, this contact of Orlovsky’s, and what he does. Is he some kind of double agent nested inside the Soviet embassy? A disaffected Italian Communist?

All these possibilities whirl through my mind as we reach the first floor and walk down the hallway, at the end of which lies the studio that runs the width of the courtyard below. None of them comes close to the truth. The man who looks up from the drafting table, who scrapes the chair back and stands politely, is a man I already know.

“Miss Macallister,” says Sumner Fox. “You’d better take a seat. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”





Iris





July 1948

London



At half past six the next morning, the boys burst into the room and jumped on the bed.

“Mama! Daddy! I lost a tooth!” Kip said.

Next to her, Sasha groaned and rolled on his stomach. Iris’s head throbbed. She must have drunk more champagne than she realized last night. She glanced at Sasha—out cold—and sat up painfully. “You lost a tooth! Where?”

He showed her.

“There was blood all over his nightshirt and Mrs. Betts put it to soak!” Jack announced.

“The tooth or the nightshirt?”

“The nightshirt, of course! You look awful, Mama.”

“Not as awful as Daddy,” she said.

“Does this mean we don’t have to go to church?” Kip asked, bouncing a little.

Iris swung her feet to the floor and stared at her toes.

“I don’t know, darling, but I guess we’d better start breakfast, just in case.”



Even though Sasha was an atheist, the family went to church most Sundays, a habit they established when they moved to London. Sasha said it was important for the boys to have a proper religious education, so they could disavow God from a position of confidence when they were old enough to reason things out for themselves. Besides, you met a lot of important people at church on a Sunday.

So Iris rolled out of bed and trudged to the bathroom to make herself a little more human. On the way back to the bedroom, she picked up Sasha’s discarded clothes and hung them in his wardrobe. Sasha himself hadn’t moved. He sprawled on his stomach, hair in disorder, perfectly naked—thank God for the blankets. There was just enough light that she could see his face, so relaxed it was almost angelic, relieved of all its sins. Iris remembered what Philip had said last night—the hearings—and wondered why Sasha hadn’t said anything to her about them. Because he wasn’t worried about anything this woman might reveal in her testimony, or because he was?

She tucked the blanket around him and headed down the hall toward the kitchen, where the boys were making the usual joyful racket—take that, Mrs. Bannister in the downstairs flat—as Mrs. Betts flitted around the room getting breakfast. Jack spotted Iris first.

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