Our Woman in Moscow(9)

A woman stood next to Iris’s right shoulder, a man to her left. The woman stepped away, and for a minute or two, Iris and the man contemplated the painting in silence.

“We seem to be interested by the same pieces,” the man said.

Iris startled and looked to her side.

The man with the golden hair.

He stared straight ahead. He had a long, sharp nose and a firm jaw.

“Do we?” Iris said.

“Pluto and Proserpina,” he said, tactfully avoiding the word Rape. “Truth Revealed by Time. David and Goliath.”

“Isn’t everyone interested by those? They’re the masterpieces.”

He nodded to the painting in front of them. “You’d think the artist would model David after his own face, if he were going to model himself at all, but actually that’s Caravaggio on the Goliath.”

“Yes, I know.”

The man turned his head and looked at her sheepishly. Beneath those heavy brows his eyes were very blue, almost ultramarine. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to condescend. I was just trying to make conversation.” He smiled. “We’ve met, you know.”

“Have we?”

“Don’t remember?” He stuck out one enormous, bony hand. “Sasha Digby. I work with your brother, at the embassy.”

“Oh! Of course.” She shook the hand.

“Party last month? At the ambassador’s residence? You were there with Harry and your sister. Of course you don’t remember. It was the end of the evening before I introduced myself. I guess we all had a little too much champagne.”

Iris tried to recall the party, but Mr. Digby was right. She had drunk a lot of champagne that night, and she wasn’t used to it. Her memories of the evening were . . . well, kaleidoscopic was a nice way to put it.

“I’m awfully sorry. I should remember you.”

He laughed. “Yes, I do stick out in a crowd, don’t I?”

“It’s just that I don’t usually have so much to drink. They kept refilling my glass when I wasn’t looking.”

“Ah, well, they do it on purpose. Without wine there would be no diplomacy. Anyway, I should have introduced myself earlier.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I’m shy, Miss Macallister.”

“No, you’re not! Didn’t you just walk up to me and introduce yourself?”

“Only after spending an hour wandering around after you, working up the nerve.”

“Oh,” Iris said.

Mr. Digby looked at his watch. “Say, I’d ask you to coffee, but I’ve got a silly appointment coming up.”

“Then you shouldn’t be late.”

“No, I can’t, I’m afraid. But I’m glad I spotted you here. I mean, I’m not surprised to see you in a place like this. I knew there was something different about you.”

His ears were pink. A bright raspberry stain covered his cheekbones.

“I’m glad too, Mr. Digby,” she said.

“Sasha.”

“Sasha. I’m Iris.”

“I know.” He glanced again at his watch. “I’m late. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude.”

“Go. Don’t be late.”

“You’ll remember me at the next party?”

She shook his hand a second time. “I certainly will.”



After Sasha Digby rushed off, Iris floated upstairs to the first floor. (Not to be confused with the ground floor—this was Italy, after all.) Because marble was so extraordinarily heavy, you didn’t find any mesmerizing Bernini statuary up there, just paintings and ancient Roman artifacts and some splendidly decorated rooms. Iris knew them all well. She came here often. A gallery like that was like an opium den for her, packed with pleasure and revelation.

Today, however, she drifted from room to room and didn’t notice a thing. Her heart skipped and raced. She was bubbling over with some giddy froth of emotion she hardly dared to name. It was like the way a child felt on Christmas Eve, if Christmas were a tall, golden-haired man who already knew your name, who thought you were different from the other girls, who’d spent an hour working up the nerve just to say hello. She stopped in front of a painting of a woman who held a small, perfect unicorn in her lap, like a cat, and she stared at that woman and thought, I know exactly how you feel!

The rain let up. Sunshine lit the windows, the watery sunshine of springtime. Iris looked out onto the gardens below, the manicured hedges in their perfect, symmetrical designs. She could almost smell the damp green scent of the dripping leaves, the wet gravel, the rich earth. A patch of blue hung above. Everything glittered, so new and promising.

On a bench along one of the side paths sat a man and a woman, part hidden by the pattern of hedges. The man wore an overcoat and a fedora. The woman wore a raincoat and a plain, round black hat. They had crossed their legs, his right and her left, to form an intimate V. They seemed to be talking to each other, even though they were staring straight ahead, into the hedge across the path. The man was long and lean, and his suit was dark blue underneath his unbuttoned overcoat. Iris couldn’t see his hair beneath that fedora, nor the color of his eyes or the shape of his nose. She couldn’t even see the pinkness of his neck.

But she saw his hands, folded on top of his thigh, bony and enormous.