The Secrets We Kept(8)
* * *
—
The day after my sentencing, they gave me a moth-eaten winter coat and loaded me into the back of a canvas-topped truck filled with other women. We watched Moscow stream by through an opening in the back.
At one point, a group of schoolchildren crossed behind the truck, two by two. Their teacher called out for them to keep their eyes straight ahead, but a little boy turned and we made eye contact. For a moment, I imagined he was my own son, my Mitya, or maybe the baby I’d never known.
When the truck stopped, the guards yelled for us to get out and move quickly to the train that would take us to the Gulag. I thought of the early pages of Borya’s novel, of Yuri Zhivago boarding a train with his young family, seeking safety in the Urals.
The guards sat us on benches in a car without windows, and as the train rolled out, I closed my eyes.
Moscow radiates out in circles, like a pebble dropped into still water. The city expands from its red center to its boulevards and monuments to apartment buildings—each one taller and wider than the next. Then come the trees, then the countryside, then snow, then snow.
WEST
Fall 1956
CHAPTER 2
THE APPLICANT
It was one of those humid days in the District, the air thick over the Potomac. Even in September, it still felt like breathing through a wet rag. As soon as I stepped out of the basement apartment I shared with my mother, I regretted wearing my gray skirt. With each step, all I could think was wool, wool, wool. By the time I boarded the number eight and took a seat in back, I could feel the sweat soaking through my white blouse. Worse yet, I felt as if there were two large sweat stains, one per cheek, on my behind. With our landlord threatening to raise our rent, I badly needed this job. Why hadn’t I worn linen?
After a bus transfer and another three blocks of chafing, I arrived at Foggy Bottom. Walking down E, I discreetly attempted to check my rear in a Peoples Drug window. But I couldn’t make anything out, on account of the sun’s glare and the fact that I wasn’t wearing my glasses.
I was twenty when I first saw an optometrist, but by that time, I was so used to life’s dulled edges, when I finally saw the world as it really is, everything was far too vivid. I could see every leaf on a tree and each pore on my nose. I could see each strand of white cat fur on every article of clothing, thanks to my upstairs neighbor’s cat, Miska. It all gave me a headache. I found myself preferring things as one fuzzy whole, not broken down by their clear parts, and so rarely wore my glasses. Or maybe I was just stubborn—I had an idea about how the world was, and anything contrary made me uneasy.
Passing a man on a bench, I could feel his eyes lingering. Was he looking at the way I slouched my shoulders and focused on the ground as I walked? I’d practiced correcting my posture by walking around my bedroom for hours with books on my head, but all the practice hadn’t fixed it. Whenever I felt a man’s gaze, I assumed he was looking at my awkward gait. The other possibility, that he might’ve found me attractive, never crossed my mind. It was always how I walked, or the homemade clothes I wore, or whether I accidentally stared too long at someone, as I’m prone to do. It was never that I was pretty. No, never that.
I picked up my pace, ducked into a diner, and went straight to the restroom.
No sweat stains, thank God. Everything else was another matter: my bangs were plastered to my forehead, the mascara my mother had told me looked like something a mail-order bride would wear had run, and the powder I’d delicately applied to what the Woolworth’s saleswoman called my “problem areas” was thick as Bisquick. I splashed my face with water and was about to towel it off when someone knocked on the door.
“Just a minute.”
The knocking continued.
“Occupied!”
The person on the other side jiggled the knob.
Cracking the door open, I stuck my dripping face out. “Be right out,” I told the man with a newspaper tucked under his arm, and slammed the door. Hiking up my skirt, I wedged a folded-up paper towel between my underwear and girdle and checked my watch: twenty-five minutes until my interview.
Sidney, my ex-boyfriend, if you could call him that, had first told me about the job opening one night over pizza and beers at the Bayou. He was one of those D.C. guys who pride themselves on being in the know, and he knew I’d been trying to land a government gig since graduating two years earlier. But entry-level positions had become scarce and you usually had to know someone who knew someone to get an in. Sidney was my in. He had a job at the State Department and heard about the open typist position from a friend of a friend. I knew it’d be a long shot, as my typing and shorthand skills were just okay and my only other work experience had been answering phones for an almost-retired litigator who wore ill-fitting suits. But Sidney said I was a shoo-in because he’d put in a word with someone he knew at the Agency. I suspected he didn’t really know anyone at the Agency with whom to put in a word, but I thanked him anyway. When Sidney leaned in for a kiss, I extended my hand and thanked him again.
I left the bathroom, relieved to see that the man with the newspaper was gone. I ordered a large Coca-Cola, and the little Greek man behind the counter gave it to me with a wink. “Rough start?” he asked. Nodding, I guzzled down the soda. “Thanks,” I said, sliding a nickel across the counter. He pushed it back with one finger. “My treat,” he said, and winked again.