The Secrets We Kept(82)

* * *





We had planned to be at Expo 58 for three days, but we gave out our last copy of the Good Book midway through the second day.

Blue linen book covers littered the fair. A prominent economist removed the pages of an Expo 58 souvenir book and replaced them with Doctor Zhivago. The wife of an aerospace engineer concealed it inside an empty tampon box. A prominent French horn player stuffed the pages inside the bell of his instrument. A principal dancer for the Bolshoi Ballet wrapped the book in her tights.

Our job was done. We’d sent Zhivago on its way, hopeful Mr. Pasternak’s novel would eventually find its way home, hopeful those who read it would question why it had been banned—the seeds of dissent planted within a smuggled book.

Father David, Ivanna, Father Pierre, and I parted according to plan. Ivanna would return the following day, staying at Expo 58 to distribute her religious materials. But the rest of us were to leave the fair and not return. There were no grand goodbyes, no pats on the back, no job-well-dones, no mission-accomplisheds. Just some nods as we left the City of God one by one. No further contact was allowed. Where the Fathers were headed, I didn’t know; but I was to board a train to The Hague the next day, where I’d meet with my handler for debriefing and my next assignment.





EAST





September–October 1958





CHAPTER 22





The Cloud Dweller


   THE PRIZEWINNER


Boris stands behind a split-rail fence, tending a patch of earth where he had planted winter potatoes, garlic, and leeks. A visitor arrives, and Boris props his hoe against a birch tree.

“My friend,” the visitor says, extending his hand to Boris over the fence.

“It’s here?” Boris asks.

The visitor nods and follows Boris inside.

They sit across from each other at the dining room table. The visitor opens his rucksack and places the book, still in its blue linen cover, in front of its author. Boris reaches for his novel. It is much lighter than the hand-bound manuscript he’d entrusted to foreign hands two years earlier, and much different than the glossy published volume that had become an international bestseller in Europe—a volume he’s seen only in photographs. He runs his dirty fingernails across its cover. His eyes fill with tears. “It’s here,” he says again.

The visitor takes out his second gift—a bottle of vodka. “A toast?” he asks.

“Who did this?” Boris asks.

The visitor pours himself a drink. “They say it was the Americans.”



* * *





Boris takes his morning walk. It’s raining, so he takes the tree-covered path through the birch forest back to his dacha instead of his usual route through the cemetery, over the stream, and up the hill. The few dead leaves still clinging to the forest canopy are enough to shield him from the rain. He’s dressed appropriately for the weather, in his raincoat and cap and black rubber boots; but as he nears home, he feels a coldness soak through to his bones.

Boris hears them before he sees them. As he emerges from the woods, he sees cars parked along the narrow street, then the small crowd in his garden, under the cover of black umbrellas. A young man sits atop the section of fence with a rotted board. Boris wants to call out to him to move, but instead he stands as still as a deer who’s seen her hunter before being seen.

He thinks of retreating back into the forest. But someone calls out his name and the crowd moves toward him like a large mammal. The man sitting on the fence jumps down and is the first to reach him. He pulls out a notepad and holds his pen at the ready. “You’ve won,” he says. “You’ve won the Nobel Prize. Any comment for Pravda?”

Boris tilts his head to the clouds, letting the cold rain fall on his face. Here it is, he thinks. All laid out like a feast. His legacy engraved in gold. But no tears of joy mix with the rain running down his cheeks. Instead, fear comes over him like one of his icy morning baths.

He looks to the far end of his garden, where a gate was torn down twenty years earlier. He imagines his neighbor, Boris Pilnyak, coming through it, excited to share his onion harvest or the latest chapter of his novel. He remembers, later, after that novel was banned and Pilnyak accused of orchestrating its foreign publication, passing his friend’s dacha on his morning walks and seeing him looking out the window, waiting. “They will come for me one day,” Pilnyak had said. And they did.

A flashbulb pops. Boris blinks. He searches for someone familiar in the crowd—someone to hold on to—but sees no one.

“Will you accept?” another reporter asks.

Boris toes his boot into a puddle. “I did not want this to happen, all this noise. I am filled with a great joy. But my joy today is a lonely joy.”

Before the reporters can ask more questions, Boris puts his cap back on. “I do my best thinking while walking, and I need to walk some more.” He cuts through a parting in the crowd and continues back into the forest.

She will know to come, he thinks. She will be waiting.



* * *



—

He sees Olga’s red scarf from a distance and a weight is lifted. She’s atop the grassy knoll in the cemetery where the earth has yet to be broken, pacing the length of an invisible grave, her arms folded across her chest. Even now, Boris is still taken aback when he sees her. She’s aged. Lines radiate from the corners of her eyes and her blond hair has become brittle. She’s gained back the weight lost in the camps, but instead of settling back into her hips and thighs, it has gone to her stomach and face. Ever since Zhivago was published abroad, she no longer curls her hair or wears jewelry. Perhaps she no longer wants to stand out. Or maybe she is simply too tired to care. Regardless, Boris thinks her even more beautiful.