The Secrets We Kept(90)

I thought of Irina—the first time I saw her, and the last. I’d planned to talk to her after her mother’s funeral, to comfort her, to hold her, to tell her everything. But instead of going to the cemetery, I went to Georgetown and sat through the second half of The Quiet American, alone.

I still had the note I’d planned to slip her after the funeral in my pocket. The words I wrote had worn completely away from constantly being rubbed between my fingers as I walked the streets of Paris. But I remembered what I’d written, the words I never gave her, the truth I’d kept to myself.

And then there was the truth I kept from myself. I’d boarded the plane to Paris convinced there was no alternative. But that first night, the what ifs surrounded me like a cloud of gnats. I imagined the whitewashed house in New England that Irina and I could’ve moved to—its yellow door and porch swing and bay window overlooking the Atlantic. I imagined us going into town each morning for coffee and doughnuts, the townsfolk thinking we were roommates. As I thought of all the paths I didn’t take, the loss came over me like a lead blanket.

I thought of the book in the purse sitting next to me. How did it end? Do Yuri and Lara end up together? Or do they die alone and miserable?

The waiter took our plates and asked if he could get us anything else.

“A bottle of champagne, perhaps?” my new friend asked, looking at me, not the waiter.

I raised my glass. “When in Paris.”





EAST





January 1959





CHAPTER 26





The Muse


   The Rehabilitated Woman


    The Emissary


   The Mother


    The Emissary


   THE POSTMISTRESS


The first copies were passed from hand to hand in the parlors of Moscow’s intelligentsia. After Borya won the Nobel, then declined it, copies of the copies were made. Then copies of those copies. Doctor Zhivago was whispered about in the bowels of the Leningrad Metro, passed from worker to worker in the labor camps, and sold on the black market. “Have you read it?” people across the Motherland asked each other in hushed voices. “Why was it kept from us?” The it never needed to be named. Soon the black market was flooded, and everyone could read the novel they’d been denied.

When Ira brought a copy home, I forbade her to keep it in the house. “Don’t you realize?” I cried, ripping the pages up and tossing them into the bin. “It’s a loaded pistol.”

“You’re the one who bought the bullets. You placed him above our family.”

“He is our family.”

“And I know what you’re keeping hidden here. Don’t think I don’t!” She stormed out before I could respond.

The money was kept in a russet leather suitcase with a brass lock tucked behind the long dresses in the back of my closet. The bundles were wrapped in plastic, stacked neatly in rows under two pairs of trousers.

D’Angelo had arranged for the transfer—first from Feltrinelli to an account in Liechtenstein, then to an Italian couple living in Moscow. The Italian couple would phone my apartment and say a delivery for Pasternak was waiting at the post office. I would then collect the suitcase, take the train to Peredelkino, and store it at Little House for safekeeping.

Borya didn’t want it. Not at first. With the State having cut off his ability to publish or make a living through his translations, he said we’d find other ways to support ourselves. I reasoned with him that it was but a fraction of what he was owed. Feltrinelli had sold so many copies, he’d already had to reprint it twelve times in Italian; it was a bestseller in America too. The film rights had even been sold to Hollywood. In the West, Borya would’ve been a very wealthy man. When he said we’d make do with what we have and we should be grateful we have each other, I asked him to imagine what would become of me and my family once he was gone.

He eventually came around.

To say I pushed him to accept the foreign royalties would be an understatement; to say I had anything in mind other than ensuring my family would be taken care of, a lie. But why not get something for myself? Why not? After everything I’d done. After everything I’d been through.

But with the money came even more surveillance. They were still watching. I saw no one but always felt their eyes. I shut the windows, closed the drapes, and obsessively checked the locks to Little House. At night, every branch breaking, every gust of wind rattling the door, every screech from some distant car made me jump. Sleep was out of the question.

Seeking relief, I left Little House to stay at my Moscow apartment. It was difficult to be away from Borya, but for the first time in my life, I was glad for the five flights of stairs, the onionskin-thin walls, and my many neighbors who lived on top of one another. If something were to happen, surely someone would hear it and come to my aid. Wouldn’t they?

I was also glad to be with my family. I was seized with the feeling that I needed to be near my children, something I hadn’t felt so strongly since they were young. But Mitya and Ira stayed out of the apartment, making excuses about friends and school. When they were home, they treated my mother with the respect they denied me. Mitya, who had always been such an obedient child, began acting out. Not coming home when he said he would, sometimes smelling of liquor. Ira chose to spend most of her time with a new boyfriend.