Our Woman in Moscow

by Beatriz Williams

  Iris woke at dawn to the shrill noise of all the world’s birds outside the open window. Yesterday was hot; this morning, the sky was cloudy and restless. Sasha lay asleep on his stomach, one arm thrown across her ribs. She untangled herself and slipped out of bed. She ached all over; when she looked in the mirror, she saw red smudges scattered across her breasts and stomach and thighs. She put on some clothes. When she returned to bed to stare at Sasha, she was pleased to see she’d marked him, too. His mouth hung open a little. His hair splayed across his forehead. Iris wondered how he looked after he went to bed with Nedda Fischer—whether they made love like this, snarling and snapping—whether they discussed Marxist theory afterward, among the tangled sheets—the dialectic and all that, the class struggle as the basis of all history—the inevitable revolution—all the things Iris didn’t care about.

  She wondered if she should tell Philip Beauchamp what she knew—whether that would be an act of patriotism or of vengeance.

  Downstairs, the cottage was still quiet. Not even Mrs. Betts had risen to put order to all the chaos. Iris found Burgess sprawled asleep on the library sofa, covered by a horse blanket; Major Davenport lay on the floor half ensnared by a raincoat. Neither was wearing a shirt; God knew if they had anything on down below. The room stank of male perspiration and of stale cigarettes. Iris picked up the empty bottles of gin from the weary Oriental rug and threw them in the trash. She put on her sturdy leather Oxford shoes and slipped out the kitchen door.

  The air was speckled with fragile golden light and the dew coated the meadow. Iris inhaled the smell of wet hay, the new clean green morning. She started on the lane, toward Highcliffe, then veered down a path that angled to the sea. Like the birds, she couldn’t settle. She tried to tie together Sasha and Nedda Fischer and Guy Burgess, but the threads kept dropping as she picked them up, because Sasha was at the American embassy and Burgess worked for the British Foreign Office and what about the Fischer woman? The SIS? How did they all tie together, how did it work? Sasha said it was finished. Why? Because the war was over, fascism was vanquished? Why did they still see each other, then? Why did they get drunk and trade messages and rush off?

  Iris stopped in the middle of the path and held her hand up against the sun, which had broken between a pair of clouds to illuminate the world. Through her fingers, she spied some tiny movement to her left and turned her head. Along the edge of the meadow, on the other side of the wooden fence, a gray horse galloped hard, urged on by a taut man in tweeds and tall shining boots and no hat. The sun flashed on his silver hair. Iris made herself small in the grass. She watched the horse pound toward the fence, which must have been four feet high at least, and soar over it in a neat, perfect arc. They galloped on toward the cliffs. A foreboding took hold of Iris—the sea—something terrible! She held her breath and marveled at the beauty of the animal, his giant stride, the expert stillness of the man riding him. Her lungs almost burst with fear—with awe—no, don’t!—turn, for God’s sake!—

  The horse bent around the curve in the cliff path, the way you might swing your body around a pole. The pair of them—silver horse, silver man—tore away into the sunshine.

  Iris wanted to call after him. She wanted to shout My husband is a traitor, your trusted Fischer is a traitor, Burgess too, maybe Davenport, who knows.

  But she didn’t. Her husband might betray secrets, but loyalty was the stuff of Iris’s bones.

  Ruth

  July 1952

  Moscow

  When I open my eyes, the curtains stand open to a bright northern summer morning, and the chaise longue is so immaculate, you’d never guess a two-hundred-pound man slept upon its cushions. The other thing immaculate is Fox himself. He’s bathed and shaved and stands now in his American sport coat and slacks as bright as a new damn penny. Even his breath is sweet, though his voice is a little too stiff, in my opinion.

  “Rise and shine, sweetheart. Car arrives in half an hour.”

  “Go to hell,” I mutter and spring out of bed.

  Thirty-three minutes later, he ushers me into the back seat of the same car that drove us here from the airport the previous evening. I can’t say I shine, as instructed, but at least the hurry and bother have distracted me from my anxiety. I cross one leg over the other and watch the hotel spurt away. Fox, ever thorough, riled up the sheets and punched the pillows before we left, to make it look like a newlywed couple had spent the night in them, but a knot tightens around my stomach anyway. I hate the idea of some chambermaid reporting back on our sheets and the cleanliness of the bathroom. I hate the way you can never be alone.

  I hate that this reunion with my sister is as unnatural as my union with Fox, and it means about as much.

  I’m surprised when the car swerves out of traffic and pulls up at an apartment building across from a large park, because the building seems old and shabby, the kind of place that was once the kind of smart, elegant residence where smart, elegant people lived, but has now fallen into neglect. Shouldn’t the Digbys be living in style, as heroes of a grateful Soviet republic?

  Mr. Kedrov travels with us in the passenger seat, next to the driver. During the drive, he occasionally turned to us and reminded us of things we’d already been told, like—Now, remember family name is Dubinin, to protect privacy! And—Car will be waiting for you outside at two o’clock! He now springs out, while Fox opens my door with his usual dispatch. Once I’m free, he keeps his fingers wound with mine, as if he’s worried I might bolt at the last minute. Or possibly just to keep up the act of a tender pair of newlyweds—who knows? We step inside the lobby. There’s no doorman on duty, no porter. Mr. Kedrov proceeds to the elevators and presses a button. He rolls back and forth from his toes to his heels and chuckles at the closed metal doors of the elevator, which looks as if it was added years after the original construction. He mumbles something about the Dubinins having moved in a few months ago, when an apartment became available, because of the expected new arrival.

  “Is that so? Where were they living before that?” Fox asks, in the manner of a man making conversation.

  “When they first arrived, we found them beautiful housing in resort, not far from city. They learned Russian language and sent boys to Soviet school. Is quieter there,” he adds, frowning, and jabs the elevator call button a few more times.

  I think I see a sheen of sweat at Kedrov’s temple. Maybe Fox notices it too. I dig my fingers into Fox’s hand and absorb the whip tension of his body alongside mine.

  At last the elevator doors open with a jerk and a clang. The morning sunshine happens to be pouring through the lobby windows and door, which makes the cab seem darker than it really is. Kedrov motions us both inside. Fox urges me first, a perfect pantomime of old-fashioned courtesy. But Kedrov doesn’t join us in the elevator. He stands by the door and holds it open with his hand until we’ve both turned, then he reaches inside and presses one of the numbers on the panel. They’re Cyrillic, of course, so I can’t tell which one it is, although I know the Digbys—the Dubinins, I remind myself—live on the fourth floor. He says, “Apartment 412, they are expecting you!” before he releases the door.

  We jolt upward. Fox takes my hand—I don’t know if he’s acting on habit by now, or whether he wants to comfort me. Either way, I feel comforted. How much harder it would be to face her alone! Especially with Digby by her side, and their children, and an additional child crammed inside her womb, about to enter the world at any moment. I wonder why Kedrov didn’t come up with us, keep an ear on things, and I remember there’s no need. The Digbys’ apartment must contain more microphones than a Hollywood sound stage.

  The elevator takes an eternity, not nearly long enough. The cab halts with a bang and a jerk. The doors open. Fox urges me out and holds my hand as we walk down the hallway. I wear a nifty navy blue jacket over a white silk shirt and a blue silk scarf patterned in gold horseshoes for luck; light tan slacks and comfortable Oxford shoes; my hair a little longer than I like it, brushed back fr
om my face, waving softly beneath my small, plain hat. I consider myself smart and modern; Iris will think I look mannish and severe. I long for a cigarette and a double scotch. Instead I have Fox’s hand wrapped around my gloved fingers. Ahead of us, a door opens and a tall, angular man steps out, thinning hair sleek and gold under the hallway light. He waves at us.

  “Hullo there! Welcome!” says Sasha Digby.

  I’m not prepared for the fury that whips through me at the sight of him. I’ve almost forgotten about Digby as an actual man, a breathing human being, because he’s lived so long as a villain in my imagination. But you can’t just hate a person in the flesh, at the moment he presents his frail humanity to you—the thinning hair, the skin that’s taken on lines and texture, the anxious blue eyes that want so badly to please you—to be forgiven. So the hatred transforms in an instant to anger.

  Still, I disguise it well. You never saw such an actress! I hurry forward to clasp both of Digby’s hands and mwa the air next to each cheek. “Sasha! My God, twelve years! I never dreamed we’d meet again here!”

  “Nor did I, nor did I!” He turns to Fox and holds out his hand. “Sumner Fox, by God. I thought Iris was kidding me. Sasha Dubinin.”

  “Dubinin. Pleasure.” Fox shakes his hand, man to man.

  “Come in, come in. Iris! They’re here! I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your coming out like this. I know it’s hell, a trip like that, visas and diplomatic clearance and every pesky thing. I hope nobody made any trouble for you.”

  “Not a bit,” Fox says. “Smooth as butter. I couldn’t believe it myself. Once the wheels went in motion, why, there was no stopping them rolling forward.”

  For some reason, we still stand outside the apartment door. I suppose we’re all a little nervous of going in to face what’s inside. But a space falls after Fox’s last words, in which there is nothing else to say, so we all turn to the apartment’s interior and perform the exact same pantomime as downstairs at the elevator a moment ago—Digby waving us both in, Fox urging me a half step forward with a hand that just caresses the curve of my spine.

  Then I’m inside the foyer, and a small, delicate woman appears—heavily pregnant, dark hair, anxious face—Iris.

  “Ruth? Thank you so much for coming.”

  I don’t know how it is. I don’t know why I do it, what force urges me forward. Something primeval, I imagine. My feet move by themselves. I open my arms at the last instant and cradle her shoulders and head—my stomach rams the mountain of hers—her dark hair fills my mouth. I have to spit it out to speak.

  “Of course I came, pumpkin.”

  I would like to say that we then settle down on a sofa somewhere and trade tender reminiscences until the cows come home, but an instant later the children tumble down the hall and that’s that. I mean, the noise alone. The kids fire questions at me, Iris asks if I want tea or coffee—vodka, I call out—Digby tells Fox what a fan he was, something about a game against Harvard—there’s no time at all for awkwardness. We wind up on a sofa fully half an hour later. The children get bored and wander off to somebody’s room to play a game.

  “Not Monopoly, I presume?”

  Digby laughs. “No.”

  Now, the first thing I notice about Digby, once we’re all arranged in this shabby living room of theirs, is that he drinks coffee instead of vodka, and he smokes a pipe instead of a cigarette. The second thing I notice is that he actually looks remarkably well, for a traitor—older, like I said, but still pink and healthy, not even so much as a fatherly paunch. The room in which we sit is lined with books. Digby’s talking with Fox about his work, how he’s writing a comprehensive study of American foreign policy since the First World War, teaching a class or two at Moscow University—that kind of thing, he says.

  That kind of thing. Doesn’t that kind of thing include delivering lectures to intelligence officers at the KGB? The nerve of him! But of course he spoke—like we all do—to the microphones listening silently in their hidden corners. Back in Rome, Fox had assured me that Digby wanted out of the Soviet Union. But as I sit and listen to Sasha rattle on about his life in the Soviet Union, it seems to me he’s awfully cool. He’s as cool as ice. Probably you have to be, doing what he did. But the Digby of Rome—the ardent Bolshevist delivering secrets to the Soviet Union because he believed so passionately in world communism—wasn’t cool at all. He was a drunk. He argued his politics out loud, where anyone could hear them. He spilled his secrets to women, just to get them into bed. He’d only gotten worse after the war, by all accounts.

  This Digby seems . . . well, happy.

  I turn back to Iris and ask how she’s feeling. How much longer until the baby flies the coop? She puts her hand on her belly, the way expectant women do, and says any day now.

  “You look well. You look exactly like one of those women who gives birth in the hayfield and gets right back up again.”

  “Well, I’m not,” she says, a little cold. “I’m not at all. God knows, I wish I were.”

  I open my mouth to ask what seems to me a logical question—namely, why she keeps having them, in that case. But Digby rises from his chair and wanders over to put his hand on her shoulder, and I suppose he knows what I’m thinking.

  “The trouble is, she forgets. They get to be a couple of years old and she wants another one, and I haven’t got the heart to say no.”

  “I don’t think it’s your heart that can’t say no,” I tell him crisply, and for an instant nobody says anything. Then Digby bursts out laughing.

  “They’re a lot of trouble, all right, but they have a way of reminding you of the future, and what’s important. And they’re a hell of a lot of fun, too. Why—”

  As if on cue, the youngest—her name is Claire, I’ve been told—toddles charmingly into the room in her yellow dress and makes straight for her daddy’s leg. He bends down so she can whisper in his ear. The expression on his face is so earnest, so devoted to what she’s telling him, it stops my heart. Then he rises and takes her hand. He says solemnly, “If you’ll excuse me a moment. Claire and I have something important to attend to.”

  Then he walks away, hand in hand with his adorable daughter, and I think maybe that was it. Maybe that’s what focuses his mind and makes him so cool when an absolute ice calm is called for—he has his daughter to think about, her safety and her future, and his only true loyalty is to her and her brothers and the woman who’s given them to him.

  After lunch we take the elevator downstairs and visit the park across the street. The day’s turned so sunny and warm, a perfect summer afternoon. I ask Iris if she’s up to walking so far, and she says of course she is. In fact, exercise is absolutely vital to a healthy pregnancy, and anyway a good long walk might bring on her labor.

  “But don’t you want to wait until the last possible minute? Since it’s such a trial to you?”

  “The opposite. I want it over with. I want to look the dragon in the face so I can stop dreading him.”

  She gives me a particular look when she says this, which no microphone could have picked up, and turns to help little Claire with her shoes.

  “And no more after that, I hope?” I ask.

  She’s busy with shoelaces and doesn’t answer. But when she climbs to her feet, wincing, she says quietly, “Honestly, I’d hand you the gun myself.”

  And I am left wondering on which Digby I’m supposed to fire it.

  The men tramp on ahead with the boys, while Iris and I walk with Claire. To my surprise, the little tyke picks up my hand and swings along next to me. She calls me Auntie Wuth as if she’s known me all her life.

  “Well, of course she does,” Iris says. “I talk about you all the time. The trouble we used to get into when we were little. You would always take the blame for me.”

  “That’s because nobody would have believed you’d caused the trouble yourself. That innocent face of yours.”

  She cuts off a laugh. I look at her face and notice she’s wincing, though she keeps
on walking in that rolling waddle of pregnant women.

  “Everything all right?” I ask.

  “Just the usual. I don’t think it will be long.”

  “Good, because I don’t think I can hold out much longer.” I cast a glance around us and see nobody near, except for a man in a dark suit who lingers on the path behind us, about thirty yards away. I speak in a soft voice. “I don’t know how you could stand it, all these years. The listening ears.”

  She laughs gently. “I do appreciate your coming, Ruth. I mean that. After all these years, out of the blue. I don’t know how we’d manage without you.”

  Without warning, Claire wheels in front of me and holds up her hands. I stare at her, perplexed. She gazes up soulfully with her mother’s face, shaped like a heart, fringed with her mother’s dark hair, and waggles her fingers.

  “My God, she looks exactly like you,” I tell my sister.

  “That’s a blessing, anyway. Are you going to pick her up, or not?”

  “Pick me up!” Claire says, right on cue.

  “Oh, that’s what this means.” I waggle my fingers back at her and bend down to hoist her on my hip. She’s lighter than I thought, as if her bones are hollow, like a bird’s. She snuggles her arms and legs around me and rests her warm head in the hollow of my shoulder. Her hair smells of honeysuckle and childhood.

  “Tank you, Auntie Wuth,” she says.

  So distracted am I by the unfamiliar sweet warmth of Claire’s body, I don’t think to ask Iris what she meant. Why it should be a blessing that a child looks like her mother instead of her handsome father.