Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were going to die on the electric chair at Sing Sing. Evdokia sat at her desk with the newspapers and a pair of scissors and made clippings for Moscow. US atom spy couple, parents of Michael and Robert, their crime ‘worse than murder’. The secret the Rosenbergs had shared was a new type of bomb, a beryllium sphere, enclosed in plutonium, hugged by barium; thirty-six high-explosive lenses, each with two detonators, seventy-two condensers to fire them. Evdokia thought that detonators were detonators, but in the atom world there was always a further caveat on any basic fact. The judge said the Rosenbergs were part of a diabolical conspiracy to destroy a God-fearing nation and that the Russian international spy ring was a well-organised beast, with tentacles that reached into the most vital of places. The jury made no recommendation for mercy. Only the Lord could offer forgiveness for what the Rosenbergs had done.
If Moscow wanted these articles, Evdokia thought, something about the case must be true. The defence was claiming Political Hysteria. Evdokia clipped a photograph of Mrs Ethel Rosenberg: thirty-five years old, stern but delicate in black and white.
Ambassador Lifanov came into the room. The knot of his tie was minuscule, perfectly positioned on his throat, and the chain of a fob watch hung below his breast. He stood beside her and watched. She put the clippings in a folder and faced him. His glasses were low on his nose.
‘Petrova . . . these figures.’
‘Ambassador?’
He put some papers on her desk—the embassy’s monthly payroll. She had prepared and submitted it that morning.
‘Is it correct, this figure?’
She looked. Everyone’s salary was twofold: an allowance in Australian pounds, furthering a direct deposit in roubles into a Moscow account. The ambassador was pointing to Volodya’s name and his one hundred and one Australian units.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said.
The ambassador looked taken aback. He pointed out her own name.
‘Seventy-five Australian units,’ she said. ‘Is something wrong?’
He frowned, gauging her. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it seems unbalanced. Wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. The Pipniakovs, for instance. They have six mouths to feed. And here, look: twenty-six units. I think it is unfair. That is all. Alexandra agrees.’
‘Your wife, Comrade . . .’ She was not sure what to say. ‘Nicolai Nikhailovich, these figures are set in Moscow . . . You are comparing a dvornik’s wage to a diplomatic post.’
‘Still, it is unreasonable. Do you not think?’
‘The figures are what the Foreign Ministry have decided.’ She did not add that the payroll showed only her and Volodya’s ostensible income—that the MVD served them additional salary as well. ‘Perhaps the Pipniakovs should receive more,’ she said. ‘But my responsibility is only to ensure that the correct monies are paid.’
The ambassador shrugged. ‘I am simply saying that, without children, you and your husband are very well off.’
Hatred welled. She stood and left the room without looking at his face. The corridor was airless. Volodya was out of his downstairs office. She shut the door. She took a teacup from his desk and gripped it, applying tremendous pressure against the cup and its handle until the pain felt like it might damage her bones.
The national sheepdog trials. The weather was warm and the embassy accepted an invitation en masse and embarked on a Sunday morning, the cars sardined with children. The trials were at an oval in Yarralumla. The Soviets parked on the boundary and set down rugs and served themselves cordial, wine and bread. The next day would be Constitution Day, a holiday.
The dogs competed one at a time, herding three sheep through a series of obstacles. Evdokia and Volodya stood at the rail with Philip Kislitsyn and his wife. Anna wore a suit that was neutral in colour but modern in its look. She and Evdokia looked at poor Zaryezova. The girl’s husband was in the commercial section and tense about his money. Her suit was ill-fitting, its shoulders uneven like some parallax mistake.
The dogs dashed and stalked and came around. The men, in crumpled suits and crumpled hats, whistled, waved sticks, split sheep and penned them, sometimes shouting ‘Hup’. There was a crowd of a few hundred, annexing the land around their cars, picnicking, a six-metre tally board and a loudspeaker broadcasting.
The secretary of the Trial Association walked past exhibiting the trophy and welcomed the Soviets to the event. The ambassador told him they had sheepdogs everywhere across Russia, but all of them with shaggy hair.
They drank from coloured metallic cups. Evdokia watched as Alexandra Lifanova poured all the women champagne except her. Anna stood for the toast but did so looking sympathetic and distressed. Volodya poured his wife a little brandy instead, and Kislitsyn asked for a share. The children chased one another through the shining maze of cars.
It turned out that the Czechs had come too. She walked with Volodya to their encampment under the shade of a tree. On the oval, a dog crossed between the sheep and his master and was disqualified. The company were despondent for it. Volodya, in a happy mood, shouted that it should be allowed to start again, and the Czechs chimed in, but with no result. Volodya and the Czech consul, Zizka, began drinking vodka. Evdokia watched the way he did it, gulping the drink down. Her husband and the consul stood clasping each other by the shoulder, smiling in the grassy sunshine. They drank and smoked and ate sausage and cured meats and they applauded the dogs and laughed together as they drank some more.
Evdokia sat on a rug with the consul’s wife. The woman wore tinted glasses and had trouble watching the events on the oval, so Evdokia tried to describe what was happening, but it was such a poor sport to commentate on that they gave up, laughing. Lunch was chicken sandwiches.
Vasili Sanko came to say that Ambassador Lifanov felt ill and wanted driving home. Volodya looked at him, chewing. ‘That’s your job.’
‘He says I am too drunk.’
Volodya examined him and grinned. ‘You are an ox. You are not too drunk.’
Zizka gave Sanko a glass. The driver paused briefly, then tipped it down his throat. He clapped once and said, ‘Volodya, the ambassador wants you to take him. He declares that you have the most practised hands.’
Volodya laughed. ‘He is wrong, I can’t drive. I’ll crash like a cartoon.’
Evdokia spoke up. ‘Tell the ambassador that my husband is too drunk. He is bleary-eyed.’
Sanko waited for his cup to fill again. He watched a dog finish its round. ‘Alright. We are all too drunk.’
Zizka cheered and laughed.
‘Tell Lifanov we’re happy here,’ said Volodya. ‘And say that while the Czechs’ vodka might be inferior, at least they serve more of it.’
Sanko smiled and turned. He walked along the boundary, white pegs of timber, back to the Russian camp. Evdokia watched him go. A while later, they saw the Zim departing for Mueller Street. She wondered who was at the helm and turned to give Volodya a goading stare. He wasn’t watching her. She saw him give the car a small wave and continue his cheering of the dogs.
The next day was Monday. In the Lockyer Street house, she stood at the door of the spare room. They’d planned to create a garden box that morning in the space below the porch, but Volodya was in here, snoring.
On the street, sprinklers flared in a few front yards. She walked to the Manuka shops. For the first time there she felt utterly lonely, somehow purposeless, a schism between herself and the physical world.
The house was empty when she came back. The car gone, Jack too. The afternoon arrived and went. She swept the house and used a duster. She put furniture oil on the chairs. The radio played serials that she didn’t have the concentration to follow. It was enough for her to listen to the drama, the sound of family empires, humming.
She wrote to her mother. She wanted to write the things she couldn’t: this growing isolation, the hollowness. The letter was so far removed. She sat the pen on the bureau and stopped.
Volodya came home before dinner, not saying where he’d been. Jack was muddy and she washed his feet in a bucket. The sun gone, they ate sausages from the freezer. She watched Volodya chew and told him that this was a wasted day, that miserable failure had come visiting their plans.
He looked at her and gave a nod. ‘The sausage is good. The potatoes.’
‘Are they?’
‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘I need to go to Sydney.’
‘I thought maybe you’d gone there now.’
‘No. I’d tell you!’
He put pepper on the meat.
‘You went to the spare room last night?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘I woke myself from snoring. I was uncomfortable. I slept there for your benefit.’
‘Where did you go today?’
He paused. ‘Oh, errands.’
‘Errands where? In the country?’
‘Hmm?’
‘Jack’s paws. Mud all over.’
Volodya shrugged. ‘We crossed a creek.’
‘You were hunting?’
‘Doing errands.’
‘Errands, but crossing creeks?’
‘Yes.’
‘With dogs and rifles?’
‘Just cover. Hunting as cover.’
She knew that was a lie. ‘You decided to go hunting and forget the garden box,’ she said.
‘No.’
‘Tell the truth.’
‘You don’t know, Doosia. I needed to do some things, country things, I needed Jack for a story.’
‘You took Kislitsyn too? Did you take Zizka?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Perhaps I will ask them. Whether, this holiday, they were at home with their wives?’
He stood up from the table and changed the tuning of the radio, giving the dial a violent jerk.
‘What will you do in Sydney?’ she asked.
He collected his plate to leave the room. ‘That is official,’ he told her. ‘Not yet any business of yours.’
The ambassador laughed into the phone. Evdokia was taking notes while he spoke with his Swiss counterpart. The Swiss man was now making jokes. Lifanov’s laugh started and ended in his gut, lifting him from his seat. On telephone calls, his habit was to jam his finger under the cradle, as if the spring in the mechanism might fail at any moment and the cradle give way under its own weight, disconnecting him.
At the conversation’s end, he had Evdokia read him back the notes. On her way out, she said to him, ‘Nicolai Nikhailovich, I hope you are not angry about the dog trials. The men were very drunk. It would have been dangerous for them to drive.’
He laughed happily and looked at her. He said that Vasili Sanko had driven safely. The chauffeur’s wife had promised the ambassador the chance to cut off her husband’s head should the pair arrive anything less than sound. They’d sung a song and negotiated the corners slowly.
‘You arrived safely then?’
‘Sanko has a head.’ The ambassador smiled.
That afternoon she went upstairs. The silence of the secret section was the same silence you heard in the corridors of Dzer-zhinsky Square. She worked quietly at the administrative desk, tabulating the results of a stocktake of MVD equipment, cataloguing anything of security interest that couldn’t be burnt.
2 × Nagant M1895 revolvers
1 × radio receiver (dismantled)
4 × official MVD seal
1 × photographic enlarger . . .
Suddenly, Prudnikov was whispering from the door. The chief cypher clerk had one foot in the hall and was holding a square of paper. They were the only two in the section. ‘Nina and I are sorry,’ he said. ‘About what is happening. We must follow the ambassador’s lead.’ He looked down the corridor, towards the stairs. ‘But we are friends, we hope you know. Volodya is in Sydney?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I will show you this so that you may know.’
The page he held was a private cable from Lifanov to Moscow. It said that Third Secretary Petrov was drunk on duty and disobeying direct orders.
‘I am cyphering this,’ said Prudnikov. ‘It will go tomorrow.’
She thanked him. He put the cable into a folder and disappeared.
Volodya rang from the Oriental Hotel. Sydney had seen sun showers, which was the impossible situation of rain on your face and the sun on your skin. It was seven o’clock now. He was going to have dinner. He sounded crisp and a little contrite.
‘Mirabel,’ he said.
‘Mirabel?’
‘That child. The daughter at 16 Lefroy Street.’
Evdokia knew the girl. Six or seven years old, brown hair, little red sandals. She walked by the house every morning on her way to the Telopea Park school. She played sometimes with the boys in the street, and she’d come to their door once, without escort, selling tickets for a raffle.
‘I think we should ask her parents whether we can adopt her,’ said Volodya.
Evdokia was silent.
‘I think it is a good idea,’ her husband continued. ‘We can promise she will be well looked after. We can tell her parents that she will be given a good home and a good education in Russia.’
She had been going to tell him about Lifanov. Instead, she stood there somewhat stunned.
‘When I am back,’ Volodya said before disconnecting. ‘We will talk more about it then.’
She walked through the house, switching on all the lights. It was a crazy idea, Mirabel in their apartment in Moscow, a novelty Australian daughter. Was Volodya serious, or was he simply up there in Sydney halfway drunk? Thinking it over, it eventually occurred to her that his suggestion was probably an attempt at making amends for his hunting. An apology of sorts. The idea was actually quite galling—Volodya presenting the possibility of a child to her as if the suggestion of a daughter was a peace offering equivalent to bunched flowers, a piece of jewellery or some coffee. It stung. It was infuriating. She began thinking about Irina—the slight that her husband had just delivered on herself and her daughter both. Then she pictured Volodya’s face again from that day’s end; his arrival at her apartment, her struggle to relay the news and his developing of that crippled look that she’d never forget, her daughter’s lifeless body in its bed. The forty strange hours of flu and fever; the nausea, the cold limbs and the flights through delirium; the lucid hours that were perfect resurrections until each time the fever hit again and with increased vigour. Until the last.
It was difficult to reconcile Volodya’s kindness at that time with now. Still, she thought their marriage was strong. In the beginning, after their wedding in Moscow, he’d directed upon them a focus that was at times overbearing, their lives overlapping to the degree that she often complained she needed release. But it was an intensity that had had its uses, allowing her to cope. Perhaps it was just the natural way of things that, since then, his attentions had been slowly travelling beyond them. She thought he was increasingly self-focused, progressively more foreclosed. On their excursions or at the gatherings they attended as a couple, there was a developing sense of his acting alone, of needs that excluded her, a selfish-ness in his behaviour that wasn’t malicious but that was there all the same. The secrecy did not help. In Sweden, and here in Australia, he seemed to know full well that he could cloak whatever he wished by evoking the MVD’s name. Still, none of this concerned her too much. She thought that these were ordinary pressures—the same as those on any union. What husband wasn’t selfish and unthinking at times?
She had arrived at the window of the spare bedroom. About to draw the curtains, she saw through the window two human shapes: two pin-prick glints of cigarette, two men sitting outside in a car—the car where you’d park if you were trying to surveil or intimidate the house.
She was being paranoid, she knew. She closed the curtains and went and reheated some stew; dropped bits of potato into Jack’s mouth while listening to a news broadcast on the radio. Returning to the bedroom, she looked through the gap between the curtains, wit
h the light off. The car was still there.
Modes of fear. She wasn’t afraid to begin with, but as time wore on a nervousness set in, a tightening sensation in the blood. She rang the operator and asked the girl to pass a message to the police: a suspicious car on Lockyer Street. Prowlers?
The police came in a gleaming white utility with a loudspeaker on its roof. One officer, turning into the street from Canberra Avenue, parking right behind the car with his headlamps ionising the back bumper. He spent a few moments at the wheel of the utility, as if pondering the object in front and gathering his thoughts. Then he got out and walked up the gutter and leaned into the car. The conversation lasted a few minutes. The policeman wrote something on a pad and went back. He sat in the utility—Evdokia thought maybe talking on his radio—then he cut half the power to his headlamps and drove away.
The car remained. One figure looked directly at the house now, the other behind and around.
There was a heavy spanner in the bathroom where Volodya had been changing washers. She stood with this weapon in one hand and Jack’s collar in the other. Jack knew that something was happening but not quite what. He pulled against her grip, low vibrations in his throat. The people in the car wound down their windows. She decided to switch on the outdoor light. Its glow fell weakly on the road, hardly more than a gravesman’s lamp.
Even as the engine started, the car’s occupants seemed coolly unperturbed. They moved slowly to Lefroy Street, turning right, headlamps off. She was taking a long breath at the window when she had the feeling that there was someone in the room. Jack barked. The sound rang out like a shot in an enclosed space and she dropped the spanner and swung around.
There was no one. She cursed the dog quietly as her heart came to rest. She cursed and patted him at the same time.
At the back door she checked the bolts. She went to their bedroom and set down a towel. The flex cord on the telephone extended a few inches under the door. She moved it into the room, put the reading chair against the door, the dog on the towel and the spanner by the bedside lamp. These were practical precautions. She was no longer afraid. Life had just seen enough trouble caused by men breaking through doors in the middle of the night not to act in cases of fair warning.
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