And then the train was pulling out of the station, wheels clacking on the tracks. Through the train windows, Daniel caught one last glimpse of Gennady as he moved down the rows of seats looking for a place to sit. Then the train car passed out of sight, the train was picking up speed, it moved out of the station and rolled away into the forest.
Daniel stayed and watched until the train disappeared between the trees – until the rattle of its wheels had faded, and he could no longer hear its whistle. Then he turned the key in the ignition and drove away.
Part Two
1975
Chapter 1
When Daniel arrived home from his business trip, he found his wife Elizabeth clipping the hollyhocks in the dusk. She looked up at the creak of the porch steps, and Daniel leaned over the porch rail and asked, “Did you finish the hollyhock paintings?”
She set aside her clippers. “That’s why I’m clipping them back,” she said. “Did you walk all the way from the subway station? You could’ve called.”
He set down his briefcase and leaned over the porch rail to kiss her. “I didn’t want to wake the kids. How are they?”
“Emily learned the butterfly at swimming lessons this week and has decided she wants to be a mermaid. David still thinks he’s too old to go to bed at eight o’clock – ”
Daniel laughed. “I bet he fell asleep before his head hit the pillow.”
“Of course he did. These swimming lessons are great for tiring them out.” Elizabeth picked up her clippers again. “I left the last slice of pie for you on the kitchen counter.”
“My lovely wife.” Daniel kissed her again and picked up his briefcase.
It was blackberry pie; Elizabeth must have taken the kids up to the cabin to pick berries while he was gone. Daniel ate it out of the pie pan while he flipped through the stack of mail. Bill, bill, junk mail. A postcard from Sante Fe, sent by Anna and her second husband, Nate, who were always jetting off to somewhere for their joint career as travel writers. More junk mail.
A letter from Gennady.
It had been fifteen years since Daniel had seen him; six years since he’d seen that handwriting, when Gennady finished his last international posting in Zurich. Daniel dropped his fork on the pie tin and ripped the letter open.
My friend –
I have received a two-year assignment to Washington DC…
Daniel had to put the letter aside for a moment. Then he picked it up and read the rest of it greedily, not that there was much more: Gennady mentioned a post office where Daniel could send a reply, P.O. Box 675, under the same name he’d used for his Zurich letters. A time and a place they could meet for lunch. A week from now at a cafeteria. Write and let me know if you will be there.
Like all of Gennady’s letters, it was short and unsigned.
He would discuss the letter with Elizabeth soon, but not right now. Instead, he went quietly up the dim stairs to their bedroom and got out a shoebox that he kept on an upper shelf, well out of reach of his children.
It was his box of keepsakes from past love affairs. By far most of the objects recalled his relationship with Helen: Daniel had been a sentimental high school student. Here was a pencil she had lent him before they began dating (how he had tried to transmute that simple pencil into a confession of love), notes she had left in his locker, ticket stubs from every movie they’d seen together…
Here also was the book of Whitman Paul had given him; tickets to a symphony he had attended with Janet.
And, of course, mementoes from Gennady.
The brief note Gennady left Daniel the morning after Daniel had kissed him. The little metal stagecoach from the Cracker Jack box. The photograph that Daniel’s mother had taken Christmas morning, Gennady opening his Christmas present while Daniel leaned over the back of his armchair and smiled down at him.
The letters Gennady had written from Zurich.
Daniel was sitting on the bed by the window, rereading the old letters in the dying light, when Elizabeth came in. “You’ll ruin your eyes,” she told him.
“Yes, probably,” he said. He set down the letter he was reading. “I got a letter from Gennady.”
“Gennady?” Elizabeth had never met the man, so it took her a moment to place the name; but when she did, she smiled. “So he’s been posted abroad again! How is he?”
“He’s – well, he’s in DC,” Daniel said. He held the most recent letter out to her. She moved closer to the window to read it, and he leaned over and switched on a lamp.
“Will you meet him?” she asked.
Daniel hesitated. Of course he wanted to, but at the same time… “It’s been fifteen years,” he said at last. “People change.”
Just look at Paul. Daniel had run into him six months earlier at Bureau cocktail party. Physically, Paul was just as handsome as Daniel remembered. Perhaps even handsomer: the addition of a few wrinkles and a little silver in the hair only made him look distinguished.
But it had been an awkward meeting. They exchanged only a little chitchat before Paul said, an edge to his voice, “I suppose you’re married by now.”
“Yes,” Daniel said, and made for his wallet to show Paul the photograph of his wife and children.
“I thought you would be,” Paul said, the edge even more cutting, and on second thought Daniel didn’t take out his wallet after all.
Actually, the problem with Paul was that he hadn’t changed at all.
In any case, Daniel knew from the Zurich letters that Gennady himself was married now. Her name was Alla.
“The worst thing that can happen is an awkward lunch, right?” Elizabeth said. “You should do it.”
“Yes, you’re right,” Daniel agreed. He flipped back through the Zurich letters till he found the first one, and held it up for her to read. “I think he wanted me to come visit him in Switzerland.”
Zurich, Gennady had written, was “clean and pretty and boring, but the mountains are very fine. They say the skiing is good in winter, but right now we hike, and admire the views and the wildflowers, and feast in the inns in the evenings.”
Enclosed: a dry yellow wildflower, fragile after all these years.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Well, I didn’t realize at the time. And this was right after we bought the house… right after our honeymoon…” Daniel grimaced. “I’m pretty sure I wrote about our honeymoon in reply.”
“Daniel!” Elizabeth laughed at him.
“He didn’t go all tourist-brochure about Switzerland again,” Daniel said ruefully.
“Have lunch with him, Daniel,” Elizabeth said. “Invite him here for dinner. I’ll make chicken Kiev.” She lowered her voice, although the kids were safely asleep. “You can hardly decide if you want to sleep with him again without even seeing him.”
Daniel began to gather up the letters again. “You wouldn’t mind?” he asked, although he knew that answer would be –
“No, of course not.”
She really meant it, too. He tried to mean it when he said that he did not mind about her lover Ronald Benson, but it wasn’t always true.
Daniel evened up the edges of the letters and returned them to the box. “It’s been fifteen years,” Daniel reminded her. “He’s married. And he may look like a Politburo member now.”
***
Gennady did not look like a Politburo member.
An objective observer probably would have said that he hadn’t aged as well as Paul. He looked tired, and his suit still didn’t fit, but instead of giving him a boyish charm, now it just looked sloppy.
But when Daniel came into the cafeteria, Gennady sprang to his feet with his old youthful energy. “Put down your tray,” he ordered, and as soon as Daniel did so Gennady gathered him into a bear hug, and even kissed him on both cheeks in the Russian manner. “Old friend! Old friend!” he said, holding Daniel at arm’s length and smiling at him.
“It’s good to see you,” Daniel said, smiling back. He would have liked to return the ch
eek kisses, but he was too shy, and slid into the booth instead.
His shyness infected the conversation. For a little while they ate in silence, until Daniel blurted, “I told my superiors that I’d be meeting with you. I thought it would look funny to meet a Soviet spy without telling them. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not,” said Gennady. “I’m glad you’ve finally learned some wisdom and discretion, my friend. You wouldn’t want to be executed like the Rosenbergs. Naturally I told my people too. Although, of course…” That tiny ironic smile that Daniel had nearly forgotten. “I’m not a spy. I’m a cultural attaché.”
“Of course, of course. Careless of me. And how’s it going spreading Soviet culture to the American masses?”
So they chatted about books and films. Gennady smiled with pleasure when Daniel mentioned that he had taken his children to see an American release of the Soviet film The Wild Swans. “Ah! How many children do you have?”
“Two; a boy and a girl. David and Emily.” Daniel took a photo from his wallet. He had taken it in front of the cabin earlier that summer, Elizabeth and David and Emily all sitting in the dappled sunlight beneath the maple tree.
Gennady inspected the photo. “Very pretty, all of them.”
“Do you have children?” Daniel asked.
Gennady gave the photograph back and shook his head. “Alla doesn’t want them and, after all, she would be the one looking after them.”
“I see women’s lib hasn’t made it to Moscow,” Daniel said wryly.
“Nothing has made it to Moscow since 1965,” Gennady replied.
His voice was flat. Daniel hesitated, then decided not to follow up on that comment. Instead he asked, “How is Alla liking DC?”
Gennady’s face tensed “She didn’t come. She doesn’t like to travel.”
“Really?” Daniel said, startled. That was not the impression he’d gotten from the hiking and skiing and fondueing in the Zurich letters.
“You see, there is not much chance to travel abroad in the Soviet Union,” Gennady said. “So she had never traveled before we got married, and then we were posted to Zurich, and…” He shrugged. “She found she didn’t like it.”
Daniel felt that he had been tactless, and cast around for something else to talk about. “How are you liking DC?”
Gennady’s face relaxed. “It’s very hot,” he said. “Muggy. I learned this word last week,” he added, and that characteristic pride in a piece of vocabulary acquisition struck Daniel with painful fondness. “Did you know you have a National Gallery? Of course it is not as fine as our Tretyakov Gallery…”
Daniel laughed. Gennady gave a quick sly grin.
“But some of the art is good,” Gennady said generously. “And it is cool inside.”
“Which is the most important thing in a DC summer,” Daniel agreed. “Have you been to any of the Smithsonians? They’re building an Air and Space Museum down on the Mall…”
Gennady looked rather cold. Daniel should have guessed the Apollo missions would be a sore topic.
But Gennady thawed again when Daniel began to talk about the restaurants in town. It transpired that Gennady had been to many of them – “Cultivating sources,” he explained. “In the culture industry.”
“So let me get this straight,” Daniel teased. “You’re taking other people to La Colline, but I only rate a cafeteria?”
He really was a little hurt: not about the cafeteria, but because it was clear Gennady had been in town at least a couple of months before he wrote to Daniel.
Gennady actually looked embarrassed. “I wasn’t sure you would come.”
“How could I say no? I’ve missed you, you know.”
“I doubt it,” Gennady scoffed, but Daniel could tell he was pleased. “You’ve been too busy to miss anyone. Traveling across the United States with your Elizabeth, living out of a camper and sleeping under the stars, skinny-dipping in the Colorado River…”
“Stop, stop, stop,” Daniel begged. “My life isn’t usually like that. That was just my honeymoon.”
“You wrote six pages about it.” Daniel hid his face in his hands, and Gennady added happily, “Many exclamation points. A great deal of capitalization.”
“Shoot me now.”
“It was sweet,” Gennady said, slightly mocking. Then suddenly his voice became serious again, and he said, “I’m glad you are happy, my friend.”
Daniel lowered his hands and looked at Gennady. “And how about you? Are you happy?”
Gennady shrugged. “I’m okay.”
“Just okay?”
“You’re so American. Okay isn’t good enough for you?”
“I’d like you to be happy.”
“I’m happy to be having lunch with you. And I will be happier still if you agree to do it again.”
“Yes, of course,” Daniel said. He couldn’t help smiling. “I’ll have to write a report about it, you know.”
“Yes, of course. And so will I.” Gennady finished his pot roast and switched his plates around to start in on his coconut cream pie. “Would your superiors prefer to hear that the Soviet agents in DC are industriously scouting for information, or that we are all too busy taking long lunches to do so?”
“I don’t know that anyone would believe me,” Daniel said, “if I tried to pass you off as industrious…”
Gennady laughed. Daniel grinned. “Why don’t you come to my house for dinner?” Daniel suggested.
The coconut cream pie bulged as Gennady tried to cut it with his fork. “Yes, yes, that would be nice.”
“Maybe sometime next week? Friday?”
Gennady paused, his fork mid-pie. “You’re serious?”
“Yes. My wife suggested it,” Daniel said, and added, “She’s heard a lot about you.”
The fork descended gently to Gennady’s plate. “Has she?”
Daniel heard the question behind the words: What exactly have you told her about me?
He answered as directly as he could in a crowded cafeteria. “Yes. I tell her everything.”
Gennady didn’t reply. He took up his fork again and made inroads on the coconut pie. “This filling, it’s falling apart, it’s like soup,” he muttered. Then, to Daniel: “What would the FBI think if they found out? A Soviet spy in your house?”
“I doubt they’d be happy,” Daniel admitted. He poked at his stiff Jell-O. “You would be in more danger than I am,” he said, without looking at Gennady. “Your government is far more likely to execute you for espionage than mine.”
Gennady shrugged. “Yes, theoretically, but you understand my colleagues wish to complete their American tours with as many three-hour lunches and as little actual work as possible, so it is not in their best interests to notice anything.”
Daniel dissected a cube of Jell-O. The noise of the cafeteria rose up around them: chattering voices, the clink of forks on plates and ice in glasses, the clatter of a pan on the serving line.
“Elizabeth’s looking forward to meeting you,” Daniel ventured. “She says she’ll cook chicken Kiev.”
“Real chicken Kiev with plenty of butter? Not one of your American low-fat creations?”
“Real chicken Kiev,” Daniel promised.
“Well.” Gennady capitulated. “For real chicken Kiev I would walk over broken glass.”
Chapter 2
Gennady arrived for dinner at Daniel’s house very early.
He left his apartment in Washington DC with time to spare, just in case he needed to shake off a tail. But the American intelligence community was almost insultingly uninterested in the doings of the Soviet agents in their capital: no one followed him.
And he gave himself a little extra time, too, because he had no directions but the sketchy map that Daniel had drawn on the back of a napkin. But in fact he had no difficulty finding Daniel’s house. He got off at the last stop on the Metro line (the DC Metro was far less grand than the Moscow subway) and walked a pleasant two miles along a leafy suburban stree
t.
Daniel had clearly done well for himself. The trees were stately, the houses spacious, and the air full of the pleasant scent of cut grass, the hum of lawnmowers, and the happy shrieks of children splashing in pools. Gennady walked slowly, but even so he ended up in front of Daniel’s house more than an hour early.
He hesitated on the sidewalk, looking up at the two-story house so lushly planted with lilies that it seemed almost embowered. Perhaps he should take a turn around the block?
But then the front door of Daniel’s house opened and Daniel’s wife stepped out, instantly recognizable from the photograph with her dark gold hair and her smile.
In the photograph, her voluptuous figure hadn’t been evident, but it certainly was now as she came down the porch steps, barefoot in slacks and a loose peasant blouse. “Gennady?” she said, the word half a question.
“Yes. And you must be Elizabeth?”
She held out her hand to shake. “Won’t you come in?” she asked. “I’m afraid Daniel isn’t back yet, but I could grab you some lemonade.”
“All right.”
The front hall seemed dim after the brightness of the sunshine. Gennady slipped off his shoes and padded down the hallway into large, light, spacious room, its walls covered with paintings.
Two of the paintings extended from floor to ceiling. Another, horizontal, stretched six feet across the wall, and beneath it hung a series of tall thin paintings of hollyhocks, three feet high and less than a foot wide.
The hollyhocks Gennady recognized on sight. The painting above seemed more abstract, but upon further consideration he saw that it was not abstract after all, but a landscape, a lake, unrecognizable at first glance because one did not expect to see a lake in soft orange and sunshine yellow, shadowed with deep purple trees.
“Do you like it?”
Gennady had grown so absorbed in the picture that he didn’t notice Elizabeth’s return until she spoke. She looked almost like a painting herself: Socialist Realism, the pretty lady of the house in her embroidered blouse, holding a silver tray bearing a blue glass pitcher already weeping condensation.
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