Boston
Neither of them speaks much during the drive home from the airport. During the long flight back they have been depressed and agitated by turns. They have talked about Misha’s confession, examined his words from every angle, pieced together not only the facts of the case, but the emotions of it too. Now, during the final leg of the journey home, it is as though all of that artificial, nervous energy has drained from them. Lauren in particular is tense, deeply upset. Each mile along the highway is only bringing her closer to Alexander, and she does not quite know how to tell him what they have learned.
“I feel like we’ve been away for months,” Melissa says.
“Missing the office?” Lauren asks, smiling.
“Sure, but that’s not what I meant. I kind of got used to Moscow. Felt immersed in it, and in Katya. I think I’m still in shock.”
Lauren nods. “I know.”
They turn off the highway and into the warren of back streets that leads directly to their neighbourhood.
“Do you want to have some dinner with us? I can pretty much guarantee that Uncle Alex will have an amazing meal waiting.”
“I’m sure he will. But I think you’d better do this alone, don’t you? This is going to be incredibly hard for him.”
“I know.”
Melissa swings the car into Alexander’s street, and slows before the house. She gets out and helps Lauren up the front steps with her bags. As she hands her the last one, their hands touch. Melissa entwines her fingers with Lauren’s and squeezes. Then kisses her on the cheek.
“Good luck,” she says. “Call me later and let me know how it went.”
Before she has even driven away, Alexander has opened the door, and is embracing his niece. He waves to Melissa, and then helps Lauren into the house.
“So good to have you back. I have dinner all ready.”
“Smells great.”
She follows him into the kitchen, where he is all movement and energy. When he looks at her, she is watching him with compassion, or is it pity? Something about her look causes a vague sensation of coldness to invade his chest, and when she asks him if she can have a quick shower before dinner, he is almost grateful for the idea of a few extra minutes to collect himself now that the excitement of her return is beginning to give way to a nervous tension - curiosity about what she might have found out.
“Go ahead,” he tells her. “I need a few minutes to finish dinner anyway. And then, I want to know about Moscow.”
She smiles, sensing the effort that he is making to take a distanced interest in her trip. He wipes his hands on a cloth and looks at her.
“Go on. Then you can come back and tell me everything.”
“Moscow’s looking more and more like downtown in any big US city,” Lauren says as they eat. “The ads, the coffee places, you know. At least, part of it seems that way.”
“And the rest?”
“The rest of it still looks like the place of my imagination. The place I always visualised you living. Dramatic buildings, the churches you walk past where suddenly a group of people are chanting prayers, the old babushkas on the street corners, those solid grey Soviet buildings. The spires of the Kremlin. It’s a strange combination.”
“You
romanticise it too much.”
“Maybe. I can’t help it.”
Alexander pushes away his plate. He has eaten less than half of the food on it, she notices.
“How are you, Uncle Alex?”
“Fine.”
“How’s Estelle?”
Now his eyes avoid hers, and he stands up to load more salad into her bowl.
“I don’t know. I saw her the day after you left. A week ago, nearly. We saw My Fair Lady. You should see it by the way.”
“Tell me. Something happened.”
He sits down, pinned there by her insight.
“Nothing, really. Without actually talking about it as such, she made it clear that she wasn’t interested in pursuing any relationship with me. Not one that might trouble her husband.”
“Were you surprised?”
“No…” He pauses, hoping he will be excused from saying more, but she only waits. “I guess I was somehow hoping for more from her. So, I thought it best that we stop seeing each other altogether.”
“How does she feel about that?”
“I don’t know. I got a note about a week ago. She said she was going out of town on her own for a few weeks. To get her bearings, think about things.”
“What things?”
“I have no idea. She wants to write, you know,” he adds suddenly, with warmth. “But she seems somehow afraid of that man and his opinions.”
“The professor?”
Alexander nods. “I don’t think she even likes him. Maybe she loves him, from habit, or duty, but there’s no passion there.”
“Isn’t passion a lot to expect after thirty years?”
Alexander fixes her with a look that holds in it a weight of anger and sadness. “I don’t think so.”
She is silent, sorry for his distress, unsure of what to say.
“Without passion, what is the point of living?” he tells her, his tone still bristling with emotion. She nods, wanting to placate, wanting to understand.
“And Misha,” he says, suddenly. “Tell me, did you find him?”
“Yes,” she says, looking down. “We did.”
Lauren begins to recount the details of her journey over a dessert of chocolate cake, beginning with how the detective found Misha, and then moving onto their first visit to Misha’s apartment. She does not hurry her words, for she wants time to carry her uncle slowly along with her, before the real story is thrust on him. She has no trouble managing this – despite all Alexander’s previous protestations that he does not care about Russia and the details of what happened, he is in fact hungry for facts, and descriptions, and sights and every one of her impressions is of interest to him. He wants to know what Misha looks like, how he behaves, does he have the same sense of humour, what is his apartment like? All these Lauren answers, obliging her uncle with her painter’s eye for detail and nuance.
“So you learned nothing from him?”
Lauren catches an undertone of disappointment in his voice, and she feels slightly sick. Of course, deep down, he was really hoping that we would find something out; of course he has always secretly wanted every fragment of Katya that he can grasp hold of. The fact that Lauren now has plenty to tell him does not make her feel any better. In all of her imagined outcomes, she never dreamed that the story she discovered would be so very difficult to recount.
“We learned nothing from him at first. He was very hostile to us, actually. Melissa noticed it more than me - she knew instinctively that he was hiding something under all that anger. I mean, I waltzed in there expecting to be received like a long-lost princess. His good friends’ niece and all that. But instead, he cut us dead. Threw us out of his apartment, practically.”
“How strange,” Alexander comments. Lauren nods but moves quickly on, relating how she left Misha the letter and a brush and ink portrait of Katya – one that she had used as a study for the main portrait. Alexander stands up at this.
“Come, let’s continue this in the living room. I have something to show you.”
She follows his neat, padding steps out of the kitchen – he has not bothered to begin clearing their plates, an unusual oversight.
In the living room the curtains are still open to the blackness of the night beyond. And Katya’s portrait is hanging there, on the large wall to their left. Although the size of the canvas is perfect for the space, she dominates the room, thinks Lauren. Not the picture, but Katya herself.
“What do you think?”
She smiles. “It’s a good place to put it. But it isn’t too much for you?”
He shakes his head. He had worried about that at first – that was why it has taken him so many weeks to hang it.
“She was the most important person in my life for such a long time,” he says. “I didn’t want to be afraid of that any more.”
His simple sentence brings the threat of tears to Lauren’s eyes, and quickly, she goes and closes the curtains, a task that gives her a few seconds to compose herself. She has a lot more to get through tonight.
They sit together before the empty fireplace, and she watches her uncle bend down to light the neatly built pile of kindling and logs. He is lean and economical in all his movements.
“So you went back to see him?” Alexander asks her over his shoulder.
“No. I wasn’t expecting to see him again. And then, on the day we left – this morning in fact – a funny thing happened.”
Was it only this morning, she wonders? Her fatigue from a long day’s travelling has been subsumed by the emotion and shock at the outcome of the morning’s meeting with Misha. Alexander is watching her, patient, calm. He feels carried along in this whole current of events, but the feeling is not unpleasant. Not if he can keep balanced and sanguine, the way he feels now. Perhaps his relaxed air is only superficial, or perhaps it indicates a deeper peace with what Lauren has chosen to do – in any event, he is calm as he waits for her to continue. She smiles slightly and puts her hand over his. Then she leans back and begins to tell how Melissa had caught Misha leaving something at the hotel for her, and how she had kept him there.
“What did he bring you?” Alexander asks.
“I’ll get to that,” Lauren says.
She talks on, paying particular attention to Misha’s reaction to her own resemblance to Katya. Melissa had told her that he had not wanted to see Lauren again, that he could not bear it, and that her arrival in the restaurant had been the beginning of his confession.
“Confession?” Alexander sits up slightly, and now his surface calm has fragmented; without putting up the slightest fight, it has shattered like a barely frozen crust of ice on a puddle.
“He told us that he knew all along that Katya was working for the Americans. Because he worked with her.”
There is a pause while Alexander digests this. He is clearly stunned.
“Misha worked for the Americans?”
She nods. “He was Katya’s main contact for years. He recruited her in fact. They worked closely together. For the most part, he used her to smuggle out research he was involved in at the Aviation Institute.”
“I can’t believe this. It can’t be true.”
“It is. They recruited him out of college, apparently.”
She waits, allowing time for this to settle in Alexander’s mind. Her uncle is frowning, thinking, shaping ideas.
“So did he know her plans to escape? Did he try and help her?”
Lauren becomes aware that her lips are pursed, as though she is trying to avoid having to let out the next words that she has to say.
“She told him. After you had left. In fact, she timed it as well as she could in the circumstances, just minutes after you had defected.”
“She knew I’d got out?”
“Not for sure. She hoped. Anyway, she didn’t breathe a word to anyone until then, he says. Even him. She wanted to be as sure as she could that you were safe. But then she needed his help. And she told him that the government, or the KGB, had caught someone, and that she was worried that that person would talk and compromise Misha and herself.”
Alexander nods. “That’s why I left so quickly. The opportunity was there, and we had to take it. Otherwise they would have found her.”
“Yes, they would have. They would have found out both of you, Uncle Alex. You do know that, don’t you?”
Her concern to reassure him, and reinforce the point acts as an instant alert to his senses. His stomach sinks slightly with misgiving at what she might be about to say. But try as he might, he cannot weave a path through his thoughts and conjectures to prepare himself by imagining possible outcomes. He sits slightly forwards in his chair, cradling his wine glass, waiting anxiously.
“Uncle Alex, it was him.”
“What?”
“It was Misha that they’d caught.”
Now distant possibilities begin, vaguely, to jostle for position in his mind, but he cannot make sense of them. He has a sense of dread, like a small patch of acridity in his throat, but he cannot reason out why.
“But Misha was with us the night before I left. We had dinner with my parents, I’m sure of that. How could they have caught him?”
“They let him go.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you see, Uncle Alex? He switched sides. To protect himself.
He became a double agent.”
He says nothing, but his mouth is slightly open as he thinks over this revelation. “Of course,” he says, softly. “Of course.”
She nods. She goes over to his chair and perches on the arm of it. Takes his wine out of his hand and places it alongside hers on the table. Her hand is on his back, and with bitterness she recalls touching Misha’s bony shoulders, reassuring him, in much the same way not so long ago.
Alexander can hardly speak, but he must articulate what he is thinking.
“Misha betrayed Katya?” is all he can get out, in a hoarse whisper.
She holds her uncle close, and pulls his head to her shoulder, as though trying to cocoon him, insulate him from her next words.
“Uncle Alex, he pulled the trigger.”
He is unresponsive – it is as though she has spoken in Chinese, and he cannot fathom her meaning. He looks at her, his eyes wide, trusting, as if willing her to explain again, to explain that what he just heard is a mistake.
Lauren is crying, she cannot help herself. “Uncle Alex, he shot her himself.”
“No…” is all he can say, and then there is a moment of complete stillness in the room. All life, and breath, and sound and movement has ceased. And then the shoulders beneath her hands are shaking.
“Oh God, Uncle Alex, I am so sorry. I thought you ought to know. I thought I had to tell you.”
She is holding him hard against her as he cries. She is helpless in the face of his grief, and has no idea what else to do. To her relief his shoulders stop moving after a few minutes, and he just sits quietly, beneath her hands, composing himself. She releases her hold on him when he shifts. He is reaching into his pocket for a handkerchief. She stands and pokes the fire, and waits for him to finish wiping his face and blowing his nose behind her.
“Are you sure it’s true? He told you this himself?”
She nods. “I’m so sorry, Uncle Alex.”
“How could he?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know.”
He is sitting very still again. It is as though all life is draining from him.
“I’m sorry,” she repeats. “Sorry to tell you this.” She wants to find something to do to help him, any small thing, even though he is so far beyond relief, and so she offers to fetch him some water. He nods, and she hesitates for a moment, because his breath is short now, his chest moving too quickly. He nods again, and quickly, she turns and hurries out.
In the cool darkness of the kitchen, the light of the open refrigerator door illuminates her face. Just as she reaches in for a cold bottle of water, she hears something. She stops, head up, listening. The noise comes again. A crash, something falling. Then another. Without stopping she runs back, the bottle clutched in her hand, listening to the continuing noise, and she throws open the living room door.
He is standing up, almost panting now, and in his raised hand is a small vase. It appears that this vase is the only breakable thing in the room that is still in one piece. She throws the bottle onto the sofa and goes straight to him taking the vase from his hand, and putting her arm around him. He sits down, covering his eyes.
“How could he? We were his best friends in the world. How could he?”
“I’m sorry, Uncle Alex.” There are shards of broken glass beneath her feet. She is a little fearful now, for she has never in her life seen him do anything remotely violent, and she does not know how to reach this part of him that is so wounded it cannot speak, only act.
“Don’t be. I don’t want to have another secret, or unanswered question in my life ever again.” He is shouting now. “Do you understand? However hard it is, it’s better than lies.”
She makes reassuring noises, but he cannot hear them. His eyes are everywhere, moving wildly.
“I have to kill him. I have to. For Katya’s sake. And my own. I want him to know what she must have felt when he put the gun to her, the bastard. I want him to beg my forgiveness for taking her away. For taking her life from her when she was so young. How could he do it?”
Tears of fury and frustration leak from his eyes.
“She had everything to live for, Lauren. We both did. He could have helped us.”
He sighs, deeply, twice, and she senses that his rage is spent for now. Physically, he cannot continue without giving himself a heart attack. She sits next to him and holds him, trying to calm him. She does not know how she can go on with this story, although there is more to say. But can she really leave the next part for later?
“I miss her so much, Lauren,” he whispers. “My poor Katyushka. What a way to die.”
She takes these last words as some kind of sign that she must go through with the rest of it immediately. Checking that he is calmer, she leaves the room, and returns within a minute, feeling weighted down by the small, light suitcase that she is holding in her hands. She comes to where he sits and places it before him.
“Do you recognise this?”
He shakes his head.
“Misha says they gave him no choice but to kill her; and that she gave him no choice by confiding in him. But he says he’s been consumed with guilt ever since…”
His voice is fierce. “He could have helped her. He could have escaped with her. He was our friend, Lauren.”
“I know.”
“I’m glad I didn’t come with you. I would have killed him
myself.”
“I know. But if it’s any consolation to you, he’s been drinking
himself to death for years now. Trying to forget what he did, I
think. He’s dying. He has a few months left at the most. I think
that’s what made him give me this.”
She picks up the case, gently, rests it on her knees, and watches as realisation crosses his features. There is shadow thrown over his face, as if the inner pain he feels is somehow being reflected darkly back through his skin.
“It’s not hers?” he whispers, nodding at the case.
“Yes.”
He reaches out for it, hands shaking, and she hands it over, placing it gently on his lap.
“She had it with her when she….She was all packed to try and get out. He told her he was taking her to a safe house.”
The click of the catch opening sounds deafening in the quiet of the room. Alexander slowly lifts the lid. On top of a small pile of clothes is a photograph in a tarnished silver frame. He picks it up and looks at it. Then he sets it down on the table before Lauren.
“Her parents. Your grandparents.”
She resists the impulse to take it and examine it well. There will be time for that later. She looks respectfully at the photograph, but then watches her uncle closely. In his hand he has a yellowed envelope that has been lying, sealed, just beneath the frame.
“She gave Misha that letter,” Lauren says. “To give you in case anything should happen to her. He put it away after he…after she died and never looked at the case since. He says he couldn’t stand to see it, and couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. He said that keeping it in his house, knowing it was lying there, was his punishment these last decades.”
“There is no punishment hard enough for him,” Alexander says savagely. He holds the letter, passing his fingers over it, caressing it, a look of such seriousness and sorrow on his face that Lauren can hardly stand to watch him. Then, at last, he lifts it and hands it to her,
“Shall we keep it for later?” she asks. “You’ve been through too much already tonight.”
“Please open it,” he says. He is right, she feels that. How could either of them carry on without finishing this tonight? She gently pulls open the envelope and slides the thin paper out. It crackles slightly as she unfolds it. Then she hands it back to him.
“It’s in Russian,” she says, redundantly.
He nods, and begins to read.
My darling Sasha
I am on my way to you. My heart is so light at the thought of starting this journey towards our new life together, I have to force myself to remember you will only be reading this if I never reach you.
I love you more than I knew I was able to love anyone or anything. Please remember this always – I don’t worry that you will ever forget, but I am afraid that you might come to doubt it because of everything you have so recently found out about me. You know now that I have spent most of my life working against the system that killed my parents. I used to think it was a life of such honour and nobility. But I have had enough of it. Enough of being driven by revenge and pain. That is why I am so happy that we have decided to try and get away from here. Outside, we can tell the truth about our country, about my parents. We can say it all, loudly, without fear of being silenced.
You opened up my eyes and made me see a world that is worth living in. You have made me love life. I never did before. What a gift to be given - three years of discovering that the world can be an exhilarating place to be in. No matter what happens, I will always be grateful to you for that.
Which brings me to the point of this letter. If something has happened to me, Sasha, don’t let it ruin your life. Carry on well, as though we were with you. I say “we”, my darling, because I have just found out I am pregnant. I wanted this to be the first news I told you when we meet again, so forgive me for not confiding it before you left. I am so full of hope for our new baby. I will always admire my parents, but their politics left me an orphan – it was a terrible childhood, and I will not put our baby through it, if there is a chance we can get out of here and live together in freedom. All I really wanted to say was I love you, and adore you. More than anything, I live to be with you again. But if that does not happen, I rely on you to live the life we dreamed of on my behalf.
Yours always
Katya
She thinks he has finished reading, but she cannot be sure. She is holding her breath, reluctant to make any sound or movement at all in that room. The fire crackles like distant gunfire in the stillness around them. His eyes have stopped reading, but his head is still down. Something is about to happen, she can feel it, but just as she makes a move towards him, he makes a sound, an utterance that is beyond the human or even animal, a noise that seems to have been ripped out of the very centre of him. The letter falls back into the suitcase, and his hands are lifting the clothes inside, lifting them up, and he is crushing the cloth and garments to his face, sobbing and trying to inhale the scent of his dead wife at the same time. He is rocking back and forth, his hands still clinging to the clothes, his arms drawn up around his head and ears, as though seeking protection. The sounds he is making are new to her, and are sounds that she never wants to hear again - a distillation of sorrow, pure sadness and a deep raging that she cannot begin to reach. She sits, paralysed, on the edge of her chair. She cannot touch him or comfort him at this moment, so she just waits, helpless, and watches her uncle disintegrate before her.