The next day, Louise was waiting just outside the orphanage gate in the late-afternoon darkness. The darkness hid the overcast sky, but she still felt its presence, like she was constantly ducking beneath a low roof. When she saw Natalya walking toward her with her dancer’s posture and movement, she consciously straightened her shoulders and tucked her chin. She still didn’t know how to greet her, but Natalya solved the problem by moving her cheeks quickly to Louise’s right and left in a quick air-kiss.
“I only have half an hour,” Natalya said. “My children.”
“Of course. No more time than that.”
Louise led her to the old mansion’s ornately carved front door. She rang the brass bell that was attached above it with a leather string hanging from a clapper. Within a minute, Kaarina Varila peered through a small opening. Flickering light, perhaps from a lamp or candle Kaarina was holding, lit Louise’s face and Kaarina smiled warmly upon recognizing her.
When they were inside, in her halting Finnish, Louise introduced Natalya.
The smile froze. “Hyvää iltaa,” Kaarina said. It was a very formal—and cold—good evening. Natalya responded equally formally. There was an awkward silence.
Kaarina turned to Louise. “I’m guessing she only speaks Russian, like the rest of them.”
Louise put on a smile she wasn’t feeling. She hadn’t expected Kaarina to react to Natalya as she did. It wasn’t as if Natalya had bombed Finland. “She, I think, reads Finnish enough for her job at the Soviet legation but can’t speak it.” She tried a joke. “I mean who can?” Kaarina didn’t respond to the joke. “She speaks French. Really well. We speak French to each other,” Louise added.
Natalya had gone into Russian stony face.
Louise started scrambling to somehow reduce the tension, fill the empty space with some words. “We’re both here to help. Just wanted to stop by to see the place. See if there’s something we could do.”
Kaarina still said nothing.
This irritated Louise, as if Kaarina were disregarding their offer to help, and she was being unfair to Natalya. Louise didn’t hide her annoyance when she said, “She’s just here to help, too. The children don’t know a Russian from a … from a Martian.” She paused. “She was raised in an orphanage herself.”
Kaarina softened a little. “Orphanages at their best are bad experiences. Was it the first war?”
“No. She said it wasn’t. She said her parents were undesirable to the state.”
Kaarina looked back at Natalya. “Well, she may not be all bad.”
Louise looked at Kaarina for a moment to make sure she was on solid ground, then turned to Natalya and said in French, “She asked if we want to see the orphanage.”
“How kind,” she said with just a hint of sarcasm. “Not exactly a warm welcome.”
Louise let it drop. Kaarina was already walking into a large room that decades ago may have served as a small ballroom. It was bedlam, children running, some girls jumping rope, two boys kicking a small pillow bound tightly with a thin rope that served as a soccer ball.
“Looks like you could use help supervising the play,” Louise said with a smile.
“We could,” Kaarina answered. “We also need help washing pots, washing clothes, cleaning floors, cleaning toilets.” She looked at Louise. “I don’t suppose either of you would be interested.”
“Whatever is needed. Really.”
Kaarina studied the two of them, probably wondering if Louise was being genuine. “What we really need,” she said, “is help with clothes and good food. Things that take money.”
“That’s exactly how I was hoping we could help,” Louise blurted out. “That’s why I brought Natalya into this.” She turned to include Natalya in the conversation. “With a joint Soviet-US project, there’s a chance that the legation could find some money.”
“A fat chance,” Kaarina said.
“No. Really. I talked with Mr. Hamilton, the chief of station.”
Natalya was looking to Louise to translate. “Talking about how we can help,” Louise said to her in French.
“I thought I heard the word ‘money,’” Natalya answered, saying “money” in English.
“You did. I think we can help.”
The shrug followed.
They followed Kaarina into a large, dimly lit room. It was filled with four rows of about fifteen cots each, all spare, plain, now empty, made up with varying degrees of success, obviously by the girls themselves. About five of the beds had a ragged stuffed animal on the pillow. One had a doll, carefully laid beneath a tiny, crocheted blanket.
“This is the girls’ room,” Kaarina said in English. Louise translated. Natalya nodded, licking her lower lip pensively. She put her hand on the tiny blanket for a moment, then quickly pulled it back. She was trying to smile, but her lip was quivering. Louise reached out and touched her. But it was as if Louise weren’t there. Natalya had withdrawn to some inner world.
Kaarina cleared her throat, wanting to move on, and Louise followed her. Louise turned back to look at Natalya, who seemed to return to the present, aware that Louise and Kaarina were waiting on her. She rejoined them. They entered another large room.
“This is where the boys sleep,” Kaarina said. It was sparer and plainer than the girls’ room. The beds were made but clearly to a different standard and level of success. There were no toys and no stuffed animals. A lone little boy lay on one of the beds, staring up at the ceiling. He didn’t respond to Louise’s attempts to connect.
Louise and Natalya looked at each other, Louise hopeful and questioning, Natalya expressionless, her face a mask.
Kaarina led them down another hallway, her and Louise together, Natalya lagging behind. “Your Russian comrade doesn’t seem all that happy about being here,” Kaarina said to Louise in a near whisper. They both looked back to see where Natalya was. She had turned around and stopped, holding her arms around her chest, looking at the girls’ sleeping room.
Natalya took the long way home, smoking three cigarettes to calm herself. As soon as she got home, she lit another cigarette and began making dinner. Fanya, a slightly plump girl of about eighteen with dark hair that had been rolled on top and hung to her shoulders helped Natalya feed the children, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, the smoke making her squint. The routine of feeding her children slowly calmed Natalya, nourishing through them the unfed child she’d been.
Mikhail got home around seven and rolled around on the floor with the children, laughing, letting them climb over him. Natalya watched, loving them all, remembering her own father.
She broke the spell to call Mikhail to the table for their own dinner. As the two of them ate, Fanya got the children ready for bed. Then, Natalya finished putting the children to bed, reading aloud to them until they fell asleep. She returned to the kitchen to wash the dishes, while Mikhail worked at the kitchen table, his usual evening activity.
Natalya returned to the small living room to find Fanya on the couch looking at an interior page of Helsingin Sanomat.
“I didn’t know you read Finnish,” Natalya said. She was pretty sure that Fanya did not read Finnish. She guessed that the girl was looking at the photographs of the latest fashions from New York, London, and Paris in the women’s section.
She knew that the Party would condemn high fashion as decadent. She knew she should as well but couldn’t quite bring herself to it. She scoffed inwardly at the pull of the beautiful clothes, telling herself that it hardly made any difference, since it was impossible to buy high fashion—or even a foreign-made dress—in Russia anyway. And, of course, haute couture fashion was ridiculously out of reach for almost all women even in the capitalist countries. Fashion was used to keep workingwomen from recognizing their servitude by entertaining them with dreams of the plausible impossible. Hah. And Marx said religion was the opiate of the masses. But then, she thought, how was it different than any other form of entertainment—or beauty? Were music and plays decadent? She pushed the lure of beautiful clothes away from her mind. It was silly, unreal, and definitely counterrevolutionary longing.
After about half an hour, Fanya went to her room. Natalya sat down where she’d been and pulled out the style section for herself. She touched one of the photographs, as if trying to feel the texture of the dress.
Mikhail moved behind the couch, looking over her shoulder, gently twirling a strand of her hair with his forefinger. “Too bad I’m not the attaché in Paris, Natashenka,” he said softly.
“Or London,” she said, reaching for his hand without looking at him and pulling it down to kiss it. He kissed her ear.
She glanced at Fanya’s door. Bringing his hand to her cheek and nuzzling it, she whispered, “It would take far more than being a Hero of the Soviet Union.”
He whispered back, “I’d have to kiss so much ass, you’d have to chisel the brown off my nose.”
She pushed his hand away giving him an impish smile and going loud again said, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could help our Mother Russia and the Party in one of the big embassies in the heart of our enemies?”
“Maybe, someday,” Mikhail said aloud, “if we do well here.”
Natalya glanced at their own bedroom door. She touched his lips with her forefinger. “I’m so sleepy,” she said. “Having to be with that shallow American woman after work just so you can get closer to her husband. The things I’ll do to get you to Paris.” She was pulling him by both his hands toward the bedroom as she was talking.
When they got into the bedroom, Mikhail closed the door and they both begin undressing, she, slowly and deliberately, he a little more hurriedly. She dropped her shoes without using her hands and unbuttoned her dress. She let it puddle at her feet, revealing the silk slip Mikhail had looted for her from a wealthy German manor house. He was standing very still, watching her. One of the many things she loved about her husband was that he was totally unabashed about having an erection.
When they finished, she snuggled her cheek into his chest.
He whispered in her ear, “So what did you and Mrs. Koski talk about?”
Natalya didn’t answer, looking up at the ceiling, images of her old orphanage flooding in. Those long, frightening nights, still trying to believe that somehow, somewhere, one or both of her parents had lived. The meanness of so many of the other girls. The cold institutional hallways. The cold beds. The cold. The barely adequate food. The unfairness. The loneliness.
“I told you what she said that night we first saw the orphanage,” she whispered, still looking at the ceiling. “Even if it’s just to make fewer bad memories.”
“Is it something you want to do? Help at the orphanage? I know it can’t be easy for you.”
She twisted to look at him, whispering just inches from his face. “Oh, Misha. If I can just make fewer bad memories for just one of those little people. Just one of them.”
Mikhail let her snuggle into his chest, gently stroking her hair. She knew he had no real idea of what life had been like in the orphanage. How could he? His own childhood had been nothing like hers. Both parents worked for the Kharkiv Locomotive Factory, which built tractors and tanks. They were solidly industrial working class in a favored ministry. That had gotten Mikhail out of the Ukraine and into Moscow Military School, the first step to becoming an officer.
“So, are you going to help then?” he asked again.
The twinge of fear—or guilt—rose from somewhere primitive, as it did so often. It was a simple question, but would she be allowed? What if it would be seen as fraternizing? What if she said the wrong thing? Could Mikhail turn her in? She fought it down as she had so many times before. She knew these fears were irrational, especially about Mikhail. But these reactions just went off, like saliva in Pavlov’s dog. She’d been conditioned and she couldn’t stop the reactions. She could only live with them and try not to let them run her life. She knew Mikhail loved her, would never betray her, but then—back came another dark thought and again she had to take a deep breath to keep it in its place. Her father had loved her mother and he had disappeared one night, leaving her mother behind. Then, two weeks later they came for her. Did her mother betray her father to the NKVD? Did he betray her under torture? In the end, it made no difference. Her parents had only survived as long as they had because her father had fought for the Bolsheviks in the civil war. Their aristocratic backgrounds eventually doomed them, no matter what their politics. She steeled herself to talk honestly with her husband. In the Soviet Union, every confidence with someone you loved was an act of political courage.
Finally forcing the dark thoughts back down, Natalya said, “Mrs. Koski, Louise, wants me to help her raise money for the orphanage. Some sort of joint American-Soviet effort.”
“Hmm. Sokolov would love that. Gets you close to Koski’s wife, would help Sokolov identify the leanings of important donors.”
“I don’t want to work for Oleg Sokolov.” She shuddered slightly. “The NKVD gives me the creeps.”
“MGB,” he corrected her. “Whole new postwar reorganization.”
“Same horror,” she whispered. “I do not want to work for Sokolov.”
“Everyone works for a Sokolov, just not this particular one.”
“He looks at me … you know … it’s creepy.”
“Everyone looks at you.”
“I know.” She said it as if acknowledging the weather. “But not that way. He’s like a hungry dog looking at a steak. And I’m the steak. Creepy.”
They were both quiet.
Snuggled up against Mikhail’s warm back and legs, she remembered Mikhail whispering to her one night about Stalin’s purges early in Mikhail’s career and how he had survived them by staying, as he put it, off the skyline. That tactic had gotten him a battalion command. Then came the Hero of the Soviet Union action that nearly killed him. That got him the division chief of intelligence job, which then led to the privileged post he now held—along with free bus transportation and an additional forty-five square meters in living space at a reduced rent if they were still in Russia she thought scoffingly. Six years of hell for an additional forty-five square meters of Communist heaven.
Mikhail had told her about the hundreds of thousands of murders in the late 1930s that the government was keeping secret. It couldn’t be hidden from the army because the empty billets were there nearly every morning. Every Russian officer who survived knew full well how many did not. None of the soldiers, including Mikhail, were about to say a word about it in public. In private, however, he talked. She almost wished he hadn’t. It was just one more secret to keep quiet or lie about, one more added weight to the burden of constantly guarding her thoughts, lest they both get marked as counterrevolutionaries or enemies of the People.
In public, even at the dinner table, she never knew if what Mikhail was saying was true or false until she could get him alone. She just smiled and kept quiet. Only at night, only in their bed, not even in their bedroom, when they could whisper in each other’s ear, could they speak the truth. Even then, knowing that he wanted to protect her, she couldn’t be certain.
What good was knowing the truth, anyway? How did it help her—or her family—learning from Mikhail that Stalin had executed tens of thousands of innocent people and sent several million more to starve and die in the gulag? How did it do any good to hear Mikhail whisper a name like Beria? Beria, who enjoyed gruesomely imaginative ways of inflicting pain. Beria, who picked out the prettiest girls. Natalya had known two of those girls—one who came back and one who didn’t. Such truth she did not want to know—and if she did, how would that help her here and now?
Returning to the present, she whispered in Mikhail’s ear, “Louise asked me for tea tomorrow afternoon.”
“It’s up to you, of course,” Mikhail said, squirming around to face her. “But seriously, consider working with her. You want to help orphans. And it would look good. Might even help get us to Paris.”
She made a fist and gently bumped his shoulder. “I don’t want to spy on her.” She was quiet for a moment. “I like her, Misha, but our countries are becoming enemies.”
Mikhail reached for the pack of Camels on the bedside table. He’d pulled out one of his Balomorkanals that night they’d all visited the orphanage and Arnie Koski had wrinkled his nose and offered him one of his Camels. Seeing how much Mikhail enjoyed it, Arnie then gave him the rest of the pack, joking about seeing some of Mikhail’s soldiers on the Enns with two in their mouth at the same time. A good memory. There were a few. He lit a Camel and blew the smoke carefully into the darkness, savoring the milder flavor. He and Natalya had agreed to only smoke them after making love. They’d leave the Balomorkanals out in the living room, not caring if Fanya snuck a few of those. “I have the same sadness,” he said. “I like both of them.”
Mikhail made a smoke ring, but in the dark could not see if he’d been successful. “And you’re right. Our countries are becoming enemies. I miss the clarity of the Great Patriotic War.”
“I miss nothing of it.”
“No, I suppose not.” He formed another smoke ring. “We soldiers, at least, were defending those we love against enemies we knew.”
“Defending against who? Other soldiers who were defending the ones they love from soldiers like you?”
“You’re trying to make war look absurd with an old argument,” he said. “I agree. If everyone were motivated like the soldiers doing the actual fighting, war would be absurd. But you’re confusing what motivates soldiers from what motivates politicians.” He inhaled slowly, held the smoke in, then let it out. “Maybe, now that the war is over, I should get out of the army.”
“Misha, you love the army. And you love your country.”
“Unfortunately, the army doesn’t report to my country,” Mikhail replied. “It serves the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and it reports to Stalin.”
“And Arnie Koski reports to Harry Truman. What’s the difference?”
“Well, I suppose it’s that Truman reports to the capitalists who paid for his elections.”
She giggled. “Well, at least Comrade Stalin is his own man.”
He laughed and gently kissed her. “Making jokes about Stalin,” he whispered, “can get us both to Siberia.”
He stubbed out his cigarette and rolled over to sit on top of her, her narrow waist between his knees. Natalya began stroking his hips, very slowly.
“You think Colonel and Mrs. Koski have talks like this?” she whispered.
“Probably,” he answered. He leaned close to her ear. “Only they probably don’t have to whisper.”
She pulled his head in and kissed him. Then she opened to him again.
Louise and Arnie weren’t talking; they were trying to make a baby. When they’d finished, Louise put her legs up on the headboard. Arnie, sitting next to her legs, his back against the headboard, looked down on Louise’s smiling face.
“This time, for sure,” she said.
He smiled gently. “It’s OK, Lulu Moppet. It’s OK if we never have kids.”
“OK for you, maybe.” She wiggled her hips as if it would help the sperm along.
After a brief silence, Arnie asked, “So did you have a success with Natalya Bobrov?”
“Russian women add an a to their names,” Louise said.
“Bobrova. So, did you get anywhere?”
“I don’t know. She’s good at hiding.”
“It’s how Russians survive.”
“My idea is to get her to go with me to her legation. We take at face value that it’s the way our governments say it is: that we’re still allies.” She scooted her rear end closer to the headboard. “We’re still allies, right?”
She felt that Arnie was angry. He never showed it, but she never missed it, either. “What?” she asked.
“Officially,” he answered. “Unofficially …” He moved to sitting on the side of the bed, his back to her. “Don’t go see Abramov.”
She lowered her legs from the headboard and moved to talk over his shoulder. “Don’t be worried. I know we are falling out with the Russians, but for right now, all we need is officially, not actually. My plan is for Natalya and me to see Abramov together. Natalya can get us ten or fifteen minutes, because she works for someone who reports directly to him.”
“I don’t know,” he said to the wall.
“Arnie. What’s the risk? Think of the children.”
He seemed to take that in, thinking about the pros and cons. “So, what’s the pitch?” he asked.
“I’m having coffee with her tomorrow. Or at least tea. I want the two of us to ask Abramov if he’ll help fund my idea of a joint Soviet-American goodwill project to help Finnish orphans.”
“Good luck with that,” Arnie said sarcastically.
“Oh, don’t be so pessimistic. They like good publicity as much as anyone. And I’ll charm the pants off him.”
He didn’t reply.
She simply wasn’t going to be dissuaded by his natural Finnish pessimism. However, maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned charming Abramov’s pants off him.
Then Arnie asked, “Where are you meeting Natalya? It’s important.” So, it wasn’t Abramov he was worried about.
“I suggested that little tea shop we like, but she insisted on tea at the Soviet legation.”
“She’s no fool.”
“No, she most certainly isn’t.”
“Be careful with her. They’ll be asking her to report everything.”
It stopped her for a moment. Of course, it was possible. But no, surely not Natalya.
“Oh, Arnie. I’ll be careful. Relax.”