When Arnie got back to the room from work on the next Wednesday, he handed her a note with a hammer and sickle on the letterhead. “What’s this?” he asked.
She took it, a bit surprised. Mikhail had answered in Finnish the invitation she’d written to Natalya in French. She was also surprised by the poor quality of the paper. “I asked Natalya if she and Mikhail would like to join us for the French string quartet performance. That’s all. I thought I was supposed to facilitate these kinds of social relations.”
Arnie took the note back, sighing. “Louise. Everything is read by the MGB.”
“So? I knew that.”
“They don’t like notes being passed around in languages they don’t understand. That’s why Mikhail wrote back, to me, in Finnish.”
“Good gracious, Arnie! The note is harmless. I asked if they’d like to listen to some music.”
“And some MGB spook will be wondering why the wife of the American attaché would be trying to make friends with the wife of the Soviet attaché in a language he doesn’t understand. Don’t you think it would look a little suspicious?”
“Everything looks suspicious to them.”
“Louise,” Arnie said very evenly. “Yes. But in America, suspicious is something you investigate. In Russia, suspicious is a crime. Think about the Bobrovs.”
She felt a slight chill in her spine. After a pause, she mumbled, “That’s ridiculous.”
“To an American.”
The household goods finally arrived on Tuesday. The problem was they still hadn’t found a place to live, so Louise asked Hamilton if Pulkkinen could help her pick up the crates.
Pulkkinen knew of a warehouse by the docks where they could store things until she found an apartment. After a couple of trips with the wooden crates roped to the top of the Fleetmaster, he helped Louise open them with the car’s tire jack. They went through four before finding her dresses.
“On our next move,” Louise said to Pulkkinen, “I’ll be sure to label the crates, not just the boxes inside them.”
Pulkkinen just blinked.
“Pulkkinen, I’m making a joke.”
“I know.”
She vowed she’d break through that reserve. She pulled out a dress and, holding it to her breast with one hand and against her stomach with the other, she said, “I just love this one.” She twirled around, letting it flow out. Then, moving with it as if with a dance partner, she asked, “What do you think?”
“It looks good.”
“You’re as bad as my husband.” She flopped the top of the dress down. “You Finns have one word that covers anything complimentary: hyvää.” She began folding the dress.
Pulkkinen smiled. “Forgive my reticence.”
She remarked to herself his use of the word “reticence.” “Where did you learn to speak English so well?” She’d asked the question in the same kidding vein, but for some reason Pulkkinen’s face flickered with some sort of reaction, which he quickly tried to hide.
“In school,” he said.
“Pretty good school,” Louise said, returning to pick through the clothing. She pulled out one of her dresses that was a favorite of Arnie’s and two of her favorite slips, adding them to the small pile on the floor. Then she picked out some clothes for Arnie.
That evening, she came out of the bathroom wearing the dress Arnie liked. “You still like it?” She gave a twirl, causing it to float up just a bit above her knees, showing the lace on the slip’s hem.
“It looks good.”
“You Finns. That’s exactly what Pulkkinen said when I showed it to him this afternoon.”
“What can I say. Maybe it’s genetic.”
She fluffed the skirt to make it hang better. “He used the word ‘reticence’ today. When I asked him where he learned such good English, he, I don’t know, he reacted somehow, like it flustered him. I mean … I don’t know.”
“Big word for a driver,” Arnie said.
“That’s what I thought.”
Despite having minored in French, the closest Louise had ever gotten to France was with Arnie at the French legation’s Christmas party. Then, Christmas decorations had overpowered everything. Now, with the holiday decorations gone, she saw that there had been an underlying elegance that now was revealed: the curtains, the style and quality of the furniture, the style and quality of the clothes. It was as if someone tried to bring a little Paris north with them and had done a rather good job of it. There were long tables covered with heavy white tablecloths. Waiters stood by, pouring French wine. There were trays of baguettes with crusts of golden brown, as if they’d been baked in Riviera sunshine, laid out next to an enormous variety of French cheeses. Dozens of silver trays held beautifully presented canapés made of salmon, quail eggs, and olives of various sizes, unlike the plain and uniform black ones they got in cans from California back home. She tasted a large green one, surprised by the firmness of its texture and then additionally surprised to find that it had a pit in it. That was also unlike the olives back home.
Louise was taking it all in and soaking it all up. This was as close to real France as she’d ever been. Even in high school, with her one year of high school French from Madame Jones, who spoke French with just as broad an Oklahoma accent as she did English, Louise had dreamed about Paris. It had taken the whole first quarter at OU to stop pronouncing words like “fenêtre” like “fe-netter.” Madame Jones said things like “winder” for “window,” so she was at least consistent.
Louise’s dreams of going to Paris had, however, been modified after marrying Arnie to going there with him someday on an extended leave. Then the dreams were shattered by the war.
She and Arnie moved into the flow and chatter of the crowd, sticking close to each other, smiling and nodding. It felt like trying to enter a ballroom floor to join a rapidly circling crowd of waltzers.
She spotted Mikhail in his uniform standing with Natalya against the wall just to the right of the door that led into the even larger room where the quartet would be playing. Natalya was in the same long black dress she had worn to the New Year’s Eve party, only the lace collar was gone. She wore no jewelry other than simple silver hoop earrings. Louise could see that Natalya’s dress would do for a formal occasion or a less formal cultural affair. Clearly Natalya had to make do on a limited wardrobe just like she did. But then, Natalya could have worn a housecoat and still looked elegant.
Making their way to Natalya and Mikhail through the crowd, Louise began to understand what her mother had referred to as breeding. The women in this room, she realized, had probably worn expensive clothes since they were in diapers. She felt like a farm horse in a pasture of thoroughbreds. She smiled at a memory from one of the earlier holiday parties. An Englishwoman with a tony accent had told Louise that to most Europeans, Russians and Americans seemed quite alike. Both were the outgrowths of frontier cultures, warlike people who’d expanded across entire continents, crushing all before them, who didn’t know when to stop wearing white in the fall. With an inward chuckle, she had to admit that she was beginning to see the woman’s point.
She smiled brightly at Natalya, trying to think of an appropriate greeting that would draw her out. To her relief, Natalya smiled back. Then Natalya’s smile faded, replaced by her placid and nearly expressionless face, as if she were wearing a mask. Arnie’s cautioning about the note came back to her. Of course, no one read other people’s mail in Oklahoma. The right to privacy was inviolable. She wondered what it must be like to live without it.
She was suddenly aware of how little she’d appreciated the birthrights, far beyond material wealth, being American granted. Arnie had fought for those birthrights, and a lot of their friends had died so others could live in freedom with their benefits. Then she was surprised by a feeling of gratitude. She looked up at Arnie’s face, which was animated by whatever he and Colonel Bobrov were talking about in Finnish. Arnie glanced down at her, giving her a puzzled look. She blinked her wordless thanks. Clearly mystified, Arnie smiled, put his hand on her lower back, and rubbed her with a tiny circular motion, just above her rear. Then he resumed his conversation.
Louise glanced at Natalya. A softening of Natalya’s eyes showed that she’d taken note of the brief display of tenderness. The mask, however, remained. Louise now knew that there was a friend in there behind that mask. But how to get to her?
Louise started in French with the usual warm-ups: how were the children, the weather, has Natalya been to the fish market on whatever street. The conversation between the two women seemed to have empty spaces, moments when people were thinking what to say, particularly Natalya. Then it hit Louise. Natalya was shy! How could someone so beautiful be shy? Maybe say something about the music.
“I read somewhere, once, that the Debussy quartet they’re playing tonight is his only one,” she led off in French. “It’s supposed to be quite”—she searched for words—“unclassical.” Could she be any more inarticulate she thought.
“Yes,” Natalya said. Her smile was gracious, a welcome relief. “It is supposed to have been highly influenced by Nadezhda von Meck.”
Louise couldn’t help a puzzled look.
“Tchaikovsky’s patroness.”
“I love Tchaikovsky,” Louise said, then paused. “I was a tin soldier in The Nutcracker when I was eight.” She rolled her eyes in self-deprecation.
Natalya smiled, saying nothing, but Louise could see she was holding something back.
“What? Come on.”
Natalya now blushed. “I was the Sugar Plum Fairy.”
They both laughed. The ice was broken.