While she modeled the pajamas, Arkady turned off the room light. ‘I love you,’ he said.
‘We will be happy.’
Arkady unbuttoned the pajama top, opened it and kissed her breasts, neck and mouth. The hat fell off and rolled under the table. Irina dropped the pajama bottoms herself. Arkady entered her standing up as he had the very first time in his own apartment, the same but slower and deeper, sweeter.
Night washed all the garish colors from the walls.
In bed, he taught himself again about Irina’s body. The women he had seen walking on the street below had a narrow look. Irina was taller, more sensual, more animal. Her ribs were not as painfully drawn as in Moscow; her nails were longer and painted. Yet from the softness of her lips to the hollow of her neck, to the dark hardness of the tip of her breasts, from the sweep of her stomach to the rising mound of damp curls, she felt the same. Her teeth bit the same; the same beads of perspiration sat at her temples.
‘In my cell I would imagine your hands’ – she took his hand – ‘there, and there. Feeling them, not seeing them. It made me feel alive. I fell in love with you because you made me feel alive, and you weren’t even there. At first they said you told them everything. You were an investigator, so you had to. The more I thought about you, though, the more I knew you wouldn’t tell them anything. They asked me if you were insane. I said you were the sanest man I’d ever met. They asked if you were a criminal. I said you were the most honest man I’d ever known. They ended up hating you more than they did me. And I loved you more.’
‘I am a criminal.’ Arkady lay on her. ‘I was a criminal there and I’m a prisoner here.’
‘Gently.’ She helped him.
She’d brought back a miniature transistor radio that filled the room with an insistent, percussive music. Boxes and clothes were spread across the floor. On the table, plastic forks stood in cardboard containers.
‘Please, don’t ask how long I’ve been here or exactly what’s happening,’ Irina said. ‘Everything is being done at different levels, at new levels we never knew about. Don’t ask questions. We’re here. All I ever wanted was to be here. And I have you here with me. I love you, Arkasha. You mustn’t ask questions.’
‘They’re sending us back. In a couple of days, they said.’
She clutched him, kissed him and whispered fiercely in his ear, ‘It will all be over in a day or two, but they’ll never send us back. Never!’
Her fingertips traced his face. ‘You could have a cowboy’s tan, with sideburns and a bandanna and a cowboy hat. We’ll travel. Everyone has a car, you’ll see.’
‘I should have a horse if I’m a cowboy.’
‘You can have a horse here. I’ve seen cowboys in New York.’
‘I want to go out West. I want to ride the range and be a bandit like Kostia Borodin. I want to learn from the Indians.’
‘Or we could go to California, to Hollywood. We could have a bungalow by the sea, a lawn, an orange tree. I’d be happy if I never saw snow again in my life. I could live in a bathing suit.’
‘Or nothing at all.’ He caressed her leg, then laid his head against it and her fingers stroked his chest. They had to talk in fantasy because of the microphone. He couldn’t ask her why she was so sure she wasn’t going back. She begged him not to ask about anything else. Anyway, when it came to America all they could conceive of was fantasy. He felt her fingertips trace the scar the length of his stomach. ‘I’ll keep my horse by the orange tree in back of the bungalow,’ he said.
‘Actually,’ Irina said while she was lighting her cigarette from his, ‘it wasn’t Osborne who tried to have me killed in Moscow.’
‘What?’
‘It was all Prosecutor Iamskoy and Unmann the German. They were in it together; Osborne knew nothing about it.’
‘Osborne tried to kill you twice. You were there, I was there, remember?’ Abruptly Arkady was furious. ‘Who told you Osborne had nothing to do with it?’
‘Wesley.’
‘Wesley is a liar.’ He repeated in English. ‘Wesley is a liar!’
‘Ssh, it’s late.’ Irina put her finger to his lips. She changed the subject; she was patient, and in spite of his outburst she was pleased with herself.
But Arkady was disturbed. ‘Why did you cover up the mark on your cheek?’ he demanded.
‘I just decided to. They have makeup in America.’
‘They have makeup in the Soviet Union, and you didn’t cover up the mark there.’
‘It didn’t make so much difference there.’ She shrugged.
‘Why does it make a difference here?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Irina was angry in her turn. ‘It’s a Soviet mark. I wouldn’t cover a Soviet mark with Soviet makeup, but I will with American makeup. I’ll get rid of everything Soviet. If I could have a doctor cut into my brain right now and take out everything Soviet, every memory I had, I’d do it.’
‘Then why did you want me here?’
‘I love you and you love me.’
She trembled so much that she couldn’t speak. He wrapped the sheet and blanket around her and held her. He shouldn’t have gotten angry at her, he told himself. Whatever she was doing was for the two of them. She had saved his life and brought him with her to the United States at what cost to herself he had no idea, and he had no right to argue. He was, as everyone reminded him, no longer a chief investigator but a criminal. The two of them were criminals, and all that was keeping them alive was each other. He found her cigarette where it had rolled onto the carpet and burned a new hole, and held it to her lips so she could smoke. They could both enjoy good Virginia tobacco now. How wonderful was a lover’s accuracy that he could mention that hidden mark and so easily wound her.
‘Just don’t tell me that Osborne didn’t try to have you killed,’ he said.
‘Things are just so different here,’ she said. She began shaking again. ‘I can’t answer any questions. Please, don’t ask me any questions.’
They sat up in bed and watched the color television set. On the screen, a professorial type was reading a book at a lawn table next to a swimming pool. Out of the bushes jumped a young man with a water pistol.
‘My God, you frightened me!’ The reader almost fell over in his chair and his book dropped into the pool. He pointed to it and said, ‘I’m nervous enough as it is, and you pull a stupid trick like that. Lucky that was just a paperback.’
‘This is Chekhov?’ Arkady laughed. ‘This is the same scene you were shooting at Mosfilm when we met.’
‘No.’
The man with the water pistol was followed by girls in bathing suits, a man dragging a parachute, a dance band.
‘No, this isn’t Chekhov,’ Arkady agreed.
‘It’s good.’
He thought she was joking, but Irina was totally absorbed by the screen. He could tell she wasn’t following the story that was developing; there was no need to, the screen provided its own appreciative howls of laughter. She was, he saw, captured by the electric blue of the pool, the plush green of an avocado tree, the purple of bougainvillea around a driveway, the high-speed mosaic of a freeway. She had found, in a way he never could, what was important on the screen. Its glow reached out and filled the room. When a woman sobbed, Irina saw her dress, her rings, her hair, plush cushions on wicker furniture, a red-cedar terrace and the sunset over the Pacific.
She turned and saw Arkady’s dismay. ‘I know you think it’s not real, Arkasha. You’re wrong – here it is real.’
‘It’s not.’
‘It is, and I want it.’
Arkady relented. ‘Then you should have it.’ He laid his head on her lap and closed his eyes as the television murmured and laughed.
He realized Irina was wearing a new scent. There were few perfumes in Russia, and they were solid, workaday smells. Zoya’s favorite was Moscow Nights. That was a real tractor among perfumes. Moscow Nights had been called Svetlana for Stalin’s favorite daughter until she eloped with a swarthy Indian. Mo
scow Nights was a rehabilitated smell.
‘Can you forgive me for wanting it, Arkasha?’
He heard the anxiety in her voice. ‘I want it for you, too.’
Irina turned the set off and Arkady let the window shade snap up like an explosion. The office building across the street was a grid-iron of dark and empty windows.
He laughed for Irina’s sake and turned on the transistor radio she had bought. A samba. Her courage returned, and they danced on the gray carpet, followed by their shadows on the gray walls. He picked her up and spun her around. Blind eye and good eye, both widened with pleasure at the same time. So in one eye sight was gone and the soul remained, even though the mark was gone.
With her above, her hair covered both their faces, a coverlet that swayed as he rose.
With her below, she was a boat bearing them both away.
‘We’re castoffs and castaways,’ Arkady said. ‘No country will let us land.’
‘We’re our own country,’ Irina said.
‘With our own jungles.’ Arkady pointed to the flowered wallpaper. ‘Native music’ – he pointed to the radio and to the hidden microphones – ‘and spies.’
Chapter Three
A brown spider fell into the sunlight and became white.
Irina had left early with Wesley and Nicky.
Its white cable hung from thin air.
‘How can you Russians smoke before you even had breakfast?’ Wesley had asked.
It swung to a web high in the corner. Arkady hadn’t even noticed the web before – not until it glittered in the sideways slant of this particular morning sun. Spiders would be sun worshippers, of course.
‘I love you,’ Irina had said in Russian.
The spider hurried up and down its threads, front limbs fretting at this and that. Nobody gives them credit; they are such perfectionists.
Which made Arkady say ‘I love you’ in Russian in return.
How much difference was there between a Russian spider and an American spider?
‘Let’s go, big day,’ Nicky had said when he opened the door.
Did they spin their webs in the same direction? Did they brush their teeth the same way?
Which made Arkady afraid.
Did they communicate?
The sidewalks were crowded with well-dressed crowds. The sun stood at their backs and counted the seconds until they got to work.
How long had Irina been in New York? Arkady asked himself. Why did she have so few clothes in the closet?
It would be snowing in Moscow. If they had a sun like this they’d be on the embankment, stripped to the waist, basking like seals.
The painters were at work again across the way. The clerks on the next floor would pick up a phone, say no more than a word or two and set it down. In Moscow an office telephone was an instrument for gossip considerately provided by the state; it was hardly ever used for work, but it was always busy.
He turned on the television to cover the sound while he worked on the lock with a hairpin. It was a well-made lock.
Why would painters work with the windows shut?
In the church garden old men in dirty clothes shared a bottle in slow motion.
The television showed mostly detergents, deodorants and aspirin. There were short interviews and dramatic sketches in between.
When Al brought in a ham-and-cheese sandwich and coffee, Arkady asked him what American writer he liked – Jack London or Mark Twain? Al shrugged. John Steinbeck or John Reed? Nathaniel Hawthorne or Ray Bradbury? Well, that’s all the ones I know, Arkady said and Al left.
The offices emptied for lunch. Wherever the sun reached the sidewalk, someone stopped and ate out of a paper bag. Paper wrappers floated five or ten stories up between buildings. Arkady threw the window up and leaned out. The air was cold and smelled of cigars, exhaust and frying meat.
He saw the same woman in a white-and-black imitation fur coat go in and out of the hotel with three different men.
Cars were huge and dented and had a plastic gloss. There was an intense level of noise, of things being hauled and raised and hammered, as if, just out of sight, the city was being torn down and the cars were being instantly and carelessly manufactured.
The colors of the cars were ridiculous, as if a child had been allowed to color them.
How to categorize the men in the church garden? Social parasites? A ‘troika’ of drinkers? What did they drink here?
London wrote about the exploitation of Alaska, Twain about slavery, Steinbeck about economic dislocation, Hawthorne about religious hysteria, Bradbury about interplanetary colonialism, and Reed about Soviet Russia. Well, that’s all I know, Arkady thought.
People carried so many paper bags. Not only did these people have money, they had things to buy.
He took a shower and dressed in his new clothes. They fit perfectly, felt incredibly fine and made his own shoes immediately ugly. Nicky and Rurik, he remembered, had Rolex watches.
The clothes bureau had a Bible. Far more surprising was the telephone book. Arkady tore out the addresses of Jewish and Ukrainian organizations, folded them and put them inside his socks.
Black police in brown uniforms directed traffic. White police in black uniforms wore guns.
Irina had hidden the criminals Kostia Borodin and Valerya Davidova. She was implicated in the state crimes of smuggling and sabotage of industry. She knew the Moscow town prosecutor had been a KGB officer. What was waiting for her in the Soviet Union?
Cabs were yellow. Birds were gray.
Rurik came by with a gift of miniature vodka bottles – ‘airline bottles’ he called them.
‘We have a new theory. Before I say it, though’ – he raised his hands – ‘I want you to know I’m not insensitive. I’m Ukrainian like you. I’m a romantic, too. Let me confess something else. This red hair of mine, it’s Jewish. My grandmother was a convert; she had a whole head of it. So I can identify with all kinds of people. But there is a feeling in some quarters that this sable affair is part of the overall Zionist conspiracy.’
‘Osborne’s not Jewish. What are you talking about?’
‘But Valerya Davidova was the daughter of a rabbi,’ Rurik said. ‘James Kirwill was associated with Zionist terrorists here who shot at innocent clerks in the Soviet Mission. The retail fur and garment industries in the United States are basically Zionist monopolies, and they are the ones who will ultimately profit from the introduction of sables here. See how it fits?’
‘I’m not Jewish, Irina’s not Jewish.’
‘Think about it,’ Rurik said.
Al collected all the miniature bottles.
‘I’m not KGB,’ Arkady said.
Al was embarrassed about being put on the spot. ‘Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Does it make any difference?’
Dusk came, the offices emptied and Irina didn’t return. There was an evening service at the church. The prostitutes were busy bringing men into the hotel. Arkady thought of the women and their business as the final tide of the street’s life reached up to him.
In an hour, shadows became impenetrable spaces between streetlamps. Figures on the street appeared as night animals. Heads turned to a siren’s operatic call.
Why had Kirwill laughed?
Arkady was used to different agents. It didn’t strike him as strange that the new one wore a dark suit, tie and visored cap, and he was relieved to finally be allowed out of the hotel room. No one stopped them. They went down in the elevator, walked through the lobby and west on Twenty-ninth Street and across Fifth Avenue to a dark limousine. Not until Arkady was ushered into the rear of the car by himself did he realize the other man was a chauffeur. The interior of the limousine was a dove-gray plush, the driver and passenger separated by a glass panel.
The Avenue of the Americas was a dark street deserted except for the illuminated store windows, the mannequins’ life of luxury, as unearthly as the whole city was on this first
trip outside the hotel. At Seventh Avenue they turned south and went a few blocks before the limousine turned into a side street and into a truck bay. The chauffeur let Arkady out of the car, led him to an open elevator and punched a button with his thumb. The elevator rose to the fourth floor, where they stepped into a brightly lit hall swept by miniature television cameras from opposite corners. The door at the end of the hall clicked open.
‘You go alone,’ the chauffeur said.
Arkady entered a long, dim workroom. Sorting tables ran the length of the room, and racks of what first appeared to be clothes or rags became, as his eyes adjusted, a mass of furs. There may have been a hundred racks, most of them hung with thin, dark pelts – sable or mink – as well as stacks of larger, flattened hides – lynx or wolf from what he could see. There was an acrid smell of tannic acid and over each white table a low fluorescent lamp. Halfway down the room one lamp went on and John Osborne laid a pelt on the table.
‘Did you know that the North Koreans sell fur?’ he asked Arkady. ‘Cat pelts and dog pelts. Amazing what people will buy.’
Arkady walked down the aisle toward the table.
‘Now, this pelt by itself is worth about one thousand dollars,’ Osborne said. ‘Barguzhinsky sable, but you probably guessed that; you must have become a bit of an expert on sables. Come closer, you can just see the hint of frost on the hairs.’ He brushed the fur back from the stiff skin, and then picked up a small automatic and aimed it at Arkady. ‘That’s close enough. This will be a beautiful coat, full-length, maybe sixty pelts in all.’ He brushed the pelt again with the gun. ‘I think someone will pay a hundred and fifty thousand for the coat. How different is it really from buying cat skins and dog skins, though?’
‘You’d know better than I would.’ Arkady had stopped one table away from Osborne.
‘Then take my word for it’ – Osborne’s face was hidden in the shadow of the lamp – ‘because this building and the surrounding two blocks are the largest fur market in the world. So I’ll tell you, there’s no more comparison between this’ – he stroked the glossy pelt – ‘and a cat skin than there is between Irina and an ordinary woman, or between you and an ordinary Russian.’ He tilted the lamp and Arkady had to raise his hand to keep from being blinded. ‘You’re looking good, Investigator – very good in a decent suit of clothes. I’m sincerely glad to see you alive.’