Read Someone Else's War: A Novel of Russia and America Page 49
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Oscar Tolchin had agreed to the conditions imposed by Madame Getmanova. They never met. She’d contacted him by telephone; their entire conversation took less than ten minutes. But a few weeks later, an unmarked van with ordinary DC license plates pulled into his driveway. The crew spoke little English. Oscar simply pointed to what to take, and they took it. Madame Getmanova had assured him that Olivia’s possessions would be waiting for her, a welcome-home gift, when she returned from…
The silence made him hurt, month after month. Then he finally accepted. If whatever she was doing, she was doing for the United States, it would do no good to make inquiries of the government. If she was engaged in something different, such inquiries might do a great deal of harm. He determined to leave it at that.
Then a FedEx courier arrived with an envelope. Within the envelope was a letter, bearing his address but no postage of any kind. The handwriting was Olivia’s. It took him a moment to regain sufficient co-ordination to open it. There were many sheets of paper and a photograph of his daughter, thin, worn, but unmistakably happy, with a Russian officer on the bank of a canal, the beautiful Italianate Winter Palace, the Hermitage, behind them. Petersburg. The officer had his arm around Olivia’s waist and he looked extremely proud of her. And tender, Oscar realized as the tears began. That, too.
The letter told of a long train trip through Russia, and of many other things, her words suffused with the calm contentment of a woman at last at peace with her soul.
And then a postscript in a male hand, the English letters stiff and awkward, the Cyrillic orthography sometimes breaking through.
Doctor Tolchin,
There are a number of things I would like to say to you, but you must accept my apologies for my silence. Perhaps fate will in time permit me to say them to your face.
Your daughter came to us as an engineer, bringing a great gift that has saved many lives and will continue to do so. Her presence among us is also a great gift, and that she shares herself as well as her work is, for those of us who love her, a constant inspiration and delight.
I have signed my name, but in truth it does not matter if the censor has cut it away. What matters is the happiness your daughter has found with us. And brought us. That too is a gift.