You Are One of Them (16 page)

Where the defectors hang out, Svetlana said, as if there were enough of them to form a club. As if they were assembled around a table, playing poker. Chips stacked in red, white, and blue, the colors of the country they left behind but also the ones of the place they now called home. There were two kinds of defectors: those who were running away from something and those who ran toward the Soviet Union for ideological reasons. The seekers of asylum and the true believers. Both were gamblers. Hedging their bets. Risking what they had in hopes of trading up. Reckless because they believed they were entitled to more.

Lee Harvey Oswald defected to the Soviet Union for a few years. When he returned to the United States in 1962, he brought a Russian wife and daughter with him. He assassinated Kennedy the following year. American Morris Cohen and his wife, Lona, were both KGB spies; they defected in 1969 and lived in Moscow on KGB pensions until their deaths in the early 1990s. The Cohens were awarded the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of the Friendship of Nations, and after the Soviet Union splintered, the Russian Federation issued postage stamps with their faces on them.

I considered the facts. Mr. Jones had access to intelligence secrets. He had opportunity: we gave him our letters, so he certainly could have buried messages in them. For the first time, it occurred to me that
he
might have been the one who hid my letter behind the bulletin board in Jenny’s room. Maybe Jenny didn’t know that it was there. Maybe she wasn’t lying when she said she was sure Andropov would write to me. If Edmund Jones was a spy, then it wasn’t my fault that Jenny abandoned me. There were larger forces at work.

Was it so improbable? Every true story about espionage was full of impossible-to-believe details. Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian playwright who moved to London and denounced his government through his work as a radio broadcaster, was murdered in 1978 by Bulgarian secret agents who stabbed him with an umbrella that had poison hidden in it. KGB colonel Oleg Gordievsky was smuggled over the Finnish border by MI6 when he defected to Britain. Edward Lee Howard escaped by diving out of his wife’s moving car in the desert night; he planted a dummy wearing his clothes in the passenger seat so that when his wife drove back to her house, the FBI men watching her would assume that Howard was still there. What if the Joneses’ plane went down with dummies on board? The more I thought about this scenario, the better I felt. I’d spent all that time on Martha’s Vineyard holding a grudge, but maybe Jenny didn’t do anything wrong. Maybe I was the one who owed her an apology. Maybe our friendship came to an end not because she preferred Kim, not because I was no fun, but because she sensed my pulling away.

•   •   •

O
NE NIGHT
I asked Jane if the American embassy thought there were any unreported defectors. We were at Cafe Margarita, an arty den across the pond from Corinne’s building. Some kind of jazz band was playing, and we’d all ordered red wine.

“What do you mean by unreported defectors?” Jane said. She pushed her glasses up on her head, and I noticed that she had almost no eyebrows. The absence of the green frames around her eyes transformed her face completely. It’s funny how such a small change can make such a big difference. I thought of Pip. When he was wet, he looked like a completely different dog. With his usually fluffy coat flattened out by water, he was tiny and meek.

“I mean people who defected without ever officially declaring that they defected,” I said. “People who were reported dead but didn’t really die. People who chose to disappear.”

“This is the problem,” Jane said. “It’s hard for us to build diplomacy with Russia when everyone’s still holding on to these Hollywood clichés. Enough about defection and spies. This is a new era!”

“You know what this era is?” said Corinne. “It’s the era of the Russian supermodel. Half the models on the runways in Paris, Milan, and London are Russian. All the scouts are flying in, wandering around these little Siberian towns looking for the next big thing. My boss wants me to find talent here.”

“Do models count as talent?” said Leslie. She was the only smoker in the group. When warming up to make a point, she tapped her cigarettes on the table, ostensibly “packing” them, but with the vehemence of a judge’s gavel. “How are they talented? Because they know how to walk?”

“Ladies,” said Jane. “New subject: the Fourth of July picnic at the embassy. We’re planning a really fun day for all the Americans here.”

“You’re already thinking about July?” said Leslie. “I have to survive this reporting trip to Chechnya first.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” said Corinne. “War gives me the creeps.”

“Then it’s a good thing you work for a fashion magazine,” Leslie said. “Your job is the polar opposite of public-radio journalism.”

“Aren’t you sanctimonious today?” Corinne said.

“Come on,” Jane said. “Give it a rest. We’re supposed to be showing Sarah a good time.”

“You’re having a good time, aren’t you?” Leslie said to me. Her hair was short and spiky; she reminded me of a spider plant.

“Sure,” I said. “I’m having a blast.”

That night Leslie told me about Yeltsin’s Truth Decree. In July 1994 the president had signed a decree forbidding false advertising. It was aimed at all the companies that were duping naïve Russians. “Billboards, TV commercials, newspaper ads telling people they’ll get a thousand-percent return on their investments. These poor pensioners are sinking their life savings into these schemes without asking any questions. And then the companies just disappear and take all their money. Everyone wants to get rich, but no one really understands the realities of a market economy.”

“My assistant lost a lot of money that way,” Corinne said. “She invested her parents’ savings, too. They lost everything. Can you imagine?”

“Con artists and crooks,” Leslie said. “It’s so depressing.” Resigned, she lit a cigarette. “Reform is a pipe dream.”

“The Truth Decree sounds like something out of Orwell,” I said. “Did it work?”

Leslie laughed. “What do you think?”

•   •   •

S
VETLANA’S OFFICE VOICE-MAIL
MESSAGE
was in English and Russian. I got used to hearing her say,
“Please to leave the message after beep.”

“It’s Sarah. Zuckerman. Again,” I said day after day. She didn’t return my calls.

And so I waited and sifted through the information I had.

Mr. Jones had access and opportunity, but what was his motive? He had never struck me as an ideologue. He and his wife were so happy in Washington; why would they give that up? And even if he
had
been a spy, that didn’t necessarily mean that Jenny was alive. If they weren’t on that chartered plane, who was? The more I thought about it, the more absurd the idea of the Joneses defecting to the Soviet Union became. Because if they
had
defected, wouldn’t we have heard about it in the States? Wouldn’t the Soviets have called a press conference to announce their latest prize?
YOUNG AMERICAN CHOOSES THE UNION OF FRIENDSHIP AND PEACE. CHILD DIPLOMAT MAKES HER HOME IN THE USSR.
There was a public-relations frenzy when Stalin’s daughter defected to the States in 1967 and then repatriated seventeen years later. TASS was quick to tell the world when the USSR granted Edward Lee Howard political asylum.

There was no reason to trust Svetlana. Jenny was invited to the USSR to prove that it was a peaceful, friendly place. For all I knew, Svetlana had invited me to further her own agenda, to demonstrate that post-Soviet Russia was still a “champion” capable of making world-class soft drinks. Maybe I was being used as a propaganda tool. Just because Svetlana was telling me something I wanted to believe, that didn’t make it true. It was dangerous to get my hopes up. I steeled myself against inevitable disappointment.

I told Corinne that my Russian friend believed we hadn’t walked on the moon. “A lot of people here think that,” she said. “But they’re just sore losers. They lost the Cold War, so now they’re like, ‘You cheated!’”

It was amazing to me that Russians and Americans still defined themselves in opposition to one another. Americans generalized about Russians; Russians generalized back. The Cold War was over, but the habit of drawing lines in the sand was hard to break. Corinne said that when she arrived, she wanted to make Russian friends. “But until about four years ago, it was illegal for them to spend time with foreigners. They’re curious about us, but they’re also still really suspicious. And it’s so hard to get people here to be honest.” Relationships with expats were safer, she said. But hanging out with expats seemed like a cop-out. I didn’t want to be one of those foreigners who hid behind walls, the way the embassy people did.

“On my trip to the USSR, I learned about the importance of friendship,” said Jenny’s book. In my room in Corinne’s apartment, I flipped through the pages again. Jenny went to Pioneer camp, she visited a collective farm. She had lunch at the Soviet Women’s Committee. She spent an afternoon doing gymnastics with the Soviet Olympic team. There was no point in trying to re-create her trip. Too much had changed. I had to find a way to break this to my mother, who thought a slide show of my photographs would be the perfect way to open the tenth-anniversary Jennifer Jones Festival. I returned to the title page, where Jenny’s careful cursive waited for me.
“For Sarah, my best friend forever.”
She wrote that in December of 1983. Just a few months later, she was spending all her time with Kim. Forever didn’t last very long.

•   •   •

M
OSCOW CONTINUED ITS
STEADY
march toward winter. Corinne screamed one morning when a mouse, driven inside by the cold, darted across the kitchen floor. It disappeared under the stove while we ate our muesli.

The days were getting so short. One Saturday I slept until almost two and then started to cry when I realized I’d missed most of the daylight. The sun wasn’t completely up until nearly ten, and the light began to leach out of the sky by four. The darkness fell quickly and made me feel desperate, not just for light but for answers. There is something painfully honest about winter: the skeletal trees, the brutal repetition of the cold. There are no empty promises, no hazy, humid hopes. It’s reality, lonely and stark.

What was I doing in this bleak place? My friends from college were having a good time cobbling lives together. My friend Juliet was rooming with two classmates on Ludlow Street. She e-mailed to say she kept running into people from school at neighborhood bars.
“Everyone in New York wants to know when you’re coming home,”
she wrote to me earlier that week.
“We miss you. xoxoxo”

I decided I’d finish my Russian class, go home for Thanksgiving, and never come back. I’d spend the holidays with my mother and then in January I’d move to New York, stay with Juliet on the Lower East Side. It was good to know I had real friends waiting for me. It was the safe route, but what was so wrong with that? I didn’t have to make myself suffer. What was so awful about being like my mother? At least she was loyal. But a few days later, the
Moscow Times
offered me a job. I had aced the copy-editing test. They would even sponsor me for a new visa so I could come back after the holidays and start in January.

“We should celebrate,” Corinne said that night.

“I guess.”

“If you really want to be a journalist, make it happen. Start as a copy editor, become a reporter. Things are more fluid here—you can move up fast. You’re welcome to stay here at my place for a few more months. Chip in a little for rent. Find your own apartment once you’re settled into the job. When are you going to get another chance like this? We’re on the vanguard here.”

“Vanguard or abyss?”

“Isn’t this what you came to Moscow for?” Corinne said.

I paused. I’d never told her about Jenny. The real reason I’d come to Moscow was too hard to explain, I thought, without sounding deranged. I liked Corinne, but she struck me as someone with no tolerance for ambiguity. She valued efficiency above all. She probably outsourced complicated emotions the way she sent out her dry cleaning. I could imagine her impatiently counseling friends through heartbreak, slamming the door on inconvenient feelings.
You just have to get over him,
she’d say, with a snap of her fingers.
Time to move on. There are other fish in the sea.

Now she said, “You have to decide what you want.”

I wasn’t used to asking myself what I wanted. I was used to taking what was offered. What did I want? In what ways was I wanting? Wanting. Wanton. At times my behavior in college had certainly been wanton. I’d gone home with some guys just because they invited me. Just because it felt good to be desired, just because it was a chance to make heat on a cold night. For years I’d been replaying events in my head, looking for clues, for any foreshadowing of betrayal and abandonment.
I should have known better,
I’d tell myself after someone left me. I can’t believe I thought I mattered enough to make anyone stay. I’d spent years thinking that I was “sad” like some people are French. I’d been telling myself the same story, branding myself as damaged and disposable. Easy to leave.

I liked the idea of becoming an investigative journalist, though. I liked the idea of having my name in the papers, not as the quoted best friend but as the byline. Corinne was right. It was time to focus on my future instead of trying to resurrect the past.

“Dear Mom,”
I wrote that night.
“Most of the places Jenny visited don’t exist anymore. I think we should forget about the tenth-anniversary celebration. People want to look forward, not back.”
I knew that her feelings would be hurt. She’d view this as a betrayal. But I couldn’t keep carrying Jenny’s legacy. I had to create my own. I tried to soften the blow.
“Maybe you can find a new cause?”
But I couldn’t hit
SEND
. I couldn’t take Jenny away from her.

I
WAS IN THE
KITCHEN
making coffee one morning in late October when the phone rang. It was the short ring of a local call. Corinne was at her office, so I answered.

“
Allo?
Sarah?” It was Svetlana’s voice on the other end. 
“Privyet,”
she said in a giddy singsong. I realized I’d missed her.

“I’ve been trying to reach you,” I said. “Did you get my messages?”

“What messages?”

“There were a lot of messages.”

She had a surprise for me, she said. A very big surprise. Would I come to her office today at eleven o’clock? She would meet me in the lobby, she said, so that the armed guard didn’t bother me. I didn’t want to miss my Russian class. There were only a few days of the course left. That week we had been practicing the subjunctive mood. “I would have gone to the film if I had had a ticket,” our teacher, Irina, said. “I would have come to Moscow long ago,” I said, “if I had been invited.”

“What kind of surprise?” I asked Svetlana.

But she just said, “Eleven o’clock,” and hung up.

•   •   •

S
VETLANA WAS WAITING
when I arrived. She wore the same white blouse and gray skirt. I soon learned that most Russians wore the same thing to work every day. I produced my passport for the guard, but this time he returned it to me immediately and waved me past. On the way up the stairs, Svetlana said, “You brought your camera?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, you cannot use it. This is the top secret.”

In the office Svetlana led me to a door next to the kitchen. “Our conference room,” she said. Inside was a long table on which nine forlorn cans of Czar clustered in the center. There was no one there. Just a large mirror on one wall and a framed noirish black-and-white print of Red Square opposite it.

“What’s the surprise?” I said to Sveta.

“Focus groups,” she said.

Richard appeared in the doorway behind her. “Today,” he said, “we are doing consumer research. We’ve invited some people in for taste tests. A Czar challenge, if you will.”

“What does this have to do with me?” I said.

“I thought you might enjoy it,” he said. “Russian people your age . . . listening to what they have to say. And we could use a young American perspective. The Yanks in our office are much older. Of course, you’ll need to sign an NDA. This is all highly confidential, but I know you’ve been helping Sveta with campaign ideas.”

Svetlana was distributing plastic cups, placing three in front of each seat at the table. “I told Richard how productive we were at our lunch,” she said, and gave me a knowing look.

“Yes, we were,” I said, playing along. I realized that Svetlana must have expensed our meal at the Metropol. “We’re full of ideas.”

“Consumer research is a challenge here,” Richard said. “Brits and Americans
want
to talk about themselves. Ask them one question about what laundry detergent they use and you get a whole monologue about their family. But Russians are tight-lipped. Afraid anything they say might be used against them. They’ll tell you what they think you want to hear. Hard to get honest responses. But Svetlana here is going to moderate the groups. We’ve been training her, haven’t we? Teaching her about market research.”

Svetlana nodded. She was folding paper napkins into triangles.

“I thought you had a surprise for me,” I said. “I assumed this was about our friend.”

She didn’t answer.

“I’m going to show you something,” said Richard, like a magician ready to pull a rabbit from a hat.

I followed him out of the conference room and through the adjoining door. We were in a small, dark room in which six chairs had been arranged in two rows of three. One wall was a window that looked into the conference room. We watched Svetlana through that window as she arranged cans of Pepsi and Coke next to the cans of Czar.

“A one-way mirror,” said Richard. “We can watch the groups, we can hear what the consumers say. They can’t see us.”

“Do they know they’re being watched?”

“They do not.” He crossed his arms over his chest. The gesture struck me as defiantly smug. “We’re not legally obligated to tell them.”

“You want Russians to get over their fear of being watched by watching them?”

“This is the way it’s done,” he said. “Advertising is about giving people
choice.
Consumers tell us what they want so that we can create products and campaigns that work for them.”

“That work
on
them, you mean,” I said. Through the glass, Svetlana was emptying a tube of Pringles onto a paper plate.

Andrei poked his head into the room.
“Privyet,”
he said in a tone that sounded like a taunt. He was wearing some kind of cologne with tangy citrus notes.

“Welcome to the front lines of the cola war,” said Richard.

Andrei collapsed into a chair and lit a cigarette. Richard waddled out of the room. Through the one-way mirror, I watched him lean close to Svetlana and whisper something in her ear. Svetlana nodded and then hid all the cans of cola with a red cloth.

“For people my age, you know, Pepsi is almost like a Russian brand,” said Andrei. “We grew up with Pepsi. Coke is seen as absolutely American, which helped them for a while. You know, they were the cool new foreign import. But they still have some catching up to do in this market. And our hypothesis is that America is losing its appeal as a selling point.”

“I don’t care about the cola war” I said. “I’m looking for my friend.”

“What friend?”

“No one you know.”

“Ooh, a secret friend,” he said.
“Drug or podruga?”
A male or female friend?

Andrei reminded me of some of the boys I knew in high school. I’d cross the Cathedral Close every afternoon for swim practice—we worked out with the boys in their school’s pool—and sometimes their campus felt like enemy territory. Some of the guys, out of faculty earshot, weren’t afraid to hurl words our way.
Box,
they whistled.
Pussy.
They just wanted a reaction. Even a deferential greeting held the threat of mockery. I always darted up the flagstone path, head down, swim bag over my shoulder. I was on guard.
“Podruga,”
I said.

“So mysterious,” said Andrei.

“My friend
died,
” I said.

“If she’s dead, why are you looking for her?”

“It’s not funny,” I said. I was getting flustered. I could feel my cheeks engulfed with heat.

“Relax,” he said. I’ve always hated being told to relax. It feels patronizing.

Richard returned. “Women in the first group, men in the second,” he said.

Andrei crushed out his cigarette on the plastic arm of his chair, then swept the ashes onto the floor. “Come on,” he said, kicking an empty chair my way. “This will be fun. We’ll all learn something.”

Richard pulled the door closed. We were in the dark. “No light in here,” he said, “or they’ll be able to see us through the mirror.”

I felt a surge of claustrophobia. The older I got, the less I liked small, confined spaces. “I have to go,” I said. “I don’t feel well.”

“You can’t leave
now
,” said Richard. “The consumers are coming into the room. We can’t open this door again until after the first group.” He stank of beer. The air was yeasty with his sweat.

Four women entered the conference room. They were all young—in their early twenties, perhaps—with hard, insolent faces. The hidden microphone wasn’t on yet, so we couldn’t hear Svetlana, but she must have asked them to sit down, because they all took seats. Sveta’s back was to us, and I could see the sharp bones of her spine through her blouse. The other women faced the mirror. They were drawn to their own reflections. Hands moved to smooth stray hairs; mouths pursed to correct lipstick smudges. They performed these touch-ups with robotic precision. There were two blondes, a redhead—through her thinning hair I could see that her scalp was stained with dye—and a brunette. Suddenly we picked up the broadcast of Svetlana’s reedy voice.

“What’s she saying?” Richard asked in a stage whisper.

“She has asked them to introduce themselves,” Andrei whispered back.

The woman on the far right began. She was the redhead. Her eyes were smudged with kohl.
“Menya zovut Natalia,”
she said.

“Her name is Natalia,” Andrei said to Richard. “But Sveta is calling her Natasha.” Natasha was the nickname for Natalia, just as Sveta was the nickname for Svetlana. In Russia, nicknames were standardized, along with everything else. We learned that Natasha was a secretary and that she was twenty-one.

The blonde next to her began to speak.
“Menya zovut Zoya,”
she said. Zoya had long, honey-colored hair with thick bangs that grazed her lash line and hid her brows. Finally, I thought, a Russian blonde whose roots weren’t showing. Her hair actually looked conditioned. Too bad Corinne wasn’t there to see it. Zoya said she was a teacher and that she was twenty-two. Then she said something about living in the States when she was a child.

“Did she just say she lived in America when she was young?” I said.

“No,” said Andrei. “You misunderstood.”

“We’re trying to understand their perceptions of America,” Richard said. “We’re trying to understand how those perceptions influence their notions of soft drinks and their usage patterns. Is a cola inherently American? Do we have to traffic in American imagery?”

But I was sure I didn’t misunderstand. She’d said,
“Ya zhila v Amerike.”
I lived in America. Either Andrei wasn’t listening closely or he was deliberately mistranslating. I couldn’t see his face in the dark. Was he lying or lazy?

“We’ve lost the sound,” Andrei said. We could see Zoya’s lips moving, could see her head cock to the left as she listened to Svetlana’s next question.

“Bloody hell,” Richard said. “Sveta must have bumped her microphone. If it’s not back on in a minute, you’ll have to go in there, Andrei.”

Zoya’s attenuated fingers were stroking her collarbone. She had the high cheekbones and deep-set eyes typical of Russian women and the same haughty expression. But there was something about the way she leaned forward, the way she looked directly at Svetlana as if she were comfortable with interviews.

I stood up.

“Hey,” said Richard. “You can’t go in there.”

“I just need a closer look,” I said. I pressed my face to the glass.

Zoya sat back, tucked her hair behind her ears. There was something familiar in her gestures, an echo of a former self. It was like watching a silent film, like watching a home movie. It was Jenny I was projecting onto the scene. I filled the hollows under Zoya’s eyes, dotted her nose with freckles, darkened her hair. Zoya looked nothing like Jenny. And yet.

“Is she Russian?” I said.

“Of course,” said Andrei.

Then the sound came back on. The return of Zoya’s voice—husky, jaded, Russian—altered the scene. I could no longer see any trace of Jenny there. She shook her head dismissively. “I don’t like American food,” she said.

“She doesn’t like American food,” Andrei translated.

The next woman introduced herself. Her hair was the color of dishwater, and she nibbled on her bottom lip as she spoke. “She is Lyudmila,” Andrei said. “She is a medical student. She is twenty-three.”

“Who found these people?” I said.

“What do you mean?” said Richard. “The consumers?”

“Where did they come from? Did Svetlana invite them?”

“Svetlana helped with the recruiting, yes,” said Richard. “We don’t have a proper planning department. We have to work with what we have.”

“Lyudmila says they used to pour Pepsi in wineglasses on special occasions,” said Andrei. “When they were children.”

I remembered New Year’s Eve when Jenny and I drank Coke out of champagne flutes to ring in 1983. “Cheers,” we said, uniting our glasses with a clink. “Not too much pop or you’ll be up all night,” Mrs. Jones warned.

“Now Sveta is asking them about colas,” Andrei said. “About Pepsi and about Coke. What they drink. What they like. Their usage occasions. What do they think about when they see these brands.”

“Too many questions at once,” Richard said. “I told her, you’ve got to build the discussion slowly, let them open up, not jump right in with brand identities. Christ.”

The women looked bored. The one named Zoya spread out her hands and scrutinized her manicure. Then she held her hands up on either side of her face and looked at herself in the mirror. Her nails were the color of scabs. And then she smiled. It reminded me of our elementary-school pictures. Once a year we were ushered into the gym where a photographer had set up a temporary studio on the stage. The photographer’s assistant distributed black plastic combs so that we could neaten our hair while we waited for our turn in front of the camera. Jenny and I were always together, so when we reached the front of the line, I watched her pose. Her face was blank until the photographer said “Ready?” and then she switched on her smile. The dimples came out, her eyes lit up.

I moved toward the door before I knew what I was doing.

Richard grabbed my arm to restrain me. “Hey,” he said. “There are rules. There are protocols.” I noticed the puckered mark of a closed-up hole in his left ear and imagined the midlife crisis that had led him to pierce it years before. He had probably worked very hard to be hip. And now he was a fifty-year-old in a baggy sweater. A
jumper,
he’d call it.

“I think I know I her,” I said.

“Millions of dollars are riding on this project,” said Richard.

Who was the puppet master? Where were the strings? Had this whole thing been organized for my benefit? Was there really a cola called Czar?

Richard was out of shape and a little drunk. I wrestled out of his arms, opened the door, let the light compromise the research. And then I stormed into the conference room.

“I need to talk to you,” I said. All four women at the table shifted their gaze to me. If they were alarmed, they didn’t show it.

“May I help you?” said Svetlana in English. She stood, pressed her knuckles into the table until the skin blanched with the stress.