You Are One of Them (20 page)

“Well, Richard thinks you are crazy, but it went exactly as I planned,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“You did see Jennifer. I wanted to get you in the room with her.”

“What?”

“I wanted to see if you would recognize her.”

“Zoya?” I said.

“She was not ready to see you, but I knew she would come to focus groups. You recognized her, she recognized you.”

“I thought Zoya was Andrei’s friend,” I said.

She paused. Then she said uncertainly, “He told you that?”

“Yes,” I said. “He said he introduced her to you.”

“That is good,” she said. “Jennifer would not want him to—how do you say?—blow on her cover.”

“Blow her cover.”

“Da.”

“She recognized me at the focus groups?”

“Yes, but she could not say anything. Not in front of Richard.”

“That was really Jenny?”

“Eto pravda,”
Svetlana said.

“But where is she?”

“She is living in dacha,” Svetlana said. “Provided by KGB.”

“I want to see her.”

“This is why I arrange meeting. This is why we go to dacha.”

“We’re going to Jenny’s dacha?”

“You must call her Zoya in front of Andrei,
ponimayesh?
”

“He doesn’t know the truth?”

“He does not know that you know. He will report her.”

“To whom?”

“She needs her father’s KGB pension. It is not much, but she has nothing else, understand? If they think she wants to return to America, they will take it away. She will have nothing. She must be loyal to Russia because Russian government is supporting her. I told her perhaps you can help her.”

“Does she want to return to America? Can’t she just waltz into the embassy and repatriate?”

“She is always under the surveillance. She will explain to you. But remember: It is secret from Andrei. Promise me. You cannot tell him. He cannot be trusted.”

“Was his father in the KGB?” I whispered.

She leaned close to me and placed a hand to my ear.
“Da,”
she breathed, as if blowing up a balloon with her secret.
“Yes. Of course.”

I
T SNOWED ALL
DAY
S
ATURDAY.
Corinne and I made hot chocolate and popcorn and shuffled through her collection of pirated movies in search of something to watch.

“I’m sick of all of these,” she said, “but it’s too cold to walk to the video store.” There was a small English-language video-rental place just off Malaya Bronnaya, near the church where Pushkin married, but it was a good ten minutes away. “Welcome to winter in Moscow,” she said. “The key is to leave the house only when necessary.”

We settled for old episodes of
Fawlty Towers
on the BBC. We sat together on the kitchen sofa, sharing the heavy wool throw. The usually unflappable Corinne was out of sorts that day.

“I told myself I’d stay here for two years,” she said. “But sometimes I’m not sure I’ll make it. It’s good for my career, but it’s killing me.” She clutched her mug with both hands and stared into it, as if trying to read signs in the marshmallows. I’d never seen her so calm. She was still in her robe—it was creamy silk and printed with birds in flight—and without her signature red lipstick she looked frail.

“Are you okay?” I said.

“I’m just tired. I’ve been here almost a year, and we haven’t even published an issue yet. We’re just laying the groundwork for launch, greasing the wheels. I’m starting to wonder if it will ever happen. Most days I’m impressed if the phones work. I’m thirty years old, and I’m tired. Sometimes I just want to go home.”

I envied her knowing where she belonged. “Maybe I shouldn’t take this job,” I said.

“Don’t listen to me. I’m just cranky today. If you want to be a journalist, you should stay,” she said. “There are big stories here.”

“Do you remember Jennifer Jones?” I said.

“The old Hollywood actress?” she said. “What about her?”

“Nothing,” I said. “She just popped into my head.”

Corinne said I needed to figure out what I wanted. What I really wanted was to hear Jenny say,
I missed you.
But I knew I had inherited my mother’s habit of holding on too tight. No one cared about my Jennifer Jones anymore. The Berlin Wall fell; the Soviet Union collapsed; I was no longer a wallflower. Why was I still obsessed with Jenny?

•   •   •

L
ATE ON
S
UNDAY
MORNING,
Andrei picked me up in a large four-wheel-drive vehicle painted a dark green reminiscent of a tank.

“Is this yours?” I said. Very few Russians owned cars in 1995.

“I borrowed it from my father,” he said.

I’d brought orange tulips—thirteen of them, purchased from one of the twenty-four-hour flower kiosks—and I put the bouquet in the back. There were two shopping bags propped on the seat. Through the plastic I could see the outline of soda cans.

“You want a Coke?” Andrei said. “I brought some for you.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be hawking Czar?” I said.

“Czar is owned by Coca-Cola.”

“What?”

“They’re trying to gain market share by launching a Russian brand. They’re not going to tell people it’s owned by Coke, but, you know, that’s why one of Coke’s roster agencies is doing the campaign.”

“So an American company is using Russian nationalism to sell a Russian brand that is actually American?” I said.

“An American company with a British creative director and Russian copywriters,” he said.

“That’s insane.”
Everyone is potentially under opposition control,
I thought.

“
Eto biznes,”
he said. It’s business. “Someday perhaps a Russian company will own Coca-Cola and Czar will be the flagship brand.”

“How did you end up working in advertising?”

He shrugged. “My father knows Misha. The managing director. Every foreign firm needs a Russian partner to get started.”

“You mean to handle the bribes.”

“So many opinions, Sarushka,” he said. “As if your country is not corrupt. It will take us about an hour to get there. You mind if I smoke?”

“I do, actually,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “You’re the boss.”

“How old were you when you met Zoya?”

“I don’t know. Thirteen? She was probably twelve. My parents took me to see her before we went to Washington, so she could tell me what it was like there.”

So Andrei met Zoya about the same time Jenny died. It was possible that he met her right after she assumed her new identity. “And what did she tell you?” I asked.

“She told me about the embassy apartment building, about the school. She told me about your cherry blossoms.”

“She went to the embassy school?”

“Of course. We all did. When she was there, the embassy office buildings were not yet open, but the school and the residential areas were complete in 1979, so . . .”

“You’re sure she went to the embassy school?”

“I told you, we hardly left the embassy grounds.”

“And her Russian?” I said. “When you met Zoya, how was her Russian?”

“Do you always ask so many questions?”

“I’m curious. And I’m practicing to be a journalist.”

“Actually, the first few times we met, we spoke English. My parents wanted me to practice with her because she was fluent. My English was terrible in those days. My parents hoped that talking with Zoya would be like a—how do you call it? Crash class?”

“Crash course.”

“Crash course,
da.
So I went to see Zoya a few times before we moved to Washington.”

“Did she speak English with a Russian accent?” I said.

“No, she’d mastered American English. She taught me American slang. She told me about American television shows.
The Love Boat, Fantasy Island
,
Three’s Company.
”

These were shows I watched with Jenny. “And you’re sure she was Russian?” I said.

He laughed. “As opposed to what?”

I changed the subject. I didn’t want Andrei to get suspicious. For all I knew, there was a recording device in the car. “Where are we going?” I said. “Have you been there before?”

“To Zoya’s? Sure. It’s not so far from my family’s dacha.”

Russian dachas were handed out by trade unions, so each dacha community outside Moscow was defined by the profession of its inhabitants. The Writers’ Union, for example, gave its members dachas at Peredelkino, where great Soviet scribes spent their summers. Scientists had dachas in one community. And I knew that KGB operatives had dachas in another one.

“Is it near all the KGB dachas?” I said.

“Boltun—nakhodka dlya shpiona,”
he said. It’s the Russian equivalent of “Loose lips sink ships,” but literally it means “A chatterbox is a treasure for a spy.”

I sank back into the passenger seat. Moscow was sprawling, vast. As the car rattled beyond the ring road, the city’s main artery, I wondered if I was being kidnapped. During the 1991 coup attempt, the KGB held Gorbachev hostage in his dacha. I should have told Corinne where I was going. I should have told my mother. I should have e-mailed Juliet in New York or Sam in San Francisco. How long would it take everyone to notice I was missing? I didn’t even know in what direction we were heading. Were we north of the city? East? West?
This is a fool’s errand,
I thought.
I shouldn’t have come to this crazy country at all.

And then, the birch trees came into view: long white limbs lining the road like ghosts. And they were impossibly beautiful. Russians talk a lot about the soul. The
dusha.
The depth and mysticism of the Russian
dusha
can’t be understood by foreigners, they say. The Russian soul is intuitive and fatalistic and strong. They believe in the incorruptible power of
dusha
no matter how much the material world disappoints. I pressed my nose to the window of Andrei’s car and watched the birch trees flicker past, and I felt a stirring deep down. My soul was in there somewhere.

Finally we turned onto a dirt lane, rutted and crusted with old snow. Andrei slowed down, took the bumps with care. He hadn’t said a word for nearly an hour. “We’re almost there?” I said.

“Da,”
he said.
“Gotova?”
Are you ready?

The dacha was a wooden cottage nestled in a grove of pine trees. It looked like it was made of gingerbread, with white trim like icing. Andrei cut the motor and reached into the back for the bag of gifts he had brought. We got out of the car. It was cold, but it was almost noon and the sun was bright on the snow.

“Dobry dyen!”
Andrei called with exaggerated cheer. Good day! He knocked on the door with three quick raps. Was it some kind of code?

Zoya materialized in the doorway.
“Skolko let, skolko zim?”
she said. How many summers, how many winters? It was such a poetic way to say it had been too long.

1983

I
T’S THE DAY OF OUR CLASS PLAY.
Our parents are arranged on folding chairs erected for the occasion, and the other lower-school classes—fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-graders—are cross-legged on the gymnasium floor. From backstage I spot my mother through a torn seam in the curtain. Her hair is hidden in a blue-and-orange scarf, and she’s drowning in a cardigan that is far too big for her. She studies the program as if preparing for a quiz. In the front row, I see Jenny’s parents. Mrs. Jones has dressed up; she’s even wearing high heels. Mr. Jones is telling a story to the mother next to him. Or maybe it’s a joke. The woman grins, captive to his charms.

Behind the curtain, Mrs. Gibson is whispering final notes.
Take a deep breath,
she says to us.
You know your parts, you’re ready. Now just enjoy it. It’s called a play because it’s supposed to be fun.

Jenny’s ruby red slippers are on the prop table, awaiting the second act. They are patent Mary Janes, purchased at the little shoe store on Macomb Street, then smeared with glue and covered with glitter. Mrs. Jones made them. She volunteered her services; she loves costumes.

In a corner, Jenny is warming up her voice.
“To sit in solemn silence on a dull, dark dock / In a pestilential prison with a life-long lock. / Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock / From a cheap and chippy chopper with a big, black block.”

Did you teach her that?
It is Kim hissing in my ear. Was she actually the Wicked Witch, or is that just how I remember her? She raps my shoulder with her broom.

Teach her what?
I say. I don’t look at Kim, but I can see the ghoulish green of her face paint out of the corner of my eye.

That dumb vocal exercise,
she says.
It’s so depressing I figured it must have come from you. It’s about jail and someone waiting to get their head chopped off. Gross.

No,
I say.
It didn’t come from me
.

Jenny repeats the rhyme. Her alliterative consonants are defined and crisp.
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock.
She’s not famous yet—her letter to Andropov won’t be published for another three weeks—but she is already a star.

I hear the impatience of the audience: the squeak of metal as chairs inch back, the rustle of paper as programs are opened and closed, the wiggling girls who are glad to be out of class. And then Mrs. Gibson’s voice from out in front of the house.

Welcome,
she says.
We are so grateful you could all be here.

My classmates and I cluster in a nervous swarm, and then Mrs. Gibson is there in the dark, hustling us into our places, and the lights in the gym go down, and when the curtain goes up, only Jenny looks ready to perform.

•   •   •

E
VEN AFTER ALL
THESE YEARS,
I remember the pungent smell of vinegar as we walked into the house. It was the marinade for the shashlik, Svetlana said. The kebabs had already been soaking for hours.

“It smells delicious,” I lied.

Zoya was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and black jeans. She was shorter than I was, shorter than I thought Jenny would end up being, and curvier than I had imagined Jenny would be. “Welcome to a Russian country house,” she said.

“This is Sarah,” Andrei said. “Our American friend.”

“The crazy girl from our office,” Sveta said with a smile.

“I believe I saw you on the roller coaster,” Zoya said.

“Really?” I said. I thought I’d been so stealthy.

There was something wintry in her expression. She wore small diamonds—or rhinestones? it was hard to tell if they were fake—in her ear and twisted them while she spoke. “I spent some of the money your boss gave me at Gorky Park,” she said to Andrei and Svetlana. “Those rides are expensive. It’s hard to justify paying for them unless you get a sudden windfall. I decided to treat myself.”

“What is this ‘windfall’?” Sveta said.

“
‘Windfall’
eto kak udacha,”
Andrei said. “Like a lucky break.”

“Did you go on roller coasters when you were a kid?” I said to Zoya.

“We had no roller coasters in Moscow,” Svetlana said.

“But Zoya lived in the United States,” I said. “Didn’t you?”

I waited for some kind of reaction. A half smile, a wince. Anything. Her face remained blank, serene as a mask. I inhaled deeply, as if the scent of her might give something away. If you asked me to describe what Jenny smelled like, I couldn’t tell you, but I thought there might be some familiar note that would take me back to the Jones house. Zoya just smelled like tobacco. If regret had an odor, it would smell like an ashtray.

“Da,”
she said. “But I gather their boss isn’t supposed to know that.” She handled her words carefully, as if they were made of glass. The Moscow accent I’d heard at the ad agency was gone. She spoke English like a native, with an American accent. But so did Andrei. It didn’t prove anything.

I gave her the tulips.
“Spasibo,”
she said, and pressed her nose into the flowers for a careless sniff.

“Tulips smell like nothing,” Svetlana said. “The Dutch have no passion, I tell you.”

The room was crowded with various objects and competing patterns. The walls were papered in a dark red floral print on which dozens of oil paintings hung. The pictures were of ancient Russian churches, mostly, with glinting gold domes. Three Oriental rugs had been arranged in overlapping squares, and the lamps were covered with patchwork shades. An antique silver samovar loomed on the sideboard, and among the books on the shelves painted lacquer boxes fought for space with dried flowers. I felt like I was stepping into a Chekhov play.

“This is a typical dacha?” I said.

“Dacha is where Russians go to relax,” Svetlana said.

“Some dachas are much smaller,” Andrei said. “And most dachas are only used between May and October. We grill shashlik
outdoors. It is a little cold today, but we will manage.” He held up a bottle of vodka and winked.

“Won’t you sit down?” Zoya said. She indicated a leather recliner draped with an old quilt. “This is the most comfortable seat in the house.”

I sank into the chair. Zoya and Andrei sat down on a sagging sofa opposite me.

“I will put flowers in the vase,” Svetlana said. She carried my tulips away.

I ran my eyes over the room, looking for clues. On the bookshelves all the titles were in Russian. There were no framed family photographs, no evidence of the Joneses or of the United States of America. There was an acoustic guitar on the floor in one corner. An old turntable sat on a shelf with dozens of records stacked haphazardly next to it. An antique clock on the wall had Roman numerals on its face. A chessboard was set up on a small table near the window. What if, instead of MASH, Jenny and I had played a game called DASH, in which future home options were Dacha, Apartment, Shack, House?

“How long have you lived here?” I said.

“In this house?” Zoya said. She was doing math in her head. “Ten years, maybe. But my family also had an apartment in the city.”

“On the Arbat?” I said.

“No,” she said. “Chistye Prudy.”

I kept waiting for her to give me some kind of sign, some nod of recognition. But the woman across from me remained detached. Her posture was remarkable: it was as if even her spine were unburdened by doubt. She had none of Jenny’s softness; her edges were sharp. And yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew her. Under her icy shell, I could see a blueprint of the person she might have been.

“Where in the States did you live?” I pressed. “In Washington?”

“Yes, Washington,” she allowed. She twisted a strand of golden hair.

“But your parents are Russian?” I said. Moscow Rule #8:
Don’t harass the opposition.
I didn’t want to push her. I’d play along.

“My parents are dead,” she said.

The half-truth hung in the air between us the way, years later, I felt its presence between me and the man with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life. “Is there someone else?” I said to him. We were sitting side by side on the sofa of the New York apartment we shared, and when I asked the question, he froze for a moment, then said—while staring straight into space or into the imagined face of the shrink who had coached him through the breakup rehearsal—“I just need to be alone. This is all I can handle.” The unsaid words were suspended, as if from wires, and I knew that he had already transferred his allegiance, that another pair of hands was already guiding him inside her, that another conjured body fueled his masturbation, that another phone was receiving his flirtatious text messages. He couldn’t look me in the eye. I could have said,
I can tell you’re lying,
but he wasn’t lying, exactly, just omitting the part of the story that would make him look bad. The result was the same, wasn’t it?

He was withdrawing his affection; he was demoting me to the past tense. He thought his leaving me was unrelated to his joining her, but I knew he wouldn’t have the courage to go without a destination. She was waiting with arms open, adoring and not yet disappointed. Because it’s easy to love someone you haven’t let down. In the beginning the promises are like fresh snow, not muddied by footprints, not yet trampled. You are a hero to the country you defect to, a traitor to the one you defect from. The face of the one you’re leaving is crestfallen, biting her lip in an effort to stay strong, to believe, in spite of all the evidence, that you are innocent. “It just didn’t work out,” he said to me, as if he had no agency in the matter, as if it were chance, not choice, taking him away from me.

Would I have felt better knowing that there was nothing I could have done to make Jenny stay? Would it have been easier to let her go?

Svetlana returned with four glasses. “These are okay?” she said to Zoya.

Zoya nodded. In her presence Svetlana was deferential and eager to please. I realized that Zoya was the sun who pulled Sveta into her orbit.

Svetlana placed the glasses on the coffee table and sat down beside Andrei. “Perhaps you would like to walk in the woods?” she said to me. “It is very beautiful place for walking.”

“Also skiing,” said Andrei. “Cross-country skiing.” He opened the vodka and filled the glasses.

“It is not so cold today,” Zoya said. “But better if we take a walk after lunch.”

“U menya tost,”
said Andrei.

“In English,” said Zoya, “so our American guest can understand.”

“Ladno,”
said Andrei. “A toast to friendship between nations.”

All our glasses met in the center of the table. “During a Russian toast,” said Zoya, “you have to make eye contact with everyone.” So for a moment my eyes locked on hers. They were impenetrable pools. I couldn’t find my way.

“Now,” Andrei said. “Time to grill shashlik. Come. I will show you how we do it.” He beckoned to me.

I bundled up and followed him outside to a primitive grill constructed of a few bricks. He squatted to build his fire. “Svetlana is like schoolgirl around Zoya,” Andrei said. He imitated her voice. “‘Zoya says this, Zoya says that’ . . . She would follow Zoya off a cliff.”

“Svetlana told me I shouldn’t trust you,” I said.

He laughed. “That’s because she is jealous. She knows I like you.”

“Huh,” I said.

“You like kebabs?”

“Sure,” I said. “But I’m really cold.” I wanted to talk to Zoya out of Andrei’s earshot.

“I can keep you warm,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “I’m sure you can.”

“You are very cynical for an American,” he said. “You know that?”

“I’m going inside,” I said.

•   •   •

S
VETLANA AND
Z
OYA
were preparing lunch. I stood in the doorway of the kitchen and watched them chop vegetables.

“You like peppers?” Zoya said to me.

I nodded. The kitchen was a bright, charming space. Pots climbed the walls on hooks, and blue-and-white porcelain tiles made a flowery backsplash behind the stove. The table was draped with a yellow cloth and set with four china dishes in a green-
and-white pattern. My tulips had been arranged in the center in a white jug.

Svetlana opened a jar of preserves and held it up for my inspection. “At dacha we gather the berries in summer and then make the jams.”

Through the warped old window, I could see Andrei tending his fire.

“And mushrooms?” I said, turning back to face Sveta. “You also gather mushrooms?” It seemed like a dangerous enterprise, separating the edible fungi from the poisonous. I wouldn’t know how to tell the difference.

“Of course mushrooms,” Svetlana said. “At dacha we live simple life.”

I was about to tell Zoya I knew who she really was when Andrei walked into the room. “I am ready for the meat,” he said, and clapped his hands.

Zoya passed him a plate piled with skewers of lamb. “I’ll come with you,” she said.

“When can I talk to her without Andrei?” I said to Svetlana after they had gone outside.

She just held a finger to her lips. “Shh,” she said. “Patience.”

I looked outside. Andrei caught Zoya’s hand and pulled her close. The embrace was brief, but their bodies came together easily, as if by habit, and I wondered if they were lovers. I glanced at Svetlana. She was busy slicing bread.

•   •   •

W
HEN
A
NDREI AND
Z
OYA
returned with the shashlik, we sat down to a feast. Soup, of course, but also beet salad, boiled potatoes, and the lamb kebabs. Even caviar, red and black. And vodka. Svetlana refilled our glasses as we took our seats.

“This is lovely,” I said. “I hope you didn’t go to all this trouble just for me.”

“It was our pleasure,” Zoya said. When she smiled, I saw the remnant of a dimple. I was following crumbs, trying to find Jenny’s path through the woods. I sat across from her. Andrei was next to me.

“Do you like living here?” I said.

“I am a Russian citizen,” said Zoya. “Where else would I live?”

“Why are Americans so surprised that we are happy? Russia is great country,” said Svetlana.