Sometimes, when Sasha recalls the things he did during the war, the careless way he dodged Gestapo and slipped in and out of buildings in the night—when he recalls the things he did before and after the war, the thousand tiny acts of subterfuge required to photograph documents without anyone noticing, say, or slip papers into your briefcase at night, or glance at the documents on a colleague’s desk and memorize paragraphs in a few instants—the dead drops, the radio transmissions, the pass-offs, the hours crisscrossing cities to shake off surveillance, the endless ciphers, the hurried sex in cars and back hallways and safe houses—the memories seem to belong to another person. The old alertness returns to him now, walking between these silent buildings, but he can’t summon the old energy. The rush of purpose is gone. In his veins he feels only dread, so cold it numbs his nerves. His arms ache from the handcuffs behind his back. He wants another cigarette. He wants a drink.
They stop in front of a low-roofed, rectangular building with no windows. A guard stands outside, motionless. The KGB woman nods to him—he steps aside. She opens the heavy metal door and says, After you, please.
Sasha ducks through the doorway into a small guardroom. Three metal doors line the opposite wall, each with a tiny barred window.
Sasha stops and asks for a cigarette.
The woman turns back to the door and asks the guard if he’s got any cigarettes. The guard reluctantly hands her one from a battered pack, along with a cheap lighter. She lights the cigarette for him and sticks it in the corner of his mouth. Sasha smokes it for a moment, staring at the wall.
The KGB woman looks in one window, then another. She smiles fondly and puts a finger over her mouth. “Sleeping,” she whispers.
Sasha doesn’t want to look. He doesn’t have the guts to see his children in a prison cell, his wife and newborn baby son in a prison cell. But he walks forward anyway. It’s his punishment, isn’t it? Too many sins to count, and they’re all coming due at once.
He looks through the window and lets out a small, anguished noise at the sight of Claire, curled up in a cot with Kip, who sleeps with one protective arm over his kid sister. Their clothes are dirty, their hair is matted. On the floor next to them sleeps Jack, rolled in a blanket. He’s lying on his back, and his mouth wears a strange, lurid grin.
Sasha can’t bear it—he can’t look away—he can’t stand it another second—he can’t move. The pain is like a magnet that holds him in place. Jack’s pale hair—oh God! Claire’s flushed cheeks, the trusting way she snuggles into her brother. How many thousand times has he held his daughter in his arms and kissed her sweet hair?
He tears himself away and leans his head against the cold wall. He never could wear the mask, could he? He never could keep it all inside. Not like this woman.
She stands there next to the wall, arms crossed. She could possibly order him to look inside the next cell, but she doesn’t. She has all the patience in the world. She waits for him to creep there himself, to bring his face near the bars of the window and open his eyes.
But it’s not Iris, after all. It’s Ruth.
She lies on a cot, long and golden, eyes open to the ceiling, arms crossed behind her head. She turns her face and looks at him, without a word, and the expression of her eyes is so deadly that he jerks away.
“Digby?” she calls after him. “Is that you?”
“Yes.”
“How’s Iris?”
“I don’t know,” he gasps, over his shoulder.
Ruth comes to the window. “She’s in the cell next to me. I called out but she didn’t answer. Can you just make sure she’s all right, please?”
He nods and steps to the third door and peers through the window before he can even prepare himself.
Iris.
She’s asleep on a cot, on her back. The baby, wrapped in a swaddle, rests in the crook of her elbow. Her breathing is rapid and shallow; her cheeks are flushed. Her short dark hair tumbles around her face.
How many times has Sasha seen his wife asleep with a newborn baby? Hundreds of times. All the memories dazzle him at once, colorful and brittle, in constant motion like a kaleidoscope. He can’t choose one.
He turns his head to the KGB woman and says, “She needs a doctor! She’s not well, she had a cesarean section three days ago!”
“She needs a doctor! Please!” echoes Ruth. She’s wrapped her hands around the bars of the window.
“Of course she’ll have a doctor,” says the KGB woman soothingly. “As soon as our dear Dubinin agrees to cooperate.”