The day passes, inch by inch, in a strange, nightmarish haze. The guards bring bread and water, and then—grudgingly, a little horrified—cloths for Gregory and also for Iris, whose womb still bleeds heavily. She tries to rest as much as she can. Not to think too much.
Ruth tells her that a guard came earlier with another prisoner, some school friend of Kip’s. Iris doesn’t catch the name—she doesn’t have the strength—but she hears them talking. It’s a girl. She tries to remember Kip’s friends. She knows there was a girl among them, very pretty in a solemn, fierce way—dark hair, energetic eyes that seemed to catch every movement. What was her name? Possibilities float in and out of Iris’s mind, but she can’t catch one. Her world has shrunk to the tiny dimensions of her cell—to the minutes ticking by—the baby who needs all her attention. The air is damp and stale, but every so often a clean fresh salt draft whooshes in from the sea with one of the guards, and she breathes this wind like a tonic that will restore her to health.
Iris has some idea that Ruth is keeping up the children’s spirits. There are songs and word games, the same songs and word games that she and Ruth used to sing and play when they were little, so Iris keeps having these half dreams—hallucinations, almost—that she’s ten or eleven years old, she’s on the beach with Ruth, some hot and eternal summer’s day on the shore of Long Island Sound. She hears the word marina, over and over, and in her mind they’re rigging the sailboat for a long day on the water, and Iris feels the old, familiar unease that comes to her when she’s out sailing, and the old, familiar envy of Ruth, drenched in sunshine as she scampers around the boat while Iris clings to her seat and tries not to be seasick.
The cell door clanks open. Ruth rushes inside. Iris, she says.
Ruth, Iris whispers back.
You have to get up. They’re moving us.
Where?
I don’t know. Maybe a hospital for you.
Iris almost laughs, this is so impossible. Ruth hasn’t lived inside the Soviet Union for four years—she still has hope.
But she summons herself and stands, with Ruth’s help. Ruth swaddles up Gregory and carries him with her right arm; with her left arm, she supports Iris.
“Don’t forget Gregory’s bag,” Iris says.
Ruth finds the valise and wrinkles her nose. “Why don’t you just throw out the soiled ones? I’m sure you can get fresh cloths where we’re going.”
“You never know,” Iris replies. “Where are the children?”
“They’re already in the truck.”
Truck?
It’s one of those military convoy vehicles, noisy and hard. One of the guards hoists her inside. The children clamor her name—Mama! She closes her eyes and savors the feel of their young legs and arms, of Claire’s soft cheek against hers. The truck smells of dirt and sweat and mildewed canvas and vomit but she doesn’t care. This is all that matters, her babies, for whose sake she has done what she has done, so that they can live in a better world. Of course, that’s what Sasha told himself, isn’t it? You start out wanting to make the world better, and you end up destroying everything that was good.
The truck lurches forward and everyone falls silent. Through the cracks in the truck’s canvas covering they glimpse the twilit world outside. It might be any hour from eleven until three in the morning—twilight never quite sinks into the absolute dark of night during these midsummer weeks—just this purpling sky, the faint stars, the hush, now broken by the roar and rumble of the truck and some other vehicle ahead of them.
Wherever they’re going, it’s not along some road. The truck sways and dives. In her mind, Iris returns to Long Island Sound and a sailboat under the hot sun. The terror of a vessel she can’t control, obeying natural laws she can’t predict. She hears an unfamiliar voice speaking Russian, a girl’s voice, and she remembers the other prisoner, the school friend of Kip’s—what was her name? How did she get here? It’s all part of the dream, maybe.
The truck stops with a jerk. A pair of guards appear at the back and shout at them to get down, file out, line up. The Russian girl shouts back at them. But they don’t have any choice—the guards carry fearsome rifles, which they point to the girl, then Kip, then Ruth. They have the decency not to point at Iris. One by one, everyone crawls across the bed of the truck and jumps to the ground below. Ruth goes before Iris. She hands the baby to somebody, leaps down, and holds up her arms to help Iris. Ruth is so strong, she catches Iris without a stagger.