The elevator takes an eternity, not nearly long enough. The cab halts with a bang and a jerk. The doors open. Fox urges me out and holds my hand as we walk down the hallway. I wear a nifty navy blue jacket over a white silk shirt and a blue silk scarf patterned in gold horseshoes for luck; light tan slacks and comfortable Oxford shoes; my hair a little longer than I like it, brushed back from my face, waving softly beneath my small, plain hat. I consider myself smart and modern; Iris will think I look mannish and severe. I long for a cigarette and a double scotch. Instead I have Fox’s hand wrapped around my gloved fingers. Ahead of us, a door opens and a tall, angular man steps out, thinning hair sleek and gold under the hallway light. He waves at us.
“Hullo there! Welcome!” says Sasha Digby.
I’m not prepared for the fury that whips through me at the sight of him. I’ve almost forgotten about Digby as an actual man, a breathing human being, because he’s lived so long as a villain in my imagination. But you can’t just hate a person in the flesh, at the moment he presents his frail humanity to you—the thinning hair, the skin that’s taken on lines and texture, the anxious blue eyes that want so badly to please you—to be forgiven. So the hatred transforms in an instant to anger.
Still, I disguise it well. You never saw such an actress! I hurry forward to clasp both of Digby’s hands and mwa the air next to each cheek. “Sasha! My God, twelve years! I never dreamed we’d meet again here!”
“Nor did I, nor did I!” He turns to Fox and holds out his hand. “Sumner Fox, by God. I thought Iris was kidding me. Sasha Dubinin.”
“Dubinin. Pleasure.” Fox shakes his hand, man to man.
“Come in, come in. Iris! They’re here! I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your coming out like this. I know it’s hell, a trip like that, visas and diplomatic clearance and every pesky thing. I hope nobody made any trouble for you.”
“Not a bit,” Fox says. “Smooth as butter. I couldn’t believe it myself. Once the wheels went in motion, why, there was no stopping them rolling forward.”
For some reason, we still stand outside the apartment door. I suppose we’re all a little nervous of going in to face what’s inside. But a space falls after Fox’s last words, in which there is nothing else to say, so we all turn to the apartment’s interior and perform the exact same pantomime as downstairs at the elevator a moment ago—Digby waving us both in, Fox urging me a half step forward with a hand that just caresses the curve of my spine.
Then I’m inside the foyer, and a small, delicate woman appears—heavily pregnant, dark hair, anxious face—Iris.
“Ruth? Thank you so much for coming.”
I don’t know how it is. I don’t know why I do it, what force urges me forward. Something primeval, I imagine. My feet move by themselves. I open my arms at the last instant and cradle her shoulders and head—my stomach rams the mountain of hers—her dark hair fills my mouth. I have to spit it out to speak.
“Of course I came, pumpkin.”
I would like to say that we then settle down on a sofa somewhere and trade tender reminiscences until the cows come home, but an instant later the children tumble down the hall and that’s that. I mean, the noise alone. The kids fire questions at me, Iris asks if I want tea or coffee—vodka, I call out—Digby tells Fox what a fan he was, something about a game against Harvard—there’s no time at all for awkwardness. We wind up on a sofa fully half an hour later. The children get bored and wander off to somebody’s room to play a game.
“Not Monopoly, I presume?”
Digby laughs. “No.”
Now, the first thing I notice about Digby, once we’re all arranged in this shabby living room of theirs, is that he drinks coffee instead of vodka, and he smokes a pipe instead of a cigarette. The second thing I notice is that he actually looks remarkably well, for a traitor—older, like I said, but still pink and healthy, not even so much as a fatherly paunch. The room in which we sit is lined with books. Digby’s talking with Fox about his work, how he’s writing a comprehensive study of American foreign policy since the First World War, teaching a class or two at Moscow University—that kind of thing, he says.
That kind of thing. Doesn’t that kind of thing include delivering lectures to intelligence officers at the KGB? The nerve of him! But of course he spoke—like we all do—to the microphones listening silently in their hidden corners. Back in Rome, Fox had assured me that Digby wanted out of the Soviet Union. But as I sit and listen to Sasha rattle on about his life in the Soviet Union, it seems to me he’s awfully cool. He’s as cool as ice. Probably you have to be, doing what he did. But the Digby of Rome—the ardent Bolshevist delivering secrets to the Soviet Union because he believed so passionately in world communism—wasn’t cool at all. He was a drunk. He argued his politics out loud, where anyone could hear them. He spilled his secrets to women, just to get them into bed. He’d only gotten worse after the war, by all accounts.