“Well,” Krasavchenko muttered later as we went down to our actual dinner and the President excused himself to another function, “that was useless.”
“Did you think he’d put his hand on his heart and promise an army on the spot? If he had, I wouldn’t have trusted him a centimeter.” I smiled. “We’re just students, not negotiators. All we can do is advocate. At least he listened, unlike his journalists.”
Unexpectedly Kostia spoke up, his voice quiet over the muffled tread of our shoes on expensive carpet. “That’s a man to follow into shellfire.”
“He makes me think . . .” I paused, trying to find the words. “I might only be a student here, but I don’t have to be useless. If one man like him can tow his nation single-handedly through a worldwide economic depression and then a worldwide war, I can learn to give speeches without feeling like a deer caught in klieg lights, can’t I?”
Kostia didn’t answer, but his eyes caught mine for the first time since the opera. There was something in his gaze now that scorched, and I couldn’t stop my stomach from clenching in confused, chaotic response, even as we were ushered toward another long dining room table of White House officials and guests. The final day of this conference here would also mark six months since the day Lyonya had died . . .
I was relieved to turn away from my partner and take a seat beside the presidential adviser Harry Hopkins, who pulled out my chair with something of a twinkle in his eye. From our very first meeting he’d taken a liking to me, and despite my instinct to stay reticent with Americans, I’d taken a liking to him. He was another one, like his boss, who asked questions and actually listened to the answers. I’d been dropping as many facts as I could into that receptive ear. “What did you think of the President?”
“I am honored to call him an ally,” I managed in my most gracious diplomatic tones, murmuring a spasibo to the server who filled my glass.
“Mrs. Pavlichenko, I’ve heard the tobacco company Philip Morris is offering you a contract,” a woman called across the table. “They want to put your portrait on cigarette packets! What have you to say to that?”
“They can go to the devil,” I said in English, abandoning the gracious diplomatic tone, and the table burst out laughing.
“Cigarette packets may only be the start of it,” the First Lady murmured, and I cocked my head.
“What do you mean, Mrs. Roosevelt?”
“Oh, nothing.” Her eyes positively danced. “I merely have an idea . . . and I believe the President, having met you all, is ready to agree to it.”
THE SECOND AND third day of the conference. Long droning addresses, usually followed by heated debates. Answering questions about my uniform; trading university lecture stories with a bucktoothed girl from York and a smooth-cheeked boy from Beijing who barely looked old enough to shave. Applauding as the delegates adopted a Slavic Memorandum condemning German fascism. “So kind of them to conclude that fascism is bad,” I whispered to Yuri. “I can’t wait to inform Comrade Stalin of their decision. He’ll be so relieved!” Even that didn’t get a facial expression out of my minder, who continued to watch beady-eyed from the back of the room as flashbulbs went off.
The First Lady insisted on posing for photographs between Pchelintsev and me, taking our hands very firmly in her large, capable ones. Maybe her husband couldn’t promise aid as quickly as we wanted, but she made sure no photographer left without that photograph of us all holding hands, a visible symbol of the Soviet-American military alliance.
“You’re getting comfortable in the limelight at last,” Alexei murmured on the conference’s last day. The closing reception was being held on the green beside the White House; the warm, sunny evening threw my shadow ahead of me long and slanting. “Well done, kroshka.”
“Ta mère suce des ours,” I told him. A phrase I’d been taught by a French Canadian student on a cigarette break, when we’d been discussing how to get rid of handsy lecturers—a topic female university students could discuss across all global divides and language barriers. I’d taught her how to say Put your pig paws back in your pockets in Russian; she’d taught me Ta mère suce des ours, which apparently meant Your mother sucks bears. “It’s even more insulting than it sounds in translation,” she advised, and I grinned at Alexei’s perplexed face now as I strolled off to join the group of students from Montreal. I was determined to enjoy this last reception. In Moscow it would have been an elaborate affair, white-draped tables and dark suits and long speeches, but the First Lady had made it all into a backyard party: students wandering the gardens with paper plates full of sandwiches and glass bottles of Coca-Cola, the sound of decadent, delicious ragtime drifting from an unseen radio. President Roosevelt had yet to join us, and I could sense a thrum in the crowd as the guests looked for him, but until he arrived, things could remain decidedly informal. I ended up telling a White House aide about my walk to Boulder Bridge in Rock Creek Park, blinking as the aide told me how President Roosevelt had once lost a signet ring there on a hike. “President Roosevelt was hiking?”