What if we couldn’t get the baby out? Or what if suddenly I couldn’t get out? If you had to leave us? It scares me to death. I can hardly breathe when I think about it.’
‘Honey, you and I are both American citizens. And we both have diplomatic passports. You don’t have to worry about all this stuff. Anyway, if you got pregnant, you could leave. Other wives do. The baby could be born in Germany, or on US soil, in Buffalo. I’ll send you home to your mother.’
‘No!’ She was shocked by his suggestion. ‘No, no, no.’ She grabbed the ends of the belt on her bathrobe, cinched it tight, flounced away from him across the little room even as she proclaimed, ‘I want to be with you. You and only you. I am never going home to my mother. I won’t be separated from you. Never. It’s bad enough when you’re at the embassy all day. Besides, once the child was born, I’d have to come back here with it anyway. And I couldn’t do that, either. As long as we live in Russia, I need to be light on my feet, ready to move, able to fly at a moment’s notice. I can’t be burdened down with a child. It nearly killed my mother, John. And frankly, it nearly killed me: I was the child who was holding her back, who was keeping her here, exposing her to suffering, want, manipulation, fear, heartbreak. She could have left before the war if it hadn’t been for me. Because of me, she delayed and then it was too late.’
John was silent. Nina’s relationship with her mother was an unfathomable, tortured area, full of love, hate, generosity and selfishness in the most irrational welter. He accepted that maybe Nina could not go home to her mother ever again – why should a married woman want to do such a thing, anyway? He could see that it smacked of failure, loss of independence. And yet he felt swamped by the practical considerations; how could he take responsibility for the happiness, minute by minute, of this woman he loved and had taken away from her chosen homeland? How could he address her increasingly difficult state of mind, so unexpected? She didn’t seem to be the inspired, resilient woman he had married.
At the office, there was plenty of talk about adjustment, settling in, newlyweds, loneliness. He had been encouraged to treat it as a normal, temporary feature of his own job, handling Nina, being attentive to her moods, to her resistance. But he sensed that to Nina, Moscow was a metaphysical experience, swallowing her alive. And he knew the office vocabulary was useless to describe what was happening to her.
There was something inside Nina, something burning, some lit, primitive energy that he couldn’t understand. It wasn’t that she had fooled him; on the contrary, she sometimes treated him to breathtaking, even hurtful outbursts of honesty, stunning revelations. But there was a depth of passion in her that he had not yet plumbed. He could remember the first few times he had met her, the way she used to avert her eyes, as if she were too shy to look at him straight, and she would flex her feet, rising onto her toes, as if she might lift into the air. Her blue eyes were dark-flecked, pixelated, her small face square-cheeked, square-jawed, the fine bones seeming almost to show through the taut-stretched, white skin; later he discovered that if he ducked down and held her look, he could feel the flash and strength of her so intensely that he had to avert his own eyes. Her vitality dazzled him; it was irresistible, unpredictable. He had believed, still believed, that if he held her eyes, her arms, firmly enough, cradled her soul, steadied her, it would gradually come out, and he would be able to see it, engage with it – the ferment. But he knew that he had not yet gotten to the bottom of her. Her feverish, evanescent restlessness.
He didn’t agree with Nina about the baby. He wasn’t about to tell her now, but he himself had come to the conclusion that a baby would make them both happy. Certainly it was something they had wanted before the assignment to Moscow had come up. They had daydreamed aloud about it in the most sentimental terms. Still, who was he to force something on this woman, so brilliant, so beautiful, so sure of herself and yet so skittish, even if he did think it might stop her feeling lonely when he was at work?
She looked at him, standing off, gripping the sash of her robe, when he wanted her beside him, as one with him. What did she expect of him? Could he actually provide it? Happiness? Were husbands supposed to be able to deliver that? He had wanted to give her everything her heart desired. It wasn’t working. I was insane to bring her here, and she was more insane to want to come. She was so certain, so positive that I could get her in. And that was all we focused on. It was what I wanted, so she made it her business to want the same thing.
John could remember the anxiety of getting Nina’s visa to enter the USSR, how he had anguished over giving up the assignment, made up his mind that she was worth any sacrifice, that if she couldn’t get in, there would be another job somewhere else. Too bad if he couldn’t use his Russian, he would wait. There had been day upon day of interviews for both of them. But the paperwork had gone through without a hitch. We let ourselves be tricked by that, he realized, by the official OK. All along, I was expecting someone to tell us we couldn’t go. Waiting to be told no, that the risk was absurd. But nobody tried to stop us, apart from Nina’s mother. Nobody interfered. Then again, we were the only ones who knew the truth about Nina’s place of birth; why would anyone else suggest it was an obstacle? When the papers came, we opened a bottle of champagne; we looked on it as a victory – getting away with it. After that, I never let myself pause to imagine what difficulties there might be once Nina was here. I just pictured how happily she would take to a familiar city, how it would be a lark for her.
Finally he said, solemn, reluctant, ‘OK. Well. No baby. I agree. All precautions in place, then.’
‘You’ve said that before, too, haven’t you?’ She was accusing him of something. He felt confused by her unexpectedly strident tone.
‘I want to trust you,’ she almost shouted. She was back at the sink, slapping at the dirty dishwater, whacking dishes with a cloth. ‘But it all gets so – impossible. Heated. You never are as careful as you say. Condoms, all this stuff, it’s so unbeautiful, so distracting. I know how you feel about it. I feel the same. It’s one thing we intended to be free of once we were married, isn’t it? And I am no good at resisting anything, at stopping you or even slowing you down. And they are listening to us, John. I can’t talk. I can’t tell you what I feel. What I want. They are in bed with us and I’m not sure you even care! Even that doesn’t stop you.’
John went deep painful red. And his voice came out tipped with rage. ‘We don’t have to discuss this any more, Nina. Not that I think the KGB bothers to listen to drunken domestic quarrels. Our guys wouldn’t. Who can afford the resources? We’re not teenagers. And I’m not such a cad. Don’t lay all the blame at my door. I don’t think that’s fair. You’re the one who’s shouting, if you’re so worried about being overheard. And you’ve got methods of contraception you haven’t even bothered to take out of the box. What about that diaphragm you’ve made so much fun of? All you’ve shown me is soul-destroying lingerie from Paris.’
Now she was crying, but she tried not to let him see. She knew it was true, that she was blaming him more than was fair. Ever since he had brought her to Moscow, she had tended to blame him more and more for everything. She had forgotten how to take responsibility for herself. There were no avenues for it; she had no choices. She felt boxed in, suspended.
‘They do listen!’ she said with a feeling of pathetic self-righteousness. ‘They think they know just when people will let their guard down. And anyway I’m sure they’re bored out of their minds, so it’s like – it’s like – pornography to them – which you can’t get here.’ Her voice trailed away querulously. ‘This is a – very – puritanical society. You know the joke – Khrushchev’s joke – everyone repeats – there IS no sex in the Soviet Union. The atmosphere here is not – natural. It affects people in the weirdest ways. It makes them – sick.’
‘Oh, Christ, Nina. You’re talking nuts. Where do you get this stuff? Just stop.’ There was disgust in his voice, and a kind of horror. She was right for all he knew, but he couldn’t let these
