So I spoke for him.
The editors met with me, but none made promises. A few said they’d possibly be interested in publishing the poems that came at the end of the novel, but my questions about publishing the book in full were never answered directly.
Many nights, Borya waited for me on the train platform for news of how my meetings in Moscow had gone. I tried to frame everything positively, talking more excitedly than was warranted about Novy Mir’s interest in publishing some poems, but Borya knew better. He’d walk me back to Little House in silence, his arm tightly intertwined with mine, as if I were holding him up.
Once, on my return from another fruitless trip, Borya stopped in the middle of the road and announced he no longer believed Zhivago would be published. “You mark my words. They will not publish this novel for anything in the world.”
“You must be patient. You don’t know that yet.”
“They’ll never allow it.” He scratched his eyebrow. “Never.”
I started to think he might be right. After yet another meeting with yet another publisher, Borya met me in Moscow so that we could attend a piano recital. We arrived early and sat on a bench under a chestnut tree.
A man who I thought I’d seen on the Metro stood at the end of the pond in front of us, watching the ducks. The man was young, wearing a long brown overcoat despite the heat.
“I feel as if we’re being watched,” I told Borya.
“Yes,” he replied, matter-of-factly.
“Yes?”
“I assumed you knew.” The man standing at the pond noticed us looking at him and walked down the path, disappearing from view. “Shall we go?” Borya asked. “We don’t want to be late.”
Borya maintained that the surveillance didn’t bother him. He’d even joke about it, addressing whoever was listening by speaking into a lamp or to the ceiling.
“Hello? Hello?” he asked no one. “How are you today?”
“I’m fine, thank you,” he answered himself.
“Are we boring you?” he asked a light fixture. “Maybe instead of what we’re having for dinner tonight, we should talk about something more interesting.”
“Will you stop?” I asked. I didn’t find his jokes funny, and I told him as much. “I’ve faced them before,” I said. “And I won’t do it again.”
He took my hand and kissed it. “We must laugh at it all,” he said. “It’s all we can do.”
WEST
February–Fall 1957
CHAPTER 8
The Applicant
THE CARRIER
As the taxi turned left onto Connecticut, I pressed two fingers to my wrist the way Mama had taught me when I was a child and carsick. The feeling intensified when we hit Dupont Circle. I thought about getting out and walking, but that wasn’t the plan. I couldn’t deviate from the plan—not unless I was being followed.
I was told to hail a taxi at the corner of Florida and T at seven forty-five and take it to the Mayflower Hotel. The hotel was only a short walk from there, but the optics, they said, were better if I got out of a taxi.
I was told to avoid wearing anything that would make me stand out: flashy jewelry, too much makeup, an ostentatious hat, ostentatious shoes, anything ostentatious. I thought of all those sequined gowns filling our basement apartment, of all the women coming by to try them on and buy them from Mama. I didn’t own a single item of clothing that could be classified as ostentatious. My instructions were to dress well but not too well, to look nice but not too nice. I was to look like the type of woman who frequented the Mayflower’s bar, the Town & Country Lounge. The tricky part was that I was the type of woman who hadn’t even heard of the Mayflower Hotel, let alone the Town & Country Lounge.
For the night, I was no longer Irina; I was Nancy.
The taxi came to a full stop midway through the circle and I checked my hair in my compact, still unsure I’d gotten the look right. I wore Mama’s old fur, which I’d spritzed with Jean Naté—an attempt to mask the mothball smell. I wore the periwinkle and white polka-dot dress I’d worn to every wedding I’d attended for the last five years. My hair was pulled back in a French twist and secured with a silver comb, another item borrowed from Mama. Reapplying the new shade of orange-red lipstick I’d purchased from Woolworth’s, I frowned into the mirror. Something was still off. It wasn’t until the taxi pulled up to the hotel and a doorman opened my door that I looked down and realized it was my shoes: dull black pumps. Dull black pumps with a scuffed left heel. And I hadn’t even thought of shining them. The kind of women who went for drinks at the Town & Country on a Wednesday night wouldn’t be caught dead in anything dull. As I entered the Mayflower’s grand lobby, decked out in red and white roses for Valentine’s the next day, I couldn’t stop thinking about my shoes. At least I’d been given a nice purse—a quilted black leather Chanel bag with a double flap and a gold chain, large enough to hold an envelope.
I told myself to project confidence, to become someone who belonged with the well-heeled set—to become my cover, to become Nancy. Gripping the Chanel like a talisman, I passed the bellboys in their tasseled caps, the honeymooners checking in, the huddled men conducting after-hours meetings, the glamorous brunette waiting for one of those men to take her upstairs, the large potted palms lining the mirrored corridor. I walked through the lobby and into the Town & Country like the kind of person whom the bartender knew by name.
I already knew the bartender’s name. It was Gregory, and there he was: prematurely gray hair, white shirt and black bow tie, standing behind the bar pouring a Gibson.
The lounge was busy, but the second-to-last high-backed chair at the bar was free, as they said it would be.
“What’ll it be?” Gregory asked, his nametag confirming what I already knew.
“Gin martini,” I said. “Three olives, with one of those little red swords.” One of those little red swords? I scolded myself for going off script.
In front of me was a thin glass vase containing a single white rose. I picked it up, turned it clockwise in my hand, sniffed it, and put it back—as instructed. Then I hung the Chanel by its gold chain on the chair back’s left side. Then I waited.
The man to my left hadn’t so much as glanced my way when I sat down. He was reading the sports section of the Post and looked like every other man in the place—a lawyer or businessman on a one-night trip in from New York or Chicago or wherever those types came to the District from. The word to describe him would be nondescript, and I wondered if he’d describe me that way too. I hoped so.