I refilled my wineglass. “I know how old I am.”
“One night he recited the poem to a group of us on a street corner, and I told him it was akin to suicide. He didn’t heed my warning, and of course they soon arrested him. Not long after, I received the phone call. Do you know who it was?”
“I’ve heard the stories.”
“Of course you have. But never from me.”
I moved to refill his wineglass, but he waved me away. “Stalin began without greeting, his voice immediately familiar. He asked if Osip was my friend, and if he was, why I hadn’t petitioned for his release. I had no answer for him, Olya. But instead of making the case for Osip’s freedom, I made excuses. I told the head of the Central Committee that even if I had petitioned on Osip’s behalf, it would never have reached his ears. Stalin then asked if I thought Osip was a master, and I told him that was beside the point. Then do you know what I did?”
“What, Boris? Tell me what you did.” I drank the rest of my wine.
“I changed the subject. I told Stalin I’d long wanted to have a serious conversation with him about life and death. And do you know how he responded?”
“How?”
“He hung up.”
I rolled a pea around my plate with the back of my knife. “But what does this have to do with now? That was years ago. Stalin is dead.”
“I’ve long regretted what I did. Or, rather, what I didn’t do. I was given the chance to stand up for my friend, to save him, and I didn’t take it. I was a coward.”
“No one blames you for—”
Borya pounded his fist on the table, rattling the plates and silverware. “I won’t be a coward again.”
“This is not the same—”
“They’ve asked me to sign letters before.”
“This is different. Feltrinelli already knows to ignore anything you send that’s not written in French. You’ve prepared for this. It won’t be a lie. It’s simply a measure of protection.”
“I don’t need protection.”
My anger grew. “What about me, then, Boris? Who will protect me?” I paused before unleashing everything. “They sent me to the Gulag once before. Because of you.” I’d never laid the blame for my arrest directly at his feet, and he looked aghast. I said it again: “They sent me to that place because of you. Do you want to be responsible for sending me back there?”
Boris went quiet again.
“Well? Do you?”
“You must think very little of me,” he finally answered. “Where is it?”
I went to my bedroom and returned with Polikarpov’s telegram. He took it from me, and without reading it, signed his name. I sent it to Milan first thing in the morning, followed by a telegram to Polikarpov saying it had been done.
Borya and I didn’t speak about the telegram again after that, and in the end, it didn’t matter anyway. Feltrinelli ignored it, as we knew he would, and a date for publication in Italy was set for early November.
I had tried my best, but my best was not enough. Doctor Zhivago was a speeding train that could not be stopped.
WEST
Fall 1957–August 1958
CHAPTER 12
The Applicant
THE CARRIER
Sally Forrester arrived on a Monday. I’d gone to Ralph’s with the typing pool, at Norma’s pleading. I knew she was only interested in getting the scoop on my relationship with Teddy, but I’d agreed when she offered to buy me a burger and a chocolate malt, knowing I had soggy tuna on Wonder Bread waiting for me at my desk.
The typing pool’s usual booth was a tad cramped, so I sat with my long legs turned out to the aisle. As soon as we ordered, Norma volleyed questions at me. “Come on, Irina. You’ve been dating for what, a year? And you don’t tell us anything. We don’t know anything.”
“Eight months,” I said.
“I was engaged to David after three,” Linda chimed in.
I smiled politely. Fact was, Teddy and I had become a real couple without my even realizing it. Our first dinner at Rive Gauche turned into dinner and a movie the following weekend, which turned into dinner and dancing, which turned into dinner at his parents’ expansive home in Potomac. Teddy had introduced me as his girlfriend, and not wanting to hurt his feelings, I hadn’t corrected him—even after months passed. Maybe it was because we got along well, or because Mama loved him and he had an impressive knowledge of Russian culture and mastery of the language. “You speak better Russian than my cousins, and they were born there!” she’d told him.
Plus, I was comfortable with him in a way I’d longed to be with a friend my entire life. I didn’t have to analyze my every word and move with him. It was a friendship, but I hadn’t yet given up hope that it could turn into something more. I was waiting for that lightning bolt, that electric shock, that weak-knees moment—every cliché I’d only read about.
There were other perks too. Teddy was seen as an up-and-comer at the Agency, a potential member of an inner circle that, as a woman, I could only hope to see the outskirts of. He’d take me to the Sunday dinner parties in Georgetown and the fancy cocktail parties at the Hay-Adams Hotel. And he wouldn’t send me off to chat with the wives and girlfriends; he’d pull me from conversation to conversation with the men, and squeeze my hand when he felt proud of a point I’d made.
Teddy was a Catholic and never pressured me to do anything I wasn’t ready for. It wasn’t that he was against sex before marriage—he’d lost his virginity to a substitute teacher his senior year at prep school and had three more partners in college—but he was respectful of my boundaries. I wasn’t against sex before marriage either, although I’d let him believe I was more of a prude than I actually was. Teddy didn’t know it, but I was no virgin. I’d lost—or rather, given away—my virginity to a friend my junior year. I’d approached it as something to get over and done with, and invited him to my dorm when my roommate was away. He came through the door and I asked if he’d have sex with me. Poor guy was so taken aback, he initially tried to talk me out of it, but he relented when I took off my blouse.
I’d always approached sex as an anthropologist. Instead of turning the gaze on myself, I was most interested in observing the man and his reactions. And I liked how Teddy responded to touching me—even more than how it made me feel. His restrained desire made me feel powerful, and that was a revelation. Teddy was everything I should’ve hoped for—and yet.