Mitya reached for another sushka. “You would’ve asked him?”
“I would have thought of something.”
“Why won’t he marry you?”
“Mitya!” Ira slapped his arm.
“You’ve asked the very same thing,” Mitya said. “Just not to Mama. People at school say things, you know.”
“What do they say?” I asked.
Mitya said nothing.
“I’ve been married twice before and don’t want to marry again,” I said, knowing they could see right through me, as they could see through everything now.
“But you love him,” Ira said. “Don’t you?”
“Sometimes love isn’t enough,” I said.
“What else is there?” Ira asked.
“I don’t know.”
Mitya and Ira glanced at each other, and their silent agreement broke my heart.
* * *
—
When the house was quiet, I looked in at the children, both sleeping again. I put on my raincoat and left. I couldn’t go to him; he’d be asleep. I walked along the green fence by the main road. As I walked, I thought of Mitya as a little boy, refusing to let go of my hand before boarding the bus to camp. I thought of him now saying we needed a pistol, being the man of the household. I thought of Ira, how she’d grown since that day the men took me. I thought of my children knowing, so young, that love sometimes isn’t enough. A truck’s headlights appeared in the distance. I wondered what would happen if the truck swerved off the road, if I didn’t get out of its way. The sky cracks open and—
WEST
August–September 1958
CHAPTER 20
THE TYPISTS
The Agency moved fast. After Irina’s successful night in the Bishop’s Garden, with the Russian manuscript now in our hands, there was no time to waste. In the time it took winter to thaw, the cherry blossoms to bloom and drop, and the dome of Washington’s humidity to descend, Doctor Zhivago’s Russian proofs were prepped in New York, printed in the Netherlands, and shuttled to a safe house in The Hague in the back of a wood-paneled station wagon. Three hundred sixty-five copies of the novel had been printed and bound in blue linen covers—just in time for the tail end of the World’s Fair, where we’d distribute the banned book to visiting Soviets.
But all that was only after a few hiccups.
The Agency’s initial plan was to contract a Mr. Felix Morrow—a New York publisher with close ties to the Agency—to arrange the layout and design of the manuscript and prepare proofs that couldn’t be traced back to American involvement. Then the manuscript was to be shipped off to a yet-to-be-determined publisher in Europe for printing—another safety precaution to erase any Company fingerprints. A memo even stipulated that no American paper or ink be used.
Teddy Helms and Henry Rennet had taken an American Airlines flight to New York, then a train out to Great Neck, to personally hand the Russian manuscript to Mr. Morrow—along with a bottle of fine whiskey and a box of Mr. Morrow’s favorite brand of chocolates to seal the deal.
But Felix Morrow proved to be a liability. A former Communist turned Trotskyite but now as American as apple pie, as he put it, the New York intellectual loved to talk—and talk he did. Even before the ink on the contract dried, he was telling everyone about the great book he had in his possession.
Norma even heard through her old New York literary contacts that Morrow had contacted several Russian scholars to review the manuscript, and soon everyone was talking about a Russian edition in the works here on American soil. She immediately alerted Anderson, who told her they’d take care of it. “No pat on the back,” she told us. “Not even a thank-you.”
Even worse, Morrow had also contacted a friend at the University of Michigan Press to explore the possibility of printing the novel in the United States—in spite of the exclusive world rights owned by the Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli and likely to secure a nice amount of change. “I can publish anywhere I please,” Morrow had told Teddy when confronted.
Teddy and Henry were again dispatched to Great Neck—to quiet Morrow with an even finer bottle of whiskey and an even bigger box of chocolates, and to halt his deal with Michigan. Morrow protested, but finally he agreed to be cut out of the operation—not because of the whiskey and chocolates, but because of the promise of an even larger compensation than he’d initially been given.
After the Morrow situation was put to bed, Teddy and Henry trekked over to Ann Arbor to stop Michigan from moving forward. They pleaded with the university’s president to cease the publication plans. They told him the first Russian-language edition needed to appear to come from Europe in order to have the greatest impact on the Soviet reader and to avoid being dismissed as American propaganda. They also emphasized that the author, Boris Pasternak, could be put at risk if the book was connected to U.S. distribution. After some back-and-forth, Michigan had agreed to delay the publication until the Agency’s edition appeared in Europe.
The Agency then worked with Dutch Intelligence to finish the job. A deal was made with Mouton Publishers, which was already contracted to produce the book for Feltrinelli in Dutch, to do a small run in Russian for the Agency.
After all that, Doctor Zhivago was finally on its way to Brussels and the World’s Fair; if all went according to plan, it would be in the hands of Soviet citizens by Halloween.
To celebrate, Teddy and Henry arrived back in Washington just in time to catch Shirley Horn’s second set at the Jungle Inn. They took a seat in the red vinyl booth farthest from the stage.
Teddy drank whiskey on the rocks and Henry sipped a dirty gin martini as they watched Shirley. They were so transfixed that they didn’t notice Kathy and Norma in the booth next to them. Or perhaps they did notice the women but just didn’t recognize them without their typewriters and steno pads.
“She’s good, right?” Henry shouted over the din of the club. “What I tell you? The real deal.”
“Very,” Teddy said, waving his hand to flag down the waitress.
“The real deal. Absolutely. Aren’t you glad you came out tonight?”
“What’s with the waitress?” Teddy asked. He loosened his tie. “We should’ve gone home to change. We look like a couple of feds.”
“Speak for yourself,” Henry said, dusting something invisible off his navy blue jacket. “And you know damn well that if we’d gone home first, you’d have just stayed in. What’s with you lately, Teddy boy?”
Instead of answering, Teddy rose to get another drink, returning with two martinis, an extra olive in his.