Our Woman in Moscow
Beatriz Williams
Ruth
August 1952
In the Sky Above Northern Europe
When we were eight years old, my twin sister, Iris, saved my life. I’m serious. I had a fever and a terrible stomachache, and our parents were out at some party. The nanny was one of those no-nonsense types you get, and I was not then—nor am I now—someone who likes to air her private miseries for the delectation of others.
Iris was the one who noticed my gray, shining face, as I curled up in bed and tried to read a book. Twin sisters and all. She just knew something was awfully wrong. She made the nanny call up 21, or wherever it was, and have the ma?tre d’ send for our parents. Of course, Mother told Nanny she wasn’t coming home for any silly stomachache, and really Ruth should know better than to seek attention that way. She’d thought better of me. Nanny relayed this message with an air of triumph. I said Fine and curled back up, shivering as you shiver when a fever’s come on.
So what did Iris do? My sweet, small, timid, delicate flower of a sister? She called up the ambulance service all by herself, that’s what she did, and a half hour later they burst into our apartment, swept past poor astonished Nanny, and swiftly diagnosed a probable case of acute appendicitis. Within the hour, they were wheeling me into the operating room at the Hospital for the Relief of the Ruptured and Crippled on East Forty-Second Street. Mother burst hysterical into the waiting room in her fur coat, I’m told, though by then I was under some combination of nitrous oxide and chloroform, so I can’t say for certain.
Anyway, my point is Iris saved my life that day, so it seems I owed her one.
Where was I? My mind’s wandering a bit. It’s been a long day, and it’s not even noon yet, and I’m afraid I’ve already drunk the best part of a bottle of English gin in order to cope. I’m sitting inside the fuselage of some type of military aircraft—don’t ask me what kind, for God’s sake—in the company of a United States army doctor and a pair of army nurses. We’re on our way to evacuate an injured American citizen. It’s an important mission. He’s an important citizen, a genuine twenty-four-carat hero. I’m not allowed to tell you where we’re going—that’s top secret—and I’m probably not allowed to tell you his name, either.
Still, now that I think about it, they didn’t specifically say I couldn’t.
All right. I’ll whisper it, so pay attention.
Charles Sumner Fox.
Nice name, isn’t it? So distinguished. On his business card, it reads c. sumner fox. That’s because of his mother. He told me the story once, when we were in Italy together. It goes like this. His father’s from Savannah, and his mother’s from Boston, and they met in western Massachusetts where Mr. Savannah attended Amherst College and Miss Boston attended Smith. Some mixer, I guess. They fell in love somehow. She agreed to marry him and start a new life in Georgia, but she insisted on naming their firstborn after a famous abolitionist, just to make a point. Look for Charles Sumner in your encyclopedia and you’ll see what I mean. Senator from Massachusetts during all those squabbles and treaties before the Civil War, the ones you learned about in school and forgot. Once, while he was on the Senate floor delivering a speech against slavery, some congressman took his cane and beat Charles Sumner until he almost died. I’m serious. Grievously injured, all because he stood there on the floor of the United States Senate, if you will, and called the congressman’s cousin a pimp for Southern interests.
Men. I tell you.
Anyway, as a result of these shenanigans, Charles Sumner became the hero of Massachusetts, where the good citizens reelected him even though he couldn’t actually attend the Senate, on account of being beaten so badly, so that his empty desk could stand as a noble reminder, et cetera. All the world loves a martyr. As time went on, mothers named their sons after him, just to make a point.
But listen to this. It’s sort of funny. After Charles Sumner Fox was born, his mother decided he didn’t look like a Charles after all, so she called him Sumner. And he’s been Sumner Fox ever since, to the world and to me. If the name rings a bell, it’s because he once played football for Yale, where he was considered one of the greatest fullbacks ever to carry a pigskin. So you probably heard of him.
I’m buckled into a seat across from the doctor and nurses. They’re wondering who I am and what I’m doing here, and why I stink like a gin distillery. They won’t look me in the eye. That’s all right. I light a cigarette and offer the case to them. They accept gratefully. I light them up one by one with a fine gold Zippo loaned to me by my sister’s lover, who doesn’t actually smoke. Have you ever noticed how every single doctor and every single nurse smokes like a damn chimney? Not that I blame them. You see enough death and sickness and grievous injury, you need something to keep your nerves in order.
We sit smoking, not looking at each other. Smelling the human stink of the inside of a troop transport, the scorch of engine oil and aviation fuel. I wonder if they know who he is, this patient. Like I told you, it’s all top secret. And believe me, the US government is going to keep this one under lock and key for some time to come. It’s a daisy, all right.
I turn my head to stare out the window at the thick clouds below. My foot keeps tapping against the deck of the airplane—I think the doctor and nurses are annoyed. But I can’t seem to stop. I’m a bundle of raw nerves that no quantity of English gin and cigarettes can soothe. And it comes to me, as I sit there strapped into my metal seat, blowing smoke from my parched mouth, that maybe this is why my sister saved my life all those ages ago, when we were eight years old.
Iris saved me for this moment.
And what I have done this summer, I have done to repay my debt—the debt I owe her, the debt I owe people like Sumner Fox, the debt I owe to civilization itself—to all who came before me and saved me without my knowing it.
Outside the window, the great humming engine changes key. The airplane drops. I stub out my cigarette and close my eyes. Within the hour, I’ll know how our story ends.
One
Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.
—John le Carré
Lyudmila
May 1951
Moscow
When she was six years old, Lyudmila Ivanova watched as a trio of men in dark suits searched her family’s tiny apartment in the middle of the night and arrested her father for the crime of owning a set of English novels. He was a professor of literature, and the books were Russian translations. Still, English novels were decadent, and when his case went before the tribunal, her father refused to admit his crime and repent. Lyudmila still remembers his straight back and clear voice as he addressed the three judges on the dais before him. He was sentenced to ten years’ labor in some work camp in Siberia. The family never heard from him again.