“Is that where you got all those scars?”
“Some of them, I guess. But I was used to getting beat up in football. I didn’t care much about getting hurt. The hunger was harder. Thirst. You would eat the bugs in your cell. You would lick the dew from the rocks. You had to work all day and eat maybe a bowl of rice.”
“How could you stand it?”
“You just did. At first, I used to lie there at night and think about everything I would eat when I got back. I had it all planned out. I’d take my wife out to dinner at some hotel, seven or eight courses, soup to nuts, and when we were done eating . . .”
“Yes?”
“After a while, though, it got to hurting too much even to think about food, or anything else—any kind of pleasure. You woke up in the morning, if you slept at all, and you just made it through the day without thinking about anything. Until one day, the war ended and we were free.”
“Just one day after another, right? That’s how you did it.”
“Yep. No past and no future.”
“Then how did you find the will to live?”
“It’s just there, Ruth. Life wants to live. Why does a rabbit run from a fox? Why does an amoeba—I don’t know, whatever an amoeba does to live, as long as it can? Because the point of life is to live.”
“Isn’t that a circular argument?”
“Isn’t everything circular? The earth spins on its axis, right? Revolves around the sun. Sun revolves around the Milky Way, that’s what the astronomers say. Doesn’t mean we’re not getting somewhere, without even realizing. Then one day you wake up and realize everything’s changed.”
“What did you do after the war?”
“Well, first I came home and found my wife was about to have a baby with a friend of mine.”
“Some friend.”
“Then I went back to work.”
“Why? After what you went through.”
“A lot of reasons. First, because I was a bachelor again, nobody to depend on me. But mostly—I don’t know, maybe it’s me—the case takes hold of you, sometimes. It’s all you can think about. You live and breathe and eat and drink it. You’re in love with it. That’s what gets you through the long hours, combing through transcripts and telegrams and passenger lists. You never know where you’re going to find that missing piece of the puzzle.”
“Or find yourself sitting in a Soviet hospital, waiting for a baby to be born.”
He laughs and stretches. “I’ll go try to telephone Digby again. Don’t go anywhere, will you?”
I spread my hands. “Where would I go?”
It’s funny, though, how Kedrov disappeared. He was so attentive before. I stand and walk around the waiting room, just to stretch my legs, and look over the other people waiting. They glance back and avert their eyes. An elderly man, well dressed; a mother and child; a single, attractive woman, sort of sumptuous looking, whom I imagine to be somebody’s mistress, because that’s so much more interesting than the probable reality. Fox still hasn’t returned. He must be talking to Digby. I glance at the clock—nearly half past nine—and return to my seat.
Next thing I know, Fox nudges me awake. Somehow I’ve fallen asleep on his lap, all curled up, though I have no memory of his returning or my dropping off. I sit up too quickly and he catches me just in time. A nurse stands in front of us—a different one than before, younger and smaller, dark-haired, almond-eyed, so that I imagine some warlike Mongol ancestor pillaging his way across the steppes. She points to me, not unfriendly. “Come, please.”
“Go ahead,” says Fox. “I’m meeting someone for breakfast.”
Breakfast. Christ, the dead drop. I’ve forgotten all about it. Some contact was supposed to make a document drop in some predetermined location—inside a hollow stump or a trash can, maybe, marked by chalk or other means, though Fox won’t tell me exactly where—as soon as Iris went to the hospital. Of course, there’s no way to abort this operation at short notice, and he can’t just leave such an extraordinary package lying around for someone to discover.
But where the devil is he going to keep it? Not the hotel room, examined daily by chambermaids and who knows what else.
I shake my head to clear it. The nurse stares at me.
“What time is it?” I ask Fox.
“Just past six o’clock in the morning.”
“Good Lord! Where’s Digby?”
“That’s an excellent question.” Fox rises to his feet, pulls me up by the hand, and kisses me on the lips, because the nurse is watching us. “Give her my love, darling, will you?”
They take me to see the baby first. He’s lying in a bassinet in the nursery, and even I—with no experience of babies—can see he’s a bruiser. The three infants nearby look so tiny and delicate, and here’s this frowning, squash-faced, broad-shouldered behemoth, crowned by a tuft of pale hair. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Fox had sired him.
The nurse whips a swaddle around him, lifts him up, and dumps him in my arms before I can object. His eyes fly open, but he doesn’t cry. He just stares up at me and works his mouth. I thought newborns’ eyes are supposed to be blue, but his are no color at all, just opaque.
Already the nurse is motioning me to follow her out of the nursery. I trail along behind her. I’m afraid I’ll drop the baby, so I hold on tight as we turn down a couple of corridors and somehow end up in Iris’s old room, from which they wheeled her last night. She lies in her bed, wan and bloodless, but her eyes fly open when I walk in after the nurse.
“Brought you something,” I tell her.
Iris says his name is Gregory, and who am I to object? That was our father’s name. She looks at his shifting mouth and says he’s hungry. She and the nurse exchange some words that turn terse. The nurse happens to be taking her blood pressure, and frankly I think it’s unwise to provoke an argument at such a moment, but whatever the issue in dispute, Iris seems to prevail. The nurse flounces away with her collar and bulb, and Iris pulls aside the hospital gown and starts to feed the baby.
“They think it’s barbaric to nurse your young. She wanted to get a nice bottle of scientific milk for me.”
“I happen to agree with the nurse, but it’s your baby.”
Iris looks up and smiles. “Don’t sass, or I’ll name you godmother.”
“Oh, that’s rich. Put the child’s spiritual welfare in my hands, why don’t you.”
“I just might, if only to keep you from bolting again.”
“Me? You were the one who bolted.”
I nod at Gregory, who seems hard at work. His tiny hands grip her breast and his mouth works frantically.
“Seems to be an expert,” I observe. “His mother, too.”
“Well, I should hope I know what I’m doing by now.”
She’s so weak. She hardly moves, except to keep the baby secure against her breast. I think of the freshly stitched wound beneath the hospital gown and the firm, fluent way she spoke to the nurse, not like the old Iris at all. She feels my stare and looks up.
“What’s the matter?”
“Just thinking of something your husband said. How much you wanted another baby, all of a sudden.”
“What, me? I’m just a housewife, remember?”
Something about her tone of voice sends my memory racing back to the night before last, and what I said to Fox—the question I asked—before he . . . well. Call a spade a spade. Before he distracted me.
“Just a housewife,” I repeat.
“Speaking of which, what’s happened to my husband? I would have thought he’d have arrived by now.”
“There’s been a delay, I think.”
“Oh? What kind of delay?”
“Fox is on the case, don’t worry. Probably the little nippers are misbehaving. I’ll report back with all the news.” I rise from my chair. “You just rest, do you hear? Let me do all the worrying, for once.”
“Just like you used to,” she says softly.
I lean down, smooth back her sticky hair, and kiss her forehead.
“Just like I used to.”