Ruth needs you.
Once that KGB woman has squeezed what she can out of Sasha—unless Sasha breaks and tells her the truth, or as much of the truth as he can surmise—they’ll execute him and then send Iris and the children to some labor camp, probably. If Iris doesn’t get better, they’ll put Gregory and Claire in an orphanage, or possibly adoption by well-connected party members. Iris imagines some Russian woman, some wife of a Politburo bigwig, feeding Gregory a bottle and tucking Claire into bed at night. The image hurts so much that she allows herself to doze off, but not before shifting Gregory so that he’s lying safely between Iris and the wall. Her last conscious thought is that she must ask the guards for fresh diapers.
She wakes from her confused, feverish sleep to the noise of Claire crying. Somebody’s trying to soothe her—sounds like Kip. Ruth sings a song from the cell between them. Oh! It’s the song she used to sing to Iris, when Iris couldn’t sleep in the weeks and months after Daddy died. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray.
Gregory stirs and makes those little newborn noises that work up to sobs and then pathetic mayhem. Iris summons her strength and lifts him back into her arms. Ruth breaks off singing and calls her name from the other cell.
“Yes, I’m awake!” Iris calls back.
“How are you feeling?”
“Better.”
The doctor left some aspirin behind. Iris swallows a couple of pills and carefully stands, so she can walk back and forth with the baby. His diaper’s soaking wet, poor thing. When they bring food, she’ll beg for some cloths. Anything will do.
The day passes, inch by inch, in a strange, nightmarish haze. The guards bring bread and water, and then—grudgingly, a little horrified—cloths for Gregory and also for Iris, whose womb still bleeds heavily. She tries to rest as much as she can. Not to think too much.
Ruth tells her that a guard came earlier with another prisoner, some school friend of Kip’s. Iris doesn’t catch the name—she doesn’t have the strength—but she hears them talking. It’s a girl. She tries to remember Kip’s friends. She knows there was a girl among them, very pretty in a solemn, fierce way—dark hair, energetic eyes that seemed to catch every movement. What was her name? Possibilities float in and out of Iris’s mind, but she can’t catch one. Her world has shrunk to the tiny dimensions of her cell—to the minutes ticking by—the baby who needs all her attention. The air is damp and stale, but every so often a clean fresh salt draft whooshes in from the sea with one of the guards, and she breathes this wind like a tonic that will restore her to health.
Iris has some idea that Ruth is keeping up the children’s spirits. There are songs and word games, the same songs and word games that she and Ruth used to sing and play when they were little, so Iris keeps having these half dreams—hallucinations, almost—that she’s ten or eleven years old, she’s on the beach with Ruth, some hot and eternal summer’s day on the shore of Long Island Sound. She hears the word marina, over and over, and in her mind they’re rigging the sailboat for a long day on the water, and Iris feels the old, familiar unease that comes to her when she’s out sailing, and the old, familiar envy of Ruth, drenched in sunshine as she scampers around the boat while Iris clings to her seat and tries not to be seasick.
The cell door clanks open. Ruth rushes inside. Iris, she says.
Ruth, Iris whispers back.
You have to get up. They’re moving us.
Where?
I don’t know. Maybe a hospital for you.
Iris almost laughs, this is so impossible. Ruth hasn’t lived inside the Soviet Union for four years—she still has hope.
But she summons herself and stands, with Ruth’s help. Ruth swaddles up Gregory and carries him with her right arm; with her left arm, she supports Iris.
“Don’t forget Gregory’s bag,” Iris says.
Ruth finds the valise and wrinkles her nose. “Why don’t you just throw out the soiled ones? I’m sure you can get fresh cloths where we’re going.”
“You never know,” Iris replies. “Where are the children?”
“They’re already in the truck.”
Truck?
It’s one of those military convoy vehicles, noisy and hard. One of the guards hoists her inside. The children clamor her name—Mama! She closes her eyes and savors the feel of their young legs and arms, of Claire’s soft cheek against hers. The truck smells of dirt and sweat and mildewed canvas and vomit but she doesn’t care. This is all that matters, her babies, for whose sake she has done what she has done, so that they can live in a better world. Of course, that’s what Sasha told himself, isn’t it? You start out wanting to make the world better, and you end up destroying everything that was good.
The truck lurches forward and everyone falls silent. Through the cracks in the truck’s canvas covering they glimpse the twilit world outside. It might be any hour from eleven until three in the morning—twilight never quite sinks into the absolute dark of night during these midsummer weeks—just this purpling sky, the faint stars, the hush, now broken by the roar and rumble of the truck and some other vehicle ahead of them.
Wherever they’re going, it’s not along some road. The truck sways and dives. In her mind, Iris returns to Long Island Sound and a sailboat under the hot sun. The terror of a vessel she can’t control, obeying natural laws she can’t predict. She hears an unfamiliar voice speaking Russian, a girl’s voice, and she remembers the other prisoner, the school friend of Kip’s—what was her name? How did she get here? It’s all part of the dream, maybe.
The truck stops with a jerk. A pair of guards appear at the back and shout at them to get down, file out, line up. The Russian girl shouts back at them. But they don’t have any choice—the guards carry fearsome rifles, which they point to the girl, then Kip, then Ruth. They have the decency not to point at Iris. One by one, everyone crawls across the bed of the truck and jumps to the ground below. Ruth goes before Iris. She hands the baby to somebody, leaps down, and holds up her arms to help Iris. Ruth is so strong, she catches Iris without a stagger.
Iris gives her the bag with the soiled diapers. Because what does she have to lose? If something happens to them, the bag will be thrown away. Nobody will look inside a baby’s soiled diaper. And maybe the bag will survive even if she does not. Maybe someone will come looking for her, and find this bag, forgotten in the mud. You never know.
The guards shout some more.
“What are they saying?” Ruth asks.
“They want us to follow them.”
Ruth puts her arm around Iris’s waist and walks with her at the end of the line. They’re walking on hard sand, by the feel of it. Iris can almost hear the rushing of the sea in her ears, unless it’s her imagination again. The voices bark in Russian to hurry along. They travel some hundred yards or so, then a guard orders them to stop and line up. They stop and line up. Iris turns to face the guards. There are two of them, holding their rifles, and a woman who stands a few feet away. The KGB woman. She stares at them coldly, one by one, ending with the girl.
“Where’s Fox?” Ruth shouts at her. “Where’s Digby?”
“This is not your concern,” the woman says, in perfect English. “After a thorough investigation, you have been found to have committed treason against the Soviet people. The penalty for this crime is death—”
“I hate you!” the girl screams.
The woman turns her head and stares at the girl. Not long, a few seconds only, during which not a murmur interrupts the cool, dark silence of twilight.