Letters from home came less frequently now—two or three times a year—which Florence interpreted as her parents’ concession to her choices and not to the failures of the Soviet mail system. This letter, though, included an insert from her brother, who (her mother’s portion of the letter informed Florence) was graduating early from Erasmus. In a grousing tone that was nonetheless boastful, Zelda had written, “Sidney is under the impression that he is destined for Yale, but will more likely be attending City College next fall.”
Scanning Sid’s berserk penmanship, Florence saw that he was not, as she’d once been, under the misty spell of the Ivy League; more practically, he wished to study architecture or civil engineering and become, like his hero Robert Moses (a Yale alum), a “master builder.” Two whole paragraphs of scratchy text were devoted to this Robert Moses who was transforming the city of New York from a cluster of disconnected boroughs into a mega-megalopolis spanned by bridges and expressways. Two pictures were tucked into the looseleaf: a four-by-two of Sidney’s yearbook photo, his chin propped up self-consciously while he gazed seriously into the distance in a way he no doubt imagined befitted a future “master builder” (his ears nonetheless looking like the open doors of a taxicab careening straight at you), and a photograph of the family in the dining room—Zelda grimacing distrustfully into the camera, Sidney grinning with his eyes closed, Harry and his wife and their baby, now a chubby-kneed four-year-old girl on Solomon’s lap. At the end of the letter, her father had added a careful postscript inquiring if Florence would be able to travel to New York to attend Sidney’s graduation in June, his circumspect request already anticipating her answer.
Sidney, in spite of his skinny neck and big ears, no longer looked like the kid she remembered. Could two and a half years really have passed this quickly? She missed all of them badly. But more than that she was surprised to feel in herself a belated affection for the family home itself. She was overcome with an almost physical love for the tasseled lampshades in the second photo, the living room’s ornamental bric-a-brac, its silver tea tray on the table, the bookshelf in the corner (filled, she knew, with unread Book-of-the-Month selections), her mother’s fussy curtains, and all the other unseemly, cozy, bourgeois accessories of which her and Leon’s communal-apartment life was supposed to be a principled and conscientious denial.
That night, and several nights following, she went to bed clawed by a restless yearning for some guidance and direction. It was not until the following week that, waking up one morning to the sober light of a white-clouded November, Florence understood that the tangle of her feelings could be distilled into a practical question of housing. Her outlook would improve once she got out of the crush of communal life. Brightly, she remembered that she had once been in line to get her own room from the bank. Now she had a spontaneous urge to ask Timofeyev whether a common-law marriage like hers and Leon’s made her ineligible for her own room in a different apartment. With two different rooms to their names, she and Leon would be in a strong position to trade on the gray market for a separate apartment of their own. Surely her mentor would be able to advise her in confidence about which channels to appeal to.
Florence knocked on Timofeyev’s door that morning with a renewed sense of courage. She lowered her eyes respectfully when he invited her to sit. “What’s the urgent matter?”
Many days had been a brave buildup to this moment, and now she felt tongue-tied.
Florence seemed unable to catch Timofeyev’s eye, so she fixated on his collar. She was struck by the way his neck flesh sagged. Once a portly gentleman, he looked now like somebody recovering from a wasting illness. She thought perhaps it was the stress of all the new meetings they had to attend these days, clarifying and reclarifying the implications of the recent trials in which well-regarded Party members had confessed to monstrous crimes against the country.
“Come out with it. I don’t have all day, Flora.”
“You see, it’s my housing situation.”
“Ah. The apartment question.”
“My husband and I, we weren’t officially registered, and I believe my domestic situation is, how can I say it plainly, unworkable.”
“And you’d like to apply through the bank for a room of your own, is that it?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t do anything for you, Flora.”
“I’m prepared for a long wait.”
And now, letting the air out of his lungs, Timofeyev said, “I can’t help you because we’re cutting your position.”
For a moment it seemed to Florence that she’d forgotten some elementary but critical rule of Russian grammar and couldn’t decipher the words coming at her.
“You were going to be informed this week,” Timofeyev said.
“I suppose I ought to finish typing up the correspondence from last week and organize…”
“Flora Solomonovna, your responsibilities have been concluded here.”
She could feel herself smiling and blinking at this, blinking and smiling, as if her mind, shocked into paralysis, still needed time to unscramble the signal for her body. Then, slowly, comprehension began to set in. “Grigory Grigorievich, you know I’ve been tirelessly committed to…”
“You’ll be issued an official letter so you can apply for work elsewhere.”
“Where will I apply?”
He took a moment and, with his face only slightly softened, said, “You have valuable skills. The timing is just poor.”
She saw in his face a reflection of her confusion, watched his mustached lips part in preparation, she felt, to give her some clarification. But he seemed at that moment to hesitate, and then, looking her square in the eye, he added, somewhat mysteriously, “It’s better this way, Flora, believe me. Who knows what will happen tomorrow.”
Under Florence’s feet, the parquet rolled like the keel of an unsteady boat as she made her way to her desk and then, gathering her things, left to go home.
And this feeling of vertigo continued all the way into evening as she waited for a telephone call from Leon. But Leon did not telephone that night, or the next. And Florence had no way to reach him in Tashkent or wherever he might be now. In the meantime, her days vacant and idle, she made futile telephone calls of her own. First she called Essie, who was now employed as a copy editor in the Foreign Languages Publishing House, who promised Florence she would ask about any openings in the English-language division. She called back with a reply faster than Florence thought polite or necessary.
“They aren’t taking anybody.”
“You said they were short-staffed.”
“They don’t want to hire foreigners.”
“It’s the Foreign Languages Publishing House, for heaven’s sake.”
“Maybe in the spring.”