Consulting the mirror, Florence noticed that sleep had brought a flush back to her cheeks.
What had she expected from Leon? She was ashamed of sounding so weak. The fault was hers. She had allowed herself to indulge in the delusion that he would be on board with her plan, and that they would do together what she now knew with certainty she would have to do alone. Her pain and dismay at this realization began to turn, as she started to get dressed, into a kind of renewal of self-reliance. So he liked how they were living, was grateful for eleven square meters, crammed in like TB patients with total strangers. So let him. He liked turning out his little ditties about how the future was just around the corner—good for him. He liked being sent out to the sticks to be treated like some pasha by the locals and sit around on carpets sipping sour camel’s milk—fine with her. She didn’t need him to hold her hand; she didn’t need anybody’s permission to get the hell out of a country that promised to be nothing for her but bad news. Already, the morning seemed to be in full agreement with her plan. The toilet room was miraculously free, the water in the shower pleasantly scalding. In the gloriously empty kitchen Florence brewed herself coffee on the stove. Through the double-pane glass of the kitchen window, the rays had found their way around the clouds and were sending their cold sunshine down in benediction. Back in her room, she put on her downy shawl and her mittens and headed purposefully to the metro.
When she surfaced at Manezh Square, she could just glimpse, under lowlying afternoon clouds, her homeland’s rugged little flag flapping against stiff, rapidly cooling Moscow air. In fact, only the flag’s tip was visible, a red-and-white wagging tail. To Florence it resembled a shivering finger beckoning from a short height above the U.S. Embassy, whose actual building remained largely hidden behind the ornate Hotel National, and behind its own gates.
Ignoring the moist sponginess that had taken residence in the toes of her stockings, Florence crossed Gorky Street and continued to advance across the plaza toward the yellowed limestone compound. She passed her own reflection in the doors of the Hotel National. In front of a shopwindow, she walked past a man in a caramel-brown coat and fedora who watched her pointedly from behind his round glasses, but didn’t alter his expression when she nodded politely.
At each corner of the gates stood a guard in a green overcoat and ursine hat. Bayonetted rifles were strapped assertively across their felt-covered backs. And because one of the guards, on closer inspection, appeared to be an extraordinarily large adolescent, Florence selected the older of the two to approach. He had a beefy peasant’s face redeemed by intelligent eyebrows that lifted slightly in readiness to hear what she had come for. Politely, she explained her reasons for needing to enter.
He showed little sign of either understanding or caring about her explanation, and spoke only one word: “Documents.”
She dug into her pocket and produced the paper with her passport information.
“This is not valid.”
“It is the receipt for my American passport, which was taken by the Housing Office. If you would just read there…” She had to rise slightly on her tiptoes to point to her place of birth.
He studied the paper compliantly but blindly, like a child holding a book upside down.
“This is not a passport,” he said, handing it back.
“I am aware of that. As I said, I’ve lost my passport, and this is the only place in this city that I can get a new one made. So, if we can solve this problem right here…”
“Entry allowed only for official reasons. We need proof that you can enter.”
“I just gave you proof….Oh, this is too pointless. I need to speak with the American guard on duty.”
“I am the guard.”
“Somebody in there.” She pointed behind the gates.
“We have instructions about who may enter.”
“Please, if you could just go in and talk to somebody, anybody, inside, I’m sure this will all be settled in a few minutes.”
“If you keep standing here, we will have to report you to the police.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, all I’m asking is for you to ask somebody to come out—just to talk to me through the goddamn gate.”
“You will have to leave now.”
“I am sure you are overstepping your authority by preventing an American from entering her own embassy.”
“Vaclav…,” the guard said, jerking his head toward the giant teenager, who, after a second of slothful adolescent hesitation, began to approach.
She sensed that her opportunities were numbered. “Yoohoo-oo! An American here!” she shouted in English through the metal gates to no one. “Hello-o-o! Is anybody there? Can somebody please come out and tell these morons…”
But here she felt her underarms gripped by upholstered appendages whose embrace, in size and texture, was not unlike that of a comfortable armchair, only that they seemed to be conveying her backward with the torque of a wrecking ball. Her feet, slightly off the ground, beat like weak swimmers in rough tide.
“Help me, somebody! I am a citizen of the United States!” she shouted in English. She was deposited roughly on the sidewalk.
The sun had long taken leave behind the clouds. She pulled enough oxygen into her lungs to restore her ability to see and regain control of her limbs. Her ears were still pounding, either from the rush of traffic or from the blood echoing in her eardrums. With an effort, Florence got up on one heel and wiped the dirt off the palms of her hands. She examined the pink flesh, and found it speckled with dents from loose asphalt. She straightened up and fixed her twisted stockings through her skirt, permitting herself one last look back at the guards, who had returned to their posts. Gradually, the pressure in her ears settled and her eyes once again took in the street, the whizzing automobiles, the wedding-cake fa?ade of the National. Only then, as she prepared to cross the avenue, did she again spot the man in the fedora hat. He was at the opposite side of the street from where he’d stood before, but the caramel color of his coat was unmistakable. He was loitering in front of what looked like a Ford V8 parked nose-up on the sidewalk. Florence adjusted her shawl over her shoulders and crossed to the opposite corner of the plaza. When she turned back to look again, he was gone.
—
SHE HAD NEVER BEEN good at deferring an urge once it manifested itself in her consciousness. She marched the ten blocks back to the OVIR.
“I would like to fill out the papers, please, for an outgoing visa to travel abroad,” she announced to the clerk on duty with a confidence that suddenly sounded strained and counterfeit. She presented the receipt for her passport as her form of identification.