petrol at his side. I told him I’d never leave him. By the look in his eyes, I knew he didn’t believe me. I wept, telling him I was sorry, so sorry, and he told me he forgave me. But I could tell he said it only to get me to stop crying.
I asked if he’d accompany me to Fedin’s dacha—step one of my plan. He agreed, reluctantly. We left the tavern and trudged up the muddy hill.
I knocked at the door of the grand home of the newly anointed chair of the Writers’ Union, built from large logs stacked atop each other. No one came, so I knocked again. Fedin’s young daughter answered. Without invitation, I barged in. Mitya waited outside. Just as Katya was saying her father wasn’t home, he appeared.
“Make us some tea, Katya?” Fedin asked his daughter.
“I don’t want tea,” I said.
Fedin’s shoulders rose, then fell. “Come.” I followed him into his office, where he sat, swiveling in a leather chair. Looking like a snowy owl on his perch—with his white hair, his high widow’s peak, his arched eyebrows—he gestured for me to sit across from him.
“I’ll stand,” I said. I was so tired of sitting across from men. I got right to the point. “He will kill himself tonight if something isn’t done.”
“You mustn’t say such a thing.”
“He has the pills. I’ve delayed him, but I don’t know what more I can do.”
“You must restrain him.”
“How? It is you and the rest of the Central Committee who have done this.”
Fedin rubbed his eyes and straightened his back. “I warned him this would happen.”
“You warned him?” I shouted. “When did you warn him?”
“The day he won. I went to his dacha and told him myself that his acceptance would force the State’s hand. I told him, as a friend, that he must turn it down or face the consequences. Surely he told you of this.”
He hadn’t. Another thing he’d kept from me.
“Boris has created the abyss he stands at now,” Fedin continued. “And if he kills himself, it will be a terrible thing for the country, an even deeper wound than the ones he’s already inflicted.”
“Nothing can be done?”
He told me he’d arrange for Boris and me to meet with Polikarpov—the same official from the Culture Department with whom I’d pleaded after Borya had sent his manuscript away with the Italians. We could make our case in person to him, with the understanding that Borya would apologize for his actions.
I agreed, and I was prepared to do everything in my power to convince Borya to agree to it. I’d tell him he was selfish. I’d bring up my time in Potma. I’d tell him they’d go after me again. I’d tell him he had never given me what I’d wanted most: to be his wife, to have his child.
But in the end, there was no need.
Before I could ask, Borya informed me he’d already settled the matter. He’d sent two telegrams: one to Stockholm, declining the Prize, and one to the Kremlin, letting them know. The Nobel would not be his.
“They’re coming for me, Olga. I can feel it. Even when I’m writing in my study, I can feel them watching. It won’t be long now. One day, you’ll wait for me and I’ll never come.”
WEST
December 1958
CHAPTER 25
The Swallow
The Informant
THE DEFECTOR
According to my former employer, one can sum up the entire spectrum of human motivations with a formula called MICE: Money, Ideology, Compromise, Ego. I wondered how the other side would assess me. Did they have their own formula? Did they think through these things with more nuance?
The woman who’d told me about Henry hadn’t yet appeared again, but I knew she would in time. Meanwhile, I sold off two of my favorite Hermès scarves and my remaining copies of Zhivago. I did keep one, though, the English edition I failed to return at Le Mistral—which I placed in the nightstand next to my bed, where one might find a Bible in an American hotel.
I no longer spent my days in my room; I no longer mourned the person I used to be. Mornings, I went to the Jardin des Tuileries—walking the gravel corridors of perfectly manicured trees, feeding the ducks and swans at the pond, pulling a green chair into a spot of sun to read. In the afternoons, as the days got shorter, I sat at every terrace on rue de la Huchette, sampling each café’s selection of mulled wine. I made