The Secrets We Kept - Lara Prescott Page 0,93

I asked, desperate to change the conversation. He was to start his summer session of Young Pioneers the following week. For the last four summers, Mitya had so enjoyed his time in the woods. The summer I returned from Potma, he hadn’t wanted to go, fearing that if he left my side, I’d be taken again. He’d sobbed as I dressed him in his white shirt and red neckerchief and boarded him onto the bus. As I stood with the rest of the parents and watched the bus drive away, he didn’t even wave goodbye. But when he came home, he was full of stories of the friends he’d made, of playing Geese and Swans, raising the red flag, morning and afternoon calisthenics, and marching—he even liked the marching. For weeks he sang Pioneers songs and recited facts he’d learned about corn quotas.

Mitya raised his head. “I suppose.”

“You don’t want to go this year?”

“I’m sick of all those songs,” he said. “And I wish you’d signed me up for the Young Technicians camp instead. I’d rather be building things than marching.”

“I didn’t know you wanted to—”

“It costs extra,” he interrupted.

“I’m sure we could’ve worked something out.”

Mitya reached for another sushka. “You would’ve asked him?”

“I would have thought of something.”

“Why won’t he marry you?”

“Mitya!” Ira slapped his arm.

“You’ve asked the very same thing,” Mitya said. “Just not to Mama. People at school say things, you know.”

“What do they say?” I asked.

Mitya said nothing.

“I’ve been married twice before and don’t want to marry again,” I said, knowing they could see right through me, as they could see through everything now.

“But you love him,” Ira said. “Don’t you?”

“Sometimes love isn’t enough,” I said.

“What else is there?” Ira asked.

“I don’t know.”

Mitya and Ira glanced at each other, and their silent agreement broke my heart.

* * *

When the house was quiet, I looked in at the children, both sleeping again. I put on my raincoat and left. I couldn’t go to him; he’d be asleep. I walked along the green fence by the main road. As I walked, I thought of Mitya as a little boy, refusing to let go of my hand before boarding the bus to camp. I thought of him now saying we needed a pistol, being the man of the household. I thought of Ira, how she’d grown since that day the men took me. I thought of my children knowing, so young, that love sometimes isn’t enough. A truck’s headlights appeared in the distance. I wondered what would happen if the truck swerved off the road, if I didn’t get out of its way. The sky cracks open and—

WEST

August–September 1958

CHAPTER 20

THE TYPISTS

The Agency moved fast. After Irina’s successful night in the Bishop’s Garden, with the Russian manuscript now in our hands, there was no time to waste. In the time it took winter to thaw, the cherry blossoms to bloom and drop, and the dome of Washington’s humidity to descend, Doctor Zhivago’s Russian proofs were prepped in New York, printed in the Netherlands, and shuttled to a safe house in The Hague in the back of a wood-paneled station wagon. Three hundred sixty-five copies of the novel had been printed and bound in blue linen covers—just in time for the tail end of the World’s Fair, where we’d distribute the banned book to visiting Soviets.

But all that was only after a few hiccups.

The Agency’s initial plan was to contract a Mr. Felix Morrow—a New York publisher with close ties to the Agency—to arrange the layout and design of the manuscript and prepare proofs that couldn’t be traced back to American involvement. Then the manuscript was to be shipped off to a yet-to-be-determined publisher in Europe for printing—another safety precaution to erase any Company fingerprints. A memo even stipulated that no American paper or ink be used.

Teddy Helms and Henry Rennet had taken an American Airlines flight to New York, then a train out to Great Neck, to personally hand the Russian manuscript to Mr. Morrow—along with a bottle of fine whiskey and a box of Mr. Morrow’s favorite brand of chocolates to seal the deal.

But Felix Morrow proved to be a liability. A former Communist turned Trotskyite but now as American as apple pie, as he put it, the New York intellectual loved to talk—and talk he did. Even before the ink on the contract dried, he was telling everyone about the great book he had in his possession.

Norma even heard through her old New York literary contacts

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