Thirty-seven
Ten minutes after leaving the French Club, she led him through a pair of wrought-iron gates and down a stone path that ran along the edge of an enormous, well-tended garden. It was so peaceful here that they could have been miles from the city. The house was tall, with a dark roof and narrow windows, and covered in ivy.
The woman who opened the door was small and rotund, perhaps about fifty—though it was hard to tell—her graying hair held back by a red peasant scarf. Without saying a word, she took Natasha in her arms and hugged her hard and long.
“This is Richard,” she said quietly. The woman smiled at him, her face flushed. He stepped forward to offer his hand, but she took him, too, into her arms, with such vigor he thought his ribs would crack. She stepped back into the kitchen. “Ivan,” she shouted.
There was a grunt from within.
“Look who has come to see us.” Her English was heavily accented.
Ivan was thin and angular, with a hook nose and a chin thick with stubble. “Natasha,” he said, transformed by her presence and repeating his wife’s greeting, suddenly boyish in the way he walked and smiled. He offered his hand stiffly to Field as they were introduced and gave him the stern look of a prospective father-in-law.
“Come, come,” the woman said. She took his arm and led him to a large table in the middle of the darkened kitchen. Ivan glanced anxiously at the clock on the wall. “There is time,” his wife scolded him. “It is Natasha.” She looked at Field and smiled.
Field smiled back.
“I wish to know all about you. Some tea?”
“Tea, yes, that would be wonderful.”
“All.”
“There’s not much to tell . . .”
“You are shy. Natasha has never . . .” She looked at Natasha, whose face burned red.
“You are from a good family?”
“Katya . . .”
“You have a good education?”
“His uncle is the municipal secretary,” Natasha said. Katya looked at her husband and garbled at him in Russian. They both nodded with satisfaction and Field knew that he’d passed some kind of test.
He eased himself back in his chair and caught sight of a picture on the shelf behind them. It was a recent formal photograph of Natasha, taken with the clock of the Customs House in the background. She was standing next to, and had her arms around, a young boy of five or six. They looked happy.
She followed his eyes, then stood suddenly and moved in front of the picture so as to block his view. “We really should go,” she said, her head bowed. Field saw the shock in the old couple’s faces as they realized their mistake, the easy familiarity of a moment ago evaporating in an instant.
He stood, mumbled a good-bye, and slipped through the house before following her retreat back down the stone path.
“I must be mad.” She turned to him once they’d reached the street, a new determination in the set of her chin. “For me, it is—”
“He’s your son.”
“No.” She shook her head forcefully.
“For God’s sake.”
“On my mother’s life, I swear it.” She stared at him. “I made a mistake,” she said. “I started to dream again.”
“I don’t think you understand . . .”
“It is you who do not understand.” Her expression darkened. “Why will you not believe me when I say that I am not free to love you? What I have done I had no right to do.”
He stepped toward her.
“No,” she said firmly. “Go now. I have some things I need to tell them.”
Field took a step back, but still hesitated.
“Good-bye, Richard,” she said, and went back inside, shutting the wrought-iron gate behind her.
Field watched her go, willing her to look around, but she did not.
Thirty-eight
Field set about the record books in the Immigration Department with renewed energy, burying himself in his work, frustration and anger driving him until lack of sleep began to overtake him.
The sweat settled on his brow and it was as much as he could do not to lower his head onto the book in front of him.
He took numerous cigarette breaks and, all through them, Pendelby plowed on, never seeming to lose concentration, until he stood and announced he would be breaking for lunch. Field was suddenly alone in the room, listening to Pendelby’s retreating footsteps on the stairs.
