“No.” His father slowly shook his head. “I had no choice, Nick. You believe that, don’t you?” He took Nick’s elbow, a physical plea. “To leave everything- No. I thought we could sit it out.” He took his hand away, dropping it with his voice. “We could have.”
“What are you trying to say? That it was all a mistake? Somebody jumped the gun?” This was worse somehow, their whole lives turned around in a careless haste.
“I did think that at first,” his father said, starting to walk again. “I tried to tell them. But there were orders. You didn’t argue with that. Ever.”
“In the phone booth,” Nick said quietly. “In Union Station.”
His father turned, amazed. “How did you know that?”
“I followed you.”
“You followed me,” he repeated. When he looked at Nick, he softened, as if he could see a child’s face again. “Why?”
“I knew something bad was happening. I thought, in case-” He stopped, surprised to find himself embarrassed.
“In case,” his father said, still looking at him. “So I made you a spy too.” Then he smiled. “A better one, it seems. I had no idea.”
“You weren’t looking.”
“We’re supposed to, you know,” he said wryly.
Nick shrugged. “People don’t see kids. You had things on your mind.” He saw him again, in the herringbone coat, walking slowly up the hill, looking down at the snow, preoccupied. “Is that when you decided? After the phone call?” As if the chronology mattered.
“I didn’t decide, Nick. I did what I was told.”
“But if Welles didn’t have anything?”
“We didn’t know that then, only later. I suppose I believed him too. That there was something. I didn’t want to go to prison.” He stopped, turning. “So I went.”
“Without us,” Nick said, picking at it.
“Yes. Without you. It was usual to have the families follow. Like Donald’s.”
“But we didn’t.”
“No. Did I think your mother would come? I don’t know. At first I hoped, but I never heard. And then-well, by that time I knew Moscow better. It was the terror all over again, until Stalin died. No one was safe. War heroes.” He snapped his fingers, making them vanish as casually as the black cars in the night. “Even Molotov. He denounced his wife. The fool thought it would save his job. She spent seventeen years in the camps. Soviet justice.” He turned to Nick. “It was no place for you. I didn’t want you there, can you understand that? It would have killed your mother, that life. Later, when things got better-” He spread his hands. “You were already someone else.”
They had made a circle through some trees and were heading back to the fortress, to the stillness. The guard had left his post and in their absence was inspecting the car, running his hand along the smooth finish as if it were an exotic animal.
“It’s clearing,” his father said, looking up. “We’ll have sun.”
“Then let’s finish.”
“Yes.” He stopped, touching Nick’s elbow again. “A moment.”
The words sounded translated. Nick looked at him quickly, wondering whether the walk had tired him. Or was he trying to keep a distance from the guard? But his face, lost in thought, showed something else: an old man trying to find his place in a prepared speech.
“So why bring me out?” he said finally, picking up the thread. “The propaganda? That was part of it. Just being there. They like to show us off. Like the Africans they bring to the university. Living proof. Marx is everywhere-even in the jungle. No color bar in the International. Of course, the people think they’re savages-they just stare at them in the metro-so who’s fooling whom?” He paused, catching himself. “But they never used me that way.”
“They gave you a medal.”
“Yes. One press appearance, then no more. A lot of trouble to take, don’t you think, for a minute on the stage?”
“They had to help you. Isn’t that part of the deal?”
“For a Russian, yes, they would do that. But the rest of us — it would depend on what we knew. And what did I know? So why take the chance, if I was being watched, for instance?” he said, glancing slyly at Nick. “Someone had to get me out. Why put anyone at risk? Why not just leave me to the wolves?”
“Okay, why?”
His father looked at him, his eyes burning, finally there. “To protect someone else.”
For a moment Nick was silent, trying to take it in. “Do you know that?” he said quietly.
His father nodded. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. At first you flatter yourself-you want to believe you are important. But I wasn’t. It was never about me, Nick, what happened. It was always about someone else.”
Nick stared at him, so carefully led to the point that now he felt pinned by its sinking inevitability, the event of his life reduced to an accident. Not about them at all.
“Who?” he said.
