The Red Daughter Read online

  True things—this is a phrase that recurs in the letters. Put together like this the words are seductive, taking on the sound of their intention, becoming irrefutable as idea, if not as fact. Not very Russian. (The Widow claims Georgian blood in her veins, along with Montenegrin.) My father was never one to talk much about Truth. Of course, he had no need. Whatever he said was by definition beyond truth—instantly it became reality, as it would thereafter be understood by anyone who valued his life.

  The famous Architect named both his compounds, in Wisconsin and Arizona, Taliesin—a Welsh word, the Widow informs me, meaning the shining brow. Above the stone hearths he carved more Welsh words, meaning Truth against the world. This is beautiful and stirring language, a battle cry etched on a battle shield, and I confess that just the thought that there could be such a place, Truth, set opposite this other place, World, and that at the center of it could be this woman who presumes, without ever having met me, to know me intimately and call me daughter tugs sharply at the thread of longing I find ever dangling from my heart.

  Us and Them.

  My real mother believed in an Us too. In the Party that was her life and soul, all people were equal, and all equals had to sacrifice the same, none made special, including her own children. It was when she realized that human beings by their nature could not live this way for long, that in every garden there is a serpent and in every Us a young man who upon robbing his first bank for the revolution and getting his first taste of righteous bloody power, decides to change his name from Dzhugashvili to Stalin, I believe it was then she understood that her beloved Us was actually a cancer waiting to bloom, and that sooner or later They would win.

  Four times in my life have I known this feeling of Us that my mother so desperately needed to believe in. The first was during the years before the war, when my widowed father still returned home each evening, calling out Housekeeper! as he entered the front hall and letting me dawdle on his lap in the dining room under the large portrait of my mother; when each evening after dinner (me sitting on his right among the six other adults—always six), before leaving to spend the night at Kuntsevo, in his overcoat smelling of pipe tobacco he came to my bedside and kissed me good night as I lay suspended in the comforting wash of his tenderness, halfway between dream and waking.

  The second was that single miraculous day in the privately procured cinema with Lyusia, when for once we existed happily under the illusion that there was us and no one else.

  The third and fourth were the births of my children.

  I will never forget the moment I first truly understood. My memoir had been published, three autumns ago now, and after weeks of traveling everywhere and saying everything to a country that was still a stranger to me, I retreated to the Rhode Island house of a kind, older widow I had met on my travels. The two of us were sitting one evening in her living room, watching the television news while eating our dinners from plastic trays (something Americans are always eager to do if given the chance). Now to international matters, the newsman Walter Cronkite was saying. It turns out that, one way or another, the dead Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin is still very much on the minds of his people. What you are about to see is from a recent interview with Stalin’s grandson Josef Alliluyev, whose mother, Svetlana, defected to the United States last spring. And with that, Cronkite’s trustworthy face was replaced on-screen by my son. The setting I immediately recognized as our old Moscow apartment. Seated rigidly at the desk where I used to work on my translations, he looked as though he were presenting himself for an exam he knew he would fail. In poor Russian (with English subtitles) the German correspondent asked Josef if he had anything he would like to say to the mother who had abandoned him.

  Josef nodded. Taking a few moments to compose himself, he said in a flat clear voice, If Mother should wish to return now, there would be no punishment.

  And so, through my son, the Mother State spoke, an invitation unofficially extended. And in my son’s mouth, for all the world to see, Mother became a word interchangeable with any other term of use, preowned and easily corrupted, a means of delineating avenues of barter and politics.

  Us. Them.

  That was the last of the communications. For the past two years, only silence. The letters I get now are from people not my children. This is what happens to you when you become Them. There is no going back.

  But the Architect’s Widow writes me. Yes. And writes. She who does not know me calls me daughter.

  27 January

  Today I went into the city to lunch with Peter. I was the one who called; he sounded reluctant, but I insisted.

  But first I stop by the legal office to say hello to Lucas Wardlow, Esquire, elegant silver fox of a man sitting behind his wide mahogany desk. He gets to his feet and kisses my cheeks and leads me to the leather couch at one end of his office for a little chat. Not as spry as once, perhaps, but still illustrious. An ex-president in habit and manner, used to crowds and audiences and making speeches now only when it suits him.

  And how is my new home treating me? he wishes to know. Am I teaching? Working on a new book?

  I tell him that my new home is treating me fine, thank you. He ought to come and visit, since he lives not far away.

  Yes, yes, he answers vaguely, rubbing his callused golfer’s hands together.

  I tell him that I turned down the offer to lecture in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures because I do not wish to be pigeonholed in the typical Russian émigré bunker.

  You turned Princeton down? He cannot hide his dismay. Well, of course, I can certainly see…

  As for writing another book, I interrupt him, before beginning such an endeavor I would of course demand correction of one issue that troubles me.

  What issue?

  How my lawyers allowed the copyright for my memoir to be put in my translator’s name instead of mine.

  Ah…Lucas Wardlow, Esquire, reaches—energetically for a man his age—for an intercom console sitting like a nuclear trigger on his antique coffee table. Depressing a red button with his forefinger, he talks to the machine invisibly connected to his secretary. Margaret? Margaret?

  Does he think I intend to let him escape so easily? Tell me, Mr. Wardlow, does this seem at all fair to you, in a country such as this? Who wrote my book—me or my translator?

  I see…Margaret, do I have a lunch meeting? Lucas Wardlow, Esquire, calls hopefully toward the open door, abandoning the intercom altogether.

  It is not Margaret who walks into desperate Wardlow’s office a moment later. In the months since I last saw him in person Peter has become, I am aware, a full partner at the firm—an extra inch of title that has given him a certain additional presence. The gray at his temples and sideburns makes him rather distingué, as do the tortoise reading glasses he puts on in order to study the menu at the Japanese restaurant on Lexington where he takes me to lunch.

  Know what you’d like to eat? he asks politely, once we’re settled at a table by the window.

  Martini.

  Peter glances at me over his reading spectacles, our eyes meet, and it seems to me that he almost smiles.

  Two vodka martinis, he tells the Japanese waiter, just now arriving. Very dry, straight up, twist.

  Hai, domo!

  And so I find, to my great relief, that we are not entirely broken.

  * * *

  —

  Later, tongue loosened, I tell him that I am glad—no, very glad—to finally be sharing a meal again with my lawyer.

  I’m glad too.

  I can be difficult.

  No, he demurs.

  Yes.

  Well—all right, maybe a little.

  Sometimes, maybe it’s true, I can be frustrated about the book contracts you wrote for me. I know this. But, Peter, I count on you to understand these are just minor complaints. They don’t ma
tter. I point them out because they are there and need correcting, but I don’t need them to live by. More money, more things—what would I do with them for myself? I have everything I need. My simple house, my brand-new, four-door green Dodge—you have not seen my beautiful car! I tell you, Peter, I am finally in love. Like a girl. Like a brand-new American girl with her brand-new pony. Only my pony has tires!

  My lawyer laughs then, heartily and with relief, and we are good again. His firm pays our lunch bill and tips like a titan. Hai, domo! Peter escorts me out into the blue winter sunshine on the crisp sidewalked street. A lanky man wearing long mustaches and yellow-tinted sunglasses slouches by on the arm of his skinny blond girlfriend, her bare navel and hip bones showing out between flaps of shag-rug coat. Peter and I pause to stare at them. For they are beautiful in their ugliness and unbounded in their desire, and this is not their part of town. Nor mine.

  Here is my new lover, I say boldly, as we approach my new car parked on Madison and Fifty-fifth Street. Is Mr. Dodge not handsome?

  He’s the real McCoy, all right, Peter remarks—the bottled cowboy phrase so unlike him that after a moment we are both grinning.

  Darn tooting? I say, teasing.

  He shrugs, grin frozen, suddenly self-conscious. I reach for his hands to bring him back to life. He subtly resists.

  Peter, I say.

  He looks at me.

  It is mood that matters most to me. The mood between us, not the words. Not papers or signatures or dollar signs. You understand? The mood and the feeling between us. This is what matters.

  I feel the same way.

  Good.

  He leans down and kisses my cheeks, each one with emphasis, and hands me into my car. So much unsaid.

  I am careful pulling out among the buses and taxicabs, well known to be aggressive lunatics. And then, too soon, Peter is just a small, shrinking figure in my looking glass.

  February 17, 1970

  Taliesin West

  My Dearest Daughter,

  It is increasingly strange to me that you are not here. I look up, expecting to embrace you, only to remember that you have not yet come. Once, I spoke your name out loud. At dinner the other evening Sid said something about Svetlana and I mistook it for you, not my own Svet, and my heart began to race not with grief, at last, but with excitement. This is good pain, and I welcome it.

  Your loving Mother

  March 2, 1970

  Taliesin West

  Dear Svetlana,

  I wanted to write and join Mrs. W in saying how happy we all are here to know that you will soon be coming to visit. This is a unique place in America, as you no doubt have heard. It would be my pleasure while you are with us to take you on a tour of the historic buildings and grounds and to show you the surrounding area as well.

  Yours, with my cordial regards,

  Sid Evans

  8 March

  I am in my attic looking at suitcases when I hear a car pull up in front of my house. Quiet late-winter afternoon. Two doors opening and closing in quick succession with that chilling echo that announces, wherever you are, We have come for you.

  Three minutes later, Dick Thompson, the CIA man, limps into my kitchen holding a bouquet of red tulips. I am almost glad to see him after more than a year.

  Wasn’t sure about the color, he apologizes for the flowers.

  I told him yellow might be a safer choice, Peter says, entering after Dick.

  I point out that they come well prepared for what is apparently a surprise visit.

  That’s a pretty good description of my job, Dick says with a wink.

  I put the tulips in a vase with water and a touch of sugar. I make tea for my guests. Russian tea with fruit jam, and some heavy oat biscuits given me by my neighbor the Jungian psychiatrist. We sit at the table in the kitchen, Dick unconsciously rubbing his deficient leg now and again. (According to Peter, it is shorter than the good one for some unfortunate reason.) I have already noticed his eyes cataloging my shelves of plates, cups, glasses, to say nothing of my jars of flour, sugar, bread crumbs, baking soda, brown sticks of vanilla.

  You see my secret? I say with a mischievous smile. I am just another middle-aged housewife without a husband.

  Peter chews a biscuit, staring at the table, and I use the silence to ask Dick whether the American government is aware that the copyright for my books was granted to my translator, thus depriving me of financial rights and valuable income?

  Not my area of expertise, I’m afraid, Dick replies with a sideways glance at Peter. I’m sure Peter is handling that.

  Svetlana, Peter changes the subject, I was telling Dick about the letters you’ve been receiving from Taliesin. That you’re planning a trip there.

  I explain to Dick about the Widow of the famous Architect who believes I am a cosmic substitute for her dead daughter.

  Interesting perspective, Dick remarks.

  Dick thought you should be aware of the reputation the institution has in certain circles, Peter says.

  My CIA man rubs his poor leg. The result of an old bullet wound? I have to wonder. Some intelligent people consider the place something of a cult, he observes.

  What do you mean, cult?

  A situation where everyone is more or less compelled to believe the same power and follow its directives, Peter says.

  Russians invented this, I tell him. More, not less.

  Dick Thompson smiles.

  I ask him, So you do not consider Frank Lloyd Wright a genius?

  No, no, he was truly brilliant. A great artist. A tax-evading spendthrift egomaniac, but the real deal.

  So I will spend a week viewing his Arizona residence, then travel out West a bit and come home. Everyone already knows I have my own mind about life and politics, government, freedom. Everybody knows this.

  Very true. Using the table for support, Dick gets to his feet. Hell, maybe I just wanted to bring you flowers.

  I smile. Next time yellow?

  Next time it is.

  I watch Dick Thompson make his way down the brick steps and out to the sidewalk and his government sedan. It is obvious that in the time since last I saw him something in his leg has grown worse.

  He never complains, Peter says quietly. He has lingered behind in my kitchen, still buttoning his coat.

  I touch his arm. How is little Jean?

  He peers at me as if the question is pregnant with other questions. Jean’s decided she wants to be a writer when she grows up.

  Then you must send her over to me when I return from my trip. I will give her an interview.

  I’ll tell her. He opens the door. A gust of cold air makes the house shiver to its bones.

  Peter, I will call you if I need anything?

  When he looks back, his gaze has turned lawyerly. Of course. Have a good trip, Svetlana.

  16 March

  In the Phoenix airport, a woman I know only by hearsay steps forward and embraces me. Roughly my own age, attractive, dark curly shoulder-length hair cut straight across her forehead over painted and shaped eyebrows. Rather dramatic use of black eye shadow for a desert airport afternoon. She calls herself Vanna and declares her hope that I will be her sister. I return the hope, adding that I have never had a sister, not in Russia and not in America.

  But such is the locked past and not to be spoken of in Phoenix, Arizona, where the sun shines nonstop over mountainless land. My new sister leads me by the arm through the air-conditioned terminal to the luggage. Her pretty turquoise dress ends at her thighs, muscular and shapely from daily hours of sacred dance. Her chatter as bright and unignorable as her dress, even if the rampant energy behind it feels like overflow from a dammed-up performance going on elsewhere.

  Here is what I know: she is half sister of the other, previous Svetlana and the only full offspring of the fam
ous Architect and his Widow. And here is what I learn, once we are in her cherry red sports car out on the interstate highway between Phoenix and Scottsdale: she is a casually reckless driver. At high speed, the engine of her Volkswagen Karmann Ghia produces a deep-throated German ruckus that she conducts with one hand while steering the vehicle with the other at seventy and eighty miles per hour. Hot wind buffeting us through half-open windows adding to the maelstrom. She is an anxious bossy talker, though with the noise and the wind I catch only half of what she’s saying:

  …Mother first…so eager to see you…fairy tale…bigger than…tonight you’ll meet…tall handsome hugely…sad too…stoical…gentleman…dinners we all…everyone puts a lot…going to wear…performance of the very best…Saturdays…black tie…evening dresses.

  The Karmann Ghia swerves from one lane to another. Far out in the countryside hammered flat by sunlight, the odd cactus passes with such slowness that I wonder if they are perhaps desert mirages. I explain to my new sister that I have not brought a single evening dress to Arizona. In fact, do not own one.

  No worries! she shouts back at me with happy certainty. You’ll wear one of mine! Chiffon and silk! You will be a princess!

  * * *

  —

  I am led by a handsome young man in work clothes down a tiled walkway through a gallery of bougainvillea in full pink bloom. Scents of orange blossom, lavender, sunbaked dirt. The sound of a fountain burbling somewhere nearby. The overall property far too extensive to be absorbed in a single view, even from on high. Rather, one already suspects, it is a series of heavily framed and curated tableaux that, while indicating Nature at every turn, is laid out so as to never let one forget the Genius who designed it all. Or perhaps, the woman who reigns over it now.