She said nothing.
“Okay,” he said, and looked to the dean. Her smile had returned. Kit had to take Milton Bluhdorn’s hand, it came toward her, a little fat white animal that she could not avoid. Then the dean showed Kit to the door, but before she opened it she put her hand on Kit’s arm.
“Your thing with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee,” she said. “Going to that meeting. I understand that was nothing. Just curiosity. We understand it was nothing.”
Then she let Kit go, and shut the door behind her.
Kit went out past the secretary and out the big door into the corridor, and then she thought she could go no farther. There was a women’s room a few steps away and she caught the doorknob and held herself up; she opened the door and went in. It was empty. She clapped her hands to her face and cried aloud, small barks of fear and horror that she had never heard her throat make before, but that she couldn’t help making. They ceased, but her chest went on heaving.
The door opened and Kit recognized the sleeve of the dean’s red wool jacket, and she turned quickly away to the frosted window. The top panel was canted open, showing green leaves moving in a breeze and a blue sky. The window was barred.
“Beautiful day,” the dean said. “Beautiful.”
Kit slipped out past her smiling, her eyes on the floor.
She went out into the afternoon. The sun was hot and the whole sky so intense a blue it could hardly be looked at; still the morning mist seemed to cling lightly to things, to the trees thinking of turning, the rosy brick buildings, the clock tower. Students in groups or couples walked the paths, the girls holding their books to their breasts and laughing with the boys.
Kit with her secret inside her could hardly walk among them. What had been done to her had been done to none of them. The beautiful world was theirs and they didn’t even know it and would never need to know it. She had felt this way—that she carried something black within her that no one could see but that cut her away from everything and everybody else—only once before, and it was when she first knew she was pregnant.
She made herself walk far enough that she was out of sight of the building where the dean’s office was. She sat on the steps of the music building, where students went in and out with instrument cases; a piano poured notes out of an open window, the same huge clusters over and over.
“Hi.”
Jackie Norden had come up beside her, she hadn’t seen him till he spoke, and she got to her feet and in tears of relief or need hugged him hard and pressed her cheek against his smooth one, oblivious of those passing.
“Oh God,” she said into his ear, “oh God, oh Jackie.”
He laughed, amazed, trying to get a look at her face, interpret her. “Hey. It ain’t been that long.”
“I called the house,” she said. “I called and called. They said the phone’s disconnected.”
“Aw,” he said. “Damn Communists. They hate to pay their bills, they just hate it. Not like they don’t have the money.”
“Jackie,” she said. “Something’s happened.”
She sat down again, and held her head. Jackie took from his pocket a great handkerchief, snapped it and spread it on the step, and sat beside her. He said nothing more, only waited for her to begin: and when she could, she told him all that had happened, what she had been told, what had been asked of her.
“And what did you say?”
“I said I would. I said okay I would.”
“You did?”
“Well what could I say? What if I said no and they did something, something…I just couldn’t tell them I wouldn’t.”
He took his pipe from his pocket and began to stuff its great mouth with shaggy tobacco. “And do you plan to tell Falin about this?” he asked. “I mean about them and what they said?”
“Of course. Of course I will. What do you think.”
He marveled at her. “God damn,” he said. “A double agent.”
“What do they want?” she said. “Why did they say those things? They said they want to be sure about him. But what does that mean? What do they think?”
“Well,” Jackie said. “Look at it from their angle. Here’s a guy who wrote some kind of allegorical poems some time ago, poems nobody seemed to take a lot of notice of, but nobody objected to very much either, and then got some other poems published in other countries, for which you can go to prison or worse. Then he writes a letter, an open letter, to Khrushchev and admits all that stuff, and calls Khrushchev on stuff. Right?”
“I guess.”
“Well, then what? Nothing. They call him in to question him, but he always comes out again. Then suddenly it’s in the papers that there’s been a trial and he’s been stripped of his citizenship and is being sent out of the country. Not what usually happens over there. So it makes you think.”
“Makes you think what? What?”
“Well what if a deal got made. What if they told him, okay, we’ll make it look like we got mad and threw you out, if you’ll agree to act as an agent for us over there. It’s that or. You know.” He made a gun with his hand and shot himself in the temple.
“He’s not a spy,” Kit said. “He’s not.”
“Well,” Jackie said. “How about this, though. Maybe he was an American agent, all along. And he was in danger of being exposed. And we planned it all, the open letter and all, because we had this way of getting him out, by having him kicked out for his provocative act, because we have guys high enough up in their system to do that.”
“We do?”
“Maybe we do.”
She thought of Milton Bluhdorn: Your country went to a lot of trouble for Mr. Falin. “Well then why,” she said, “do they want to spy on him? Why would they want me to?”
“An agent can always be turned one more time,” Jackie said. “If the Russians sussed out the Americans’ plan, they could be pretending to be fooled by it. And Falin might still really be their guy. The only way to be sure a spy ain’t changed sides is to end his career.”
She covered her face in her hands.
“And you’re planning to tell Falin what they wanted you to do,” Jackie said.
She nodded. “Of course.”
“Acourse you will. And acourse they must have thought of that.”
She studied his face, trying to guess where his thought was headed. “If they thought that,” she said, “then what good would it do them, to, to.”
“Maybe all they care for him to hear,” Jackie said, “is that they asked about him. That they can get to people he knows and ask them. Just to let him know they’re thinking about him.”
She only looked at him, until he seemed to see in her face the dread and disbelief she felt; he took her hands and lifted her to her feet. “Aw hell with ’em,” he said, and put his arm around her shoulders. “They’re just being paranoid, no doubt. Knowing they don’t know everything, but not knowing what it is they don’t know, which is probably nothing anyway.” He held her tight. “Surely’s nothing, in fact. Surely.”
They walked.
“She asked me, the dean did,” Kit said, “about the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.”
Jackie said nothing.
“She said she thought it didn’t mean anything that I was at that meeting, that it was just curiosity.”
“Well that’s all it was.”
“Yes. But how did she know about it?”
Jackie shook his head, in wonderment or ignorance or disgust. “Man,” he said. “Oh man.”
“Do you still have your car?” she asked him.
“Oh sure.”
“Would you take me out there? To his house?”
“Well,” Jackie said, and stopped to light his pipe. “Yes. I’d be happy to. But you know you got to get used to this game. Maybe you wouldn’t want to race right over there soon as you can. Looks…Well you think how it looks.”