Jason Overstreet - Beneath the Darkest Sky

“Really, love?” she said, cracking a welcomed smile.

“Yes, I want to be nothing but supportive of you. I love you. You’re my life.”

I took my right hand and placed it on her lap. She covered it with both of hers. Though I had real misgivings about her unbridled adoration of all things Soviet, I was committed to her right to follow her own path, especially given my previous behavior toward her in New York, which had almost cost us our marriage. In her defense, considering the privileged and sheltered childhood she had enjoyed under the Rev. and Mrs. Cunningham, what person would have the tools to deal with the fierce politics of Stalin—or even J. Edgar Hoover, for that matter? I had tried to shield her from Hoover’s world. How much more dangerous might Stalin’s world be? All I could do at this point, having failed her in America, was respect her opinion, her success, her growth, free at least from the debilitating injustices of Jim Crow America.

Summer and fall dragged on, and I spent most of that time turning down jobs that I just didn’t have the stomach for, one as a toolmaker, another at the Torgsin grocery, and a third at the post office. But it was okay for the time being, as we were getting by just fine and Loretta liked me spending time at home with the children.

I’d been told shortly after Bobby had departed for Argentina that I’d have to wait until the new ambassador arrived to be considered for any position at the chancery, which I actually didn’t want. Still, when he did arrive in mid-January of 1937, some eight months after Bobby had left, I went to Spaso and met with him. Joseph E. Davies was his name. He was a man quite different from William Bullitt. To put it bluntly, he knew nothing about the Soviet Union or, for that matter, diplomacy in general.

Bobby had told me he despised the man and considered it a joke that Roosevelt had appointed him in the first place. Davies said to me point-blank, “We have no position here for you as an interpreter or as an assistant of any kind.” If he thought he’d been hurtful with his comments, he’d been incorrect because I actually was enjoying this long break from embassy work. Besides, I knew the only reason I’d ever received a paycheck from the State Department had been because of Bobby. And I’d saved up enough money to pay two years’ worth of rent, excluding Loretta’s income.

Other than that brief meeting with Davies, the only news I had heard about the goings-on at Spaso House was from one of the couriers I’d run into at the Anglo-American School while picking up James and Ginger one afternoon. He’d told me that Davies and his filthy-rich wife had ignored Soviet officials and had had a yacht full of food shipped in from the United States, particularly dairy products, all of which had spoiled after being stored in the refrigerators at Spaso House.

Apparently, he had installed so many appliances and packed so much food into them that the power required to service them all had blown the circuits, leaving tons of cream, milk, and butter spoiled. Jim, the courier, had told me that Davies was so scared of NKVD finding out about his secretly imported food that he’d been forced to scramble around and dispense of it, no small task apparently.

It was also on this day at the Anglo-American School when I learned of an open position, one teaching chemistry. The idea of working at the school where my children attended excited me, so I applied immediately. A week later, I was hired. It was the same job my friend Lovett had held.

By the time February of 1937 rolled around, our family, particularly Loretta and the children, were in a very good place. Loretta was engrossed in her work teaching, painting, and traveling around the country to show her newest pieces, and the children and I were closer than ever. When I wasn’t teaching, I was tutoring them and watching them develop into young scholars. Both were fluent in Russian now and had plenty of friends.

Of course I spent moments thinking about the conversations Bobby and I had had about him becoming an ambassador or senator, and I longed to be by his side helping him rise through the ranks. I remembered his promise to keep fighting for social change and him telling me I was playing a solid role in it all. But now I wasn’t affecting Negro life at all. Joining the CPUSA seemed like the only way to do such, but Bobby had told me early on, “Whatever you do, do not join the Communist Party. It will make it difficult, if not impossible, for me to ever rehire you.”

So, for the foreseeable future, I just had to hold down a job. And I found myself beginning to feel a bit militant. I was channeling the anger and frustration I imagined my brothers and sisters feeling back home, for even though I was a respected man in Moscow, I walked around as if I were still back in America. It’s who I was. I found myself ruminating about this thought all of the time: The Negro’s problem is that he always finds himself wanting and needing to work full-time at creating a free society, but he is faced with the reality of having to work a full-time regular job, one given to him by none other than his oppressor just to stay alive. Quite the dichotomy!

I tried my best, however, not to let all of this completely consume me. I needed to embrace my circumstances, to enjoy Moscow life. My good colored comrades, Robert Robinson and Homer Smith, came by our apartment regularly, especially when Loretta was traveling. On February 15, 1937, they, along with the colored actor, Wayland Rudd, were visiting for dinner, and the issue of NKVD arrests came up.

“Where is that gorgeous wife of yours?” said Homer. “You’re lucky my friend Langston Hughes isn’t here to try to do another film. He was quite the ladies’ man on his last Moscow visit. I’m sure he’d have a hard time refraining from flirting with her.”

“Just stop, Homer,” said the Jamaican-born Robert, adjusting his dark-rimmed eyeglasses.

“Yes,” said Wayland, “you need to quit.”

“It’s fine, Wayland,” I said, refilling my wineglass. “I know she’s gorgeous. She’s in Stalingrad.”

“She’s no safer down there than she is up here,” said Robert. “I can’t tell you how many of my coworkers have disappeared from the tool factory.”

“Maybe they’re criminals,” I said. “Maybe they’re Trotskyists. Maybe they miss the czars.”

“You must be joking,” said Homer. “My editors back in America are begging me to investigate deeper into these ever-growing arrests of foreign workers, and if I didn’t have to split my time between being a reporter and working at the post office, I’d probably be able to give them more. And apparently the State Department back home is mum on the entire issue, not giving New York reporters a thing. So, my bosses want me to dig. But there’s also a side of me that’s worried about saying too much. Hell, they might arrest me if I go poking around trying to find out who’s been arrested and where they’ve been sent. And NKVD men are lurking outside of the U.S. Embassy just waiting to see who’s trying to get out of the Soviet Union.”

“You should keep your mouth shut, Homer,” said Robert. “Write about something else. I can only speak for myself when I say I’m becoming terrified that I may be arrested for some fabricated crime. A white American comrade of mine from the factory went to the U.S. Embassy looking to find out what happened to his brother, who’d gone missing, and Ambassador Davies was of no help.”

“Not surprising,” said Homer.

“Maybe his brother did something wrong,” I said.

“And,” said Robert, ignoring me, “when my comrade exited the embassy, NKVD scared the hell out of him, telling him to never be seen there again. Like Homer said, they have all of the embassies blanketed, looking for counterrevolutionaries. Don’t ever try to report someone missing! If they go missing, it’s not our problem! And these show trials are frightening, too. Important Russians are being tried and convicted left and right. Look at what happened to that splendid writer at Izvestia , Karl Radek. Don’t you see what’s happening, Prescott?”