Red Sparrow

Colonel Digtyar himself brought the cardboard box with her clothes to the cell, stood there while she undressed and returned the smock—State property—and dressed in front of him, her shins and thighs mottled blue-black, her fingernails purple, her ribs showing. They had accomplished all that in such a short time. They walked her upstairs to the grilled door and she stepped out onto the snowy street, with the traffic noise and the smell of exhaust from the buses, and she walked gingerly on the ice for a little way, just to feel the ground beneath her feet, her breath in clouds rising above her head. Her ballet limp was more pronounced now, and her foot throbbed, but she concentrated on swinging her arms and walking away from the walls with her back straight. The marks on her wrists were visible from under the cuffs of her overcoat.

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Dominika dreamed about prison, in her bed, or sitting in a chair in the living room while her mother washed bedsheets sour from the poison that was leaving her body. She backed into the hall closet and closed the door on herself and stood wedged in the dark to relive the cabinets—smell and sound, click-clack, click-clack—and for the pleasure of knowing she could come out into the light whenever she liked. She wrapped her wrists together with panty hose and strained the knot tight with her teeth, to feel her pulses. After all the edgy urges left her, she cried silently, tears wetting her cheeks. Her mother played the violin every day now, a half hour at a time, while Dominika sat on the floor and stretched, and lifted her legs until her stomach screamed, and pushed up from the floor until her arms shook. Her mother washed her, sitting in the tub the first night, but now Dominika stood in the bath alone, seeing the marks disappear, watching herself heal. She nodded to herself in the mirror. She was getting better, and with the feeling of redemption the coda of a vermilion fugue, a red fury, repetitively welled up around her. It was a deep rage, one easily enough controlled, one that would last, one on which she could feed.

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Dominika Egorova sat in a chair in front of the paperless desk of her uncle in his office on the executive fourth floor of SVR headquarters in Yasenevo. Outside, the snow-blasted pine forest stretched out of sight, beyond them the bare fields and the flat horizon. Sunlight streamed through the picture windows, illuminating half her uncle’s face but plunging the far side of it into shadow. Half his beastly yellow aura was mottled, the other half sparkled in the sunlight. Vanya Egorov sat back, lit a cigarette, and looked at his niece. She was dressed in a plain white shirt buttoned at the neck and a blue skirt. Her dark hair was carefully combed. She looked thinner and pale.

“Dominika,” Vanya said, as if she had just returned from a cruise on the Volga. “I was gratified to hear that the unpleasantness is over. The investigation of the Helsinki matter is concluded.”

“Yes,” she said, staring at a point on the wall behind him.

Vanya looked carefully at her. “You must not be concerned. Every officer who is active in operations will at some time in his or her career be involved in an investigation. It is the nature of our business.”

“Is it the nature of our business to be tied dripping wet in front of an air conditioner for four hours every day?” She said it calmly, without inflection.

Vanya looked sourly at her. “Animals,” he said. “I shall order a review.”

A review of your own promotion prospects, thought Dominika. She nodded at the new plaque on the wall.

“Congratulations, Uncle, on your promotion,” she said. Vanya looked at the citation and ribbon, and fingered the rosette on his lapel.

“Yes, thank you very much,” said her uncle. “But what about you? What shall I do with you?” As if she were being given a choice, she thought. But she had something in mind.

“Now that I have returned, I am ready to report wherever you wish to send me. It is your decision, of course, but with respect, I would very much not like to return to the Fifth. Would it be possible to resume the place offered me in the Americas Department by General Korchnoi?”

“I will ask him,” said Vanya. “I’m sure he would agree.”

“There is something else,” Dominika said. She thought of them all and her prison cell and felt the tightening in her throat and knew her face and neck would be flushed (No. 47, “Infuse the neck and face to authenticate emotion, or the advent of climax”). Vanya waited.

“I want to continue working on Nash,” she said suddenly, holding his eyes in hers. Vanya sat back and looked thoughtfully at her.

“Quite a request,” said Vanya. “You know Colonel Volontov thought your progress against the American was too slow.”