Despite the Falling Snow Read online

  “You knew who I was when you married me. And you have known for the last thirty years. Why are you only complaining now?”

  She looks down. “Maybe I’ve changed. People can, you know. Sometimes it’s a desirable thing, to progress as a person. Maybe the ideal thing would have been for us to change together.”

  “Spare me the popular psychology.”

  But she hardly hears him. “Is there a statute of limitations on complaining? If you’ve put up with something for thirty years, is it too late to put in a request for a change?”

  “Now you’re being facetious.”

  She pauses and takes a breath which manifests itself as a long sigh. When she speaks again, her tone is calmer and less harsh.

  “The truth is, what I just said hurt you, and maybe that’s why it’s taken me so long. It’s not an easy thing to say.”

  She puts the book down, and touches his shoulder. There is no response and so she walks back around the table and sits down opposite him.

  “Frank,” she begins, but she can get no further before he stands up and walks out of the kitchen, back down the dark hallway. She looks at the doorway where she seems to still see the large outline of his frame, and, stunned, listens to the thud of his study door, and the turn of the key in the lock.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Moscow – January 1959 – Two years later

  Katya hurries into the apartment, throwing off her coat, and walking straight into the kitchen.

  “I have to hurry,” she says, kissing Alexander on the back of the neck. “I have to leave again in half-an-hour.”

  He looks round at her; he is retrieving some butter from their new refrigerator. He taps the solid block unhappily, then looks again at the temperature dial.

  “This refrigerator won’t just cool things,” he complains. “It insists on freezing them.”

  He leans in towards her, butter in hand, waiting for her to kiss him again, on the mouth. She does so, smiling.

  “At least it works,” she tells him. “What did Irina leave?” She lifts the lid on a pot of food that sits waiting on the stove. He looks across.

  “Stew,” he replies. “She says we are keeping the place too clean, and that she didn’t have to work the full four hours so she left back some money.”

  Katya is taking down two plates, and gathering cutlery. “The last honest woman in Russia,” she says.

  “I gave it to her anyway,” says Alexander.

  “And the last philanthropist,” she comments, hoisting the pot to the centre of the table.

  He comes over to her, carrying several slices of dark brown bread, and two opened bottles of equally dark beer. They sit, and begin spooning out the stew, bowls full of steaming, scented sauce and small pieces of meat.

  “Where are you going to, in such a hurry?” Alexander asks. He loosens his tie, and watches his slim, ravenous wife dipping her bread into her bowl.

  “The school play, remember?”

  “Ah, yes. And tell me, what does the school administrator have to do with the schoolchildren’s play?”

  She sighs. She knows this light, bantering tone of his, but cannot enjoy it tonight, does not want to cope with the request for attention that underlies it.

  “The school administrator has everything to do with it,” she says. “All the staff has to be there. To meet the parents, and cheer the children. You know how it is.” She looks up.

  “How was your day at work?”

  “Bad.”

  “The same problem still?” Katya asks, concerned.

  “We are losing a lot of valuable information. They have been watching all of us for weeks now, but I know it’s someone from outside.”

  “Are you sure? Who else but an insider would have been able to get so much information to Washington for so long?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. But they must be found. The atmosphere is becoming more and more paranoid. None of us trusts each other any more.”

  “So you’ve told Oleg?”

  “I’ve told everyone. At every level. They’re worried.”

  “Ah,” says Katya, nodding.

  “What is it, my love?”

  “So the man who came to check the wiring in the building this morning – he was putting in more listening devices?”

  Alexander shrugs. “Probably.”

  “When they find whoever it is, they’ll kill them, you know.”

  “Perhaps,” he says, without satisfaction. “Can I come with you?” he asks.

  She rolls her eyes. “I’d love it, but I couldn’t let you sit through yet another version of Peter and the Wolf.”

  He says nothing, and she continues. “They’re primary school kids. You’ll be bored. Won’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  They eat, and she feels badly that she has been so unequivocal in her refusal. After a few moments, he looks up at her and smiles, so that she should know that he is not upset about it.

  “Do you really want to come?” she asks, gently.

  He shakes his head. “I really don’t,” he tells her. “But I will miss you, that’s all.”

  “I know. So will I.” She touches his hand across the table. “It won’t be long. I should be back by nine, at the latest.”

  “Okay.”

  When they finish, they both rise with their plates, but Alexander takes Katya’s from her. “Go and get ready,” he says. “You have to leave.”

  Five minutes later she is back in the doorway to the kitchen, watching him wash up the dishes.

  “Why don’t you leave them for Irina?”

  “I don’t like the mess. And I don’t mind doing it.”

  “Thank you,” she says.

  “For what?”

  “For doing that. And for being here.”

  “Where else would I be?” He goes over to her, drying his hands, and kisses her. “Go on. You’ll be late.”

  She nods and turns in the hallway, and tells him goodbye.

  He frowns. “Are you going to be on the stage?” he asks, and she laughs, her head back and her delicate throat exposed.

  “No way. I’m not an actress.”

  She opens the door. He is turning to go back to the kitchen when something makes him stop and look again. She is still standing in the doorway, framed there, smiling at him, and when he turns to look, she makes a sweeping, faux-actress curtsey and blows him a kiss. He laughs, and she is gone.

  He is lying on the bed, reading through the reports he has brought home with him, when the telephone rings. It is his mother. They want his help with a young man who works at the bank. The young man, it seems, is too talented to be working as a mere clerk, and they have asked Alexander to see if he can find a place for him somewhere as an assistant.

  “He’s here now,” says his mother. “If you are not busy, come over with Katya and speak to him. Tell us what you think.”

  He is pleased to have something to occupy his time, for this evening has already dragged without her there, and so he tells his mother that he will come, and that he will bring Katya, if he can pick her up when he goes past the school.

  He puts down the solid black receiver, and then picks it up again. He dials the number of the school where his wife works. There is no reply.

  “Of course,” he tells himself. “They are all watching the play.”

  He cuts off the call and while he considers what to do, he tries the number again. This times, a man’s voice answers.

  “Is this the school?” Alexander asks, frowning.

  “Yes.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m the caretaker. Who are you?”

  “I am Alexander Ivanov. I am looking for my wife Katya. The administrator?”

  There is a grunt that, from its tone, Alexander assumes to be a grunt of recognition.

  “Is she there?” he repeats.

  “No, she’s not here. Nobody is here. It is nearly eight thirty at night, comrade. Nobody is here
.”

  The man sounds genuine. “What about the play?” asks Alexander, his stomach dropping slightly.

  “What play?”

  “The school play. Peter and the Wolf.”

  “They did that last month.”

  Alexander pauses. “Are they doing it somewhere else, perhaps?”

  He can almost see the man shrug. “Where else would they do it?” he asks, reasonably.

  Alexander does not even remember thanking the caretaker, or saying goodbye, or any of the formalities that he knows he must have completed before putting down the receiver. His heart is filled with a mixture of misgiving, fear and anger. If she is not at the school, where is she? Is she safe? Why did she lie to him? The question that recurs most often in his head. “Why did she lie?”

  There is something about what has just happened that, deep down, does not shock him quite as it should. Something in his wife’s personality or nature that has made him almost expect something like this. There has always been a tiny kernel, a hidden part of her that he feels he has never seen. The certainty of this feeling has, however, been worn away over the months and years of their marriage by Katya herself. She has told him time and again that he is not logical, that he is insecure for no reason, and when she asks him what she has done to make him feel the way he does, he cannot point to any one thing. And he, knowing that she does love him, and knowing also that she would not hurt him, has slowly come to disbelieve his own gut feelings.

  But now he sits forward in his chair, and then gets up and goes and lies, fully clothed, on his side of the bed. He is feeling sick with anger now. She must be with somebody. In his mind he thinks back to all the times he has felt uncertain about her, and those feelings are gradually refined and magnified until they are all that he is aware of. By the time the hallway clock chimes half past nine, he is so sad and angry that he is again sitting up. He pulls out the new Literaturnaya Moskva magazine -– he likes to look through the poetry and commentary, now that censorship has eased a little – but at this moment he cannot begin to make sense of the firm lines of print through the blood pounding in his temples. The telephone rings, and he snatches it up. He hears his father’s voice, and dispirited, Alexander tells him that he has a bad headache, and cannot come over. His sentences are terse and tense, and the conversation is over in seconds, after which he walks helplessly around the apartment, looking out from every window, waiting, waiting for her to come back.

  It is ten o’clock now, and he has checked his watch more than ten times. Still, there is no sign of her. She is never late. He goes to the window and looks out at the street, but there is only the night guard. No Katya walking back up the road, no muffled sound of the outside door closing, no footsteps flying lightly up the stairs. For the first time, he begins to be afraid. The anger at her settles down within him so that the burning in his stomach is now like faintly glowing coals and not the licking flames of the last hour. He paces up and down, hoping she is all right, and wanting her to come in so that she can tell him the reason for the lie, for there must, he realises now, be a reason; a simple, logical reason.

  At almost eleven o’clock, he is slumped in the armchair, listless, and for a few minutes he has ceased waiting on a knife edge, so that when the muffled slam of the downstairs door finally comes, he is surprised, and sits up, wondering whether he has heard it correctly. He has, for there are footsteps on the stairs, and they are hers. Before she can even place her key in the lock, he has opened the door. His manner is cool and distant, but is belied by his appearance – reddened eyes, unkempt hair, creases in his shirt where he has turned back and forth on the sofa, trying not to worry about her. She takes him in while she stands there on the threshold. She says nothing for the moment, but neither does she walk in. Something momentous has occurred or is taking place. A turning point, and she must read it and assimilate it and understand how to deal with it before she even thinks about opening her mouth to speak.

  “Where were you?” he asks.

  She steps inside and kisses him on his cheek, and she can feel that he has resisted the impulse to turn away from that kiss, and that he suspects something.

  “I’m so sorry, Sasha,” she tells him, her voice normal, neutral. She is speaking more to the listening devices that she is sure are in their apartment, than to him directly. “The play finished at nine, and then Elena was ill. Svetlana and I stayed with her until her husband came. He took her straight to a friend of theirs who is working at the hospital. He’s a doctor. The friend.”

  “I called the school.” His voice sounds sad, the harshness falling away despite his intentions. She is so plausible, so believable, she loves him, she would surely not lie – not with such detail.

  “My school?”

  He nods. Of course.

  She smiles. “It wasn’t there. It was at the 6th district school. A joint production. We did it last month for Christmas. They did it now for New Year. Here,” and she is holding out a yellow leaflet, printed with the school names, and a picture of Peter trapping the wolf, and the date and the time and the place. He takes it and scans the information. He feels suddenly ridiculous, standing before her with his wild eyes and accusing manner.

  “ I should have explained properly. I was in such a hurry, I’m sorry.”

  “What was wrong with her?”

  “Who? Elena?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure. Seemed like food poisoning to me. She ate some meat at dinner that was a few days old. She got it with rations, but it was the last piece, someone brought it out from the back for her. They probably had it in the shop for a week. It happens.”

  He runs his hands over his head, brushing down his hair with his fingers, and then re-tucks his shirt. She has not yet taken off her coat or gloves. She holds her hat in one hand.

  “Are you tired?” she asks him.

  “No.”

  “Shall we go for a walk? It’ll relax you.”

  He feels angry again, let down in some way. Irritated that she wants him to relax, when it is her late return that has so troubled him. But before he can say anything, she pulls off a glove and places a hand over his lips. The fingers stay there, and when she knows he will not speak, they trace the line of his mouth, and her own lips go up to meet his.

  “Come on,” she says, and he gets his coat and hat.

  Outside, there is snow falling, very lightly, a few, delicate, downy flakes, flakes that are barely felt when they touch the skin. When she looks up at the deep grey of the night sky, she sees the white flecks tumbling down, the light weight of them making their descent seem too slow, a pace that seems out of tune with the laws of gravity, and she feels dizzy for a moment, and nauseous.

  Why is she out here with him, when they should be in the warmth of their home, getting ready to sleep? What does she want to tell him? When she had first walked into the apartment, under the weight of his suspicion and anger, she had been concerned, perhaps even hopeful, that she would need to tell him things, to admit certain truths. But now she has told him the surface facts, about the play, and about Elena falling sick, and she can perhaps still wriggle away from his deeper uncertainties without too much effort. So why has she brought him outside? What does she want to tell him?

  “I thought you had lied to me, about the play,” he says. “What could I think? Especially when you were so late.”

  She has not lied about the play. She needs a good, true alibi for whatever she does. A lie about a play or about a woman going to a hospital, would be too easily found out and exposed. No, she has been at the play, she has sat through Peter and the Wolf again, and she did sit with a comforting hand on the deputy head teacher’s back watching her vomit into the stark white toilet of the school cloakroom. She tells him this again, and he nods.

  “Why did you doubt me, Sasha?” she asks. She is so much in love with him that she can hardly keep her rational mind working. Her impulse is to throw her arms about his neck and beg him to forgive her for feedin
g his doubts, for she has been lying to him, for the last three months she has been lying. Or, at least, not telling him everything – about where she has been, what she does, whom she meets. For three months, after the two year break that Misha insisted was necessary to avoid suspicion, she has started working again, her real work, stealing his thoughts and papers and transposing them, and passing them on to the people who will use them to fight his government. His employer. His life. Even now, on the way home from the school play, she has dropped off a camera film containing snapshots of documents. Her husband’s documents, private papers from his workplace.

  She has felt every minute of these past three months creeping slowly by, because she has hated every second of them. She had known that once the two year grace period was over, Misha would try to play on her doubts, on the fact that she had once sworn to dedicate her whole life to fighting the communist system. As she had expected, he had teased, and pushed and wheedled and manipulated, but still she had held firm, and even though in her mind she found some of his arguments persuasive, she would not betray her husband – she had come to believe that she must live with integrity in her own house before attempting to do so out in the world. But then Misha had played his trump card.

  “Remember, Katyushka,” he had said, with a cool smile. “You already betrayed him once. Before you were married. Imagine how devastated your husband would be if he found out the love of his life married him only for his information.”

  She had hated Misha at that moment. She had seen at once, at last, that he had made her steal from Alexander that first time, not as a test of her resolve, but to have something to hold over her if the plan went wrong, if she fell in love. She knows that it is that kind of foresight and ruthlessness that makes him such a good agent, but she never expected that he would use such tactics to blackmail her. She had felt trapped, confused, desperate; and so she had agreed to start spying on Alexander – anything to avoid him learning that she had betrayed him already. But instead, with each passing day, with each completed theft of his information, she has become increasingly tangled in the net, increasingly unable to find a way out of her dilemma. Until the weight of guilt has built up to such a level that part of her is now willing her husband, her victim, to find her out, so that she can confess at last, and put an end to this waking nightmare, however terrible the consequences may be.