Despite the Falling Snow Read online

  “You were telling me about your wife?”

  “Katya, yes. We grew up during the last part of Stalin’s rule, you see. He died in fifty three. And then, by the late fifties, Khrushchev took over.” True statements, but vague ones, a ploy to move the focus away from the specific. Estelle moves forward, interested.

  “Tell me about Stalin’s terrors? Wasn’t that when all those thousands were arrested and killed?”

  “By the time all the waves of arrests were done, it was millions. Tens of millions, even, when you count all the people who starved to death in the countryside. Unnecessarily, after terrible government policy decisions.”

  “Why?”

  Alexander shakes his head. “That’s the terrible thing. For no good reason. Paranoia, perhaps. A wish to keep control and power at any cost. Stalin was a cruel man, and he ruled with fear. You disagreed with him, you died. Very few people will argue in those circumstances.”

  “But when so many people die, when people are losing their families for no reason…didn’t it inspire people to fight against it?”

  Alexander considers. His eyes are almost closed with the effort of transporting himself back to that time. He was a child then, during the worst of it. Why didn’t people fight it? How much suffering must a population go through before they revolt? Those that did revolt, and many who did not, were imprisoned, tortured, killed. One way or another. He looks away, suddenly.

  “Is that what happened…?”

  “To Katya? Not directly. We were just children during the worst of it. Anyway, Khrushchev was a change. He still did as he pleased, but there was more accountability. You were allowed to criticise. A little.”

  He stands up, under pretence of pouring more wine. Suddenly the boredom of the meeting that he has just fled seems comforting, and safe. His movements are measured and careful, designed to gain time. Time to re-balance, to bring himself back to the present, away from a place where Katya’s name is suddenly arising naturally, and too often.

  “Do you mind me asking when your wife died?”

  “1959,” he replies.

  “Ah. That is a long time.”

  “She was very young. We were very young.”

  “Do you have any children?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Do you regret it?”

  “No regrets. About anything.” He smiles, and she sees that the smile is merely a cover for his lie. He sits down, recalling how he had lain next to his wife at night, coated in a darkness unrelieved by streetlamps outside, and he would imagine her child – their baby – and he had begun to love the idea of it almost as if it had actually existed.

  He is concerned that she will ask him what happened. Why Katya died. Even after so many decades he has not found a way, a simplified, subtle way to explain, and yet gloss over what had happened to her. It would be so much easier to be able to put forward an acceptable reason. An illness, a terrible accident. But he has still not learned what one says when it was neither. Estelle is about to ask how he and Katya met, when she notices his quick, nervous movements, his eyes roaming away from hers. She sits back in her chair at once, sorry to have pressed the topic. It is rude of her, a guest in his house, to make him uncomfortable. She is trying to decide how to change the subject when he speaks.

  “It’s a funny thing,” he says. “Even though it has been such a long time, sometimes I can still remember how I felt in those weeks after I first met Katya. The excitement, the dizziness, the agony of meeting the person you had never believed existed. It is a wonderful thing to be truly in love.” He looks up. “That is what I remember most about my wife. How very much I adored her.”

  That much is true, he thinks. All the rest; the betrayals, the nightmares, the waking horror, the guilt; he has packed these away over the course of the years, packed it all tightly into one corner of his mind. No regrets. About anything.

  Chapter Two

  Moscow – March 1956

  THE ROOM IS WARM, AND FULL. Most of them are young, about his own age, their chatter filling up the peeling high arches that sweep across the ceiling above them. There are lights, and laughter, and glasses that touch each other musically; an unfamiliar feeling of excess and even decadence that forms a welcome illusion for certain moments during this evening. For certain moments, from certain angles, with his eyes half shut, he can see that the long, narrow room in this apartment belonging to Misha’s friends has suddenly regained some of the elegance and life that perhaps filled it so often in another, pre-revolutionary lifetime.

  There is a small window at his back, and when he feels a cold draught touch his jacket, he turns, and the preternatural glow of the snow lighting the gloom outside attracts him and makes him look. On the street below he sees a small boy and an old lady. Both are carrying large bundles on their backs. Both look small and frail under their loads and he watches them for a long minute until they move around the corner of the building and are lost to sight. Probably they are carrying home wood to try and warm their rooms. Or room. He looks at his watch. It is ten o’clock.

  It is becoming hot at the party, and Alexander runs a finger along his slender neck, under his collar and tie.

  “You look like a government man,” Misha had told him, with no small measure of sarcasm, when he picked him up. “Don’t you have any casual clothes? This is not one of your state department cocktail parties, you know.”

  “I came directly from work,” had been Alexander’s taut reply before he had seen Misha’s teasing eyes, and then he had laughed. “Anyway, in the end we are all government men, aren’t we?”

  A light haze of smoke drifts up high, drawn towards the gleaming, makeshift lights strung up in the corners, and he watches Misha, standing across from him, talking, intent on his own words, then listening to those nearby. There is a buzz of excitement in this room, for the first news of Khrushchev’s secret speech has been leaking out into Moscow, creeping through cracks in office windows, gusting into apartments where neighbours have been passing overheard comments up through thin-walled buildings. The speech was made at a closed Congress session but Alexander is pleased that their leader’s forthright, shocking denouncement of his predecessor Stalin is becoming known to the people outside. The sense of openness, of freedom that has made some of them light-headed at work over the past weeks will start to infect others too. How can that be bad?

  As if he has been listening to his friend’s thoughts, Misha turns to him.

  “And what do you think about Comrade Khrushchev’s brave speech, my friend? That the “cult of the individual” mustn’t happen again?”

  He pauses and takes a drag on his cigarette. “That old man Stalin was a cantankerous, bloody-minded butcher all along?” Misha smiles thinly, and exhales a long stream of smoke upwards. Alexander does not smoke. He used to, as a teenager, but as a young man, the residual taste of tar, the insidious smell of ash in his clothes, bothers him.

  “I think it’s about time,” Alexander replies. “People will see that things are different now. Really different.”

  Misha slaps him on the back. “Such an idealist, Sasha.” He smiles, but the smile is forced, and when he speaks next, his voice has lowered so that only Alexander can hear him.

  “You do remember that our beloved leader Nikita Sergeyevitch was around during all that terror. Doing his part?” The soft tones are a precaution, one that may or may not be necessary here, but Misha, like all of them, cannot get used to any other way when talking about certain subjects.

  Alexander shrugs as if to say, you asked me, and Misha laughs. His eyes are smiling now, not just his mouth; he looks happy.

  “Don’t you feel the change, Misha? In the government, in the people, in the air? There is hope now. Maybe now the Soviet system will work as it should. As it can. And whatever he may have done in the past – well, at least he is trying to change all that now.”

  “But can people cope with change? Most of them still worship the old man – even more since he’
s been dead.”

  “They saw him as immortal, that’s all. Even though he took away husbands and fathers and families, Stalin was a god, to be worshipped and deferred to. He set himself up that way, aloof from the destruction. Khrushchev is different, you can see that. He understands the people. It’ll be different now,” Alexander adds simply.

  “Maybe. Maybe it will be. Maybe I do feel it. Hope. Freedom. Truth. Beauty!” Misha raises his hands over his head and declaims the words and a few drunk people around him applaud before going back to their glasses. He takes a breath and another drink before looking up again.

  “Oh, but I’ve worked hard to build up this cynical surface, Sasha. I’ll be sorry to let it go just like that. Don’t make me abandon it all in one night.”

  Alexander smiles at his friend – he cannot remember a time, even when they were boys together at school, when Misha has not had that cynical surface. Carefully cultivated, it had always lent him an aura of sophistication in the eyes of his friends as they were growing up, and even now, in tandem with his startling good looks, it seems to ensure the attraction of any number of women. Alexander turns slightly, for Misha’s eyes are wandering over his shoulder. There are two girls standing behind them. He steps aside and allows his friend a free try at them, then scans the room as Misha and the girls talk.

  A few couples are dancing in one corner, to the music of three men who sit cramped closely together, brows pulled into ridges of concentration, heads swaying, fingers spinning old remembered melodies from a guitar, a fiddle, a pocket flute. The music has been moving faster, gaining speed slowly as the evening progresses, and now has a rhythm that is well held and infectious. Alexander notices that, in the absence of a drum or tambourine, almost everyone in the room is tapping a foot or a finger in time to the music. He smiles to himself, and as his eyes sweep back towards Misha, his gaze catches on something, and he turns back to look.

  She is sitting with two other girls at one of the groups of wooden chairs placed haphazardly around the edges of the room. Alexander watches her intently – he is trying to decide what is it about her that has caught his attention. She is beautiful certainly, but there is something else, something in the proud set of her shoulders and head, that sets her apart from the girls around her. She is talking animatedly, telling a joke or a story, and her friends are laughing, and so is she, but her laughter is controlled – she is smiling, but also watching her audience’s reaction. He strains to hear her voice, but he is a little too far away, and the people around him are noisy. He looks about him, with the air of someone who has just woken up, and he realises that he does not know how long he has been staring at her; but now there is a young man who has gone up to her, and who is talking to her, trying his luck, and obscuring Alexander’s view.

  “Sasha! Where do you wander off to in your head? Come, let’s get another drink.” Misha gives him a friendly slap on the back, and then looks across the room, to see what sight has turned his friend into a statue.

  “The blonde?” he asks, puzzled. He has never known a man less easily pleased with women than his best friend, and this girl looks like so many others that Alexander inevitably turns down.

  “No.” Alexander moves across a few steps, to see past the young man who is still standing in front of her. He pulls Misha with him, and they both look at the fine-boned, dark-haired girl. Misha’s eyebrows go up, and he laughs slightly, hesitantly.

  “If you’re going to fall, Sasha, don’t fall for that one.”

  “Why not?”

  Misha does not answer, and Alexander looks at him.

  “You know her?”

  “A little. Not so well,” replies Misha, with a shrug. “We grew up around each other. My parents knew her parents. They were university professors. They were taken. Years ago. During the war.” He hesitates, then makes the final comment, the one he would have held inside were it not for all the alcohol sloshing in his head. “Khrushchev’s speech came too late for them.”

  Alexander’s frown deepens.

  “For what reason?”

  Misha almost snorts with laughter. An excess of vodka is sharpening everything he feels, making him lapse into stating what they all already know.

  “For what reason! The same reason as everyone else. They were declared “enemies of the people”. For no damn reason. Some asshole who worked with them probably wanted their jobs, or their apartment or something, and turned them in.”

  “Imprisoned?” he asks.

  “No. They got their eight grams.” It has been a while since Alexander has heard that expression – the slang for the bullet in the head, the reference being to the weight of that bullet. Misha takes a last smoke of the remains of his cigarette and shifts his weight, as though he is suddenly restless.

  Alexander is looking back to the chairs where she is sitting. It seems that the young man has been sent away, sauntering with poorly hidden embarrassment back to his laughing friends, and the girl is now listening to the music, watching the guitar player with intent eyes. The musician has fingers that move lightly, flowing like warm water over the rippling strings. Alexander turns back to Misha because a thought has occurred to him.

  “Do you…I mean, are you…?”

  Misha waves a hand, one that is holding an empty glass.

  “No, no, not at all. She’s pretty, but a handful. Not for me. You go ahead. If you must.” He shakes his head. Alexander nods and pulls his tie back up to his collar and he starts off across the room, stepping through the whirling dancers like a man who has plunged into a stormy lake and is determined to make it to the other side.

  “Her name is Katya,” Misha calls after him, but there is no acknowledgement from Alexander, who is crossing the room with the solid, blind steps of a sleepwalker.

  He is halfway to her when he catches sight of himself in a large, slightly tarnished mirror that was once imposing, and that is mounted on the wall to his side. He does not stop, but is taken aback at the sight of the smart, confident-looking young man who looks back at him. His hair is short and neat, his eyes large, with long lashes. His chin shadowed and strong. The poised, purposeful reflection is unrecognisable to him, because inwardly his heart is pumping so loudly that he can no longer hear much of the music, and he can feel the dry taste of nervousness in his mouth. In a moment, he is standing before her, and she is looking up at him, with the same intent, evaluating stare that she gave to the guitar player a few moments ago. Alexander says nothing, and she waits, somewhat expectantly, for him to speak, but after a short, stiff bow, he offers her only his hand. He is faintly aware that her companions are giggling, made nervous by his intensity, and he begins to feel ridiculous, just standing there, holding out his hand and waiting, especially when he realises that she is not going to take it. The very same moment that he begins to withdraw, however, is the moment that she reaches out. He looks down, watches her slender fingers lying lightly on his palm, and he closes his own fingers over them. The moment feels absurdly romantic to him, but when he glances to her face for recognition of this, her dark eyes only hold an amused, aloof look, and he feels instantly chastened. But he lifts his hand, gently, and she acquiesces and walks with him to the middle of the room where the dancing is, and there they move together, easily. He can hardly feel her against him – she is as light and insubstantial as a shadow, and he looks at her and realizes that this is because she is moving with such unconscious elegance, such unconsidered grace, that he has to prevent himself from stopping to watch. He can feel the heat of her against his palm, and he tries to partner her well, to keep up, although he is not quite sure how, since he can hardly hear the music through the pounding of his heart in his ears.

  When the music dies away, it is she that pulls him gently aside. They have remained together there for some moments after the music has finished, and she waits for him to lead her away from the dancers, but the silent, solemn young man seems unaware that the song has ended. She bites her lower lip, uncertain of what to do next. He ha
s said not one word to her yet, which strikes her as odd; and although something about his boldness and resolution has attracted her this far, now she feels her customary sense of cautiousness returning.

  “Thank you,” she tells him, politely, with a hint of dismissal in her voice that seems to jolt him finally into speech.

  “Have a drink with me?” he says.

  She glances back to the group she has just left. She does not feel like returning to their jokes and giggles and gossip – not just yet. She looks at Alexander and nods, then, taking his hand once more, she steers him back towards the long tables at Misha’s end of the room that serve as a bar. They pass Misha on the way, and Katya smiles at him in recognition, but does not stop to talk for she is preoccupied and sees him only vaguely, as though he were a familiar painting that she is passing while walking quickly through a gallery. When they reach the table, she asks the girl who is watching over the bottles to pour two drinks.

  She hands Alexander one glass and picks up the other.

  “You are the strangest person I have ever met. And yet,” she hesitates.

  “And yet?”

  “There is something about you that is almost familiar.”

  She frowns and raises the glass, as though she has just given a toast, and she drinks down the cool liquid. He offers her his own full glass, but she refuses it, and places her hand over his and tries to make him drink.

  “Why am I strange?” he asks.

  “Because those are practically the first words you have spoken to me.”

  “And what is familiar about me?” he asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  “My smell, perhaps?”

  She looks surprised, and then suspicious. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that smells and scents have strong evocations for people, and usually, when you cannot place what is making you comfortable with someone or some place, it is often the smell of them.” It is the longest sentence he has spoken to her, and she likes the sound and timbre of his voice. It is reassuring and gentle.