Despite the Falling Snow Read online

  “And the eyes?” He looks at Lauren for the first time.

  “Are they good?” she asks gently.

  He nods. They are exact; so true. They look directly at him while revealing very little themselves. Katya could always have a hint of haughtiness about her, and Lauren had captured that too, but she had also placed in those eyes a fierce intelligence and an infinite sadness.

  “When I was thinking about this piece, and how to do it, I went through everything I knew about her, and I realized that basically, that there were two Katyas. One was my father’s. You know Yuri’s stories,” she smiles. “The laughing, clever kid sister who was always leading him a dance and getting him in trouble with their parents. And then I knew your Katya. Or at least your stories of her,” she adds, to qualify any presumption he might feel she is making.

  He waits for her to go on. Tell me, Lauren, what she was like, let me try and feel it again, even though you cannot possibly understand it all.

  “That was the Katya I wanted to capture. The bold, strong, vulnerable, angry woman who chose to…”

  A quick movement of his head catches her eye and causes her to stop.

  “Anyway, that’s what I was trying for,” she finishes mildly.

  “You’re a genius, Lauren. It’s almost hard to look at.”

  “I’m sorry. The last thing I wanted was to hurt you… It’s funny, I was excited all the time I was painting it, varnishing, even framing just today. It was only when I got it home this afternoon that I had my first panic attack. Wondering if I was really doing the right thing. It must make you miss her all over again.”

  They are quiet together for a minute or two before he speaks.

  “It does,” he says. “I mean, it only sharpens what I’ve felt for the last forty years. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

  “As long as you’re okay with it. I can always take it away.”

  “No, no. It was a shock, that’s all. I just need some time.”

  He sounds more like himself and she is immeasurably relieved. The self-control, the rationality is back, and she is no longer fearful that she has made a terrible mistake. She leads him back to his chair and pokes at the fire, which has settled down into small, licking flames that curl around the last, luminous log of wood.

  “I’ll get some tea,” she tells him. “Camomile?”

  “If you’re having some?”

  “Yes.”

  He watches as she goes out to the kitchen, leaving him with a precious few moments alone. He glances at the fire for comfort, but the logs are too dry and are spitting and hissing, putting out a violent heat that causes him to move his chair back a little. Closing his eyes intensifies his awareness of the canvas looming behind him. With conscious, almost ostentatious calm, he turns in his chair, and looks at it, at her, once more. She is watching him with an expression that is half-smile, half-frown, an expression that perhaps she never even had during life, but which captures her character perfectly. He feels a stab of guilt and swallows, but his mouth is dry. He looks for water, but there is only the remains of their wine. Lauren will come soon with the tea, he reminds himself. In the meantime, Katya is regarding him with that slight smile, without accusation or blame. He has always known that she would never have blamed him for what happened – his own pain and guilt have been punishment enough. But that knowledge has only ever reinforced the sense of exactly how much he lost when she died.

  Chapter Six

  Moscow – May 1956

  THERE IS A LOW, DISBELIEVING WHISTLE from the man standing beside her. She smiles, and watches the sound escape from his lips, and form a question that hovers in the air before them.

  “So it’s going exactly as we’d hoped?”

  She nods and leans over the bridge and looks out onto the river. If she narrows her gaze, the surface of the water sparkles like a field of diamonds under the late afternoon sunshine.

  “And he is in love with you?”

  “Who knows?” she replies.

  “Well, you should know. You must know. Or it’s no good.”

  His eyes stay on her and a last outline of amusement leaves her features. In the face of his expectant silence, she gives a shrug; a conceding gesture, a reluctant acknowledgement.

  Misha sighs. “Good work, Katyushka. It must be hard too, but you’ve done well.”

  Her eyes are downcast, and she appears in no hurry to answer.

  “Thank you,” she says at last.

  He drops his voice, matching her tone. “It’s not easy, is it?”

  She looks up. Of course, it must be difficult for him too. Much more so than for her. She hardly knows Alexander, while Misha has been friends with him for fifteen years or more.

  “But, in the end, Katya,” he continues, “you have to make choices in life. Especially in this life of ours. To sacrifice your personal loyalties for a greater cause. Alexander represents everything I despise, and even though he’s my friend, I can’t live with myself if I’m not doing everything I can to fight the system I hate. It’s a hard choice, but I know where I stand.”

  She is not as reassured by this argument as she feels she should be, not least because it sounds too carefully concise and rehearsed to her ears. It is not that she disagrees with Misha. They have all come out of years of terror and horror, years of becoming used to those crippling moments when your mouth turns dusty with fear, when you hear that someone else you know has been spirited away, when you are glanced at with a guilty look by someone you work with or live next to, or worse, when you are avoided altogether. Where personal loyalty between friends, colleagues, even family, is forgotten in the name of the greater good. Denounce your cousin if he is an enemy of the people. Turn in your neighbour for crimes against the state. Or for anything at all. They might be thinking thoughts that could threaten the Soviet people. She lost her parents because of this ethos, taken to extremes.

  But then, perhaps, this choice he is talking of making is not so relevant to her. She is not betraying her best friend, she is only cultivating a source.

  “Katya?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you care for him?”

  Misha watches her carefully, picking through her expressions and movements for signs, but she looks up and meets his gaze without hesitation, her eyes unreadable.

  “We are different, the two of us, aren’t we?” he asks.

  She waits for him to explain.

  “I mean we are friends, too. Even if we don’t see each other much.”

  So I can tell you how I really feel? She thinks. Would it be a relief, a pleasure even, to confide in someone, when she has never confided in a soul through her entire adult life? She pictures the scene. Sitting with Misha over a glass of vodka, or some tea perhaps, the way other people do, trying to explain, faltering, confused and perhaps a little shy, that she has been unexpectedly moved by Alexander? No, not moved, exactly, that is too strong a word, maybe touched. Or simply disconcerted. She smiles at Misha. She cannot conceive of sharing her deepest thoughts with him. Especially thoughts that are in need of clarity, and certainty, and definition. No, Misha. Not even you, who I’ve known since we were barely teenagers.

  He sees the cold steel behind the look that she gives him now, and he starts to say something, but her face contracts into a frown of concentration. Her eyes are no longer with him, but are focused on a building several hundred yards away. His eyes move sideways immediately, and they both watch as a large man carrying a shopping bag emerges from the entrance to that apartment block. The man looks about, up at the blue sky, and walks away briskly.

  “It’s not him,” says Katya.

  “No.” Misha glances at his watch. “It’s not time yet. Good. All we need is another one who doesn’t stick to his routine.”

  They face each other again, two friends strolling and lounging out on the bridge, on a day that holds the promise of summer – a day that has drawn out young couples all over the city, and that will tempt more once the day’
s work is over. Katya is the one facing the apartment block, and as she talks to Misha, her eyes flicker constantly back and forth, between his face and the building. He finds it distracting to talk to her in this way, when her attention is diverted, but there is no help for it – they are here for a reason. But he smiles to himself as he thinks that, even were their positions reversed, and he were the one watching the building, her eyes would still never rest. It is a habit of hers – a nervous habit probably – and he cannot remember a time when she was not like this, darting, sparkling, always moving.

  Misha examines his fingers, thinking. He knows little of Katya’s private life, but then it has always appeared to him that she has never really had one. He doubts that many men have come and gone during her young life. Perhaps one or two, nothing serious certainly. She is an introverted girl, the type to hold herself in and probably deny any sort of sexuality or passion. Some women, he thinks, are just not capable. Certainly he has never felt able to make any kind of overture towards her, even before he recruited her and they began working together. He glances at her again. She is a beauty, but an inaccessible one – and he is not a man who finds women intimidating. On the contrary, he has always had as many women as he pleases, and he has enjoyed that, enjoyed the fact that he can attract them with only a slight, pleasant type of exertion – of his looks, his conversation, his personality. But Katya has always been just outside his grasp, even though over the years he has reached for her, in his own way; that is, without seeming to do so, for to give the appearance of trying too hard, or caring too much, would go against everything he has brought himself up to be.

  “I think you’re falling in love with him,” Misha says, quickly, but her face reveals little.

  “And you would know best.”

  “Aren’t you?” he demands.

  Katya laughs, and raises an eyebrow, but her eyes never leave the building.

  “I thought that was how it’s supposed to be.”

  “Not in this situation.”

  She turns away. “I know who I am, and what I believe in, Misha, and no-one can ever change that.” She is sincere, and he nods, to calm the passion that has risen up in her.

  “He is nice to be with,” she offers, as an attempt to reassure Misha that she is not hiding things from him. “Easy. I don’t have to fight so hard all the time when I am with him. Do you understand?”

  “He is exactly what you are supposed to be fighting.”

  “I know.” He catches the irritation in her voice. She is often dismissive to avoid being emotional. Misha speaks again, and keeps his voice neutral – he is probing, but moving around her words carefully; he is a man handling a live grenade that cannot be shaken or dropped without consequences.

  “You really do care about him, don’t you?” he says.

  “A little. But that makes it easier. Imagine being involved with someone who repulses you. Don’t worry, Misha; I know what I’m getting into.”

  Her eyes are scanning people around them, looking for anyone who may be looking for them.

  “Are you sure he won’t suspect me?” she says suddenly. It is a deep pool she is about to plunge into with Alexander, and she cannot help but look for reassurance, even if it can only be superficial.

  “No, he won’t. Not if you’re always aware. Always. And not if he cares for you the way he seems to. Not if you wait for the right time. When you have his love, and his trust, completely.”

  In Misha’s eyes she sees the recognition of her dilemma, even though it is one she will not voice. It is simply not what she expected, nor how she would prefer to work.

  “Fighting an enemy without a face, using strangers, those things are easy. It’s not so easy compromising someone you love,” he says. It is a gentle probe, his voice is warm, safe, relaxed, so that she might not even notice what he has just implied with his last three words.

  “He’s not like anyone I’ve ever met,” she says, “but I don’t love him.”

  She senses that he is reassured in the relaxing of his shoulders. He smiles. She is intelligent and quick. Perhaps she will pull it off after all. There is one sure way to find out, but before he can lead into it, she turns slightly, so that she can watch out more easily, and then Misha catches the scent of her, the cool, clean smell that is always hers. She lacks the sweet, flowery, feline perfume, the heavy dabs of standard Soviet scent worn by many of the women that he knows, but her fragrance is honest and real. He looks at her sideways, at her distant eyes and long lashes, at her exotic black hair and finely drawn lips. Standing there in the sunlight, against the cool stone, she looks like an idealized portrait of a person, with no feature ungainly or imperfect. Sasha, he thinks, you may get what you want, but she will be a handful, my friend. Even without the added complications.

  “So he thinks you’re a card carrying communist?”

  “I am,” she smiles.

  He just laughs.

  “Idiot,” she says, and touches his nose, then his curly dark hair.

  “I’m not the idiot.”

  “Yes, you are. Look at you. Your nose is all red, and it’s not even winter. What kind of Russian are you?”

  “I’m not,” he says, facetiously. “I came here from Italy last year. I felt like freezing to death and being grey, and never having anything good to eat. I got tired of all the sun, the sea, the delicious food and the dark-haired women.”

  “Yes,” she says. “The women I can believe. Have you ever had one that wasn’t blonde?”

  “Only kissed.” He smiles.

  “Who?” she asks, and he frowns.

  “You, of course!”

  “Oh, Misha. That. A teenager’s peck – this is what you count?!”

  “There he is.” Misha says, with no change of tone or expression. He lounges back against the bridge and smiles at Katya. She takes his hand to glance at his watch. He is intensely aware of the feel of her fingers on his arm– they feel light yet strong against the inside of his wrist.

  “Good. Four o’clock again. What do you think?”

  “I think he’s stayed away for an hour every day this week.”

  “Shall we wait until tomorrow?” She watches their man, short, grey-haired, plump, walking away from them, down the sun-streaked street, where shadows are just beginning to fall with the lowering sky.

  “Up to you.”

  “Okay,” she says.

  He looks at her. “Okay what?”

  “Okay, I’ll go in now.”

  They linger by the bridge for five more minutes, talking with suppressed excitement. They are both nervous, but now Katya takes two deep breaths and smiles. Misha straightens the collar of her blouse.

  “Where does Alexander think you are now? He must know that school is over by now.”

  “Yes, but the school administrator sometimes works late, to catch up,” she says, and her smile has changed a little; he imagines he sees the bright determination slipping out of her slightly, and so he turns, and focuses her mind once more on the job in hand.

  “You’d better start,” he says.

  “Okay.”

  They walk together towards the building, and as they near the front steps, he calls goodbye, and leans and kisses her on the cheek, an affectionate parting from her friend or brother or lover – who would be able to tell which? Then he strolls away, down the street, relaxed, unconcerned. She watches him go; Misha, who has always been considered something of a subversive, with his daring views and his bitniki clothes, the American-influenced jeans and sweaters that give the suggestion of a disaffected rebel, but in a way that offers no real threat. He often plays the role of the doubting intellectual in public, and amongst friends he is usually free with his criticism of the Soviet system; but his anger is carefully controlled for effect, and is never pushed too far. It gives him an edgy persona; he is the maverick employed in one of the State’s most trusted positions. In many ways, it is the best cover he could ever have concocted, the kind of double bluff that is the direct opp
osite of her own strategy of modelling herself as the perfect, non-questioning communist. There is also a large part of him that enjoys the subterfuge and thrives on the danger of the work that they do. Part of him, she feels, is like a small boy who has been given the toys and tools to play spy games, and consequently is always filled with excitement and self-importance.

  She turns and runs up into the building. Immediately, she has good luck. An old man is coming out, and holds open the heavy front door for her. She wishes him “Good afternoon,” and starts up the stairs. Above the ringing of the cold cement under her feet, she hears the old man turn and call after her. She stops. A nosy one, probably. One of those who know everyone in the building.

  “Who are you here for?” he asks, his voice shaky.

  “Sasha,” she replies, and is shocked that she has used his name as the first name that comes to her, that she has already dragged him into this part of her life. Usually she replies any male first name – something different each time, of course. Using the diminutive makes them think she is on intimate terms with whomever she’s visiting, and with luck, makes them hesitate as to whom she means. She smiles at the old man, and continues up the stairs, showing no hesitation. She is relieved when she hears the acknowledgement and the slam of the door.

  It does not take her long to open the inner door. She has knocked first, of course, just in case, but she can sense that the apartment is empty. Immediately, she walks down the short hallway and into the bedroom. There is a chest of drawers and on the mattress, the sheet is caught up in one corner, as though the bed has been lifted. Sure enough, in an improvised pocket beneath the springs, she finds the code sheets. Some cable transcripts too, which look old and pointless. They may be hidden as a decoy. She takes them to the small table, and lays the pad down, avoiding moist rings of tea spills. From her inside pocket she extracts a camera, and leans down to fit the whole page into the viewfinder. She snaps, winds, and lifts the top sheet, then snaps the one below. She gets into a rhythm at once: click, wind, lift, click, wind, lift. Kneeling down, she stuffs them back into the mattress pocket.