Despite the Falling Snow (12 page)

After dinner they sit in the living room, almost stupefied by the food.

“I can’t believe I ate that much. I can’t move,” Lauren tells him.

He offers her a chocolate truffle. “Are you trying to kill me?” she asks.

“Certainly not. I want my present first.”

She struggles up with looks of exaggerated anguish, but refuses his offer of assistance. With difficulty she slides her package into the living room. He comes to where she holds it upright, and glances to her for permission to open it. She nods, an edge of anxiety scoring into her, as she watches him pick at the tape.

“Just rip it open, Uncle Alex. It’s a portrait,” she admits suddenly, unable to wait.

“A portrait of whom?”

She smiles and they continue unwrapping together, leaving curls of gold paper all over the floor. He is about to ask the question again, but now enough strips of paper are removed that what was initially just swathes of textured paint now reveals itself as a white blouse, a neck, a throat… then a chin and a mouth – a familiar mouth. The smile freezes on her face as she sees his watching eyes change from anticipation to shock. Or is it horror?

“Uncle Alex?” she says, taking hold of his hand. She has stopped peeling away the paper, but his free hand reaches up and pulls it loose, an impatient, urgent movement. He must see the rest of it at once. He gasps for air, an alarming sound, for in its shock, his body has forgotten to breathe. Lauren’s hand is on his forehead, stroking, panicking.

“I’m fine,” he whispers.

“Are you sure?”

He does not reply. He is engrossed in the painting. He now realizes that he had forgotten what Katya looked like, how she really was. The shape of her nose, the tilt of her chin, the lines on her forehead. Those details that get blurred in memory after months and years, that you find you can only recall by staring at the two photographs that you came away with, and that only return for sweet, ephemeral moments when the beloved’s face comes unsummoned into dreams or recollections. He feels he might cry if he speaks so he says nothing, and Lauren knows him well enough to wait in silence while they both look at the portrait. He forces himself to focus on the work involved, on Lauren’s achievement, as a way out of the labyrinth of emotion that has suddenly claimed him. His niece, Katya’s niece, has captured her aunt with such vivid clarity and life that he has to remind himself that she has in fact never even met her.

“Was it the wrong thing to do?” she asks finally.

He shakes his head to buy time, though there is a part of himself that is almost resentful of what his niece has done. How she has forced right before his eyes, in unrelenting clarity, the vision of his lost wife. His lost love. She waits, sensing that he is displeased in some way – she watches him biting his lip slightly. Perhaps he is trying to regain some control. Then he speaks, as quietly and calmly as he is able.

“Tell me about it,” he says.

Still gripping his hand, she speaks, slowly, carefully, explaining how she worked from the two pictures that he has, and from a couple of Yuri’s photographs, taken when Katya was a teenager, the Katya that he knew before he left Russia. Her features and facial structure were the same, of course, and gave her different angles and expressions to work from.

“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.

T
HERE 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.”