Despite the Falling Snow (5 page)

“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 has 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.

“Are you trying to get me to smell you?”

“No,” he laughs. “Only if you want to.”

“No, thank you. Some things should be kept for the future.”

She cannot think why she has said that. About the future. Without any thought, it just flew out of her mouth, and now he is smiling, he looks happy, as though he is hoping to see her again. She smiles too, suddenly. After all, something has drawn her to this man; perhaps his eyes, which are open and honest and intelligent.

“How old are you?” she asks.

“Do you want to guess?”

“No,” she replies, rolling her eyes. “I just want to know. I can’t tell from the look of you, whether you are eighteen or thirty.”

“I am twenty five”

“Like me.” She smiles, as though this satisfies her in some way, and then she closes her eyes. Etched into the skin between those eyes is a furrow of concentration. Alexander watches her, pausing only to ask the girl to pour two more drinks. When Katya opens her eyes, she sees the young man standing before her with his own eyes tightly shut, and a look of absorption on his face. She laughs.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to see what you were concentrating on so suddenly.”

“And? What was it?”

“The music?” he ventures, and she smiles her affirmation. The musicians are playing more quietly now, and are almost drowned out under the rising of voices made freer by alcohol and laughter, but the music is there, behind everything, and it is soft and emotive. An older man has joined them, and with his balalaika is wafting a mournful tune that twines out over the heads of the crowd like a long curl of blue-tinged smoke.

“I love this song,” Katya says, so quietly that Alexander can barely hear her.

“So do I. Doesn’t it remind you of your childhood?”

“Yes. That’s exactly it.” She looks away from him. “My grandmother used to sing it. She’d make my father play the piano to accompany her, and she’d sing it to my brother and me before we went to sleep.”

“Is she still alive?”

Katya shakes her head, but offers nothing more and Alexander looks around, at the deaf crowd, and then back at the liquid eyes of the girl before him.

“Nobody can hear it except for us, I think.”

“Perhaps he is only playing it for us,” she suggests.

Alexander smiles at the idea. “Yes,” he says, and he quickly asks her to dance again, for she seems to be on the verge of tears, as she stands there, alone, listening. His question wakes her from some faraway reverie, from unbidden, unwanted memories – no, they are not even memories, she thinks, it’s just a feeling that has enveloped her without warning; that feeling of being a child and being warm, with everything as it should be, nothing complicated or difficult. The smell of onions and fried potatoes still lingering from dinner, and sitting close between Yuri and her mother, and watching her father and grandmother play and sing, and feeling safe and just happy.

“Would you like to dance?” he asks again.

She shakes herself, and smiles and refuses, politely, for she feels that if she continues to focus on that song, even by dancing to it, she will start crying. I must talk, she thinks, say something funny or witty or intelligent to this kind-faced young man. Ask him what he does, where he lives, what he thinks, feels, knows. That’s what I am supposed to be doing. He is not what I expected to meet here tonight.

She opens her mouth to address him, and he leans forward a little, to catch the coming words, but they don’t arrive. The perfect bow of her upper lip remains open for a second, but no words come out. I cannot speak, she realises; I cannot say one word without crying. It must be the drinks. What is in them?

Her head turns to the bar table, and she sees the second round of glasses sitting there, brimful, their wet bases leaching colour out of the red paper that covers the table. A hand comes into her line of vision, and she sees long fingers and square nails closing around one glass, and raising it up to offer to her.

“Another? Or have you had enough?”

Misha is smiling grimly. Beside him, Alexander stands, attentive, polite.

“I think you know each other?” he offers.

Misha nods, his eyes, reddened with too much alcohol, still upon Katya.

“She’s like my kid sister,” he tells Alexander. “Which is why I warn her off men like you.”

Alexander laughs. “Am I so bad?”

“You’re too good, my friend. Too good by a long way.”

Katya takes the glass and downs the drink, while Misha watches her. She is restless, annoyed with Misha for interrupting, for breaking the delicate web of memory and gentleness that she had spun here alone with this young man. Now they will be forced to banter with each other, to laugh at stupid jokes that are funny only when you have drunk enough vodka.

“How do you both know each other?” Katya asks.

“We were in the same class at school,” Misha tells her. “I was the handsome, brilliant, popular one, and he wasn’t.”

“Then why were you friends with him?” Katya’s voice sounds bored with her own question, as though she is now merely going through the motions of frivolous conversation.

“I took pity on him.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t the other way around?” Her voice is clipped, with no hint of laughter, and Misha’s eyebrows go up and he smiles to cover his displeasure.

She looks at Alexander. He is smiling at his friend indulgently, but there is also a hint of distance in his eyes that suggests he too is beginning to find this conversation tedious. Misha glances from one to the other, with a wry smile now, and through the clouds of vodka that have gathered in his head, he sees that neither of them are finding him charming or amusing. He takes a deep breath that neither one can see. Never mind, he thinks, I’ll deal with this later. Now is not the best time. Without another word, he squeezes Alexander’s shoulder, and leans to kiss Katya on the cheek. And then, as suddenly as he joined them, he is gone, and they are left alone again, amongst the crowd.

Alexander hands her another drink, and she takes it, then winces and coughs at the burning of the pure liquid snaking down her throat, and he rubs the top of her back with his hand to ease her discomfort, and she leans in to him, and lays her head on his shoulder. Almost as soon as he has absorbed the fact that she really is leaning against him, that he can feel her whole body beneath his hand on her back, she straightens up, with an abruptness that surprises him.