Despite the Falling Snow (8 page)

She had understood that at least some of his initial interest in her teenage self had stemmed from the fact that she was related to Katya, that she was a strong blood link to that great love of his. But it took very little time for him to come to know her on her own terms; their relationship had deepened quickly, and he began to love her as if she were his own child. If the line of her chin, or the colour of her eyes, or the tilt of her head offered him an occasional, fleeting, aching suggestion of his late wife, then that was only to be expected and understood. Lauren has never felt that she bore a great resemblance to her aunt, but her hair and eyes are dark, very dark. These features, combined with the simple fact that Katya died young, at around the age that Lauren is now, probably continues to make the occasional passing similarity more noticeable.

Alexander understood that the mystery and tragic elements of Katya’s story could have lent it a kind of glamour in his niece’s eyes, for she was distanced enough from the events and emotions of that time for them to seem dramatically unreal. And Katya had lived her brief life with an intense passion and conviction that would be irresistible to any young woman. It was with slow inevitability then that Lauren moved away from her uncle’s reticence in excavating the past, and towards a trip to Russia to explore the places where he and Katya had lived and grown up. It had been a momentous journey for her, a revisiting of roots that was accompanied by all the romance and excitement of a new city and a wholly different culture. She had visited the usual museums and galleries and the Kremlin, but what she remembers best, what she still savours inside when she recalls that trip, are the small, quiet moments. She remembers standing on a street corner outside the building where Alexander and Katya had once lived. She had imagined them returning there, both weary after work. She imagined them walking out together along the snow-crusted river. She rode the metro that her aunt might have taken on her way to work. Or to so many other, secret places. She had sought out archives that might shed more light on her death and her life, but found nothing more than a sparse, clinical summary that added nothing more to what they already knew. She had even looked, without much hope, for their old friend Misha. Someone who might give her a more intense taste of their lives then, of why things had turned out as they had. She had asked Alexander to accompany her, but he had made his excuses and declined. Without wishing to fully consider his own reasons for refusing, he had simply attributed her fascination to her artistic, romantic temperament, and left it at that.

“I wish you could have met her,” says Alexander softly, as he watches Lauren looking at Katya’s photograph.

“I would have liked that.”

Alexander runs a hand over his head. He is weary and an air of melancholy, of unfulfilled longing, has taken him over. She returns to the fireside, where they sit in silence for a few minutes, and when she finally glances at him, she sees that he has fallen asleep. Quietly, she removes their plates and when she comes back he has nodded awake again.

“You fell asleep,” she says.

“I was just resting my eyes,” he tells her, and his smile lets them both know that he is lying. “What shall we do now?”

“I’m going to read a bit,” she tells him. “And you’re going to bed.”

He protests, but she is adamant and knows how to handle his insistence; and with an effort that he tries to hide, he gets up from the chair.

“Are you sure?”

“A good book, a glass of wine and a roaring fire. I’m in heaven,” she tells him.

She walks with him to the staircase, the panelled hallway cool after the warmth of the flames, and he leaves her with a kiss. She watches him walk upstairs and then returns to the living room. Halfway back to her chair she stops with an abrupt turn, and moves back to the piano. She sits down on the cracked leather stool and lets her hands move over the keys; the ivory is soft, almost powdery to the touch, and her fingers recall their character at once, remembering that they need only the most delicate pressure to coax out the full tone and nuance of each note. She plays for perhaps twenty minutes, a series of melancholy pieces that leave her somehow indulged and depressed. She sits back and looks at Katya’s picture once again. She gives it a close, detailed stare that now contains no emotion, only the cool precision of the artist’s eye. She is evaluating angles, shade, light, expression. She remains absorbed in this way for several minutes, until at last she steps back with a nod to herself.

T
HERE IS NOT ENOUGH WATER
in the whole of Moscow to slake Misha’s thirst the morning after the party. His throat burns as he drinks down another cupful. This insatiable thirst always takes hold of him after he has drunk too much – that, and the sensation that his stomach is hollow, burned clean, as though scoured out with acid. He glances down at his flat abdomen, lean and keenly muscled, like the rest of his tall, lithe body. He looks fit and healthy – he is healthy, for the most part, even though on mornings like this, it can take a little time for his body to remember that fact. But six or seven long draughts of cold water, and some strong tea and black bread go a long way to bringing him back to himself, after which he will bathe, and wash his curly cropped hair in the sink, allowing himself to enjoy the feel of the soap lather around his ears and forehead.

Thirty minutes later, he is dressed. Dark trousers and a black roll neck sweater that fits his slim contours closely. Over these he shrugs on a long thin overcoat. He does not bother with a hat. He spends all day at the Aviation Institute, becoming warmer and warmer under the over-zealous heating, and he likes the grasping rush of the cold evening air that plays over his head when he walks out of there at the end of the working day. Anyway, he is not prone to colds, has never been a sickly man, and if you treat the Russian winter like an enemy who has power over you, you will be caught out by it every time.

She is waiting for him at a bar just a few blocks from her apartment. Misha sees her inside, drinking a glass of tea, and he slows down as he approaches. The inside of the bar is illuminated and has an unreal quality this evening, as though it is a festive stage set, placed down in the middle of the fading, dank, slush-lined streets that surround it. And in the centre of the lights and warmth and smoke sits Katya, alone at a small table. He watches her keenly as he approaches, then smiles when she looks up and catches sight of him. He goes straight to the bar and orders two vodkas before he kisses her on the cheek.

“I don’t want a vodka,” she says. “I had too much last night.”

“I know,” he says, easily, with a gentle sarcasm.

She waits for him to explain himself.

“I’ve never seen you act like that with anyone.”

She presumes that he is referring to Alexander, and she is momentarily pricked by his directness, and then irritated. What concern is it of his how she acts at a party? A taut reply rises to her lips, but she holds it back at once; for she realizes now that he must have mentioned Alexander for a reason. Misha wastes no time in explaining.

“He’s government,” Misha says. “Nice position too. Couldn’t you tell?”

A pause. “Ah, yes,” she says. “Of course.…”

Beneath the even tone of her voice, Katya is shocked. Shocked that the man whom she found so appealing and attractive, so unexpectedly, is working directly for the system she so despises. And she is even more surprised that she did not pick up this fact straight away. Now that she considers it, she realizes that the signs were there – the neat, blue suit; a sense of uniformity, a bland correctness, in his manner, his dress, even the shine on his shoes. All these things should have alerted her. It should not have been difficult to spot. In the end those political pigs are all the same, on the surface and deep down.

“I told you I drank too much,” she says, and her ironic tone is a cover for the slight pang of disappointment that she also feels in her stomach. She had really liked him, for a while.

“He’s so young,” she says.

“I know. Nice, too. A little boring, but nice.”

He has already drunk both the vodkas. He stands up and pays the bill and Katya begins putting on her coat. She understands that the rest of this conversation is best held outside.

“Are you using him?” she asks, her voice altered in the vast dampness of the outdoor air.

Misha smiles. “Alexander is not easily used. He is a man of integrity. And he would have suspected me if I’d tried for information. Besides, only now is he in a really useful position.”

The pause that follows seems to her to be some kind of test. He is waiting for her reply, for the right reply, and it should not be so hard for her to give it. Perhaps it only seems a little difficult because she had liked Alexander. She swallows down the last taste of disappointment that remains in her mouth, and speaks.

“Seems like a good opportunity,” she says.

He turns with a half-smile and examines her face. “It is. Could be. If you can keep your head. If you’re not attracted to him.”

“You know me, Misha.”

“Yes, I do.” He stops walking and holds her gaze. “That’s why I was surprised. Last night. I’ve never seen you like that with anyone.”

She sighs. “I liked him. For a moment. But if he’s government, he’s everything I work against. It’s not a dilemma for me. It’s black and white.”

“Good.”

“But he’s coming tonight. To see me. I told him he could,” she adds, with as much nonchalance as she can manage.

“You don’t waste any time, do you?”

“I don’t think that’s something you should be concerned about.”

He raises an eyebrow, but lets the comment go and they walk on side by side in silence. Beneath her ribs, deep inside her empty stomach, Katya feels the teasing itch of fear and the flickering of excitement. This could be a big opportunity for her, a chance to directly make a difference. To tap her own source, not to simply pass out information from others.

“Listen,” Misha says, and he is all briskness, all business now. “If you can do it, it would be wonderful. Just imagine. But it’s not easy to become involved with someone purely to betray them. You have to be emotionally strong. Clear. Clean. Business is business.”

“I know.”

“I hope so.”

She resists the urge to turn away. Evidently she must reassure him a little more if she is to be trusted with this job.

“Misha, he’s sweet. Like a puppy. But now that I know who he is, I
can’t
fall for him. It’s impossible, it would be a denial of everything I am. If you want me to do it, I will.”

He finds himself momentarily irritated at her admission that she felt some attraction, any attraction, to Alexander. When it comes to women, he has within him a certain expectation, borne of arrogance, which means that he is always slightly surprised by their awareness of anyone other than he. But her earnest, decisive tone now pleases him, and she can see that. He is not the type to express himself openly; he prefers to play games with people, to keep his responses neutral and unreadable wherever possible. But still she knows him well enough to read the quickening of his step and the bright animation of his manner as he instructs her:

“Very good. For the next few months, you captivate him. Get to know him, allow him to know a little of you, enough for him to fall in love, and above all, get him to trust you. He’s a good man, and he hasn’t yet had disappointments in life. He’s young, like us,” he adds, his voice lower, perhaps even hesitant. “He trusts easily.”

They are at the crossroads behind her apartment, and he has stopped.

“I’ll leave you here,” he says. “Think about it a little. Start seeing him, and think about it. You must be sure.”

“I am sure.”

He smiles slightly. The pleasurable tension of a new avenue, a new contact; the arousal of a new game beginning. A pulse of energy moves through him. He will go out tonight and celebrate. Drink a little and find a girl with pretty eyes to flirt with and make love to.

“Then good luck,” he says. “Let me know how it goes. Keep me updated every step of the way.”

She nods, accepts the touch of his cold lips on her cheek, and she turns to cross the road, her mind still reeling with the sudden shift that has occurred. Within the space of a few minutes the focus of her evening, and perhaps even her life’s work has changed. The heady excitement of attraction and potential romance has brewed within moments into a more bitter, but more real possibility of stolen government secrets, the possibility of making herself useful firsthand, not just as a go-between. This, after all, is what she has always struggled for. Let the real work begin now, Katya, she thinks. You can do it; let the work begin.

Katya squints into the bright morning. She can hardly see her way to school through the snowfall that flurries down around her. There is no hint of a blizzard in this springtime snow; there is barely any wind, and the snowfall itself is not heavy, but her head is light, and the glare of the whiteness that has already coated the streets is dizzying her further. She walks along in the right direction; after all, she knows the way to her own place of work. But all around her, fat flakes of frosted water land gently on the ground, on her head and on her arms; one or two alight upon her eyelashes. She narrows her eyes to close down her field of vision. The snow dances lightly around; when she tries to watch, and follow the descent of some few, particular flakes, she finds them eddying about her, disconcerting her and teasing her, following a balletic path, spiralling downwards, and whirling back up, pausing to whisper kisses of cold moisture against the exposed tips of her ears.