Salt the Snow

by Carrie Callaghan

  Just as before.

  Milly gritted her teeth and tried not to think about the cursed waste of it all: her time and his hope and his life spinning out in the distant labor camp.

  She hadn’t yet told Olga.

  Milly and Seema stood at a streetlight, and Seema giggled.

  “What?”

  “If you want a strawberry so bad, you should just ask.” Seema held up the kilo of strawberries she was bringing for a gift.

  “I wasn’t …”

  “It sure looked like you were staring at them. Fierce. Here.” She plucked out one and handed it to Milly. The fruit wasn’t quite sweet, it was too early for that, but still, the burst of juice on Milly’s tongue was divine. That’s what she needed tonight. Hope.

  When they arrived at the apartment, Seema handed the box of berries to Olga, whose lined face lit up. Olga kissed Milly’s cheeks three times, then hesitated before doing the same to Seema.

  Two of Zhenya’s second cousins were already in the main room, where Luba’s belongings had been pushed to the side to make room for the long table. Victor was there too, though no one was talking to him as he smoked a cigarette in the corner. Milly hadn’t seen him for weeks, certainly not since her meeting with Rosonov, and she scowled.

  He was a rotten coward.

  Luba was helping in the kitchen, but she dried her hands on a cloth and picked up a bottle of vodka and a pair of stemmed glasses Milly had never seen before. Milly exhaled, relieved. A drink would help.

  “Have some,” she said to Milly, extending a glass. Seema stood next to her, but Luba said nothing. Milly frowned, then passed her glass to Seema. Russians loved to boast that they didn’t have the race problems that America did, yet when faced with an actual human body with dark skin, they seemed to see right past her. Now Luba blushed, handed Milly a second glass, and poured her guests a splash of vodka each.

  “Have you heard more?” Luba asked. About Zhenya, obviously.

  “He’s going to perform in the agitation propaganda group.” Milly swallowed her entire dish of vodka, then held out her glass for another pour, even as the heat of the first one was spreading from her chest down through her limbs. She wasn’t ready to tell them about his ratified sentence.

  “It’s your birthday,” Luba said. “Who do you want to kiss?”

  “I don’t think a solitary kiss is enough to cut mustard with me,” she said, then blushed at her instinctive forthrightness. The other two women laughed.

  “If you want a tumble, you can find one easily enough,” Seema said.

  “Yes,” Luba added. “I’ve seen the men watch you dance.”

  Milly waved the words away, but wished they’d go on. She could almost beg them to tell her about her sex appeal, to tell her enough and then maybe she would believe it.

  Olga called them to the table, a long makeshift piece constructed of mismatched tables rammed together, probably borrowed from neighbors, along with the colorful tablecloths patchworking the surface. Milly squeezed past the wall and into a seat toward the middle of the contraption, and one of the second cousins, Kostya, sat next to her. Milly smiled at him. When she and Zhenya had gone out with him before, Kostya tried to net her fingers in his under the tablecloth. Then, she had pulled away. But tonight, she might welcome his advances. Anything to forget about Zhenya. She took another large swallow of vodka.

  Seema sat across from her, alongside the other cousin’s wife, and Victor was at the far end. Good. She didn’t want to sit near him, much less talk to him.

  Olga, grinning, placed a large platter of dumplings in the middle of the central table, and then, still standing, she raised her glass in a toast to Milly. The rest of the party followed suit, and then dove into their meal.

  Seema nodded and listened to the cousin’s wife, who was going on about production quotas in her glass bottle factory, while down the table, Victor had coaxed another guest Milly didn’t recognize, a neighbor perhaps, into singing some sort of revolutionary song. But the words didn’t sound right, and Milly strained to listen. Something about slop, she heard and frowned. Was Victor trying to get them all in trouble? The neighbor’s singing broke into a laugh, and no one else looked concerned. Milly took another drink.

  Next to her, Kostya was quietly eating his food. Milly dabbed a napkin to her lips, and when she replaced it in her lap, she let her fingers drift over to his hand, which was resting on the bench they shared. A thrill shivered up her arm when her pinky touched the skin of his thumb. She slid her hand closer.

  Kostya held still for a moment, but then Seema said something about quotas, and he laughed and pulled away his hand. He pushed away his empty plate, placed both palms on the table, and leaned forward to listen to the beautiful Seema.

  Milly balled her hands into fists, then drained her second glass. Or maybe it was her third. A man might enjoy pursuing a woman, but as soon as she showed a sign of wanting attention, of needing some affection and having the courage to ask for it, he spooked and ran to the next pretty face.

  Milly stretched her legs under the table and was tempted to kick Seema, but she didn’t. It wasn’t Seema’s fault her eyes were large and her cheekbones high, nor was it her fault that Milly’s chin was large and her front teeth prominent. Her eyes welled up.

  The bench shifted, and on the other side of her, away from Kostya, sat Victor.

  “It’s not the same without Zhenya, is it,” he said in a low voice. He held her gaze for a long moment before turning to pick at the tablecloth’s rose print.

  “Some nerve you have saying that.” Milly wiped away a tear that had splashed onto her cheek. “If you had kept your mouth shut …” She looked down the table and saw Olga almost smiling at something someone else said. Milly clenched her jaw.

  “You don’t understand,” he said.

  “You’re right, I don’t.” It felt good to be angry at Victor. Better the clean fuel of self-righteous anger than the soot-coated self-pity from Kostya’s rejection.

  Victor opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. He rubbed at his jaw, just beneath the ears.

  “Are you going to see him?” he asked, his eyes fixed on his dingy glass.

  “How can you ask about him? If you hadn’t squealed, would he even have been arrested?”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “There’s always a choice!” Her declaration attracted a few stares from around the table, and she smiled, holding up her glass. Hell if she’d embarrass Olga for the likes of Victor.

  He shook his head.

  “You should write about him, Milly. Tell his story, to help him.”

  She snorted. “Sure, the oh-gee-pee-you would love that.” She drew out the name of the secret police, as if lingering on the sounds would make them less terrifying. “Anyway, no one in America will care about an opera actor accused of fairy business.” She looked at Victor, challenging him. She wanted to shake him, to ask if he had made love to her Zhenya and then told the secret police about it, to dig into the wounds of betrayal. But she couldn’t, not yet, not here.

  Victor kept his eyes on the tablecloth.

  “It is the same everywhere,” he said. “Zhenya is lucky to have you. We all are. Happy birthday, Milly.”

  He took her hand in his. Before she could pull away, he raised his other hand in a toast, then emptied the glass. Milly yanked her hand free then drained her own glass.

  18

  BEFORE

  DECEMBER 28, 1933

  OVER THE DIN of Zhenya’s party, hosted in Anna Louise’s rooms, Milly heard another knock on the door. She rushed to open it, weaving through the oblivious hot bodies talking and drinking and toasting Zhenya, the most popular supernumerary in the city.

  Milly opened the door and smiled to see a salt-and-pepper-bearded man standing in the hallway.

  “Captain,” she said. “What an honor.”

  The man bowed and entered, and Milly giggled. He, like so many of the other opera actors and singers, was associated with the
former upper classes. In his case, he had been the captain of the tsar’s guard.

  “Tell me what he would say, Captain,” Milly said as she took his wool coat, damp with melting snow, and hung it on top of the other coats piled on the rack.

  The former soldier held out his fingers, pinched as if he were a tsar holding a cup of hot tea, and said, “Is it cold in the boulevards today?” Then he switched characters, standing tall with his shoulders thrown back and said, “Sire, you are right, as always. It is colder ’n hell in the boulevards today.”

  Milly laughed, and threw her arms around the grinning man.

  “How delightful you are. Go find Zhenya now, if you can, and wish him happy name day.”

  Not that Zhenya was hard to find. He was beaming as he held court in the center of the room and laughed at his friends’ jokes. As soon as Milly had learned Anna Louise would be in Geneva during Zhenya’s name day, she knew she had to do this for him.

  A handsome young man with black curls and heavy-lidded eyes stumbled past. The son of a Greek countess, Milly had heard someone say.

  “Stop him,” a woman called out. “He wants to sleep in the bathtub! And then where shall we pee?” Half a dozen people tittered in laughter, and one redirected the countess’s son to a bench by the wall. Milly smiled. What a brawl.

  Someone else knocked on the door, and she threw it open, nearly slamming a reedy ballerina in the process.

  “I heard you were having a party,” said an olive-skinned man in English.

  Milly frowned.

  “Louis,” she said. “Come on in.”

  Louis Fischer, American journalist and self-righteous pain in the ass, sniffed and then entered, followed by Seema, her boyfriend, Boris, and two others from the newspaper.

  “I think I’ll have to hang a sign saying we’re at capacity.” Milly maneuvered among them to take their coats, and they bent over to shuck their winter boots from their feet and add them to the pile by the door. Seema slipped on a pair of heels she pulled from her purse, and she unfurled from her crouch like an iris.

  “We found him on the street and thought we’d see if we could give him away to a good home,” Seema said, then walked through the crowd to find a drink. Boris shrugged, as if in apology, and followed her.

  “The Moscow Daily News crowd is exceedingly hospitable,” Louis said. He crossed his arms.

  “Maybe we’d be more hospitable if you weren’t stealing our assignments,” Milly said, though she knew she shouldn’t—if for no other reason than because she didn’t want Louis to know how much it hurt her that the American Mercury editors back in the States were so willing to print his byline instead of hers.

  Louis looked at her sideways, as if he weren’t sure if she was mocking him, then sniffed.

  “I tell the stories that need to be told.”

  Between them, a short woman wearing a blond-braid wig squeezed past with four full glasses in her hands. Milly wanted to warn her not to break Anna Louise’s glassware, but she turned to Louis instead. She took a breath and tried to regain her composure.

  “I’m going to go check on Zhenya.” Without waiting for Louis to respond, she stepped away.

  Zhenya was sitting next to Victor on the couch, Victor’s head tilted toward Zhenya’s. In the months since Milly and Zhenya had married, his friendship with Victor had seemed to stabilize into something easy and comfortable. Now they were both laughing as the woman in the blond wig did some sort of impersonation. Unless Milly someday worked in the theater with them, she would never know even half of Zhenya’s life. They had their own language there.

  She wedged herself between the two men and laid her hand on Zhenya’s knee.

  “Let’s go find some music to dance to,” she whispered loudly into his ear, letting her lips brush the sensitive ridges nestled beside his cropped blond hair. The top of his hair was longer, and she tangled her fingers in his waves.

  He frowned.

  “You know I don’t like to dance in clubs,” he said.

  “But soon the building curfew will start, and everyone will have to go home.” That was true, but she was hoping they could leave even before the house committee chief forced the noisy party out. She wanted to get Zhenya away from the crowd, to snuggle up to him on the dance floor and enjoy the rhythm of their bodies.

  He frowned again.

  Victor leaned over.

  “She makes a good point,” he said. “If you wait until the housing chief comes, the party will deflate. People will forget they’re having fun.”

  A cough sounded behind them.

  “Are you saying counterrevolutionary things?” Louis said from the other side of the sofa. He had been talking to a Russian man, no one Milly recognized, and Louis looked at her with narrowed eyes.

  “Jesus, Louis, mind your own business.” Milly stood and tugged Zhenya’s hand, then, after a pause, Victor’s too. “Let’s go,” she said. “Someone else will throw these people out.”

  Zhenya looked at Victor, who flashed half a smile, and then they both stood.

  “May as well.” Zhenya threw his shoulders back. “I listen to my baby.” He planted a kiss on her temple.

  The room was hazy with cigarette smoke and loud conversation, and no one seemed to notice as the three of them grabbed their coats and boots and snuck out the front door.

  By the time they reached the sidewalk, they were giggling like fugitive schoolchildren. The Izvestia headlines flashed through the cold night above their heads, and Milly read one in an exaggerated American accent. The men doubled over laughing. It wasn’t really funny, but she would repeat the act endlessly if she could sustain this easy camaraderie.

  “Let’s go to the nightclub,” she said, tingling with happiness. She looked up at Zhenya and held her breath, while he glanced over her head at the street, and the skin around his eyes tightened.

  “Fine,” he said. He took her cold fingers in his gloved hands and kissed them. “Don’t do your crazy things, all right?”

  She raised her hand to his soft lips again and smiled at both Zhenya and Victor.

  “Let’s go have some fun,” she said.

  When they arrived at Restaurant No. 9, the only nightclub in Moscow, Carol and Jennie, two Americans from Moscow Daily News, were sitting at a large table in the dark room, with vaulted ceilings like a wine cellar, and waved them over.

  Everyone ordered shashlik, a roasted lamb kebab, and Milly insisted on ordering two bottles of Georgian wine for the table.

  The food came quickly, and as they ate, two orchestras set up on opposite sides of the long dining room. One was a traditional Georgian set, with dark-haired musicians in long coats holding instruments that reminded Milly of a string of turnips hung from a rafter. The other band was more Western, she supposed, based on the violin and cello.

  “You think they’re going to play at the same time?” Carol asked in English. Zhenya frowned, and Victor furrowed his brow, probably trying to make sense of her slanted New York accent.

  Milly gestured at the canvas walls dotted in paint made to resemble a mosaic.

  “I’m not sure this place knows what it is,” she said. “So yeah, I’m guessing it’ll be one big mash-up.” But it would be better if one group played at a time, so she could get Zhenya to dance with her. She brushed his knuckles with her fingers, and he gave her a half smile.

  She drained her glass of white wine and poured another, topping off Jennie’s and Victor’s glasses afterward. As she did, the Georgian band whined its way into a traditional song, and the other stayed silent. She gave a half shrug to the group.

  “Guess not,” she said. “And I guess we can’t really dance to that.”

  Zhenya picked at his lamb and leaned over to whisper something in Victor’s ear. Victor laughed, and when he did, his lips curled up, almost like an ape’s.

  The song finished, and the men in their long coats with bullet-shaped pockets bowed to the smattering of applause. Then the other band played a few tuning notes
on their instruments. A man with a broom mustache stood at the front of the small stage, below which there were no tables.

  “In honor of our American guests,” he said in Russian, then gave a bow toward Milly’s table.

  Milly translated for the other women, who tittered with excitement. Then the band loosed a fox-trot into the air.

  Milly jumped to her feet. “We have to dance,” she said in both English and Russian. “They want us to.”

  Carol and Jennie stood, but Zhenya didn’t move. She held out a hand toward him. Victor glanced between them, but finally leaned back in his chair. Zhenya crossed his arms.

  “Have it your way.” She thrust out her lower lip then followed the other Americans to the small space in front of the stage. There the three of them moved an empty table to the side to make more room, and Milly danced. First with Carol, then Jennie, then by herself. She loved the movement and the music, the quick footwork and the tilt of her hips. Maybe she could make Zhenya want to join her, when he saw how fun it was, and how good she looked. When the song finished, the band members gave her red-cheeked grins, and she returned to her table to change out of her boots and into the keen heels she had brought. The men said nothing. Behind her, while she buckled on the shoes, the band started another fox-trot tune.

  “Come on, boys,” she said when she finished, then poured herself another glass of wine.

  “Stop making a scene,” Zhenya hissed in Russian. His face had grown pale. “This is not how people act.”

  “It’s dancing.” Milly drained her glass. She smiled and wiggled her hips. She hadn’t meant to spark a fight. “You’re a dancer, you love music. Come on, it’ll be fun.”

  “Look around. You’re embarrassing me.” Zhenya tilted his head toward the large table of Russians over his left shoulder, all of whom were hunched over their plates and studiously ignoring the pair of dancing women at the back of the room.

  “The band is playing these songs for us.” More importantly, she wasn’t embarrassing. Dancing shouldn’t be embarrassing, living shouldn’t be shameful.