by Shamim Sarif
“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.
Chapter Four
Moscow – March 1956
THERE 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.
One Month Later
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.
She thinks briefly of Alexander. It has been three weeks since the night they met and she has seen him a few times. Fewer meetings than he would have liked, which is just how she feels it should be; she is teasing out his eagerness. He came to see her again last night, and she had talked to him. That, she knew, was the way to begin. To reveal something of herself, not to probe him, not just yet. And although she has asked him a little about himself, he has been uninterested in replying at any length – in that respect, he seems unlike most other people that she knows. Instead, he has been full of questions to her – her work, her daily life, her thoughts and hopes and fears. She told him of the first two things. I am a school administrator. I run the school. And I get up at this time, and eat that for lunch, and do this in the afternoon, and sleep at around this time. The rest could come later, or not at all. He will wait for her tonight, this time at his apartment. For dinner. She smiles to herself. Although she told him little of real depth, she felt a liberation of some kind simply by speaking to him. Any kind of self-revelation is so rare for her that the mere fact of spending several hours with one human being who is focused solely on her, interested only in what interests her, has given her an unfamiliar sense of release. Of light-headedness. What will happen if she does not find her way back through this shower of snow? What if these pattering, dancing, floating flakes blind her and unhinge her and mislead her, and whisk her far away into the immutable, unending whiteness of the desert, and what if she never makes it home again? The long, pure vista of snow that she sees stretching out before her will continue for ever and ever, she feels, and her head is almost spinning with the seductive pain of being surrounded completely by whiteness and cold, no humans, no life, no end to it.
At the street corner, she stops, disconcerted, and finds that she is standing next to other people. Coated, hatted, bundled black shapes, blurry against the ice. She is back in the city, she suddenly finds, back on the street that she knows by heart, and has been removed from the vast, snowbound Siberian plain of her imagination. So, she thinks, as she crosses the street with the other shapes; so I will continue to live in this new world of mine, I will see him tonight, and he will see me, and we will carry on this game of getting to know each other a little better.
Five minutes later, she is inside the echoing concrete hallway of the school. Her everyday mind is returning as, bit by bit, the brilliant white of her imagination is being painted over with the various greys of this building. The stairs, the floor, the thick metal doors. The grey cabinets and chairs, and her own metal desk. Her grey metal typewriter. The grey skin of some of the teachers. The grey hair of the head teacher, who asks Katya, every few months, if she would not like to teach instead. If she would not like to be out of the school administration offices, and in front of a class of minds eager for knowledge.
Not for the knowledge I would be forced to teach them, she thinks, as she shakes her head again, politely, and laughs. The children would love you, the head teacher tells her; they already do. Her heavy squat body and square rustic head nod to the young woman in hopeless encouragement. Yes, Katya thinks, but children are innocent and superficial. They like me because I am prettier than most of their teachers, and because I am young. They would have crushes on me, the small girls and the small boys. They don’t care about anything else. Do they?
She has seen some of their eyes, the little children who come to that school, and she has seen a thirst and an adoration that shocks her. Such naked emotion in the eyes of those children. Smile at them, and they smile. Shout and they withdraw. Hit them and they cower. Such raw power these greying teachers hold. She wants no part of it, not directly. She does what she has to do behind the scenes. Curricula, timetables, state funds. As good a job as any other to earn a wage and fill her days. But she would rather not face that dependence and devotion, that innocence which has already had its new, sharp edges roughed away by state and parents.
She hates herself when she thinks like this, but she does not often think any other way. She herself has cowered, and longed for love from too many different aunts and uncles and friends with whom she spent her own childhood and adolescence. Much of the time, she was even separated from her only brother. There was no-one who wanted to take in two orphans. Two extra mouths to share the thin soups and occasional meats at the table. Two more pairs of feet to buy decent shoes for. In her loneliness, craving the love of her parents and the companionship of her older brother, she learned to turn into her own mind and heart for the satisfaction that she sought. Hours spent learning how to fully use her imagination, teaching herself to fight through to the farthest reaches of her mind in order to remove herself from the lonely, terrifying world she now inhabited. Nights spent holding herself in, learning to be content with her own company, to push away the longing for others, and to trust only herself. A good training, as it turned out, but not the easiest way to live. Alexander is already trying to find a way into this interior life of hers. She smiles and shakes her head at the idea. She walks into the office, and smiles a hello at Svetlana, who shifts self-consciously in her seat. At her desk Katya begins sorting out the stack of letters and memos which has piled up since yesterday afternoon.
The day is passing swiftly for once, and Katya types away, clattering fingers dancing over the keys.
“I can do those for you,” Svetlana
says.
“I’ve given you more than enough for one day,” Katya replies. Besides, she likes the feel of the keys, and to watch the words being formed on the paper before her. She works with a soothing rhythm that is beginning to free her unconscious mind, and she is finding that her thoughts are drawn repeatedly to Alexander.
She looks up with a start. At her open door, two round blue eyes are staring at her out of an oval face. The eyes are welling with tears. She looks at the boy. He must be five or six, and his knee is bleeding. She stands and goes to him, and kneels down beside him.
“Did you fall?” she asks.
He nods, and the tears pool out and edge down his cheeks. She touches his head affectionately, then stands and briskly gets out a box of tape and bandages.
“Shall I take him to the nurse?” Svetlana asks, half-rising from her chair.
“I’ll manage,” Katya replies.
“But all injuries are supposed to be reported to the nurse…”
Svetlana’s voice trails away, silenced by Katya’s look of disbelief.
“It’s not a sin to do things differently now and then, Svetlana,” she says, with a laugh in her voice. Svetlana subsides, her full lips pursed hard against the mockery.
Katya cuts a small piece of tape, and applies it to the bandaged knee.
“There you are. Is that better?”
The boy looks down, uncertain.
“You are a brave young man, aren’t you?” she says.
He looks at her, suspicious. Her amiable, kind tone is unexpected, and he turns suddenly and runs away. Katya watches him go with a small pain in her heart, and some anger flashing in her eyes. Not at the boy, but at everything that has made him push her away. She is almost sitting down at her desk again when she suddenly stands instead, and the abrupt scraping of her chair, together with the metallic slam of the office door which Katya throws open make Svetlana look up, wide-eyed. But Katya is already gone, her chair having fallen to the floor.
