Despite the Falling Snow

by Shamim Sarif

  She is running down the hallway. It is silent and deserted, for the children have now started their final lesson. But as she flies down the corridor, and turns a corner, she sees her little boy, the one with the cut knee; he is almost back at his classroom. He stares at the woman bearing down on him, and she stops, and they watch each other for a moment. She considers. Another kind word and he will probably run again.

  “Come here,” Katya tells him, with authority, despite the fact that she is suddenly unsure quite what she is doing, following this unknown child.

  He frowns, and then slowly begins the walk down the corridor towards her. He stands before her, and she looks down at the top of his head, her arms folded.

  “Please,” she says. “Please don’t run from me like that,” she says, her voice soft and kind now.

  Quickly, she passes her fingers through his hair, caressing it, tidying it, and then she turns and walks back down the corridor. She can hear the echoing of her own footfalls clamouring back at her from the hollow walls, but she can hear nothing else. She turns again, and looks at the boy, standing there, still watching her. His soft eyes are too large, too tentatively adoring, too thrilled. She closes her own eyes against them.

  “Go back to your lesson,” she says, pushing a tone of command into her voice, and he runs from her, back to the classroom.

  “Where did you go to?” Svetlana’s timid voice makes Katya want to snap back a reply.

  “Bathroom,” she says.

  “Oh.”

  She suspects very strongly that her secretary’s main purpose in life, or at least here at school, is to watch her. Either she is one of those people whose lives are so dull and mean that she keeps herself from boredom by spying on everyone around her, or she has a definite instruction from someone, somewhere to keep an eye on Katya. This would not be unusual, given that Katya’s parents were killed under Stalin, as enemies of the state; and her brother Yuri’s subsequent escape to the United States did nothing to help the situation. But then, Katya has always relished a challenge, and began her campaign for acceptance and credibility in the Party long ago as a young Pioneer. In her smart uniform – a red hat and scarf over a white shirt, which were some of the best pieces of clothing she owned – she had stood in an orderly row and sworn solemnly to uphold the ideals of Lenin and Stalin. She still remembers the thundering sound of hundreds of childish voices around her, echoing around the hall in which they stood. Soon after that, she had calmly signed a denouncement of her parents, requested of her at the age of thirteen as her civic duty. That had gotten her some points for “heroism” in the Party records. Even then, at that age, with no idea of how she could ever effect a sort of revenge for her parents’ deaths, she was clear in her own mind that she wanted to do so. It was always simply a question of how, not whether or not she should.

  She glances once more at Sveltana. Her light brown eyes hold streaks of gold within them, and they are superficially striking, but they are always darting, watching; and her delicate mouse-like ears are always twitching. There is plenty of use for unassuming, steady people like her; the local resident’s associations, the work councils, the police – they all use observations from people like that all the time. Katya glances at the clock on the wall behind her. Five minutes to go.

  She begins packing up her things.

  “It’s only five minutes to,” Svetlana points out, helpfully.

  “I can read a clock,” Katya tells her. “I am going home.”

  Svetlana watches Katya’s swift, easy movements. Her admiration of her beautiful superior, with her tall, slim figure and her ink-black hair and eyes has turned to envy over the past year, and even dislike. Svetlana too is pretty in her own way, and as helpful as she can be, and she has tried to make Katya like her, but she will not.

  The school bell rings, and a dulled scraping of chairs in thirty rooms above and around them penetrates the thick, solid blocks of the office walls. Katya looks up at her co-worker, and smiles, more kindly. The girl is pleased, and smiles back, coyly, but not without a desperation behind her light eyes that makes Katya shiver inwardly. But Katya smiles again, anyway, before looking back to her own desk, where she picks up her bag. She waits for a moment and listens. Outside the office door, a hundred pairs of feet hustle through the corridor. There is no stampede for the door; even getting out of this place cannot inspire these children with enthusiasm, Katya thinks.

  She pushes back her own metal chair, and reaches for her coat.

  “Bye, Svetlana,” she says.

  “Bye, Katya.” There is a pause – enough to mark a change of subject, but not enough to allow Katya to escape.

  “Doing anything tonight?” Svetlana asks, and her sugary friendliness makes Katya’s skin crawl.

  “No.” She is seeing Alexander. She will go to his apartment, where he wants to cook dinner for her. But that is something private. Even when it has nothing to do with her clandestine work, Katya has never been one to speak of her internal life, of thoughts and feelings, even to her few friends.

  “No,” she repeats. “You?” she asks, politely, although she does not really care.

  “I am re-reading Comrade Stalin’s speeches. A little every evening,” Svetlana replies.

  That should be a stimulating night, thinks Katya, but her eyes lose nothing of their polite smile. “They are very interesting,” she says. “Very good.”

  “I know, they….”

  “I have to go.”

  “Going home, Katya?” she asks.

  “I already said that,” is the curt reply.

  “Oh.” Svetlana looks down at her account books once again. “It’s just… you don’t always go straight home after work. Do you?”

  Katya resists the impulsive response, which is to turn and stare sharply at the girl, to evaluate the meaning of her words. Instead, she keeps her head down where it was, in her bag, looking for her hat, and when she finds it, she pulls it out and looks at her with a sigh and says, “Don’t you have anything else to worry about?”

  Taking a step or two forward, so that she is standing even nearer to the girl in the oppressive office that they share, Katya puts on the hat, and dons her coat and gloves, slowly and methodically, pulling each woollen casing over each of her own slender fingers. Her eyes are softer now, dancing, with a hint of smiling flirtation in them, and they are fixed upon the girl’s eyes. It is a dirty trick, and Katya knows it, but she holds the look anyway, and watches the girl look away, and then watches her darting eyes become inexorably drawn back. Svetlana is confused; something about Katya makes her heart beat heavily and her stomach feel weak.

  “See you tomorrow, Svetlana,” she says as she walks out at last.

  “See you tomorrow.” The voice is whispery, hopeful.

  Why do you play such games? Katya asks herself. If she is dangerous she will only become more so if you tease her like that. But she does not stop to think about it any more. When she steps outside, the snow is still falling, and with a feeling of pleasure she steps into the tumbling flakes, thinking briefly of the boy in the corridor, and the evening still to come.

  His apartment building is new of course, built high and wide, and it overlooks the river. It is no more than twenty years old, and has been built specifically to house government employees; particularly the privileged ones. His own rooms are bright, and very warm; the heated air feels stolen away from some distant, tropical place. The place is brilliantly illuminated with lamps, candles, wall mounted lights. She walks in from the early evening gloom, and immediately she has entered another, more welcoming, more pleasurable world. She places her coat into his waiting hands, and catches the clean, soapy scent of his hair when he leans to kiss her cheek. While he goes to pour them each a glass of vodka, she looks around. What must it cost for the electricity to light this building? And the gas to heat it? Yet who would not want to live here always?

  “What are you thinking about?” he asks, handing her a glass.

  “How lig
ht it is in here.”

  “A privilege that I enjoy to the fullest,” he tells her. “I hate the dark.”

  “Like a little boy?” she smiles.

  “Well, not the darkness really. I mean, the dreary, grey light of winter. The dusk at any time. That sort of thing.”

  “Yes,” she says. “I know what you mean. It can be oppressive.”

  In the kitchen she stands watching him. He has a chicken. Whole and uncut, and it is roasting in the black oven with potatoes. She watches him cut up winter vegetables and toss them in a dressing of vinegar and a little oil and salt. She offers to help him, but he refuses.

  “I love doing this.”

  She can see that he does. His fingers move with grace and feeling, weighing the knife, scooping up the strips of carrot and cabbage and beetroot, stirring at simmering pots.

  “You look very happy.”

  He stops stirring to look at her, and his large brown eyes are serious and kind.

  “I am happy,” he says. “I am happy that we met. And that you are here now.”

  “Thank you.” She is slightly embarrassed by his openness. It is not what she is used to, and she walks away a little, under pretence of looking into the oven. Gently, she pulls open the door, and glances in at the roasting bird.

  As they eat, he tells her that he works as a first secretary to a minister, a good, trustworthy position. She nods, seriously, without too much interest. She does not want to think about this now. Her first task is to get to know him, let him feel he knows her, and let him begin to love her. There will be time later for finding out these practical things. For now, she remains wholly absorbed by the contents of her plate. The flesh of the chicken is soft and melting, it possesses a texture and taste she has never before encountered, and that bears no resemblance to the stringy specimens of fowl she has eaten prior to this.

  “This is an incredible meal,” she says. He nods and thanks her.

  “Who do you work for, Alexander?” she asks, and her eyes have a glow in them, as though she is sharing a joke with herself.

  “A government minister,” he repeats.

  “From the quality of this chicken, I think it must be Khrushchev himself,” she jokes. He laughs, but shakes his head.

  “The chicken was not a privilege. At least, not directly. You know Misha?”

  “Yes, of course,” she replies. “We were friends growing up. Not that close, but we saw each other occassionally.”

  “We were best friends, when we were boys. He was a genius with physics and mathematics. All the subjects I hated. He’d help me with my science homework, and I’d help him with history and literature. He’s still one of my closest friends. The closest, probably.”

  She says nothing to this, and he shakes his head slightly, to draw himself away from the dark beauty of her eyes, watching him.

  “Anyway, his grandmother is part of a small kolkhoz, out in the country. She raises all her own chickens and a few pigs and goats. His father was coming in to the city a few days ago, so I gave him the cash for her best chicken, and he carried it with him on the train. Under his jacket. Flapping away, no doubt. And here it is.”

  She smiles at the story. “Do you always go to this much trouble for food?”

  “This was an exceptional occasion,” he tells her. “But yes, I enjoy good food – when one can get it. Life can be full of small pleasures, if you take some time now and then to enjoy them.”

  “Most people don’t,” she says, which is the closest she can get to saying anything about herself.

  “Why do you say that?” he asks, not because he disagrees, but because he would like to hear her thoughts, to draw her out of her reserve.

  She takes a drink and considers. “I think people are too used to thinking about the past or the future. There is no consideration for the present. It is taken for granted.”

  “Perhaps that is because many people are unhappy with their lot in life. They are hoping for a better future. That is the promise this country has made them.”

  She is surprised at his sympathy for people less well off than himself, but also irritated at his politician’s talk of promises.

  “Those promises have been made for many years,” she says.

  “What do you suggest?”

  She has already noted four places where bugs may be in this government apartment, and anyway, her true thoughts do not concern him.

  “At least the worst is over,” she says.

  “Yes. The worst is over. Now, after the long winter, comes ottepel.” The snow melt. Khrushchev’s famous “thaw”, after the stiff, frozen years of Stalin’s rule. He carves more of the meat, and with a smile of thanks she holds up her plate to accept it.

  He does not, that evening, specify which minister he works for, but Misha has already told her. She feels edgy, suddenly – nervous, irritable. She takes a few deep, controlled breaths, breaths that he will not notice, and she tries to think. What is troubling her? She smiles at him, and considers. If she is to be honest with herself, she has found that she likes Alexander, more than she can remember ever liking anyone. In the tiredness of the late evening, she wishes for a moment that the calculation and evaluation and consideration of how to steal his secrets would not have to constantly play inside her head, even though she knows that to put them aside, even for a moment, would leave her exposed. They are walking outside now, a walk after dinner, in the wide snowy streets. She has only been trying to do this for a few weeks, and she is already having trouble with him. He is arousing unexpected, unusual feelings in her. He seems to be inspiring respect, and gentleness in her, perhaps because he demonstrates those qualities himself.

  “I like my work,” he says, when she asks him.

  “Passionately?”

  “No. How can you be passionate about something you have not chosen to do?”

  “Then why not do something else?” she asks.

  “Is that how things work in the Soviet Union?” he says, his voice lower. He offers her his hand as they climb over a snow bank to get closer to the softly iced expanse of the river. His grip is firm, and he does not try to hold on for longer than is necessary. They stop under a streetlight and she looks out over the cool blue-white of the frozen water on one side, and the gracious, expansive street on the other, where the buildings are tinted yellow from the lights and the snow. It is how she imagines a deserted Parisian boulevard must look and feel. He follows her gaze, trying to see what she sees.

  “It’s beautiful,” she tells him.

  “Yes.”

  And a world away from the Moscow I live in, and that most people know, she thinks.

  They have walked as far as the square, near the Kremlin. There has been a new, light snowfall since the early evening, that has been largely undisturbed. The purity of the crisp, white carpet gives a magical quality to the square and it decorates like fine sugar the tops of distant, golden Kremlin domes and spires that rise up from the walls that close them in. He takes hold of her hand as they both absorb the beauty before them, and she feels warm suddenly, even out here in the cold. Then she quickly glances up, as she always does, at the building that towers over the street ahead of them. It is a habit of hers, a reminder, and at this moment she suddenly feels she needs that reminder more than ever.

  “You like that building?” he asks her, noticing.

  She shakes her head. “No. Do you know about it?”

  He knows that on either side of the grey monolith of the main structure, the wings of the building are designed in slightly differing styles. It looks unbalanced and confused, despite its air of solidity.

  “The architect who designed it submitted two different plans to Stalin,” she tells him. “And they were both signed off. Or perhaps neither were. Something like that – I forget the details. Anyway, the man was too terrified to ask which design Comrade Stalin actually wanted. So he built half one way, and the other half the other way.”

  “Is that true?” he asks her.

&nbs
p; She shrugs and smiles, but without pleasure. “I think so. It could be true anyway, and that’s what is important.”

  He has nothing to say to her in response, so he stays silent, and they keep walking, footsteps crisp on the frosted pavement.

  “Tell me about the school. I want to know more,” he says. Of course, she thinks. You cannot say much about your work. Not to someone you don’t know and trust. Not yet.

  “No,” she replies. “I want to know. How did you get where you are? You are so young, and so…”

  “So what?”

  “Nice,” she laughs. “Tell me, please.”

  “All right, I will,” he says. “Come back for some tea, and I will tell you.”

  An image of his father swims into Alexander’s head from the far edges of his mind, where it usually sits. An image of him excited, angered, passionate, brimming with ideas and with confidence. He was, still is, a good man, honest, and with compassion. At the time of the revolution, he was very young, the son of a merchant, who had inherited a good business from his own father. When the revolution occurred his inherent idealism was overwhelmed with the possibilities laid out by Lenin and his group. He joined the Party at that time, giving up the comfort and security with which he had been brought up, happily and without pride in his actions. He saw no use in arguing for a better, more equal Russia if he himself was not prepared to take the first step. He worked hard and long, moving up through the ranks of the local Komsommol, before taking the next steps into central government. When he came upon corruption and injustice, he explained it away as being an inevitable part of any human endeavour. It would not last long, could not last long, in the new Soviet Union.

  Stalin had been his undoing. Not in any physical sense. He was not fired, or sent into exile, or killed. But towards the end, his mind and heart began to silently doubt what it had believed in for so many years as Stalin’s methods of rule became unmistakeable, and unexplainable. The pervasive fear that you could sniff in the air like hanging smoke, the terror, the petty-minded spying on one’s own family and friends, became too widespread to be passed over or explained away. It began to be apparent to him that almost everyone he knew, from colleagues to friends, were acting from the wrong motives. They only spoke the words that were expected or required; their work was inspired by fear, not belief. It nearly broke him, Alexander told her. He continued to work, but his passion was dying away, like a marching song that fades as the parade moves out of sight. And then when Stalin died, and the political manoeuvrings of his rivals were over, the ascendance of Khrushchev had given him some slight relief. He had used his remaining contacts, and had started Alexander at once on his career in government service.