Despite the Falling Snow

by Shamim Sarif

  “Just give me a bowl of fruit,” Estelle says. “I can pose as a still life.”

  “I see you as anything but a still life,” says Lauren. “Just relax. The point of sketching someone at home is to have them be comfortable.”

  “In their native habitat,” comments Estelle.

  “Exactly.”

  Lauren refuses the offer of a drink or breakfast; she has a nervous tension in her stomach and in her hands which, if harnessed correctly, can be helpful to her work. She begins drawing, talking to Estelle as she does so, inconsequential chatter, the kind that she can manage easily in order to keep her subject relaxed and interested. They talk about her husband’s work, and then her daughter’s.

  “Melissa can be a little short sometimes,” Estelle says suddenly. “She doesn’t even realise she’s being less than gracious. Her mind is always moving at a hundred miles an hour, always thinking about the next thing, and words or communicating just take up precious time.”

  “Is that how your husband is?” Lauren asks.

  Estelle smiles. “Yes. But he means well, mostly.”

  “And if it’s too much bother for either of them to communicate, who does that leave for you to talk to?”

  “I don’t know,” says Estelle wryly. “Maybe I should get a therapist.”

  Lauren smiles. “Well, how about talking to me? Tell me about your story ideas.”

  “For my great novel, you mean?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Don’t laugh,” Estelle instructs.

  “I won’t.”

  “Alexander and Katya.”

  Lauren laughs.

  “I’m serious,” says Estelle. “Your uncle is an intriguing person, and Katya – well, there’s just a ton of drama and mystery that seems to hang around her.”

  “It’s not that mysterious,” Lauren replies. “He just doesn’t like to talk about it much.”

  “Why not? Can the wounds be that raw after so many years?”

  Lauren stops drawing. “I don’t think it’s that. He feels somehow responsible, and therefore guilty, for what happened to her. He had to make some hard choices before he left Russia. And she was the love of his life. I guess in the end, he’s not a heart-on-his-sleeve kind of guy. He’d rather keep it all in.”

  “Which doesn’t make my job any easier. Anyway, I just want to use them as a starting point. For a fictional piece. Unless he authorizes me to write the official version.”

  “I’d love to see that,” Lauren says, and Estelle looks at her, unsure if she detects a note of sarcasm, but Lauren gives her a glance of confirmation.

  “No, I really would. You see, for a long time now, I’ve thought there was a lot more to the story than even Uncle Alex knows. He was out of the loop of what was happening. And there are loose ends that just don’t tie up. I don’t think he was as responsible as he thinks.”

  “You’re forgetting – I still don’t know what happened. Only that your aunt died. Care to fill me in?”

  Lauren rubs at her eyes with her hand. “I’d love to. But I think we should clear it with your lead character first, don’t you?”

  “I suppose.”

  Lauren looks at her closely.

  “You have the eyes of a naughty child, Estelle. I need to find a way to capture that.”

  Estelle gives a half-smile, but does not reply. She is involved in the idea of this story. Of Katya. A different era, an intensity of life so far removed from her own. Aware that she has fallen silent, she looks at Lauren, but she too is absorbed, her attention moving more fully to the paper before her, to the lines of charcoal darting over the page. Estelle sits watching the young woman working, and she can feel that she is rapt, excited, interested. Everything that Estelle is afraid to allow in herself when she sits at her desk. She is suddenly overtaken by desire, and wishes she was there now, with the glow from the setting sun on the wall behind her, and her pen flowing across the lined sheets. When Lauren leaves, she decides, she will write. Anything. She will describe the portrait of Katya. Then she will describe Katya herself, or rather the character she wants to begin sketching in.

  “So you wouldn’t mind me using your story as a starting point?”

  Alexander has only been in Estelle’s apartment for ten minutes, but he is already ambivalent about having come. At first he had been secretly disappointed that Lauren preferred to sketch Estelle in her own home rather than having her come to their house. He would have liked to have constant proximity to his new friend without having to contrive reasons for it. But he has resolved to simply acknowledge the fact that he would like to see Estelle more, and so has offered to come and walk his niece back home when she has completed her morning’s work. For Estelle, Alexander’s arrival seems the perfect opportunity to ask the question that has been in her mind all morning.

  “You’re planning a whole novel?” Alexander asks, and she nods.

  He is pleased that she is excited about writing, though disturbed about her choice of subject. Her eagerness and enthusiasm are clear to him, and she seems different, more vibrant, when she talks about working. After years assisting her husband, probably with little thanks, and no outlet of her own, she has something that is driving her.

  “I’ve already started researching. Books and the internet. The big impression I’ve found so far is that Khrushchev made a huge difference. Just in attitude, and atmosphere, after the dictatorship of Stalin. There was less suspicion, more openness.”

  Alexander nods. “Yes, it was like that, mostly. Khrushchev was not infallible – he made many mistakes, often because he was rushing through changes to avoid opposition, but he was a big step forward. They called it the “thaw”, that period. That’s when I was working in the government.”

  “It must have been an exciting time.”

  Alexander studies his hands, thinking. It has been so long since he has thought of that time and place as anything other than threatening, and choking. Had he thought it exciting once, when he first started? Probably. But that was before Katya. Before the very institutions that he had been reared to respect and serve began to threaten what he loved most. He blinks away the thoughts.

  “You seem happy,” is all he says to Estelle, and the directness of his comment makes her look away for a second.

  “I guess I am,” she says. “But I know these things are hard for you to talk about, and contrary to the impression I may have given up till know, I hate to be a pushy broad.”

  “I can’t pretend that I relish going over things that I haven’t considered for many, many years,” he says.

  “Maybe it’s time you considered them again,” Lauren says.

  He is suddenly irritated. “I’ve kept them at arm’s length all this time for a reason. They are painful subjects for me.”

  “I know, but the more I’ve looked into my aunt’s life, the more discrepancies there seem to be.”

  Alexander rubs his chin. “Can anything be changed by all of this?” he asks.

  “Maybe,” Lauren says. Her face shows determination and life – the same qualities he recognises in himself, though perhaps not as frequently any more.

  “Katya is dead,” he says. He is getting tired of saying it, and of thinking it. “Nothing is going to resurrect her. Estelle, I want you to write, more than anything. I think it’s wonderful, and if I can help by providing your starting point, or even with telling you what I know about Katya’s life and death, I guess I’ll do so. But I won’t have a whole investigation re-opened. Nothing can be served by all this re-hashing and probing.”

  His hand hits the table for emphasis, and although he has meant the gesture merely to emphasise his point, to his embarrassment, the teacups shake slightly.

  “That’s not in the spirit of study and enlightenment, Mr Ivanov.”

  He turns to see a looming outline in the doorway.

  “Professor Johnson.” Alexander stands and shakes his hand.

  “Enlightenment can never be achieved in this case. It i
s always a good thing to know when to leave something be.”

  “Stop, stop,” the professor replies, a note of delight in his low voice. “You’re opening up too many wonderful debates all at once. The nature of enlightenment, the nature of achievement itself…. Ah, we could talk for hours.”

  Alexander sits back down. “With respect, I don’t want to open up debates. I want to close them.”

  Professor Johnson does not comment further, only nods, and then makes his way to the fridge. Estelle is up already, bringing him a glass, into which he pours the contents of a can of tonic water. He drinks a sip and looks at the company at the table.

  “Excellent protection against malaria,” he informs them, taking another drink.

  Lauren laughs, and his eyes fix on her. They are fierce, and birdlike, giving the impression of continual movement and extreme concentration at the same time.

  “You remind me somewhat of my wife,” he tells her. “Though not superficially you understand. Something in the eyes. ‘All the wild summer was in her gaze…’”

  Estelle smiles, but busies herself with scooping tea leaves into a pot.

  “Thank you,” says Lauren.

  “William Butler Yeats,” continues the professor. “The quotation, just now.”

  He is a big man, broad in the chest and shoulders, and yet somehow he contrives to look lanky. He walks slowly back to the door of the kitchen, placing his legs gingerly, as though they have not been tested away from the confines of his desk for some time. He shakes his head when Lauren asks him if he will join them.

  “I don’t take afternoon tea,” he tells her. “I have to save something to look forward to in my old age.”

  Alexander can see Lauren examining his face and frame, placing him against an empty canvas even as she smiles at his joke. And then something happens, something which Alexander would give much to be able to undo. He reaches for his teacup, but Estelle is still pouring milk into it, and their hands brush, and without thinking, he reaches out to hold hers to steady it. The touch is brief, intimate, and he feels it in every fibre of his body, and a second after the nervous, pleasurable tension has faded, he is appalled that the professor might also have seen and sensed what has happened. Estelle glances up at her husband as she pours Lauren’s cup, but he is not looking at either of them. Alexander cannot help but feel, however, that the professor does not miss a trick.

  Estelle’s voice is bright when she breaks the pause. “I’m stealing Lauren’s research on Russia for my own purposes.”

  There is a slight snort from her husband, a residual response to what he has just seen perhaps. “Not another book attempt, my dear?” he says.

  Estelle is silent, compact, pulled in suddenly. Like an animal on alert. Professor Johnson smiles at once.

  “You know, you mustn’t feel badly about appropriating Lauren’s research. After all, much of academia rests on the study of stolen books and papers.”

  Perhaps he feels badly for having denigrated her attempted work, or perhaps, Alexander thinks, he just feels badly that he did so in front of their guests. But Estelle’s glance at her husband is kind, if cautious.

  “Never mind, Frank,” she says, and he seems to take this as an absolution of a sort, and with a cough, he turns and walks back down the hallway.

  It takes almost two hours for them to go over the history of Alexander’s life with Katya as he remembers it. His discoveries, her decisions, and then her death; the central issue, as overpowering as a poisonous gas to the rest of the conversation. It is here that he has always been at a disadvantage when faced with Lauren’s probing and questions – for what he knows is hearsay. He was not there before, during or afterwards, and he cannot therefore know precisely what happened and when. That is Lauren’s point, one that seems to make sense to Estelle also. It is now, for the first time, that Alexander recognises something of Melissa in her mother’s clear eyes, a reflection of the careful sifting going on in her mind.

  “I think there’s a lot more that we could try and find out. Especially now,” Lauren tells him.

  “Why now?” asks Alexander.

  “Because I found out that Misha is alive,” she says gently. “Their best friend in Russia,” she adds, for Estelle’s benefit.

  Why this should hit him as a physical shock, he has no idea. It is not as though he had known or believed that Misha was dead. But for all the years since he has left Russia, his thoughts of Misha have been like those of Katya – rooted in the past. In some ways, it was as though they had died together. He had rarely thought of the possibility that he still existed, and he had always told himself that this was because it would have been too difficult and too dangerous for them to have kept in touch for the first decades. This was true enough, but if he is to be honest with himself, that close friendship with Misha was also the strongest remaining reminder of Katya, and Alexander had found in the immediate aftermath of her death that he wanted a clean break, a pure, deep cut that would sever him from their country, and from everyone and everything in it.

  The women watch him expectantly, but he is at a loss. He has been feeling his grip on the afternoon, on the whole situation, loosening for some time, and now his head feels light and as though it is filled with cotton wool or the meringues that he is so fond of. Everything is soft, there is nothing solid to grasp hold of, and he hates the feeling. It is how he has imagined the onset of senility might one day feel, and the very idea makes him want to shiver.

  “How long have you been keeping all this from me?”

  “I wasn’t hiding it. I didn’t know if we’d find him, and I didn’t want to bother you with it unless we did. It started when I went to Moscow last year. I couldn’t find him then, so I hired a private agency – a detective, really – to look for him.”

  Alexander nods. “And?”

  “They’ve found him. A couple of weeks ago. Still living in Moscow. I’ve been trying to find a good time to tell you.”

  Alexander feels the last thread unravel in his mind. He can no longer think or feel. He touches his forehead, and Estelle hands him a glass of water.

  “He was in Moscow, when Katya died. He was her best friend, and yours. He must have tried to learn something about her death. And since you were never able to speak to him, you don’t know what he might have found out.”

  “You want to see him?”

  “I think so. Don’t you?” Lauren’s hand is on his shoulder. Estelle is sitting forward in her chair.

  “I think we should.” Lauren continues. “I think a trip out there would help a lot. I could help you figure out the full story, and Estelle says she’d love to join us – it would be a great chance for her to do some research. I think it would be good for all of us. Maybe it would help you, Uncle Alex.”

  He does not reply. His throat is still dry, despite the sips of water.

  “Uncle Alex? All I’m trying to say is that there are all these missing pieces, and maybe it won’t change anything, but don’t you want to know the whole story, once and for all? You might even find out that you weren’t as responsible as you feel. That’s what I’m hoping,” she adds, her voice dropping.

  He is listening, she knows, but he makes no sign, he is just leaning forward, eyes staring at the floor. When she looks up at Estelle, the blue eyes are thoughtful. With a glance at Lauren, Estelle shakes her head slightly, and Lauren nods, knowing she has taken things as far as she can for the moment.

  Lauren has an image of her own mind as a canvas, spattered with wildly coloured paints, colours that are random, without any coherence, colours that are bleeding into each other, forming a coagulated mass that is confusion and uncertainty. This bewilderment has been with her since she began having doubts about her work. But now, the re-visiting of Katya’s story is also seeping into the mess. She has not previously had any doubts about looking for Misha and going to meet him – she has been more and more convinced that the loose ends, the unknown parts, of Katya’s story should be found. How can partia
l information be a good thing, when the full story is potentially available. How can ignorance be better than knowledge? But the distress she is causing her uncle is causing her to reconsider...

  She is reading a memoir about Africa when the telephone rings. She is still surrounded by dunes and desert as she answers, so it takes her a moment to realise that it is Melissa, but when she does recognise the voice, the book drops and she sits up. After the standard pleasantries, she offers to call Alexander to the phone, but Melissa refuses.

  “I’m calling for you, actually.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ve just been given two front-row seats to the ballet. For tonight. And I wondered if you’d be interested to join me. It’s The Nutcracker.”

  “I’d love to.” Lauren feels the confusion in her mind spreading again, although now the feeling is a pleasant, heady one. As soon as she has accepted it occurs to her that perhaps she should be checking with her uncle first regarding the etiquette of the impending business deal. They arrange to meet at the theatre, and only when she hangs up the phone does it occur to Lauren that perhaps this invitation is part of closing that deal as far as Melissa is concerned.

  The theatre is warm and dark, the lights of the stage reflected softly back onto the entranced faces of the audience. Without moving her head, Melissa takes a sidelong glance at Lauren. She seems fully engrossed by the dancing, her eyes following the light movement of the leads, her mouth slightly upturned, happy. Melissa looks back at the stage. The music is dramatic and moving, but she does not know enough about ballet to be able to tell whether the dancers are superlative or merely good. She will ask Lauren later what she thinks. In the meantime, she is a little restless. There is still another hour to go, and Melissa can think of a number of things she could do in that precious amount of time – she could be working, or working out; she could be catching up with the news on TV, or even taking a long soak in the bath, a luxury she rarely has time for. But she is here, with a guest, and she makes an effort to relax about the wasted time. When did life become so frantic, that to sit still, listening to music that she cannot even imagine having the brilliance to write, become something she has to remind herself she enjoys? Clearly, Lauren does not see it that way, nor do most of the people sitting here around her. With cool analysis, Melissa wonders if she is slowly losing whatever capacity she once had for pure pleasure, for learning, for art, for spending her time outside work in a way that might not be the most efficient, but that could be the most enlightening. She resolves to relax and enjoy the rest of the performance. Then, later, she will make an effort to schedule in some down time, perhaps an art gallery. Something she can ask Lauren to show her.