Despite the Falling Snow

by Shamim Sarif

  “That much is obvious. But what does it matter? I started the ball rolling. I started the investigation.”

  “But someone else finished it. Brutally. No arrest, no trial. This was not Khrushchev’s new way of working, was it?”

  “It could have been,” he says. “We’ve been through this before. Things don’t change overnight in any government. Khrushchev made big strides towards transparency and accountability, but old ways die hard. And the KGB dies the hardest. To them, what Katya and I did was treason.”

  “And what about Misha?” she asks quietly.

  The telephone rings, and gratefully, he reaches over and picks it up. There is a gruff, unfamiliar voice at the other end.

  “Is this Mr Ivanov?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “President of the Chekhov Appreciation Society?” A brief bark of a laugh follows. The Professor. Alexander begins to feel a faint throb of headache invade his temples.

  “Is everything all right, Professor Johnson?”

  “Ah, that’s the thing, you see. I’m not quite sure.”

  Alexander is not in the mood for games, and he waits, silently, for an explanation.

  “I would love to meet you, if you’ve time,” Frank Johnson offers at last. “There are some things I would like to discuss with you.”

  “Such as?”

  “I would like us to meet face to face.”

  “Very well.”

  “Good,” he says. “Can you come tomorrow?”

  “Where?”

  “To my office. At the university. English Department, in the Grayston Building on….”

  “I know it.”

  “Ten o’clock.” It is a statement, not a question.

  “Noon would be better for me,” Alexander replies as politely as he can. In truth, the time is of no great relevance, but he feels an impulse to bridle against the professor’s presumption. He hears some pages turn, and above the noise of paper, a sigh of irritation.

  “I have a tutorial at twelve. How about eleven?”

  “Sounds fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Lauren is watching him, confused.

  “What’s going on?”

  Alexander takes a small bite of his eggs, then pushes the plate away and rubs at his aching head. “The professor wants a duel,” he says.

  The following day dawns with the kind of pure, hard sunlight that suggests coldness, and Alexander is up early, sitting at his study desk, high on the top floor of his house, under the sloping eaves, watching the blue of the sky turn from a deep azure to a pale, icy sheen. Padding into the kitchen in his robe and slippers, he prepares bacon and pancakes for breakfast, leaving the door wide open in the hope that the scent will drift up the stairs and wake Lauren.

  Within a few minutes, she appears, hair wet from the shower, and sits down at the table with her head leaning tiredly on her hand.

  “You smell lovely,” he says. “Very clean.”

  “I am very clean. What smells so good?”

  He fills a plate and deposits it in front of her.

  “My god. I’m going to weigh three hundred pounds by the time I leave here.”

  “Do you want me to take it away?” he asks, and her arms move protectively around the plate. He watches her for a moment, pleased that something has healed between them.

  “What is it?”

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday.” He sits down and in the next few minutes, tries to explain to her about Misha. How they had been in the same class at school since the age of eight, how the ties of friendship that had bound them were far too strong to be pulled apart even by slightly differing ideologies or political loyalties.

  “But you did differ?”

  “Not much. At university, we both questioned the government a lot – quietly though. We talked for hours about the changes we wanted to see, how we would make a difference from within. You see, he was in the system, like I was – he had a good research job in an exciting field – aviation and space exploration. Remember, the Soviets launched the world’s first satellite in fifty-seven. It was a great time for him, but he couldn’t discuss it much; so much was new and secret. I remember, we had such a celebration when he got the job. My first serious hangover.” Alexander smiles at the recollection.

  “I was so proud of him, and yet I was anxious too – eager to find my place in life, to start working as he had. He graduated from the Institute of Aviation; he’d always wanted to fly. He was as disillusioned as Katya and myself after the years of Stalin. But, though he hated to admit it, I think he felt there were possibilities for change under Khrushchev.”

  “Why did he hate to admit it?”

  Alexander shrugs. “That was Misha. He had this cynical, devil may-care, attitude, and that meant not appearing to give much respect to anything or anyone.”

  “He sounds like a character,” she tells him. Then, more softly, she adds. “And I look forward to meeting him.”

  Alexander stands up from his chair as though she has thrown her hot tea in his lap. Then he pauses, trying to cover the sharpness of the movement.

  “I’d better get ready,” he says, and goes upstairs.

  Under the soothing pulse of a very hot, very long shower, he tries to argue down his internal resistance to Lauren’s and Estelle’s planned trip to Russia. Either they will find something, or they won’t. If they do not, which is the likely outcome, nothing will have changed. If they do, would he not want to know any other detail, any other small crumb of information about Katya that they could bring back to him? Only when he starts dressing does he remember the professor, and he consciously takes a little extra time in choosing what to wear. It is strange that after the turmoil of the past few weeks, and despite the anger and headaches, there is a part of him that feels more alive and invigorated than he has for months. Perhaps because there are challenges to face once more. A part of him is longing for the pain of Katya’s loss to be fully understood and then buried forever. Another part wants Estelle to help with that process. And yet perhaps all that has happened is that he has begun to acknowledge something he has pushed aside for too many years – that he has dealt badly with the aftermath of his wife’s death; that he has taken the easier route away from it, a route of disassociation, not involvement. He used his grief and horror as a good enough excuse not to return to that worst of times, but forty years later, it is becoming apparent to him that he has been naïve to think that he has ever had a choice in the matter. Perhaps all that he has managed to do over the course of his life is to delay the same moment of confrontation he has been trying so quietly to erase.

  Lauren is still in the kitchen when he comes back downstairs. She has a fresh pot of tea and a newspaper before her, and has waited here to try and win him back, to once again smooth over the roughness that keeps edging between them. Her eyes look him up and down over the edge of the broadsheet.

  “It doesn’t matter how spiffy you look, he’s going to hate you. Probably more so.”

  Alexander laughs. “Should I wear my oldest clothes and forget to brush my teeth?”

  She wrinkles her nose. “Maybe not. Whatever you do, you’ll never compete with his rumpled, professor look. Better to stick with what you know.” She stands and kisses him on the cheek.

  “You look very handsome,” she says. “Good luck.”

  With the aid of various signposts, he makes his way to the English Department. Inside, the brick building is dark and poky, though impressively panelled in wood, and in the gloomy lobby he sees the back of a woman typing and speaking on the telephone. After a few moments’ wait, he looks in at her door.

  “Professor Johnson?” he whispers.

  She places a hand over the receiver. “Up the stairs – third door on the left.”

  “Thank you.”

  His name is written in rolling script on a small card insecurely attached to his door. There is an air of impermanence about the sign, which adds to the gloom of the place. Alexander
removes his hat and knocks firmly. There is a rustling of papers, and a gruff “Come,” and he enters.

  Frank Johnson’s thick iron-coloured hair is swept back over a craggy forehead and disjointed nose, but several locks have escaped and hang limply over his brow. He is closely shaven, but has cut himself recently, low on the chin. He stands to shake Alexander’s hand, and he seems even taller somehow, perhaps more so in the confines of this small room – perhaps four or five inches over six foot.

  “Good of you to come. Sit down, sit down.” He points vaguely behind Alexander. There is an old, wooden chair which holds a tall pile of books, including a complete works of Shakespeare. Professor Johnson reaches over and tries ineffectually to push the books away, but his action seems surprisingly frail. Alexander turns to help, and together they clear the books onto the floor, and he sits down.

  “Something to drink?” the professor asks.

  “No, thank you.”

  “I’ll open a window. It can get stuffy in here, and I tend not to notice, you know.”

  Alexander acquiesces gratefully – the room is more than a little oppressive. While he waits, he looks at the bookshelves that surround them. As he would somehow expect in an English professor’s room, they are stacked to overflowing, with books placed horizontally wherever there is the slightest bit of space. Further tall stacks lie on the tops of the bookcases themselves. As he glances at titles and authors, he can see that the books had once been laid out in some kind of chronological and regional order, but that the thread has been lost somewhere along the way. Directly in front of him is a case devoted entirely, it seems, to Irish works.

  The professor is watching him when Alexander turns back.

  “I like books.”

  “I noticed. Irish Literature?”

  “A fondness of mine, if not truly a speciality. The Irish have a certain…” He sighs, and places his enormous hands behind his head while he selects the right words. “A certain…wildness, a certain desperate enjoyment of life which often overlays a certain darkness and blackness of soul. Which reminds me not a little,” he says, with a sideways glance at his guest, “of the Russian temperament.”

  Alexander is at a loss. The comment sounds innocuously general, but is clearly aimed at him.

  “You don’t agree?” Professor Johnson asks.

  “On the contrary, I think there is a lot of truth in what you say. But I also think one has to be wary of speaking in generalisations.”

  “Indeed. Let’s choose some specifics, then.”

  “Very well.”

  “I wish to know a little more about you, Mr Ivanov.”

  “Please, call me Alexander.”

  “Thank you. I wish to know more about you, Alexander.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “You may. How can I put this?” His fingers tap along the paper on his desk and he glances about, as though searching for a book that will perhaps help to explain his meaning.

  “I’m a man of routine. I am at home almost all of the time, and then two days in the week, I come here, to this esteemed institution of learning, in order to tease out some semblance of a coherent thought process from the young minds entrusted to me.”

  “You don’t work full time?”

  “I work all the time. But not here. At home.”

  “I see.”

  “Wherever I’m working, I am home every evening, and I have dinner there with my wife.”

  Alexander catches the first gleam of suggestion in the professor’s eye. He nods in a non-committal way, and waits for him to continue.

  “Every evening we talk a little. About various things. Our daughter. My work, even, now and then, though I blame myself for not being as open and articulate as I would like on that subject. We talk about music sometimes. Sometimes,” he says, staring off at a point somewhere behind Alexander, “we don’t speak much at all. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, we don’t speak about Russia.”

  Alexander wonders if the professor rambles this much in his tutorials.

  “You don’t discuss Russia?” he repeats.

  “Ah,” the professor says, lifting a triumphant finger, as though Alexander has somehow proved a point for him. “We never used to. We never used to. And then, out of the blue one day, we were eating dinner, and Estelle begins talking to me about Russia, and Stalin, and Khrushchev. Asking me questions, you know.”

  Alexander nods, shifts slightly in the chair, which is uncomfortable.

  “I thought nothing of it at the time,” Professor Johnson continues, “and I answered her questions as best I could, which is to say, I answered them rather poorly. Russian history is not my best subject.”

  “I’m sure you know a lot…”

  He raises a hand. “Anyway, I discussed various things with her, and then she mentioned you, and how you had met, and so on, and that was the end of that. Or so I thought.”

  “And then,” he says, “we met, you and I, over tea, a couple of times. And now it’s beginning to happen again.” He sits back with some satisfaction, as though his explanation is now complete.

  “What’s happening again?”Alexander asks, puzzled.

  “The Russia questions. Again, and again. And again. And do you know something? Every last one of those conversations somehow ends up being about you.”

  “Oh.”

  “I am not a brilliant man when it comes to emotional or psychological affairs,” he says. “But it would take a dunce not to make the obvious conclusion.”

  Alexander’s stomach drops. “I see,” he says quickly, hoping that the aforementioned conclusion is so obvious that there will be no further need to articulate it.

  “My wife has found something in you.” He makes it sound distasteful, as though it might be a ringworm or a virus.

  “What do you mean?” Alexander asks.

  “Something,” Professor Johnson replies, as if unsure. He pauses, and looks out of the window. “Something that attracts her. Something she does not find in me. Attention, perhaps, excitement, understanding; I have no definite idea.”

  Alexander sits forward in his seat, and assures Frank Johnson that he is a man of some integrity at least, and that he is certain that his conduct has not been inappropriate.

  The professor laughs, heartily, but the pressure of sound cannot quite cover the tone of concern beneath.

  “Inappropriate,” he repeats. “I’m sure it hasn’t. I am not, after all, accusing you of a sordid affair, or of any type of affair whatsoever.”

  Alexander holds his look. “What are you accusing me of?”

  The answer takes such a long time to come that Alexander begins to think that the question has been forgotten. Professor Johnson swings around in his chair, and looks out from the window, and all that can be heard in the tiny room is his laboured breathing, and Alexander’s own quiet shiftings on the chair. When, ever so slowly, that chair of his begins to creak back around again, Alexander feels his limbs stiffen in anticipation.

  “I accuse you,” the professor says, rubbing at his huge forehead, “of endearing yourself to my wife. Of conversing with her in a way that pleases her much more than my way. Of giving her something to look forward to each day. Of making her happier in a way, but also somehow more dissatisfied. In short, I accuse you of coming between us.”

  “We are friends, nothing more.”

  “Please…” he says, raising a hand. “You are taking her to Moscow.”

  Alexander stands up. “It seems to me that this is something you should be discussing with your wife, Professor Johnson. I don’t make her decisions for her.”

  “That’s the easier way of looking at it. You have certainly influenced her.”

  “What would you have me do? Stop seeing her?” Alexander wants to know what his view of the situation is. He does not, as yet, feel compelled to let the professor know that Estelle will be travelling to Russia without him. There is a principle at stake here.

  “There’s the thing,” Frank Johnson sa
ys. A slow smile spreads over his granite face. His teeth are a little crooked, Alexander notices. “Logically I cannot see a reason why you should. As you say, you are friends, nothing more.”

  “But?”

  There is no further comment.

  “Then what is your reservation?” Alexander asks.

  He looks down, with a sigh, and waves a hand as if to close off this particular line of conversation. When he glances up again, his dark, heavy eyes look infinitely tired.

  “You confuse me, Alexander.”

  “Imagine how I feel.”

  A brief smile at this. “You see, I can’t decide what your inner response has been to our discussion,” the professor says. “It seems to me there are two general possibilities. That as a man of integrity, as you call yourself, you feel your conduct has been, and will continue to be, nothing less than honourable, and therefore there is no need to stop…socialising with my wife. Or secondly,” he continues. “That your intentions toward her are in some way inappropriate – be they romantic or otherwise, and that, as a man of integrity, you think that perhaps you should stop seeing her.”

  Alexander sits silently for a moment, for he feels he is being pushed to agree to the latter suggestion.

  “At least in both scenarios I am a man of integrity,” is all he says. “You know, Professor, feelings rarely conform to the ‘general possibilities’ that you speak of.” He is buying himself time.

  “True, but that is very rare,” comes the reply. “I believe, Alexander, that feelings are not quite as complex as people like to give them credit for. Usually, there is one main force driving you in any given situation – jealousy, anger, compassion, even honesty – and these will condition your responses. Time and again, the same responses occur to the same situations. All part of that human condition, that people are so fond of invoking.” He turns again to the window. “You see it in history, in science; and, of course, in literature. Very little changes in novels over the years,” he says with a sigh. “Style, primarily, and the method of writing, but the rest of it, well…” He raises his hand and waves it dismissively at the window and then turns so that he is facing Alexander once more.