Despite the Falling Snow

by Shamim Sarif

  “What sort of man are you?” he asks, suddenly.

  “Modest,” Alexander replies.

  “Ha!” he barks. “Amusing, but you don’t get away that easily.”

  “Why are you concerned with my character?”

  “I may not take a minute interest in the day-to-day details of my wife’s life,” he says. “But I am interested in what makes you interesting to her.”

  “I am honest, and direct, and reasonably kind. I love learning, and I love life – I find it exhilarating most of the time.””

  “Good qualities, all. What else?”

  “I can cook.”

  A shout of laughter. “I know. Ever since I can remember my wife has been telling me that she always wanted a man that could cook. And now she has the ‘King of Catering’.”

  The silence that follows is awkward, unwieldy; and Alexander does not know how to grasp and subdue it. The professor will not look up, but watches his own large fingers, as he laces them in and out of each other. In his mind, Alexander curses Business Week for that circus-like headline.

  “Perhaps you’re making too many assumptions about what she wants,” he offers at last. “If it’s any consolation to you, I can tell you that it seems to me that your wife already has what she wants. And who.” He tries to stop there, graciously, but finds he cannot. The professor’s potential discomfort is of no concern to him at this moment.

  “Except perhaps for a little encouragement regarding other things she is interested in – like writing, or travelling. Whether she is able to write brilliantly is irrelevant. And subjective. The point is she wants to try. And the encouragement to do so may be all she lacks.”

  “Perhaps,” Frank Johnson replies abruptly, frowning. “But from what I have read of her work, which I admit, is not that much, she is not a great writer. She may improve, but the chances are that, at the end of the day, she will contribute nothing to the world by typing prose into a computer. Even I don’t attempt it. Because it’s difficult for me to encourage mediocrity. It goes against everything I stand for. I know it’s harsh in one respect, but there it is. Can you understand that?”

  Alexander nods. “Yes. It’s a view I try to uphold too. But I don’t think you’re giving her a fair chance. She’s hardly begun. And when she does begin, who sets the standard that decides whether her writing is worthwhile or not?”

  The professor frowns slightly, but does not reply. Then he reaches a big hand across his desk to the shelves of Irish literature, like a child reaching for a worn, loved blanket, and he extracts a small paperback book, whose title Alexander cannot read.

  “Joyce,” he says, raising the book. “‘The Dead.’ A fine short story. Do you know it?”

  “I’ve read it. But it has been a good while. I don’t remember much.”

  “Good. May I?”

  Alexander nods, and watches as he leafs quickly through the pages. They fall open easily at certain places, those which he particularly likes, he presumes. Why the professor has decided to read to him, he cannot say. Perhaps he feels, as Alexander himself does, that they have exhausted whatever they have to say to each other. It takes him only seconds to find the place he is looking for, but as he lifts the book to read, there is a knock at the door.

  “Two minutes,” he shouts, and there is a muffled noise in reply. “My twelve o’clock tutorial,” he says. “A good boy, but a feverish imagination. Now, where was I….” He looks back down at the book, and after a short pause to indicate the end of conversation and the beginning of the reading, he begins:

  “The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.”

  He looks up. “Have you ever loved a woman so much that you felt unable to live without her? I haven’t.”

  Alexander is deeply saddened by this admission. He would have been better pleased if Estelle was married to someone utterly devoted.

  “Yes,” he replies. “My wife, Katya.”

  “But you have managed to live without her.”

  “I have had little choice.”

  Professor Johnson shrugs, a gesture of dismissiveness, and Alexander feels he could easily hit him then, with his ironic tone and his air of superiority.

  “My life with and without my wife is something you will never know anything about.” He stands up to leave.

  The professor stands, also, quickly. “Wait a minute. You’re right. I push things too far sometimes to no real purpose. It was bad of me. I apologise. Please don’t go.”

  Alexander is burning, with anger, with sorrow, with confusion again, but he remains there. He forces himself to read the titles of a row of books behind the professor’s head. Then he takes a breath.

  “Your tutorial is waiting,” he says.

  “He will wait.”

  “I’m sure, but I must go.”

  “Do you like it?” he asks quickly, pointing at the book.

  A pause. “Very much.”

  “Good. I had a feeling that you might. Please,” he says. “Please.”

  The pleading tone sends a shiver down Alexander’s core, and he feels both contemptuous and pitiful. He does not sit down, but neither does he make a move to leave, and at once the professor continues:

  “I like this piece, that’s all. I think it is a fine, melancholy piece of writing. And I’m trying – in some sense – to learn what it means.” His large voice softens at this last sentence. He looks up. “May I continue a little?”

  Alexander nods.

  “Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead.”

  “He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey, impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.”

  The book closes with a snap.

  Alexander cannot speak. He would like to – he would like to tell Frank Johnson that he reads beautifully, for his anger has left, to be replaced by something deeper and sadder, but his throat is dry, a sensation that is becoming too familiar these days.

  “I wanted to know if you would see in it what I do,” Professor Johnson says. “Purely selfish motives. One is always looking for understanding.”

  As he speaks, he makes his way to the door, and opens it. Outside, a blond-haired young man scrambles to his feet from the floor where he has been sitting, and at a signal from the professor, comes inside the room as Alexander leaves. The windowless hallway is dark and cold, and Alexander turns briefly to look back at that tiny room where only a desk lamp makes an impression on the shadows of the winter’s afternoon.

  “I thank you for coming,” Professor Johnson says.

  Alexander nods briefly. Placing his hat back on his head, he turns and walks quickly away.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Moscow – November 1956

  MISHA TOLD HIM THAT HE WAS naïve to think that his wedding day would be the happiest day of his life.

  “The most nervous day, my friend,” he had said. “Or the most frightening. But happy? You won’t have time to feel happy.”

  Alexander buttons his newly pressed shirt, and carefully tucks it into his trousers. He feels his chin and cheeks, shaved just two hours ago at the barber shop that is in the courtyard of his building. They are smooth, but in his current fastidious mood he fancies th
at there is a slight stubble there already, and he goes back into the bathroom to shave once more. He leans well forward over the basin, his feet too far back because he does not want to splash any water or soap onto his clean shirt. He loves clean clothes, and so does Katya. Some evenings, when they meet at her apartment, he has noticed her walk in and throw down everything that she is wearing in a pile to be washed.

  He rinses his razor in the bowl, and dries it, aware that there is barely any difference in the state of his chin, the shadow being either imagined, or too slight to be gripped by the blade. It matters little, however – half the pleasure for him is in the preparation, and in quiet anticipation. He pats his face dry, and goes back out to the slightly tarnished mirror that stands on the dressing table. The table that he will now clear of his things, ready for Katya to use. He looks at his face. It is a handsome face, so he has been told, all the years of growing up as the only child of his parents. It is also a serious face in the mouth and the eyes, although those eyes have a latent sparkle, and show a personality that appreciates irony. He wonders how his face would look diluted into the features of a little baby, and then he shakes his head, because what he really wants is a baby that looks like Katya. He imagines a tiny body held close to his chest, imagines breathing in that baby fragrance of sweetened milk. He buttons his starched collar, and smiles at himself in the mirror. Misha was wrong, he thinks. This really is the happiest day of my life. The only cloud on his horizon is the fact that he must face another two hours without Katya, two hours that they must spend apart, each of them getting dressed up and ready so that they can finally spend the rest of their lives together.

  He is at the registry office, with Misha, nearly an hour early. They both stop together at the entrance, which is imposing in its monolithic austerity.

  “My grandparents were married in a church,” Alexander says, and Misha nods.

  “Mine too. Even my parents were.”

  It has been many years now since the majority of churches were converted for other uses, or vandalised, or simply destroyed. The clergy and those faithful who had tried to continue the practice of their faith, were sent away to the camps. Or just shot. So many were found dead in those early days that after a little while people became slowly numbed, immune to the shock. Alexander does not remember the incident himself, but he remembers his mother telling him, one evening, in a voice choked with urgency and tears, that their own local priest had been arrested and taken away. They had never heard of him again.

  Misha walks into the grey-stoned entrance slightly ahead of Alexander. The latter follows, his eyes passing over the clean, scrubbed floor, which gives off a faintly antiseptic smell. The windows are high up and the cold, grey pillars induce in him the feeling of a prison. He sniffs. A church would be more atmospheric perhaps, but impossible for someone in his position. He imagines a smell of incense, a glow of stained glass, a cross over an altar. It is a romanticized vision, and anyway, he has no real belief in God, and certainly no belief in religion as such. Both he and Misha were taught that religion was nothing more than a means of controlling the minds of the population; something that Alexander, after much argument and consideration, still believes to be true. It is beyond his comprehension how anyone can simply subscribe to an entire school of thought, based on a book or a self-enclosed set of teachings, from an ancient era. To have faith in such things, blind faith, appears to him to be a convenient way of excusing such people from any thought or reasoning. But then he remembers how he and Misha laughed ironically that instead of icons of the Virgin, they were all now given overblown pictures and statues of Stalin to worship. One cult had simply replaced another. But while he senses from Misha no existential questioning, no philosophical uncertainty, Alexander remains quietly unsure, and unsettled. He has a sense sometimes, deep in the night, of revelation, a sudden realisation of his own infinite smallness, and he feels the world itself getting smaller and smaller, subsumed into some vastness that creeps in on him from the shifting edges of consciousness. He cannot say what it means, and this fact alone is what troubles him.

  They speak to the girl at the counter, and explain that they are here for a wedding, and with a smile she winks at Misha and sends them up two flights of stairs.

  “Why do women always react that way to you?” Alexander asks him.

  Misha is almost forced to shout over the ringing sound of their footsteps, climbing the concrete stairs in unison.

  “They can’t help it, my friend,” he says. “They just can’t help it.”

  Katya’s uncle has arrived even before them. One of her few relatives, and perhaps the only one she has any contact with, he is old and infirm now, but he hurries to stand up when he sees the two young men approaching down the hallway. He was once a priest, back in the twenties, but now he works at the railway station, selling tickets. Misha and Alexander quicken their pace, and Misha puts a gentle hand on the old man’s shoulder to guide him back into his seat. He is smiling, and mumbles some words, which they have to strain to catch. He has spent seven years in the camps and his face was beaten so much that now his speech is barely recognisable as such.

  “Thank you for coming, Dimitri Petroyavich,” says Alexander.

  He nods and catches Alexander’s hand in his own, in a handshake that he holds for a long moment. The vein-ridged hand has a permanent tremble now, but it seems in that one grasp to convey congratulations, gratitude and blessing all in one, and it brings a feeling of tears to Alexander’s throat.

  “I need the bathroom,” Dimitri says, suddenly. The two men stand again and Alexander walks him down the corridor to the toilet, and then returns back to Misha.

  “They have wrecked him,” he says.

  “They wreck everybody. Sometimes it is better just to be killed quickly than to go through what they go through.”

  Misha’s slow, ironic voice is harsh and hard, and Alexander touches his friend on the shoulder, disturbed by the depth of anger he sees in his eyes. Misha reaches for his cigarettes.

  “They wiped out the clergy,” he continues, striking a match with vehemence, “wiped them out, Sasha!”

  “I know.”

  “And then, our great Comrade changes his mind – he thinks bringing back the church will help to bring the country back together, after her ripped it apart himself during the stinking war, and so he says, okay, tortured priests, come back. Come on back to your churches that I spat on. Practice again the things I killed you for yesterday.” Misha keeps the anger in his voice very low, a habit they have all assimilated from their anxious parents since they could talk, and now he shakes his head in disgust.

  “If I were that priest, if I had endured what he had and seen what he’d seen, I’d have the shakes too.” He pauses. “And then, the rules of the game only change all over again.”

  Misha restlessly begins to walk about, smoking his cigarette. Alexander stands too, and starts to explore the cavernous hallway from the other side. His stomach is clutched by a sick feeling, one that passes over him often, when he thinks of this world about him, and the many changes that still must be made. From the corner of his eye he watches his friend, sees the deep inhaling and exhaling, sees him calming down a little. Alexander reads a few general notices taped onto a board, and then glances at his watch. When will she be here? he thinks. Misha is at his shoulder suddenly. Alexander turns.

  “My best man,” he tells Misha. “The best man.”

  Misha shakes his head. “You are the best man, my friend,” Misha says. “As far as Katya is concerned. You are the best man.”

  “Really?” His tone is earnest and the question too quick. Misha looks at him.

  “Really. She adores you, Sasha. Even she can’t cover that up.”

  Alexander nods, and thinks of her – she must be almost ready, preparing to leave. Attending her this morning are her flatmate Maya, and Maya’s sister-in-law. Uncle Dimitri will take the place of Katya’s own father and brother. She is missing Yuri today, he knows; she
misses him often, but will rarely admit it, as if to do so would be to somehow dishonour his decision to escape. It has made life hard for her, especially now that she is marrying a government official. She has perhaps been under some surveillance from the KGB, and so has he, her background checked and re-checked. It is probably only because her record for the Party is exemplary that they have been able to come this far undisturbed.

  The two young men wait together, marking off the minutes silently. Alexander is just thinking to check on Dimitri, when the old man emerges. He moves slowly down the hallway, and continues on past the bench where they sit, motioning to Alexander to follow him. He does so, walking with him until they reach the other end of the corridor.

  “My son, how are you today?” Now that Alexander’s own dark head is bent right down to Dimitri’s white one, he can better understand what he says.

  “I am fine, uncle. Very happy,” he adds, honestly, but not without a trace of self-consciousness. He glances up, waiting for the old man to speak, and he sees a swollen mouth, the skin and lips bruised and twisted into a shape that is unnatural and harsh. The eyes that meet his own are dark and dulled with age. Alexander watches the old man weighing his words. His brown suit smells musty and slightly damp, as though it has been hanging unused in an old closet for years.

  “You are sure you wish to marry?”

  “Yes, uncle.”

  “Katya. You will look after her?”

  “Yes, uncle. I love her.”

  Dimitri’s face is stern, his mouth set into a downturn, and Alexander feels a sense of forbidding. The old man seems displeased, unconvinced about something.

  “What’s wrong, uncle?” he asks.

  The grainy eyes turn to him, surprised. “Nothing. I am very happy she found you. That you found each other.”

  Alexander nods, and swallows. Nothing else in the old man’s face has changed, and he realises now that he has been smiling all this time. But the attempted grin has been foiled by the palsied, frozen mass of skin around his mouth. For a moment, Alexander cannot take his eyes from the lower part of Dimitri’s face; in his mind he visualises the kind of brutal beating and cutting that might have led to such a gruesome countenance.