At the top of the tame white hills, above the frozen river, a lonely American man and a French girl just sensing his loneliness, looked down upon them with awe and compassion and humility and stared into the night as if searching for the Star of Bethlehem. But there were no stars, no moon, just the luminosity of the snow and uninvited Christmas. They held gloved hands but didn’t speak; then walked back to the car, kicking white wings with their boots, humble and grateful for life and believing that they were sharing their thoughts. And on such a night as this who was to say that such a miracle was not true?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At the New Year the wealthier Muscovites motored to their dachas in the country. On the evening before the holiday began the main highways leading out of Moscow were crowded with Kremlin Chaikas ploughing arrogantly along the middle of the road; if the humbler Volgas or Moskvich’s got in the way their drivers were chilled by a look from one of the passengers before the big curtained cars accelerated away.
But the poorer citizens went to each other’s homes where they ate and drank happily, especially in Georgians’ homes where one toast could last fifteen minutes, embracing the glorious Revolution, the brotherhood of men, peace on earth and long life and happiness to a withered babushka snapping toothless gums in the corner. The red Khvanchkara wine flowed down their throats and the vodka exploded in their bellies. And while they drank they ate toasted cheese and pickled cucumber and black bread to act as blotting paper. The young men played guitars, their girls sang throaty ballads and the melody and emotion touched the dullest of faces with beauty. Very old men re-fought the Revolution, middle-aged men re-fought the Germans, young men fought each other. The parties went on all night and next day the party-goers went ski-ing in the soothing forests or ski-ing in Gorky Park; the cold dispelled the vapours and when they returned home the party began again.
Randall decided to spend the New Year at Zavidovo, the foreign diplomats’ holiday centre 120 kilometres outside Moscow. He drove with Michele in his Chevrolet and Mortimer followed in his Anglia with Diana.
They motored along the Leningrad road through wooden villages each with its water pump, through small towns each with its red-flagged party headquarters. Through forests as lonely as the sky and past fields undisturbed since the first snow. They drank coffee from a flask and ate hot loaves stuffed with cheese. Outside the 40 kilometre limit they were flagged down by a militiaman standing beside his motorcycle and sidecar. He asked for their passes and talked for ten minutes about the weather and the hardship of working during the holiday. Then he waved them on, a great smile cracking his chapped face.
They passed the small-town house where Tchaikovsky lived, stopped at a level crossing and smiled indulgently while a crowd examined their cars. They both skidded wildly on the packed snow when a lorry carrying scaffolding braked suddenly and for no apparent reason.
‘Those bars could have decapitated us,’ Randall said.
They turned off the main road and headed across the countryside along a road barely distinguishable from the fields. When they reached the holiday centre it looked like a prison camp—a line of huts hiding in the snow, soccer goal-posts in the centre, a long building that might once have housed the camp commandant’s staff, and beyond the building the broad frozen curve of the Volga.
But inside the long building the bleak furnishings had absorbed the glow of an immense decorated tree and the warmth of a log fire. There was a small restaurant, its tables decked with tumblers and goblets made of pink and green glass, and another room for the Russian version of pool—the table, littered with balls, as lonely as an abandoned car.
Randall and Mortimer shared one chalet, the girls another.
‘We can always swop over later,’ Randall said.
‘I don’t know that I want to,’ Mortimer said.
‘That’s a hell of an attitude,’ Randall said.
‘I suppose you’re right. But that sort of thing seems incongruous somehow. This isn’t a Blackpool holiday camp after all.’
‘I don’t reckon you’ll have much say in the matter. Not if I know anything about Diana.’
The chalets were equipped with shiny, bargain-basement furniture, radios that picked up distant tin-whistle music and protesting beds.
They ate Chicken Kiev, cauliflower baked in sour milk and cold French fried in the restaurant. Then went ski-ing on a gentle slope outside the gates, Michele chic in tight pants and powder blue anorak, Diana clumsy by comparison in bright red. The ski-run was short but the trudge back to the top was exhausting. Their faces and mittened hands ached with the cold.
They returned to coffee and brandy beside the log fire. Randall and Mortimer played chess while the other guests steamed in from the cold. East Germans and Poles mostly, a Dutch couple, and two Greeks. Balls cannoned on the pool table with snug knitting-needle sounds, embers shifted comfortably on the fire.
After tea they went back to one of the chalets, played cards, grilled sausages imported from London and drank whisky. At ten they went skating on the small rink. At eleven they went back to the lounge to greet the New Year.
The party was gay and garbled with hourly outbursts of hilarity as different nationalities realised that the New Year was being welcomed in their own countries. The East Germans were the noisest, spinning around the floor in wild dances and singing excited songs, identifying themselves for a few hours—like prisoners on parole—with the country of their birth instead of the doctrine of their new masters. The Poles with bellies better tutored in the ways of liquor drank quietly before joining the Germans. The Greeks sang songs from their taverns. In one corner an American, a Frenchwoman and a young Englishman and his girl fired a plastic champagne cork and sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
A Pole who had passed the quiet drinking stage grabbed Diana and swung her round the floor, breasts leaping, skirt flying high. Mortimer shuddered.
‘What’s the matter?’ Randall asked. ‘She’s a gay girl. You should think yourself lucky.’
Mortimer nodded and swallowed his champagne in one gulp. ‘She’s gay all right,’ he said.
Diana returned breathless and elated. ‘Thank heavens you men are here,’ she said. ‘If you weren’t heaven only knows what would happen.’
The gaiety was interrupted by a tapping on the outside of the window beside the tree. Through the window they saw, hanging in the darkness, the face of a fiend or a clown or both, half animal, half human. Women screamed and a glass crashed to the floor. Then someone switched on a light outside and the rest of the fiend materialised unmistakably as the comfortable body of the manageress. She vanished and reappeared inside with the leap of a pantomime demon, rushed around the tables enticing and commanding with her hands, and disappeared once more.
‘What was she doing?’ Michele asked.
‘I’m darned if I know,’ Randall said. ‘Some sort of New Year’s tradition, I guess. You never can tell with these people. Anyone who says they’re dull has been brainwashed.’
‘No one is dull,’ Michele said. ‘Except perhaps those who accuse others of being dull. Only people who get bored are boring.’
On the other side of the room a waiter who had been leaning with his back against the wall with a benign smile on his face slid slowly down until he was sitting. Two other waiters picked him up and carried him away still blessing the occasion with his smile.
Randall wondered how his wife was celebrating. He also decided to have a paternal chat with Mortimer on the way back to the chalets.
The snow crunched beneath their boots and the moisture in their nostrils prickled frostily. The wind from Siberia rode across the fields and drove the snow high against the chalets until it reached the windows. The two girls walked on ahead.
‘She’s a great girl,’ Randall said.
‘So you keep saying.’
‘You could do worse.’
‘And I could do a damn sight better,’ said Mortimer with spirit. ‘Honestly you’re the last person I thought o
f as a Moscow match-maker. What’s the matter with everyone here? Is it frustration or something?’
‘Hardly,’ Randall said. He paused. ‘Although at the moment you just could be right.’
‘You’re like a lot of old women. You needn’t worry about marrying me off, you know. Diana doesn’t need any help in that direction.’
‘You don’t seem sold on the idea.’
‘You’re damn right I’m not sold on the idea.’
‘Have you anyone else in mind?’ Randall who had made inquiries since Diana had revealed Mortimer’s interest in a Russian girl wondered how far he should pursue it. He said jocularly: ‘I hope you haven’t got involved with any Russian broads.’
Mortimer stopped walking, ‘Just what are you driving at?’
Randall shrugged. ‘I’m not driving at anything. Just a conversational gambit. Don’t get so excited.’
‘I am not getting excited. I just don’t want any rumours circulating about me. I know this place too well already. The only Russian girl I have any contact with at all is my Russian teacher. And I’m certainly not involved with her. She’s a very sweet person and that’s all there is to it.’
‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ Randall said. ‘Don’t get so darned excited. Let’s catch up with the girls. We’ve got to sort out the sleeping arrangements.’ And he thought: Poor bastard—it is the Russian teacher.
‘Come on you men,’ Diana shouted. ‘I’ve got a little suggestion to put to you.’
Randall squeezed Mortimer’s arm. ‘Good night,’ he said. ‘Sleep tight.’
Michele undressed in the bathroom. Randall, lying in his single bed with his hands behind his head, imagined her slipping on a thigh-length whisp of nylon. When she returned she was wearing pink flannelette and white bed-socks.
‘Why haven’t you got your hair in curlers?’ he said.
‘I left them behind,’ she said.
He saw beneath the homely material the contours of youth and remembered that he was nearly forty. He wanted her then as he could not remember wanting a girl before. With the hesitant yearning of a young man wanting to love and be loved and not knowing how to go about it. He wanted to hold her through the night, to feel her breathing steadying as her mind roamed in sleep. He wanted to be inside her and take her with him to the summit of love and look into her eyes when they arrived.
She sat at the dressing-table, staring into the cracked mirror, smearing cream on her face. Small and dark with sensitive shadows under her eyes. She was as he had never seen her before.
He pulled back the blankets. ‘Are you coming in?’
She shook her head. ‘No, Luke,’ she said.
They left the lamp on between the two beds and looked at each other across the space.
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said, nursing the disappointment, searching for words.
‘It would be wrong for us now.’
‘I just wanted to be near you.’ The half-truth, he thought.
She smiled. ‘You see it’s not always true what they say about us French girls.’
‘I want to tell you a lot of things,’ he said, ‘but I’ve forgotten how.’
‘Perhaps I know them.’
‘I’m getting old and I’m married.’
‘And you’re very sorry for yourself.’
He lit a cigarette and watched the smoke embroider itself into blue lace. ‘I guess so.’
‘I think you’re a gentle person.’
‘You’re the first person who’s thought so.’
‘You have a terrible reputation. I didn’t want to go out with you in the first place because there are so many men like that. But now I know what they said is not true. Not with me anyway.’
He stretched out his hand across the space and she held it. ‘I keep wanting to say things but it all sounds like second feature dialogue.’
‘But it is not a second feature situation.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘It isn’t as far as I’m concerned. I suppose most people would say I shouldn’t be here with a married man. Perhaps they are right. I just know that I want to be with you and that is not so wrong, is it? Perhaps I will get hurt. I am willing to take that risk. But if I thought I was harming your marriage then I wouldn’t be here.’
‘You’re not harming that,’ Randall said.
‘Did you love her very much—your wife?’
‘I’ve forgotten,’ he said. ‘Maybe, a long time ago. I think we’re slipping back into that script again. I wish to God I could express myself better.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I know that you feel and I think I know what you are feeling. Many people can talk. It is better to have feeling. When you meet someone and you know what they are feeling it is beautiful.’
‘Did you know what I was feeling just now when you were sitting at the dressing-table?’
Michele snuggled down in the bedclothes. ‘Perhaps I was feeling the same.’
‘If you had been you wouldn’t be sleeping in that bed.’
‘I didn’t want it to be that way.’
He sighed and stubbed out his cigarette. ‘If I said, “Nor did I” then I would be lying. But now I’m glad it’s this way.’
She squeezed his hand. ‘Are you sure, Luke?’
‘Sure I’m sure,’ he said.
‘That’s good,’ she said, ‘because I’m not sure.’ She switched out the light. ‘Good-night, Luke.’
‘Good-night,’ he said. ‘Sleep well.’
At first he couldn’t sleep. When he heard her breathing deeply and regularly he climbed out of bed and kissed her gently. Then he climbed back and fell asleep.
Next morning they fished through a hole in the ice on the Volga and caught nothing. The cold forced them back to the lounge where the waiter who had been carried out unconscious the previous evening served them with coffee, the ache in his head visible on his face.
After lunch they drove back to Moscow. Very slowly through the villages where the drunks waltzed across the roads to bring unwelcome good cheer to friends and neighbours.
The dark day tattered with snowflakes fused almost unnoticed into night. On the outskirts of Moscow the snow thickened, covering the windscreen after each sweep of the wipers. When they were near the new indoor tennis stadium, a militiaman waved them down with a torch. ‘Can you help us please,’ he said. ‘There has been a bad accident and so far only two ambulances have arrived.’
A taxi packed with young people on their way to a party had smashed into one of Moscow’s trams at a crossing. Blood as dark as oil stained the snow. The badly-wounded were lying in the ambulance, two dead young bodies with surprised faces lay in the snow beside a shattered guitar.
Randall told Michele to stay in the car. He and Mortimer who was shuddering violently walked with the militiaman to the wrecked car.
‘Perhaps you would be so kind as to take these two children to hospital,’ the militiaman said. ‘They were in the tram. They are not hurt badly. Just shocked and cut by broken glass.’
‘Of course we will,’ Randall said. ‘Is there anything more we can do?’
‘There is nothing more you can do. The taxi driver was drunk. He will be dealt with.’
The driver, who was unhurt, was hysterically pleading his innocence with anyone who would listen to him. He had lost his hat and his eyes were wild and red. A woman who had been in the tram turned from him and pointed at the bodies. He began to cry.
Two boys, aged about 10 and 12, were led over to Randall and Mortimer. ‘Please take them to the hospital as quickly as you can,’ said the militiaman. ‘They are very cold and very frightened.’
The boys in poor overcoats and worn shapkas were cut about the face.
Randall said: ‘I think they’re worse than they look.’
Mortimer was still shuddering. He saw Randall looking at him and said: ‘I’m sorry, Luke, but I can’t help it. I’m not much use at times like this. You see I’ve never seen anyone dead before.’
‘Just try and keep these kids from looking at the bodies,’ Randall said.
‘All right, Luke. I’m sorry. It all seems so much worse in the cold. Everyone lost and hurt in the snow. It seems as if God doesn’t care.’
‘He cares,’ Randall said. ‘Now let’s take them round the back of the tram back to the cars. Perhaps we should carry them. He spoke to the boys in Russian. ‘Would you like to be carried?’
The older boy shook his head. ‘No thank you,’ he said in tremulous English.
‘My, you speak English too.’
‘We learn it at school,’ said the other boy looking back over his shoulder at the wreckage.
‘We’ll take one each,’ Randall said. ‘You follow me and for Christ sake drive carefully. It wouldn’t be the first time one crash has caused another.’
The older boy climbed into the back of the car with Michele. ‘Take care of him,’ Randall said.
When they drove away the tram and the taxi were covered with snow. Already they looked as if they had been there a long time.
‘Where were you going when this happened?’ Randall asked.
‘We were going home,’ the boy said. ‘We had been fishing.’
‘Did you catch anything?’
‘We caught two but we left them on the tram. My mother would have cooked them tonight. She will be wondering where I am.’
Randall glanced round and saw that Michele had her arm around the boy. ‘Don’t you worry about that,’ he said. ‘Someone will get in touch with her and tell her what’s happened. You certainly speak good English. I wish I spoke Russian half as well.’
‘You speak Russian very well,’ said the boy. He leaned forward and Randall caught a glimpse of his white shocked face. ‘Those two people lying in the snow. Were they dead?’
Michele pulled him gently back. ‘They were just lying there waiting for another ambulance,’ she said.
‘I don’t think so. I think they were dead.’
At the hospital Randall asked if they should wait and take the boys home. But a woman doctor said they should be kept overnight; their parents would be notified.
Angels in the Snow Page 19
