Despite the Falling Snow (2 page)

She tells her love while half asleep
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow
.

- Robert Graves

S
HE HAS BEEN SITTING ON A WOODEN BENCH
in the courtyard of this office building for some time – about twenty minutes, she guesses and she is briefly grateful that the large quadrant is enclosed from the ice-hard blasts of wind that seemed to burn through her as she walked here; only the soft purity of the blue sky above is caught between the tops of buildings. The space is explicitly welcoming, but she cannot help but feel oppressed by the ungainly height of the structures around it. The shiny, varnished seating, the eerily immaculate late autumn flower beds, the studied restfulness of the trickling fountain – all these lead her to regard this corporate resting place with subdued contempt. Resolving that she will not check her watch – not just yet – she turns her attention back to the novel. She is on page five (of seven hundred and forty three) and she decides to begin the page again, since she has read it through without absorbing a single word.

It is hardly more gripping the second time around, and she wonders whether, at the age of sixty one, she might not be excused from reading things that don’t grab her at once, taking into account that even in the best of circumstances, she can’t have
that
much time left in this world. Her husband has gruffly advised her to read Proust, to revel in his refinement of thought, to admire his delicacy of phrase. She is intelligent enough and perceptive enough to recognise both of those things, even within the small portion she has read, but something is lacking
here
. Unconsciously, she touches her heart. Perhaps it will come later, if she will but give the novel a chance. She eyes her handbag with a sidelong, slightly guilty gaze, like a child trying not to stare at a forbidden toy. The bag contains two slim volumes; one, a Hemingway novel, the other a book of stories by Salinger. Her husband is unimpressed by both, but holds a particularly sarcastic contempt for the Salinger. Nevertheless, she likes it, admires the direct simplicity of the sentences. She had been hesitant to read the stories again after Professor Johnson’s vehement assertion that they possessed no real merit, but she found to her pleasure that they had come through unscathed, and were as poignant and relaxed and cleanly written as she had first thought them.

Her eyes are drawn back to the looming building before her. The endless squares of darkened glass and polished steel are uninviting, inscrutable, protective of the activity going on behind them. She is rarely in the business district. It is a section of the city that is unfamiliar to her, that has no relation to the Boston she loves. Hers, rather, is a world of red brick houses and streets lined with trees that are coolly shady in summer and starkly proud in winter. The calm, broad sparkle of the Charles River, and the sweeping energy of the Back Bay. The small specialist shops of Newbury Street, the cobbled streets of old Beacon Hill, and the faint rumble of traffic that counterpoints the delicate quiet of the public gardens. The coffee houses around the many university campuses where you might stumble upon a reading or some music. Still self-consciously avoiding the book in her hands, she glances away from the structure before her, and looks for comfort to the solitary tree that soars up from the concrete. It is half-stripped of leaves, but those that remain still show deep, burnished reds and darkening browns; the fading colours of a New England autumn that has come late this year, and is now almost at its end.

She becomes aware that something is buzzing. She glances around seeking the source of the noise, but there is no one in the courtyard but herself. Then she feels a vibration against her feet. Inside her handbag. Reaching in, she pulls out her mobile phone, and slams shut the Proust. The handset shudders in her hand like a thing in pain. She focuses on it – none of the buttons appear clearly marked. She pushes a black one, then a green one then holds it to her ear. Nothing.

“You’re not used to it, are you?” says a voice.

She turns her head. Beside her, watching her, stands Alexander Ivanov. He is neatly wrapped in an understated but expensive navy cashmere coat and a russet scarf which emphasises his silver hair. He removes his hat when she turns but she is too surprised to even notice the polite gesture.

“All the buttons look the same,” she says. She drops the handset back into her bag.

“You should get your daughter to teach you, Estelle,” he smiles.

“Maybe over lunch today,” she tells him. He says nothing to this, and she wonders if his silence is meaningful, coupled as it is with the fact that Melissa is nowhere to be seen. She shifts over on the bench, conscious that she is taking up the only available seat, and he sits down, keeping a correct distance, and smiles at her. His eyes are large and dark brown and softened slightly with age – the warm pools of colour look textured, like worn velvet, she thinks.

“It’s good to see you again,” he tells her. “We didn’t really get a chance to talk much the first time.” He has an accent when he speaks, a precision of utterance that is well-defined but also musical. There is a heaviness on the letter “L” that she is most aware of when he says her name.

“It was kind of you to let me wait in your office that day,” she says.

“Why didn’t you come up today? It’s cold out here.”

“I like the fresh air,” she says simply. She does not attempt to explain her ill-defined antipathy to the building – she has only met him once, and he is unlikely to understand her irrational whims, particularly since he owns the building in question.

“Anyway, if the meeting’s done…” she says.

“Actually, it’s still going on. I played truant, that’s all.”

She is still wondering how someone can play truant from the sale of his own multi-million dollar company when his telephone rings.

“Perhaps that’s them,” Alexander says, reassurance in his voice. She looks back up at the tree for something to do while she tries not to listen to the clear voice at the other end. Something about some final queries and wouldn’t he like to come back to the meeting?

“Not especially,” he says. “Why doesn’t everyone break for lunch? I believe Melissa has another appointment…” There is quiet at the other end, some conferring perhaps, before the metallic voice comes back on the line.

“She says it’s nothing important. She’d rather get this thing hammered out and finished.”

She can see him press the phone more closely to his ear, trying to block the words from floating out to her across the cool, crisp air.

“Very well, I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” he says, his tone terse. “Try and have it done by then, will you, Michael?”

He snaps the phone shut, then switches it off. He looks at Estelle, and there is a moment of quiet communication between them. She knows what has happened, and wants to save him the trouble of finding a tactful way to tell her that her daughter will not bother to come.

“I saw the article in Business World the other week,” she says. “‘The King of Catering’.”

“Those headlines…” he says, with a slight shake of his head.

“I thought it was interesting,” she replies. “Especially about your background. Your life in Russia.”

He nods slightly, enough to politely acknowledge the comment, but says nothing. Estelle considers asking again, for the few lines about Alexander’s early life gleaned from the article suggested a story worth hearing. She decides against probing too much – after all, she knows him only slightly. She pulls a hat from her bag, a preliminary to leaving.

“I’m sorry about lunch with Melissa,” he says. He hesitates, and a quick smile moves across his face, which otherwise looks concerned, even nervous. “Would you care to join me instead?”

Estelle pauses, surprised, and while she is thinking, decides against trying to put on her hat blindly and yet elegantly while he is watching. Instead she uses it to keep her hands warm.

“Shouldn’t you be going back in?” Estelle asks.

“What for? They all know what to do.”

She raises an eyebrow. “I hope so. She may be my daughter, but I don’t mind telling you that Melissa has the manners of a piranha when it comes to closing a deal.”

He laughs, surprised at her tight appraisal of her own child, and tells her that he doesn’t mind, that tough negotiations are a part of most business transactions. There is a short pause between them, a moment when he seems to be debating whether to reveal or explain something. He looks up at the glass building.

“That’s where they are. Twenty-sixth floor.”

Once again she looks up. It is the type of inaccessible building that she usually associates with her daughter, clean and lean and functional.

“I was sitting there, fifteen minutes ago, sealed inside, looking out of the window like a restless schoolboy who can’t concentrate on his math lesson. All I could see was the sky, and beyond that the city and the Back Bay. When I finally came to, someone was asking me something, and I had no idea what it was. Nor did I much care what it was. So, I excused myself and came down here.”

“It can’t be easy, watching someone else take charge of your business.”

“I suppose that must have something to do with it. But I’m not sorry to let it go. It’s time.”

He rubs his hands together to keep them warm and fixes her with a mischievous look. “So will you come for lunch? Melissa did promise we’d get together the last time. And you can help me play truant.”

“It’s kind of you, but not at all necessary…”

“Martha, my housekeeper, is at home if you feel happier with a chaperone,” he says.

“Trust me, it’s been decades since I worried about men being gripped by uncontrollable bouts of passion at the mere sight of me,” she tells him. “Don’t worry, I’m not scared of you.”

“Good. It’s settled then?” He stands up, as though it is.

She feels a prickle at this hint of presumption, but her curiosity about this man has been building. There is nothing she likes more than a good story. And she is cold, and hungry, and does not feel like returning to the desolate reaches of her apartment, or sitting in a restaurant alone.

He takes out his phone again. “Why don’t I call Melissa and have her meet us when they’re done?”

She nods, grateful for his consideration – that her daughter knows where she is and will join them gives her a measure of security, a final encouragement that she is doing the right thing by having lunch with a man she knows, but does not know. They walk out together, across the squares of sunlight that cover the courtyard. A scatter of auburn leaves floats to the ground before them, and there is something touching to her in the way that Alexander reaches out to feel one as it drops. In the sight of his hand, slightly curved and battered from old age, and Boston winters, and probably from Russian winters too, extending out involuntarily to greet a stray leaf that falls right before his eyes. He watches it settle, feather-like, upon the ground. Then he guides her out to the main doors of the building where the doorman tips his hat and whistles down a cab.

She slides into the red vinyl seats, and Alexander is half-inside too but stops to hand the doorman a tip. His wallet is flipped open – a rich, brown leather casing, which is beginning to show the grainy softness of age. He pulls out a bill and hands it to the man, but Estelle’s attention is on a photograph that is exposed inside the open wallet. She sees it for only a second, perhaps two, and it is old and black and white, and perhaps even very slightly out of focus. But the woman in the picture is arresting – she is also young and quite beautiful. Estelle can tell that much despite the fact that the woman is squinting into the camera because the sun is in her eyes. There is something about the photograph, something seductive, something she has no time to think about or define at that moment – but it strikes her as one of those images that contain a whole attitude and atmosphere and that would make anyone stop and take a second look if they could. As Alexander enters the cab, his thumb brushes lightly and very quickly over the picture, and his glance falls on Estelle; then the wallet is closed, and the woman is gone.

He gives the driver his address, and Estelle clears her throat, but hesitates to ask the question on her lips. He looks at her, expectant, a clear gaze with those clear brown eyes, and she can tell nothing at all from them. With a polite smile, she sits back in her seat and looks ahead as the cab moves off.

His house is an old, red-brick building, dating from the days when high ceilings and grand rooms were common. From the days when a growing city could afford to be expansive.

“It’s nice to see a place like this that’s unconverted.”

He nods. “Lots of stairs. Keeps my old bones moving.”

“We don’t live all that far from each other. We’re in a brownstone, it’s a lovely building, but we have an apartment. Small, but worth it, to be in the centre of town.”

He understands this – he has always lived right in the middle of cities; even in Moscow he had that privilege. Most people who wanted slightly larger apartments – or any apartment of their own – were forced to move to Khrushchev’s new buildings, hastily thrown up, thin-walled and grey, on the outskirts of the city. And many people were happy with that; those blocks gave them space they had never had before. Unless you did well for the Party, or worked in the government itself, rooms at the hub of Moscow were tiny and overfilled.