Despite the Falling Snow (20 page)

She walks out, away, into the hallway into the tiny, damp bathroom, and looks at herself in the mirror. “Sasha?”

“Yes?”

As she suspected, he has followed her and is waiting outside, in the dank hallway. Above him, in the corners of the low ceiling, he can see patches of dampness and the white bloom of mildew beginning to take hold.

“What are you doing with me? Misha told me once that he tried to warn you away from me the first time we met. At the dance.”

“I didn’t even hear him,” Alexander replies. “I was a man possessed.”

He sees the shaking of her head amongst the shadows in the bathroom, as she watches herself in the mirror.

“Ah, but possessed of what, now?” she asks, without humour, and she leans down to splash icy water on her face. She feels sorry for him for a moment, for even though he is the same age as she, she can feel his childlike helplessness in the face of her grief and anger. She runs a hand over her burning eyes, and thinks to herself that she will go in and lie down next to him and let him hold her, and let his warmth and love enclose her in so that she does not have to see or hear anything else ever again. That will help her, and it will help him also. But for now she remains standing there, fiddling with her hair, for she is thinking. She looks at her eyes in the mirror, and knows they are the same as her mother’s, and from this starting point she tries to reconstruct her mother’s face as she recalls it – the rough, dark hair, the high, broad forehead and long nose, uneven from some childhood mishap. The face appears to her – a face, any face really, not truly as it was. She is trying too hard to see it, and it has been too long, and Katya herself was too young. All these circumstances conspire against the retaining of the perfect memory, and she sighs. She comes out to the hallway and together they walk back to her room.

“I can’t even remember what my mother looks like,” she tells him, and he nods and walks her back to the bed. His body is warm compared to the cold air of the apartment, and she closes her eyes, places her mouth and nose almost flat against his chest and breathes his smell and listens to the blood pulsing around his body. Now she will begin once more the process of forgetting it, that terrible thing that once happened, so many years ago. And what a hard process it is, every time she recalls it, to then tame it and push all of it back into the farthest, unlit recesses of her memory where it will never stay willingly, but lies waiting like a sly, hungry animal; waiting for her guard to drop, for her shell to crack open and let it back in.

She feels safer with Alexander’s arms around her, and his sensitive, kind eyes watching over her, but she also feels brittle and cold inside. She had made notes on the information she had gleaned from his papers that night, several weeks ago, and she passed them to Misha the next day. He had been satisfied in some way, and since then, she has not had to do anything similar. But since that evening she has begun to dislike herself, and the feeling of self-disgust is especially strong at times like this, when Alexander is watching over her with more care and adoration than she has ever received in her life. She sighs. Perhaps she will not think so hard about it for a while. Just for a few weeks. She is too confused to consider anything properly now. Perhaps she will just relax a little, and enjoy her time with him, and then, when Misha wants her to begin work, she can decide what to do. She feels tears prick at her eyes again, and tries biting her lip to hold them back, but they will not be held. They are tears of anger at what happened to her parents, tears of self-pity for the lost child she remembers being, and tears of frustration at the dilemma she now feels, because she is not at all sure that there is any decision to be made by her, about Alexander; she is almost sure that there is no way out.

E
STELLE OPENS HER FRONT DOOR
. She is dressed entirely in black – trousers, a turtle neck and a scarf that swathes softly over her shoulders. The effect is elegant, effortless. A faint smile of approval passes over Lauren’s lips as Estelle shows her in, guiding her to a drawing room which Lauren takes in with a precise glance. The original floorboards are exposed, sanded and varnished to a warm brown colour which matches the outside of the fireplace. On top of the mantel is a photograph of Melissa as a child, sitting on her father’s shoulders. There is an element of the dashing, the Bryonesque, about Professor Johnson in the photograph. His face shows a casual pride as he holds onto his child. Melissa is smiling, the kind of fully released expression that is so much more common in children than adults. Lauren looks away, to a couple of old rugs placed beneath leather sofas. The soft grain and folds of the leather might make an interesting background, she thinks, and she suggests that Estelle take a seat there. Tinged with self-consciousness, Estelle takes a few moments to find a comfortable position, but Lauren is busy unfolding her easel and setting out her pencils.

“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 is 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.