Despite the Falling Snow (30 page)

“I have been lying to you, Sasha,” is her first sentence. “Or, at least, I have not been honest with you. Since we met. Since before we were married.”

He cannot say a word. His large brown eyes meet her’s, mute with dread.

“Sasha, you know how the murder of my parents has affected me?”

Perhaps it is cowardly of her to approach it in this way, roundabout, giving the justifications first, but she cannot just come out with it. He nods. It is the first time she has spoken of it as murder, rather than “loss” or “death” and he senses that there is a reason for the new directness.

“Well, I became a Pioneer after that, just like you, a good young Party member, and no-one could fault me. I denounced my parents in writing, just like they asked me to, and I followed the road that one takes in order to get along. And then, when Yuri escaped to America, suspicion was thrown on me again, and I worked even harder to prove myself a model communist, and I succeeded quite well.”

She takes her hand from his neck and presses her stiff fingers between her knees. Snowflakes settle on her coat for a moment, then melt into the woollen fibres where they will sit, slowly making her wetter and colder.

“I did all that for a reason. And the reason was not a love of communism, or the government. Quite the opposite. You know I look at things differently from most people, but I have never told you how differently. I hated Stalin. I hated his government. I hated his paranoia that infected the whole country, so that it became everyone’s paranoia. To not be suspicious, to not be sneaky, to not be fearful – would have meant to not be alive. To survive, your neighbour had to reveal five names of traitors, whether he even knew them or not. So that you never knew who was watching you, or was being beaten at that moment into giving your name as an enemy of the state, just because they had to give someone’s name. I hated the so-called communist ideal that could allow people like Beria to rape as many young girls as he wanted, and that let Khrushchev and Molotov and all the rest of them live in huge houses and eat well while the working people starved. I hate the fact that, even now, we have a “proletarian aristocracy”. I know, because I married into it.” She cannot help but laugh, bitterly.

“Is that what communism is supposed to be about? That, with you, I can live in a beautiful apartment overlooking the river, while with Maya I have to live in a cold cell of a room while her mother sleeps in a cupboard?”

He doesn’t reply, but his eyes are fixed on her with surprise and sympathy.

“You’re right,” he says. “But things can be changed, slowly…”

“No. I don’t hate the communist system because it has been abused, Sasha, I hate it because it cannot work, even when there isn’t a dictator in charge. It stifles people, it kills freedom of thought and expression, everyone and everything must be the same, uniform. Well, people are not the same. There is no room here for artists, writers, poets. Look what they just did to Pasternak. The whole world is praising his book, he won this prize, the Nobel prize. And here, in his homeland, he is driven to despair. Treated like a criminal. It is unforgivable, Sasha. And it’s not just writers. If anyone, a farmer, or a clerk, a train driver, wants to work extra hard and try and make something of himself, or if he wants to invent something, or try to do something he enjoys or loves, is that so wrong? Or if someone has a good business idea – why should that person not be able to do as he pleases, and even make money and live in the big house that now only a politician can live in? At least he would be there on merit. That’s how it is in America.”

Alexander cannot speak; he is caught between shock and amazement at her words. He is trying to take it all in, trying to absorb her passionate defence of the enemy, of capitalism, and he is absorbing it, easily, because her words are seductive because they are rational. And behind it all, he is waiting, still waiting for her to explain how she has been dishonest to him, for he cannot yet see what point she is moving towards.

“Anyway,” she continues, a little more calmly now, “from the age of thirteen, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. Most people don’t, ever. Especially here, where there is no room for wanting. We just do what we’re told, don’t we?”

His head is light, reeling from her words.
I knew what I wanted to do with my life
. It seems so simple and clear, but so alien. How did she learn even to think in such a way? He is full of admiration, suddenly, for her swift mind, for her unconventional thinking, even as he is apprehensive of what it has led to. She is talking again, and he looks at her closely, to listen better, to allow not a word or nuance to escape him.

“I wanted to fight the system that had caused my parents, two kind, intelligent,
innocent
people to be brutally killed. I wanted to revenge the pain they put me through. Taking my own mother away from me. And from Yuri. And millions of other children. Shame on them, Sasha.” Her voice breaks, the tears bubbling under the cracked surface of her sentences. “Shame on them. How did we let them get away with it for so long? Why are we still?”

He puts a hand on her shoulder, which is shaking from weeping now, and waits as long as he can before asking:

“How did you fight it, Katya? Tell me…”

She takes a sudden, gulping breath and looks up. Her gloves wipe the edges of her eyes.

“I’m an agent,” she says, simply, in a whisper. “I work for the Americans. I have done for years now.”

“
What?
”

She knows he has heard, so she shrugs and says nothing else. Takes more breaths of the moist, cold air. A flake of snow dances into her mouth, burning away instantly on the heat of her tongue.

What she has just revealed seems meaningless to him, almost beyond comprehension, and yet it makes perfect sense.

“You had no idea?” she asks. He shakes his head. And then a thought begins to form that he can hardly articulate. But he must try. He looks at her, jaw slack, eyes anguished, and tries to form the words. Nothing comes out, but she hears them as clearly as if she has just been inside his mind.

“No, no, no,” she says, and she grasps his gloved hand, and pulls it to her breast, her heart. “That is not why I married you, Sasha. It’s why I almost didn’t. It’s why I said I had to think about it when you first asked me, when every part of me was crying yes.” She pauses, and touches his head. “Do you remember on our wedding day, when you came to meet me at the metro? Well, I nearly told you then. But I was too weak,” she says, with a trace of bitterness. “I told myself I was just being careful, but really, I was weak. And, anyway, I had agreed not to work for two years, to avoid suspicion, and I was sure I would never start again. But I did. A few months ago. It has been killing me, Sasha, and I can’t do it anymore. I wanted you to know.”

She is crying again, but there is no sobbing, no change in her voice, only tears which simply slide down her cheekbones, which are gaunt and starkly shadowed in the half-darkness. He cannot move. He just stares at her, shocked.

“How could you have lied to me, Katya? All this time? And
spied
on me?”

She shakes her head, unable to speak. He feels anger tingling in his throat and hands. The sheer purity of the emotion is making his voice constrict, and his head reel. He looks away.

“How could you betray me?”

“I couldn’t. Since marrying you, I haven’t worked for them actively. And now, I’ve started again, they asked me too, they blackmailed me into it. They said if I didn’t do it, they would tell you anyway. And I was scared to lose you. But I can’t lie about it any more, Sasha, I can’t…”

She finds that she is calling after him, because he is walking away from her now, almost stumbling through the snow, in an effort to distance himself from her quickly, as quickly as he can. He cannot look at her, or hear her pleading voice, not now, not when he does not know if he can ever again trust a single word that comes from her mouth.

He does not return home for five hours. It is very early in the morning, the small hours, the hours that feel diminished to her, in the way that her whole life feels suddenly diminished and meaningless now that he hates her. In those five lost hours, she has passed through fear, and sorrow, and self-loathing, and dread, and now she sits at the kitchen table, in the dark, drained of feeling and of thought.

He has walked for five hours, with numb feet and a cold heart, and during the last hour of anguish, as he walked past the restaurant they went to on their first wedding anniversary, and past the bridge that they have so often crossed together on their way to visit his parents, he has begun to remember something of their old life, the one they had before tonight, and he has also begun to attribute some meaning to the fact that it is Katya herself who has confessed her betrayal.

He walks into the house, and switches on all the lights and comes into the kitchen. There she sits, squinting in the sudden glare like a newborn animal. She has been crying a lot, he can see that, and despite himself, his heart goes out to her. He takes his frozen hands from his coat pockets, and picks up the coat that she has left draped across the table. He hands it to her, and almost automatically, she rises and puts it on, and follows him out of the front door, down the stairs and into the silent street. He turns and looks at her, eyes stern.

“I can’t lie to you any more,” she whispers, simply. “Even if it means it’s over between us. I love you.”

He believes it, and he is tired of anger, and of pushing her away, and he cannot bring himself to ignore her pain at this moment. His fury and his hurt are beginning to be subsumed now by his heart. Uncertain of what to do, he puts his arms around her, and although the action is mechanical, it stimulates something within him, his love, his care, and he finds himself feeling relieved that she has said what she wanted to say, even if he has no idea what to do with her words just yet. After a moment, he kisses her forehead, inhales her, the cold skin where it meets the warmer scalp, and holds her to him.

“You don’t hate me?”

“No... but I wish you could have told me before.”

“I know. I said nothing because I was so afraid of losing you, and instead, I just made it all worse.”

He glances around. Suddenly, even the quiet glow of the snow seems threatening to him.

“What are we going to do, Katyushka?” he whispers. “I’m so scared.”

He has spent the last several weeks alerting his department to the fact that there is a mole, or a leak of some kind, never suspecting for a moment that the leak was himself. Through Katya. The realisation that she may be caught at any moment, that she may be wrested from him and into prison, ignites a fear within him that for the time being subsumes his sense of betrayal.

“What have I done?” he asks. “Because of me, they’re looking for you. What have I done?”

“You did your job. You did the right thing.” Her voice is muffled against his damp collar, but it is as though he does not hear her at all.

“What are we going to do? We can’t stay here. They’ll find you.” He cannot think properly, he needs time, and he needs his rationality back. Then, in the midst of his confusion, an idea comes to him.

“I’ll cancel America,” he says.

He means the diplomatic delegation that he is going on the following week. It is an honour to be chosen for the trip, part of the group accompanying Deputy Premier Mikoyan to Washington, New York, Chicago, even Los Angeles – part of the new diplomatic openness between the two countries. It will be Alexander’s first time out of the Soviet Union and he has been proud and excited about it, eager to go and see and explore this other culture, this other world, for himself. But now it seems faintly ridiculous to him, this schoolboy enthusiasm, when all this time his wife has been connected so deeply with the United States, has been involved with organisations that make a mockery of the surface diplomacy that he represents. And on a practical level, this trip is also something that will keep him away from her for a week, just when he must be with her. He must find a way to understand everything that is happening, and make a plan, and protect her – and himself. But how?

“You can’t cancel it. Nothing could be more suspicious…” Even as she speaks, she has raised her head and is now staring at him, with eyes that are wild, almost prophetic, filled with revelation.

“No. You must go. You must. Don’t you see? Then you will be out of here, at least. We will be out. I’ll join you, they’ll help me get out. If I offer them your information…. Sasha, we could do it. We could leave here.”

“Leave?” He is still stupefied. “How can we leave?”

“You have a ticket already. I will follow you.”

“Katya, this is insane. Stop talking this way.”

“Think about it. What choice do we have? Jail, or worse.”

“It will never work…”

“Can we stay?” she asks. “Can we stay?”

He stares at her for a few minutes while he thinks about her question. He is trying to consider all the options, looking at remote possibilities, suggestions, ideas. The hurdles they face are hard, perhaps insurmountable, but dealing with them is infinitely soothing to him for it involves thinking, deciding, practicality. Her lying, her betrayal, her pain, her reasons – all these things are too overwhelming for him to think of at this moment, and the focus on immediate, practical issues is strangely calming.

“Let’s go,” she pleads. “I’m so tired of it here. We can’t even talk to each other in private except in the street. Let’s go. Please. Maybe there we could really make a difference. We could tell people how things are here. The terrible things that have happened.”