Angels in the Snow Read online

  Harry Waterman spent the morning sticking strips of newspaper across the joins in the windows to prevent the iced wind piercing the flat in deep winter. He worked slowly and inefficiently, and as he worked the familiar sourness spread inside him like a stain—eight years of his life lost, the dwindling years ahead. He could look neither behind nor ahead for comfort. The sourness was becoming worse, an ulcer of the soul. He drank a neat vodka, then another, and the sourness sharpened into anger.

  He went into the kitchen which was the only other room in the flat, to see what his wife had left him for lunch. There was a saucepan of borsch, cold sausage and tomato salad on top of the stove. Soup, sausage and spuds. It was as bad as the food in the camp, he lied to himself.

  He went down to the road to a beer hall, hiding his bottle of vodka inside his coat, scowling at the cold. In the beer hall they greeted him and listened to his routine stories of life at the camp on condition that he stoked them with vodka and told them about the girls.

  Luke Randall finished dressing and said good-bye to the woman in his bed. ‘Try and be gone before the maid arrives,’ he said.

  ‘Why do you hate me?’ she asked.

  ‘I hate myself,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll destroy yourself,’ she said. ‘Soon you’ll have no one. You can’t go on using people and rejecting them. You can’t say you love people one minute and throw them out the next. No wonder your wife left you.’

  ‘She’s on holiday in the States,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘She’s left you and I don’t blame her.’

  ‘How do you know she’s left me?’

  ‘Because I read a letter from her to you.’

  ‘You’d better be gone when I come back this afternoon,’ he said.

  ‘She left you because of your affairs.’

  He looked at her with distaste. She looked middle-aged and bitter. They had reached the spiteful stage. ‘The trouble with my wife,’ he said, ‘is that she understands me.’

  He took his coat, left the flat and waited for the lumbering lift. In the flat across the landing, as bare as a prison cell, a French woman screamed at her husband. The husband screamed back and there was silence.

  The lift arrived and he slammed the gate with the finality of a man closing a book at the end of a chapter. Stuck inside the lift, as ponderous as a pulley on a building site, was a typewritten slip advertising a Moskvich for sale; it had been bought duty-free by a diplomat who was now out for his profit on the open market.

  Outside, the shining sky had dulled to slate. Wisps of snow as sparse as last autumn leaves drifted from the greyness, flakes of whitewash dislodged from the ceiling.

  A snowball squeezed into a small cannon-ball of ice hit him in the back.

  ‘Hey,’ he shouted, ‘who threw that?’ He thought about throwing a snowball back; then thought about his own children and walked away, a big badger of a man, with his head tucked into the wind. Thus he collided with the young man emerging from the adjoining block. A young man too smart by far wearing a new dark overcoat and new sheep’s wool gloves and new shining shoes. Luke Randall was in no mood for pleasantries. ‘Why don’t you look where you’re walking,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Richard Mortimer. And spent the next half hour cursing himself for accepting the blame for what was patently the big man’s fault.

  Perversely the encounter stimulated Luke Randall. He decided to walk to work. As he rounded the corner of the block and emerged on to the main street he felt the wind, tunnelled between the buildings on either side, push him. He turned and walked against the wind. The snowflakes accelerated as they turned the corner and fled down the broad highway. He opened his mouth, felt the wind in his throat and raised his head, exhilarated.

  He walked quickly, wanted to run. But diplomats never run. He smiled and the pale, screwed-up faces passing by stared at him curiously. No fur hat and a smile on his face—the big man was drunk or mad.

  He made a couple of skipping steps like a ballroom dancer showing off with the quickstep, swallowed a snowflake and laughed. He was free again for a while.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Traffic moved swiftly this morning, the drivers anxious to escape from the new cold. On the Tchaikovsky Street stretch of the ring road which encircles the heart of Moscow lorries bored through the snow while ugly Volga taxis bullied their way along giving precedence only to the big black Chaikas with their curtained rear windows heading for the Kremlin. Single-decker buses and trams were crammed with Muscovites glum with the feel of winter. Drivers turned their Chevrolets and Cadillacs cautiously into the American Embassy convinced that the cab drivers would forgive the cold if only they could score a dent in the side of a bourgeois automobile.

  This morning, glowing with temporary elation, Luke Randall noticed people and buildings and cars afresh. He confirmed his first impression that the American Embassy looked like a large, bankrupt hotel—mustard-coloured, old before its time, as prosaic as a plane tree.

  The militiaman outside saluted him with the wary cheerfulness which policemen reserve for foreigners. ‘Zdrastvuite.’ What was he at home, denuded of uniform and boots? Did he put his stockinged-feet on the table, grumble behind Izvestia and Pravda and slop borsch down his vest? Or did he divest himself of authority, stick postage stamps in an album and adore a peasant woman with a rump like two bed bolsters?

  He collected his mail and took the lift up to his floor. The duty marine who had recently arrived from Vietnam greeted him with a deference tinged somehow with the contempt he felt a military man should feel towards a diplomat. A closed-circuit television set recording departures and arrivals outside flickered beside him.

  ‘Seen anyone suspicious on that thing today?’ Randall asked.

  The marine, crew-cut and built like a Wimbledon champion, shook his head. ‘Seen one helluva lot of snow, Mr. Randall,’ he said.

  ‘Should be a change after Vietnam.’

  The marine shrugged. ‘I guess it’s a change right enough.’

  ‘But not a change for the better?’

  The marine grimaced. What had he done to deserve Moscow?

  In his office the secretary he shared with another diplomat was dealing his letters on to his desk.

  ‘You look like a card sharper,’ he said.

  ‘No card sharper should have fingers as cold as mine,’ she said.

  Her fingers, he reflected, looked cold even in the summer. Thin and chalky like a school teacher’s fingers. Elaine Marchmont finished the deal and sat down at her desk. She was wearing her boots for the first time since the last winter had melted and dried up.

  ‘Shouldn’t you take those things off in the office?’ he asked.

  ‘Is it against protocol to wear boots in the office?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. I didn’t think they looked too comfortable, that’s all.’

  ‘If it was someone like Joyce Holiday or … or Mrs. Fry wearing them you’d tell them to keep them on.’

  ‘Why Mrs. Fry?’ he asked. And added quickly: ‘Or why Miss Holiday for that matter?’ He hoped Janice Fry had left his flat by now.

  ‘Because they’re the sort of women men like to see in boots.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about boots on anyone. Those happened to look uncomfortable. You didn’t steal them from a Russian soldier did you? I noticed one on guard outside the Kremlin without his boots on.’

  Elaine Marchmont said: ‘Why do you have to keep riling me? We can’t all be sex kittens.’

  Then he felt sorry for her. Sorry about the boots that did nothing for her. Sorry about her myopia, her thin body, her hair which was the colour of dried grass rather than straw.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘There’s some decoded cables for you,’ she said. ‘Some mail from the pouch. A report from Chambers in agriculture. Three invitations to cocktail parties and APN’S translations of the Soviet Press.’

  There was a duty letter from his wife, written with e
ffort, recording the boys’ progress at school, asking for money to redecorate the flat in Washington. The words only flowed naturally when briefly they were oiled by anger, and she recalled his infidelity. The words became her voice, precise and plaintive and Anglicised. ‘Who, I wonder, is the current girl friend.’ Then she remembered her Bostonian upbringing; the voice faded and she hoped without sincerity that he was keeping well.

  The cables contained Washington reaction to Soviet reaction to American policy in Vietnam. Their phraseology was as drearily predictable as the wording of a protest note.

  Cocktails with his neighbours who still included his wife on the invitation although they knew she had left. Cocktails with his opposite number at the British Embassy. Cocktails with his own ambassador. Gallons of cocktails, except that there were never any cocktails—Scotch and soda, gin and tonic, occasionally Russian champagne.

  Snowflakes pressed against the window and peeped in before dissolving. He walked to the window and gazed down at Tchaikovsky Street. A few parchment leaves adhered to the branches of the trees, clinging hopelessly to summer. Fur hats and head-scarves bobbed and weaved among each other and an ambulance, not much bigger than a limousine, raced towards Kutuzovsky Prospect where he lived.

  ‘The first road accident of the winter,’ he said.

  ‘And I’m willing to bet a cab was involved,’ said Elaine Marchmont. ‘The cab drivers are pigs. Worse than the French.’

  ‘Cab drivers are the same the world over. Except in Lagos. There’s nothing quite as bad as a Lagos cab driver.’

  Elaine Marchmont knew nothing of Lagos cab drivers. ‘These pigs won’t even stop for you,’ she said. ‘And when they do they’re as surly as hell.’ She ground out half a cigarette. ‘I hate them,’ she said.

  Randall looked at her speculatively. ‘Elaine,’ he said, ‘how long have you been here?’

  ‘Eighteen months. Going on nineteen. Why?’

  ‘Isn’t it about time you took a vacation?’

  ‘Moscow,’ she said firmly, ‘is not getting me down. Not one little bit.’

  ‘You must be unique,’ Randall said.

  ‘You know I like it.’

  ‘Sure,’ Randall said. ‘It’s an experience. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.’

  ‘Come on,’ Randall said. ‘Not every minute. What about those minutes when you were trying to get a cab?’

  ‘And I’m pretty sick of hearing people bitching about Moscow. They should never have joined the diplomatic service.’

  ‘Moscow gets you,’ Randall said, ‘whether you like it or not. I know of one guy who lasted six days. They had to hold a plane at Sheremetievo to ship him out. He reckoned everyone was after him.’

  Elaine Marchmont smiled wanly. ‘At least,’ she said, ‘I know no one is after me.’

  ‘Come on,’ Randall said. There wasn’t much else to say. Every embassy had its spinsters who volunteered for Moscow in the belief that there would be a surfeit of bachelors. But most of the men were married and the bachelors were careerists unlikely to jeopardise their careers by serious affairs within their embassies. And in any case they could always take the nannies out.

  ‘You’re a lousy diplomat,’ Elaine Marchmont said. ‘You know it’s true. I remind myself of an actress who used to play the perfect secretary on the movies. Eve someone or other. She used to cover up her lack of sex appeal by making cracks about it and helping her boss with his love affairs while all the time she was in love with him.’

  ‘Are you in love with me?’ Randall asked.

  ‘You must be joking,’ said Elaine Marchmont.

  ‘It’s stopped snowing,’ he said.

  ‘Sure. And now it’ll melt and there will be fogs and the planes won’t come in and we won’t get any mail.’

  ‘You sound as if you know your Russian winter off by heart. This is the thing that gets most people. The thought of another winter.’

  ‘I’ll survive. I don’t mind the real winter. It’s the preliminaries that bug me.’

  ‘Don’t use that word,’ Randall said. ‘This guy they flew out after six days thought everywhere was bugged.’

  ‘The preliminaries and the aftermath,’ she went on. ‘The snow that keeps stopping and starting. The mists. And then in April the mud and slush and running water. The whole place sounds like a running cistern.’

  Her face was pale and taut, summer freckles on her nose already fading. Everything about her was pale, even her voice.

  ‘I honestly think you ought to take a holiday,’ he said. ‘Prepare yourself for the winter.’

  ‘And where should I go? Helsinki—again? I might as well stay here.’

  You could fly to Copenhagen,’ Randall said. ‘Or Stockholm. Or London even.’

  ‘Or Siberia,’ Elaine Marchmont said. ‘I’ve never been there. You seem to forget a vacation costs a lot of dollars which I don’t happen to have.’ She blew her nose. ‘It’s the thought of Christmas that really frightens me.’

  Christmas. Children around a tree fragile with bright glass. The elation subsided. Tonight a cocktail party.

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘You’ll have a great Christmas.’

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘With other people’s children. Buying them lousy Russian toys and helping other women cook the turkey. I just can’t wait.’

  ‘I think I’ll take a coffee break,’ he said.

  The canteen was a small, gloomy place adjoining the transport section. A young German called Hans who had a way with hamburgers and tossed salad was in charge. He was sleekly blond, taciturn and efficient and gave the impression that he had exactly calculated the savings needed to return to The Fatherland to open his own restaurant. In Dusseldorf, perhaps, where a lot of money was spent on schnitzel and steaks and schnapps.

  Here crew-cut young Kremlinologists discussed nuances of Soviet policy and reached conclusions which would have astonished the instigators. And when they had decided Soviet intentions in Vietnam, China, the Middle East and Africa they discussed the new ambassador and his wife, gently probing each other’s opinions in case they were in the presence of a confidant of the ambassador. They discussed the winter gathering around them; and they luxuriated in the privations and frustrations of life in Moscow—but only if they were friends because it was easy to become known as someone who was for ever bitching. If they were really close they debated the possibility of love affairs on the embassy circuit in Moscow and, if they were even closer, they confided their own desires.

  Here American journalists dropped in for a snack with their hungry, pregnant wives. If there were rivals present they managed through faint praise to deride their exclusive stories; or to hint at their own mysterious assignments with anonymous Russian contacts. Journalists and diplomats mixed warily over hamburgers and salad, canned beer and ginger beer, seeking each other’s knowledge with deference and undertones of contempt for each other’s profession.

  Randall took his coffee and joined the correspondents of a magazine and a news agency, who were talking shop while their wives, both as taut-bellied as bass drums, talked about babies, nannies and Russian maids.

  They greeted him eagerly. No correspondent had really understood his brief within the embassy. He was a deep one, a dark one, with unfathomed depths of information to be tapped. Or he was a clerical nonentity whose non-slip mask concealed nothing. At cocktail parties each correspondent had stiffened Randall’s whiskies to free the mask; both had failed. Each was valuable to Randall because, with their contacts within the freemasonry of journalism, they gathered a little information from the correspondents of other countries; and sometimes, but very rarely, from Russians.

  ‘How’s the brains department these days?’ said the agency man. He had no idea what Randall’s job was.

  ‘Fine,’ Randall said. ‘Just fine.’

  The agency man’s wife said: ‘I’m darned sure my maid has been stealing my cigarettes.’ In Cleveland, Randall thought, she woul
d have been lucky to have had a cleaning woman in twice a week.

  Everyone made plump jokes about pregnancy. Both women, terrified of Russian midwifery, were taking the train to Helsinki to have their babies.

  ‘The trouble with Russia where abortion is legal is they might think I’ve gone in to have one,’ said the magazine man’s wife.

  ‘I guess they would think you were a little on the tardy side,’ Randall said. Everyone laughed. That was one of the assets of being mysterious: everyone laughed at your jokes. ‘What are the agencies putting out today?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know about THE agencies. We haven’t moved a thing except the Pravda stuff on Vietnam and the Chinese. I sometimes wonder who they hate most—the Chinks or us.’

  ‘They don’t hate either,’ Randall said. ‘It’s just propaganda Soviet style.’

  ‘It’s so awful,’ said the magazine man’s wife. ‘This slaughter in Vietnam. Those terrible pictures of mutilated babies.’

  The men regarded her uneasily. She had been emotional lately what with the baby coming and Moscow in general.

  Behind them Hans moved stealthily from hamburger to steak.

  ‘It makes me want to cry,’ she said.

  ‘There, there, honey,’ said her husband. ‘You just take yourself to Finland soon and have that son for us.’

  ‘Sure I’ll have your son,’ said his wife. ‘Just so that he can go to Vietnam and be killed.’

  ‘That’s a long time ahead,’ said her husband.

  ‘Sure it’s a long time,’ she said. ‘I just wonder what little old battlefield they’ll have fixed up for him by then.’

  The agency man’s wife said: ‘It could be a daughter.’

  And Randall, bored by the dramatisation of the unborn, said: ‘Let’s worry about the weather. It’s the only thing we know for sure. It’s going to be very cold very soon.’

  ‘I don’t think I could stand another full winter,’ the agency man’s wife said.

  ‘We’re moving off,’ her husband explained.

  ‘Where to?’ Randall asked politely.