Salt the Snow

by Carrie Callaghan

  “What do you want?” she said when she approached.

  “Come have a drink with me.” His voice was taut, like a wire.

  She paused. She didn’t want to spend time with him.

  “Please,” he said. He looked at her with eyes watering over. “I’m ruined. I need your help.”

  “One drink,” Milly said, eyes narrowed. “We don’t get paid for three more days.”

  She turned toward the bar, a room off the main lobby, but the small space was crowded with laughing men in uniform, and a lopsided tune limped out from the piano.

  “Not here,” Victor said. “Come on.” He laid his hand on her forearm, and Milly was surprised by how strong his fingers were, as if her arm were a trout lifted from the lake by his eagle talons. She looked at him as he led her away from the raucous bar, and his jaw was clenching.

  Outside, the warm air rustled her skirt as they walked the few blocks to the Metropol. A flock of starlings twittered at them from a tree above. Victor seemed distracted and nervous, and he waved Milly’s questions away.

  “Not yet,” he said, and they waited for the traffic guard to indicate they could cross.

  Once they were inside the Metropol lobby, Milly’s new dress began to feel shabby. The gilt of the lobby wasn’t quite golden enough to reflect her sad image, but the mirrors were. And there, in the small hotel bar, stood a woman in her late forties wearing a velvet gown and a gigantic gemstone resting on her open décolletage, alongside three American marine bodyguards. All four held crystalline dishes of vodka, and Mrs. McLean, whom Milly recognized from yesterday’s newspaper photo, was complaining loudly in a voice that seemed sprung from a bullfrog, not her slim body. Her neck was a bit loose, Milly thought as she and Victor slid into a banquette on the other side of the bar.

  “That is the famous diamond, eh?” Victor nodded his head.

  “The Hope diamond, nestled in her amble bosom. Some gals have all the luck.” Milly waved at a waiter, who seemed happy to rush over to a part of the room not dominated by Mrs. McLean’s complaints about the American ambassador and his poor manners.

  “Two vodkas,” Milly said. Once the waiter walked away, she looked closely at Victor, the fine lacework of veins showing in his eyes and the shadows alongside the bridge of his narrow nose. His hair seemed greasy, now that she was closer.

  “So?” she asked.

  He began to cry, silently.

  “You’re the only one … the only one who misses him like I do.”

  The waiter plunked two short glasses on the table and spun away. Milly took a quick swallow from hers.

  “God dammit, Victor.” She hated feeling sympathy for him. He didn’t deserve it, when he collaborated with the police, and he was free while Zhenya wasn’t.

  “Every night I lie in bed wishing I were the one imprisoned and not him. But I was a coward. I can’t change that. And now I’m not even allowed to write him letters.” Victor wiped a tear from his face. “Would you tell him something for me?”

  “Victor. He wrote me … he wrote me in his last letter that he was done with the fairy business.” She said the last two words in English, partly because she didn’t know exactly how to translate it, and partly because she didn’t want anyone to overhear. When she had read that letter from Zhenya, she blinked in confusion. The pledge seemed more made to the censors than to her. If he hadn’t been done with loving men when they married, she doubted he was done now. But she wouldn’t tell Victor that.

  Victor shook his head, then retracted his hand to wipe his cheeks dry with the cotton handkerchief folded in his breast pocket.

  “I know.”

  Milly folded her hands in her lap. She couldn’t bring herself to ask Victor how long ago Zhenya had left behind the fairy business. Was it when he begged her to propose, to rescue him? She knew he had a special regard for Victor, but had his feelings taken him further than that? It didn’t matter now. She took two more sips, nearly draining her glass. Victor hadn’t touched his, and she looked at his fingers and wondered if he would. She wondered if he had squeezed Zhenya’s bare flesh as she had.

  “And carrying on with a nineteen-year-old!” Mrs. McLean’s complaints about Ambassador Bullitt wafted over. Milly couldn’t see, but she suspected the three soldiers were loving seeing their unconventional boss scorned by this paradigm of wealth. All four of them were probably the sort of people who wanted to believe that wealth was meted out to those who played by the rules. Milly finished her drink.

  “He’ll be glad to hear from you, Victor.” She sighed. It was true, and she couldn’t deny Zhenya the pleasure of news from his dear friend … or lover. “What should I say?”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

  “Make it sound like it’s from you. Just tell him the news about me. The season’s gearing up; he’ll want to know which shows we’re doing.”

  She looked at the folded letter and wondered what sort of secret language might be concealed inside the names and memories of operas these men had performed together.

  “He’s in a performance brigade himself. In addition to the labor. He seems … pleased about that,” she said. It was hard to know what part of Zhenya’s enthusiasm was his native spirit and what part was his fear of the censor. She hated that she couldn’t tell how this experience had changed him.

  A greasy lock of hair fell over Victor’s forehead, and he pushed it back.

  “When they arrested me—”

  “Don’t.” Milly held up a hand.

  Victor ignored her.

  “They promised me it didn’t matter what I said about him. There was nothing wrong with what we had done. It wasn’t illegal then.” His eyes were wide and pleading, and Milly wondered when he had last slept.

  “I don’t want to hear about it, Victor. No matter what you intended, you gave them the information they needed to keep him.” His excuses would only make her angry.

  “I never thought they would convict Zhenya.”

  Milly gripped the table and leaned forward. Across from her, Mrs. McLean laughed at something one of the marines had said.

  “But you saw them arrest him. You knew how serious his situation was!”

  He cradled his head in his hands.

  “I was scared.”

  Milly wanted to throw over the table, or kick him, or scream, but she was stuck alongside him in the banquette against the wall, and so she grabbed his drink and took a large swallow.

  “You’re a coward,” she said.

  “I know.”

  The vodka began to swirl against her temples, and she took a deep breath.

  “We’re both cowards.” She pressed her fingertips under her glasses. “If I were truly brave, I’d write a news story about Zhenya. But who would care? Who would raise a finger to help my beautiful husband once they found out what he was convicted of?”

  Victor’s chest caved as he slumped into his chair, and Milly pushed the glass back toward him.

  “What a pair we are. Drink up.”

  “You’ll tell Zhenya what I wrote?”

  “In one form or another. Yes.”

  The words were hard to say, but she forced them out. She couldn’t deny that they both loved Zhenya, and he loved them. That tied her to Victor too, no matter how much she resented it.

  Victor drained the rest of his glass.

  THE NEXT DAY, Milly, Lindesay, and Joe Baird stood at the foot of the parachute tower in the Park of Culture and Rest. It was some hours after they’d left the office, and they’d already had a few drinks. Lindesay ran the Internews office out of a small corner of the same requisitioned mansion Moscow Daily News worked from, and Joe wrote for him.

  “It’s a long way up.” Milly wobbled a little as she craned her neck to look at the top of the wooden structure. It had four sides, like an ancient siege tower, and a ramp winding up the exterior. A wire stretched from the top to the ground, and a woman screamed as she jumped off the platform. Her parachute depl
oyed, and the wire guided her to the ground.

  “If only we could parachute up,” Joe said, his curly black hair bobbing as he looked up.

  Milly giggled, though it wasn’t very funny. Lindesay put his hands on her shoulders, and she sucked in a little breath. He turned away from the tower toward a covered stage behind some trees, then released her. She could feel the warmth of his fingers on her skin even after his hands were gone.

  “It’s too far of a climb,” Lindesay said. “Admit it. We’re not hiking up that thing. How about some jazz? Or the zoo. I want to hear a lion roar.”

  Milly clapped her hands like a child, performing of course, but enjoying the act all the same.

  “Let’s see the lions,” she said. “Whaddya say?”

  Joe looked wistfully up the tower again, then shrugged his thick shoulders.

  “It’s all the same to me.”

  Lindesay needed no further endorsement and set off down the trail, with Milly and Joe behind him. The paved walkways were crowded with families, knots of young girls in yellow and cream dresses, and roving bands of boys chasing pigeons. The manicured hedges disgorged a stumbling man, and Milly shrieked, then laughed as the drunk man doffed his cap. There was a festival atmosphere, with the distant sound of jazz and the intimate smell of candied nuts on the air, and Milly smiled. Then she thought of Zhenya, and she halted. He should be here. She should have tried harder to dispute the charges. Had she wanted for him to be punished? Punished for not being the husband she had thought she wanted. A little girl walked past and then squalled when her ice cream plopped to the ground, out of the dripping cone still in her hand. Lindesay, up ahead, turned and saw Milly standing. He came back toward her.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said, and Milly jerked her head up to meet his gaze. “Here.” Then he handed the little girl a ruble note, crumpled from his pocket, and Milly’s breath steadied. He didn’t know, he didn’t know.

  “I was thinking of Zhenya,” she said, when he nudged her forward to catch up with Joe.

  “Do you miss him?” Lindesay bent low so his mouth was near her ear as she walked, and no one else could hear him.

  “I need to try harder to get permission to see him. He wants me to come visit.”

  “That’d make a hell of a story, Milly.” He straightened. “American Wife Travels to the Gulag to Visit Husband.”

  “Like hell it would. I can’t write about Zhenya. No one would understand.” She hadn’t even told most of her friends that they were married, and she usually called him the boyfriend. But one night in the newsroom, when Lindesay was bored with his Internews work and had come to visit her, he had mentioned his wife, so she narrowed her eyes and mentioned her husband. She regretted it now.

  Lindesay shrugged. “We newspapermen don’t usually think about fair. Just about what makes a good story.”

  “Newspaperwomen,” Milly muttered. Lindesay winked.

  They reached the part of the park with the animal cages, and sure enough there was a lion roaring and pacing in his small box.

  “Hardly seems decent,” Lindesay said.

  “I thought you didn’t care about decent.” Milly nudged him.

  “Shouldn’t we get a drink?” Joe asked.

  “Not yet.” Milly hooked her arms through both men’s elbows. “Let’s go dance first. At the jazz pavilion. I’m counting on you boys to brighten my mood after this dreary place.” She inclined her head toward a cage where a black bear sat mournfully on its haunches.

  “Just for a turn,” Lindesay said. “Then I’ll need to get home.”

  “One turn.” Milly pulled them along. She hoped she didn’t sound disappointed. “Then I have some OGPU officials to bother.”

  “A story on the police?” Joe asked, his dark eyebrows raised.

  “Nah,” Milly said. “Never mind.”

  But as they walked toward the jazz music, Lindesay looked down at her with those mahogany eyes of his, and she wondered how much he knew. And she hated that she wasn’t already standing in line, waiting to make an appointment to wait again, in hopes of getting a meeting. She wondered what Zhenya would do for her. What Lindesay would do. She snorted, and Joe replied with a “Gesundheit.” Lindesay looked at her again, and she smiled up. She knew what he’d do—he had said as much. Well, she was better than that, at least. If she wrote about Zhenya it would be to help him, not to earn a few extra dollars. She’d dance a little now, sure, but she’d get to the police offices before they closed.

  THREE DAYS LATER, Milly rubbed her aching eyes while she reread the next day’s copy under the yellow light of the newsroom lamp. She blinked, and the words blurred then re-formed. She took her glasses off, wiped them, then tried again. She was so damn tired.

  She had made it to the OGPU office before closing, but the line was too long, and though she had tried to argue with the officer sent out to shoo them away, in the end she had gone home. Only to lie in bed, unable to sleep, worrying about Zhenya and pitying her own life. She’d even tried, out of boredom or desperation, to rub her hand between her legs, but she couldn’t kindle any sparks. Only gloom. And then she was hit with two solid days of work, followed by more restless nights.

  “Miss Bennett,” the mail delivery boy said, and handed a few letters to Milly. One was a notice from the Writers Union, probably about some upcoming meeting. Another was unmarked. She opened the envelope.

  When she finished reading, Milly walked back to her chair and collapsed into the creaking wood. Then she flipped open her calendar.

  She had three days to leave for Siberia. Somehow, she had received permission to visit Zhenya.

  20

  AUGUST 1934

  MILLY WAITED ON the dirt path outside the tall wooden gate while the guard walked over from his hut to let her in. A grove of aspen trees behind her whispered as he sauntered toward the barred entrance. Every morning for the past week she had followed this routine: walk the ten minutes from the decrepit house she was staying in, then stand here braying at the gate until someone inside the guardhouse roused himself to let her in. She sighed and rolled her eyes as this one took his time looking her up and down, and eventually he opened the gate.

  “Breakfast is over,” he said.

  Milly laughed.

  “I’m not here to eat.” She held out her rumpled pass. While he scrutinized it, three other women from nearby cabins got in line behind her. Even in Siberia there were lines.

  The guard nodded, so Milly snatched her pass back. By now, Zhenya should be in the rehearsal space, in one of the common buildings. She hoped it wouldn’t take long to find which one. This was her second-to-last day in the camp.

  When she had first arrived, limping and crooked from nine days of train travel, Milly had surprised Zhenya as he walked out of the mess hall after lunch. She almost didn’t recognize him, with his face tanned golden brown and his shoulders rounded with muscle under his rough cotton shirt. He had been laughing at something the man next to him said, and when Milly called out his name, he halted, confused. His eyes found her, standing in the shade of the wooden porch of the mess hall, and his mouth fell open. He ran two steps toward her, but then froze, remembering himself, and lunged back into the line from the mess hall.

  “Milly baby!” he called, his voice plaintive, and she hurried to wrap her arms around him. He peppered her cheeks and forehead with kisses, while the man behind him frowned.

  “You’re holding us up,” the man growled.

  “Yes, yes, you’re only jealous,” Zhenya said, but he began walking, pulling Milly along with him.

  She was so elated to see him that all her nerves about their reunion evaporated under the sunlight of his smile. But as the days wound on, Milly’s anxiety grew. A week had passed and she still hadn’t been able to have him to herself, not even for a private conversation. Always they were surrounded by at least four or five other men. She wanted time to talk, to hold him. To ask.

  Now she walked among the camp’s wooden buildings.
Some were so weather beaten and warped that they must have dated back to the time of the tsar, but most were newer, square and featureless with a grim determination to swallow the prisoners of the Soviet state.

  She saw a prisoner she recognized, a wide-faced man with curly brown hair, and she held up a hand. He squinted at her until she walked a few paces closer, and then he smiled.

  “Are you going to the rehearsal?” she asked him as she fell in stride.

  “Yes. But we have only morning rehearsal today. This afternoon, more time in the quarry.”

  “I thought that was finished.” Milly frowned. Zhenya had told her, chin high, how he had spent the spring breaking apart and loading rocks, so they could be sent to build walls and bridges all over Russia. He had flexed his muscles for her while she laughed, not sure what to make of his enthusiasm for his own enslavement. He seemed to want to reassure her, so she let him.

  “Pavlev, tell me,” Milly said as they walked. “Do you like it here?”

  He laughed. “Will you take my place? You can have it.”

  “I wouldn’t have believed it if you’d told me a year ago, but yes, I’d live in the camp if the commissar would let me. I spent all yesterday afternoon writing him a letter while sitting outside his own door, which he wouldn’t open to see me. And I guess I’ll be doing the same today, begging him to let me stay here with Zhenya. So yes, I’d take your spot.”

  Pavlev shook his head.

  “It is hard here. Especially in the winter.”

  “But I can’t leave him.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  He walked a little faster, and Milly had to hurry to catch up.

  When they reached the common room, Pavlev walked across the bare wooden boards of the floor to take his place in a row of men standing along the opposite wall. A guard glared at him, then saw Milly and lifted his cap, a strangely courteous gesture in the dim brown room.

  In the middle, Zhenya stood holding another man’s hand.

  “But you must understand!” Zhenya squeezed the man’s hand, then, still holding it, got down on his knees. He looked up at the other man, a dark-haired fellow about Milly’s age. “You must bring in the grain. Your country needs it.”