Despite the Falling Snow

by Shamim Sarif

  “Are you all right, Sasha?”

  “Fine. I’m baking.”

  Yuri looks back down at his book and shakes his head. “He works, he cooks, he bakes. It will be a lucky woman that marries you!”

  Even as he finishes this last remark, he feels the pain emanating from the man standing before him. Yuri frowns. “Sorry, Sasha, I didn’t think…”

  Alexander stops him with a raised hand, for he wishes that he did not feel such a light-hearted comment so deeply, and he hates to make himself into an object of pity.

  “I have to go back to the kitchen,” he tells Yuri, his tone now deliberately ironic. “My plums are waiting for me.”

  From the refrigerator he takes another bowl, filled with the fruit, which he washes, then halves and sprinkles with sugar and a little cinnamon. He removes the pastry from the oven, pouring out the beans, and places the soft fruit into the cooked case with care, piling up the layers. Over the top he lays some extra lengths of dough, like a latticework, and brushes it with milk, and sprinkles the whole pie with sugar. Pulling open the oven, he slides it in, and then stands watching the closed door as though expecting some sign. He turns his head towards the light that comes from Yuri’s lamp, and as he watches, the lamp clicks off, and he hears the sound of his brother-in-law rising heavily from his chair. Yuri’s shadow falls into the kitchen, outlined against the soft light streaming in from the streetlamp outside.

  “I’m going to bed.”

  Alexander nods. “Goodnight, Yuri.”

  Yuri smiles at him and turns. “Goodnight, Sasha. Sleep well.”

  Alexander sits at the table, his chair slightly to one side, so that the streak of yellow light from the street falls next to him and not across him. He listens to the distant noises of the city night. Cars passing on the main street to the side of them, a siren fading in the distance. He hears some footfalls echoing up from the street below, and a woman’s low, soothing voice, reading aloud he thinks, in the apartment next to theirs. That voice somehow sharpens the dull ache that is always in his heart. He turns his head away, trying not to hear it, listening instead to the throb of the oven, baking the pie. But the voice is unrelenting, soft and musical, and he cannot block it out, nor does he now want to. He waits for a few minutes, listening hard, sitting with his head in his hands. The weight of his head seems huge to him now, and slowly, he lowers it onto the kitchen table, so that his ear and cheek are resting on the warm grain of the wood. The pain of listening to that low, light voice is fine and excruciating, and just when he thinks he cannot bear it a moment longer, he makes himself visualise her too, this unknown neighbour talking through the walls. He sees her, dark-haired and slim, like Katya, and in his mind she is reading a story to her baby, and the child he has invented is a miniature of her, long-lashed and beautiful, and already asleep. Now he imagines her turning out the lamp, and closing the door with a gentle click, and walking softly into her own bedroom where someone she loves is waiting for her. Alexander stands up quickly, for his stomach is turning and he feels he might vomit. He wants to cry, but he has cried so much in the past months that he feels all dried up inside, as though there is nothing left to weep out. A couple of lengths of pacing in the kitchen begins to calm him, and he stops at the oven door and edges it open to look at the pie. It looks moist and delicious, and he nods and closes the door, and sits back down at the table. The woman’s voice is gone now, vanished away like an hallucination, leaving only the sound of late night traffic, and he is thankful for it.

  “What do you mean, there are no more?” The woman stands, hands out in disbelief, staring at Yuri. He shrugs.

  “We are sold out, Mrs Sachs,” he says.

  The woman fingers her pearl necklace and taps a polished heel. She is most unhappy.

  “I’ve been coming here every week for two months,” she says. “That salmon is my signature dish; how can I have my friends over tonight without my salmon?”

  Her reasoning seems flawless to her own ears, but it makes Alexander smile from the back of the shop.

  “Perhaps for next week, you’d like to reserve some?” asks Yuri.

  “Next week?! I need it now, not next week!”

  Yuri looks to Alexander, his face contorted with uncertainty. He hates to be faced with anyone shouting, which is why his wife gets away with anything she likes so long as she raises her voice. Alexander comes out from behind his counter.

  “I apologise, Mrs Sachs. We had a smaller delivery of salmon today, and I couldn’t….”

  “It’s you?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Who makes the fish?”

  “I make all the food, yes.”

  Mrs Sachs has lost her angry demeanour, and is filled with interest now that she is faced with the man who can produce meals a hundred times more inviting than her own. She regards him for a moment as he stands there in his white apron. She takes in his short, dark hair, a damp curl sticking to his wide forehead, his shadowed jaw and his huge brown eyes. He is not overly tall, but his leanness and erect posture give him a length of bone most unlike her husband’s meagre stoop. She puts a hand to her wavy red hair and smiles.

  “My,” she says. “And all this time I thought a woman was producing all this food. I can’t imagine.”

  Alexander smiles briefly, and looks down at the counter, where a brisket of beef lies, ready for trimming and tying.

  “What am I going to do about tonight’s dinner?” she asks, a slight sigh in her tone. He turns and meets her look, and she touches her top lip nervously.

  “There is a fishmonger on the next block,” he says. “You can get the salmon there. If you like, I will write down the recipe for you. I can explain how…”

  “I don’t cook,” she says, with finality.

  “Ah,” replies Alexander. He is tired, and tempted to frown and hurry the woman out of the shop, but he tries to keep his temper. “Then I have a new dish, which you may like. It is made with chicken, and has a cream and chive sauce…”

  “Cream?”

  He nods.

  “With chicken?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re Jewish. No mixing meat and dairy.”

  “I see.” Alexander smiles politely, and excuses himself.

  “What if I ask you to cook the meal – the salmon, I mean – deliver it to my house, and prepare it to be served?”

  Alexander stops short, and glances at Yuri, who shrugs.

  “Now?”

  “Right now.”

  “It would cost too much,” says Alexander.

  “For who?” Mrs Sachs laughs. “You name the price, and I’ll pay it.”

  And so he begins. Three and a half hours that pass in a blur, but a happy, adrenalin-packed blur, and that culminate in a three course meal for eight people, prepared, cooled and packed. He makes the drive in Yuri’s shuddering red Chevrolet to the lower end of Beacon Hill, a different city from the one he lives in, and he twists and turns up and down the steep streets, by the quiet light, soft as butter, of old, ornate street lamps, until he finds the Sachs’ house. He gets out and knocks, and enquires to check that he is at the right place. Then he unloads all the boxes and dishes, which are covered over with crisp aluminium foil and heavy plates, and he carries them straight into the kitchen by the back entrance. Mrs Sachs and her housekeeper are there, one in a black cocktail dress, the other in a grey uniform.

  “Wonderful!” Mrs Sachs cries. “Here,” she says. “If you lay it all out here, on this table, and just show Mrs Monks what goes with what.”

  She disappears through a swinging door, and as the door opens, Alexander can hear laughter dying in a distant room.

  “The sauce,” he says, looking at the housekeeper. “It needs heating.”

  The woman looks into the bowl and evaluates the amount of sauce. She reaches up to a rack of saucepans above their heads and takes one down.

  “A very gentle heat. It shouldn’t be hot, just warmed through.”

 
She nods and turns to the stove while Alexander unwraps the pieces of fish, and the dessert. As he does so he glances about the kitchen, at the rows and rows of pans floating above him – pans for every kind of kitchen work. The serving dishes, white with ornate gilded patterns around the edges, every single piece matching. Rows of utensils, shining silver under the lights, so many gleaming rows that he would not know what to do with most of them.

  He bursts into the apartment with more life in him than Yuri has ever seen.

  “How was it?”

  “Wonderful.”

  Yuri smiles and folds up his newspaper. “She likes you. Mrs. Sachs.”

  Alexander ignores the comment. “I like this work, Yuri.”

  “You cook every day in the shop.”

  “Yes, but tonight, I decided a whole menu, and arranged it all on the most beautiful dishes, and she let me stay and make sure that everything was heated properly, and served well. It was like having those people in my own house.”

  “If only you had a house like that! Good. I am happy that you are happy.”

  “She asked me to do it again. Next Saturday.”

  Yuri nods approvingly. “You know, you can start a good business this way.”

  “We can.”

  “No, Sasha, not me. I have enough to do. You can do the work for this one, and take the profits!”

  Which is why Yuri wonders, three months later, why he should be up to his armpits in onions and garlic. True, his bank account is better than it has ever been, but what a price he pays! On days like this he goes to bed still reeking of the pungent bulbs – all the milk and lemon juice and soap in the world will not help him – and his wife refuses to touch him. Or to let him go near her. Alexander should be doing this job, Yuri thinks; he sleeps alone. No-one will care what he smells like.

  He leans forward and watches his brother-in-law through narrowed eyes, as he works in the kitchen. He sees the hands and fingers and eyes working in perfect harmony, producing dishes that Yuri gets to sample every night, and he knows that he is chopping the onions because he cannot do what Alexander is doing.

  The cook looks up. “Did you get the fresh herbs?”

  Yuri sighs and wipes away a burning tear. “Bradshaw is laughing at me. I asked him for fresh rosemary, and he said, who uses it fresh? We have it dried, lots of it…”

  “He can get it if he wants to. He finds the fruit and vegetables that we need, why not the herbs? Someone somewhere is growing them to dry them.”

  “Not here. It’s not warm enough.”

  “Yuri!”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll tell him again tomorrow. You are too fussy. It will make your business harder to run.”

  “It will make the difference between our business and everyone else’s.”

  “No-one else is doing this!”

  Alexander laughs. “But they will. And we have to be far ahead of them when they do.”

  Yuri shakes his head, but inwardly he is smiling. It’s a good thing you made it to the States, Alexander, he thinks to himself. This way of thinking would have been wasted at home. With a sidelong glance he watches his brother-in-law at work, and Alexander knows that he is being watched, but he chooses to feign a lack of awareness. When Yuri least expects it, Alexander’s eyes dart up and catch him, and Yuri smiles and looks away, although he has nothing to be embarrassed about. When he looks back, Alexander is still watching him, intently.

  “You know, just then…”

  “What?”

  “You looked just like Katya. With your head down, and your eyes…”

  “I’m her brother,” Yuri shrugs, and he continues with his work, but he is pleased. It is the first time that Alexander has voluntarily mentioned her since he arrived. It must be a good sign, Yuri decides. A sign that he is getting over it a bit. For no reason except that he feels suddenly light-hearted and happy, he looks up, and lobs a clove of garlic over at Alexander. Alexander sees it coming, watches the clove’s short arc through the air, and with a deft swipe of his sharp knife, he halves it before it falls. Yuri laughs, and Alexander bows, sticks the tip of his knife into the wooden chopping board, and goes to clean his hands.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Boston

  THERE CAN BE NO SLEEP FOR ALEXANDER that night, or for many nights to come. The sheer force of emotion has drained him physically, leaving him feeling knotted and yet shapeless, as though his muscles and nerves are slack with exhaustion. Lauren takes him up to his bedroom, switches on his reading lamp, brings him water and tea, and he is aware of her moving around him, but his heart and mind are filled with nothing but Katya and Misha. Much later, in the weak light that just precedes dawn, he persuades Lauren to go to bed. She is red-eyed from sleeplessness, travel-weary. Reluctantly, she leaves him for a few hours, and she sleeps at once, a blank dreamless slumber, and when she wakes, jet-lagged, she forces herself to step immediately under a hot, reviving shower, so that she can get back to her uncle as quickly as possible.

  She finds him in the kitchen, sitting at the table. Or rather, he is slumped in his chair. She feels a small pain in her heart to see him like this. He does not even look up when she comes in, and when she walks around the table to sit across from him, she realises that he has fallen asleep. She watches him for a moment. He looks old now, already, in a way she has never seen before, and the change has happened only hours after she has told him what she learned. Or perhaps it happened in moments. His hair seems lank, despite being short; his eyes and mouth are pursed and his skin is dry and grey.

  He opens his eyes and gives her a fair attempt at a smile.

  “How are you?” he asks.

  “Worried about you.”

  She gets up and hugs him, then moves around the kitchen preparing tea and toast. He is watching her; at least his eyes are following her around the room, but his mind is elsewhere, filling up again with the hundreds of questions that he has thought of during the night, the questions that he has been waiting here to ask her.

  “I need to know everything, Lauren,” he says. “About how he killed her.”

  To his dismay, he feels the tears rising to his eyes again. Just saying those words brings back a grief that surrounds him like subtly suffocating fumes.

  She nods. “I’ll tell you whatever I know.”

  She is so grateful to Melissa, so pleased that she came with her to Moscow. Not only did she catch hold of Misha before he left the hotel, but after she broke through his silence and got him to talk, she ensured that they heard as much detail as he could possibly provide. While Lauren herself sat hardly speaking, overwhelmed with the sheer fact of what he had done, Melissa had simply gone on questioning him with delicacy and intelligence. Lauren had watched her legally trained mind working to fill in as many details as she could, to clarify every nuance and suggestion, to sift the reality of what had happened back then from any wishful thinking on Misha’s part, to ensure that every last, bitter drop was wrung from his memory. Later she had told Lauren that her subtle interrogation was done partly to satisfy herself that Misha was telling the truth, but mostly to ensure that when they came back home, they would be able to give Alexander as much of the story as they possibly could.

  “What do you want to know?” Lauren asks gently.

  “I want to know how she died. Exactly. How did he betray her, what did they say to each other, how did he do it? How could he have done it?”

  So she tells him the story of Katya’s final hours, as Misha had told it, and she also fills in the details that led up to it. How Misha had been caught by the KGB and he and his family threatened. That he had agreed to give up the names of other American spies in return for his life. That he said he had intended to protect Katya, until she came and asked him for help.

  “Do you think that’s true?”

  “Who knows for sure? Maybe that’s how he lives with himself. Pretends he really would have protected her. Blaming her for coming to him for help.”

  “Why didn’t he just help
her? Why tell them?”

  “He said they were watching and listening to his every move. Just by contacting him, Katya threw suspicion on herself, and then, they were watching them when they met that day. She had her suitcase with her, it was too obvious. He felt he had no choice.”

  Alexander has to grip his cup to stop his hand shaking. He feels incandescent, glowing inside, as if there is a fire burning in his stomach which is lit by pure rage.

  “And then?” he says, and his teeth are clenched.

  “And they told him to get rid of her, and followed him when he went back for her. She saw them just before the end, and she tried to persuade him to make a run for it. She tried everything to convince him.” Her voice drops. “She even told him about the baby.”

  “Our baby…” he whispers, and he puts a hand over his eyes. She clears dishes for a few minutes, waiting until he is ready for her to continue. There is a loud bang behind her, and she turns to see his fist crashing to the table again.

  “He could have run with her,” he says, and his voice is loud. “He could have tried. They could have caught them, probably they would have, but my god, was it better to have stayed and lived whatever sham of a life he’s lived for the last thirty years? He could have tried to save her, and get out himself. He could have made it out and lived together with us...”