Angels in the Snow

by Derek Lambert

  Before they left Randall handed the boys a ten-rouble note. ‘Split it between you,’ he said, ‘and buy some more fish in the morning.’

  ‘We cannot take this,’ said the older boy.

  Randall stuffed it in his pocket. ‘Take it,’ he said. He turned and strode through the heavy doors, shoulders hunched, head down.

  In the car he said to Michele: ‘I would have liked to have given them more. Poor snotty-nosed little bastards.’

  Michele held his arm. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know.’

  Randall clenched the steering wheel and thought: Christ, Christ, Christ.

  And back at her apartment he made love with a desperate passion that had no relation to their mood at Zavidovo. At first she lay passively. Then when he had entered her she suddenly cried out and joined him and they reached their fulfilment in a sobbing frenzy in which Randall heard the cries of the wounded and saw the blood on the snow.

  Later he awoke needing her. She felt him and held him there. And then it was gentle and tender as he had known it should be.

  He kissed her, dressed and went home.

  In the morning he phoned the hospital and asked about the two boys. He was told that they had been discharged.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Winter laboured on through January and February. When newcomers asked when it would end old-timers recalled that the previous year it had snowed on May Day. But soon there were fewer falls; the old snow was hard and dirty on the ground and piled in grey fortifications along the sides of the roads. Even the river lost its grandeur; the ice was opaque, scattered with refuse and so solid that it couldn’t creak in protest.

  It was the worst time of the year in Moscow. Until this time fresh snow, filling the evening sky and sealing new white envelopes over the rooftops, had partially masked the bitter sulk of winter. But no longer. The season’s bleak soul was bared.

  In February the Muscovites’ resilience, stored like honey from the summer, began to weaken. An influenza epidemic swept the city and thousands died; but no one outside official circles—which had only just published figures from an epidemic three years earlier—knew how many. In the foreign embassies almost everyone caught ‘flu, or colds which they diagnosed as ‘flu, and the epidemic provided a new topic of conversation at cocktail parties.

  The newspapers warned readers to get immediate medical attention if any symptoms developed. Outside the Chinese Embassy in Friendship Street Soviet workers ordered to take part in ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations stood in the relentless cold with their banners fatalistically awaiting the symptoms. The Chinese exhibited little sympathy; they kept the workers waiting, taunted them from inside the embassy and refused to accept protests about the treatment of Russians in Peking. The workers folded their banners and wandered off to home and hospital.

  The hardiest Muscovites kept up their ski-ing, sliding for miles through the silent countryside with transistor radios as company. And deep in the forest a snatch of music or a newscast could often be heard above the whine of the wind.

  But most people stayed at home watching ice hockey and the Revolution, or playing chess and dominoes, reading, studying and breathing each other’s germs.

  It was, they said, the hardest winter for years. But they said that every year.

  Nikita Grechenko, on his way to meet Harry Waterman in Gorky Park, loved the winter. He liked the summer but he preferred the winter. He inhaled the iced air deeply, grinned into the wind and ate enormously. His hair beneath his expensive sealskin hat became glossy and his cheeks fattened into healthy pink pouches. He bloomed in winter as some men bloom in the summer.

  But he had no great love for the grimy packaging of winter in Moscow itself. He regarded journeying into the city as one of the more wearisome aspects of his job, like sitting in a hot office that smelled of disinfectant studying the habits of tiresome Westerners most of whom had long since served their purpose to the Soviet Union.

  Whenever possible he escaped with his friends and his guns and went hunting in the taiga where the beauty was never soiled. He hunted with breathless exhilaration and killed with a skill that minimised the suffering of his prey; immediately he had killed he mourned the death of the animal; the grief was sharp and genuine and even before it was spent he was looking forward to killing again. He accepted the two emotions, the love of killing and the repentance, as separate entities and did not wonder how it was that he could experience both. And for a week after his return from an expedition he and his family and his relations lived on moose steaks.

  Harry waited near the big wheel which had not turned since the autumn. He had started out that morning with some semblance of courage. But Grechenko was late. And as Harry waited the courage evaporated and froze, first into doubt, then into fear. What did Grechenko want and why did they have to meet in Gorky Park? He wished that he had something to report. But the correspondents and diplomats had been elusive lately. Perhaps he had been overdoing his overtures of friendship.

  Where was Grechenko? Waiting, perhaps, behind the trees; waiting to give the signal to his men to move in and take him quietly and firmly, guiding him through the children skating on the frozen footpaths. But no, they would not do that; he, Harry Waterman, was of more use to them in Moscow than he was rotting in a camp. No, they would not do that.

  But Christ it was cold. It seemed to have penetrated inside his body. He wished he had brought some vodka with him. A small boy trying to run on the toes of his skates cannoned into Harry. ‘Scram,’ said Harry.

  ‘Good morning, Harry,’ said Grechenko.

  Harry jumped. ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘you frightened me.’

  ‘No need to be frightened, Harry,’ Grechenko said. ‘At least I don’t think there is—is there?’

  ‘I thought you’d come the other way,’ Harry said. ‘Why the hell did you pick Gorky Park to meet?’ It was his first and last attempt to assert himself; his words fled like snowflakes in the breeze.

  ‘I like the open air,’ Grechenko said. ‘You should sample it more often. Let us walk. That too will do us good.’

  Harry walked beside him and waited.

  Grechenko said: ‘You are probably wondering about the purpose of this meeting.’

  Harry wanted to say: ‘Too bloody true. What the —’s it all about?’ Instead he said: ‘I was wondering. I suppose you want to give me some instructions.’

  Grechenko stopped outside the dilapidated chess palace and regarded Harry with studied surprise. ‘Instructions? No, I have no instructions for you. I have given you those already. It is information I want. I want to know what you have found out for me.’

  Fear moved inside Harry Waterman and he looked around for a toilet. ‘Give me time,’ he said. ‘You must give me time.’

  ‘Time, Harry? It seems to me that it is nearly two months since we last met. Surely you must have found out something for me by now. Don’t you want to go back to England?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ Harry said. ‘It’s just that I haven’t had enough time yet. First there was Christmas, then the New Year. It hasn’t been easy to keep in with people.’

  Grechenko breathed deeply of the razored air and began to walk again, smiling at the children, helping to her feet a small girl who had fallen. ‘It’s February, Harry,’ he said. ‘It’s a long time since the New Year.’

  ‘As a matter of fact I’m hoping to meet some diplomats tomorrow at a little supper given by a friend of mine.’

  ‘I know,’ Grechenko said. ‘Boris Leonov is giving a little supper party.’

  ‘How the hell did you know that?’ Harry said. ‘Are you keeping tags on Leonov?’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Grechenko said, ‘I’m keeping tags on Harry Waterman. Did you enjoy your little session, as you put it, the other night?’

  ‘What little session? I haven’t seen anyone worthwhile all this month.’

  ‘With that I would agree. No one worthwhile at all. But you did have a little session with some of your colleague
s who have decided that they prefer life in the Soviet Union to life in the West.’

  ‘Oh them. Yes, there was a small birthday party. But you’re not interested in them, are you? I mean you know a bloody sight more about them than I do.’

  ‘But none of the star performers were there, were they? The gentleman who now chooses to call himself Fraser. And the wretched Mr. Philby. He wasn’t there, was he?’

  ‘No,’ Harry said. ‘They weren’t there.’

  ‘A bit out of your class?’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ Harry said.

  ‘As far as I’m concerned,’ Grechenko said, ‘they’re all in the same class.’ He seemed to be thinking aloud rather than addressing Harry. ‘They’re all traitors. And they say they’re happy in the Soviet Union, they say they have found themselves.’ He paused. ‘Do you believe that, Harry?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Harry who was trying to guess where the conversation was leading. ‘I just don’t know.’

  ‘They lie,’ Grechenko said. ‘They are lost souls. It seems to me they betrayed their countries for a cause in which there is no role for them now they have arrived in Moscow. But I have no pity for them. They did not become traitors for the grand reasons of which they talk. They were selfish men with bitterness in their hearts. They did not give away their country’s secrets for the sake of Socialism. They gave them away because of their own private hatreds and because they gloried in their own secret importance. To them Socialism was merely an escape, an excuse for their behaviour. They are no more true Socialists—or Communists, if you wish—than you, Harry Waterman.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ Harry said uncertainly. ‘I don’t know them all that well.’

  ‘Some of them may possibly have thought they understood Socialism. But they found it was very different from what they had read about in their books. It was very pleasant being a Communist with all the advantages of the Capitalist way of life. It was not so pleasant living in a Communist country. They found they had lost their secret importance and they had lost any purpose in life. Then they admitted to themselves—but to no one else—that it was selfish and not ideological motives which had attracted them to Communism. But when they arrived at their citadel they found it was empty.’

  Harry said cautiously: ‘I don’t quite see what all this has got to do with me.’

  They had reached the skating rink. Grechenko stopped and watched the girls spinning round and the youths flying past with hands clasped behind their backs.

  ‘As I told you,’ Grechenko said, ‘these men sold their souls and now they have lost them. They make grand statements about finding peace and happiness in the Soviet Union but they are just lies to cover up their unhappiness. Perhaps your Mr. Maclean—or Fraser as he calls himself—is the most honest of them in that respect—he just lives in his fine flat and says nothing. But they will all die here, like Maclean’s drink-sodden friend Burgess, and perhaps they will even welcome death because life for them has lost its meaning.’

  They walked back along the main avenues of the park, past the row of statues posturing gracefully towards the gates, their dignity endangered by the presence of slivers of ice between their buttocks.

  ‘I don’t dislike life here,’ Harry said. ‘I’ve got a good home and a good wife.’

  ‘Don’t bother to lie,’ Grechenko said. ‘You want to go back to England to stay there and I have told you that it is possible. You are not lost like these other unhappy men. You did not betray your country. All you did was attack one man: they have been instrumental in killing hundreds. But you must work for your release, Harry. You must help us. So far you have done nothing.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll pardon me when I get back to England? I didn’t mean to kill anyone. It was all an accident. After all it was a long time ago—a bloody lifetime ago. They wouldn’t bring a charge against me now, would they?’

  Grechenko looked at Harry with contempt on his healthy face. ‘They won’t charge you, Harry,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact that soldier didn’t die. Someone should have told you that long ago.’

  He turned and walked briskly away, picking his way through the skating, tumbling children.

  Small electric shocks sometimes darted from person to person in Moscow in the winter. In the Metro station Harry Waterman brushed against a girl wearing a brown nylon raincoat. A shock flickered between them and the girl jumped. Harry felt nothing. He stepped into the train barely realising what he was doing. The beautiful stations with their mosaics and sculptures slid past and he saw none of them. Instead he saw the young soldier falling and heard a voice shouting: ‘He’s dead. You’ve killed the poor bastard.’ And then he was running, hiding, sweating away his life, wasting it away in the camp.

  And the bastards had known all the time that he had killed no one. The rotten, dirty, filthy bastards. All of them, British and Russian. He smacked his fist into the palm of his hand and swore aloud. The passengers sitting opposite him, tortoise heads protruding from deep coats and scarves, gazed at him without expression.

  The smell of river water was in his nostrils, the sound of ships’ sirens in his ears, the taste of bitter beer on his lips. All these could have been his over the undisturbed years. The knowledge was a wound that would never heal.

  But he would return. Now he had to. It was no longer just the yearning with which he had lived for twenty years. He had a purpose, a mission, a crusade, a revenge. If he failed then his birth, his childhood, his life, were without meaning.

  The train stopped at a station muscled with bronze statues of peasants winning the Revolution. Passengers left and others took their place wearing the same hats and scarves, the same faces. Harry became aware of them for the first time and hated them. Hated their unemotional features, their cheap clothes, their passive ways. They were not the same people whose rebellious spirit had been moulded into bronze on the platforms outside.

  He emerged at the Byelorusskaya station and walked home without stopping at the beer hall. The flat was empty, his borsch waiting to be heated up on the stove. But he had no stomach for food or soup.

  He took out his album of photographs and looked at the cracked photographs of the camp taken with a home-made camera on film smuggled in by a prisoner who had been a journalist. Puny men, their faces bared in defiant grins, stared back at him from the past. There, too, was a picture of his mother asleep on a deckchair on Brighton beach; and a picture of a girl with bow lips and wavy hair lit by studio lights which he had carried with him in his wallet in the Army and exhibited to the other soldiers as his fiancée. His mother was dead and the girl was middle-aged, probably married with a brood of kids. Harry closed the album. Then he went to the dresser, unlocked the bottom drawer and took out the black box. He laid his treasures on the table, opened the matchbox and fingered the soil, as fine now as black sand. After a few moments he returned them all to the box and returned the box to the drawer. It was the first time he had put them back without polishing the cap badge.

  Then he lay down on the sofa and wept.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Boris Leonov was the living proof that Communism and equality are not synonymous. Boris lived well by anyone’s standards and visiting parties of zealous party members from other countries touring collective farms and factories would have been surprised to see his house.

  He lived in Peredelkino, the woodland village fifteen miles outside Moscow, where poets and authors lived and wrote and published whatever the State permitted. There was a hillside cemetery there, each grave enclosed by an assortment of railings: from the distance the cemetery looked like a convention of brass bedsteads. The graves bore sealed photographs of their occupants; proud, bearded men, and women with noble hairstyles posing for death. New graves were decorated with evergreen leaves and paper flowers. Pasternak’s gravestone, sharp and modern, was there, his saint’s face carved concavely in the stone. The grave was untended.

  At the top of the hill stood a small church, its blue c
upolas starred with gold. Inside it was a dark cave with walls of deep, devout red, lit only by candles. When the bearded priests intoned at the altar it seemed at first that the church was empty; then the shapes of old women waiting in the darkness materialised. As the priests chanted they moved forward on fragile knees, kissing the flagstones.

  Before the service they gathered outside the locked doors peering apprehensively from beneath black shawls at youth strutting briskly past. But mostly the Komsomol stalwarts saved their jeers and taunts for Easter. And thankfully the ancient worshippers with their autumn-leaf faces moved into the comforting darkness and settled on the flagstones which had been theirs for sixty or seventy years.

  Boris Leonov’s dacha hid behind pine and silver birch about a mile from the church. It was at its best at Christmas when his Western friends visited him and compared the setting with Austria, Switzerland and Canada. Even the snow seemed to have a rich pile, lying heavy on the big pines, thick and luxurious on the lawns. It was, they all said, just like a Christmas card.

  The glacial beauty outside also emphasised the comforts inside the dacha. The log fire, the oil paintings and icons, the rich draperies and carvings, the hi-fi and the wide-eyed television set.

  All Boris’s Western friends speculated about his moneyed ways. In fact he had many business enterprises which accounted for his wealth; despite these enterprises his friends guessed at other sources of income. And they invested him with trappings of mystery which were probably not deserved.

  Certainly he never discussed the luxuries, as incongruous as a glass of champagne in GUM, which he enjoyed inside a Spartan state. He entertained his guests as if he were in London or New York: there were the comfortable pillows of living imported from the West and you were expected to recline upon them without comment.

  Often Boris left the Soviet Union on ranging tours of the world outside the experience of Soviet citizens not on Kremlin business. When he returned he spoke of his experiences with a nonchalance that was almost theatrical. He had seen more of the globe than many of his diplomatic and journalistic friends.