Angels in the Snow

by Derek Lambert

  Andrei said: ‘In the Soviet Union everyone works together for the common cause.’

  ‘Sure,’ Randall said.

  They stared deep into the eyes of the tiger. The tiger with its combed lifeless coat stared back from glass eyes, arrogant even in death that had lingered dustily for twenty-five years.

  ‘I’m glad you kept the treats for the afternoon,’ Elaine said.

  ‘You need a spot of museum treatment after that Russian soldier last night,’ Randall said.

  Old women with eyes as disinterested as those of the tigers guarded the showcases. The little museum with its sapless plants, its animals with sawdust blood, its butterflies with pinned wings, its stones and its shells, was already a fossil itself.

  Andrei had long since expended his minimal interest in the fauna and flora of the taiga. There was nothing here that could be remotely connected with sharp-cornered concrete or hydroelectric plants.

  ‘Now I will show you the new sports stadium,’ he said. ‘As is well-known it is a glorious example of what men and women working for a common cause can achieve.’

  ‘Gracious,’ Elaine said. ‘Whatever next.’

  ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to give the stadium a miss,’ Randall said. ‘There’s been a change of plans. We want to pull out tomorrow. Can you fix the bookings?’

  ‘Just as I was beginning to enjoy myself,’ Elaine said. ‘We haven’t seen a real, honest-to-goodness building site yet.’

  Andrei looked worried. ‘It is true,’ he said. ‘There are many more spectacles to see.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Randall said. ‘Try and fix those seats for us, Andrei, on tomorrow’s plane.’ He spoke with the authority invested in him by their secret relationship. ‘Now run along—Miss Marchmont and I are going for a stroll.’

  They walked along paths threading the high, wooded slopes of the river. The dusk smelled of wood-smoke and mud and boats. A band played folk music; couples emerging from hibernation and falling eagerly in love left the paths and vanished in the trees.

  Elaine took Randall’s arm, ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she said shyly.

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought you might. It’s just good to be sharing things with someone. That’s what it’s all about—sharing.’

  ‘That’s what it’s all about,’ Randall said. He wanted to share it with Michele. He patted Elaine’s hand. It was all so unjust.

  Ahead of them a youth bent his head and nuzzled his girl’s cheek. A jewelled ship steamed past below them on dark waters, a star glittering blue and green pricked the sky.

  ‘Why do we have to go back so soon?’ Elaine asked.

  ‘Business,’ Randall said. ‘I’ve done what I came to do.’

  ‘Making arrangements for some trade delegation from the States? That’s hardly in your line of business, is it?’

  ‘It’s a rather special kind of delegation,’ Randall said non-committally.

  ‘You’re very fond of Michele, aren’t you, Luke.’

  ‘She’s a nice girl.’ That, he thought, was what he and the Ambassador had said about Elaine and meant something quite different.

  ‘It had to happen to you sometime.’

  ‘What had to happen?’

  ‘You know,’ she said. Her voice was tired.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. He tried to force brightness into his voice. He pointed at the river and the firefly steamboat. ‘You’d never guess we were in Siberia, would you?’ he said.

  Elaine said: ‘Let’s get back to the hotel. I’m getting cold.’

  Andrei picked them up at the hotel next morning. Randall said: ‘Do you know we had to pay three times more than a Russian would be expected to pay for our rooms? That really encourages tourists to go back to the West and spread the good word, doesn’t it.’

  Andrei shrugged. ‘Even so it is cheaper than hotels in the West. Is that not so?’

  ‘That’s hardly the point,’ Randall said.

  On the way out to the airport in the black Volga Andrei pointed out a new block of flats, tall, grey and black-eyed. Women in blue dungarees were painting the woodwork. ‘Are they not truly magnificent?’ he said. ‘Is it not wonderful that this fiftieth anniversary year of the glorious Revolution five hundred of our people will have fine warm homes? You see, Gaspadeen Randall, Socialism does work.’

  Randall searched Andrei’s profile for some confession of hypocrisy. But there was not a twitch, not a flutter of an eyelid behind his earnest spectacles.

  At the airport they shook hands with warmth and theatrical sincerity. ‘Now I will leave you,’ Andrei said. ‘You are just in time to catch your aircraft.’ Four hours after that the TU 114 took off. It played its daily trick with time and, after an eight-hour flight, they landed one hour after take-off.

  It was three in the afternoon when Randall got back to his apartment. Anna who had not expected him back until the next day was just leaving.

  ‘Hallo, Anna,’ Randall said. ‘Going a bit early, aren’t you?’

  Anna looked as if she would like to have hugged him. ‘I was just going round to the gastronom to buy some food in case you returned early,’ she said. ‘Is that not good? Then I will be able to cook you a meal.’

  ‘You weren’t slipping off early by any chance?’

  Anna giggled girlishly at his joke. ‘I was going to buy your favourite chocolate biscuit cake,’ she said. ‘It was to have been a surprise.’

  When she had gone Randall re-read the piece of notepaper that Andrei had given him. If the figures were correct the Chinese strength on that stretch of the border was far greater than Washington had estimated. He decided to micro-dot the information and dispatch it to Washington as soon as possible with the warning that the source was suspect because it was quite possible that the Russians wanted to install Andrei as a double agent in the West.

  Then, while Anna cooked noisily and sang throatily in the kitchen, he rang Michele. He realised that for some unaccountable reason he had been deliberately delaying the call; shyness, perhaps, or old instincts not to display eagerness; he was far too old for either. The phone rang in Michele’s apartment with lonely insistence. He wondered if he had rung the right number; but he knew he had—he was also too old for self-delusion.

  Anna came into the lounge beaming. ‘Your two favourites, Gaspadeen Randall,’ she said. ‘Fish soup and chocolate cake.’

  ‘Thanks, Anna,’ he said, ‘you’re a marvel.’

  After she had left he threw the meal away. He tried to call Michele once more but there was no reply. He did not worry about whom she was with: he knew there was no need to. He went to bed and dreamed about tigers.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Luke Randall, in his fortieth year and emphatic until the clock tolled his birthday that he was thirty-nine, embraced spring and early summer with the eagerness of a young man in love for the first time.

  Anna filled the apartment with cherry blossom, and its white confetti collected undisturbed on the carpet. Randall threw open the windows and breathed the spring scents of a big city; dust drying after a shower, pollen-dusted breezes sneaking in from the fields, flowers in the parks.

  No one appreciated his mood more than Anna. ‘It is good to see you so happy, Gaspadeen Randall,’ she said; and to celebrate his happiness she did even less work than usual. Instead of her bubbling winter brews she served him cold summer soup made with Kvas which he detested but drank without complaint. The sunshine seemed to whet her appetite further and she smoked more of his cigarettes than she had in the winter.

  ‘Have you ever thought of slimming?’ he asked one day when she had eaten her own meal plus the chop and potatoes he had left on his plate.

  ‘You do not eat enough, Gaspadeen Randall,’ she said. ‘Russian men eat all the time. They make themselves strong for the winter.’

  ‘Why do they eat so much in the winter?’

  ‘To keep themselves strong. It is a habit they picked up in the war. If you have once known hunge
r then you will always eat well when there is food around.’

  ‘To hell with the war,’ Randall said. ‘Forget it, Anna. It’s been over twenty-two years and it’s spring.’

  Anna chuckled fatly. ‘You act like a man in love, Gaspadeen Randall. It is very good to see.’ She helped herself to a slice of his chocolate cake.

  ‘Help yourself,’ he said.

  ‘And you look younger,’ she said.

  Her flattery, as subtle as a Pravda leader, pleased him. He also agreed with her—the lines on his face were no longer the lines of middle-age, they were merely the etchings of maturity. He was also drinking less.

  At weekends he and Michele drove to one of the sandy river beaches where Muscovites enjoyed summer with the determination of people already anticipating winter, or to the forest where they lay in the pale grass and gazed at the blue and green mosaic above them. Sometimes during the week they took a steamer around the extravagant loops of the river, past the modern fortress of the university, past the Lenin Hills to Gorky Park.

  They enjoyed the park in the evening. The roundabouts and swings creaking into motion after the winter. The soldiers and sailors and the available girls. The open-air theatres, the seaside music, the swans and rowing boats on the mossy waters of the lake. Old women dispensing fruit drinks, boys with guitars and new songs from the West, off-duty militiamen with notebooks locked away, youth challenging age on the chipped chess boards and losing.

  One May evening they drank coffee beside the lake after queueing for it for half an hour. Beside them a young couple swallowed portions of sour cream followed by stew and dumplings without speaking. The girl wore a smart black suit, white frilled blouse, high-heeled shoes shaping plump calves. She was as smart as he was shabby in bruised shoes like polished cardboard and a suit as shiny as the shoes.

  ‘Quite a dish, isn’t she?’ Randall said. ‘You wouldn’t have seen a girl dressed like that five years ago.’

  ‘I think it is sad,’ Michele said.

  ‘Sad? Why sad?’

  ‘I don’t know. Such striving to be smart and pretty. Such pride in little things—a pair of shoes, a smart suit. Every fold in that blouse carefully ironed in some over-crowded little flat somewhere. It makes me feel guilty wearing my clothes from Paris.’

  ‘Take them off then,’ Randall said.

  The couple mopped up the stew with bread, sat back replete and smiled at each other. The main business of the evening was over. His hand covered hers.

  The big wheel rotated lazily, the ducks on the lake paraded their chicks. Three soldiers who had boldly picked up three girls sat down awkwardly at a table with them, suddenly shy with their conquests.

  Randall said: ‘I guess it’s not such a bad old country at that.’

  ‘It is a good country now that we are seeing it together.’

  Sharing was everything, Elaine Marchmont had said. Tonight she had been invited to a flat by a group of diplomats and correspondents to sing madrigals.

  On their way back to the steamer Randall and Michele were parted by a group of singing youths occupying the path outside a theatre in the park. A blushing girl came up to Randall and offered him two tickets. He smiled and shook his head.

  Michele said: ‘That means she wanted you to take her in. It means she liked you.’

  ‘I’m old enough to be her father.’

  ‘You are an attractive man.’

  Randall was pleased, and at the same time ashamed of his conceit.

  ‘You wait till I’m a grandfather,’ he said. I’ll be irresistible.’

  They boarded one of the trim white steamers plying the river like buses. A little man with two neat sons joined them in the cabin. He smiled at them, proud of his boys. Randall’s pleasure chilled. He saw Michele looking at him sadly. He tried to smile reassuringly but the smile was a failure.

  The steamer nosed its way home through the dusk; a hydrofoil surged past with arrogant speed.

  Michele took his arm. ‘Poor Luke,’ she said.

  ‘If it’s anyone’s fault it’s mine,’ Randall said.

  ‘Perhaps. It doesn’t alter the fact that it makes you unhappy.’

  ‘Does it make you unhappy?’

  ‘Sometimes. When I see you look like that and I know shouldn’t be out with you.’

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  ‘I’m glad,’ she said.

  Randall remembered the following day for two reasons: he had a bad letter from his wife and the Chinese staged a demonstration outside the American Embassy.

  The letter was brief. She had heard, she wrote, that he was having an affair with a French girl. That did not worry her but he need not think that she had any intention of divorcing him. The letter added, almost as an afterthought, that his elder son would have to go into hospital for an operation. The letter did not specify what operation.

  Randall was re-reading the letter when word came from the Russians that the Chinese were going to make trouble.

  Within an hour the Russians had sealed off Tchaikovsky Street. Thousands of police and troops lined the road and lurked around the corners in trucks. Lorries and water carts were lined up in front of the embassy.

  Inside the embassy servicemen put up the shutters they had made after the last violent demonstration. The staff reacted with studied calm; only the secretaries, conscious that they were bit players in history, were excited.

  Not Elaine Marchmont. ‘Can you beat it,’ she said. ‘The Russians protecting the Goddam Yanks.’

  Reinforcements of police arrived outside.

  King said: ‘I wonder if they’d protect the Chinese Embassy if we staged a demonstration.’

  Downstairs the doors were bolted. The diplomats went about their business with exaggerated intent. Correspondents gathered in the courtyard formed by the lorries and planned their interpretation of any forthcoming violence. They stayed within their own clans—the East Europeans with shabby clothes and old cameras, the British smiling at mild jokes because everything had to be a bit of a joke, the Americans with cameras trained on the embassy in the hope of snapping the Ambassador framed in the shutters, a lone representative of the New China News Agency making defiant notes backwards.

  The Ambassador came into Randall’s office. ‘We’ve just had word they’re on their way,’ he said.

  Randall said: ‘Do you think there will be trouble?’

  The Ambassador squinted through the shutters. ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘The cops mean business.’

  King said: ‘What I don’t understand, sir, is why—if they mean business—the police let them march in the first place.’

  ‘Then you don’t understand very much, Mr. King,’ the Ambassador said. ‘How do you think it would look to the rest of the Communist world if the Russians prevented a demonstration over Vietnam? As it is Mao’s going to make a lot of capital out of the fact that they’re protecting us. Shots of the police guarding American property. Pictures of police brutally beating up peace-loving Chinese citizens. I feel sorry for the Soviets because they can’t win this one.’

  King nodded wisely. ‘I guess you’re right, sir.’ He went on nodding and lit a cigarette which he smoked elaborately, inhaling and exhaling noisily, tapping non-existent ash with a hammer index finger.

  Elaine Marchmont wrote something on a slip of paper and handed it to Randall. It said: ‘What a fink.’

  ‘I’ll be non-proliferating in my office if anyone wants me,’ said the Ambassador.

  ‘He’s real smart,’ King said. ‘And a good guy with it.’ He ground out his cigarette butt with dramatic finality.

  Randall peered through the shutters and saw the nose of a procession rounding the corner of Kalinina and Tchaikovsky on the other side of the road. Little men carried big banners.

  ‘I’m going outside to get the feel of it,’ he said.

  Elaine Marchmont said. ‘I shouldn’t, Luke. You might get the feel of it right between the eyes.’

  King said: ‘I reckon we’re su
pposed to stay in here. It wouldn’t do for an American diplomat to get involved in a brawl.’

  ‘Nuts,’ said Randall.

  He joined the American correspondents left on the safe side of the barricade; others had dodged round the militia cordon to walk beside the marchers.

  ‘You shouldn’t be out here, Luke,’ Hellier said. He was writing rapidly in his notebook.

  ‘And you should be over there where the trouble’s likely to start.’

  ‘I’ve got two guys there already.’

  ‘Do you reckon there’s going to be trouble?’

  ‘I don’t know. This is a tough one for the Soviets. They’ve got to keep it under control and they’ve got to try and handle the Chinks with kid gloves at the same time. It’s up to the Chinks, I guess.’

  Reluctantly Randall admitted to himself that he enjoyed the smell of trouble. He remembered other postings where he had been involved in the sort of organised hatred which once upon a time had invariably been directed at the British. Twice there had been violence and he had enjoyed it. He was not proud of his enjoyment: he merely admitted its existence, controlled it and tried to temper it with compassion. He knew that his emotions were the emotions of many men and until evolution exorcised such feelings there was little hope for Mankind.

  The little men in blue, button-up tunics halted on the other side of the road waving red copies of The Sayings of Mao Tsetung above their heads. A breeze ruffled their banners. Chinese, militia, spectators and correspondents waited for an incident which might ignite violence. They almost had one.

  An intense young man from the Komsomol turned with a gesture of derision and started to head towards the Kalinina. But he was very broad-shouldered and, as he turned, he accidentally knocked over an emaciated Chinese bearing aloft his red bible.

  As the little man fell a Chinese photographer scuttled around him snapping away with two Japanese cameras, one with black and white film, one with colour. Russian and American photographers also raced up; but all they could photograph was a small Chinese lying on the ground with no intention of getting up and a large Young Communist looming above him more in surprise than anger.