Angels in the Snow

Weather prophets studied birds and berries and clouds and prophesied a long hard winter; they prophesied one every year and were never wrong. The cold beckoned death and many people died by its blade; it equated birth with death by dispatching couples early to bed in over-crowded flats and cottages. From the white streets the living rooms of old wooden tenements, jungled with potted plants and creepers, looked as if they were filled with green water.

Many people welcomed winter. Skiers flying from the artificial jump on the Lenin Hills; skaters in the parks, old men frozen beside holes in the ice hooking fish from the quiet depths and memories from the turbulent past; children who were now towed on toboggans instead of being pushed in prams. Only the city’s pigeons and sparrows seemed totally unaffected by the new season which had arrived and intended to stay.

Foreign diplomats and correspondents reacted according to their experience of Russia, and their experience of hardship which in most cases was limited. Some newcomers, self-conscious about their fur hats, boasted that they could do without them until the pain in their ears conquered pride. One Frenchman whose pride was unquenchable was taken to hospital where the lobe of one frost-bitten ear was removed, a deformity which he subsequently attributed to a sniper’s bullet in Algeria. The diplomats skied and skated and sometimes spied, attended each other’s somnolent dinner parties, haunted the Bolshoi Theatre, anticipated leave and new postings and went to Helsinki to have their teeth fixed. The British Ambassador went cross-country ski-ing every weekend, the American Ambassador attended more poker schools because they took his mind off non-proliferation and he usually won, and the Chinese Ambassador went home to Peking.

In the bedroom of his flat Luke Randall made love to the tourist from New York with enjoyment and detachment. The detachment enabled him to prolong the sexual act and satisfy many women who, with bleak pride, had professed frigidity. There was little ardour involved, merely clinical expertise. Only once had there been a woman who aroused in him the tenderness and cruelty of passion; but she had derided the inhibitions which she had released, and now she had left him.

The woman in his arms said: ‘Let me do that.’ She unhooked her brassière, paused for a moment and then removed all her clothes except her pants.

‘Why leave those?’ he asked.

‘Because when you take them off I shall be able to tell myself that you seduced me.’

Fifteen minutes earlier, he reflected, she had been asserting her independence from men. She was smart, about thirty-five, and ran her own employment bureau.

After the cocktail party he brought her back to his flat for coffee and she said: ‘I hope you don’t think this means I’m going to go to bed with you.’

Randall closed the door and said: ‘As a matter of fact I do.’ She was too old for flirting: so was he.

He kissed her nipples into life. She sighed and called him by his first name as if they had been lovers for years. He examined the nipples in his detached way and decided that at some time in her life there had been a baby. He moved to her belly, not as firm as it had seemed, to the point where you sometimes forgot to whom you were making love.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No you mustn’t.’ But he did and the sighs became moans. ‘Oh Christ,’ she said. ‘Oh Christ.’ She cried out in victory because he was there, cried out in defeat because she had let him. And he wondered as he had wondered before at the debasement of lovemaking.

He climbed past her breasts again and looked into her eyes. She turned her face into the pillow. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Now.’

‘In a minute.’

‘No now. Please now. —— me now.’

And he smiled because she would never admit—might not even believe—that she had used such a word.

He entered her and almost immediately she cried out in her climax. And later cried out again so loud that he kissed her mouth to keep her quiet. Then kept on until he had finished.

‘God,’ she said, ‘that was wonderful.’

‘It was great,’ he said.

‘It was disgraceful, really,’ she said. ‘I’d only just met you.’

‘Don’t fret,’ he said. ‘You wanted to and I wanted to. We were attracted.’

‘It was beautiful.’

‘It was enjoyable.’

‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘you’re a cold fish. Now I come to think of it you were pretty cool just now. Cool and competent.’

‘I enjoyed making love to you,’ he said. Couldn’t they ever leave it at that? There had been no beauty, just the contortions of sex.

‘Did you? Did you really, Luke?’

‘Of course I did. Wasn’t it obvious?’

‘I don’t know. I guess I was too bound up with my enjoyment. Selfish, I suppose. Was I good, Luke?’

Jesus, he thought; but he didn’t want to hurt her. ‘You were great,’ he said. ‘Just great.’

‘I’ll never forget it. Making love with a man called Luke in the shadow of the Kremlin. I suppose you’ve made love to lots of women here.’

‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked.

‘I don’t mind. A beer perhaps. Don’t be too long.’

He took as long as he could and returned with a beer and a Scotch. She had put on her pants and brassière and repaired her face. ‘When will you be in the States again?’ she asked.

‘God knows. Next year maybe.’

‘You’ll look me up, won’t you?’

‘I will,’ he said. ‘But it won’t be the same. You know that, don’t you?’

She sipped at her beer. ‘Why not?’

‘Because it never is. You must know that.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know.’

‘How much longer are you here for?’

‘Intourist are taking us to Leningrad tomorrow. But I don’t have to go.’

‘You go,’ he said. ‘It’s a beautiful city.’

‘I wanted to go—until tonight.’

‘You go just the same.’

‘So it meant nothing to you?’

You could hardly tell a woman that at the critical moment you had been trying to pretend that she was your wife. Truthfully he said: ‘Of course it meant something.’

‘It did to me, too. It was beautiful.’

He felt tired and a little sick. He yawned. ‘I have to be up early in the morning,’ he said.

‘Can I stay the night?’ Pride and composure had evaporated: she was a successful middle-ageing woman frightened of loneliness.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I wish you could. But you have to watch your step here. We’re not in Miami. I’ll drive you back to the National.’