Angels in the Snow

‘Eighteen months. Going on nineteen. Why?’

‘Isn’t it about time you took a vacation?’

‘Moscow,’ she said firmly, ‘is not getting me down. Not one little bit.’

‘You must be unique,’ Randall said.

‘You know I like it.’

‘Sure,’ Randall said. ‘It’s an experience. Isn’t that right?’

‘I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.’

‘Come on,’ Randall said. ‘Not every minute. What about those minutes when you were trying to get a cab?’

‘And I’m pretty sick of hearing people bitching about Moscow. They should never have joined the diplomatic service.’

‘Moscow gets you,’ Randall said, ‘whether you like it or not. I know of one guy who lasted six days. They had to hold a plane at Sheremetievo to ship him out. He reckoned everyone was after him.’

Elaine Marchmont smiled wanly. ‘At least,’ she said, ‘I know no one is after me.’

‘Come on,’ Randall said. There wasn’t much else to say. Every embassy had its spinsters who volunteered for Moscow in the belief that there would be a surfeit of bachelors. But most of the men were married and the bachelors were careerists unlikely to jeopardise their careers by serious affairs within their embassies. And in any case they could always take the nannies out.

‘You’re a lousy diplomat,’ Elaine Marchmont said. ‘You know it’s true. I remind myself of an actress who used to play the perfect secretary on the movies. Eve someone or other. She used to cover up her lack of sex appeal by making cracks about it and helping her boss with his love affairs while all the time she was in love with him.’

‘Are you in love with me?’ Randall asked.

‘You must be joking,’ said Elaine Marchmont.

‘It’s stopped snowing,’ he said.

‘Sure. And now it’ll melt and there will be fogs and the planes won’t come in and we won’t get any mail.’

‘You sound as if you know your Russian winter off by heart. This is the thing that gets most people. The thought of another winter.’

‘I’ll survive. I don’t mind the real winter. It’s the preliminaries that bug me.’

‘Don’t use that word,’ Randall said. ‘This guy they flew out after six days thought everywhere was bugged.’

‘The preliminaries and the aftermath,’ she went on. ‘The snow that keeps stopping and starting. The mists. And then in April the mud and slush and running water. The whole place sounds like a running cistern.’

Her face was pale and taut, summer freckles on her nose already fading. Everything about her was pale, even her voice.

‘I honestly think you ought to take a holiday,’ he said. ‘Prepare yourself for the winter.’

‘And where should I go? Helsinki—again? I might as well stay here.’

You could fly to Copenhagen,’ Randall said. ‘Or Stockholm. Or London even.’

‘Or Siberia,’ Elaine Marchmont said. ‘I’ve never been there. You seem to forget a vacation costs a lot of dollars which I don’t happen to have.’ She blew her nose. ‘It’s the thought of Christmas that really frightens me.’

Christmas. Children around a tree fragile with bright glass. The elation subsided. Tonight a cocktail party.

‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘You’ll have a great Christmas.’

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘With other people’s children. Buying them lousy Russian toys and helping other women cook the turkey. I just can’t wait.’

‘I think I’ll take a coffee break,’ he said.

The canteen was a small, gloomy place adjoining the transport section. A young German called Hans who had a way with hamburgers and tossed salad was in charge. He was sleekly blond, taciturn and efficient and gave the impression that he had exactly calculated the savings needed to return to The Fatherland to open his own restaurant. In Dusseldorf, perhaps, where a lot of money was spent on schnitzel and steaks and schnapps.

Here crew-cut young Kremlinologists discussed nuances of Soviet policy and reached conclusions which would have astonished the instigators. And when they had decided Soviet intentions in Vietnam, China, the Middle East and Africa they discussed the new ambassador and his wife, gently probing each other’s opinions in case they were in the presence of a confidant of the ambassador. They discussed the winter gathering around them; and they luxuriated in the privations and frustrations of life in Moscow—but only if they were friends because it was easy to become known as someone who was for ever bitching. If they were really close they debated the possibility of love affairs on the embassy circuit in Moscow and, if they were even closer, they confided their own desires.

Here American journalists dropped in for a snack with their hungry, pregnant wives. If there were rivals present they managed through faint praise to deride their exclusive stories; or to hint at their own mysterious assignments with anonymous Russian contacts. Journalists and diplomats mixed warily over hamburgers and salad, canned beer and ginger beer, seeking each other’s knowledge with deference and undertones of contempt for each other’s profession.

Randall took his coffee and joined the correspondents of a magazine and a news agency, who were talking shop while their wives, both as taut-bellied as bass drums, talked about babies, nannies and Russian maids.

They greeted him eagerly. No correspondent had really understood his brief within the embassy. He was a deep one, a dark one, with unfathomed depths of information to be tapped. Or he was a clerical nonentity whose non-slip mask concealed nothing. At cocktail parties each correspondent had stiffened Randall’s whiskies to free the mask; both had failed. Each was valuable to Randall because, with their contacts within the freemasonry of journalism, they gathered a little information from the correspondents of other countries; and sometimes, but very rarely, from Russians.

‘How’s the brains department these days?’ said the agency man. He had no idea what Randall’s job was.

‘Fine,’ Randall said. ‘Just fine.’

The agency man’s wife said: ‘I’m darned sure my maid has been stealing my cigarettes.’ In Cleveland, Randall thought, she would have been lucky to have had a cleaning woman in twice a week.

Everyone made plump jokes about pregnancy. Both women, terrified of Russian midwifery, were taking the train to Helsinki to have their babies.

‘The trouble with Russia where abortion is legal is they might think I’ve gone in to have one,’ said the magazine man’s wife.

‘I guess they would think you were a little on the tardy side,’ Randall said. Everyone laughed. That was one of the assets of being mysterious: everyone laughed at your jokes. ‘What are the agencies putting out today?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know about THE agencies. We haven’t moved a thing except the Pravda stuff on Vietnam and the Chinese. I sometimes wonder who they hate most—the Chinks or us.’

‘They don’t hate either,’ Randall said. ‘It’s just propaganda Soviet style.’

‘It’s so awful,’ said the magazine man’s wife. ‘This slaughter in Vietnam. Those terrible pictures of mutilated babies.’

The men regarded her uneasily. She had been emotional lately what with the baby coming and Moscow in general.

Behind them Hans moved stealthily from hamburger to steak.

‘It makes me want to cry,’ she said.

‘There, there, honey,’ said her husband. ‘You just take yourself to Finland soon and have that son for us.’

‘Sure I’ll have your son,’ said his wife. ‘Just so that he can go to Vietnam and be killed.’

‘That’s a long time ahead,’ said her husband.