Derek Lambert - Angels in the Snow

Traffic moved swiftly this morning, the drivers anxious to escape from the new cold. On the Tchaikovsky Street stretch of the ring road which encircles the heart of Moscow lorries bored through the snow while ugly Volga taxis bullied their way along giving precedence only to the big black Chaikas with their curtained rear windows heading for the Kremlin. Single-decker buses and trams were crammed with Muscovites glum with the feel of winter. Drivers turned their Chevrolets and Cadillacs cautiously into the American Embassy convinced that the cab drivers would forgive the cold if only they could score a dent in the side of a bourgeois automobile.

This morning, glowing with temporary elation, Luke Randall noticed people and buildings and cars afresh. He confirmed his first impression that the American Embassy looked like a large, bankrupt hotel—mustard-coloured, old before its time, as prosaic as a plane tree.

The militiaman outside saluted him with the wary cheerfulness which policemen reserve for foreigners. ‘Zdrastvuite.’ What was he at home, denuded of uniform and boots? Did he put his stockinged-feet on the table, grumble behind Izvestia and Pravda and slop borsch down his vest? Or did he divest himself of authority, stick postage stamps in an album and adore a peasant woman with a rump like two bed bolsters?

He collected his mail and took the lift up to his floor. The duty marine who had recently arrived from Vietnam greeted him with a deference tinged somehow with the contempt he felt a military man should feel towards a diplomat. A closed-circuit television set recording departures and arrivals outside flickered beside him.

‘Seen anyone suspicious on that thing today?’ Randall asked.

The marine, crew-cut and built like a Wimbledon champion, shook his head. ‘Seen one helluva lot of snow, Mr. Randall,’ he said.

‘Should be a change after Vietnam.’

The marine shrugged. ‘I guess it’s a change right enough.’

‘But not a change for the better?’

The marine grimaced. What had he done to deserve Moscow?

In his office the secretary he shared with another diplomat was dealing his letters on to his desk.

‘You look like a card sharper,’ he said.

‘No card sharper should have fingers as cold as mine,’ she said.

Her fingers, he reflected, looked cold even in the summer. Thin and chalky like a school teacher’s fingers. Elaine Marchmont finished the deal and sat down at her desk. She was wearing her boots for the first time since the last winter had melted and dried up.

‘Shouldn’t you take those things off in the office?’ he asked.

‘Is it against protocol to wear boots in the office?’

‘Not as far as I know. I didn’t think they looked too comfortable, that’s all.’

‘If it was someone like Joyce Holiday or … or Mrs. Fry wearing them you’d tell them to keep them on.’

‘Why Mrs. Fry?’ he asked. And added quickly: ‘Or why Miss Holiday for that matter?’ He hoped Janice Fry had left his flat by now.

‘Because they’re the sort of women men like to see in boots.’

‘I don’t give a damn about boots on anyone. Those happened to look uncomfortable. You didn’t steal them from a Russian soldier did you? I noticed one on guard outside the Kremlin without his boots on.’

Elaine Marchmont said: ‘Why do you have to keep riling me? We can’t all be sex kittens.’

Then he felt sorry for her. Sorry about the boots that did nothing for her. Sorry about her myopia, her thin body, her hair which was the colour of dried grass rather than straw.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘There’s some decoded cables for you,’ she said. ‘Some mail from the pouch. A report from Chambers in agriculture. Three invitations to cocktail parties and APN’S translations of the Soviet Press.’

There was a duty letter from his wife, written with effort, recording the boys’ progress at school, asking for money to redecorate the flat in Washington. The words only flowed naturally when briefly they were oiled by anger, and she recalled his infidelity. The words became her voice, precise and plaintive and Anglicised. ‘Who, I wonder, is the current girl friend.’ Then she remembered her Bostonian upbringing; the voice faded and she hoped without sincerity that he was keeping well.

The cables contained Washington reaction to Soviet reaction to American policy in Vietnam. Their phraseology was as drearily predictable as the wording of a protest note.

Cocktails with his neighbours who still included his wife on the invitation although they knew she had left. Cocktails with his opposite number at the British Embassy. Cocktails with his own ambassador. Gallons of cocktails, except that there were never any cocktails—Scotch and soda, gin and tonic, occasionally Russian champagne.

Snowflakes pressed against the window and peeped in before dissolving. He walked to the window and gazed down at Tchaikovsky Street. A few parchment leaves adhered to the branches of the trees, clinging hopelessly to summer. Fur hats and head-scarves bobbed and weaved among each other and an ambulance, not much bigger than a limousine, raced towards Kutuzovsky Prospect where he lived.

‘The first road accident of the winter,’ he said.

‘And I’m willing to bet a cab was involved,’ said Elaine Marchmont. ‘The cab drivers are pigs. Worse than the French.’

‘Cab drivers are the same the world over. Except in Lagos. There’s nothing quite as bad as a Lagos cab driver.’

Elaine Marchmont knew nothing of Lagos cab drivers. ‘These pigs won’t even stop for you,’ she said. ‘And when they do they’re as surly as hell.’ She ground out half a cigarette. ‘I hate them,’ she said.

Randall looked at her speculatively. ‘Elaine,’ he said, ‘how long have you been here?’

‘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.’