Simon Montefiore - One Night in Winter

‘I come all the time,’ she said. ‘But not so much for the ballet. For us, it’s a…’

‘A breath of the old world?’ he suggested.

‘Yes. The thirties were so hard and the war’s been terrible but now we’re winning, it’s brought some glamour back to Moscow. Not much…’

‘But just enough?’

‘Well, everything’s relative, but for a Muscovite—’

‘The Bolshoi’s like the aristocratic ball in War and Peace ?’

‘Frank, it seems you’re finishing my sentences.’

‘Or you’re stealing my thoughts, Serafima.’

They both laughed.

‘How old are you?’

‘I’m twenty-two,’ he said.

‘I’m still at school,’ she said. ‘But it’s my last year.’

‘I know,’ he said, looking at her openly for the first time. ‘I can tell.’

They were still walking when the blizzard struck, and soon the snow was so dense that they could not see ten metres in front of themselves.

Serafima knew that wartime had intensified life: people lived, loved, died faster than before. But the affinity between her and Frank made her uneasy and suspicious. She had never been in such a situation before, never met a man like this, yet alone talked in this manner. She had to wonder: was Frank Belman the sort of man who regularly asked out Russian girls after only two minutes of conversation? How did he know to change out of his American uniform? He may look like a sincere intellectual, she thought, but was he actually a cynical seducer come to drab Moscow to turn the heads of girls eager for the slightest glint of faraway cities? An American spy? Was this a set-up? How could she know? And yet somehow she thought she did.

‘How did this happen?’ she asked, stopping suddenly and turning to him.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, that I’m here with you now. Did you choose me specifically or was it by chance?’

Frank laughed, and Serafima noticed the way the thick snowflakes were settling on his dark lashes, even longer than hers, she noticed jealously. ‘You chose me. First, you were alone in the box, my box; second, you watched the ballet and never me; third, you didn’t run to the bar like every other girl but just waited for the next act. So I knew you weren’t like the others.’

‘How do I know you’re not?’

‘Do I seem like the others?’

‘No. But I don’t really know many other men.’

He put a hand on her arm. ‘Look, I know what you’re getting at because I asked you out so quickly. But I saw that I had just one minute before you left and I’d never see you again. You’re wondering if I’m an agent of the capitalist-imperial powers and I do admit I wondered how a beautiful girl happened to be in my box, alone, on the very evening I decided to come to the ballet.’

She smiled uncertainly. She had not thought of this.

‘So you were wondering whether I am a spy?’ She paused. ‘I don’t think I am – unless it’s possible to be a spy without knowing it.’

‘That’s a very Russian idea,’ he answered. ‘But let me tell you I’m an attaché, a diplomat in uniform, at the American Embassy. I interpret for the ambassador. But I guess you’d say I’m a real damned capitalist.’

‘You’re from a rich family?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you live in a mansion?’

‘My parents do.’

‘Do you have repressed Negro servants in white gloves?’

‘No gloves, but our butler is black.’

‘Does he wear a white coat like in the movies?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, as a good Communist, I declare you the enemy. I suppose you must be what we call a bloodsucker of the working class?’

He was, he told her, one of those Americans who were as at home in the country houses of England as he was in the mansions of Long Island. His father was Honorius Belman, president of the Southern-Eastern Union Railway Corporation, a Texan born in a log cabin, but he, his son, had been educated at Groton and Harvard where he’d studied Russian. Frank told her how he played polo with plutocrats like the Rockefellers, that his father was a donor to FDR’s campaigns and that he had spent a holiday working in the White House. All of which explained why he had not been impressed by her own famous parents, Serafima realized.

After walking for hours, they were back where they had started. They reached the Metropole Hotel across the square from the Bolshoi. A hotel? He did not seem that sort of man. But perhaps all men were that sort of man, Serafima thought as the doorman in his green braided uniform bowed and the revolving doors spun them into the scarlet lobby.

Frank bought her two shots of vodka at the Metropole bar but, to Serafima’s relief, he didn’t mention anything about taking a room. There was a jazz band playing and, on the dance floor, the uniforms of a dozen nations danced the foxtrot. Men’s shoulderboards and shiny boots, the bare shoulders and permed tresses of scarlet-lipped girls shimmered around them. They stood watching for a moment as the vodka restored her. She was dreading him asking her to dance. She hated foxtrotting. She had no natural rhythm, and her clumsiness would ruin everything.

‘Do you… like to d-dance?’ Frank asked over the sound of the band. When she came to know him better, she would realize that he stammered slightly when he was nervous.

‘If you want to,’ she answered, frowning.

‘You look cross,’ he said. ‘You’ve looked cross ever since we came in here. When you’re cross, you lower your eyebrows so you look like an angry swan. More beautiful than ever but quite frightening!’

‘Well, the angry swan says sorry. It’s because… I’m not sure I like being here.’

‘But I thought all girls loved to dance,’ he said, looking anxious.

‘Yes, most do – but not all.’

He cleared his throat a little. ‘I have a confession to make. Although I’m told that every man must be able to foxtrot, I can’t dance at all. I hate dancing… I’m sorry. I’m not much of a date, am I?’

‘Oh Frank, I hate dancing too. And I can’t foxtrot or anything else. I can only talk and walk.’

So out they went, back into the night, Frank quoting poets that few Westerners knew: Akhmatova, Pasternak, Pushkin, Blok. They walked across the Stone Bridge opposite the Kremlin. Through the snow, they could hardly even see the towers, gates and stars under its camouflage netting.

Serafima could feel the icy flecks settling on her warm skin and then melting – it was delicious. She stopped as Frank took off his gloves and offered her a cigarette from his silver case. They blew the blue smoke into the grey light where the snowflakes glinted like jewels in the lamplight, and did not speak.

Frank seemed to be thinking hard about something; then he cleared his throat. ‘I’m not a playboy. I haven’t talked about many of these things with anyone before you. May I… m-may I… hold your hand?’

She presented her hands to him, and when he unpeeled her gloves, the night became silent and she could see his hands shaking just a little. It was, she thought, truly a moment from the distant past, from a more romantic time.

When he held her hands in his, she turned them to put her fingers through his, and when she squeezed them, he squeezed back; and both of them stood there in the snow, face to face, overcome with the excitement of finding each other. The snow had padded the city so that they could hardly hear anything, see anything. Hours had passed since they met, yet their acquaintance, only as fresh as a night’s snowfall, already seemed as if it had lasted for a long, long time. She had never kissed anyone. Never wished to. But she wanted him to kiss her now.

‘Serafima, may I…’

But she’d already lifted her face to his, and could feel his mouth on hers as the snow fell thickly around them.