In the novel I have to an extent re-arranged chronology. The structural requirements of a novel in which the action is confined to one year—my year in Moscow—necessitated this. For example, the demonstration by the Chinese outside the American Embassy did not take place during that year. But the atmosphere and background are, I believe, authentic, and many of the incidents are factual. The principal story-lines are fictional; but that is not to say they could not have happened.
The first snow of winter fell at night. Middle-aged women who saw it rejoiced because in the morning there would be work clearing the pavements; lovers in doorways kissed tenderly because, they said, their love was as pure and clean as the flakes settling on their shoulders; militiamen guarding the apartment blocks where the foreigners lived swore as they peered into the five months of frozen misery that lay ahead.
The snow fell hesitantly at first. It was late this year and the people of Moscow had been waiting for it as they would wait for the thaw in the spring, as people wait for the rains in the tropics, as if crises were seasonal to be buried or thawed or drowned. Soon the tired city was polished with new light.
The flakes touched the window of the bedroom where Luke Randall was making love to someone else’s wife.
‘Darling,’ she said, ‘it’s snowing.’
‘Is it?’ he said. The arrival of the snow seemed to crystallise the knowledge that in the morning he would no longer find the woman beside him attractive.
‘Tell me you love me,’ she said.
‘I love you,’ he said. He filed away the knowledge for the night and embraced her softness and warmth. But there was desperation, hatred almost, about his love-making.
On the embankment beside the bridges snow-ploughs held their annual reunion. The river was dark and strong and the only colour in the black-and-white city came from the illuminated red stars on the Kremlin towers; in the morning the cupolas would gleam with a new lustre amid the snow.
The snow covered the children’s playground outside the foreigners’ flats. Yesterday it had been a seedy place: a few benches and a couple of swings planted in soiled sand. Now it was sugared and clean, awaiting the children.
Three floors above Luke Randall’s flat a Middle East diplomat quietly hanged himself. No one ever knew why. Women, men, Moscow. Everyone included Moscow in their speculation. The curtains of his bedroom were drawn and some said that if he had drawn them and seen the snow he might have cancelled, or at least postponed, his journey. Others said he killed himself because he had seen the snow.
Richard Mortimer was not at all surprised to see the snow when his TU 104 landed at Sheremetievo Airport several hours late from London. He had never envisaged Moscow without snow. He had seen pictures of river beaches and sunny boulevards; but only the sombre prints of dark buildings brooding in the snow had been fixed in his mind.
So the airport was as he had expected it. He was elaborately polite to the officials and surprised that the formalities were finished within ten minutes. The red neon letters MOCKBA reminded him of a milk bar.
He was met by a young diplomat in a fur hat who said his name was Giles, Giles Ansell.
‘I’ve got the old jalopy outside,’ Ansell said. ‘It’s only an Eleven-hundred but it’s quite adequate for Moscow. Having a bit of trouble with the gears though.’
He tried to ram the gear lever home and there was a rasping protest from the car. Porters and taxi drivers stared without smiling. ‘Peasants,’ said Ansell. ‘Bloody peasants.’
The first attack of home-sickness, like a small explosion of weak acid inside him, came as they drove through herring-bone woods of silver-birch. He saw them through the falling snow, fragile, cold and lonely. He saw himself as a child walking in the woods at home hearing a wood pigeon disturbing the snow in the ceiling of branches. The wood pigeon flew away and he was alone in the muffled tranquillity. Wellington boots and Balaclava, woollen gloves with fingers sticking out of holes; the humiliating laxative of fear.
‘We saw Giselle last night,’ Ansell said. ‘You don’t know what ballet is until you’ve been to the Bolshoi.’
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ Mortimer said.
‘It’s absolutely bloody marvellous. The choreography’s superb. Nutcracker’s my favourite.’
The small boy began to cry. His Wellingtons were leaking, his fingers aching, and if he ever got home again he would always be good.
‘Does the mail take long?’ Mortimer asked. He would write home as soon as he reached the flat.
‘Ordinary mail I’m told takes about a week,’ said the diplomat. ‘But of course we use the bag.’
They turned on to a broad, badly-lit highway. Headlights swooped on them through the snow.
‘I keep thinking they’re going to hit us,’ Mortimer said. ‘I’m only used to driving on the left.’
‘You’re not allowed to have your headlights on in the city,’ Ansell said. He enjoyed old-handing it with newcomers. He pointed out of the window. ‘See that monument? That’s as far as the Germans got in the last war.’
Richard saw the blurred outline of huge wooden crosses tilted like trench fortifications. Then they were in the outskirts of the city; over a bridge, through a bright tunnel, past big, square buildings.
‘Here we are,’ said Ansell. ‘Home sweet home.’
The snow faltered and faded and Richard Mortimer saw the block. It was as he had expected it: high, bleak and impersonal. Only the cars on parade in the yard seemed snug, rounded and softened by the snow.
The militiaman on guard emerged from his hut to inspect the newcomer. ‘Zdrastvuite,’ he said.
‘Zdrastvuite,’ Ansell said.
Mortimer said: ‘Good evening.’ He looked at the policeman’s gritty, smiling face, the blue uniform, the grey sentry box. ‘I’m in Russia,’ he thought. ‘For heaven’s sake I’m in Russia.’
On the tenth floor the hanging body of the Arab, not long dead, moved in a vague breeze. His eye-balls bulged and his swollen tongue protruded as if someone had just popped it in his mouth.
Three floors below Luke Randall awoke briefly and drank some Narzan mineral water. The woman beside him who could no longer sleep because she was frightened waited for him to put his arm around her, but he turned on his back and slept again snoring gently.
Two miles away Harry Waterman sensed the snow in his sleep because he had been anticipating it for weeks. He awoke and watched the flakes brushing the window. He thought, as he always did when the snow came, of the camp.
He woke his wife. ‘The snow’s come,’ he said.
She shivered although it was warm in the flat; shivered with the knowledge of the winter ahead; shivered with chilled resignation.
‘Somebody