Despite the Falling Snow (40 page)

Yuri comes back into the shop from the street where he has been watching her go, and he smiles. Alexander opens the big wooden barrel for him to put back the fish.

“Why do you torment her like that?” he asks.

“It’s good for her. Anyway, she likes it. Women like a strong man, who gives them some trouble.”

“Chasing her with a pickled herring?”

“Whatever,”Yuri says, shrugging. “She likes it. And it gives her an excuse to run away from her own shop, which she doesn’t like, and sit and gossip with her friends.”

It is true that she prefers not to be tied to the shop. She is young and restless, and of little real help to Yuri, and he seems to have recognised this fact long ago and has stopped trying to change her. And so he is even more grateful for Alexander. His brother-in-law is conscientious and clean, and works hard. He is, Yuri thinks, always keen to prove himself an asset, and eager not to be thought a burden to them, as if such a thing would be possible from his sister’s husband. His dead sister’s husband. Yuri wipes down his counter tops, and thinks about the day he arrived at their door. Yuri had known at once that this man whom he had never met, had loved his sister Katya well. He had understood immediately the depth of Alexander’s love because beyond his brother-in-law’s polite words, and earnest tone, and uncomplicated appearance, were his eyes, and when you looked into those eyes you saw the clear, unseeing eyes of a dead man. Alexander, he realized at once, was a man for whom everything was now over.

In the months following his defection, Alexander had been fully investigated, interrogated and finally, congratulated by the American government. He had his papers, and he had declined the offer, the pressure, of continuing work with the government, and he was then free to continue on with his new life, except that he did not have one. Yuri had happily fed him and clothed him and he also put him to work immediately in the shop, for if Alexander, despite his anguish, were willing to continue in the outward forms of living, Yuri decided that he would help him as much as possible. In truth he is grateful to Alexander for loving his sister. In the midst of his own grief at her death, he is relieved that she found happiness and love, even for such a short time. She was always a sensitive child, she had always felt everything deeply, and she suffered terribly after their parents’ deaths. Yuri has always felt guilty for leaving her completely alone. He had been handed an opportunity to get out of the Soviet Union by travelling out with the circus, but he had hesitated to take it because there was a place for only one person, and she would have to stay. Katya, though, had encouraged him, even pushed him to go.

“In this place, Yuri,” she had told him, “If you get a chance to do what you want, you must take it.”

He remembers leaving her at her workplace that day, after she had said this to him, and he had hurried away, for he was late for work himself. He remembers he had found her gloves in his pocket as he ran, and he went back to give them to her, and then he found her crying alone, outside, crying over the fact of him going. She had only doubled her encouragement after that, and he had faltered, hating to leave her alone, but he had taken his chance in the end. Now, he welcomes this chance that has been so unexpectedly thrown at him, to make amends to her by caring for her husband.

The two men stop talking to each other and begin chatting to customers; there are now two in the shop. An old lady is buying bread from Yuri, complaining that the crust hurts her teeth.

“Are you sure you want it then, Mrs Davis?” he asks, his tone teasing.

“Of course. It hurts, but it strengthens my teeth. Anything that hurts you must be good for you, right?”

Not necessarily, thinks Alexander. He opens the barrel of fish for the other customer to look at. The vapours of vinegar and salt and the sea rise up and spread through the room. Your wife is right, Yuri, he thinks, while he waits for his customer to decide; the vinegar is strong. The man asks for a pound of the herring, and Alexander reaches in and pulls the fish out. Across the room, Mrs Davis is asking why they don’t have cakes and pies.

“Alexander!” calls Yuri. “Why don’t we have cakes and pies?”

Alexander shakes his head. “We don’t make them.”

Yuri is enjoying teasing the old lady. “Alexander! Why don’t we make them?”

Alexander replaces the lid on the barrel, and places the wrapped fish onto the scales. Then he scribbles down the cost and the weight with a pencil on some waxed paper, and multiplies them, underlining twice the price that he arrives at.

“I don’t know,” he says, and his tone has lost the bantering edge that it had. Yuri looks up at him. “I don’t know,” he repeats thoughtfully. “Perhaps I should try.”

“You like to cook, Sasha?”Yuri asks, placing the chosen loaf in the bag that the old lady is holding out for him.

Alexander shrugs. “I used to. Though, what did we have there to cook with?”

“Don’t remind me.”

Yuri goes to the door and holds it open for the old woman, and follows her out, where he stands looking at his fruit and vegetable displays, set up on trestle tables against the windows.

“These plums will have to go,” he calls in. “After today.”

Alexander follows him out and catches the plum that his brotherin-law tosses to him. They both bite into the fruit, soft and overripe, and they lean forward as they eat, so that the juice will not fall onto their shirts or shoes.

“They are not bad,” Alexander tells him. “Just soft.”

“They can’t be sold.”

“No, but they can be cooked.”

Yuri laughs, but watches his brother-in-law closely. “My God, were you serious?”

“Yes.”

“Another thing my wife will love you for,” smiles Yuri. Alexander looks at the plums, and waits for Yuri to explain. “Not only do you keep her out of the shop, but now you want to keep her out of the kitchen.”

“She hates cooking, Yuri.”

“I know. So, whatever ideas you have swimming around in that head of yours, go ahead and try them out. I won’t stop you, and God knows, she won’t. And if any of it is any good, we can sell it.”

“Good,” says Alexander. “Can I take them now?” he asks, pointing at the plums.

“When we close, Sasha, when we close. We may still sell some, you know.”

Yuri pats him on the back, and the two men walk back inside. Good, thinks Yuri to himself, watching Alexander walk briskly ahead of him. Something else to occupy his time, he thinks, and a good chance on top that we will get better food to eat.

It is two hours since they have all finished supper. Bowls of steaming vegetable soup and lots of thickly buttered bread. It is the first time that Alexander has gone into the kitchen to help his sisterin-law prepare the evening meal. She was disconcerted at first by his presence, but soon reconciled herself to it when he showed her how quickly and willingly he could chop the vegetables. He stirred, and tasted and added salt and herbs, persuading her to go and wash her hair, while he looked after the dinner. His soup was a great success, and Yuri ate three bowls and secretly congratulated himself on his latest suggestion.

The house is quiet now. Yuri is reading beneath a weak lamp in the living room, with the wireless providing a low hum of dance music in the background. His wife has gone to bed. Alexander still sits in the kitchen, a cookbook open before him, and a bowl of flour and butter by his side. He frowns as he reads, and then abruptly stands up and plunges his hands into the bowl. He works the pieces of butter into the flour, lifting it up high above the bowl and letting it fall. He rubs and sifts with his fingers, again and again and again until he has before him a bowl full of fine crumbs. He consults the book once more, and then goes to the sink and fills a large spoon with cold water. He carries it back, carefully, to the bowl and pours it in gently. Again he repeats the movement, knowing full well he could easily take the bowl to the sink, but somehow enjoying the extra steps, the extra effort, the concentration required to carry back the full spoon without losing a drop. Then he cracks an egg, and puts his hands once more into the bowl, turning and binding and pulling together. With some innate instinct he does not handle the dough much, but lightly rolls it out and places it into a buttered flan dish, which he fills with heavy, dried beans, and places into the oven. He goes out to the living room, where Yuri looks at him from over the top of his book.

“Are you all right, Sasha?”

“Fine. I’m baking.”

Yuri looks back down at his book and shakes his head. “He works, he cooks, he bakes. It will be a lucky woman that marries you!”

Even as he finishes this last remark, he feels the pain emanating from the man standing before him. Yuri frowns. “Sorry, Sasha, I didn’t think…”

Alexander stops him with a raised hand, for he wishes that he did not feel such a light-hearted comment so deeply, and he hates to make himself into an object of pity.

“I have to go back to the kitchen,” he tells Yuri, his tone now deliberately ironic. “My plums are waiting for me.”

From the refrigerator he takes another bowl, filled with the fruit, which he washes, then halves and sprinkles with sugar and a little cinnamon. He removes the pastry from the oven, pouring out the beans, and places the soft fruit into the cooked case with care, piling up the layers. Over the top he lays some extra lengths of dough, like a latticework, and brushes it with milk, and sprinkles the whole pie with sugar. Pulling open the oven, he slides it in, and then stands watching the closed door as though expecting some sign. He turns his head towards the light that comes from Yuri’s lamp, and as he watches, the lamp clicks off, and he hears the sound of his brother-in-law rising heavily from his chair. Yuri’s shadow falls into the kitchen, outlined against the soft light streaming in from the streetlamp outside.

“I’m going to bed.”

Alexander nods. “Goodnight, Yuri.”

Yuri smiles at him and turns. “Goodnight, Sasha. Sleep well.”

Alexander sits at the table, his chair slightly to one side, so that the streak of yellow light from the street falls next to him and not across him. He listens to the distant noises of the city night. Cars passing on the main street to the side of them, a siren fading in the distance. He hears some footfalls echoing up from the street below, and a woman’s low, soothing voice, reading aloud he thinks, in the apartment next to theirs. That voice somehow sharpens the dull ache that is always in his heart. He turns his head away, trying not to hear it, listening instead to the throb of the oven, baking the pie. But the voice is unrelenting, soft and musical, and he cannot block it out, nor does he now want to. He waits for a few minutes, listening hard, sitting with his head in his hands. The weight of his head seems huge to him now, and slowly, he lowers it onto the kitchen table, so that his ear and cheek are resting on the warm grain of the wood. The pain of listening to that low, light voice is fine and excruciating, and just when he thinks he cannot bear it a moment longer, he makes himself visualise her too, this unknown neighbour talking through the walls. He sees her, dark-haired and slim, like Katya, and in his mind she is reading a story to her baby, and the child he has invented is a miniature of her, long-lashed and beautiful, and already asleep. Now he imagines her turning out the lamp, and closing the door with a gentle click, and walking softly into her own bedroom where someone she loves is waiting for her. Alexander stands up quickly, for his stomach is turning and he feels he might vomit. He wants to cry, but he has cried so much in the past months that he feels all dried up inside, as though there is nothing left to weep out. A couple of lengths of pacing in the kitchen begins to calm him, and he stops at the oven door and edges it open to look at the pie. It looks moist and delicious, and he nods and closes the door, and sits back down at the table. The woman’s voice is gone now, vanished away like an hallucination, leaving only the sound of late night traffic, and he is thankful for it.

“What do you mean, there are no more?” The woman stands, hands out in disbelief, staring at Yuri. He shrugs.

“We are sold out, Mrs Sachs,” he says.

The woman fingers her pearl necklace and taps a polished heel. She is most unhappy.

“I’ve been coming here every week for two months,” she says. “That salmon is my signature dish; how can I have my friends over tonight without my salmon?”

Her reasoning seems flawless to her own ears, but it makes Alexander smile from the back of the shop.

“Perhaps for next week, you’d like to reserve some?” asks Yuri.

“Next week?! I need it now, not next week!”

Yuri looks to Alexander, his face contorted with uncertainty. He hates to be faced with anyone shouting, which is why his wife gets away with anything she likes so long as she raises her voice. Alexander comes out from behind his counter.

“I apologise, Mrs Sachs. We had a smaller delivery of salmon today, and I couldn’t….”

“It’s you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Who makes the fish?”

“I make all the food, yes.”

Mrs Sachs has lost her angry demeanour, and is filled with interest now that she is faced with the man who can produce meals a hundred times more inviting than her own. She regards him for a moment as he stands there in his white apron. She takes in his short, dark hair, a damp curl sticking to his wide forehead, his shadowed jaw and his huge brown eyes. He is not overly tall, but his leanness and erect posture give him a length of bone most unlike her husband’s meagre stoop. She puts a hand to her wavy red hair and smiles.