Snowdrops Read Online Free PDF Page A

They were not the type of men that the child would have drawn after he'd done the car. My eye caught one of theirs and I quickly looked away, as you do in London and you especially do in Moscow, where you're always seeing things through archways and in car parks or underpasses before you realise it might be better not to. I hurried up to the corner to find a taxi. The second or third passing car stopped for my outstretched arm. (I never had my own car in Russia. When I arrived, Paolo told me to start driving immediately, because if I waited 'til I was familiar with the anarchy and the ice and the traffic police on the roads, I never would, and he was right. But the unofficial taxi system is a surprisingly safe way to get around, so long as youobey two simple rules: don't get in if the driver's got a friend with him, and never if he's drunker than you are.)
    He was Georgian, I think, my driver that night. He had two miniature icons stuck on his dashboard, little mothers of God that always made me feel safer and more vulnerable at the same time--less likely to have my throat cut, but also that my life might be in the hands of someone who thought looking in the mirror or braking were God's worries rather than his. I reached for the seat belt, provoking a stern warning about the dangers of wearing one and assurances about his driving. He was a refugee from one of those filthy little wars that broke out in the Caucasus when the evil empire collapsed, wars that I hadn't even heard of until I started taking Moscow taxis. He started telling me about it as we plunged into the tunnel beneath the all-day traffic jam on the Novy Arbat (a broad, brutal avenue of boutiques and casinos), then accelerated past the Gogol statue. By the time we reached Kropotkinskaya Metro station and the river, and the replica cathedral that they'd thrown up there in a hurry in the nineties, both his hands were off the wheel and miming what somebody had done with someone else's body parts.
    Finally he pulled up on the embankment. I gave him the hundred roubles we'd agreed on, plus a soft-touch fifty-rouble tip, and ran across the traffic to the river side of the road. Through the drizzle that was starting to fall I could see the whiteness of the space shuttle and the loops of therickety roller coasters in Gorky Park, on the other side of the black water. As I was crossing the little gangplank to the floating restaurant, I remember seeing a man in tight swimming trunks climbing out of the river onto the next platform along.
    The restaurant was giving out that blaring restaurant din, everyone struggling to be heard above everyone else. A band in garish national dress was playing Sinatra with an Azeri twist. I was intercepted by a waitress and began to tell her that I was meeting someone there, but as I did I realised that I didn't know what name Masha would have booked under, or even whether she was really called Masha, and for a moment I thought,
What am I doing here in this crazy country in my turquoise shirt? I'm too old for this, I'm thirty-eight, I'm from Luton
. Then I saw them waving at me from the far end of the restaurant, the part that was done up to look like a medieval galleon. They stood at their table to greet me as I zigzagged across the room.
    "H ELLO , N ICHOLAS ," Katya said in English.
    The contrast was always unsettling. Her voice sounded like it belonged to a schoolgirl or a cartoon character, and yet there were the long legs in the white leather boots, bare from the knee to the hem of one of those short pleated skirts that a cheerleader or a waitress at Hooters mightwear. Her blond hair was down over her shoulders. For a lot of men, I know, she would have been the main attraction, but for me she was just a little too young, a little too obvious. She was still trying them out--the walk and the hair and her curves--still seeing how far they could take her.
    "Hello, Nikolai," said Masha. She was wearing a miniskirt that almost matched my shirt