Illya's enjoyment of Christmas came to him easily; the lights and the trees, the music and the gifts, and the hush that falls over a city when the stores finally close on Christmas Eve. Through kind friends and generous strangers he had enjoyed Christmas carp in Prague, bouche de Noel in Paris, drunk sidra in Buenos Aires, and tsokolate in Manila. He'd watched Napoleon's nephews tear open their presents, and taught them to use their new skates in Central Park. But it was not his holiday, it didn't live inside him.
The New Year was his. It was the Russian holiday, the holiday of his youth, of memories half buried in the endless snow.
He looked around the room. Napoleon was an impeccable host. A mixture of friends old and new, good food, the best champagne; everyone at ease. It was an exuberant group, talking and dancing, and he could feel anticipation building; in another half hour, cheers and streamers would fill the room. Best of all, as always, Napoleon was the contented center of attention, leaving Illya free to wander off as he pleased.
He used the sliding doors in the dining room to get to the terrace without disturbing the other guests. Even Napoleon's terrace was dressed for the season, dwarf pines wreathed in lights were set in tubs along the edge of the balcony. Illya leaned on the railing and looked out. Every light in the city seemed to be on, strips of windows wrapping the buildings up and down the avenues. He could see the Chrysler building, crowned with its pyramid of brightly lit arches, and farther downtown, the spire of the Empire State building floating over its neighbors.
It was cold and the frosty air was heavy and still, suspended, as he was, in the gap between the old year and the new. These few minutes before midnight were the only time of the year that he willingly allowed the past to slip into the present and that he gave free rein to whatever melancholy remained in his Russian soul.
In his memories it was always snowing on New Year's Eve.
He heard the the terrace door open and close. There was no need to turn around. Melancholy made Napoleon nervous, he had always mistrusted it. Illya's descents into it, though rare, perplexed and sometimes distressed him. Illya had long ago learned to push the mood aside, but he knew his friend still suspected him of brooding if left alone too long.
Napoleon was carrying two glasses and a bottle of champagne. "I thought I'd find you out here." He put them on a small table, then leaned companionably next to Illya on the railing. " I don't think I'll ever get tired of this view, " he said, then paused a moment. " Are you alright?"
"I am fine. Just thinking. "
Napoleon looked at him quizzically.
Illya shrugged. "I've been thinking about snow."
It was snowing in Kiev when he walked with his parents through woods so old that nothing but pine needles lay beneath the white powder that crunched under their feet, and the snowflakes drifted through fir branches massed far over his head.
It was snowing when he caught a glimpse of Snegurochka flitting between the massive trunks, her cap and collar gleaming like icicles, the blue shadows on her robe full of mystery.
"The first time we met was New Year's eve." Napoleon said. "I don't remember any snow though."
"Sleet, ice, rain and wind, but no snow, " Illya agreed. "Not a meeting I'm likely to forget."
"I was in London, about to fly back to New York; I had reservations at the Waldorf for New Year's Eve. Instead, I found myself on the way to retrieve UNCLE's Russian from that floating Thrush base in the Baltic. I was none too pleased, I can tell you."
"Retrieve me." Illya snorted. "By getting yourself captured and forcing me to break cover to rescue you. In the middle of the year's worst storm."
Napoleon smiled. It was an old argument. "Well you certainly made your feelings known. When we finally found shelter in that dilapidated old lighthouse, you impugned my planning, my abilities and then my personality. And before I could answer, you closed your eyes and went to sleep." He held up a hand as Illya was about to interrupt. "The wind was howling, the building shook every time a wave crashed into it, I could hear the water creeping up below us, and you just went to sleep. " He shook his head, remembering. " I never met anyone more infuriating in my life."
"How was I to know why you were there. All I knew was that a month of undercover work was wasted. And you were so insufferably sure of yourself, so American. Waverly's golden boy."
"Beldon's wunderkind."
They grinned at each other.
"Who would have thought that eight months later you'd be in New York, bad temper and all. You're still just as surly. I expect your staff is properly cowed."
"Of course. They count on a certain amount of irascibility from me. Just like your staff counts on the Solo charm."
Napoleon gave a theatrical sigh. "Alas, we seem to have been typecast."
They fell silent. The music from the party became louder as someone opened the door from the living room, then faded again as it quickly closed.
It was snowing when he peered out of the window of his grandmother's cottage while she cooked and his mother shook out the old lace tablecloth and set the New Year's table. It was cold by the window but his father had told him if he sat quietly and listened very hard, he might hear the jingle of bells from Ded Moroz's troika as the old man made his rounds.
He concentrated so hard he never noticed the hush that fell on the house, then suddenly, off in the distance, he thought he heard the faint sound of sleighbells. He held his breath, then heard them again. He ran to his mother so excited, that his father's late entrance from the kitchen his cheeks still ruddy with cold, went unnoticed.
"You were snowed in that time in Yakutsk after the Ice Goose Affair. You were supposed to be back in time for Heather's party. I remember she blamed me when you didn't make it."
Illya thought back. "Well you were CEA by then, everything was your fault. We weren't snowed in though, we were fogged in. We had to wait for the ice fog to lift." He remembered how impatient he was to leave Yakutsk. It was the first time he'd thought of coming back to New York as coming home.
"Snow, ice fog, not much difference" Napoleon waved his hand.
Illya rolled his eyes. " If you'd ever been in an ice fog, you'd know the difference. It was like walking through a cloud of prickling needles, you're afraid to breathe, and when you do, your breath comes out in little puffs that just hang in the ice. It was so cold that Sergei's vodka stash froze. He was inconsolable."
"You told me vodka never freezes."
"It does in Yakutsk, " Illya said darkly.
Napoleon chuckled. "When you came back you didn't stop complaining for a month."
"I merely suggested it might behoove UNCLE to have more than one cold weather specialist. And if you'd listened to me, you wouldn't have gotten stuck going to the Yukon the next year."
"But your complaints were always so entertaining, I couldn't bear to cut them off."
The ease with which they'd fallen into their friendship had surprised everyone around them, it had surprised Illya most of all. Napoleon had made it easy. Illya had hardly expected to find another place to call home.
It was snowing in Moscow when his mother pursed her lips as her father gave him a sip of vodka before taking him outside. Â He tossed snowballs and played with the other boys while the old men built a fire and drank and sang the revolutionary songs of their youth, waiting for the chimes to announce the New Year, waiting for the war to end.
And it was still snowing when they came back to the small fourth floor flat, his nose running and his feet frozen, and his mother served him long-hoarded hot chocolate while his aunt put her father to bed.
Napoleon was frowning in thought. The Adriatic Express, he said. "It snowed on the way to Venice when we were chasing Madame Nemirovitch and the little man with the false beard up and down the train."
"It didn't last. Venice was just cold and damp."
"That little model girl of yours wasn't cold."
"No." Illya smiled reminiscently. "And she didn't try to kill me either like your little Fraulein".
" Ah. Fraulein Eva. She didn't really mean it."
"Unlike Angelique, the next year in Macau." Illya scowled as he always did when he mentioned her name. "How you could think it would be a good idea to crash a Thrush New Year's Eve Party..."
"She dared me." Napoleon answered with a wry smile. "And it was in the Casino, a public place. You should have tried harder to talk me out of it."
"I was distracted by your description of the lavish buffet."
"Well, I've always been very persuasive," Napoleon said.
"The buffet was second rate. I've had better dim sum in New York. Typical," Illya grumbled. The memory still rankled.
"That didn't mean you should start complaining about it loudly enough to draw the chef out of the kitchen, and homicidal tendencies out of the host."
"I had to divert their attention, didn't I? Mr. Dong had spotted you by then and Angelique was holding a gun against your ribs."
"I was never in any danger from Angelique."
Illya couldn't hide his exasperation even now. "You're delusional when it comes to her".
"Give her some credit. She did help me rescue you once your 'distraction' brought you a little too much attention. "
"So you say." Illya said sourly. "She didn't seem all that pleased when you turned on the sprinkler system just as the countdown started."
"I don't think she knew about the confetti that was supposed to flutter down at midnight, " Napoleon lips quirked.
"Splat." Illya said and burst out laughing. "Splat. The look on Mr. Dong's face when those clumps of wet paper started raining on the baccarat tables."
"The look on Angelique's face when they began landing on her. Ruined hair, ruined dress - that's when she was ready to kill me."
"Well she couldn't have been half as angry as Mr. Waverly when he found out where we'd been."
Napoleon shivered. "Don't remind me. I was sure I was headed for the Greenland Station."
Illya looked down at his clasped hands, then out at the city again. "It was good to see Mr. Waverly at dinner tonight."
"He is true to form. He was acknowledging our new roles." Napoleon cleared his throat. "I tried to talk him into keeping you here."
"I know," Illya said.
"I shouldn't have."
Illya nodded.
It was snowing in Vladivostok, on the pine boughs wreathing the statue of Lenin in Train Station Square, over Golden Horn Bay, and on the Headquarters of the Pacific Fleet, and its line of yolkas topped with red stars.
And it snowed while young sailors, relieved of their duties for an evening, celebrated the way young sailors do when they have time and a bottle of vodka and are too far from home.
Napoleon pushed himself away from the railing, picked up the bottle of champagne and busied himself removing the foil and the wire muselet.
"But why snow?" he asked, casting a sideways glance at his friend.
Illya stood up and crossed his arms. "Nostalgia perhaps." He laughed a little ruefully. "It will pass."
Napoleon worried the cork. "We were going to spend New Year's in Moscow in '69," he said quietly.
"Things happened."
Napoleon grimaced. "The Ptarmigan Affair. I got stuck in Beirut with pneumonia and a broken leg."
"You and water never did mix well."
"It would have been a lot worse if that balloon had crashed on land," Napoleon snorted.
"True."
"I thought you were on your way to Russia. Then you showed up at the hospital ten minutes to midnight, wearing a tuxedo and with a bottle of champagne in your doctor's bag. " Napoleon popped the cork from the bottle, and both men watched it roll on the terrace floor.
"I suppose your sense of occasion rubbed off on me over the years." Illya said.
Napoleon poured the champagne and gave one glass to Illya while taking the other for himself. "You'd been looking forward to that vacation."
Illya gave him an inscrutable look. "Beirut was warm, the food was good, the girls were pretty. My grandmother always claimed that you should choose your New Year's companions carefully, for those you spend the New Year with will be close to you the rest of the year."
Napoleon felt his chest tighten, he knew sentiment did not come easily to his friend. He put a hand on Illya's shoulder. "Last fall it just seemed to me that it was so easy for you to let go."
Illya's eyes were very blue as they looked into his. "I never had any intention of letting go my friend," he said evenly.
"We never did make it to Moscow."
Illya smiled at him. "We still have time."
A roar was beginning to build in the streets below, and the sound of horns and laughter spilled out of the penthouse behind them. It was midnight. It was getting colder and the wind was picking up as though to whisk the old year away. The memories slid back to their place in the past. It was time to celebrate the other side of the Russian New Year: the pleasure of laying old debts to rest, the exhilaration of new beginnings and always, always, the irrepressible feeling that a wish made tonight would be sure to come true. Illya took a deep breath and tasted the New Year.
"There is one thing that's missing tonight," he said.
"Oh?" Napoleon's eyebrows arched.
"Fireworks. "
"Still illegal in New York tovarisch." He clapped Illya on the back. "You'll have to wait till next year when you're the host in Berlin. I'll be glad to help you toss firecrackers off the roof of the UNCLE building."
"Amateur. I have something a little more sophisticated planned than tossing crackers off the roof ."
"I can imagine, my pyromaniacal friend." Napoleon cocked his head. "I expected you to say something else is missing."
"Oh, but it's not." One of Illya's bright, true smiles lit up his face and he reached over to lightly brush the first few tiny flakes of snow from Napoleon's lapel.
They both looked up at the sky and saw the flakes starting to come down, sparkling when they reached the city lights, beginning to fall harder even as they watched.
Napoleon raised his glass in a toast. "Happy New Year, Illya."
" S Novym Godom Napoleon," Illya's glass rang against his. "Let us wish for many more."
Snegurochka: Snow Maiden
Ded Moroz: Grandfather Frost
yolka: decorated New Year's tree
|
|
