4th May 2024
This novel’s title is explained in a short preface. A snowdrop could be “an early-flowering bulbous plant, having a white pendent flower” or “Moscow slang for a corpse that lies buried or hidden in the winter snows, emerging only in the thaw”. It is no great surprise to discover which is the more relevant to the story that follows.
Nicholas (Nick) Platt is a 38 year-old single lawyer – from Luton, rather incongruously – who has worked in Moscow for 4 years. He likes the city and his lifestyle as one of the well-paid westerners playing key roles in the “Wild East” of the post-Soviet economy.
If anything, Nick regards himself as morally superior to most of the others enjoying their temporary sojourns from London or New York: “I spoke better Russian than most of the carpet-bagging bankers and mountebank consultants in the city – the pseudo-posh Englishmen, strong-toothed Americans and misleading Scandinavians the black-gold rush had brought to Moscow, who mostly managed to shuttle between their offices, gated apartments, expense-account brothels, upscale restaurants and the airport on twenty-odd words”.
At the same time, he recognises – in part, at least – the reality of life in the capital. “The office was in a crenelated beige tower on Paveletskaya Square… the air-conditioned daytime home of half the expats in Moscow… On the other side of the square was Paveletsky train station, the domain of drunks and wrecks and glue-sniffing children, poor hopeless bastards who had fallen off the Russian tightrope”. Such is Moscow at the end of the 21st Century’s first decade.
Given this background, one might suppose that Nick would be alert to the potential scams and duplicity that are prevalent in this environment. He is an experienced Moscow-dweller, who is professionally qualified and linguistically competent. But he is also a naïve and obvious victim-in-waiting. When his elderly neighbour Oleg Nikolaevich reminds him of an old Russian proverb – “The only place with free cheese is a mousetrap” – we know that Nick should have been listening more intently.
AD Miller impressively contrasts what Nick sees – or thinks he sees – as he goes about his day-to-day business with the underlying dynamics that are actually shaping Russian society and its economy. The more perceptive observer of the latter is Nick’s friend, Steve – a heavy-drinking journalist working for the Independent whilst also moon-lighting for a Canadian newspaper. His drunken aside – “crime, business, politics, spookery – the usual Russian merry go-round” – might be a statement of the obvious, but he is the one perceptive enough to recognise that “[t]he St Petersburg crew are taking over, the old defence ministry gang are getting nervous”. St Petersburg was the political stamping ground of Vladimir Putin, of course – the Russian leader since 1999 – who is not mentioned by name, but referred to by Nick more than once as “Russia’s weasel President”.
So much for context. Miller’s narrative moves forward at a brisk pace, the story’s action beginning when Nick intervenes in the attempted mugging of two young Russian women – Masha (Maria) and Katya – near the entrance to Pushinskaya underground station. He begins a passionate relationship with Masha and is brought into their world, most notably with the introduction to their aunt, Tatania Vladimirova. At Masha and Katya’s suggestion, he agrees to arrange the sale of the elderly woman’s apartment in the sought-after centre of the city in exchange for another property on a proposed new-build site in the suburbs.
The main item of Nick’s formal business concerns facilitating a huge loan from a group of western banks to finance an off-shore oil terminal near Murmansk on the far north Barents Sea. (He thinks it no more of a coincidence that this is where the two women state that they originally came from). When his infatuation with Masha appears to distract him from one or two danger signs in the business transaction, we know that all might not turn out well. In essence, Nick senses that things are not quite right, but wants to look the other way. (As it happens, we had more than detected this already from the tone of Nick’s first-person narration, which is given in retrospect and overlain with wistful regret).
There are strands of poignancy in the tale. Nick recognises his self-imposed expatriate status – with both its pleasures and constraints – as the precursor to an impending mid-life crisis, having jettisoned his contacts and familiarity with London and Britain. Most sadly, this estrangement extends to the relationship with his parents, as confirmed when he truncates a Christmas visit to them and, later, when his mother visits him for a few days.
More generally, we also sympathise with those members of Moscow’s older generation, who survived the War as children and then endured forty-plus years of Communist inefficiency and corruption, but who are being left behind (or worse) by the current regime. They include Tatania Vladimirova and Oleg Nikolaevich and the latter’s friend, Konstantin Andreyevich, who has mysteriously disappeared.
Viewed as a whole, perhaps the most striking thing about this near-contemporary novel is how dated it became on the fateful day in February 2022 when the weasel-eyed President’s forces invaded the Ukraine. Two years on from that, one hopes that the subsequent sanctions imposed by the West have meant that the “carpet-bagging bankers and mountebank consultants” – and their lawyers – have withdrawn from “the black-gold rush” that previously pertained. Likewise, it is unlikely that the summer holiday that Nick takes with Masha and Katya in Odessa – “…for Russians… a fairy-tale nirvana of debauchery and escape” – would be on the repeat list in the near future.
Finally, a theme to which the author – and his main character – keep returning is the weather in Moscow. The narrative starts in the final warm days of September, after which the light snow sets in and then the huge falls of heavy snow and the winter’s bitter cold. The pavements become treacherous and the river freezes. When the warmth of the short-lived Spring arrives and the deep snow melts away, so then is a snowdrop discovered, the corpse draped from the boot of an abandoned car in the street opposite Nick’s apartment.
JR Alexander 