After last month’s gathering, one I couldn’t wriggle out of, my father confided his intention to rename English Plus Green Continent – Russians’ pet name for Australia – reflecting the influx of clientele planning emigration to a distant innocuous country challenging Britain and the US as preferred destination. Piquing imaginations – for Russians, Australians are the next best thing to English-speaking martians. He affirmed that this had been his strategy all along. Russian entrepreneurialism is a science reborn and an extended trial run in disguise is needed to iron out kinks in the business model.
‘But it’s two-thirds desert,’ I exclaimed.
‘Creative marketing, son. It worked for Eric the Red when he needed to resettle his Vikings. Where would you rather live – Greenland or Kalaallit Nunaat?’
Straight away I regretted shunning a rare overture, one colleague to another. My father sighed, stood up, opened a cupboard and took out the bollard. ‘Present from a student. He found it in a dump outside the Australian Embassy. May as well put the damn thing to use. It’s a conversation starter if nothing else.’
Now the threads are joining up.
Entering the office, closing the door behind me, I notice a half-empty bottle of Stolichnaya – Made in USA on the label – on the table alongside shot glasses and a small parcel wrapped in lilac cellophane, matching ribbon around a letter inside an envelope. Anna’s birthday has long gone and he’s not one for gifts so that leaves belated apology. For his reliable boorishness at the dacha? Where to start? No one who knows him would speak of Sergey Vladimirovich Kurguzikov and contrition in the same breath. Then I see the parcel bears an address.
My father rummages around in a cupboard behind him, turns to greet me and pours himself a tumbler, taps his temple in self-reproach – now there’s a first – and pushes the filled glass across the table. This gesture says I am free to refuse but please listen to what comes next.
‘Vasya, what do you say to a teaching position in Australia? Melbourne, second biggest city, deep south. Still in the fertile crescent.’
I examine the parcel as phrases waft by. ‘… revived cultural exchange program… you are the obvious candidate… exit visa could take months or more… nothing else standing in the way…’ On one side my father has written his full name – Sergey Vladimirovich Kurguzikov. To Helen Somebody – Dalrymple? – in strangely palsied cursive, her location in his normal square hand exaggerated capitals for the district. MOUNT EVELYN, a telephone number alongside.
‘It’s a hilly area, near where locals spend summer. Caucasus for a flat country. If you’re fortunate as me, you’ll get to see it for yourself.’ He pours himself another shot, tosses it back, slices the air with his hand to clear away further preliminaries. ‘Melbourne was another planet. European civilization and the peace of a village without the filth, can you imagine? But your mother was absolutely against the long separation, so much so that I wondered if she would still be there when I returned. One of my students was attracted to me.’ He rakes his hands through his hair, pats it down again.
‘Why are you even telling me this? Whoever she is, she is there. You’re here.’ We are alone, no one within earshot. Finally we can talk man to man, without fear of repercussion. Unless the KGB have bugged the joey. I’ll take the risk. The double-panelled door lets me raise my voice. ‘Does Mum know? Or does this stay between us?’
‘I was suffocating here. Your generation can’t understand what that was like. I glimpsed a hole through a prison wall. I was even prepared to defect, though it would have destroyed my prospects altogether. Anyway I came back and I curse myself for it ever since. Pissed my talent up against a wall. How very Russian.’ Misty-eyed, he pauses, continues with effort. ‘So you’d be going on my unfinished business. I think that’s as much as you need to know. Anyway it all hangs on the grace and favour of whichever Ministry of Foreign Affairs shiny-bum issues your exit visa. In other words, it most likely won’t eventuate.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Or they could let you out but refuse Anna. Which I suppose amounts to the same. Still, we can dream.’
I notice his wedding ring is again off, his finger swollen and reddened. He holds it up. ‘Arthritis,’ he mumbles. ‘Side effect of the heart medication.’ He scythes the air, terminating the subject, then continues. ‘Aha! I remember where I put it.’ He turns around to open a corner cupboard, takes out a tin of prize Tambov honey and places it next to the Stolichnaya. ‘Here, mix this. Make sure you dissolve the honey first. Best of luck to you lad, it never let me down in twenty years of marriage.’
Tainted beverage if ever there was one. Sop to the vanquished. Here I am, twenty-eight, no children in sight, clinging to a flat my father underwrites. Little else to show. Dispatched to settle some grubby business in the Antipodes fifteen years ago.
As for the honey, I can’t taste it for gall.
★
COMMOTION
★
A commotion is taking place two streets away from our apartment. City police vehicles converge on the scene, rear tyres spraying mud, suggesting a Mafia stakeout. Not the long-feared Caucasian terrorist strike; blue and yellow OMON jeeps are nowhere in sight. Crack troops are only sent to major breaches of public order and ordinary domestic murder no longer warrants a swift response. Roped cordons are being erected at the intersection of my street. Lingering invites thieves out to fleece voyeurs’ pockets. I take a shortcut home through a dimly lit courtyard.
A small figure leaps at me out of the dark. From the other side spidery fingers dip into my coat pocket. Loose notes flutter out as the gang encircles me. Fall and my bag is theirs. Keep my feet and I might ward them off. I swing my free hand, connect with bone, a forehead or jaw. A retaliatory kick clips my ankle. I lash out behind, grazing a face with my wristwatch and provoking a volley of curses in Romany. The boy spits into the shoulder of my coat and runs after the others. Groping around on hands and knees, I retrieve three hundreds torn beyond use and place them in a pocket where some rolled-up tenners stick to the lining. A bunch of onlookers, several of whom I often chat with in queues or watch playing whist on summer evenings, stand a short distance from the scuffle, treating themselves to free entertainment on the other side of the yard. A drunk lies prostrate, bottle leaking over the ice as his wife alternates vows to divorce with blows from a cane.
Snort and toss from the bedroom, then the smack of bare feet on the bedroom floor, moving to the kitchen. Running water. Anna scrubs potatoes, lops stalks off beetroot. Borscht announces her imminent return to work and an end to silence.
I turn the parcel at angles as though viewing a prism, roll its contents around. Held against the lamp, American dollars, their veined imprints shine through the wrapping. Something rattles, a stony object hollow to my fingertip. I’m not dexterous enough to unpick the ribbon without rending the flimsy cellophane. Instead I take down the globe from the mantelpiece, give it a gentle twirl with the tip of one finger. Dents below the Persian Gulf. Scratches in the Caribbean. I trace a winding route via the Middle East to the Himalayas. Along the Equator, south from New Guinea. The Coral Sea bites into Australia’s northern coastline. The Pacific nibbles the smooth bulge eastward. That figures. Pacific = peaceful = Tikhiy Okean.