‘Please…’ A drop of sweat rolls into my left eye. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. ‘Please. A present. Do not please open.’ An angel hovers at my shoulder, fracturing my jerry-built syntax, rendering me a gormless nincompoop.
‘Either I do, or I give the dogs a sniff. Take your pick. If I were you, I’d choose me. I reckon they’ve got sharper noses. But they’re not that flash at reading flight schedules. I’ll ensure you make your plane if everything’s legit.’
‘Okay.’ My mouth forms the sound, nothing comes out. The second officer puckers his lips and studies the roof. His superior examines the ring, replaces it and begins reassembling the parcel’s contents. He looks at me with weary irritation.
‘On your bike then. And make sure you declare everything next time. Oh, and I mean this nicely, get a refund for that photo. It’s a shocker, and that’s saying something coming from me.’
I nudge my trolley towards the shuttle-bus waiting outside in brilliant sunshine. People wear loud T-shirts, although the outside temperature feels cooler. The driver transferring us to Qantas Domestic Terminal cracks jokes all the way. Polite minimal laughter, humouring a longwinded raconteur. For all I understand he might be speaking Spanish.
Sydney to Melbourne passes quickly. The plane bores through thunderclouds, shrugs off turbulence over a mountain range. Seated again by the window, I count watercourses winding in and out of forest. The all-Australian crew is friendly and attentive, serving fruit juice and cucumber sandwiches in dainty triangles, bantering among themselves as though returning from camp.
Landing at Melbourne is steeper, less adroit. Our taxiing U-turn rocks the fuselage. I brace myself for a repeat of Sydney, perhaps a body search this time, but domestic Customs procedures are a grin and thumb jerked over shoulder. I trail a crocodile of Japanese tourists, hand luggage bouncing off their ribs. The athletes assemble near a charter coach. An audacious impulse steers me in that direction but the coach captain blocks my path. ‘I’d say yours is over there, mate.’ Claims to Slavic kinship die on my lips. What did I think they and I have in common, other than a funny alphabet and ticket out from the Iron Curtain? I retreat to a blue bus with CITY above the driver’s seat.
★
MELBOURNE
★
I had imagined the Melbourne Hotel where I booked a single room for the first week would resemble the seedy Intourist on downtown Tverskaya Street – gloomy foyers, hit-men moonlighting as casino guards, prostitutes sipping coffee between tricks. But the interior is light and airy and ersatz music warbles through the foyer. My spacious room has a television on a beige shelf, claw-foot bath, a well-stocked drinks fridge and a jug of fresh water beside a Bible. I decide to wash my clothes in the bath while I work out what to do next. Wringing out socks, I hear footsteps and rustling from the corridor. A menu flutters underneath the door, offering a selection of breakfast dishes, à la carte or delivered on a tray. I skip overleaf to the dinner section. Columns of prices in Australian dollars, more tick-a-boxes than an Immigration Statement. In my jittery state a double conversion back from AUD to roubles via greenbacks is too much mental callisthenics. Perhaps the hotel is American owned and I will have to tip. In the end I leave it blank and venture out in search of… what? A tomato stall?
The hotel is near Chinatown, ornamental dragons guarding archways, exuberant counterpoint to Melbourne’s sobriety and scale. Streets form a logical grid and the tallest office towers double as navigation beacons. Lunchtime window shoppers peer past their own reflections at the display stands. Despite the canyon-like arcades, Melbourne strikes me as a street-level city, a maze for intelligent mice rather than a Manhattan ant colony. Blond, buttery light drenches car tops and pavements. At a street bisected by a tramline I come upon a McDonalds, its golden arches adorning a handsome granite facade. Its plastic-and-chrome décor is a clone of Pushkin Square’s, except the queues are shorter. I order a strawberry milkshake and sit down at a tray-sized table. A big straw to drink from. Less berry.
On my return the hotel receptionist passes me a message to ring Jonas Lansbergis, my university contact. We arrange to meet in the foyer café at three o’clock.
Jonas’s lean, square features and lightly accented Russian confirm his Lithuanian origins. After the waitress sets down two coffees and a bun, Jonas launches into a torrent of advice in English that flatters my powers of comprehension. ‘I’ll help you find a flat. Furnished would be better. You don’t want to be running around buying tables and chairs. One bedroom okay? Near a railway station if we’re lucky. We’ll try Balaclava first, only half an hour commute and lots of Russians out that way. In case you need a doctor or whatever in a hurry. Take the edge off your homesickness.’
Over the next week I go along with every proposal, turn up to every vacancy inspection Jonas arranges. I voice token protest at Jonas’s offer to help with moving in. But I baulk at Balaclava for reasons I cannot articulate in either language, opting instead for the district I identify as Richmond, bordering Collingwood. The flat, on a twelve-month lease – fully covered by the exchange program fund along with an open-ended ‘living allowance’ – is one of six comprising the upper floor of a two-storey orange brick complex facing Punt Road. It has a rear car park and letterboxes at the foot of the internal stairway. Traffic doesn’t bother me and, best of all, there is not another Russian in sight. The real estate agent offers me a choice between upstairs and the one also vacant directly below. Little to distinguish, but stairs are a slim buffer of seclusion.
Jonas has been assigned, or takes it upon himself to escort me to work – three stations on the train to the CBD, change to an articulated tram whose ribs clank like a concertina. Alighting on a stately boulevard of elms we cross a rill coursing over slate, impossibly lush lawns with students sitting in twos or threes. I catch myself looking for the ‘Keep Off’ signs. Seizing the chance for conversational practice, Jonas proposes a quick tour of the campus before my welcome lunch. I feign interest, attention drifting as Jonas points out this or that department, age and architectural provenance of each building, and so on. I assess his Russian as only superficially good. His fluency elides mistakes and close listening exposes an over-literary turn of phrase.
We enter the student union building where Orientation Week festivities are winding down. Inside are club premises, a billiard hall, record shop and health food cooperatives. We stop outside the Marxist Club. Bare-chested Che Guevera in combat fatigues graces the club window, much as Jagger, Bowie, Lennon and Aquarium’s frontman Boris Grebenshikov all adorned my old bedroom at my parents’ flat. Revolutionaries one and all – the difference being that Che gave his life, and others’, to the cause. I don’t know whether to be insulted or laugh at the sheer effrontery. Marxism is after all many things to many people. Old Karl would concede that. On this untroubled corner of the planet, a hobby one can take up like chess or gardening – at government expense.
As we walk back I ask Jonas, ‘Why do you teach Russian and not Lithuanian?’ A minor puzzle and, I assume, an innocuous enough question.
His long pause suggests anything but. ‘Very simple. There’s millions of you, and only thousands of us. We’d best get a move on, your lunch starts in ten minutes.’
We enter a six-storey H-shaped building – the university’s language faculty – and take the stairs to a shared fourth-floor office at one end of the crosspiece. The professor’s ample office boasts a view over the lawns and is dominated by a pink pin-up map of the Soviet Union. Its occupant extends his hand. Tired smile, vigorous handshake. Lashless blue eyes, blasted skin and singed boffin hair warn not to lean over the same cauldron. ‘David Enright. I spent time with your parents in Moscow, though you might not remember, it was 1979.’