In the waning daylight the flat exudes melancholy. I hope Jonas and friend will not think it is all mine, will understand I contribute only a little.
As I turn on the outside light, footsteps resound on the stairwell. Jonas stands at the door with a bottle of Australian champagne, introduces the girl I collided with at the party, who I have since seen coming out of Jonas’s classes. This morning I placed two pairs of carpet slippers side by side to prompt my guests to take off their shoes in the hallway. Karen nods hello and sails past. Jonas’s rueful shrug conveys when in Melbourne… If she was my student the next class would have a barbed emphasis on cultural customs. I usher them into the living room and fetch three champagne flutes, noticing with dismay that two of them are caked with washing liquid residue and the other has a chipped rim.
Jonas peels the foil from the cork. ‘Let’s have another crack at a proper welcome.’
‘Better late than never. Same expression in Russian, yes?’
‘Da. Would you have a tea towel I can open this with? I’d better point it well away, it might leave an exit wound.’
I oblige. Jonas pours the drinks and raises his in toast. ‘Za druzhbu mezhdu narodami! To friendship between nations,’ he translates for Karen’s benefit.
‘Chin chin.’ Karen has a brazen way of scrutinising everything in the room, casting methodically up and down. Her gaze settles on Anna.
‘That your wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is she coming out?’
‘I do not know. It is in the balance. Probably, but it depends on her.’
‘I wouldn’t mind working over there. Teach English, move on to bigger and better things. Theatre maybe. Much demand for that?’
‘Of course. What is your profession?’
‘I’m an actress between jobs.’
I recognise the code words ‘between jobs’.
I say, ‘You mean you are unemployed?’
‘Yeah, but that’s not how I think of it, okay?’ she shoots back.
‘Dream on, princess,’ Jonas says, rejoining us. ‘You wouldn’t hack Moscow. Try learning their alphabet first. Native speakers are a dime a dozen. Why would they need you?’
‘What would you know, mister armchair traveller? Never been north of Broadmeadows in your life.’
I have a premonition of something burning an instant before the smell reaches us. I race to the kitchen where we gather over the wreckage of the borscht, a raft of vegetables floating on a black crust.
I knead my palms. ‘So shaming…’
‘Our fault, we waylaid you,’ Jonas consoles. ‘Can’t cook from the living room.’
‘But it is unfit to eat, it is ruined.’
‘A tad well-done, that’s all.’
‘Please, I cannot serve you this. It is an insult to guests.’
‘Don’t be silly. Here, let me. Lemon tea with your soup? Karen?’
We eat in silence. For dessert I open a tin of pears. Karen makes ill-disguised attempts to catch Jonas’s attention.
‘We’ve got to get going,’ she eventually says. ‘There’s a party on tonight.’
‘Well, so long.’
Jonas pats me on the back as Karen makes for the door with a parting flick of her hand.
I wait for their arguing voices to die away before pouring a drink, Georgian cognac I’d bought for the occasion. Liquid swishing over glass resonates in the gloom. The spirit slides down my throat like a hot capsule, softly implodes and soaks through. I am not after all a stereotypical Russian. I do not drink to drown myself, to dull pain or for drinking’s sake, but to dissolve the blockages between memory and now, until my two lives reconnect.
I go downstairs onto Punt Road. The jostle of cars has dissipated. They glide down the hill, sashaying between lanes. MCG lights shine closer, their outlines fuzzed in the wavering breeze. For now, suspended between familiarity and strangeness, it is enough to be in Melbourne, but not of it.
Back inside the darkness of the flat, Anna’s photo is a revelation, like stumbling upon an icon in a dusty catacomb. I stand at a worshipful distance until weariness guides me to bed past the unwashed dishes.
Writing cannot be put off forever. If – if – Anna has sent me a letter it should have arrived by now, so best to assume it has fallen out of the plane somewhere over the Himalayas. Soviet postal clerks used to screen outgoing missives for subversive contents. These days they pilfer anything with market value. What odds mail coming the other way? Probably worse. I dither between a postcard – quicker to arrive, tamper-proof – and an aerogram with fold-up wings. In the end I opt for the aerogram. Placing it next to my notepad, I unsheathe my fountain pen, last year’s birthday present from Anna. I begin draft number eight.
Dear Anyutchka
I have made a good start, already have my own flat not far from work. The streets are very clean and well-ordered, you will feel safe here. Melbourne is quiet, more like Tarusa than a city, or how I imagine a city, but a good place for families. It reminds me of a well-organised holiday camp.
I blink at my inanities, tear off the page, crumple and fling it over my shoulder. Seven others ring the wastepaper bin. Shot number eight ricochets off the wall and finds its mark. Then the nib bends from my scrawling and will yield no ink. It is all I can do not to open the front window and aim it straight at an MCG light tower. Instead I hurl the pen at the doorway. It skips off the knob and onto the linoleum. Indigo pours out, away from the carpet. I sop up the worst with toilet paper, test the pen on notepaper. It has withstood my tantrum.
I decide to visit Balaclava before it gets dark. For want of anything better to do on an overcast Sunday.
Before I left, Anna garnered some addresses of former work colleagues who had settled in Balaclava. Tucking her list back into my hip pocket I continue towards Carlisle Street shopping strip. I have no intention of looking them up, however one or two kerbside appraisals might bear useful comparison with my accommodation. Baking aromas mingle with coffee and querulous accents. Men in waistcoats stand around a bench, their two-handed gestures miming a political discussion. Speak English, you’re not that old I want to say. Or if you can’t, sit down. Then feel ashamed of myself.
Govorim po-russki, we speak Russian announces a real estate agent’s window in Cyrillic, as does a grocery shop with barrows full of shiny fruit. Even the lemons look waxed. Stripped junk for the poorest migrants, felt armchairs sorely in need of upholstery clutter a doorway. Conversations swirl around me. Yiddish with snatches of Russian, Russian laced with Ukrainian, salty Odessan idiom. A young Australian couple bustle past me, also wanting to escape. ‘R-r-rah-shins here, R-r-rah-shins there, R-r-rah-shins everywhere,’ the boy mutters in a bad accent. The girl titters.