I stuff the address list into an upright bin, and jaywalk towards a railway bridge with an aquatic mural proclaiming LADY OF ST KILDA, mermaids bodysurfing a tempest. A tram looms underneath. Its poster of a female television journalist shunts by before the driver stops to let me on. Palm trees are reflected in the driver’s window as we cross Brighton Road. Two stops later I smell the sea. A McDonalds bestrides a traffic island, sun burnishing its golden arches.
I head for the beach along the wall of a fun park, its entrance a fiend’s grinning mouth. Thin screams issue from witches’ hats whirling to the peak of a carousel. The breeze dies away and the temperature climbs. Yellow sand forms a crust that breaks underfoot. The tide ebbs. Thickets of masts sway behind the marina. Further offshore cargo ships wend their way towards the Yarra River.
Wiping my soles on the grass, I walk past a public toilet painted red, gold, and black. Itinerants loiter on a pathway. I swerve in the direction of the street. A hand pats my elbow. ‘Gotta dollar buddy?’ I wheel around, crushing the man’s fingers against my ribs and flee back to the tram, a volley of abuse ringing in my ears.
My desk diary flips open at today, 1 May, where I’ve written PHONE INSTALLATION – 9 AM underneath HELEN BACK FROM HOLIDAYS. I blow off the last sawdust from the linesman’s drill, punch the number into the keypad. Seven rings, a male grunt.
‘Helen Dalrymple please.’
‘Wrong number, mate.’
Click. I examine the diary. In my haste I mistook the last digit, a blotted one, for a four. I wouldn't even make the grade as a courier. When I called two weeks before, the answering machine guillotined the first part of the recorded message. ‘This is Helen’s phone. Peter and I have gone camping. Wish me luck. If neither of us murders the other we’ll be back on the first. To all you burglars out there, good luck hacking through the triple alarm, you’ll find nothing worth stealing anyway.’
If her intention was to deter unsolicited callers from leaving messages, it worked for me.
I step outside to collect my thoughts. Midway down the stairwell a window faces east. Black clouds billow over distant hills. In the foreground toy houses as if emptied from a sack have mostly landed upright. Who was it wrote that everybody saw the world with one eye turned inwards? Simone de Beauvoir? Has to be one of the existentialists. Make that one eye and a half in my case. My want of ambition, chronic failure of nerve, fumbling opportunity after opportunity, is apiece with these dribbling suburbs. In place of a Kremlin – failing that, my phantom apartment towers – foliage, roof edges and industrial ramparts merge grey.
There are of course, conscience-salving options. Like locating the address and leaving the parcel in the letterbox with a note to its rightful recipient, making clear I have no wish for further acquaintance. Come to that, why not just mail it off, be done with it? I lick two stamps from the six-pack purchased from the newsagent’s, stick them alongside her address, a third for good measure, and set off for the post office, whistling.
Listless end-of-term pervades the campus. Some first-years beeline for the library, folders tucked underarm. Groups of older students play cards on the lawn. Remembering I have papers to collect, I backtrack to the department. Photocopied handouts are stuffed in my pigeonhole together with a sheaf of completed assignments. Six of seventeen due, no pink request forms for extensions or other messages. Jonas’s desk is empty. I haven’t seen him for several days. When I asked Judy whether Jonas was ill, she replied with uncharacteristic brusqueness that his hours had been reduced and busied herself with a jammed stapler.
Judy cranes her head round my door. ‘Phone call for you. Helen someone. I’m guessing one of your Dad’s old students got wind you’re here. I’ll put her through.’
I pick up my extension.
‘Hel-lo?’ I recognise the faux-European lilt from her answering message. Scrabbling noises, a feline yowl in the background as though someone is dragging it by the tail. Only after several seconds does the noise, or one source of the noises, register as human. ‘Excuse me a sec? Peter, shut the door before Buddha gets out. We’re not on Sorrento foreshore now.’ She’s reverted to flat, exasperated Strine.
‘You left the fucking door open, not me!’
‘Charming, Peter. Sorry, Vassili – Vassili, isn’t it?’ Amplified whisper, palm cupped round the mouthpiece. ‘This is Helen Dalrymple. Just calling to thank you for sending the parcel. How much should I reimburse you for the post?’
Reimburse? Where is my Thesaurus when I need it?
‘Repeat please?’
‘How much should I pay you for the postage?’
‘Please, not need. You are welcome.’
‘Your English is very good. I’d talk Russian to you but it’s all rusted away. Anyway…’
A strained formality, wary spaces between words.
‘Please thank your father for the… gift.’
I assume she means the ring. Better not to ask. A longer pause.
‘And the money. Let me know if there’s anything I can help you with in return.’
Whether or not a microphone effect, her offer comes over a little perfunctory.
‘Thank you, very kind. But it is not necessary. Please excuse me. Now I must prepare for class.’
‘All the best then.’ She exhales the words.
I suspect she is more than a little relieved I don’t take up her offer.
‘Proshai.’ She hangs up first.
I find the Collins Russian-English Pocket Dictionary, half-buried under desk debris. Proshai. Farewell, no hard feelings but we won’t meet again, not to be confused with the all-purpose goodbye do svidanya. From someone who claims to have forgotten the language, proshai is a highly passive-aggressive way to sign off. As if she’d rehearsed our conversation for thirteen years.
And who might Peter be? Husband? Lover? Son? Best have handy a white lie should my father inquire. That scalded-cat screech could belong to any Australian male between fourteen and forty.
Along the corridor the professor’s agitated rumble blends with Judy’s pacifying tones. I hear each say my, Jonas’s, and Karen’s name in turn, context inaudible. Waiting until the corridor is clear, I leave by the fire stairs, hoping more fervently than usual not to run into any of my students. If my Melbourne sojourn has taught me anything, I am after all a rear-exit person. Only five turned up for this morning’s revision session on verbs of motion. I prepared it over two weeks. Amid whispers and notes passed round, one, the self-proclaimed class dunce, fell sideways between seats. Suppressed sniggers when I swung around. I resolved to allocate higher weighting to verbs of motion in the forthcoming exams.
My Moscow students were not my type but an unspoken contract prevailed – agreed destination if not shared journey. Our common enterprise was never in question. Attendance and punctuality were givens. I took their maturity and discipline for granted. Here the syllabus is incidental, fills space between football and other pastimes. Judy is right. Who needs Russian in Melbourne?
At the end of every class I overhear, or imagine I do, murmurs, undercurrents of antagonism. Am I paranoid to suspect Jonas orchestrates the sniggering? I hope I am. My diminishing number of regular students subdivides into two groups. Three or four wide-eyed dilettantes, Marxist Club stalwarts, make up one. On their behalf Jonas conveys repeated invitations to join mushrooming expeditions outside Melbourne or to judge folk singing competitions, hinting that continuing refusal might be impolitic. But I resent being treated as the token native, and dislike petty competition at the best of times. Among the other group I encounter genial indifference, friendliness-to-a-point totted up and dispensed like sugar rations. Seeing me in the corridor they ask how I am settling in and without pausing, continue on their way, nursing cup and saucer of tea slopping onto a biscuit. Occasionally they praise my English. I smile back in the baleful assurance that I will only deserve the compliments when they stop.