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In Soviet-era history texts, the original Balaclava marked the high point of the Crimean War. Menshikov’s forces outsmarted the British, French and Turks, goading Lord Raglan into the calamitous Charge of the Light Brigade. Their descendants washed up in Balaclava, Victoria – also a coastal settlement, or near enough – in long waves. What better place to celebrate our triumph over the odds?
We pause at the Anna Karenina Pre-Loved Clothes Shop, at the quiet end of Balaclava Road, surrounded by Jewish schools and synagogues.
‘Wasn’t she post-loved by the time she threw herself under the train?’ Anna wonders. ‘Anyway, what’s Tolstoy got to do with second-hand jumpers?’
‘I’d put it next to the railway tracks,’ I quip, wait for her reaction. None. Today I can get away with anything.
‘Tolstoy fought at Balaclava, didn’t he?’
‘No. But he saw the horrible aftermath. Especially on the Russian side.’
She’s shivering.
‘Are you cold?’
‘Goosebumps. Tchaikovsky might have composed the score, but Tolstoy has scripted the big moments of my life and he’s not done with me yet. He’s stalking me from the heavens. I’m scared to look up in case a swan flies overhead. Or a babushka will walk out of that junk shop with two empty buckets. Double trouble.’
‘You’re making me nervous. Let’s put daylight between us and this train line.’
We catch the Number 16 Carlisle Street tram to St Kilda and find an open-fronted bistro on Acland Street that breathes sea air. I order Fosters, a brand seen in liquor kiosks around Moscow. The taste is reminiscent of Zhigulovskoye – chemical, frothy head and not much beneath. It’s enough on hot evenings.
Anna opts for a cafe latte. ‘Because today’s a day for firsts, and today I can.’
Indeed. Cheeky frescoes adorn the walls. Mona Lisa sips a milkshake through a straw while a waiter chalks up lunch specials. The café divides into a serving area and bookshop-cum-apothecary. We sit near revolving display stands and hexagonal glass cabinets containing decks of tarot cards, amethyst crystals and dropper-top vials of herbal extract. Through the open window we inhale marzipan fragrance from the cake shops opposite.
I ring my mother. It is recognisably her on the phone but she sounds fuller, rounder, as though in widowhood she’s gained ten kilos and shed every care. Even before I tell her the news of Anna’s pregnancy.
‘What’s Helen like? Be honest, you don’t need to spare my feelings. He left me a note, confessed what I’d worked out ages ago, filled in some details. You’ll find out for yourself that secrets can’t survive forty years of marriage.’
‘What can I tell you? Still quite attractive, in a worn sort of way. Life’s knocked her around and she stopped carrying a torch for Dad long ago. If that’s any comfort.’
‘It’s a comfort. He left her in a mangled heap. The kid?’
‘Spitting image.’
‘Lucky her. She’s welcome to the ring. Peace of mind will do me. And his inheritance, such as it is. It could take a few months before you see anything.’
‘You’re already sounding better. Anyone would think widowhood agrees with you.’
‘It does. I’ve gone into business. Don’t laugh. Housewife for life no longer. Admit it, you didn’t think I had it in me, did you?’
‘Do tell.’
‘Early days, still taking shape. You’ll see for yourself. Only bad news is we couldn’t keep up your flat. Maria Alexandrovna grabbed it back the week Anna left. You youngish people and extremely young person are stuck with boring old me.’
‘Shouldn’t we return early?’
‘No. Do what he would have wanted, see out your teaching contract, bring home a passenger and brighten my old age.’
I take out the exam papers bulldog-clipped to the folder, read through Paul’s first. 96%. I write Very Well Done, go to draw a smiley face alongside, think better of it, and push it into a plastic sleeve. I attack the rest with my red marking pen. One after another consign themselves to the F pile. Karen’s lies on top. She has been absent for a month and it shows.
I go outside for fresh air, shivering in my shirtsleeves. A marmalade kitten trots up the stairs, sees me and disappears into its bolthole. Anna tosses in her bed. Her wretched early pregnancy, vomiting every morning and getting up several times a night is stretching into second trimester. Initially she let me rest my head against her ripening belly. At week five I dubbed Nikolai sliva (plum). By week seven he was limon (lemon). At twelve weeks, I renamed him arbuz (watermelon). Anna, with a glare to bend spoons, suggested that if I really want to know what it’s like to lug a watermelon up and down hill, a kilometre to the shops and back, then contend with two flights of stairs, our Vietnamese grocer has watermelons on special at fifty cents a kilo and she would even strap it on for me. Besides which, time I slept on the divan.
Retrieving Karen’s paper, I circle Pass on the top of the cover page, fasten it to Paul’s with a paperclip, slip it inside the plastic sleeve with the others, switch the radiator to 20 Celsius and lie down under the bed sheets spread across the divan. I drift off.
The President’s deputy – not of the President’s choosing, foisted upon him by hardliners – reads his prepared text in a stammering provincial accent. President Yeltsin, on holidays in the Crimea, has been persuaded to step down from his post on grounds of ill-health. He, the President’s loyal deputy, will perform all head of state duties until such time as public order is restored. Curfews will remain in force until further notice. Unauthorised demonstrations are henceforth illegal. The man’s hands are shaking from nerves or vodka, or both.
Black and white transmission has never seemed more apposite. I punch the On/Off button. His dumpling features shrink to a pinprick…
Thud and splinter from the back door, flywire giving way. ‘Vassili Sergeyevich Kurguzikov! Will you come quietly?’ Combat fatigues hem me in. Strong hands pin my shoulders, drag me to the floor. I scream, butt my head against bare flesh…
‘Vasya!’ Anna is kneeling beside me. ‘You’re burning up. Come and sleep in the bed.’ She hoists me off the carpet, leads me by the hand to the bed. Squirms her hip into the mattress, marking out territory, rolls to face me.
‘Now don’t misunderstand this. I just don’t want you to catch cold out there. I can afford it even less.’
She kisses my cheek and turns her back. I stare at the digital clock. The clock stares back. I blink first.
I call by my pigeonhole for overdue assignments. Five submitted last week, three more to come. Attendance for the new semester is up. The stragglers might yet salvage the year.
‘Vassili Sergeyevich!’ Enright’s voice carries the length of the corridor. ‘A moment please.’
I sit facing the map of the USSR. Its pink sheen obliterates cities, railways, entire republics. The professor rests his hands on his desk.
‘You’re no doubt aware that your students are performing well below expectations. Can you explain why?’ Clever, switching to Russian. Much harder to feign confusion in my native tongue.
I stare at the Urals, focusing my thoughts. ‘I think it is hardly surprising. These days in Moscow, students fight for university places to study English. It is a matter of survival. Here, a second language is an amusing hobby. Perhaps I did not take this sufficiently into account when conducting my classes. I assumed that a tendency to mediocrity was peculiar to the Soviet mentality.’
‘That’s not really the point. We expected…’
We. Enright and who else?