He followed the trail that ran through the scrub alongside the highway but stopped when he saw the missionary on a bike, approaching. The missionary slowed, put his foot down in the dirt, and they stared at each other, Darcy with the sun in his face. The missionary smiled curiously but Darcy didn’t smile back. He held his satchel to his bare chest and watched with a dry mouth as the missionary slid the bike beneath a clump of oleanders and disappeared from the verge, down into the gully.
Darcy walked up, the tyre of the bike just visible in the bushes. He felt a queasiness he didn’t understand as he held a branch for balance, picked his way down through Scotch broom and bees, the sound of the cars on the highway behind him. He was drawn to the edge of a clearing sheltered by flowering wattles. The missionary, waiting, dappled in both light and shade, one hand in the pocket of his khaki pants. A hand gently moving, and Darcy watched it.
You’re a beautiful child of God, the missionary said to him softly, coming nearer. The sweat on the missionary’s sunburnt neck trickling down into his open collar. No one had ever called Darcy beautiful; they’d just teased him in mean ways about being pretty. Darcy looked up as he felt the missionary’s fingers run over his chin then quietly slip the strap of the satchel from his narrow uncovered shoulders, over his head. Then Darcy looked down as the missionary gently untied the shirt from his waist, spread it out carefully on the ground.
You could take your pants off, the missionary said, if you wanted.
Darcy didn’t say anything but the missionary knelt and was unzipping Darcy’s fly and at first Darcy moved away but the missionary extended his arms. I will take care of you, he said, and Darcy believed him, found himself slipping from his school shoes without untying the laces, pulling them off by the heels the way he did before bed. He felt self-conscious now, out here in his underpants, but the missionary laid Darcy’s trousers out with his shirt, Darcy’s shape on the grass. It will be comfortable, he said.
As Darcy lay down he felt rigid, like a marionette, laying his arms along the spread-out sleeves. He looked up through the quivering wattles, their leaves like waving caterpillars. Then the trees were half hidden with the weight of the missionary, his stubble against Darcy’s chin, his soft breath kissing about his neck and ears, and Darcy heard the missionary’s whispers and thought they could be prayers. When I drink from your river, oh Lord… and the hum of cars seemed far away, Darcy’s mother on the chaise and his father in town, but none of that mattered with the missionary’s breath and the words that he swallowed, the Rose of Sharon in the missionary’s palm gently covering Darcy’s lips. Darcy stared up through a smothering panic, past the missionary’s sorrow-filled eyes, through the glinting caterpillar leaves, his own body shuddering, and for a moment he felt connected to the sky.
Bolshoi Theatre
Monday night
The Bolshoi looked spectacular at night, the columns lit yellow against the inky winter sky, a statue shadowed above the portico, a chariot. That’s Apollo, said Fin as they mounted shallow steps in a wind that licked the night, Fin in her woven grey-rabbit coat. They lined up in the colonnaded atrium among dour locals to collect their tickets, seats to Chekhov arranged through the embassy. This was more how Darcy had imagined his arrival.
It’s The Lady with the Dog, said Fin, handing Darcy the tickets then shedding her coat. She gathered her wrap around her shoulders, shiny like butterfly wings, and the air around them hinted at her tuberose scent. Do you know it? she asked. It’s from a short story.
Darcy remembered it vaguely from European Lit, but he’d not finished it. He’d also started Anna on the Neck but never worked out if it was the neck of a river or Anna’s own neck.
Communists love ballet, Fin said as they walked amid the din and expectation, the echo of heels on the grey and white marble tiles. She pulled at her elbow-length gloves and Darcy carried her coat. It must have taken forty rabbits. Her clothes were from opportunity shops but she wore them as if they were haute couture. She had on a quilted velvet dress, high-heeled boots with a zip up the front. Her fresh-dyed hair was sienna and slick, plastered to her temples in little swoops, her lips red against her striking porcelain face.
Darcy wore a fifties black tuxedo that fit like a glove; secondhand in Prague for thirty Australian dollars. He liked the narrow pants legs and the polyester was so flammable it was warm. You look like a lipstick lesbian, said Fin, without the lipstick. But Darcy didn’t mind feeling slightly androgynous. The local evening wear seemed heinous to him by comparison, although there was one glamorous woman, statuesque in a fitted indigo suit, something exclusive. That’s Chernenko’s daughter, I think, said Fin, as if a star had been spotted. Her father might be the next General Secretary.
Darcy remembered Chernenko from newspaper photos, fullfaced and glaucous; the woman looked like a different species. Most of the other Russian women wore dark scarves, the men clasping ushankas as if afraid they’d be stolen from the coat check, treating their hats like a Melbourne woman might treat a fur.
Darcy followed Fin into the auditorium, past elderly ushers who didn’t seem interested. They could have sat anywhere. Five balconies ranged up above the orchestra level like a pile of shining ashtrays. It’s very red and gold, said Darcy.
Ro-co-co, said Fin, three separate words. And it felt almost as if they were back to their old selves, now they were out in public. Most patrons sat up in the higher levels or way back in the orchestra cheap seats. The elegant woman was already up in a box with a group of grey-suited men. Apparatchiks, said Fin. She pointed at the chandelier, told Darcy it was famous, two tonnes of crystal floating above them.
Why are we the only ones under it? he asked. He imagined carnage: a crystal indoor Hindenburg, their bodies impaled on the red velvet seats. Fin read a program that looked made from paper bags. I wish they had one in English, said Darcy. She’d already lost interest in translating anything. He remembered plagiarising a paper of criticism on Chekhov: the language is colourless, devoid of verve or understanding. The Hungarian tutor thought his response original and radical. Darcy missed his time with Fin at uni, even though they studied different things and were in different years. They’d meet for lunch in the Small Caf and talk politics, smoke among the young bisexual communists, artists and stoners, the radical Mauritian he had a crush on—they all thought Darcy and Fin might be lovers. They acted like they were, didn’t tell their real story, hung out in a kind of sly cahoots, studying together in the library, making their versions of art. Darcy felt safer with her then. He looked up at the gilded Bolshoi ceiling, the way the light brushed over it; this wasn’t Monash. Instruments squawked in the pit, flutes and violins being tuned. Is Anna Pavlova dancing? he asked.
She died in 1931, said Fin. It’s Lyudmila Semenyaka. Fin seemed to think that was good. Next Thursday there’s a tribute to the classical heritage of the peoples of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, she said. Marvellous.
Darcy wondered if Bolshoi and Bolshevik were related but he didn’t ask. He knew there were patterns and connections he couldn’t yet see; he wished he’d read more Chekhov, and found out what Fin was really up to before he got on a plane.
The bell jangled loudly and the lights went down. It’s about a man who searches only for passion but accidentally finds love, Fin whispered. She gave Darcy a peck on the cheek but he knew it was more for the Bolshoi than him, the place so grand and deteriorated, the crowd so frowzy. Darcy felt oddly off-kilter.