Invented Lives

by Andrea Goldsmith

  She was from Leningrad, she knew about seafood. Meat might not be available, and oranges and bananas could disappear for months, but there was always fish: pickled, salted, sometimes even fresh. But a glance at the very first stall was sufficient to prove that her understanding of fish was like an infant’s understanding of the world. Behind the glass were large, shallow trays, each filled with a different type of fresh fish: white fish, pink fish, whole fish, fish portions, and not a herring to be seen. And oysters arranged in lines next to piles of mussels in their shells, and bright-pink cooked prawns — she read the label — a mountain of them spilling into the adjacent tray.

  ‘Have you ever tasted prawns?’ Andrew asked.

  She shook her head, not shifting her gaze from the display.

  Andrew checked his wallet, and then bought eight large ones to eat with the avocado.

  ‘It’s a special occasion,’ he said.

  And immediately wished he’d remained silent. It was a special occasion for him, the first outing, perhaps even a date, with a girl who’d previously been confined to his fantasies. But was it special for her? And he decided as he watched her that it was. This trip to the market had been an inspired choice.

  They wandered slowly through the fish section to the meat department. Galina would stand in front of a particular display for a long time, sometimes with a frown as if she could not quite believe what she was seeing, but mostly with a delighted smile; on a couple of occasions she actually laughed aloud.

  There was something extravagant about her, he decided, a largeness of personality, an inexhaustible enthusiasm. Galina Kogan was … oceanic. And again he wondered whether it was connected to her Russianness, or whether it was unique to her. (And could she be separated from her Russianness anyway? Not everyone was as schizoid as he was.) Whatever the reason, her joy was more abundant, her curiosity more intense, her vision more sharp, her delight more fulsome. Even when they left the market, she was still thrilling to the wonders of the place. To be so at ease in the world, he was thinking, even when the world was not your own, was something he had rarely known.

  He hefted the shopping bags over his shoulder, and they set off towards the tram stop. With no vehicle in sight, he was about to draw on his list of prepared questions when his attention was caught by a drunk reeling on the opposite pavement, shouting to the skies and gesticulating wildly. Other pedestrians were giving him a wide berth, some even crossed the road to avoid him. He was an unusual drunk, it seemed to Andrew, dressed as he was in surprisingly neat and respectable clothes. Nonetheless, he was relieved that the man was on the opposite side of the road; drunks made him nervous, their being so out of control. He feared for them, feared for himself as well.

  Galina, too, was watching the drunk man, surprised to see here a scene so commonplace back home. She was wondering whether her reaction meant she had separated from Leningrad more completely than she’d realised, or, having learned how different life was in Melbourne, anything shared by the two places now struck her as an anomaly, when the man suddenly lurched forward and fell into the gutter. The traffic was banked up at the intersection. The lights would soon change. He needed to be hauled off the street. She started forward, but Andrew yanked her back. She shook herself free, turned to him, and was thrown for a moment by his expression. ‘What are you frightened of?’ she asked, more an accusation than a question, and went again to cross the road, but a man and a woman were already helping the fellow to safety. She watched them guide him to a seat; he was so drunk he could barely walk. The couple were talking to him, then the woman wrote something down and hurried to a phone box. The man kept a hand on the drunk’s arm to keep him from falling off the seat.

  Andrew, too, was watching, although not really seeing. He felt such a fool.

  ‘You looked so scared,’ Galina said. Her voice was quiet, her face overwritten with curiosity. ‘This man can hardly stand on his feet. The only person he will hurt is himself. What is so frightening to you?’

  Andrew had no answer. The drunk was small and slight: even if sober, he could not have done any harm. Andrew shrugged. ‘I’m not much of a drinker,’ he said. ‘And I try to be in control.’

  She was staring at him, she must think him ridiculous. He should have kept silent.

  ‘That makes us alike,’ she said with a laugh. ‘We both prefer to be in control.’

  The tram arrived, and they boarded it. In the silence during the short trip, he floundered in his foolishness. He needed to be alone; lunch now was impossible; he could freeze the prawns; they could eat avocado another day. He grappled for excuses, but with his mind in disarray, nothing was making sense.

  Galina, in contrast, was trying to make sense of him. Her circumstances demanded a strength that made empathy an indulgence, yet she found herself feeling for him — not sympathy, but kindness and a certain understanding. She could see he was as discomforted in his accustomed life as she was in her new one.

  It had occurred to her that the easiest solution to the difficulties she faced as an émigré would be to find an Australian man and marry him. It would also be an out-of-character solution for one who prided herself on her independence. Nonetheless, the temptation remained: marriage would provide a passport to Australian life, and it would strip a good many of the stresses from her days.

  The marriage solution had not prompted her telephone call to Andrew, desperation alone had been responsible, but as the tram trundled past the university and sped more smoothly along the tracks beside the cemetery, the possibility surfaced. He would be an easy catch, the sort of man who would love more than he was loved in return. The thought flickered and just as quickly died. Andrew was not a man to use. And besides, he was an artist, and she respected artists.

  ‘I would like to come to your studio.’ The words were uttered without forethought. Quickly she added, ‘I would like to see your work.’

  They had disembarked and were standing in the street at the northern end of the cemetery. Andrew was still in a quandary as to how he might escape, but at the same time he was desperate to see her again. A visit to his studio was not what he would have chosen, but under the circumstances it would have to do. He managed to nod his agreement, said he would call to arrange a time, and then, pretending he had forgotten about their plan to eat together, extended his hand to say goodbye in the European fashion. She leaned towards him and kissed him in the Russian one.

  He sorted through their purchases, handed one of the bags to her, and stepped into the street. He wasn’t looking, he wasn’t seeing, and she grabbed his arm and pulled him back, just as he had done with her earlier. Although she had better cause. There was a stream of traffic, a huge cortège travelling alongside the cemetery in the slow rhythm of mourning. The cars turned from the main thoroughfare into the side street where he and Galina were standing, heading towards the northern entrance of the cemetery.

  The two of them watched the procession. Eight, nine, ten — Galina was counting silently as the cars passed — seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, and still the cars kept coming, their headlights flatly yellow in the bright Australian light. The funeral was clearly for a very important person, she was thinking, an official of some sort, perhaps a government leader. It was almost Russian in size, although not in style. For a large state funeral at home, the procession would be on foot, with musicians tolling out a plangent patriotic refrain, and there would be a huge crowd of onlookers. Ordinary Russians like a good state funeral, not simply for the time off work and an excuse to drink, but as an excellent opportunity to mourn their own squeezed lives. As for the dead official, there was usually little grief felt for him.

  Here in Melbourne, the trail of cars with their black-clad mourners was still crawling along the broad thoroughfare and turning at the corner. There was something mesmerising about the scene, like a moving frieze.

  ‘Russians,’ she said, keeping her gaze on the cortège, ‘are ex
perts at big funerals.’

  Andrew looked at her, wondering what he might reply. But there was no need for him to speak, Galina Kogan was far away. He wanted to be away too. He raised his hand in farewell and set off down the street, leaving her to her thoughts.

  Slowly, Galina set off in the other direction, and a couple of minutes later she arrived home. She dumped the bag of produce on the table, and sank onto the couch. And there she remained, stilled not by nostalgia nor by indulgence, but the sheer force of the past.

  6

  LIFE AND DEATH IN THE SOVIET UNION

  There had been rumours, but now it was official: after twenty years at the helm and twenty years of ill health, General Secretary Brezhnev was dead.

  Galina had never known life without him; a toddler when he became leader, she had just turned twenty-one. His image graced each of her classrooms, it was posted on walls and shop fronts, it headlined the TV and newspapers. But now bull-faced Brezhnev, with his grizzled eyebrows and his slack skimpy lips, was dead.

  Her mother had always been scathing about him and damning of life under his leadership. The food he promised never appeared, the goods that would have made life easier never materialised; only the military forces and the nuclear arsenal expanded, and the space program, too. But what was the use of sending men into space if people on the ground didn’t have enough to eat? These things Lidiya said in private to Galina, who had learned from her earliest years that what was said at home stayed at home. Brezhnev filled her mother with rage. The Soviet Union wasn’t poor. There was money enough to squash the Poles when they became too independent, and the Czechs when they became too Western, money enough for all manner of emergency. So there must be plenty of money for ordinary people to have better lives.

  ‘We’re told all the time that things are getting better. That steel production is up, food production is up, oil production is up, new apartments up, factories up, electricity plants up. Everything is up, yet our pathetic lives sink ever lower.

  ‘Things are getting better? Not a chance. It’s just pokazukha, window dressing.’ Lidiya shook her head in disgust. ‘There may well be people, poor deluded people, who will genuinely mourn our recently departed general secretary, but I’m not among them.’

  The funeral for Brezhnev would be held in Moscow, but the entire Soviet Union would mark his passing. Schools, offices and factories would close, and everyone would have the day off to mourn the great leader. Lidiya proposed they make the best of it with their own funeral feast.

  ‘Ours will be a farewell-and-good-riddance feast,’ she said. ‘Although I can’t imagine his replacement will be any better.’

  So it happened on Monday, 15th November, 1982, that Galina and her mother spent much of the day in front of the TV, with an array of delicious food. The dead man meant nothing to them, and the movement of the funeral was ponderously slow, yet something was compelling them to watch.

  ‘We Russians have an unhealthy tolerance for punishment,’ her mother said wryly.

  But it wasn’t some undesirable national trait that kept Galina watching, it was the event itself. From the very beginning, with the cameras gliding over Brezhnev lying in state in the cavernous hall of the House of the Unions, it was a spectacle. Dead Brezhnev was perched atop a gargantuan pyre decorated with red flowers and a thicket of greenery. A small orchestra was playing to one side, and numerous sombre officials were hanging about, looking like they needed some occupation.

  ‘All these men guarding the great leader,’ her mother said. ‘As if anyone would want to spirit him away.’

  Then came the procession itself: guns, machinery, flowers, banners, bands, medal-bearers, and masses of men in military dress, all of them bulked out in grey coats and wearing their silly peaked caps. Galina had seen men like this before, she’d seen state funerals before, but Brezhnev’s was the biggest show of all.

  Once the procession was underway, the cameras panned between the proceedings and the huge crowds lining the route.

  ‘I wonder what bribes were given to those people to make them forfeit their day off,’ Lidiya muttered.

  Galina, too, was focused on the crowd. ‘Seems that few women took up the offer.’

  ‘Women have more sense than men,’ her mother said quickly. ‘They certainly have less time.’ She helped herself to another spoonful of creamy mushrooms. ‘The women who have to cook and clean and care for children, and hold down jobs as well, they don’t mourn this man.’

  It was a perennial complaint of her mother’s that all the revolutionary promises to women had never been fulfilled. When Lidiya was a child back in the 1930s, women were already assuming the double burden of domestic labour and outside employment. ‘It was too much even for a Soviet superwoman,’ she said. ‘If a woman believed in her work, then the domestic sphere suffered; if she didn’t, by this time many women lacked the heart and the resources to make a proper home. Cooking was a drudgery. Life was a drudgery.

  ‘Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, these leaders come and go, but the hardship for Soviet women endures.’ Lidiya nodded at the TV screen. ‘No sensible women would mourn this man.’

  This was probably wishful thinking on the part of her mother — not that Galina had a better explanation for the lack of women mourners. It was certainly not the cold that kept them away: after a series of wintry days the weather had actually improved. Indeed, if you believed in God you’d think he was personally managing Brezhnev’s farewell. For this man, who throughout his life could never have too much pomp and ceremony, there would be no rain or snow on his final parade.

  They tried to slow their eating to keep pace with the funeral. This was a mighty challenge for her mother, who always gobbled her food — a lifelong hangover, she said, from the starvation years of the blokada. After the mushrooms, they started on the smoked fish and the pickled vegetables. The most plodding, most leaden version of Chopin’s funeral march was playing — enough to turn you off Chopin forever, Galina was thinking, and she went to check on the pirozhki heating in the oven. Filled with meat and not their usual potato, this was her favourite of the feast food.

  She returned to the couch with the pirozhki, and settled again in front of the TV. It was said that Andropov would be the new leader. Andropov, like all the Soviet leaders, was old, and he’d been a member of the power elite for as long as she could remember; there’d be no change if he were in charge. He was standing in the centre of a group of dignitaries observing the parade. Leading the legions of military men was the pillar-box-red coffin, borne aloft by a gun carriage, and towed by an armoured tank so small Galina wondered if it had been made specially for parades and funerals. There followed a multitude of wreaths, each arrangement so large it required two men to carry it.

  Her mother was laughing. ‘It looks like an unfixed forest, like mobile Birnam Wood in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.’

  Following the forest of wreaths, there were forty or fifty military men, each carrying a miniature red cushion on which was displayed one or more of Brezhnev’s hundreds of medals. Then came huge battalions of soldiers and navy men and other military officials, many of them marching in a slow-motion goose-step, their arms swinging similarly slowly.

  ‘I bet they’re aching all over,’ Galina said.

  Lidiya did not respond. She had stopped eating. She was staring at the TV screen. The camera had zoomed in on the medals and their bearers. Brezhnev was known to prize his medals; even when dressed in civilian clothes, he would always have one or two pinned to his lapel. Galina assumed that to be a medal-bearer at his funeral was a special honour, given only to trusted members of his inner circle. She was thinking how absurd they looked, these block-shaped, heavy-featured men, each carrying a delicate red cushion, when her mother spoke in an odd, strangled voice.

  ‘I know him,’ she was on her feet and prodding the TV screen. ‘That one there,’ she said more loudly, pointing to one of th
e medal-bearers. The camera shifted to the crowds lining the street, but still Lidiya stood, her finger on the screen. ‘I know him. I’d know him anywhere.’

  The procession continued, the voices of the commentators tolled on, the music played. Her mother stood motionless by the TV; it was hard to know whether she was distressed, or confused, or just plain surprised.

  Lidiya turned around slowly. She looked as if exiting a dream. ‘That was my brother,’ she said, marking each word with care. ‘That was Mikhail. There, on the TV, one of Brezhnev’s medal-bearers. My brother, Misha.’

  She returned to the screen. Galina could see her willing the camera to return to the medal-bearers.

  ‘Misha must be,’ Lidiya was frowning, ‘he must be sixty. That would make him twenty years older than my father was when he was taken away. Twenty years older and a good deal fatter, yet such a strong resemblance.’

  Galina had met this uncle only once, a dozen years earlier when he’d turned up at their old home at the kommunalka. He’d arrived without warning, he’d taken what he wanted, and he’d left never to return.

  ‘He’s done well for himself,’ Lidiya said softly.

  Now Galina watched, too. She had always wanted a brother or a sister, so to have a brother from whom you were estranged made no sense to her. But when Mikhail had appeared all those years ago, her mother had just wanted him gone.

  ‘Trust me,’ she had said at the time. ‘Trust me to know what’s best for you.’

  Now Lidiya poured herself some of their special Armenian brandy; she tossed it down like vodka, and immediately poured another. Galina remained silent. The funeral plodded on. The brother appeared several more times. To her, he looked like any other high Soviet official: fat, neckless, bovine, old. That he resembled dedushka Yuri, the grandfather she had never known, the father to whom Lidiya remained devoted, was hard to comprehend. What had happened all those years ago? What had happened to make her mother hate her own brother?