Invented Lives

by Andrea Goldsmith

  She wanted to be as happy as she once was — not that she knew anymore what would make her happy. And why did she, or anyone for that matter, believe they had a right to happiness? Did the Russian girl? Did the vast majority of people? And it occurred to her that happiness, like beach holidays and a full purse at the supermarket, might well be a luxury, the privilege of the privileged.

  She returned to her task, eventually selecting seven letters and slipping them into a manila folder; she marked the file with a red asterisk, and placed it on a shelf. Leaning back in her chair, she gazed at the liquidambar through the small window set in the roof. The leaves were still fresh and young, and brilliantly green at this time of year, and the sky beyond was chocolate-box perfect, with plump white clouds suspended in a smooth azure blue. Gradually her regrets receded, and the niggling complaints too. After a few minutes, she straightened up and reached for Mrs Payne’s cigar box. She’d had a quick look this morning while Leonard was taking a shower; now, with a whole afternoon ahead of her, she could read the letters properly.

  Sylvie had several love letters in her collection. She also read the published love letters of famous people — at this very moment a volume of Keats’ letters to Fanny Brawne was on her desk — but nothing quite compared to these letters from the Frenchman Lucien Barbier to Miss Sophie Herbert. There were fourteen letters in all: the earliest was dated 1918, the latest 1920. She read them through in chronological order and pieced together their story. Sophie and Lucien had met in Egypt, when he was stationed with his French battalion and she was an army nurse. Their love had fired up quickly in the urgency of war, and it continued once Sophie returned to Australia. The three earliest letters had been sent to a London address, and all the others to Glen Iris, a suburb not far from here.

  Lucien Barbier was a passionate, expressive man, even in a language not his own. And he was a poet, too, just like her own husband had been. What would she give for a new sonnet from Leonard now? One of Lucien’s letters, the fourth, and the first to be sent to Sophie at the Melbourne address, was nearly all poetry, a lovers’ duet in a poetic form called haiku. Not having heard of haiku before, she consulted the encyclopaedia and learned that it was an old and revered form of Japanese poetry, with a strict form of three lines comprising a total of seventeen syllables, with nature and the seasons being favoured themes. Structure, brevity and depth: it seemed like a perfect combination.

  ‘Ma chérie,’ his letter began:

  I have made a copy of our ‘Lovers’ Duet’ for you. How lovingly, how passionately we serenaded each other that night in the café. Only a month since our first meeting and see how we sing. You were so quick to dismiss your efforts, but my heart still quickens with your words. And see how we travel the haiku seasons. We are unstoppable. I have the originals with me now, the stack of drink coasters we used, one for each of our haiku. They are among my most precious possessions. And when we are together again, as surely we will be, I will give them to you and you can be the custodian for the rest of our days. But for now a copy, yours on the right and mine on the left.

  LOVERS’ DUET HAIKU

  Your eyes smoke like ice.

  Outside traffic warmly glows.

  Why do I shiver?

  Above the chill wind

  I lean into your coal gaze

  and burn in white heat.

  Autumn comes slowly,

  the turning leaves take their time.

  Why does my heart speed?

  Time’s knowing thighs lock

  just memory now and sleep.

  You said you’d not leave.

  The Spring moon grows huge

  through the dark flowering trees.

  I am missing you.

  Hear my budding voice

  it bursts and beckons to you.

  Come sink in my tune.

  My song is restless.

  The battle makes my skin itch.

  My lover is deaf.

  You must learn to hear.

  Run wildly from the battle

  I await you here.

  The brooch I gave you

  for our first Autumn birthday

  is now at your throat.

  Charred I am, you hurt.

  Golden hands crisp at the edges

  crease me till I cry.

  To see you always

  I would invoke Hell eagerly

  and call and call.

  Can words conquer all?

  The quick the cold the bitter?

  Answer me my love.

  Words often fail me

  Those fast frustrating symbols.

  My eyes speak clearer.

  Your claws burn red welts

  they speak clearly to my skin.

  Lie hot next to me.

  I lie in your arms

  and know your heartbeat so well.

  My own heart knows bliss.

  If Haiku can bend

  like a branch in a chill wind

  Why my love not you?

  I will bend if you

  take my love in all seasons.

  Hold this in your heart.

  In chill and in warmth

  Our eyes would know only sun

  My lover, my life.

  Sylvie’s heart is pounding, as if these haiku are for her. She reads again, this time aloud. She reads as Lucien, she reads as Sophie, she feels the hot tension, she feels the new love. And she marvels at such passion. She wonders what happened to Lucien and Sophie. The letters end as they begin, full of love and plans for their future together. What kept these lovers apart? And in her mind’s eye, she sees Sophie’s mother, Mrs Herbert, a pillar of the eastern suburbs, a woman who would never welcome a foreigner into her family, much less a Catholic one. She sees Mrs Herbert walking to the letterbox to collect the mail, there to find in the bundle an airmail letter addressed to her daughter. Mrs Herbert checks the sender details, she breaks open the envelope, she reads the letter, she realises what her daughter is up to, she determines to stop it. She destroys the letter and all the ones that follow.

  Poor Sophie doesn’t understand. She rereads Lucien’s old letters searching for clues. She pines for him, she plans to go to Lyons, see him, persuade him of their love. But as the months of silence stretch into a year, she decides that Lucien must have met someone else, someone close by, someone easier. When her mother arranges with her friend Mrs Payne to introduce her to Mrs Payne’s son, Sophie acquiesces. She doesn’t care what happens to her now. Mrs Payne’s son courts her; it helps ameliorate the pain. A few months later, he proposes; a few months more, they marry.

  It is a shocking betrayal by a mother, Sylvie thinks. She would never do such a thing to Andrew — and girls don’t come much more foreign than Galina. But even if Galina were from a tribe in Outer Mongolia, as Andrew’s chosen she’d be Sylvie’s too. Love is not such a common commodity that you’d toss it away.

  As it happens, she likes Galina, admires her too. How can she not? The girl has lost both parents, has fled oppression, is living in a foreign country, is speaking a foreign language, is supporting herself financially, physically and emotionally. This girl, half her own age, has experienced so much. Sometimes it seems to Sylvie as if life, the full-flavoured kind, has brushed past her on its way to juicier game.

  She is grateful for the wisdom of maturity, but it seems to be making a mockery of some of her earlier choices. The fact is, you can be immersed in a type of life, as she has been, and so captive to it that you don’t realise its limitations, how confining it is. Even worse than not questioning, you don’t even see the need to question. The years pass, and it’s not that you have regrets, it’s not even that you can say how things should have been different. Rather, it’s like that old song of Peggy Lee’s: Is that all there is?

  9

  OLD SO
VIET, NEW AUSTRALIAN

  Galina is at Finland Station. In her pocket is a ticket for a train travelling to the West. She is carrying two huge suitcases, one in each hand, and on her back is a bulky hessian bundle that rises high above her head. The weight of the luggage is enormous, and she wonders how she will make it to the train. The station hall is packed, the crush and smell are overwhelming. She pushes through the crowd, it is so hard to breathe; everyone is concerned with their own business, no one offers to help. Up ahead she sees the doors to the platform, they’re open, and she feels a blast of fresh air. The people behind press her forward. She draws closer and closer, squeezes through the doorway, and finally emerges on the platform. The cold hits her; inside her clothes the sweat freezes on her skin.

  In front of her is a long train. Passengers are walking down the platform; once they find their carriage, they disappear from view. There is no shelter and no one is loitering. Overhead the clouds are thick and low, the wind cuts her face. The platform is black with ice and filth; she’s not wearing her winter boots, so must walk with particular care. The train has many carriages, each displaying a number, and she is glad to see hers is one of the closer ones. She hefts her bags to the carriage door; there’s an impossibly high step to mount, and her spirits plummet. Suddenly a man materialises and lifts her bags onto the train; he stashes them in the space provided for luggage, then leaves before she can thank him. She sinks into her allocated seat, relief filling her like warm milk. Nothing can stop her now. Other passengers enter the carriage; no one acknowledges her, no one so much as glances at her. She checks the time: only ten minutes before the scheduled departure. A woman seated behind her says, ‘Soviet trains always run on time.’

  A man in uniform appears and asks to see her ticket. ‘You’re in the wrong carriage.’ He nods in the direction of the front of the train. ‘You should be up there. Carriage three.’

  She pleads with him. There’s not enough time. She wants to keep this seat. The officer’s not listening, he orders her to move.

  She collects her luggage and steps down from the train. There are eight minutes till departure. The carriages are long, the platform is icy, the bags are monstrous. She is running on the slippery surface. The luggage grows heavier and heavier, the train grows longer and longer, the seconds tick faster and faster. She can’t see the numbers on the carriages. She’s still running when the train starts to move. Hands reach down, they grab her, the suitcases have disappeared, she wakes up.

  It takes a moment to orient herself. Not Leningrad, but Melbourne. Not Finland Station, but her saddlery. Her breath draws quickly. Her neck and shoulders ache. The pillow has fallen to the floor. Dawn is not far off and the sky is lightening. She can hear birds and the distant rattle of a tram. She leans the pillow against the wall and props herself against it. How many borders must she cross? How many bloody borders?

  Galina was homesick. Here in her own place, with a cupboard full of food, a rack of bright clothes, a kitchen and bathroom all to herself, she was lamentably and ineluctably homesick. She supposed she had been aware of it for some time, like grit underfoot as she negotiated the roads of her new existence, but now it was demanding her full attention. She, Galina Kogan, was sickening for home.

  The mood had crystallised after her visit to the Morrow home. Sleep had turned traitor, and concentration had deserted her. And there was a throbbing in her left temple which threatened a migraine that never came, the persistent threat more wearisome than the full-blown pain. Why such homesickness should strike her now, two years after leaving Leningrad, was difficult to explain. Although the possibility occurred to her that as she’d become more settled in Australia, she may have relaxed her guard; and with reduced defences, the pangs that had long been contained romped in. She was grateful to her new country, profoundly so, but this did not lighten the loss of the old.

  Osip Mandelstam wrote of an ‘inch of blue sea’; Galina longed for an inch of Russia. She shuffled through various colours in search of the best to portray the Russia of her yearnings. Soviet Russia would never possess the freedom she associated with blueness, and whiteness was far too pure for the country she had left behind. Purple? Lilac? Yellow? Green? None was right. What word, what image could describe her abandoned, yet longed-for sweet Russia?

  And that was it. Sweet. She longed for an inch of sweet Russia. She longed for snow and ice and the first spring buds. She longed for the weak wintry light and summer’s white nights. It was only now, after a separation of two years, that she realised the degree of comfort derived from familiar surroundings, and the stresses that accrue when you are perpetually confronted with strange and new customs. It was only when you find yourself limping along that you learn, perhaps too late, what constitute the absolutely crucial elements of your existence. She longed for familiar streets and buildings, she longed for the crush of the Metro and the smell of the waterways, she longed for her friends and colleagues, and she particularly longed for her Russian language.

  And she longed not to feel any of these longings.

  Here in the West, people referred to the in-built obsolescence of household appliances. Might there be an in-built obsolescence to homesickness? And an in-built obsolescence to grief, too? Might there come a time of a kinder memory that exacted neither longing nor loss?

  Whenever she was in company, she strove to maintain the outward appearance of a textbook émigré. This involved an acrobatic combination of grateful new Australian with critically informed ex–Soviet citizen. But now it felt as if two entirely different species had set up home in the single environment of her body, and both were competing for memory, habit, allegiance, and the thrum of her rudderless heart.

  She couldn’t continue this way. She needed to make some changes.

  She had thought she would assimilate more quickly if she kept herself separate from other Russian émigrés; now she wondered if she would ever fully assimilate, and, more especially, whether she could tolerate all the losses if she did. What seemed distressingly clear was that her choices — a type of self-annihilation, it now occurred to her — had made her exile total and absolute. She needed other émigrés to connect her with home. And it would help to see Zara and Arnold more regularly; they were, after all, the closest she had to family in this country.

  It was no mystery to her why the Morrow evening had been the tipping point. Andrew and his parents existed in the fullness of their lives: past and present. They drank from crystal that had come from Sylvie’s grandmother; they ate with cutlery that had belonged to Leonard’s parents; there were photos on display of Andrew from infancy to the present day, and pictures of the more than three decades of the Morrow marriage; there were anniversary and birthday presents on show, and an array of souvenirs from their travels. And if they so desired, the Morrows could point out biographical landmarks: shops, schools, hospitals, houses, beaches, bridges, countless places that said, This is how I came to be me.

  Then there was the ease and closeness in the Morrow gathering, most evident with the husband and wife, still so loving after more than thirty years together; but it was also there in their grown-up son, and the friend of longstanding. A few hours with these people had unpicked her disturbingly fragile foreigner’s cladding.

  There were, she was discovering, so many impossible pairings in the existence of the émigré. While gathered with this family in their home, Galina was soaking up their warmth and closeness while simultaneously being aware of what she was being forced to live without. Warmth and absence; gratitude and loss; resilience and despair. So many impossible pairings. Even émigré and immigrant. To the Soviets she was the former, to the Australians the latter, but to herself she was both. Always this double life: an old Soviet and a new Australian.

  Even her work had suffered in the wake of the Morrow dinner. The current batch of sewing designs should have been finished last Friday, but following a nervy phone call to her boss, the deadline had be
en extended beyond the weekend to the end of business today. Even so, with two entire pattern packets not yet started, she worried she’d miss the new deadline. It would help if she could eat, but food had turned hostile. Her stomach ached and groaned, as if it had been invaded by a typhoon — or a Leningrad wind.

  And suddenly she was laughing, the movement stretching muscles stiffened by misery. A Leningrad wind blustering in from the Gulf of Finland, this scourge of Petersburgers had blundered into her Australian life. The absurdity of it, the absurdity of her circumstances. And from one moment to the next, the breath went out of her misery. ‘Enough,’ she said aloud to the empty room. ‘You need to grow a thicker skin.’

  Misery comes so easily, she was thinking, but being so unpleasant, only a fool or a masochist would give it the upper hand. Perhaps all dynamic lives are propelled by paradoxes and uncertainties; after all, perpetual smooth sailing is not a great builder of character.

  She crossed to her work area, switched on the lamp, and laid out her materials exactly as she would have back in Leningrad. Her Australian table was larger than her old one, but with a similar pale wooden surface; her art materials were much the same, although far easier to come by here. Of course the work was different, but she’d adapted to that. The most significant and disturbing difference was Lidiya’s absence. In the evenings, after days spent in their respective jobs, the two of them would work, Galina at her table and, an arm’s length away, Lidiya. They were well aware that their sixteen-hour days revealed a work ethic that was not typically Soviet — with the obvious exception of the black market, which operated at full throttle around the clock. The old joke You pretend to work, we pretend to pay you still elicited, if not a laugh, then a knowing groan.

  She had almost finished one of the pattern packets when the phone rang. So engrossed had she been, it took a moment for her to surface, and the caller had to repeat himself.

  It was Leonard Morrow.

  After a brief greeting, he launched into the purpose of his call. ‘I don’t know if you’re needing extra work, but if you are, I might have something for you.’