Invented Lives

by Andrea Goldsmith

  They discussed style and size, they settled on a timeline, and by the time their food arrived, the business was finished.

  The café was crowded with workers on their lunch break, and there was a steady stream of people entering for takeaway food and coffee. Despite the surrounding bustle, Leonard remained focused on her. He asked about her family, about Leningrad, about her time at university; he asked about her life in Australia and the adjustments she’d had to make. There were, as far as she could see, no ulterior motives driving his questions, so she let herself talk freely. He would glance up now and then at a loud noise or a burst of laughter, but his gaze quickly returned to her. Other male patrons would be distracted when an attractive woman walked in, would track her progress from door to counter or to a table, and might continue with their blatant staring even after she had sat down; this sort of behaviour was so common among Australian men that Galina had come to expect it. Now what drew her attention was its absence. And it was not because Leonard was old — the Australian male gaze seemed not to weaken with age — but because he was interested in her and what she was saying.

  However, after fifteen minutes of responding to his questions, she was feeling uncomfortable. Her experiences this past year in Australia had shaped her preference for asking questions rather than talking about herself — a quality she shared with Andrew, she had noticed. It was not simply that Australians rarely asked her questions, her own questions had been essential to help her navigate through the ever-changing Australian maze.

  Back in the Soviet Union, understanding people and knowing what made them tick was simple. You all lived with the same restrictions and deprivations; you all wanted the same things, feared the same things, valued the same things. But with each new person here, she needed to discover their current, that absolutely fundamental source of their being that revealed their loves and desires, their biases and beliefs, their struggles and pains, their successes and losses. Questions had been essential.

  She now asked Leonard about his family in Perth, about the business, about his sports and hobbies. Leonard answered politely, but briefly. She found him strangely opaque. He seemed to live behind his face — an attractive mask, particularly given his age, but revealing very little.

  Ever since Andrew had mentioned that his father wrote poetry, she had been intrigued to know how the businessman and the poet cohabitated. Now seemed an opportune time to find out.

  ‘Andrew has told me about your poetry,’ she began. And opting for an oblique approach, ‘Are you familiar with our great Russian poets?’

  Her question caught him by surprise, and suddenly the unreadable face slipped into focus. She saw his discomfort, his eye contact faltered, and in the long silence that followed she found herself wishing she’d not broached this subject.

  Then he returned his gaze to her.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘not the Russians, though I did see Yevtushenko perform a few years ago.’ There was a pause, so drawn out she was thinking the poetry conversation might be over, when he began again. ‘My favourite poet when I was young was Wordsworth. Because of The Prelude.’ And more quietly, as if it had just occurred to him, ‘I suppose he’s still my favourite poet, though I’ve not read him in years.’ He leaned forward, and in his normal voice asked if she knew The Prelude.

  She’d heard of this poem and intended to read it. But with so much else to read for her Australianisation program, it was not a priority. ‘It’s on my long-term reading list,’ she said.

  ‘The Prelude provided me with a vision of utopia when I was growing up in Perth,’ Leonard said, a vague smile hovering over his face.

  Like all Russians, Galina knew all about utopia. Soviet dogma thrived on utopian promises, how it was necessary to suffer now for the glorious future to come. And while you learned through bitter experience that utopia never came, that it was truly a ‘no-place’, an imaginary place, how much worse daily life would have been without its possibility dangled before you.

  She’d long wondered whether for every utopia there was a dystopia lurking in the background. She now suggested this to Leonard. ‘And perhaps not in the background; it might actually be your ordinary daily life.’

  He nodded, thoughtfully, it seemed to her, so she went ahead with a more personal question. ‘In your case, what dystopia was Wordsworth’s Prelude working against?’

  She saw him hesitate, and silently encouraged him. But he must have thought better of it. ‘We can return to utopia another time,’ he said in a businesslike manner, and gestured to the waiter for more coffee.

  ‘Now then,’ he said, once again the urbane older man, ‘Andrew tells me that Soviet citizens aren’t as enamoured of Gorbachev as we Westerners are.’

  She didn’t want to change the topic, but Leonard, the adult, the person paying for lunch, had the greater authority. But still she was annoyed. Well, if he wanted Gorbachev, she’d give him Gorbachev.

  ‘I think the West is blinded by what it regards as Gorbachev’s Westernness. If he is not so different from you, then it is easier to relate to him. And if he is not so different, then you assume that his freeing-up of the Soviet system is spelling the end of communism and a transition to democracy.’ She sounded as if she were giving a lecture. But Leonard had asked for it. ‘Because Gorbachev wears Italian suits and has an elegant wife does not mean he is not a committed communist whose primary allegiance is to a strong and enduring Soviet Union.’

  She was speaking too bluntly, and with an implied criticism of Westerners; she should stop, but it seemed she couldn’t stop. ‘Even if Gorbachev wanted to bring the Soviet system to an end — and I do not believe for a moment he does — it will take far more than one man to do that. The system has been in place for seventy years, it has shaped every aspect of life, and it has shaped desire and expectation too. Its roots go very deep. Democracy for the Soviet Union is a Western dream. It’s your dream.’

  She was about to move on to the subject of a free-market system within the Soviet context, how everyone wanted an easier life with ready access to material goods, but they had come to rely on the state to look after them, when she saw Leonard’s gaze shift to the door. A man, much the same age as herself, had entered the café. Slender and athletic, dressed in slim-fitting black jeans and a tight black T-shirt, he might have been a ballet dancer. His hair was dark and curly, his face was pale and angelic, his eyes were huge and dark. He was a truly beautiful man.

  Leonard’s gaze alighted on him momentarily and then flicked back to her. He was trying to listen to her, trying to concentrate, but his gaze was pulled back to the beautiful man waiting at the counter.

  Leonard’s gaze could not help itself.

  10

  OWLS OF THE DESERT

  Leonard rolled over and propped himself on an elbow. With his free hand he pulled the sheet over their hips.

  ‘What do you think of Andrew’s Russian girlfriend?’

  It was the day after Galina had come to the office.

  ‘I like her.’ And after a pause, ‘But it’s what Andrew thinks that matters.’

  ‘It’s not an easy question for a father to ask a son.’

  ‘Patience, Leo, patience. For as long as Andrew keeps seeing her, you can assume he’s interested.’

  Leonard lay back and closed his eyes. He had to stop worrying about Andrew. He wasn’t a child anymore — another couple of years and he’d be thirty. And it wasn’t as if he had anything really wrong with him: he wasn’t blind, he wasn’t deaf, he had no chronic illness, no degenerative disease. He was just shy. He was also achieving a name as an artist, he was financially independent, he travelled widely, he had friends and now even a girlfriend. To any impartial observer, his son was a successful young man.

  Leonard drew in a deep calming breath and exhaled heavily, as if that might dispel his over-protective-father tendencies. This past month had been hectic, the period bef
ore Christmas always was, so exhaustion was probably contributing to his concern about Andrew. How greatly he’d love to stay right where he was, but he knew he couldn’t; they were going out tonight. He propped himself back on his elbow.

  ‘You need a haircut,’ he said, brushing a stray hank of hair from the broad forehead.

  Winston’s face assumed a wry smile. ‘And you’re showing your age, Leo. The world has moved on from short back and sides.’

  Winston always made light of their age difference. It had never bothered him, and when they first got together, it hadn’t bothered Leonard either; in fact, Winston’s youth made him feel better about his own age. But as the years mounted up, he had dwelled on the issue more and more, and now at fifty-seven, with skin sagging and body shape changing, he wondered how long he’d stay attractive to thirty-three-year-old Winston.

  ‘If only you could see your expression.’ Winston was laughing. ‘You look like there’s been a death in the family.’ He reached for his arm. ‘Even at eighty, Leo, even at one hundred, you’ll always be my extremely attractive lover,’ and pulled him down to the bed again.

  A few minutes more would make no difference, Leonard decided, and settled back with Winston’s head on his shoulder. He stroked the smooth familiar skin, and felt his own body relax.

  He had occasionally wondered if he might be using the age issue to deflect from more serious issues like cheating on his wife and having sex with men. But the truth was he’d never seen himself as cheating on Sylvie. He loved her, and would always love her; what he did with Winston, or any man for that matter, had nothing to do with his marriage. As for sex with men, from the time he was a schoolboy in Perth it was something he’d always done, an aspect of who he was, and part of the man Sylvie had married; like his tendency to ingrown toenails, he had lived with it all his life and accommodated for it. Some of the men he’d met over the years had accused him of being in denial. He wasn’t. He was not a homosexual, he was not hanging out in any closet; he was a married man, a family man, who liked to have sex with men.

  It made his life a little more complicated than other men’s, he was prepared to concede that, or perhaps differently complicated — after all, plenty of men had secret indulgences; but whether complicated or not, it felt normal to him. In his younger years, he’d cruised with bravado; he’d had fun, and it certainly added a bit of sparkle to an otherwise workaday existence. Since meeting Winston, his life had been far more sedate with only the occasional opportunistic adventure. He wasn’t using age to deflect from other issues. He was fifty-seven, he was ageing, and that made a difference.

  ‘So many of my generation won’t get to your age,’ Winston now said.

  The head on his shoulder suddenly felt leaden. Winston was obsessed with AIDS, he couldn’t leave the topic alone. AIDS intruded on all their Thursdays and Saturdays. AIDS was spoiling their time together.

  ‘Can’t you forget the AIDS business for just a couple of hours?’ Leonard said. He didn’t bother to conceal his irritation.

  Winston pulled himself up and sat cross-legged on the bed. His skin was smooth and hairless, his body boyishly slender. An ephebe — the word popped into Leonard’s mind from some long-ago reading. But while Winston might look like a boy, he wasn’t sounding like one.

  ‘I hate the way you refer to “the AIDS business”, Leo. It’s a disease. And it’s killing men like us.’

  Leonard, too, sat up. He pulled on a shirt, no need to advertise his age, and tried to find a way out of the conversation he knew was about to happen. He and Winston had argued about the AIDS business dozens of times, and on each occasion he had tried to placate Winston with the facts: the men who were dying of AIDS were active homosexuals, deeply embedded within a gay sub-culture. He and Winston were not. Winston only had sex with Leonard, or at least that was what he said, although Leonard had wondered about his regular visits to the Richmond pool; but whatever he did he would do it safely. As for himself, he was married, and should he have a casual encounter these days, it was always safe.

  Winston was so terrified of AIDS he’d attended an information session run by a gay men’s health group. Leonard had refused to go. ‘I’m not like them,’ he’d said. Winston returned with information about services and support groups; he also brought news of an HIV test newly available to those at risk.

  ‘We’re all scared,’ he said now, drawing the sheet around him. He recited a litany of pain, as if Leonard had not heard it all before: diarrhoea, a raft of opportunistic infections, rare cancers, ugly skin lesions, weight loss, muscle wasting — ‘Some of these men look like inmates of Changi’ — organ failure, dementia, blindness.

  ‘It’s a punishing disease, Leo,’ he said, with an emphasis on ‘punishing’.

  Everyone was affected, but the arts community in particular had been decimated. Even the conservative press was reporting on this now, thanks to Rock Hudson and, more recently, Liberace. ‘There’ll be no ballet or theatre or opera unless a cure is found.’

  ‘And did your gay men’s health group mention when that might be?’ Leonard heard the sarcasm in his voice.

  ‘You can’t simply dismiss this, Leo.’

  Leonard thought Winston unduly pessimistic. He regularly reminded him there were many female victims of AIDS in Africa, children too, and he did so again now.

  ‘But here it’s called the gay plague,’ Winston said. ‘And I think that’s more relevant to us.’

  ‘Us’. ‘We’. He hated the way Winston blithely included them in what was happening. But rather than protest, rather than getting bogged down in the same old discussion, Leonard put an end to it by removing himself from the bed and going to the bathroom.

  Back in the bedroom after a quick shower, he rummaged around in his drawer for fresh underwear and socks. (‘This is your drawer,’ Winston had said, years ago. ‘So no excuse for untidiness.’)

  ‘Does Sylvie still believe you’re playing golf on Saturday afternoons?’

  The question surprised him. In all the years of their Saturdays together, he could not remember Winston ever asking about this. ‘Why wouldn’t she?’ Leonard was gathering up his dirty clothes and putting them into Winston’s laundry basket. ‘She thinks I shower at the clubhouse — which of course I would do, if ever I played golf.’

  He wanted to lighten the mood before he left, and jokes directed at his obsessive cleanliness usually did the trick. But not this time.

  ‘Asia doesn’t have the same AIDS problem as Australia or America,’ Winston said, as he saw Leonard to the door. ‘Asia has been spared.’

  Sylvie was standing in the living room ready to leave when Leonard walked in. She was not happy.

  ‘I asked you to leave golf early, Leonard. The Barkers invited us for drinks. Remember? Drinks at their place before we go to the restaurant. And they’re expecting us,’ she checked her watch, ‘in eight minutes.’

  Of course Sylvie had reminded him, but somehow the details had failed to register. He hated upsetting her, and especially after he’d been with Winston. It brought the two parts of his life uncomfortably close.

  ‘I’ll be quick.’ And on the way past he gave her a hug. ‘Sorry.’

  Fifteen minutes and an apologetic phone call later, they were in the car on the way to the Barkers’. Fortunately, Sylvie had a very sensible gauge of what was worth being annoyed about, so her usual sweet temper was already restored. If she’d been a man, Leonard thought, she would have made an excellent politician. He had made this observation just a couple of weeks ago, the night Galina had come to dinner, and the girl had been quick to point out that with a handful of women already in the House of Representatives — ‘Nine, to be exact’ — Sylvie could become a politician without requiring a sex change.

  This was not the only occasion that evening, nor during their lunch together, that Galina had produced information about Australia of which he was ignorant.
‘How do you know that?’ he had asked yesterday when she made a reference to the Petrov case.

  ‘Immigrants have to construct firm ground under their feet, or else they can easily drown in all the newness,’ she had said. ‘So they have to be better informed than ordinary citizens.’ The situation was further complicated by something she called ‘unskilling’. ‘For émigrés like me, the qualities that kept us afloat in our old country do not work in the new. We find ourselves unskilled.’

  Galina was a wise young woman. He really hoped that something lasting would come of her relationship with Andrew.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about Christmas,’ Sylvie said, stretching her arm along the back of his seat and letting her hand rest on his shoulder. ‘Winston as usual — you’ve asked him, I hope.’ Leonard nodded. ‘Maggie, and whoever of her children happen to be around, and,’ there was a brief pause, ‘Galina. I’d like to invite Galina.’

  ‘She’s Jewish,’ Leonard said. ‘Well, I assume she’s Jewish.’

  ‘Not so Jewish that Christmas would be a problem. I think she’d like to come.’

  ‘Have you asked Andrew?’

  ‘It was his suggestion, although I’d already thought of it.’

  Leonard welcomed a variety of guests at their Christmas table: family, friends, and, from the time he joined the business, Winston.

  ‘It’s an excellent idea,’ he said. ‘I hope we haven’t left it too late.’

  ‘I think Andrew raised it because he suspected she had nowhere to go. But that’s not the reason I’m asking her. I want her to come, I like her.’

  Leonard nodded, and they settled into a comfortable silence, and would have continued that way if not for the billboard, just a few minutes from the Barkers’ house. It was enormous, it was unmissable. It displayed a still shot from that dreadful TV advertisement about AIDS: ordinary people, women and children as well as men, huddled together while a terrifying Grim Reaper knocked them down like skittles.