Invented Lives

by Andrea Goldsmith

  At last they were going to the mountains. It had been Andrew’s idea they go in summer. Galina had laughed. ‘An alpine resort without snow. What would we do?’

  He suggested hiking, picnics, reading, staring into the wild blue yonder, but it was his mention of a temperature a good ten degrees cooler than in the city that convinced her. She had adapted to Australian English, she’d adapted to the food, she’d even adapted to the mysteries of private enterprise, but she doubted she would ever adapt to the Australian heat.

  Leonard had lent them his car for the trip, convinced that Andrew’s ancient Morris would make neither the distance nor the climb. Andrew had protested, but Galina was quietly pleased. Leonard’s car was large and comfortable, with air conditioning and a cassette player. Andrew’s car sounded like a lawn mower, and its beige-and-green Bakelite radio functioned better as an aesthetic object than a music machine. Andrew had made a selection of cassettes, a variety of rock and folk as well as a range of classical music that was weighted — she guessed with considerable care — to the Russians: Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, Stravinsky, Rimsky-Korsakov. There was no denying that Andrew was a thoughtful man, and easy company too. Like the brother she’d always wished for. But Andrew didn’t want to be her brother, she’d known this for quite a while. Sometime and, to be fair, sooner rather than later, she’d have to tell him there was no romance in the way she felt about him. But when to speak? And how? She didn’t want to spoil what they already had.

  The traffic was relatively light and they reached the outer suburbs quickly. A short time later, they entered the rural township of Healesville.

  ‘We should stop for morning tea,’ Andrew said, as he drove slowly up the main street.

  Galina was laughing. ‘But we are less than an hour into our holiday.’

  ‘Holidays require holiday food.’ Andrew pulled over and parked. ‘And that means cakes from a country bakery, whether you’re hungry or not.’

  They shared a sticky coffee scroll with lashings of icing and swirls of cinnamon, washed down with a fizzy passionfruit drink. She’d never known of passionfruit until she came here, but they now counted among her favourites. She watched as he rolled a cigarette. A rollie and a ciggie: two more Australian words to add to her list, although given the widespread campaign against smoking here, probably not to her new book.

  It was not that she didn’t find Andrew attractive, but what she had been needing from him since that day she picked up the telephone and called him, was the reliability of a friend. If there had ever been the possibility of anything romantic between them, the moment had long ago passed.

  He finished his cigarette, and they took what he described as a mandatory stroll through the main street, up one side and down the other. There were several handicraft shops selling homespun wool and bulbous pottery, creams and soaps made of eucalyptus oil and lanolin. After three such shops all with similar wares, Galina suggested they stick to the street. She was drawn to the quaint exteriors of the buildings and the village atmosphere of the place. She could imagine herself living here; then realism kicked in: she’d be lucky to last a week before dashing back to the city.

  Andrew stopped to buy film, and they returned to the car. As he started the engine, he turned to her with a smile. ‘You can now cross Healesville off your “Getting to know Australia” list.’

  Once they were on the road again, Galina selected a tape of Rostropovich playing cello classics. The music filled the car, that majestic mellowness of the cello. Her mother had loved the cello, as had her mother before her. Perhaps everyone loves the cello: full-bodied, strong, secure, lyrical, but always with underlying gravitas — rather like home, she thought, and friendship, too. She looked across at Andrew. He was sitting erect, as he always did when driving, looking straight ahead at the road. But he must have felt her gaze, because he smiled, and then to her surprise he reached out and squeezed her hand. A moment later both his hands were back on the steering wheel. He was such an odd, endearing mix of a man.

  If the cello were the metaphorical musical instrument for home and friendship, what, she wondered, would be the instrument for lovers? And it came to her immediately: electric guitar. Exciting, energetic, loud, blood-boiling, and definitely not restful. This cello was restful, this car was restful, and again she looked across at Andrew, this man was restful.

  The last few months had been exhausting: Mikhail’s sudden appearance and her collapse — the most accurate way, it now seemed to her, of describing what had happened; then her picture book launched, and with Mikhail’s departure, the restoration of the saddlery as her home. It had been a huge task and a heavy one, and she’d been grateful for Andrew’s help. It had been his suggestion they put the unwanted furniture on the nature strip. Someone will take it, he said. And he was right. They put the stuff out one evening, and by morning all of it was gone. She found it disturbing that her rejects could be useful to others; she had met no poor people here, but clearly they existed. It was Andrew who reminded her that she had furnished the saddlery with second-hand items, and although she had paid for her various pieces, they were still other people’s cast-offs.

  Then it was Christmas, her second with the Morrows, but far more enjoyable than last year’s. It was not just the festival itself that had been strange that first time; there were the Morrows, whom she had met only once before, and even the food had been problematic. They had all applauded the roasted turkey, but to her palate it was bland. She had thought the seafood would be to her taste, but, with the exception of some smoked salmon, it was not her type of seafood at all; as for the crayfish they all raved about, it was a tasteless, rubbery, sea-smelling stuff that, she suspected, she would never grow to like. For her second Morrow Christmas, she had contributed to the feast with her own seafood platter of sprats, smoked salmon, a variety of herrings, and pickled vegetables. And there were the new guests this year, newer strangers than she was: a business acquaintance of Leonard’s who, together with his wife, was visiting from Japan, and Mikhail.

  Mikhail had chosen to come with her to the Morrows rather than accept Alexei’s invitation to his family Christmas. She had worried how he would cope, and had kept a watchful eye on him. But despite the language barrier he seemed to manage; more than that, he actually seemed to enjoy himself. In the early evening when the party broke up, she and Andrew had driven him back to Alexei’s house. He thanked Andrew, not simply for the lift but for the whole day. And he thanked her. ‘I had very good time,’ he said. And wished her a happy new year in the Russian custom.

  There had been so many changes these past few months, but then change seemed to be endemic to Australian life. Big changes like where you lived and worked, and small changes like when her usual brand of honey disappeared off the supermarket shelves due to a company takeover, and she was forced to choose from seven other varieties. And the time her sandals went missing, and when she returned to the shop to replace them, they were no longer available, but a dozen other styles were.

  Such small changes, but they could trip her up, she who had negotiated one of the largest changes imaginable. She doubted she would now have the courage to cross the world alone. Although was it courage? At the time, she’d had no idea what was ahead of her. Her mother’s death had deprived her of the only future she knew, so in a sense she was already plunged into the unknown before she left Leningrad. Courage surely requires an understanding of the difficulties ahead, but in those dark days she had acted with little thought and even less knowledge.

  The cello tape had finished, and she swapped it for ABBA. ABBA was familiar, ABBA was big in Russia. On their concert tour of the Soviet Union it was rumoured that, due to restrictions on the rouble, they had to be paid in oil commodities. She laughed quietly to herself: there was always a solution in Soviet Russia.

  A few hours later, Andrew parked outside a small apartment building in the mountain town of Hotham. The flat they had rented was designed f
or winter, with a rack for skis and an area just inside the front door for wet clothes and boots. The windows were double-glazed and lacked wire screens, which, from the short distance from car to flat, Galina decided were desperately needed. The air was thick with flies.

  Andrew took the smaller of the two bedrooms and immediately unpacked. He returned to the living room with two broad-brimmed bush hats, each with a curtain of netting. ‘To keep the flies off your face. Out of your nose and mouth too.’ He was smiling. ‘Once before I stayed here in summer. The weather was perfect, the walking was sublime, and the flies were unbearable.’

  It had been a long day and they were both tired. Andrew made a dinner of toasted cheese sandwiches, after which they walked around the town. The place appeared deserted. They followed the roadway to the end of town, then retraced their steps and continued past the flat in the other direction. Up ahead, a hotel was lit up, and voices and laughter reached them through the clear still air. As they drew closer, they saw that a broad balcony was filled with people standing around drinking and talking.

  ‘Obviously the place to be,’ Andrew said.

  They decided to do as the locals were doing. They bought drinks, carried them to the edge of the balcony, and stood leaning against the railing, gazing out at the mountains. As Galina sipped her drink she imagined these slopes under snow. She missed snow, she missed the cold.

  By the time they had finished their drinks the sun had set, and they made their way back to the apartment in the dark. While Galina prepared for bed, Andrew sat on the front steps smoking, a deliberate move of his, she decided, to save them any embarrassment. She called out goodnight and shut her door. He lingered for a while before taking himself off to his room, where he lay himself down and immediately fell asleep.

  The following morning, Galina woke at five o’clock. Unusually for her, she stayed in bed, gazing through the window at the rectangle of mauve sky and listening to the early-morning sounds of the mountains. No cars and trams, no helicopters monitoring the traffic; instead, she heard the carolling of magpies and other birdsong, and the soughing of wind in the trees. It was sublime, it was tranquil. She felt her mind slowing — not turning off, she felt remarkably alert, but slipping into a gentle pace which allowed for clear and lucid thought.

  Once, in what now seemed to be another life, she had been in the countryside outside Leningrad in January, on an expedition with her Pioneer group. It was a cold day, minus ten or less, and during the early afternoon she had gone for a walk by herself. Fresh snow lay all about: smooth mounds shaped by thick undergrowth, slender pipes traversing the bare branches, and large dollops weighing down the foliage of the conifers. The air was very still. There was that special light of winter — no sun, a white sky, no shadows, and no depth to the landscape. She had walked along a pathway that someone had recently cleared; it was like moving through a black-and-white photo that had been rinsed in blue. As she walked, she was aware of a peace she’d never experienced before. And now on the other side of the world, another January, another countryside, and in summer not winter, she recognised that same feeling. Fully alive and steeped in bliss.

  At half past five she roused herself and pulled on some clothes, keen to have her coffee in the peace and quiet before Andrew entered the day. This was nothing specific to Andrew: it had always been her preference to start the day in solitude with a book and coffee.

  She walked into the kitchen. The kettle was warm. Surely Andrew had not already emerged? She checked the water level, flipped the switch, and crossed to the window. Outside, the air was filled with a soft pink-grey light — the colour of a galah’s plumage, it occurred to her. Perched on a low brick fence about fifty metres from the building, gazing out over one of the ski slopes, was Andrew. He was inhabiting the early morning, the huge awakening sky, the silent slopes. He had the mountains to himself.

  She made her coffee and brought it back to the window. She watched him. He did not move, neither did she. How very connected to him she felt, the two of them awake when no one else was, a time when the day ahead was a blank page. She sat by the window, he sat on the low fence, the sun rose, the sky brightened, and only when he turned to come inside did she, too, move. She remained in her bedroom reading until seven o’clock, when she emerged as if for the first time.

  They walked throughout the day. The sun shone, but not too hot, and the hats protected them from the flies. They followed tracks over grassy slopes peppered with wild flowers; they ate their picnic lunch in a wooded glen, and when they’d finished they walked some more. It was a day marked by contentment, and she decided not to spoil it by raising the issue of their relationship.

  On the second morning, Galina woke at quarter to five and rose immediately. She pulled on clothes in the dark and tiptoed in her socks to the kitchen. The kettle was cold. She made herself coffee, slipped on her shoes, and took herself outside to the low fence where Andrew had sat yesterday. She positioned herself in the exact same spot, staring out at the mountains, sipping her coffee. She was willing him to watch her, as she had watched him. She couldn’t explain it, was not interested in explaining it, just wanted him to be there by the window, watching. And he was, she knew he was. She felt his gaze on her back, felt the kindest touch in the early-morning stillness.

  This presence, Andrew’s presence, absorbed a strange seepage from her Russian past as lines of poetry filtered through her mind. Mandelstam’s I have studied the science of departures, Akhmatova’s The paths to the past have long been closed, and Mayakovsky, from a poem she loved as a girl, Surely, if the stars are lit there’s somebody who longs for them. She heard this relay of Russian as she sat on a low fence, with a summery Australian mountain in front of her and the gaze of an Australian man behind. And when she returned to the flat, when she found him standing next to the window, when he turned to her and she saw the smile on his face, when all this happened, her resolve to speak to him again collapsed.

  They read through the morning, then after lunch they went for a walk. An hour later, on a path that twisted around one of the peaks, they arrived at an impasse, a rock fall. Andrew sat her down on a boulder while he went to investigate. The minutes passed. She started to worry. Where was he? What had happened to him? She was on her feet, she was about to call, and at that moment he appeared from around the bend.

  ‘I think we can make it,’ he said.

  He took her arm and guided her over the precarious ground. His touch was firm and secure. And so it remained, even when the rocks gave way to grass, and the worst of the journey was over.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Special thanks to Jenny Goldsmith, Celia Dann, Dennis Altman, Anna Dedusenko, Tamara Havloujian, Sarah Myles, Jean Porter and Jenny Stephens; also to Robert Dessaix and Maria Tumarkin for clarification of Russian language, and to Anne Mitchell and Meredith Temple-Smith for information on mandatory reporting of sexually transmitted diseases. I am grateful to Ian Lodewyckx, who generously shared his experiences of Soviet Russia, and also to Lara Gelbak, who, unstinting in her help and always creative in her approach, provided a wealth of information about Soviet life.

  I am especially indebted to Constantine Danilevsky, translator, editor and friend, who gave of his time and expertise throughout the writing of the novel. And to Mark Rubbo: thank you for your friendship and support over many years.

  Lastly, special thanks to my agent, Jane Novak, for her expertise and warm attentiveness, and to Henry Rosenbloom, quintessential publisher for these changing times.

 

 

 
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