“Then. Is better I get off island quick. How I will find you in Honolulu?”
Before she could answer, he saw two Marines approaching from the distance. He suddenly wheeled and headed off.
Ana hesitated, then lifted her arm, calling, “Wait.”
He was already a scribble on the landscape.
NIKOLAO
Nikolai
SOMETIMES WHEN SHE FINISHED HER ROUNDS ON THE WARDS, ANA wandered down to the ER, lending a hand when they needed backup. Since Makali‘i’s death she had not moved forward with her plans to do a residency in OB-GYN. She had not moved in any direction, grief and loneliness bonding like crystals, creating an overwhelming sense of stasis.
At night, she walked Honolulu’s quiet streets, thinking how loneliness was so much a part of human existence it seemed to have a life of its own, an organism that reproduced. She wondered if that’s why she had chosen medicine, to remind herself that others were lonely, too, and that they suffered. To see someone suffering when she was not filled her with relief. All she had to do was heal them.
One day her surgeon shook Ana’s hand. She had survived her fifth postsurgery year still cancer-free. She had a quiet drink alone, went home to an empty apartment, and stared at what looked like a giant teardrop hanging from her wall. Since surgery, her left arm had grown slightly stiff, so a cousin who taught boxing at the Nu‘uanu Y had brought her a speed bag, a little hanging punching bag, and gloves.
Screwing a platform to her wall from which the speed bag hung, he had wrapped her hands in bandages, showing her where to land her fist.
“But don’t go at it with anger. Remember when I was a kid, the punch bag hanging from the mango tree? Mango season, I’m punching, all the mangoes falling down. So. When you come at the bag, think ‘mango time.’ ”
At first she was clumsy and impatient, striking the bag angrily as if it were a human face. But once she mastered the punching rhythm, Ana began to relax. It began to be almost fun. Then she went at it with conviction, her upper-body muscles growing taut and strong. The muscles under her scars began to feel resilient, no longer tight and tender. The speed bag woke her body up, made her want to swim again.
Out in the waters of Ala Moana Beach she lazily stroked, feeling the sea melt into her. In the distance, Lē‘ahi, Diamond Head, that glowing old cadaver. And miles down the coast to her right, the rugged Wai‘anae mountain range, reminding her where she belonged. In the parfait colors of a going sun, she floated on her back, eyeing skyscrapers behind her, glass monoliths reflecting kaleidoscopic blue of sea. This time of day the city seemed soft and giving, and Ana realized she had come to love Honolulu. It let her breathe. It left her alone.
On a humid evening as she walked home from the beach, it began to rain a warm, blue evening rain, so soothing she broke into a half trot, then a jog. She jogged past her building and kept running, remembering how as a kid she loved to run in lokuloku rains. Moving along the Ala Wai Canal, Ana thought how parts of Honolulu had long ago entered her and were now secretly owned by her.
The invisible city—the sexual one, its geography—was forever fixed in her memory by early acts of love. The Honolulu Zoo, where as a student she had made love nearby in a young man’s car while primates chattered in their cages. Makiki Street, where in a borrowed apartment that same young man had ultimately scorned her. Queen’s Hospital, where in the intern’s lounge, she had made love to Will Chong. Even Atkinson Drive, down which they walked to reach the sea where Will had said he loved her, that he would trust her with his life.
Where were those young men now? Did they remember her? They had each been ambitious and focused, and would be successful, not prone to sentiment. Her memory would not be essential to their lives. Panting and breathless, she jogged back to her building, and stood looking up at her windows as if waiting for a signal, some code to tell her how to live, how to shoulder the burden of time.
SHE WAS ON THE WARDS WHEN SHE HEARD THEM PAGING FROM ER. A man with nonspecific pains was asking for her.
When she pulled back the curtain in the exam room, he smiled and raised his hand. “Hello, Doctor.”
At first she did not remember him, then she recognized the big, scarred hands. “Oh. The campfire, after ‘Iniki. You’re … Nikolai.”
“Da.” He half sat up, then lay back down.
“What seems to be the problem? Are you in pain?”
He touched his heart. “Only here. You broke it that day. What you will do to me this time?”
She put her stethoscope to his chest, then thoughtfully sat him up and pressed it to his back.
“You’ve got congestion in your lungs. Have you had flu? An allergic reaction?”
He shook his head. “Only frustration in not finding you.”
Ana called in a nurse. “Let’s get his vitals and a Chem-24.”
He tried to pull away. “Not necessary, Doctor. I am here for you.”
“Look. We’re very busy here. I don’t have time for jokes.”
As the nurse drew blood, he winced. “I am not here for jokes. Your cousin, Lopaka, told me where to find you.”
Ana paused, then pressed the stethoscope to his back again. “How do you know him?”
“We have things in common … environmental things …”
“Breathe in deeply.” She listened, then frowned. “Sounds like you’ve got low-grade pneumonia. I’m sending you for X-rays.”
She leaned close, staring at a yellowish cast to the whites of his eyes that often meant anemia. He waited till the nurse had left, then took Ana’s gloved hand and spoke in careful English.
“I will save you time. Blood counts low. Well … normal-low. It is probably going to get worse. Not enough red cells to be carrying sufficient oxygen to vital organs. Not enough white cells to be knocking out infections. Eventually, immune system will be going …”
She felt her fingers sweating in the glove.
“I should not have looked for you. Should not be remembering you. Probably I am dying.”
She withdrew her hand and tried to joke. “You can’t die. We just met.”
She walked him to the X-ray unit and, when her shift was over, met him in the hospital coffee shop. A low-dose steroid shot had temporarily stopped his wheezing and his face seemed more relaxed. A rather handsome face, wearied by lines. He looked fifty but she suspected he was younger.
He told her how he had looked for her ever since ‘Iniki, but all he knew was her first name. Then, out on the Wai‘anae Coast, he had met Lopaka and mentioned this doctor, Ana, he was searching for.
“Of course, nothing is coincidence. All is ordained, no?”
Coming on the bus to find her, he had experienced wheezing and shortness of breath. “And look, already you have saved me.”
Ana sat back, studying him. “You never told me what you were doing on Kaua‘i. You said you were shooting footage …”
He carefully lowered his throaty bass voice. “Yes. Was shooting Army Missile Test Range at Barking Sands. Was caught by military police climbing over security fence. Soldiers took video camera. They shove Colt .45 in here.” He pointed his finger like a gun into his mouth.
“Were taking me for interrogation when ‘Iniki hit. This hurricane saved my life. Was still running from them when I see your campfire.”
“So … no footage.”
“None. But I am working with Lopaka now. Will be other opportunities. I am making documentary, Ana. Very extensive. Including many places.”
“That’s impressive. But how long have you had this problem with your blood count? Do you know what caused it?”
His voice turned soft, almost elegiac. “How long? Since a child in Russia. Swimming in coal-black rivers. Breathing coal-black dust. Even sheep in fields are black. Other causes? You would like a list? Contaminated soil. Leaking waste. They are calling it ‘toxic exposure.’ Old-fashioned word is poison.”
“We have it here, too. On a smaller scale.”
“Da. This is why I am going to y
our Wai‘anae Coast. Why I go to Kaua‘i. Is all across Pacific. Everywhere, and never-ending.”
She asked if this documentary work was dangerous and he shrugged. When she asked if he made a living at it, he shrugged again.
“So-so. Swedish TV is airing my tapes on coal pollution in Russia, because is same thing now in Europe. German TV is airing tapes on acid rain poisoning forests, rivers, streams.”
Only, no one seemed eager to air his tapes on nuclear pollution, or radiation.
“And why? Because all major countries are being guilty of such things.”
“What about networks in the U.S.?” Ana asked.
He laughed. “Americans. They are wanting fairy tales. They are so dear … so innocent. What will it take, I wonder?”
He told her he had shot footage in French Polynesia. Micronesia. Wherever there were nuclear test sites. He had even interviewed Australian Aborigines, who had been exposed when the British tested H-bombs in Australia in the 1950s and ’60s.
“Still sick people there, and no one tells. No one cares.”
Unconsciously, Ana touched her chest. “We care. It’s just, we have so few resources with which to fight back.”
Nikolai leaned forward now, rubbing his hands. “This why I plan to make definitive film on death of modern human morals. Am shooting five years now. In my country you cannot imagine the horrors …”
She sat back and gazed at him thoughtfully. “You say you’re recording the ‘death of human morals.’ But … these people in your films are victims. Just aiming a camera at them is immoral. Isn’t it?”
He smiled. And then he frowned. “… Yes. Maybe I too am guilty of exploitation. But, world has to be knowing, has to be informed. I want to be showing what was done to us. What Russia did to own people in race to be world leader. How is happening all over world. I want people looking at these victims, so they are understanding they are seeing their future.” Warming to his subject, his face grew flushed.
Ana gave him a moment to compose himself before she asked, “Tell me, how do you get in and out of Russia to make these films?”
He patiently explained how, since the Communist collapse, Russia was now one big black market. Anyone could purchase passports, exit visas.
“Also, I have sympathetic ‘official’ friends who recommended me for grant, which I received for one year here at East-West Center.”
The Center was part of the University of Hawai‘i, an international think tank that attracted foreign scholars.
“This grant is to give series of lectures and finish ‘book I am writing’ on Rise and Fall of Cinema Engagé, political filmmaking in Europe in 1930s.”
“Are you really writing such a book?”
“Impossible! Who would read such outmoded thing. This grant is subterfuge. Everything is subterfuge.”
“Well, then … what happens when your year is up?”
“I go back to Russia, then leave again. Everyone is doing this. Though one day they will be cracking down when we get rid of that drunk, Yeltsin, and get decent president. Who, of course, they will then assassinate.”
She noticed he kept switching from “we” to “they,” perhaps the love/hate, pride/shame dilemma of being Russian.
“My dream? To one day be showing my films in Russia. Ninety-nine percent of Russians don’t know what was done to us. TV is controlling all news. Is absolute power now, like Peter the Great. One television station reaching eleven time zones. One hundred million voters.”
Ana began to feel overwhelmed by this man’s “foreignness,” his intensity.
“Is no more Russia now. Today, my country like big drag queen. All is ‘let’s pretend.’ ”
He explained how a colonel in the army, a man in charge of massive weapons, made a salary of only fifty dollars each month.
“He can destroy world, but cannot feed his family! Military officers begging in streets, but bureaucrats eat steaks. Russia now so corrupt, even gangsters begging for law and order. This the reason why we leave.”
At the start of their conversation, she had been somewhat fascinated by how luxuriantly he rolled his r’s, and how he lengthened his vowels so they seemed to quiver as if suspended from the end of an eye dropper. But when he became excited he seemed to mix his tenses and drop his articles, “a” and “the,” so that his English became a caricature of a Russian speaking English.
Ana played with her food and studied his big, scarred hands, drawn in by his eyes, dark and beautiful, and wide, full lips, behind which lurked big crooked teeth that, miraculously, were not capped in gold or silver. She asked if he knew any of the recent Russian émigrés to Honolulu, most of whom lived in Iliwei over near the canneries.
“Da. Good people, but … not interested in my projects. They are trying to forget. To live barefoot in Paradise. Gospodi! What a joke.”
“Why a joke?”
“Russians cannot assimilate. Unless you are Russian aristocrat, then is not really Russian. You can always spot us. Still blowing our noses in our hands. Forgetting how to button our flies. Ten years in new country, still dressing like refugees.”
While they talked he had finished his sandwich, then stabbed each crumb left on the plate and licked them off his fingers. He had squeezed his tea bag almost to a pulp, stirred his tea and gulped it in one swallow. Then, during conversation, he put the tea bag to his lips and elaborately and audibly sucked it dry. She wondered if the tea bag thing were some sort of ritual.
“Look, Ana. While we talk, I have blown my nose in my napkin, then tore my napkin to shreds from sheer emotion. Next, I will ask if you want that half of your sandwich. Then I will finish it, and want to lick your plate.”
She laughed and gave him the rest of her sandwich. “Tell me, is your family still in Russia?”
He inclined his head. “Dead father was highly decorated soldier, defending Leningrad during German siege. Mother was famous actress, beautiful. Now lives in Moscow, in the past … No wife. No children. You?”
She shook her head. “Only my work.”
Nikolai clapped his hands. “So! We can begin.”
She laughed again, shook his hand, and went back on duty. She was not attracted to him then, a wanderer, a dreamer, not a man to take seriously. Or perhaps she was attracted, because he seemed guileless, flirting like a boy, leaving himself open to hurt, or insult. And perhaps because he was slightly crude, yet somehow elegant, his answers to her questions extremely thoughtful, as if each question were, for him, a gift.
Two days later they went over his X-rays and blood tests, the results of which necessitated further tests. By then she had called Lopaka, asking about this Nikolai Volenko. Her cousin had known him only two months but said he was a filmmaker of integrity. He had rented a room near Chinatown, and one day Ana met him there for lunch.
“Lopaka is very respectful of your work. I’d like to see one of your films.”
He hung his head modestly. “Thank you, Ana. For such interest. In two days I leave to shoot more footage in Moruroa, Tahiti, where France continues testing bombs. When I return, two weeks, I show you film.”
SHE ASSUMED SHE WOULD NEVER SEE HIM AGAIN. BUT ONE NIGHT when Ana glanced outside, he was standing in the rain with a bouquet of flowers, looking up at her window. She met him at the door with a towel.
“How wonderful to watch,” he said. “So happy at your punching bag, content to be alone. I did not want disturb you.”
He was soaked from head to toe; his cheap shoes squeaked across her floor. She made him shower while she hung his clothes, and when he came out wrapped in her oversized robe, perhaps for the first time Ana saw him clearly. The body of a laborer, not muscular, but naturally wiry and strong. As he padded round the room she noticed again his scarred legs and feet, even scars on the back of his neck.
His hair was like black paint slicked against his head, only a few strands of gray. His big straight nose seemed to balance his full lips. She saw his skin was large-pored and rough, the skin of
someone who had lived out in the weather. He struck her as not handsome, but rather someone who had once been handsome. Now he just looked weary.
She heated stew and poured them wine. He started to tell her about his trip, then fell upon the food, ravenous. He ate so fast, Ana wondered if he understood food; he seemed to regard it merely as fuel. Over lunch in Chinatown, she had noticed that when he finished eating he took his pulse. Now he took his pulse again, feeling his heartbeat in his wrist, its accelerated pounding. She had seen this before, the habit of people who had known extreme hunger.
The rains had stopped and Nikolai hung his head out the window, inhaling deeply. “Such air! So pure it hurts.”
He helped her with the dishes, explaining his initial fear of Honolulu. “At first, air here was terrifying. So invisible, so subtle and subversive. From Russia, I only trust air I could see. And water. Here, it tastes like water. Very suspicious.”
She folded a dish towel. “Tell me, Nikolai …”
“Niki. Please.”
“… is anything real to you?”
He refolded the towel and hung it carefully. “Only silence is real. And, no such thing as silence. Listen!”
Gently, he cupped both of her ears with his hands. “Minute worlds exploding. So how you can imagine human language, human mind—so infant to old universe—can begin knowing what is real?”
Ana backed up, laughing. “You know, you’re like a deck of cards. You come up different every time.”
“I promise you,” he said. “I am real. I have eked out everything I am.”
He left again, trying to raise more funding for his project. Each time he returned he seemed more relaxed, his English slightly improved. Some nights he followed Ana through the apartment like a child, playing with her TV, the appliances in her kitchen.
He opened her freezer and stared dreamily inside. “Makes me very nostalgic. You see, I was born inside ice.”
He asked about the cost of her furniture, her clothes, the cost of her groceries. He asked about her work, her income, then turned her answers back on her, making her question her values. One night, Ana sat him down.
House of Many Gods Page 22
