‘At least it’s not cold’ he said with Zhana on his arm, finally resorting to the weather in an attempt to incarnate conversation.
‘What?’ came the reply.
‘Tonight, not cold’. Bronte repeated, rephrased and slower.
‘Da, not cold.’ At this rate, it would take a week to discuss his address. He marvelled when he thought about his friend from Holland who got through an entire course at Music College with an English vocabulary consisting of a mere five four-letter-words.
Inside, the interior decoration and atmosphere impressed immediately. They were in a Mexican restaurant complete with swinging bar doors and a mock saloon layout. There were electric copies of gas lanterns, slung low over the tables to give a half light, less than bright and somewhat seedy ambience. The place was arranged with booths around the walls and tables laid throughout the centre of the room. All manner of western paraphernalia hung on walls or was mounted somewhere, including a giant buffalo head. They were no less intimidating in Russia he noticed but even more intriguing was how they got most of the stuff. Russian eBay?
Everything; tables, chairs, wall panelling, floors, was in old western style rough-cut timber. At the head of the dining hall was an authentic looking American bar with a small stage for some local Madonna look alike to sing her sultry cowboy routine – in English of course. Bronte took off his jacket then helped Zhana with hers. As she slid into the booth to sit opposite, he realized how much more beautiful she actually was than her photos indicated. In fact, the most appropriate word he could find was perfect. Hair, makeup, skin, lips, clothes and coordinated colours, shoes, nails and teeth, all immaculate. Looking at her, she could have stepped straight from a fashion magazine. As another couple walked passed, he couldn’t help notice the woman striding arm in arm with her male companion. She’d just stepped out of a magazine too.
‘I like this place,’ he said reading a list of symbols with numbers from a book he guessed was the menu.
‘What? You like?’
‘This place… It is very interesting. It looks like something from the Alamo.’ He lit a cigarette and passed the book of hieroglyph to Zhana, wondering about the smoke signals he was sending the Indians.
‘Sorry? What?’ The familiar reply again.
‘I am speaking about the décor…… the furniture…’
‘Sorry? I not understand. You want I will order you fish, yes?’ Zhana played with her phone and looked tense, completely lost in a foreign sea. He thought how he would explain in the most simplistic way that it wasn’t a fish he had referred to, but that the restaurant reminded him of a set from the Alamo movie. She probably thinks the Alamo is a washing powder.
‘Never mind, it’s not important and fish will be fine’, wondering how on earth he could explain beef Chimichanga in Russian, and how many kilometres they were from fresh seafood.
‘Please excuse, my English is bad.’ Zhana had been sitting with an erect back but she seemed to sink an inch or two, as though embarrassed.
‘That’s okay. Excuse my bad Russian’ Bronte offered feebly. Her manner was so charming, she could’ve been asking him to excuse that she was a murderer and he’d have consented.
‘So you write much better than you speak? Your letters were very good’. Zhana looked at him rather blankly, though he was sure she had understood. He was learning to speak slowly and precisely if he was to have a chance at any reasonable childlike conversation.
‘Oly wrote the letters. I can not write in English’. If she’d been asking his forgiveness for murder, as the plot thickened, it was becoming a serial killing.
‘Oly… she wrote your letters? You told her what you wanted to say?’
‘No… I not need to explain what to say…’ He was beginning to wonder exactly which enchantress had lured him into this Russian version of a spaghetti western.
‘So you are saying OLY wrote my letters?’
‘She is my very good friend, like my sister. She knows what I want to say’. Zhana looked straight at Bronte then turned away, not wanting to hold his gaze. In the twitch of a smile an unwelcome tension cast its net across the table. He wondered if while fiddling with her phone, she had pressed the wrong mood button.
‘Will I meet more with her…Oly I mean? I’d like to chat about our correspondence.’
‘You already have met with her’ replied Zhana. ‘That is Oly at airport and in taxi.’ She looked away again as if that was the easiest way to avoid the subject further.
‘Yes, I realise that was Oly… but will we meet again?’
‘You like Oly? You wish to meet with Oly?’
Bronte was driving up a dead end street at a hundred miles an hour. He decided to lighten things up with a change of subject.
‘Zhana, do you know the tradition from Ukraine for couples thinking of married life?’ The best red-herring he could think to throw on the table in a hurry, he almost bit his lip worried she might think he was suggesting betrothal.
‘Nyet’, replied a surprised looking Zhana. Bronte continued,
‘They must complete three tasks together. First, they must drink alcohol. Second, they should play cards and last, go shopping.’ He was eager to hear her reaction, sensing his change of tack had brought Zhana a returning ease and a straight back.
‘Nyet, I never heard of such things. That is silly things to do, you agree? It is not interesting to do such things and anyway Ukraine people are stupid.’ Completely disinterested, Zhana glanced away again, definitely the easiest way to avoid further exchange. Bronte had his tyres let down on that story, and she hadn’t even asked to hear the reasons for these three cultural acts of immense sanity. Then reaching across the table for her handbag she added,
‘I’m going to the ladies room,’ and with that, she slid from the booth. He watched as with hips swaying in a catwalk like strut and high heels clipping on the wooden floor, she disappeared up the hallway.
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Zhana looked at the screen on her phone showing number not listed, but even before she answered she knew exactly who the caller would be.
‘Hi my Willy, Kak dela?’
‘I am well thanks my love, how are you?’ Willy called every other night from Frankfurt and although not as far away as Siberia, it was still expensive to call Russia from Germany.
‘Do you miss me?’ She sighed, almost moaning. Zhana could ask the simplest question and make it a seductive plea of great passion. When she’d seen his call she’d made herself more comfortable.
‘I want to be with you now. I miss you terribly’ Willy said, sitting in the kitchen with a cognac and some German liverwurst.
‘I miss you more. It is cold here alone… and I don’t like to be alone’, Zhana said dreamily, lying on her bed with a glass of Russian wine and a German cigarette. It had only been 2 weeks since Willy had left her after their time together in Moscow. ‘And I want you now’ she whispered.
‘I want you more’ was Willy’s reply, ‘and I love you and miss you.’
‘I miss you too’.
She still couldn’t find a way to say she loved him. Just why, she couldn’t say or wasn’t sure. Perhaps it was a defence that would take a little time to break down? Maybe there was still an empty room she’d been hiding in her heart for someone else and she’d simply neglected to hang out the No Vacancy sign?
Meanwhile Willy wanted to explode with excitement and tell Zhana he’d ordered the diamond and gold wedding bands, but the timing didn’t feel right, and he chickened out after the not so romantic proposal he made while she lay in a bath in Moscow. A quick telephone call was not the appropriate way, not at least until he had the rings in his hot little hands. After only a brief chat about nothing in particular, they blew kisses goodbye. That was much easier for them both to manage just yet.
---------- * * --------------------- * * * ------------------------ * * -----------
Bronte watched Zhana retu
rn from the bathroom, hair brushed, lips re-enhanced, clothes straightened and God knows what else she had done. He could only fantasize about that, but whatever it was, it sure took a while. Only a woman can devise an alternate night out from a trip to the ladies restroom.
‘Shall we go?’ she asked. ‘I’ll get the check.’ He was about to answer when her phone rang and he noticed she looked before she answered. The conversation was brief and appeared to be little more than a lot of ‘da’ or Russian yeses, the occasional ‘nyet’ or no and the odd ‘horosho’ or okay. When she finished, as if the call never happened or Bronte had been invisible, Zhana said officiously,
‘Okay, now we’ll go to your apartment’. She handed the money he had given her to the waiter who’d never spoken a word. Instead, he probably changed the ashtray forty times. Madonna sang Patsy Kline “I fall to pieces” and looking at the way she was bulging out of her strapless dress, it was a real possibility. As they left the restaurant, he wondered if he should re-tell the Ukraine story with the three traditions, revised to become four and include mating passionately. Either way, he was sure he’d find out real soon.
CHAPTER 8
Bronte’s apartment was located at the head of the main street, Ulitsa Krasnaya. The run-down complex sat opposite the Old Krasnaya theatre which in turn sat in front of an amphitheatre and fountain, complete with the mandatory statue of Lenin. The place wasn’t much, but at least its central location meant it would be easy to find the centre of town and the return route.
The street, or correctly boulevard, was divided by a large wooded median strip which was more like an enormous park between the north and south lanes. Krasnodar was officially founded in the seventeenth century and this monolithic median strip with its hundreds of majestic trees growing throughout its entire length could’ve been that old. Towering over nineteenth century street lamps, the trees stood like sentries guarding the paved pathway. It was evident this path had been well trodden over the centuries, its features surviving wars, revolutions and invasions.
His rendered apartment complex was dilapidated with individual balconies facing inward to overlook a central courtyard. Children’s swings, merry go round and slippery dips made of old galvanized, rusting steel would be deemed dangerous in any western city, but were in almost constant use here. Now at night, while the kiddies lay quietly sleeping, their beloved playthings sat preyed upon, victims of rust, the chronic insomniac.
No sooner had they opened the door, Zhana began her guided tour of the place. Bronte dropped his luggage to admire the clean, sparsely furnished unit. It was comfortable with a daybed sofa, a green leather couch, a TV and VCR with DVD and a modern kitchen. Zhana’s mannerisms rather suited a real estate agent sniffing a commission while presenting a property for sale. She even pointed out extras like the ironing board and new LG iron.
Before long they stood at the entrance to the bathroom and sure, the restaurant had been nice and the food tasty, but after the never ending flight from Australia, he was dying to take a shower. He was about to ask her to excuse him for five minutes while he freshened up when she said,
‘I must go now. I will come here tomorrow at 1 o’clock, okay?’
Completely unprepared for her comment, he was speechless. He could only scan her eyes for some hint she might be bluffing. They’d only been there ten minutes and if she hadn’t the time for him to take a shower, he knew sex would be off the evening’s agenda.
‘I’d hoped you would stay with me,’ he offered pathetically, sounding more like a little boy trying to bribe his mum into staying at kindergarten with him.
‘I must go to my mother… she’s not well, I’m sorry,’ Zhana replied, already zipping her jacket and putting on her most cute and apologetic smile.
‘But Zhana 1 o’clock tomorrow, it’s too late!’ Bronte was wondering what he’d do for the rest of the evening, least of all ‘til 1 o’clock in the afternoon the next day? In this strange place and with no knowledge of anything or anyone, that was unthinkable.
‘Can’t we meet earlier? Say Ten?’ He considered that was reasonable. One o’clock and the day was half gone.
‘Okay. I see you at eleven’. Zhana gave him a peck on the cheek and then as if by rehearsed movement, whisked out the door backwards, closing it in her wake.
He stood motionless for god knows how long. Time stopped, suspending him at thirty thousand feet in an unearthly silence, somewhere between Moscow, Sydney and Krasnodar. There had been a lot to take in for one day and how he could sleep at the end of it all, he had no idea. Everything was still hurtling through his mind at the speed of a jumbo jet. And the one reason he was standing alone now in that crazy country and that bloody apartment had simply pecked him on the cheek and gone. So much for the torn clothes and shredded underwear, there would be no grappling at bra straps or silky skin tonight. He walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower and as he washed, he wondered if Russian women had the Russian smell. One thing was certain, the answer to that would have to wait.
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On her way home, Zhana made a call.
‘Do you think he knows?’ the voice echoed from the other end.
‘Nyet, he has no idea. I said I will see him after one… no wait, eleven.’
‘And what are your plans for tomorrow my dear?’
‘I’m going to get those new boots,’ Zhana said confidently, signalling instructions to the cab driver to turn left.
‘Yes please - pozhalusta ma’am!’ The woman on the other end of the phone said with a laugh.
‘There was one thing ‘though Oly… Oh, it’s not important, but I thought maybe I’d mention it… I had to tell him you wrote the letters.’
‘You did what?’ Stupid idiot! ‘Why’d you tell him that?’
‘He wanted to know why my English was good in my letters but I can speak nothing. I had to tell him, it was obvious.’
‘Nothing’s obvious! You used a translator for your mail after you’d written it in Russian. God, that answer should’ve been easy!’
‘I didn’t think it would matter… but I can see it was silly…’
‘Don’t worry about it… Look, let’s speak tomorrow, but please, no more stuff-ups like that, okay? Don’t tell him anything.’ She said goodbye and hung up.
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Zhana lay in bed thinking about the next few months ahead. It was still hard to believe she had committed to marriage. True they had spent little time together but she had learned, often the hard way, to rely on her feelings and they told her Willy was a good and calm man. Though living without his own child, he was quite capable of loving her son. She was sure of it. But in some ways she still considered it an inadmissible pity that things did not eventuate with the Australian. She had the same instinctive feelings about him which said he was a good man and she felt she had seen enough in his mail to know and believe that.
Her experience of life had taught her how to judge character with a minimum of information. It had become a survival technique developed as a teenager, for from the age of fifteen she had fought off hordes of testosterone driven boys and men. Although only 168cm and 49 kilos, she had ample breasts and a little waist with legs that reached to her stomach. She would still be desirable dressed in a potato sack. Fortunately, striking physical attributes had forced her to assess men more accurately and with more skill. These skills said she’d be safe alone in Moscow with Willy. Also, that the Australian was a decent and passionate man. But when she thought about Bronte in light of what might have been, she felt sad. She rolled over and snuggled into foetal position, annoyed that she was even thinking about him. The alarm clock showed 12.35 and if her life had more colour now, it was still black at night, alone.
---------- * * --------------------- * * * ------------------------ * * -----------
After flicking from TV channel to TV
channel and back again, Bronte fell asleep late and woke early, ready for Zhana’s visit. Realising it was only a quarter to seven, he feared he’d die of boredom in this strange country and not too elaborate apartment. He wandered around for some time in his underpants drinking coffee and smoking. When this reached the point of insanity he decided to dress, take a walk and observe the amphitheatre and parklands. He’d only caught a glimpse of their grandeur the night before while they bathed in mixed shades of artificial light. As he approached, thousands of doves littering the terraces and steps barely moved from the path. He felt uncomfortable when birds did that. They were supposed to be scared of people he thought, albeit reminded of the Hitchcock film ‘The Birds’, where the bloody things take over the town.
People sat casually on a small retaining wall bordering the Lenin fountain. Every Russian city has its own Lenin Statue and all of them depict him in a heavy overcoat. Either Lenin made no public appearances in summer, wished to appear one tough son-of-a-bolshevik or was determined to lose weight the hard way. It could climb well into the thirties in Russia during the summer - certainly in Krasnodar - and luckily, bronze didn’t smell. Those sitting around the base of the statue cared nought that the bronze icon stood solemn, drenched by spraying water. The morning was warming up rapidly so Bronte removed his jacket as he wandered back to wait for Zhana. He almost felt sorry for old Lenin, especially with dove droppings all over the old boy’s head.
Kill Cupid: Internet dating just got dangerous Page 5
