Moonlight in Odessa

by Janet Skeslien Charles

  ‘I’m not so sure. . .’

  ‘Believe it. I would have died without you. I was so lonely and scared when I got here, but you called every evening, you helped me learn Russian, you taught me all I needed to know about Odessan men . . .’

  We laughed.

  She stroked my cheek. ‘God, what would I have done without you? I’ll miss you. But now I know you’ll be fine. You’ve got a good job. No, a great job. You’ll be speaking English all day, your dream.’

  ‘Do you think my English is good enough?’

  ‘Hell, yes. You speak better than most native speakers. Your vocabulary is better than mine. You’ve mastered the language. You even know differences in British and American English. I’m telling you, you know more than I do. Remember how disappointed my colleagues were when they learned I was “only an American” as they put it? When they were disappointed because I didn’t speak “real English,” who helped me learn the vocabulary?’

  I basked in the glow of her praise. And decided to quiz her. ‘What’s a “flat”?’

  ‘An apartment,’ she shot back.

  ‘Queue!’

  ‘A line. Or to wait in line.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘What would I have done without you?’

  We sat in silence and doubt crept back.

  ‘But what about my accent?’

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you? Everyone has an accent. I have an accent – you can tell right away I’m American. British people have accents. Canadians have accents. Yours is almost imperceptible – that’s not something New Yorkers can say!’

  I laughed. She knew how to put a person at ease.

  ‘My God! Think about it. You’ll be earning a huge salary. You’ll probably be running the place within a year. I’m so proud of you.’

  So how could I tell her the truth? That nothing in Odessa is entirely good. That this contract had a cost. For excellent-paying jobs, candidates paid a bribe, which Odessans called ‘an investment.’ And with this position, my investment would be more personal and painful than most.

  Chapter 2

  On that first day, I went to work filled with great trepidation. When? And how? At the office? Or some hotel? Right away or after lunch? How do these things happen? How could I put him off? It’s that time of the month. That time of the year. I don’t feel so good. Let’s get to know one another. It could take years . . .

  I sat at my desk, tense, ears pricked, waiting for Mr. Harmon to pounce, ready to fight him off with words or fists. But he didn’t even want to sleep with me. He said he didn’t like my teeth. (I’d been careful not to smile during the interview. Napoleon’s wife Josephine also had bad teeth. But aside from being married to a murderous dictator, Josephine was lucky. She was born in an age when fans were a popular accessory. She held one in front of her mouth when she smiled. When Mr. Harmon summoned me to his office, I imagined holding his electric fan in front of my face and I started to giggle.)

  Like many Odessans during Soviet times, my grandmother had had to choose between luxuries like buying food and going to the dentist. (Philosophically, health care in the former Soviet Union was free. In practice, however, things were slightly different. You had to take a gift to the doctor. No gift, no treatment. No present, no future.) My teeth weren’t perfect, but at least I’d never gone hungry. I was surprised when Mr. Harmon said he would pay to have my smile fixed. I declined, he insisted. I declined, he insisted. I declined, he insisted. Thus, I knew he meant it and I made an appointment. For the first time in my life I went to the dentist, who sat me down in the gray leather chair and pulled a light over my face. To evade the glare, I turned my head and saw a menacing arsenal of picks, hooks, and pliers on the table next to him. I looked away and saw that in the sink, there was dried blood and spit. (In Odessa, the city ‘conserved’ water by turning it off during the day.)

  I clenched my teeth.

  ‘Open up,’ he said.

  I couldn’t. I didn’t want him to see my blackened teeth.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t appreciate a tight-lipped woman,’ he joked, ‘but I have a job to do.’

  I smiled. He frowned and said, ‘It’s worse than I thought.’

  ‘Can I come back tomorrow?’ I asked, barely opening my mouth.

  ‘What difference will a day make?’

  I returned the next afternoon and sat down in the chair. The dentist shone the light in my eyes. I stood – I knew what he would do. I didn’t know if I could go through with it.

  ‘Today’s not the day?’ he asked, hiding his annoyance fairly well.

  It took one more appointment before I felt comfortable on that chair with the light blaring in my face, highlighting my foremost imperfection. I’d spent my life hiding my teeth, never smiling without my hand in front of my lips. It was hard for me to open up.

  ‘There, there,’ he crooned, ‘that’s not so bad. So your teeth are crooked and black. Soon, you’ll have white, straight ones.’

  He promised the process would take less than a month. But the sooner I had beautiful teeth, the sooner Mr. Harmon would be interested, so I told the dentist to take his time. This tactic alone bought me four months. I was happy to have a nice smile. Though I was sad when the dentist yanked all my teeth out.

  I loved those first days, working in English, the international language, communicating with our branches all over the world. Growing up, I’d learned English sayings and songs and sonnets, but never thought that one day I would need English, that this knowledge would be useful: we Odessans lived on the Black Sea but we’d been landlocked by the Soviet Union. English had been my pastime, my passion, my solace. I loved everything about the language. I read the English dictionary the way nuns read psalms. I craved new words the way Russian leaders crave power. I loved the alchemy of English, how a ‘t’ and an ‘h’ come together to form a completely different sound. Thistle. Thunder. I loved how speaking English made me feel. Smart. Sophisticated. Foreign. Better.

  I loved answering the phone in English. I loved running my hand along my computer monitor. Everything in the office was of the best quality. Quality that I, and most Odessans, had never seen before – even our light bulbs gave off a dingy, sad light. I felt proud to be a part of a company that imported space heaters, washing machines, and videocassette players from the West. I enjoyed speaking with the ship’s captain in English as the sailors unloaded the large metal containers filled with our yearnings. Mr. Harmon took a photo of me at the helm, then the captain snapped one of us together. I didn’t even mind that Mr. Harmon snaked his hand around my waist. In Ukraine, having our picture taken was very special. Most people didn’t own cameras. We didn’t even have color film until the eighties.

  It was a challenge to get our products through customs, but I soon learned to deal with the agents – who could blame them for wanting to taste the food or watch the films or wear the clothes our company brought to Odessa? I found that when I offered samples, our goods cleared customs quickly. This exchange seemed perfectly reasonable. After all, at the post office you pay more for first-class postage.

  I admit to being seduced by the high-quality pens, sleek black cordless phone, and pristine company stationery, so unlike our rough, gray paper. The whiteboard and markers in the boardroom and the colorful packs of Post-its seemed remarkable to me. The first month, I put neon pink ones on documents to remind Mr. Harmon where he had to sign and when shipments were coming in. These tokens made me realize how much better and brighter things were in the West, and I yearned to discover that world. I hoped my new job was a step in the right direction.

  Our offices weren’t on the Black Sea. Mr. Kessler, the company director in Haifa, called the rent at the port ‘extortion’ and instead leased a nondescript building in the city center on bustling Soviet Army Street, where cars and faded red trams fought for space, where gypsies begged in front of the blue Orthodox church with golden domes, where young women selling bouquets called out to passers-by. The plain exterior of our office belie
d the posh interior, though the presence of a hairy security guard hinted at our prosperity. Near the entryway, there was a state-of-the-art kitchen for coffee breaks. The refrigerator was filled with Finnish vodka, German chocolate, and French cheese. Down the long corridor with shiny white walls was my work station. Mr. Harmon’s spacious office, with his large black desk covered with expensive gadgets, was through the door on my right; the boardroom, with the long, sleek table and leather chairs, on the left.

  I bought a palm tree and placed it beside the window. Sometimes I daydreamed about California. Sandy beaches; warm, salty water rolling over my body; the sun soft on my skin. There’d be no thoughts of money, of letches, of whether I was Ukrainian or Jewish. I would be just me, alone – anonymous on a beach. I looked towards the palmetto and sighed. The metal bars ruined the effect. Because it was an Israeli office, the panes were covered with steel shafts and security guards stood at attention twenty-four hours a day. Despite the protection money we paid the Stanislavskis.

  I have always been a good worker. I never missed a day, even when I had gaping holes in my mouth. I just kept my head down as though the documents on my desk were fascinating. My hair curled around my face to hide my lips curled around my gums searching for the missing teeth. I went into the office early and wouldn’t leave until the last person had gone for the evening. During these weeks, Mr. Harmon fetched our coffee – I refused to venture into the kitchen.

  I was not entirely suited to the position of secretary, since my degree was in mechanical engineering. Still, I learned to make excellent coffee and type. I improved my English and studied Hebrew. Mr. Harmon asked me to teach him Russian, but after three lessons, I realized that some old dogs can only bark or whine.

  After my dentures were in, Mr. Harmon started to pursue me. He’d already worked out that propositions were not the way to win this young lady’s body, so he tried another approach: subtlety. In the afternoon, when the city cut the power, he and I sat in the darkened boardroom, he at the head of the table, I at his right side. We sipped cold coffee and waited for the computers and fax machine to switch back on.

  ‘Can’t we bribe someone?’ he asked.

  I nodded approvingly. He was finally thinking like an Odessan. ‘We’d have to pay at least three people at the electric company, which would cost roughly four hundred dollars per month.’

  ‘Extortion!’

  ‘The price of doing business in Odessa,’ I corrected.

  ‘Same thing,’ he muttered. ‘Maybe I could bring in a generator.’

  He drank the last of his coffee and we sat in companionable silence for a moment.

  ‘I never go out in the evening,’ he said.

  ‘Not even to the opera or philharmonia?’

  ‘No.’

  I couldn’t believe it. Most people come to Odessa for the entertainment – the ballet, the beaches, the concerts, the cafés, the casinos, the discos . . . ‘Don’t you have a good compania?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This is how we say a ‘‘circle of friends’’ in Russian. Many Odessans would love to be friends with you. The girls in the office have certainly been . . . friendly.’ Odessans don’t always speak directly. We have a certain code. Distracted means crazy. Direct means abrasive. Friendly means slutty.

  ‘True,’ he said. ‘But when they crowd around me, I know what they’re after.’ He rubbed his fingers together to indicate money.

  I shrugged, the Odessan way of saying nothing and everything. I hoped I looked sympathetic, but inside I wondered why he didn’t take one up on their very obvious offer.

  Unable to trust anyone, he said, he sat alone in his flat, a foreigner far from friends and family. When he invited me to the ballet, of course I went. I felt sorry for him. And I loved going to our opera house, the third most beautiful in the world after Rome and Prague’s. We sat in a private box. He inched his gilded chair closer to mine, telling me he couldn’t see. I moved closer and closer to the edge of the box. Leave-left-left. His forehead shone with perspiration. He stared at me, not the stage. I knew what he was thinking and I knew what he wanted, but I sat, ankles crossed, knees firmly together; spine straight, exactly two inches from the red velvet backrest; chin slightly lifted, lips fixed in a slight smile; eyes never leaving the stage. Teeth grinding, heart pounding, stomach heaving, brain berating, ‘Fool! Never let your guard down! Everything in Odessa has a price.’ After the performance, people around us talked and laughed, but we were silent. In a hoarse voice, Mr. Harmon said, ‘Come home with me.’ I pretended not to hear. I thanked him and said goodbye, then slipped through the crowd in front of the opera house, down the 192 granite steps of the Potemkin Staircase to the bus stop at the port.

  I couldn’t afford to be indignant. I couldn’t afford to offend him. I couldn’t afford to lose my job. I remembered those six months of searching – two interviews a day and lines like, ‘Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but in these hard times, when conditions are so tough, I need to give the job to a man with a family, to a breadwinner.’ Boba’s pension barely covered her heart medicine let alone our food and bills. We couldn’t afford candles, so when they cut the electricity in the early evening, we sat in the dark in the kitchen because it was a little warmer than the rest of the flat. At bedtime, we felt our way to the bathroom to wash our faces, then back to the living room/bedroom to change into our pajamas and convert the sofa to our bed.

  I had to do everything in my power to keep my job and that meant keeping Mr. Harmon content. I found a young professor with big hair and bigger breasts to try to teach him something of our language. When he showed no interest in her, I took it upon myself to hire a curvaceous charwoman, telling her to linger in his office and that if she played her cards right, she’d have a flush bank account. But Mr. Harmon had no interest in poker. To keep him at bay, I used a careful mixture of geography, denial, and guilt. I always made sure that there was something between us. When he started coming too close and had that look in his eye, I got up and walked to the opposite side of the boardroom. We circled the table slowly, both of us pretending this was perfectly normal, as many as five times before he gave up. Seeing that he would never win a race of endurance, Mr. Harmon changed his tactic and wooed me with hummus and baba ganoush as well as a battery-operated flashlight/radio for the nightly blackouts. He asked me to call him David, but I avoided doing so. When he stood too close to me, I looked at him with wide eyes and said, ‘You’re like a father to me.’ His hands tightened into fists, and he stalked back into his office. I exhaled and hoped I could last another month.

  In time, he put up photos of us together. On one of our ships. In front of the opera house with clients. His arms slithered around my shoulder, his hand poised near my breast. Everyone in the office looked at the pictures and assumed I was his mistress. He was pleased – the men respected him more and me less, the women were either jealous or admired my good sense. For a time, he seemed satisfied and stopped pursuing me, as if the rumor of our involvement were good enough. I resented the fact that colleagues thought of me as his private reserve or that I was hired, not to translate the most important, strictly confidential papers, but to sleep with the boss, yet I appreciated this period of détente. We no longer circled each other warily, trying to gain the advantage. A holding pattern emerged; when we sat in the darkened boardroom waiting for the electricity to switch back on, we really talked.

  ‘It’s my daughter’s birthday next week.’

  I looked at him in surprise. ‘You have a daughter?’

  ‘A daughter. And ex-wife. An ex-house. An ex-dog.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Eighteen. I don’t know what to get her.’ He sighed. ‘She hates me.’

  I smiled. ‘Is there anyone harsher or more intimidating than an angry eighteen-year-old girl?’

  ‘You went through that phase?’

  ‘Didn’t we all? What’s she like? What does she like?’

  He looked at me, and his hands fluttered hel
plessly, as if what he was trying to convey was too much for him. Finally, he settled on, ‘She’s nothing like you.’

  ‘Could you be more precise?’

  ‘Well, you’re so together, and she . . . she’s not. She struggles at school, struggles with her weight. She dyes her hair black and listens to punk bands that make me suicidal.’

  ‘My Boba would say that music is a cry for help. Write, even if she doesn’t write back. Phone, even if she doesn’t say much. Let her know that you love her. Call her best friend. She’ll know exactly what your daughter would want for her birthday.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said.

  ‘Those words sound so good coming from you.’

  He laughed.

  I looked at my watch. Time will show, my Boba always said. Time will show.

  ‘I never wanted this,’ he said, pointing to the black boardroom table, to the white board.

  Board, bored.

  ‘I know, I know. You hate Odessa.’

  ‘No, I don’t, and that’s not what I meant. I wanted to be a writer, to study poetry. I didn’t care about business.’

  Know, no.

  ‘Then why are you here?’

  Here, hear.

  ‘Family.’

  That one word said so much.

  ‘I wanted to study English, too. But Boba said, “Who’ll pay you to stand on the street corner and recite Shakespeare? No one, that’s who. English isn’t a career, it’s a hobby. You’ll study engineering or accounting – something with a future.”’

  ‘Did that make you angry?’ he asked.

  ‘Why would it?’ I shrugged. ‘She had my best interests at heart.’

  ‘You’re a much bigger person than I am. After years of therapy I’m still not where you are. I hated that my father tried to control me. Made me get a business degree. Made me . . .’