‘I need full-time help to sort things out. Some of my girls are nuclear physicists, but some of them! Look at what they write!’
She handed me a questionnaire filled out in pink ink. I read, ‘Name: Yulia Shtunder; Age: 19; Sex: Yes!! All the time!!’
I couldn’t help it, I laughed. She did, too. ‘If I showed the men looking for a bride that questionnaire, they’d be lined up at her door, but marriage wouldn’t be on their minds,’ Valentina Borisovna said. ‘So you see, I need help with some of these girls. I want them to be as classy as the women in Moscow. You could teach them manners and basic English, couldn’t you?’ She looked approvingly at my chignon, lightly made-up face, and black business suit.
I nodded. Let the haggling begin.
‘Is this your first job out of college, dear?’
Code: I won’t have to pay you a decent salary since you need the experience.
‘No,’ I sat up a little straighter and preened. ‘I work at ARGONAUT.’
Code: I’m smart enough to land a job with a foreign firm.
‘The shipping company?’
That had her attention. Ha!
‘The Western shipping company?’
And her respect.
‘Well, if you have a job, you certainly don’t need this one?. . .’
Code: You won’t be my twenty-four-hour-a-day slave.
Clearly, I was dealing with an expert negotiator.
‘I have plenty of time to translate letters at work. We could train the girls in the evenings and on weekends – after all, most of them have jobs, too.’
Valentina Borisovna couldn’t know that I spoke English better than most people in Odessa, that I was determined to make a life for myself and Boba. All she knew was that her niece trusted me. Of course, she’d just seen that I could fend for myself.
‘You’re hired,’ she said.
As we say in Odessa, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know and how much money you have.
Valentina Borisovna and I continued to wrangle, this time over salary. When the deal was concluded, she gave me a packet of letters to translate. I almost regretted not being able to work in her office. She had orchids and ferns in front of the large windows. On the shelf behind her mahogany desk stood a stout silver samovar surrounded by a tea service. The cups were so fine I could almost see through them.
After the interview, I walked toward the bus stop, hugging the packet of letters to my chest. This second job made me feel lighter, more in control. Even if I lost my job at the shipping company, I wasn’t totally lost. It didn’t matter that I had to work in the evening and on weekends. The money would help us buy a flat in the city center. I was sick of the long commute home.
I felt a shadow pass over me. A Mercedes slowed on the cobblestone and sidled up to me. The blacked-out back window descended.
‘Care for a ride?’ Vladimir Stanislavski called out. Ride-rode-ridden. Forbid-forbade-forbidden. His golden eyes shone from the dark interior. His smile was sinful and he was as seductive as he was arrogant.
‘Still sitting in the back?’ I asked. ‘When are you going to learn to drive?’
‘Oh, I can drive,’ he assured me.
‘Backseat driver,’ I mused, careful to look straight ahead so he wouldn’t think I was interested.
‘Are you getting in or not?’
‘Not.’
The car sped off.
Standing in the jam-packed aisle of the bus, overwhelmed by the smell of sweat and diesel, I admitted the ride home would have been faster and more comfortable in Vlad’s car. But mobsters were just plain trouble. Plus, a neighbor would surely see me get out of the Mercedes and then everyone on the bloc, including my Boba, would find out. Gossip was a four-course meal to neighbors on a feeding frenzy. You couldn’t cough without them telling everyone you had pneumonia.
As the bus bumped along, I wondered about the letters. What did strangers looking for love say to one another? I wanted to take a peek and wished the bus wasn’t so crowded. Had the men enclosed photos with their letters? Were they handsome? Perhaps, just perhaps, I would find an American man of my own. The pensioner next to me started coughing and didn’t even cover his mouth. I tried to inch away from him but there was no room. I sighed. I longed to see Jane’s world of sparkling streets and cars for everyone.
Jane. My Jane.
Came, saw, went.
Going, going, gone.
Friends and neighbors emigrated to Israel and Germany.
The American missionaries I befriended stayed for a year, then moved on to the next sad spot in the world.
Eventually, everyone left.
Even Jane.
I remembered the day I accompanied her to the airport. She nearly vibrated with giddiness, so happy was she to leave. But in the shadow of my long face, she was sensitive enough to hide her joy. She was going home to a real family. I’d met her parents and sister when they’d come to visit. Jane was so lucky. And when I was with her, I felt lucky.
She hugged me tightly one last time – her fingers spread, aligned on my ribs – before dumping her huge black purse onto the conveyor belt of the X-ray machine.
She stepped through the metal-detecting arch.
‘I’ll write!’
She’ll forget me.
‘I’ll call!’
They always do.
‘I’ll be back!’
Nu, da. Yeah, right.
She passed through the door that led to the West. I remained. Bereft. Standing in the gloomy Soviet airport, staring at that door. People went in and never came out. One more person gone from my life. My feet were so heavy I couldn’t move them. My soul hurt. It felt brittle and black and sad, like a burnt blini – no, a charred blini that was at least a hundred years old. People jostled me and I knew I should leave. I just wanted to stay in the same building as her a little longer. Just five more minutes.
What would I do without Jane? How was it that a farmer’s daughter from the other side of the planet understood me better than the girls I grew up with? I remembered all the times we sat in Boba’s kitchen and talked. When I’d told her about my father abandoning us, she clasped my hands in hers and said, ‘I’m so sorry. It must be very difficult for you.’ This sympathy is like dew on the soul: it refreshes and cleanses. If I’d told Olga, she would have replied, ‘So what? You think you’re the only one with problems? Let me tell you . . .’ And she would have listed every disappointing man she’d met or seen on television since she was ten. (‘Can you believe Pugachova’s husband? A cheater, I’m sure of it!’) Of course I didn’t mind listening, but it was a relief to be with Jane, to talk and be listened to.
I barely registered the shouting behind the door. In Odessa, there is always some commotion or another. Then I heard Jane’s voice. She flew back out the door, broke the grasp the security guard had on her upper arm, and hugged me again. ‘Dasha,’ she whispered fiercely into my ear. ‘I know you think that once people leave they never come back. I will. I promise.’
‘You’ll miss your plane,’ I chided as she caressed the tears on my cheek.
‘Always so proud,’ she chided right back, touching her cool forehead to mine. ‘I’ll miss you.’
At my stop, I got off the bus and wound my way past the crude concrete high-rises, past the rusty kiosks, past Harmon’s beat-up BMW. How long would he visit Olga here, so far out of the city? Was it just sex? Or more? Did her little ones call him Papa? Neighbors grumbled because of all the remont, remodeling, going on in her flat. They were fed up and jealous of the incessant hammering.
He had never come all the way out here to see me.
After dinner, Boba and I sat on our worn blue sofa. ‘Where is Olga? I haven’t seen her for weeks. You must miss little Ivan.’
‘She’s probably busy painting,’ I replied, hoping I sounded nonchalant, hoping she wouldn’t dig further. ‘Do you want to see the letters? Maybe there are photos.’
Distracted, Boba chose a ‘valentine’
and opened the envelope gingerly. We were surprised to see the letter was typed. A pity. So much is revealed through handwriting. Boba looked at the photo while I translated the letter aloud to her. ‘Hello. My name is Brad. I have a ranch in Texas. I’m looking for someone dependable and sincere, and pretty . . .’
‘Look at him.’ Boba held up a photo. ‘He’s not too bad. He has kind eyes.’
‘Just what any girl wants,’ I chided gently, ‘someone who’s not too bad. Listen to this. “Hello, my name is Matthew. I’m a dentist and live in Colorado where I enjoy skiing and rafting. I have four Great Danes . . .”’
‘He sounded good until he mentioned the dogs. Think of the fur you’d have to sweep up.’
That was my Boba, ever practical. What would I do without her?
I knew exactly what Olga would have said about Brad. ‘Look at him! He could crack a concrete wall with that forehead!’ She would have held the photo of Matthew next to her face, batted her eyelashes flirtatiously, and said, ‘What do you think? A good match?’ I smiled as I thought of her mischievously putting Brad’s photo in with Matthew’s letter and vice versa. I sighed. What had I done?
‘How interesting that they want our women,’ Boba said, looking at the letters and photos spread across the coffee table. ‘Why can’t they find wives in America?’
I didn’t know. After translating six letters, I took a break, stretching my neck and shoulders. Anywhere I looked in the room, stern icons stared back. I was careful not to say anything about religion. Boba had suffered as a Jew in the Soviet Union – it had been noted on identification papers that we were not Ukrainian, but Jewish. We were not just of another religion, we were of another race. An inferior race.
Boba said that Mama hadn’t been allowed to study at the university because she was Jewish, that there had been a quota on how many Jews were allowed a college education. I don’t know how she did it, but Boba went from the Jewish nationality to Ukrainian on her documents (bribes?) and to the Russian Orthodox religion in her heart (denial?). As with everything, she did it for me, so that I would have the right last name and the opportunity to pursue a higher education. So I didn’t dare say anything about the nine icons watching me.
Reading words of hopeful men and wishful women was more interesting than writing business reports for Harmon. I didn’t mind spending my evenings with these letters, translating the men’s thoughts and yearnings. Boba and I sat on the sofa, she looking wistfully at the photos while I wrote. I became quite good at reading between the lines – or so I thought.
On Saturdays, when I met with clients at the Soviet Unions office (Valentina Borisovna’s living room) to teach them English and translate their letters, I told them about my online dating experience and urged caution. But they were convinced that American men were richer, kinder, and in every way superior. Granted, in comparison to our men – macho lechers, alcoholics, layabouts all – it wasn’t much of a contest.
It was hard not to get involved. I sat across from Yelena, a thirty-year-old blonde with a worry line that divided her forehead in two, and translated her letters: Dear Yelena, I am a Mormon living in Wilbur, Washington. My wife is dead and my three children need a mother. Clearly, he wanted a nanny and a cook, but I couldn’t convince Yelena. She dictated her response: Dear Randy, I, too, am widowed (‘Strictly not true,’ she confided, ‘I was never married.’) and worry about my son. I long to have a strong man to take care of me and my boy.
A few more letters and off she went to Wilbur on a ‘fiancé visa,’ a three-month permit that the American government grants to foreign women so they can live with their future spouse on consignment. A trial period. She was brave to go to a country when she didn’t speak the language or know anything about the man she was to marry.
When we received a wedding invitation from Yelena, we were thrilled for her. And even jealous. She explained that two weeks had been enough for her to decide she wanted to stay in America for good. In her next letter, she wrote that since her husband didn’t drink he took the champagnskoye she’d brought to celebrate their nuptials and poured it down the drain. He also ‘didn’t hold with’ tea or coffee since it was caffeinated. Poor Yelena wrote that she couldn’t live without her morning tea. A month later, she announced that she was saving money to come home – Randy didn’t respect her and neither did his children. Then we received a card telling us that she was pregnant. Then came the letter explaining that she didn’t miss caffeine and actually felt healthier following Randy’s ‘guidelines.’ Then she wrote no more. To be honest, Valentina Borisovna and I didn’t miss her letters. It made us sad to realize that she’d not only learned to live within her new husband’s rigid rules, she’d embraced them.
Harmon spent more and more time with Olga, less and less time at the office. I’d finished my tasks and his for the day and decided to look at the Internet, but it was difficult to concentrate. Swiveling nervously in my chair, I wondered where he was. When was he coming back? What if he gave my job to her? He wouldn’t do that to me, would he? The longer he stayed away, the more nervous I became. Curious, I dialed his home number.
No answer.
Where was he?
I swiveled back to my computer. The free membership had expired, but I continued to write half-heartedly to the men who’d given me their personal e-mail addresses. Unfortunately, the one who said he loved Jesus seemed to love ‘porn’ even more. The capital letter man started asking, ‘DO YOU LIKE TO CUM?’ I wrote, ‘I prefer to go,’ and blocked his address. Some wanted to visit me in Odessa, Texas, though I’d stated several times I lived in Ukraine.
The women at Soviet Unions who received letters on paper seemed to have better results than I. Their men wrote sentences containing real sentiment. But none of the correspondence touched my heart as much as the letters from Will in Albuquerque to Milla in Donetsk. When I read his words aloud, I heard poetry. His photo reminded me of Jane’s American boyfriend Cole – a dark-haired, gap-toothed gentleman.
Every other week, Milla took a ten-hour bus ride to Odessa. She plowed into our office with a bottle of home-made vodka which she tipped into Valentina Borisovna’s tea cups before plopping down in the chair across from me. ‘Well, girl? Do I have any more suckers?’ A forty-year-old chain-smoking former prostitute, Milla talked like a miner and her teeth were as yellow as her sallow skin. She had nine men sending her letters, money, and gifts. (When they asked for a photo, she sent them one of her daughter, last year’s Miss Donetsk.) When I told her I liked Will, she replied, ‘Take him! Hell, girl, he’s cheap. I couldn’t get anything out of him. I’ll probably go with Monty from Palm Springs or Joe in L.A. Where the fuck is Albuquerque anyway?’
To be sure she wasn’t offended that I took one of her men, I gave her a bouquet of yellow roses and slipped her ten dollars. I didn’t like to owe anyone. Will stopped writing Dear Milla and started writing Dearest Daria. It was easier to correspond by e-mail, so I wrote my letters at work. When Harmon came into the office at eleven, he patted me on the shoulder and complimented me on my diligence. Pleased by his thoughtfulness, I smiled.
‘You have beautiful teeth,’ he said. ‘You should smile more often, so I get my money’s worth.’
I expected to see an ugly expression on his face, like he’d worn so often in the days after the incident, but he looked at me in an avuncular way. This pleased me. I didn’t want to be his enemy. He’d given me a job. Thanks to him, I could correspond with Will and Jane and save to buy a flat in the city center. Though there were still tense moments, our wary circling had become an awkward dance as we worked together to run the office. He saw himself as a kindly boss, who complimented my work and let me go home early on Fridays. He hadn’t spent a year pursuing me. He’d never been jealous of men who looked at me or – worse – talked to me. He’d never attacked me. He didn’t care that I was a procuress of flesh. He was not the first man to rewrite history. I liked this version much better and decided to believe it.
The ches
s game seemed to be over. A stalemate.
A relief is what it was.
He spent the morning taking down the photos of him and me at the bazaar, in front of the opera house, at the port. He whisked the pictures out of the frames and slid in prints of him with Olga. The poses remained the same, only his paws roamed her body instead of mine. He stood in front of my desk, staring at the photos of us in his hand, unsure what to do with them. Perhaps he considered tossing them into the bin. Suddenly, he extended the handful of memories and asked, ‘Do you want them?’
Had he finally forgiven me for turning him into the office joke, something that wasn’t my fault? It was unlucky to throw photos away, so I accepted them. When he left for lunch, I glanced at the photos and wanted to make a gesture towards peace. ‘Wait!’ I called after him. He turned around. ‘Wait.’ I wasn’t sure what to say. I stood. ‘Um, would you like to have coffee?’
He glanced at his watch. ‘Olga’s waiting. Later?’
‘Later,’ I echoed.
He left, and I felt that we could go on, not as friends, but as colleagues with peace between us. I was relieved that five months after the incident, the awkward moments were slowly disappearing. If only I could say the same about my relationship with Olga. Was she still angry with me? Did she really want my job?
I opened my briefcase and pulled out a salad that Boba had made for me, packed in a Tupperware container from Harmon. As I ate, alone at my desk as usual, I checked my inbox and found a letter from Will: ‘My darling girl, leaves swirl, trees dance, love’s delight, a moonlit night. When I think of you, I think of Pushkin and poetry. I think of War and Peace – only with a happy ending. I am so lonely lonely lonely but when I think of you, I am healed.’
Moonlight in Odessa Page 6
