Moonlight in Odessa

by Janet Skeslien Charles

  Was it working? I lifted the receiver. There was a dial tone. I tapped a number.

  ‘What’s this, little rabbit paw? You never call from work.’

  ‘I just . . . I just missed you, that’s all.’ I choked back my tears. My stupid, ridiculous tears.

  I left the office at five and took the long way home, through Park Shevchenko, past the sea, back into the city. I saw him everywhere: on the beach, in every black sedan that cruised by, in my bed before I closed my eyes.

  I didn’t sleep. I just lay awake, listening to Rachmaninoff’s ‘Vocalise’ again and again. The languid tempo of the duet elegant and thoughtful. The melancholy throb of the piano. He sways over the piano as he strikes the keys. Eyes closed. Her fingers deftly move along the strings of the cello. A tendril of hair escapes as she plays. The music holds a tinge of regret. I desired him so much. My mouth hurt. It filled with saliva then suddenly went dry, my tongue and gums like bark. My head hurt. My soul hurt. I tried to think of anything but Vlad – my mother, tasks at work, Jane in America – but my mind always came back to him. Vlad–Vlad–Vlad. I imagined his hands on my hips, my lips on the hollow of his throat, his ribs floating on mine. I lay on my belly and grasped the pillow under my body until morning.

  It had only been three days. He would come.

  Four days.

  Why hadn’t he called?

  Five days.

  Had he been injured?

  Six days.

  He had so many rivals.

  I started going mad. Stir crazy. I had to get out of the office. His line of work wasn’t the safest . . . How many before him had been shot down or trapped in a car that exploded? When there was an ‘accident’ all of Odessa’s tongues wagged. I heard nothing. I took Valentina’s camera and walked along the leafy boulevard overlooking the sea. Calm. Breathe. I loved the rows of red roses, grown wild since gardeners were no longer paid to care for them; the breeze that made it seem as though the trees were whispering; the people out and about – young mothers pushing prams, girls giggling on the park benches, boys from the naval academy in their blue suits and hats, swaggering and hoping to catch a girl’s eye. Why hadn’t he called?

  Since it was spring, Odessa was overrun by brides in white silks and satins. Wedding parties stood in line to have their portraits taken at the Potemkin Staircase and city hall with its stately white columns. This is the happiest day of a woman’s life – all eyes on her, a bride deeply in love, girlish dreams of romance blending with a woman’s desire for a home and family. Little girls rushed up to the fairy princesses come to life. The brides gave them candy and promised, ‘If you’re good, my darlings, someday you’ll be beautiful like me and all your dreams will come true.’ Who doesn’t want to believe in love? Who doesn’t want the moment to last? Brides are our fairy tales. Why didn’t he call?

  Brides are reckless and brave. They think with their hearts, they take a leap of faith (in this faithless society). The photographer moved the bride away from her wedding party. He didn’t need to tell her to smile. She was radiant. Radiant. He fussed with her train, tilted her chin slightly to the left, then went back to his tripod. Red roses, another kind of satin, soft against her cheek as the photo is snapped. A picture of her alone, so later, when the dream collapses, she still has this one moment, this one portrait where she looks her best, to use in Valentina’s matchmaking catalog.

  How cynical I’d become. I watched the brides have their pictures taken for another hour, knowing how it would turn out, still wishing it were me.

  He wasn’t going to call.

  That evening Boba and I sat on the sofa. The television was on, but we weren’t watching it.

  ‘Boba, remember that night I stayed away? I thought our time was special, but he didn’t.’

  She pulled my head into her lap and stroked my hair. ‘This is often the case, my little rabbit paw, this is often the case. Men are like stray dogs, they go from house to house looking for a tender morsel. Once they get it, they move on to the next open door.’

  I grabbed her around the waist and buried my face in her belly, weeping until my shoulders shook, until her housecoat was steeped in my tears. I promised myself that they would be the last I cried over Vladimir Stanislavski. I promised that every time he invaded my thoughts, I would push him gently but firmly out of my mind. I promised to be more careful in the future, never again to let my guard down. Promises I soon broke.

  As I walked to work the next morning, I realized the city I used to love had begun to feel like a prison: I hurried along her streets, skirting the buildings, arms crossed to protect my fragile remains, gaze pressed to the ground. My body betrayed me: my stomach my throat my jaw clenched. I was as weepy as a war widow. I couldn’t control a single thing. Not my love life, not my taste buds, not my thoughts, not my body, not my reactions. At work, I sat in front of the computer, pondering my life. Everything had changed. Before, I loved my job, now I felt trapped. The oatmeal I used to love now tasted like spackle. I’d wanted to see Vlad, but now I dreaded it: he would be talking to someone else, someone sexy and fun and free, and not even see me. Or worse, he would and there’d be that awful, awkward Hello yes yes we slept together goodbye.

  When the bell over the door rang, I looked up, hoping to see Vlad, then hated myself for being so eager, so naïve, so stupid. It was Mr. Harmon. I wasn’t disappointed – it had been three weeks since I’d seen him. He looked good. So very good. He’d lost a little weight and wore a navy suit with the red tie I had given him for New Year’s. He stood in the doorway, unsure, holding a bouquet of pink roses. I went to him, hugging him as I only embraced Boba.

  ‘I was going to come to you,’ I said and started to cry.

  He handed me a handkerchief. I blew my nose and cried even harder. It wasn’t entirely about the job.

  He patted my back awkwardly. ‘There, there. You were right. I need you. Olga’s ready to go home and be an artist again, if you’ll return to the office. Please come back.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t need me anymore,’ I sniffled.

  ‘I was lost without you,’ he admitted and handed me the flowers. Twelve! It wouldn’t do.

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you? Even numbers are for funerals!’

  ‘I can’t remember all your silly superstitions,’ he retorted.

  It wasn’t silly, it was serious. Odd numbers are lucky. Everyone knows that. Even him. He did it on purpose, to get a rise out of me. I pulled a rose out of the bouquet, snapped the stem and put the bud in his buttonhole, then straightened his tie, stroked his lapel, and swept imaginary lint off his jacket shoulder and sleeve. I took a deep breath, smelling the sweet roses, happier than I’d been in days.

  I scrawled a few words to Valentina, explaining that Harmon needed me.

  ‘Let’s swing by the port,’ he said, opening the passenger door of his beat-up BMW. ‘I should probably get a new car.’

  ‘Don’t,’ I said, thinking of Vlad’s. ‘You don’t want people thinking you’re rich. It only brings trouble.’

  When the customs agents saw me, they crowded around us. ‘Dasha, where have you been? We missed you.’

  They called me by my diminutive, a sign that they liked me. Or the money I brought them. All six said they weren’t sure about our shipments. What kind of videocassettes were these? What kind of music? Would they contaminate the youth? Why these foreign meats and cheeses? Were ours not good enough? What of the pre-made food full of chemicals? Just add water and stir? There was nothing natural about this. Would it stop people from toiling in their gardens? The agents weren’t sure they could let any of it into the country.

  I smiled. ‘All valid concerns, all valid concerns,’ I said and offered samples to ease their apprehension.

  Though he couldn’t understand the transactions since we spoke Russian, Harmon grinned as he watched me. The negotiations took most of the afternoon. I was grateful for the work; it kept my mind off Vlad. For the most part.

  Boba m
ade my favorite desserts, which we ate for dinner. The best was her Napoleon cake, layers of cake and cream, cake and cream, which melted in my mouth.

  Back at the shipping office where I belonged, things had changed. Olga’s paintings and the photos had been taken down. The walls were painted my favorite color, a pale blue. Harmon must have had the laborers working all night. I felt a grudging respect for him. Finally, he understood how things were done in Odessa.

  When I moved to sit at my station, Harmon insisted I take his office. ‘You do most of the work,’ he said wryly.

  On the desk, there was a bouquet of red roses. Twenty-five. He’d got it right. I never expected this valorization of my work. I never expected this effort. I looked at him, almost expecting him to try something. Instead, he sat at the boardroom table and went over order forms from the Western-style supermarkets that had recently opened. I watched him for a moment. My esteem for him swelled. He’d done so much for me. And he didn’t seem to expect anything in return. I stopping thinking of him as Harmon, and in my mind at least, I started to call him by his first name: David.

  It had been over two weeks since I had seen Vlad. Naïvely, I kept telling myself that he would come, if only he knew where I was. I tried not to brood, and hated the way I’d become so sensitive, jumping when the phone rang, looking toward the hall when I heard footsteps. I was in danger of crossing the line from fragile to just plain pathetic. This thought made me straighten my spine and set my jaw. Why was I letting some man make me miserable?

  Looking back, the clues were there, I just didn’t see them. Chilled champagne, just in case. A king-size bed and satin sheets, for heaven’s sake. He was a player. Just a player. And I was a record. He’d slipped me out of my jacket, laid me on the table and stuck the needle in. And I went round and round, thinking it was something special. Sex wasn’t love, Boba had told me. How right she was.

  To smooth things over with Valentina, I went to Soviet Unions with a bottle of cognac, an orchid, and a box of German chocolate. I didn’t tell her why I’d quit suddenly, just that I was tired and the shipping job paid better – reasons she could relate to. ‘I’ll miss you,’ she said. ‘You’re an honest, decent girl.’

  ‘For all the good it does me,’ I muttered.

  She barked with laughter and hugged me to her bosoms.

  She was in an excellent mood because she was close to getting the regulations changed so that Western Europeans and Americans – specifically, lonely men from these countries – could come to the Ukraine, hassle- and visa-free.

  ‘Those fools in Moscow!’ she crowed. ‘They’re making it harder to get in the country. Men will start coming to Ukraine because it’s easier. I’ll have more clients. In the Russian Duma there’s even talk of stripping the girls of their nationality when they emigrate to the West, just like in Soviet times. Can you believe it? Russian politicians certainly don’t believe in progress . . .’

  Of course, when she said progress, she meant commerce.

  I wanted to tell her about what happened with Vlad, but something held me back. Who wants to admit that they’ve been swindled? Instead, I relayed Katya’s call. ‘Valentina, what would you do if your husband beat you?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ she asked, looking at me as though I had borscht for brains. ‘You suggest a trip to the dacha where neighbors aren’t so close, where you have an old wood burning stove at hand. You sit him down at the kitchen table and give him plenty of strong home-made vodka to drink.’

  ‘I don’t know how to make it.’

  She took a sip of cognac. ‘You modern girls! You don’t know how to do anything! You should learn – home-made vodka is potent. Helpful in many situations. Ah, everything was better before perestroika – people did for themselves, and we didn’t have all these problems with alcoholism and poverty. It’s become a sad, sad world . . .’ Valentina looked out the window for a moment, as if she could see the better times of the Soviet Union on the street.

  She came back to the present and continued, ‘Anyway, when he passes out and slumps onto the table, you take a log and you beat him. Until the tendons in his back mesh with the cotton of his shirt. Until you can no longer lift the log. Then you throw it onto the fire. No evidence.

  ‘Incidentally, dear, this is also a cure for alcoholism.’

  I finally thought to check my inbox. There were twelve messages from Tristan, each more frantic than the last. It was embarrassing how easily I’d forgotten about him. I wrote immediately and explained that I had technical problems, because technically, I’d had problems. Tristan replied: Enough writing. Let’s meet. Soon.

  I thought of Vlad and let what I hoped were the last of the waves of hurt, anger, and disappointment move through my body before I typed my answer.

  Yes.

  As penance for having forgotten him, I mailed Tristan a bundle of photos of Odessa. He then sent some he’d taken in Yosemite National Park. He’d captured stunning sunsets, lonely stretches of road, and small plants that make you see the vastness of this world. Looking at his photos of sequoias, the largest living things, I could feel the damp bark against my skin.

  He wrote long letters every day. He told me that his great-grandparents were Russian. I told him that I was half Odessan, half Hungarian. He said that he wanted to know more about his ancestors, and I said I did, too, though honestly, between school and work and life, I barely had time to think about Boba let alone my ancestors. Tristan suggested meeting in Budapest, and I readily agreed. It would be interesting to see where my father was from and where he’d run back to.

  I gave Tristan my phone number, and he called on weekends. ‘Dora? Hi, it’s Tristan,’ he said, a little self-consciously. The line was scratchy, and if we spoke at the same time, we cancelled each other out.

  ‘Daria,’ I corrected, then thought, perhaps Dora is a diminutive, like Dasha.

  ‘What did you say?’

  We both tried again. Nothing. Just a buzz that was louder than his voice.

  ‘You go,’ he said.

  ‘I’m happy you called.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re –’ And the phone went dead. It happened like this in Odessa sometimes.

  Even if we could barely talk because of the poor quality phone lines, his effort and patience communicated everything I needed to know.

  In the photo he sent of himself, Tristan wore a green scout uniform. He looked serious. Kind. Dependable. He loved children. He was ready for a family. For commitment. He wasn’t the kind of man who would have champagne chilling just in case. He was a bit awkward, but this meant that he wasn’t a user like Vlad, and it made me grateful for the awkward silences and his peculiar questions:

  Do you have television?

  Do you need nylons? Toilet paper?

  Do people stand in lines for hours?

  The strangest question was this: Do you have jeans in the Ukraine?

  Didn’t he know that jeans were invented in Odessa?

  Tristan sent a plane ticket to Budapest. I could hardly wait to meet him and sight-see. My first trip to a foreign city. Each day I grew more and more excited, buzzing around the office like a spring bee drunk with pollen. When the city cut the electricity, I poured the last of the coffee into two cups, and David and I sat in the boardroom and talked. There was nothing else we could do, since the computers, printers, and fax machine were down. I was thankful he had not bought a generator. I had come to like these moments, when it was just the two of us in a darkened room.

  ‘Why are you here?’ I asked.

  He laughed. ‘I ask myself that very same question. I could say shipping is in my blood, since my grandfather started the company. But the truth is, I got into a bit of trouble and now I have to stay here for two years.’

  Vita and Vera had been right? Odessa was his punishment? I must have said these words aloud because he replied, ‘Not so much a punishment as a redemption of sorts.’

  I waited for him to say more, but he was silent. After a long moment, he
changed the subject. ‘What about you? Why are you still here?’

  ‘I love Odessa.’

  ‘You’ve never seen anything else.’

  ‘So you have to sleep with two hundred girls to know which one you want? You had to try fifty desserts to know chocolate is your favorite?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re right. Sometimes you just know.’

  ‘I don’t know what I want. Boba says I should find an American man and leave Odessa. And sometimes that’s what I want, too. I want to see the world, I want to travel, fall in love, meet people, speak English all the time, like we do in the office. But then I get scared about leaving everything I’ve ever known.’

  ‘Odessa will always be here. Don’t they call the city Odessa-Mama? She’ll be right here, waiting for you if you want to come back. You’re young, you should go, explore, live.’

  The lights came on and broke the spell. Still we stayed in the boardroom. I thought about Budapest. I would go, explore, live. He got up and turned off the lights. I was glad.

  ‘What are you so happy about?’ he asked.

  I didn’t want to jinx it by telling anyone about my trip. ‘Aren’t you tired of Olga yet? I could find you a nice Odessan lady.’

  ‘I was married to a nice lady,’ he said. ‘Now I want a wicked one.’

  I blushed, content to fall into our old banter like nothing had happened, like nothing had changed. Though things had changed. My salary had doubled. That pawn Olga had been knocked off the board. Through strategic sacrifice, I had won.

  He talked about their wedding plans. I wondered if I should warn him – she would turn on him as she had turned on me. But I didn’t want to disturb the peace between us. I didn’t want to hurt or disappoint him. What if he didn’t believe me? Besides, everyone knows that in chess – and in Odessa – it’s every man for himself.

  ‘Your parents must be curious about where you work. Why don’t you invite them here for lunch?’