They were facing east. Free of her mother, Tatiana ran down the slope with an unsteady gait.
‘You look tired again, Masha,’ Anna said suddenly.
Masha laughed. Looking into her wide, round face, Evdokia saw nothing of Anna’s observation. She thought Masha looked awake enough, lively even.
‘That’s Ivan’s fault,’ Masha said. ‘He has been sick of late, a horrible cough. I have been doing his round in the mornings.’
Her husband was the night duty officer, charged with patrolling the embassy’s grounds and buildings.
‘Is he very ill?’ asked Evdokia.
‘He’ll be alright. He needs to eat more beets.’
Tatiana fell. They expected tears and small chaos, but she picked herself up and continued unperturbed, her spirits too high for breaking.
Evdokia suddenly had an awful thought. She knew that, as the embassy’s most menial workers, the Golovanovs didn’t receive much, if any, allowance in Australian pounds. What if they had no means to shop in stores for food? What if the food they received at the embassy was not enough?
‘Masha,’ she said, ‘you know, Volodya and I have a garden at Lockyer Street that goes to waste. He talks always of a vegetable patch but nothing happens. If Ivan wants a plot, we have the room.’
The pariah offering her help. Evdokia expected Masha to at least find a way to give the idea some thought, but the woman’s response was instantaneous.
‘Evdokia Alexeyevna!’ she said, delighted. ‘Ivan has asked for some earth at the embassy, but the gardeners won’t allow it. I will tell him—he will be pleased.’ She paused. ‘But what will we give you in return?’
‘Nothing, Masha. The garden will do well being used.’
‘Well, we will help you somehow. We will make it collective! You, me, our husbands.’
Tatiana had reached the bottom of the hill and was staring across the Circuit. She wore a brown gaberdine coat that now had dirty marks on one sleeve. Anna called her back. The girl waited a moment longer, then turned and came, plonking one foot before the other, elephantine.
The walk to Capital Hill was the first in a number of friendly excursions. A small Russian party set out for the Capitol Theatre’s picture show, watching newsreels from the Olympics in Helsinki where the Soviet gymnastics team were collecting medals unprecedented, hungry in their first appearance for a half-century. The medal-winning vaulter stood on the podium as the Soviet banner dropped—a flash of the Union’s flag against grey skies—and in the Capitol Theatre, hard, round sweets were sent skittling down the aisles.
Expeditions were mounted to Civic, to the J.B. Young department store with its manchester, fashion and home furnishings. They marvelled at a shoe display—shoes that weren’t for wearing but simply for trying on. There were children’s books and Bibles, vacuum cleaners and brooms. There were seven grades of sheet and four pillow stuffings with gradients in between. In kitchenware, they found labour-saving implements for stuffing chickens and cutting eggs. There were bakelite containers with the English letter for the foodstuff marked on the side. It wasn’t always easy to know what was for buying and what was simply for display. The woman in ladieswear was a New Australian who spoke to them quietly, furtively, pointing things out in Russian when her supervisor wasn’t near. They made mental checklists of their needs, which grew as they circumnavigated the floor. Salt and pepper shakers, automatic cigarette dispensers. They went from department to department, led by a tiled walkway with straights and oblong turns that together formed an embracing geometric shape.
Nobody purchased anything without checking Evdokia’s opinion of it first. She thought certain colours were better. The others thought so too. She thought certain designs more fashionable; a red peplum jacket, for example. She said that Nina Prudnikova’s black floral skirt was dashing but slightly under-sized. Nina thought so too.
They walked a wary lap of the Civic centre, an oversized monument of rounded archways and balcony, Spanish white, banking institutions facing the empty intersections at its corners—twin buildings, mirror copies, fifty metres apart with a garden in between, low-cut lawns and towering trees where the Russians sat for a moment on two benches, a midwinter scene, the sun out, the children chasing one another from trunk to trunk and a man with a bucket and brush scrubbing an oil stain from otherwise unspoilt concrete. McGlade’s Gift Store. Ansett ANA. The City Butchery and the Canberra City Post Office. The Christian Supply Depot and the National Mutual Life. Evdokia thought the people walking here were dream-like, verging on the edge of impossible, their suits with a sun-bitten sheen, skirts and dresses incredible. She looked for signs of the downtrodden, the oppressed, the capitalist enslaved. If this town had them, she couldn’t see them. Not amongst these hopeful buildings, this place where everything seemed squared away. The perfect city, she thought. A paradise of conifers.
Weighted by their packages, they caught the bus home. There were only two routes, One and Two, and they caught One, crossing the Molonglo, disembarking at Manuka. From there they went in various directions, most to the embassy, some to the houses they had in the different streets around. Evdokia and Masha went together to Lockyer Street and saw what Ivan had done with the vegetable plot, black earth upturned in preparation.
‘Let’s take Jack for a walk,’ said Evdokia. ‘The day’s not over, Masha. We’ll go to Red Hill and the reservoir.’
Red Hill was southwest across Griffith Park and Bass Gardens. The women walked with the Alsatian leading in front. Beyond the last roadway was a fenced paddock, poplars at its edge. The hill itself was patterned by eucalypts and tall grasses, its gradient a measure of work, their footfalls drumming harder as they climbed. The walk took them to the lookout: a gravel turning circle with a single concrete bench. The view was Capital Hill and then over the river to Duntroon. Down the gravel track was the reservoir, where, after a time, they went and stood, two communists and a dog on the edge of a town supply. The water was a dark and bloody brown, a slight breeze rippling its surface.
‘I can’t read or write,’ said Masha.
Evdokia turned to look at her companion.
‘I’m not asking you to teach me,’ Masha went on.
‘I will if you would like.’
The woman shook her head, explaining that she just wanted Evdokia to know. That it was important a woman of Evdokia’s cleverness knew how uneducated she was. Evdokia frowned.
They sat at the water’s edge, talking. Masha had two brothers and one sister; one brother had been killed in a riding accident, the other by flu. Evdokia had four brothers and two sisters; one brother killed by dysentery, one by typhus, one by a fall. One sister killed by dysentery, the other a fifteen year old in Moscow.
Masha had three children, all grown adults: a boy in Moscow, two girls in Siberia, all Ivan’s. Evdokia had one girl, killed by meningitis.
Masha was afraid of Moscow, afraid of the people, the noise. Evdokia loved the city, the old buildings and the parks. It was her familiar place, home, that snoring, body-strewn room where she’d grown up.
Masha knew they were lucky to live with the privileges of departmental work. Evdokia thought it was no real crime to bring out bread in a handbag for family and friends. To use tickets to get things for others, even if it wasn’t necessarily approved.
Masha was too old to join the Party. Anyway, she didn’t remember half the revolutions that had occurred. When Evdokia had applied to join the Party, a Colonel Kharkevich had asked what was she doing before the revolution. She said that before the revolution she was three years old.
Masha knew nothing of the English language although she had lived in Australia for almost four years. Evdokia spoke English, Swedish and, for whatever undeclared reason, a few touches of Japanese.
Masha thought the landscape in Australia was a drier, less earthly Siberia without snow. She thought the hills were smaller, the dirt harder, and she wondered whether the gravity situation was doing her body any harm. Evdokia had expected mo
re animals. She had yet to sight a koala, and wondered why, with all these animals at hand, the town didn’t have some kind of zoo.
Masha thought the embassy’s children had the perfect childhood— sunshine, long summers, sacred days. They wanted for nothing and the idea of it made her glad. Evdokia remembered the famine year in which she had turned five. While no one watched them, her grandfather had taken a cup of milk from her and poured its contents on the floor. Because if hunger is a burden, then so too are the hungry.
Masha worried about the atomic bomb. Ivan was talking about the new American designs, hydrogen. The simpler the element, the greater the devastation.
They both wanted to get out of Canberra. Masha had a poster in her bedroom of Tasmania, billed as the Switzerland of the south. Evdokia wanted to see Sydney again, one of the most modern cities in the world.
On night patrol, Masha said, Ivan’s main problem was the possums. From about ten o’clock they began leaping from the heights of the eastern roof onto the tin eaves below, making a thumping din. There was also a group of boys who thought it was a game to penetrate the Soviet embassy hedge and lurk noisily in the orchard. Volodya was away days at a time. Evdokia knew only the city he was in: Melbourne, Sydney, Newcastle. He called her now from phone boxes, from the phones in cafés or restaurants. Never from his hotel.
Before she went home, Masha planned to save some money and buy a lifetime’s supply of shoes. She never wanted to beg or plead for a footwear coupon ever again. Evdokia had promised her mother a fur coat. She was cutting pictures from catalogues—removing the prices—so her mother would be able to choose.
Masha wondered why they hadn’t come to sit here before. She thought some of the women in the embassy were green-eyed and resentful, angry at how this country held a mirror to their peasantry. Evdokia thought there were certain ringleaders. Others at the embassy had simply decided which way to jump. The two women eventually walked the track from the water back to the lookout. They went slowly downhill, towards the lines of poplars and elms along the crescents and avenues, the roofs of the houses catching the afternoon sun, glinting on their left-hand sides and shadowed to the right. Some of the roads were freshly made, sitting more atop the landscape than in it, expanses of grassland like bits of puzzle in between, impossible to say whether they were future sites for housing or parklands unmade.
Masha explained that she and Ivan were at first to be posted to Vienna, then Rome, then Ottawa. She said she’d always been told that cities created their nations. Only here it was the other way around.
‘I have an idea,’ said Petrov.
Bialoguski was flipping through the Poynters’ record collection, looking for something that wasn’t so plain as to be pointless. The two men were drinking whisky with ice and brandy at the same time.
‘The embassy has a liquor merchant, Crawford & Co,’ Petrov was saying. ‘On embassy liquor, we don’t pay Australian taxes. We buy duty free.’
The doctor gave up and played Dick Jurgens. They’d be heading to the Adria soon anyway.
‘We buy in bulk too,’ Petrov went on. ‘Bottles by the crate. I haven’t tested it, but I’m sure Crawford would supply any quantity we like.’
‘How cheap?’ said Bialoguski.
Petrov leaned forward. ‘It’s boom times, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Fortunes are being made.’
‘Only by some,’ replied the doctor, waving his hand at the apartment. ‘Only by those who already have the cash.’
‘It’s a criminal system.’
‘If you like.’
‘We could team up, you and I.’
‘You’re a diplomat, Vladimir.’
Petrov grinned. ‘But you’re not. I can’t do business, but I have an idea and I can’t do it alone. There will be good profits in it. We’ll split them down the middle.’
Bialoguski had a notion of what was about to be said. He took a packet of cigarettes from the coffee table and handed the Russian one. ‘What do you get below the sticker price?’ he asked.
‘In bulk and without taxes, the discount is almost half. On Bell’s Special Whisky, even more. I can issue purchases on the embassy account. We pay with our own money, the embassy never knows. You sell them discreetly to pubs or whoever else. We beat the legal price by a fair amount and we pocket whatever is the difference.’
Bialoguski saw Petrov was watching him carefully, attempting to see what he thought. What was he doing? Was this a real scam, or was the MVD just trying to get him involved in something black?
‘What do you say?’ asked Petrov.
Bialoguski picked up the bottle of Bell’s that Petrov had brought, added a splash to both their glasses. ‘How’s your vision, Vladimir?’
‘Beautiful. One hundred per cent. He is a good man, your friend Beckett.’
‘I treated Anna Pakhomova this week.’
‘Oh?’
‘She says the ambassadorship is changing hands.’
Petrov looked pleased. ‘Yes, we are ridding ourselves of the incumbent. It’s a great relief for many of us; you have no idea, Doctor, the bastardry that goes on, always the encouragement to put each other in. You take the tiniest of inconsequential things and make deadly errors out of them. Who knows what might happen in the case of an actual crime.’
Like exploiting the embassy’s liquor privileges, Bialoguski thought.
‘Let’s do one case,’ he said.
‘Test the water?’
‘Start slowly with a dozen and see what happens from there. Come, I’ll buy you dinner.’
At the Adria, they ordered beer and bread to begin. The café was lit by milk-coloured lights that hung like alien ornaments. Their waitress turned out to be a patient of Bialoguski’s, Eliska Kysilka, a stern woman in her forties who got tremendous ear infections to the extent she suffered vertigo. Their entrées were complimentary.
‘Before I forget,’ said the doctor, ‘the Rosenbergs. I have been asked to join a delegation petitioning the American ambassador in Canberra. Lily Williams is behind it. She is the secretary of the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism. And Anti-Semitism. I think it is the council that combats both.’
‘Who are the delegates?’
‘Tom Wright from the Sheet Metal Workers’ Union. Some left-leaning City Council members. They say I am needed to add an effect of realism, a balance against the high number of registered communists.’
‘That’s good.’ Petrov seemed in a buoyant mood. ‘But don’t stick out too far. Don’t attract too much attention.’
‘From Security, you mean?’
Petrov shrugged.
‘I’ve been wanting to ask you.’ Bialoguski lowered his voice. ‘What is your embassy’s opinion of the Security here? What do you think of their capabilities?’
The Russian spoke without pause. ‘Getting better. They trace our movements now. Noticeable pressure at times. I think they have hired more or smarter men. Of course, it’s all of no consequence. They are wasting their time.’
Bialoguski nodded. Petrov fell silent when their two steaks arrived. Afterwards they drank coffee, and only when Bialo-guski had asked for their bill and was walking to the register to settle did he remember that he’d spent the last of his cash that afternoon on petrol.
‘Eliska,’ he said, embarrassed, ‘I’ve made a mistake. I haven’t brought my chequebook.’ This was Security’s bloody fault. If they paid him a retainer in advance, like they should do, he’d have money in his wallet right now. ‘I thought I had cash, but I don’t,’ he went on. ‘Can I be inconvenient and pay tomorrow?’
The woman looked at him. ‘I don’t see why not, Doctor,’ she said. ‘But I’ll need to ask.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, and waited uncomfortably while she sought the Adria’s manager, whom he knew, which made the situation more humiliating, even though the man didn’t hesitate to give him credit.
As they got into Bialoguski’s car, Petrov said, ‘Let’s find some company tonight.’
‘What do yo
u mean?’
‘There are some girls I met the other day.’
‘Whores?’
Petrov laughed. ‘What’s put you in a mood? No, they’re just some girls. Drive me over to collect them. I’ve been telling them about your flat.’
Bialoguski started the car. Perhaps the flat was a good idea; going anywhere else would require money.
The address was a crumbling terrace off the far end of Darlin-ghurst Road. It looked on the verge of collapse, a dozen or more living there, the smell of cooking baked into the walls. Bialoguski stood on the doorstep while the Russian went inside. Two girls came downstairs, looking only half as bad as the doctor thought they might. Neither were New, which relaxed him. They’d been drinking, he saw. One asked his name and smiled, and he knew then they weren’t professional girls at all.
At Cliveden, he played host and fixed drinks. Petrov seemed most interested in Dorothy, a largish woman who said she was a clerk for the Chamber of Manufactures. Bialoguski sat with Lucinda on the sofa. She told him he must be in a lucrative business if he could afford a place like this.
‘I’m in metals,’ he said.
She asked what he thought about flying saucers. She thought they were Soviet aircraft, cycloid planes flying at high altitudes. Experimental, atomic probably, the reason for the disc shape. He told her he wasn’t sure Soviet science had reached such heights. They watched in silence as Dorothy and Petrov left the room.
‘Outside sources, then,’ said Lucinda.
‘Hmm?’
‘The alternative saucer theory. Sources outside this planet.’ ‘
This is the choice we face? The Soviets or outer space.’
‘Weather balloons also, but you’d be mad to believe that. I think the outer space theory is an understandable reaction. Mysterious third parties. We’re looking for someone to save us.’
They opened a champagne bottle. He invited Lucinda to stand on the small balcony with all the lights off so there was no dampener on the view. Dark ocean mass and a carpet of lights. Lucinda said she’d come from Adelaide three months ago. This was her first view of the city from any height. He felt like volunteering something, some pristine fact. He told her about his marriage, a failed holiday in New Guinea he’d had with his wife, and the coming divorce. He felt himself performing, which was disappointing, because this wasn’t an act but the truth. She seemed to be sympathetic. They watched boats moving as lights on the harbour.
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