White Gardenia

by Belinda Alexandra

  ‘In Russia the mothers always feed the bride and groom at the wedding, like two baby birds,’ Sergei said, carving slices of meat and placing them before Dmitri and myself. ‘I am both of your mothers now.’

  Sergei’s eyes brimmed with happiness, but he looked tired. He was pallid and his lips were chapped. ‘You’ve worked too hard,’ I told him. ‘Please rest. Let Dmitri and me take care of you.’

  But Sergei shook his head. It was a gesture I had seen many times in the months leading up to our wedding. Sergei had abandoned his lost opium afternoons as easily as one might discard a hobby, and instead threw himself into preparing for the day. He worked from the first light of morning, always thinking of better and greater plans than those he had made the day before. He bought Dmitri and I an apartment not far from the house and refused to let either of us see it. ‘Not until it’s finished. Not until your wedding night,’ he said. He claimed to have hired carpenters, but I suspected from the way he returned each day smelling of resin and sawdust that he was decorating it himself. Despite my urges to rest, he would not. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said, brushing my cheek with his blistered hands. ‘You can’t imagine how happy I am. I feel life inside me, rushing in my veins, singing in my ears. It’s as if she is here by my side again.’

  We ate and drank until the small hours of the morning, singing traditional Russian songs and smashing our glasses on the floor to display defiance of anything that might try to harm our new marriage. When Dmitri and I were ready to leave, Luba brought me an armful of roses. ‘Bathe in them,’ she said, ‘then give him the water to drink and he will love you forever.’ Afterwards, Sergei dropped Dmitri and myself at the doorstep of our new apartment building and slipped the keys into Dmitri’s hand. He kissed us and said, ‘I have loved you both as if you were my own.’

  After Sergei’s car had disappeared down the street, Dmitri unlocked the frosted glass doors and we rushed through the foyer and up the staircase to the second floor. The building was two storeys and our apartment was one of three on the upper level. A gold nameplate was attached to the door: ‘Lubensky’. I ran my fingertips over the cursive writing. That was my name now. Lubenskya. I felt excited and sad at the same time.

  Dmitri showed me the key. It was a beautiful design. Wrought iron with a Parisian bow. ‘For eternity,’ he said. We clasped each other’s fingers and turned the lock together.

  The apartment’s drawing room was large with high ceilings and tall windows facing onto the street. The windows were bare, but carved pelmets for drapes had already been set in place. On the outside of the glass I could see flowerboxes brimming with violets hanging from each sill. I smiled, pleased that Sergei had planted Marina’s favourite flower. There was a fireplace and opposite it a comfortable-looking French sofa. Everything smelled like polish and new fabric. My eyes rested on a glass display cabinet in the corner of the room and I walked across the Savonierre carpet to see what was in it. I peered through the glass and saw my matroshka dolls smiling back at me. I lifted my hand to my mouth and tried not to cry. I had wept many times over in the days leading up to our wedding, knowing that my mother would not be here to share the most important day of my life. ‘He thinks of everything,’ I said. ‘Everything here has been done with love.’

  I looked up, still clutching the roses to my bosom. Dmitri was standing in an arched doorway. Behind him I could see a hallway leading to a bathroom. The ceiling was low, like a doll’s house, and both it and the walls were covered with floral paper. It reminded me of the garden Sergei had created for our wedding. I walked towards Dmitri and together we approached the bath. He took the roses from me and dropped them in the basin. For a long time we didn’t say anything. We stood, looking into each other’s eyes, listening to the rhythm of each other’s breathing. Then Dmitri reached for my shoulders and slowly began undoing the clasps on my dress. My skin tingled with his touch. Although we had been promised to each other for a year, we had never been intimate. Sergei would not have allowed it. Dmitri tugged the dress forward over my shoulders and let it slip down my legs to the floor.

  I filled the bath while Dmitri tore off his shirt and pants. I was mesmerised by the beauty of his skin, his broad chest with the spray of dark hair down the sternum. He stood behind me and lifted my petticoat above my waist, then over my breasts and head. I felt his penis push against my thigh. He took the flowers from the basin and together we sprinkled the petals over the surface of the water. The bath was cool on my skin but did nothing to dampen my desire. Dmitri slipped in beside me and took scoops of water in his hands and swallowed it.

  In the bedroom there were two bay windows facing an inner courtyard. Like the windows in the drawing room they had pelmets but no curtains. A jungle of ferns in pots on the ledges provided privacy. Dmitri and I embraced. A puddle of water gathered on the floorboards around our feet. My flesh pressed against his burning skin made me think of two candles melting together.

  ‘Do you think this is the kind of bed the nobility spent their wedding nights in?’ he asked, his hands slipping into mine. The corners of his eyes crinkled with his smile. He tugged me towards the bronze bed and pushed me down onto the red coverlet. ‘You smell like flowers,’ I said, kissing a droplet from one of his eyebrows.

  Dmitri slipped his arm around my shoulders and traced over my breasts with his fingertips. A ripple of pleasure ran from my neck to my toes. I felt Dmitri’s tongue flick against my skin. I pushed my hands against his shoulders and tried to wriggle away, but his arms encircled me tighter. I thought of myself and my mother lying in a summer field, the smell of grass on our clothes and in our hair. She liked to pull off my shoes and tickle my feet. I would laugh and struggle against her, both ecstatic and uncomfortable with the pleasure of her touch. That was how I felt when Dmitri touched me.

  Dmitri’s hands moved down to my hips. His hair tickled my stomach when he slid himself between my legs. He pushed my knees open and I felt the blood rush to my face. In shyness I tried to close them, but he pressed my legs further apart and kissed the skin between my thighs. The scent of roses floated up around us and I opened up to him like a bloom.

  A sound jolted us. The telephone was ringing. We sat up. Dmitri glanced over his shoulder, his eyes pensive. ‘It’s a wrong number,’ he said. ‘No one would call us now.’

  We listened to the telephone ring out. When it didn’t ring again, Dmitri lifted himself and pressed his face into my neck. I stroked his hair. It smelled like vanilla.

  ‘Don’t think about it,’ he said, pulling me further up on the bed. ‘It was a wrong number.’ He paused above me, eyes half closed, and I drew him down. Our lips met. I could feel him pushing into me. I gripped the skin of his back. Something in my stomach fluttered, as if a bird was trapped there. The warmth of him burst into me, making lights dance before my eyes. I wrapped my legs around him and bit into his shoulder.

  But long after Dmitri and I collapsed back into the rumpled bedsheets, and he fell asleep with his arm draped over my chest, the ring of the telephone echoed on in my mind. And I was filled with dread.

  SIX

  Requiem

  The flutter of wings woke me the next morning. Through sleepy eyes I glimpsed the dove perched on the windowsill. Dmitri must have opened the window during the night because the bird was on the inside ledge, coaxing me from my dreams with her rhythmic cooing. I pulled the bedcovers aside and slipped into the chilly morning air. Dmitri’s eyes flickered open and his hand fell to my hip. ‘Roses,’ he murmured. He lapsed back into deep sleep and I tucked his hand under the sheet again.

  ‘Shoo!’ I whispered to the bird, waving her away, but she skimmed through my fingers and landed on the dresser. She was the colour of a magnolia flower and tame. I stretched out my arm and made kissing sounds with my lips, trying to entice her to fly to me. But she darted through the dressing room and into the corridor. I snatched my robe from the hook on the door and dashed after her.

  In the grey light the furniture that
had looked so homely the night before suddenly seemed austere and formal. I studied the exposed stone walls, the furnishings, the polished wood, and wondered what had changed. The bird landed on a lampshade, almost losing her balance when it toppled from its stand. I closed the door to the corridor and opened one of the windows. The street outside was cobblestoned and picturesque. Set between two stone cottages was a bakery. A bicycle was propped against the flyscreen door and the light was on inside. After a few minutes a boy stepped through the door, his arms laden with bags of bread. He tossed them into a basket tied to the bicycle’s handlebars and pedalled away. A woman in a floral dress and cardigan peered out the door after him, her breath making rings of steam in the frosty air. The dove swept over my shoulder and flew out the window of her own accord. I watched her tumble and swoop through the air, flying higher and higher above the rooftops until she disappeared into the cloudy sky.

  The telephone rang and startled me. I picked up the receiver. It was Amelia.

  ‘Get Dmitri!’

  It was one of her orders. But instead of feeling annoyed at her intrusion, I was puzzled. She sounded even more highly strung than usual and out of breath.

  Dmitri was already striding across the carpet, pulling on his pyjama shirt. His face was wrinkled with a sleepy frown.

  I passed him the receiver. ‘What is it?’ he asked, his voice hoarse.

  Amelia’s muffled conversation through the receiver was incessant. I imagined she had arranged brunch at the Hotel Cathay or some other interruption, anything to prevent Dmitri and I enjoying our first morning as a married couple alone. I looked around for matches to light the fire and found a box on the bookshelf. I was about to light one when I caught sight of Dmitri out of the corner of my eye. His skin had turned alabaster.

  ‘Calm down,’ he was saying. ‘You stay there in case he calls.’

  Dmitri put down the receiver and stared at me. ‘Sergei went out driving by himself last night and didn’t come home.’

  Pins and needles jabbed into my palms and the soles of my feet. At any other time I wouldn’t have been so concerned. I would have assumed that Sergei was at the club sleeping off the previous day’s festivities. But things had changed. Shanghai was more dangerous than ever. The civil war had sent Communist spies everywhere, and in the last week there had been eight assassinations of Chinese and foreign businessmen. The thought of Sergei in the hands of the Communists was too horrible to bear.

  Dmitri and I searched the trunks the maids had packed for us. All we could find were summer clothes and light coats. We put them on, but as soon as we were outside a wind like a demon bit into our exposed fingers and faces and my bare legs. I shivered from the cold and Dmitri put his arm around me.

  ‘Sergei never liked to drive,’ he said, ‘I don’t understand why he didn’t wake the servant to take him where he wanted to go. If he was stupid enough to drive out of the French Concession…’

  I clenched Dmitri’s waist, not wanting to imagine that Sergei had come to harm.

  ‘Who was it that called last night?’ I asked. ‘Amelia?’

  Dmitri winced. ‘No, it wasn’t her.’

  I could feel the tremble under his skin. Dread fell over us like a dark cloud and we marched grimly onwards. Tears burned in my eyes. The first day of my marriage was supposed to be my happiest. Instead it was full of gloom.

  ‘Come on, Anya,’ said Dmitri, quickening his pace. ‘He’s probably asleep in the club and all this drama is for nothing.’

  The doors to the entrance hall were locked, but when we tried the side door we found that it was open. Dmitri ran his palm down the jamb, looking for signs of a break-in, but there were none and we smiled at each other. ‘I knew he would be here,’ Dmitri said. Amelia had told him that she’d been ringing the club since the early morning, but if Sergei was sleeping off alcohol, or opium, he may not have heard the telephone.

  The scent of roses in the foyer was overpowering. I pressed my face to the dewy petals, drinking in their perfume. They were a pleasant memory.

  ‘Sergei!’ Dmitri called out. There was no response. I ran into the hall and followed him across the dance floor, my footsteps echoing in the vacant space. I was filled with sadness and couldn’t understand why. The office was empty. Nothing had been disturbed except for the telephone. It was sprawled out on the floor. The base was cracked and the receiver cord was twisted around the leg of a chair.

  We searched the restaurant, looking under the tables and behind the reception desk. We ran through the kitchen and the bathrooms, and even climbed the narrow staircase to the rooftop, but there was no sign of Sergei anywhere in the club.

  ‘What now?’ I asked Dmitri. ‘At least we know it was Sergei who telephoned us.’

  Dmitri rubbed his hand over his jaw. ‘I want you to go home and wait for me there,’ he said.

  I watched Dmitri scramble down the stone steps and hail a rickshaw. I knew where he was going. He was heading for the slums and backstreets of the Concession, where I had once been robbed of my mother’s necklace. And if he couldn’t find Sergei there, he would head to West Chessboard Street where the stench of opium would still be trapped in the narrow alleys. The false shopfronts would be going up and the dealers would be packing away their wares for the day.

  On my way back to the apartment I passed teashops, incense merchants and butchers opening up their businesses. When I reached the cobblestoned street at the rear of the building I found it deserted. There was no sign of the boy on his bicycle or his mother. I searched in my purse for the door key but something sweet made my nose itch and stopped me in my tracks. The scent of violets. I looked up at the window boxes but knew that the smell could not be coming from there.

  I spotted the grille and bonnet of Sergei’s limousine. It was poking out of a laneway between the bakery and a house. I wondered how Dmitri and I had missed it before. I ran across the street towards the car and saw Sergei sitting in the front seat, watching me. He was smiling, one hand resting on the wheel. I cried out with relief.

  ‘We’ve been worried about you!’ I said, throwing myself on the shiny bonnet. ‘Have you been there all night?’ From the angle of the bonnet the glary sky reflected in the windscreen and hid Sergei’s face from me. I squinted at him, wondering why he didn’t answer me. ‘I’ve been thinking of nothing but Communists and assassinations all morning, and here you are!’ I said.

  There was no sound from the car. I slipped off the bonnet and squeezed between the wall and the passenger side. I wrenched the door open. A putrid smell hit me. The blood drained from my face. Sergei’s lap was stained with vomit. He was sitting unnaturally still.

  I reached for his face but it was cold and stretched like leather. His eyes were congealed. His top lip was curled back, baring his teeth. He hadn’t been smiling at all.

  ‘No!’ I cried. ‘No!’ I clutched his arms, unable to comprehend the sight before me. I shook him. When he didn’t respond, I grabbed him harder. It was as if I couldn’t believe what I was seeing was real and if I just shook the corpse long enough it would turn into Sergei again. One of his hands clenched his knee, something shiny glinting in the curve of his fist. I pried open his fingers and managed to grasp the object. A wedding ring. I wiped at the tears in my eyes, trying to see the pattern that was engraved on it. A circle of doves flying on a band of white gold. I ignored the stench and rested my head on Sergei’s shoulder, weeping. When I did so, I was sure I heard him speak to me. ‘Bury me with it,’ he said. ‘I want to go to her.’

  Two days later we gathered in the club’s foyer for the funeral. The wedding roses were already turning brown at their tips, like the leaves outside. They drooped their heads as if in mourning. The lilies shrivelled and wrinkled like maidens fading into old women before their time. The servants added cloves and cinnamon to the floral display, so that the air became at once spicy and gloomy, reminding us that the darker months were on their way. They also burned vanilla beans, hoping the loam-like aroma would hide
the smell that seeped from the carved oak coffin.

  After discovering Sergei, I had called the manservant to help me take him back to the house. Dmitri met us there. Amelia called a doctor. He examined the body and pronounced death from a heart attack. Dmitri and I washed Sergei as lovingly as parents bathe a newborn and laid him to rest on a table in the front parlour, intending to call the undertaker the following day. But in the evening Amelia called us back to the house. ‘The whole place smells of him. There is nowhere to escape.’

  When we arrived, the house was engulfed in a fetid odour. We examined the body and saw red welts on the face and neck and that the hands were covered with purple spots. Sergei was putrefying in front of us, decaying much faster than normal. It was as though his body was willing itself to dissolve from this world as rapidly as possible, to return to dust without delay.

  Autumn fell like a guillotine the day of the funeral, cutting us off from the last of the blue summer skies and cloaking us in hues of steely grey. A drizzly rain dampened our faces, and a wind that gathered strength from north and south blew in gusts and froze us to the bone. We buried Sergei in the Russian Cemetery, under the shadow of the orthodox crosses and amid the smell of rotting leaves and damp earth. I teetered at the edge of the grave, staring at the coffin that cradled Sergei like a womb. If Amelia had disliked me before Sergei’s death, she hated me with a fierceness after it. She pressed herself against my side, nudging me with her shoulder as if she hoped I would fall into the grave too. ‘You killed him, you selfish girl,’ she whispered in a raspy voice. ‘You worked him to his death. He was as strong as an ox until your wedding.’

  Afterwards at the wake Dmitri and I gorged ourselves on ginger biscuits, longing to taste sweetness again in our numb mouths. Amelia had managed to distract herself in between funeral arrangements with trips to the races and shopping expeditions, while Dmitri and I had wandered like ghosts in the apartment, devoid of our senses of taste and smell. Every day we discovered on a bookshelf or in a cupboard some new object, a photograph in a frame, a trinket, an ornament, which Sergei had lovingly chosen for us. His intention had been to bring us joy each time we found one, but in the shadow of his death those objects pierced us like arrows. In bed we clung to each other, not as newlyweds but as drowning people, staring into each other’s ashen faces and searching for answers.