White Gardenia

by Belinda Alexandra

  At the airport exit, the traffic was jammed. Ivan pulled Lily’s shawl around her nose and mouth to block out the built-up exhaust fumes. The driver patted his pocket, and then sprang out of the car. I saw that he was attaching the windscreen wipers. He jumped back in the car and slammed the door. ‘I’d forgotten I’d taken them off,’ he said. I looked at Ivan, who shrugged. I could only assume the driver had taken the wipers off because he was afraid they’d be stolen.

  A soldier tapped on the window and ordered the driver to move to the side of the road. I noticed the other taxis and cars were doing the same. A black limousine with its curtains drawn glided past like a sinister hearse. The rest of the cars started up their engines again and followed in its wake. A word hung in the air of the taxi but none of us voiced it. Nomenklatura. The party-privileged.

  Through the water-spotted window I could see that the highway was flanked by birch trees. I stared at their thin white trunks and the snow balanced on their bare limbs. The trees were like creatures from a fairytale, mythical beings in a story my father might have told me before bedtime when I was a girl. Although it was early afternoon, the sun was slipping away and darkness was falling. After a few miles, the trees started to give way to blocks of apartments. The buildings were drab with small windows and no embellishments. Some of them were half finished, with cranes perched on their roofs. Every so often we would pass a snow-covered playground or courtyard, but more often than not the buildings were crammed side by side, the snow around them stained and icy. For miles they stretched on, exhibiting a uniform grimness, and all the while I was aware that somewhere in this city of concrete my mother was waiting for me.

  Moscow was a city of layers, its pattern of growth like the rings of a tree. Each mile took us deeper into the past. In an open plaza, watched over by a towering statue of Lenin, people were standing in a line outside a store where the clerks were adding up the totals on abacuses. A grocer sat by his stock, which he kept under a plastic sheet lest his potatoes freeze in the bitter cold. A man or woman, I couldn’t tell, bundled up in a padded coat and felt boots, was selling ice-cream. An old babushka held up the traffic, limping across the road with an armload of bread and cabbage. Further on, a mother and her child, wrapped like a precious parcel in a woollen hat and mittens, waited to cross the street. A trolley bus rumbled by, its sides caked in mud. I studied the occupants, who were barely visible through their layers of scarves and fur.

  These are my people, I thought, and tried to take in the truth of it. I loved Australia and it had loved me, but somehow I felt drawn to the people around me, as if we had all been cut from the same stone.

  Ivan tapped me on the arm and pointed out the front window. Moscow was transforming before our eyes into charming cobblestoned avenues and majestic buildings with pastel walls, gothic apartment buildings and Art Deco street lamps. Draped in whiteness, they were pure romance. Whatever the Soviets had to say about the Tsars, the buildings erected by the monarchy remained things of beauty, despite the climate and neglect, while the Soviet buildings that loomed over them were already suffering from peeling paint and chipped masonry.

  I tried to keep the distaste off my face when I realised that the block of glass and cement that the taxi driver had pulled up in front of was our hotel. The monstrous building dwarfed everything around it and was incongruous against the backdrop of the golden domes of the cathedrals within the Kremlin. It was as if they had deliberately tried to make something awful. I would have preferred to have stayed in the Hotel Metropol, magnificent in all its imperialist glory. The travel agent had tried to persuade us out of the hotel the General had told us to book by showing us pictures of the Metropol’s lavish fittings and the famous stained-glass ceiling. But it was also the KGB’s favourite haunt to watch rich foreigners and we were not in Moscow for a holiday.

  The foyer of our hotel was artificial marble and red carpet. It stank of cheap cigarettes and dust. We had followed the General’s instructions to the letter and, although we were a day early, I searched every face in the lobby for him. I told myself not to be disappointed when I couldn’t find him among the sombre men reading newspapers or loitering around the magazine stand. A dour-faced woman looked up from her cramped space behind the reception desk. She had startling pencilled-in eyebrows and a mole on her forehead as big as a coin.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Nickham. And our daughter, Lily,’ Ivan said to her.

  The woman flashed a gold-toothed grimace that wasn’t a smile and asked us for our passports. While Ivan filled in the registration form, I asked the woman as casually as I could manage if there were any messages for us. She checked our room box and returned with an envelope. I started to open it and noticed that the woman was watching me. But I couldn’t take the envelope away half-opened, that would have looked unnatural. So I hoisted Lily higher onto my chest, as if she were becoming heavy, and made my way over to a chair. My heart thumped with anticipation, but when I opened the piece of paper in the envelope I found that it was a sightseeing itinerary from Intourist. I felt like a child who wanted a bicycle for Christmas and got a school case instead. I had no idea what the itinerary meant. From the corner of my eye, I could see that the receptionist was still staring at me, so I slipped the envelope into my bag and lifted Lily into the air. ‘How’s my pretty girl?’ I cooed at her. ‘How’s my pretty girl with the wiggly nose?’

  When Ivan had completed the form, the receptionist handed him our key and called over the bellboy, an elderly man with bowed legs. He pushed the trolley with our suitcases on it in such an erratic manner that I began to suspect he was drunk, until I noticed that the trolley had a wheel missing. He pressed the elevator button and then leaned against the wall, exhausted. There was another man, about the same age, with bags under his eyes and holes in the elbows of his cardigan, sitting behind a table of dusty trinkets and matroshka dolls. There was a smell about him, like garlic mixed with some sort of antiseptic. He examined every inch of us, including our luggage, as if he were trying to lock our image into his memory. In any other country I would have assumed he was an old man trying to supplement his pension, but after the General’s stories about the KGB, the man’s stern-faced curiosity sent a shiver through me.

  Our room was small by Western standards and unbearably hot. The tasselled lampshade dangling from the ceiling threw an orange glow over the worn carpet. I inspected the steam heater under the window and discovered it was the kind that couldn’t be adjusted. A man’s tinny voice was praising the Soviet constitution. Ivan stepped around the bed to turn the radio off and found that there was no on-off switch. The best he could do was turn the volume down to static level.

  ‘Look at this,’ I said, pulling aside the lace curtains. Our room faced the Kremlin. The pinkbrick walls and the Byzantine churches glistened in the fading light. The Kremlin was where the Tsars used to be wed and crowned. I thought of the black limousine we’d seen at the airport earlier and remembered that new Tsars resided there now.

  While Ivan sorted out our bags, I laid Lily on the bed, undoing her heavy clothes and changing her into a cotton jumpsuit. I took our scarves and hats out of her basket and secured it between the pillows of the bed before laying her in it. She blinked her eyes sleepily. I stroked her tummy until she fell asleep, then sat back and watched her. The pattern on the bedcover caught my eye: intertwined branches, like vines, with pairs of doves perched on them. I remembered Marina’s grave in Shanghai, with the two engraved doves on her headstone, one fallen in an attitude of death, the other standing loyally by. Then I thought about the itinerary. My stomach heaved. My mother had been a day away from me in Peking before she had been thwarted by Tang. The General had come right to the door of the Moscow-Shanghai before Amelia had sent him away. What if, just as I was about to see my mother, the KGB had caught wind of our plans and had taken her away to a labour camp? This time for real.

  I looked up at Ivan. ‘Something’s gone wrong. They’re not coming,’ I mouthed to him. He shook his head a
nd stepped towards the bed, turning the volume on the radio up a notch. I took the itinerary from my handbag and handed it to him. He read it once, then again with a puzzled look on his face, as if he were trying to find clues in it. He gestured for me to follow him to the bathroom, and after he had turned on the tap, he asked who had given it to me. We had not booked an Intourist guide, although guides were compulsory for foreigners. I told him I was afraid that the itinerary had something to do with the KGB.

  Ivan rubbed my shoulder. ‘Anya,’ he said, ‘you’re tired and you’re thinking with an overheated brain. The General said the second. That’s not until tomorrow.’

  There were circles under his eyes and I reminded myself that the situation was a strain for him too. He had spent days and nights putting his business affairs in order to make things easier for his partner while he was away, and in case he didn’t come back. Ivan was willing to sacrifice everything for my happiness.

  I felt the months of waiting bear down on me. With only a few hours left till our scheduled meeting date, it wasn’t the time to lose faith. And yet, the nearer the time came, the more doubtful I felt. ‘I don’t deserve you,’ I said to Ivan, a tremble in my voice. ‘Or Lily. I’m not a deserving mother. Lily might get the flu and die.’

  Ivan studied my face. His mouth broke into a smile. ‘You Russian women always think like that. You’re a beautiful mother and Lily’s a tubby, healthy baby. Remember after she was born, you and Ruselina rushed off to the doctor because she “didn’t cry much and slept right through the night” and he examined her and said, “Half your luck.”’

  I smiled and leaned my head against his shoulder. Be strong, I told myself, and went over the General’s plan again in my mind. He had said that he was going to get us out through East Germany. When he first told me that I had visions of guards in watchtowers, bloodhounds, tunnels and being shot at as we made a run for the Wall, but the General shook his head. ‘Vishnevsky will get you a permit to cross the border, but you will still have to be wary of the KGB. Even the Nomenklatura are watched.’ I wondered who this Vishnevksy was, and what my mother and the General had done to make friends with such a highly placed official. Or was it possible that there was some compassion behind the Iron Curtain?

  ‘Thank God I married you,’ I said to Ivan.

  He put the itinerary on the basin shelf and clicked his fingers, his smile growing wider. ‘It’s a plan,’ he whispered. ‘Weren’t you the one who told me that we are in the care of a master spy? Have faith, Anya. Have faith. It’s a plan. And a good one too, knowing the General.’

  The next morning, while we sat in the hotel restaurant for breakfast, I wavered between hopefulness and anguish about what the day would bring. Ivan, on the other hand, seemed calm, tracing the grain of the table with his finger. The waitress automatically brought us scrambled eggs and two pieces of toast, although the Russian breakfast of black bread, dried fish and cheese looked more appetising. Lily chewed the collar of her playsuit while we waited for the waitress to warm her bottle in a saucepan. When she returned, I dripped a bit onto my wrist. It was the perfect temperature and I thanked the waitress. The girl wasn’t afraid to smile, and said to me, ‘Russians, we love babies.’

  By nine o’clock we were in the foyer, coats, gloves and hats bundled on the seat beside us. Lily was sleepy after her meal and Ivan tucked her up in his coat. Our reasons for going along with the Intourist guide were precarious, but it seemed our best chance for the moment. Ivan believed that the General had arranged the tour to throw the KGB off our scent, to make us look like normal tourists, and that we would meet my mother somewhere along the way. I, on the other hand, couldn’t help worrying that the tour was a trick by the KGB to get information out of us.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Nickham?’

  We turned around to see a woman in a grey dress, with a fur coat slung over her arm, smiling at us. ‘I am Vera Otova. Your Intourist guide,’ she said. The woman had the upright bearing of someone who had been trained in the army. She was the right age to have fought in the last war, perhaps forty-seven or forty-eight. Ivan and I stood up to shake her hand. I felt fraudulent. The woman smelled of apple blossom perfume and her hands were manicured. She seemed nice enough, but I couldn’t be sure whether she was friend or foe. The General had told us, if questioned, to deny everything about our plan. ‘Anyone I send to you will know who you are. There will be no need for you to say anything. Beware. They could be a KGB agent.’

  It was going to be up to Vera Otova to let us know whose side she was on.

  Ivan cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry that we overlooked booking a guide when we left Sydney,’ he said, taking Vera’s coat and helping her into it. ‘Our travel agent must have done it for us.’

  A dark look washed over Vera’s face, but was quickly dispelled again by her gap-toothed smile. ‘Yes, you must have a guide for Moscow,’ she said, perching her woollen beret on her head. ‘It makes life much easier.’

  I knew that was a lie. It was necessary for foreigners to have guides so they wouldn’t go to places they weren’t supposed to and see what the government didn’t want them to see. The General had told us about it. The tours were set for museums, cultural events and war memorials. We would never get to see the real victims of Russia’s corrupt Communism: chronic alcoholics dying in the snow, old women begging outside train stations, homeless families, children who should be in school digging up roads. But the lie didn’t make me dismiss Vera as a fake immediately. What else could she have said in a crowded hotel foyer?

  Ivan helped me into my coat and then bent towards the seat, lifting Lily up out of the folds of his coat.

  ‘A baby?’ Vera turned to me, her smile fixed on her face. ‘No one told me that you were bringing a baby.’

  ‘She’s a good baby,’ said Ivan, bouncing Lily in his arms. Lily, suddenly wide awake, giggled and pulled his hat towards her mouth so that she could chew on it.

  Vera’s eyes had a squint to them. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking when she touched Lily’s cheek. ‘A gorgeous baby. Such beautiful eyes. The colour of my pin,’ she said, pointing to the amber brooch in the shape of a butterfly that she wore on her collar. ‘But we might have to make some…modifications to our program.’

  ‘We don’t want to go anywhere we can’t take Lily,’ I said, slipping on my gloves. My remark seemed to unnerve Vera; her eyes grew wide and her face flushed. But she quickly recovered. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I quite understand. It was the ballet I was thinking about. They don’t allow children under five inside the auditorium.’

  ‘Perhaps I can stay behind with Lily,’ suggested Ivan. ‘You can take Anya. She would love to see a ballet.’

  Vera bit her lip. I could see she was trying to work something out in her mind. ‘No, that would never do,’ she said. ‘You can’t come to Moscow and not see the Bolshoi.’ She fiddled with the wedding ring on her finger. ‘If you don’t mind, while we are at the Kremlin I’ll put you with a group tour and I’ll go see if I can arrange something.’

  ‘You let me know whatever you need to arrange things,’ Ivan said as we followed Vera towards the hotel doors.

  Vera’s heels tapped on the floor tiles in a staccato rhythm. ‘Your travel agent said that you both speak excellent Russian but I don’t mind to speak in English,’ she said, her chin disappearing as she wrapped her long scarf several times around her neck. ‘You tell me which language you prefer. You can practise your Russian if you like.’

  Ivan touched Vera’s arm. ‘I say that when in Russia do as the Russians do.’

  Vera smiled. But I couldn’t tell if it was because she was charmed by Ivan or because she had won some sort of victory.

  ‘You wait in here,’ she said. ‘I’ll get a taxi to come to the door.’

  We watched Vera rush outside and say something to the doorman. A few moments later a taxi pulled up. The driver got out and opened the passenger doors. Vera signalled to us to come out and get inside the car.

  �
�What was that all about?’ I asked Ivan when we stepped into the revolving door. ‘All that stuff about “You let me know whatever you need to arrange things.”’

  Ivan linked his arm with mine and whispered, ‘Roubles. I think what Madame Otova was talking about was a bribe.’

  The entrance of the Tretyakov Gallery was as calm as a monastery. Vera passed a voucher to the woman in the booth and held up our tickets to us. ‘Let’s put our things away in the cloakroom,’ she said, waving for us to follow her down a flight of stairs.

  The cloakroom attendants wore shabby blue coats over their dresses and scarves on their heads. They were bustling between the rows of hangers with armloads of bulky overcoats and hats. I was shocked at how old they were; I wasn’t used to seeing women in their eighties still working. They turned and looked at us, and nodded when they saw Vera. We handed our coats and hats over to them. One of the women saw Lily’s face poking through the shawl and jokingly handed me a number for her. ‘Leave her,’ she said. ‘I’ll take care of her.’ I looked into the woman’s face. Although her mouth was turned down, like those of the other attendants, merriness shone in her eyes. ‘I can’t. She’s a “valuable”,’ I smiled. The woman reached out and tickled Lily’s chin, nodding.

  Vera took her eyeglasses from her handbag and studied the special exhibitions program. She indicated the entrance to the gallery, and Ivan and I were about to head in that direction when one of the attendants called out. ‘Tapochki! Tapochki!’ She was shaking her head and pointing to our boots. I looked down and saw that the snow on our boots had melted into puddles around our feet. The woman handed us each a pair of tapochki, felt overshoes. I slipped mine on over my boots, feeling like a naughty child. I looked down at Vera’s shoes. Her dry leather pumps looked as good as new.