White Gardenia

by Belinda Alexandra

  Even when the second scene finished and the lights came up for the interval, I couldn’t recover my senses. I handed Lily to Ivan. ‘I have to go to the ladies’ room,’ I told him.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Vera, getting out of her seat. I nodded, although it wasn’t my intention to empty my bladder. I wanted to search for my mother.

  We made our way through the crowded corridor to the washroom. It was as chaotic as the cloakroom had been. There was no line to wait for the stalls. The women stood in a huddle and pushed against each other to get to the front when a stall became free. Vera pressed a tissue as stiff as cardboard into my hand. ‘Thank you,’ I said, remembering that there was no paper to be found in public toilets anywhere in Moscow. The toilets in the Tretyakov Gallery hadn’t even had seats.

  A woman came out of the stall in front of us and Vera pushed me forward. ‘After you,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait for you outside.’ I hooked the door behind me. The cubicle stank of urine and bleach. I watched through the crack in the door for Vera to go into a stall and, as soon as she did, I pulled the chain in mine and raced out of the ladies’ room and into the corridor.

  I scurried past the clusters of people chatting on the stairs and ran down to the first floor. There was a smaller crowd there and I searched every woman’s face for someone who resembled my mother. She’ll be grey now, I told myself, and there will be wrinkles. But in the jumble of faces around me, I couldn’t find the one I was longing for. I pushed open the heavy doors and ran out onto the colonnade, thinking that for some reason she might be waiting out there. The temperature had dropped and the air bit through my blouse. Two soldiers were standing on the stairs, breathing puffs of condensation into the blackness. There was a row of taxis outside but no one else was in sight in the square.

  The soldiers turned around. One of them lifted his eyebrow at me. ‘You will catch cold out here,’ he said. His skin was the colour of milk, his eyes like blue opals. I stepped back inside the theatre, feeling the warmth from the central heating rise up around me. The soldier’s image stayed in my vision like a sunspot and I recalled the station in Harbin the day my mother was taken away. He reminded me of the young Soviet soldier who had let me escape.

  By the time I tried to squeeze my way back up the crowded staircase, the auditorium had emptied and the foyer was crowded with people. I managed to inch my way almost to the top and I noticed Vera leaning on the balustrade. She was turned away from me, talking to someone. My view of the other person was blocked by a plant urn. It wasn’t Ivan because I could see him at the far end of the foyer with Lily bundled in his arms, peering out the window to the square. I craned my neck to see around the urn and caught a glimpse of a white-haired man in a maroon jacket. The man’s clothes were clean and pressed, but the back of his shirt collar was frayed and his trousers had a worn sheen to them. He was standing with his arms folded across his chest and every so often he gestured with his chin towards the window where Ivan was standing. I couldn’t hear what he and Vera were discussing above the hubbub of the crowd. Then the man shifted his foot and turned a degree. I caught sight of the pouches under his eyes. I knew I had seen his face before. He was the souvenir seller at the hotel. I pressed myself against the balustrade and strained my ears to listen to what he was saying. For a moment there was a lull in the chatter and I heard the man say, ‘They are not simple tourists, Comrade Otova. Their Russian is too perfect. The baby is a front. It may not even be theirs. That’s why they should be taken in for questioning.’

  My breath caught in my throat. I’d guessed that the old man was spying for the KGB, but I’d had no idea that he suspected us. I stepped back from the balustrade, my legs trembling. I’d only half believed Vera was with the KGB, but I had been right. She had been setting a trap.

  I darted up the staircase, pawing at people to get out of my way so that I could reach Ivan. But the crowd seemed to be jammed together shoulder to shoulder. I was hemmed in by mountains of poorly made suits and twenty-year-old dresses. Everyone seemed to reek of camphor or honeysuckle, the year’s standard issue perfume. ‘Izvinite. Izvinite. Excuse me. Excuse me,’ I said, trying to push my way past them.

  Ivan had seated himself discreetly by the window and was bouncing Lily in his lap, playing with her fingers. I tried to will him to look at me but he and Lily were too captivated by their game. Get to the Australian Embassy, I told myself. Grab Ivan and Lily and go there.

  I glanced over my shoulder. At that same moment Vera swivelled on her heel and her eyes met mine. She frowned and glanced towards the stairs. I could see her mind ticking over. She turned to the man and said something before pushing her way through the crowd towards me.

  My head throbbed. Everything seemed to be in slow motion. I’d felt this way once before, when was it? I remembered again the day on the station in Harbin. Tang inching towards me through the crowd. I grabbed and clawed at the people around me. A bell chimed for the next act and suddenly the crush of people loosened and began to fall away, like apples dropping from a burst bag. Ivan turned around and saw me. His face blanched.

  ‘Anya!’ he cried. My blouse was soaked. I touched my face, my hands were slippery with sweat. ‘We have to get out of here,’ I wheezed. The gripping sensation in my chest was so ferocious I thought I might be having a heart attack.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We have to…’ but I couldn’t get the words out fast enough. My throat was swollen with fear.

  ‘My God, Anya,’ Ivan said, clutching at me, ‘what’s happened?’

  ‘Mrs Nickham.’ Vera’s fingers clamped on my elbow like a vice. ‘We must get you back to your hotel immediately. It appears your flu has taken a bad turn. Look at your face. You have a fever.’

  Her touch sickened me. I could barely keep myself upright. It was too surreal. I was about to be taken in for questioning by the KGB. I stared at the people hurrying through the doors back into the auditorium and resisted the urge to scream. I couldn’t imagine anyone coming to our assistance. We were trapped. The best we could do was to cooperate, but deciding that didn’t make me feel any calmer. I clenched my toes in my shoes, bracing myself for whatever would come next.

  ‘Your flu?’ Ivan cried. He touched the wetness of my blouse then turned to Vera. ‘I’ll get our coats. Can the hotel call a doctor?’

  So this is how they do it, I thought. This is how they make their arrests in public and snatch you away in front of everyone.

  ‘Give the child to me,’ Vera said to Ivan. Her face was unreadable. I didn’t know her well enough to imagine what she was capable of doing.

  ‘No!’ I screamed.

  ‘You should think what is best in terms of the child,’ Vera snapped at me; her voice was like nothing I had heard from her before. ‘The flu is extremely contagious.’

  Ivan passed Lily over to Vera. The moment I saw her arms wrap around Lily something inside me broke. It occurred to me as I watched them that in trying to find my mother I could lose my daughter. Whatever is to happen, I prayed, let it come. But let Lily be safe.

  I glanced at the man with the white hair. He was looking at me with a fixed stare, holding his hands to his chest as if he were witnessing something distasteful.

  ‘This is Comrade Gorin,’ Vera said to me. ‘You may know him from your hotel?’

  ‘The flu can be very bad in Moscow in winter,’ he said, shifting his feet. ‘You must stay in bed and rest until you are better.’

  He kept his limbs tucked in tight to his body, and the way he leaned with all his weight on his back foot would have been comical under other circumstances. It made him seem afraid of me. I decided it must be his loathing of foreigners that produced such a posture in him.

  Ivan returned with our coats and wrapped mine around me. Vera tied her scarf loosely around Lily’s mouth, making it into a mask. Gorin watched her, his eyes growing larger. He took another step back from us and said, ‘I must return to my seat or I’ll miss the next act.’

  Like a s
pider running back to his hole, I thought. He’s leaving the dirty work to Vera.

  ‘Take Lily,’ I whispered to Ivan. ‘Take Lily please.’

  Ivan glanced sideways at me but did as I asked. When I saw Lily lifted out of Vera’s arms and in her father’s again, my head cleared. Vera pretended to help me down the stairs when she was really pressing me against the balustrade so I couldn’t wriggle away. I willed myself forward, watching my feet on each step. They won’t know what I don’t tell them, I thought. Then I remembered all the stories I’d heard about the KGB putting babies into boiling water to make their mothers confess, and I became weak in the legs again.

  The soldiers outside the theatre were gone. Only the line of taxis remained. Ivan walked ahead of us, his head tucked to his chest and his arms wrapped around Lily. One of the taxi drivers stamped out his cigarette when he saw us walking in his direction. He was about to get back into his cab when Vera shook her head at him and pushed me towards a black Lada waiting near the kerb. The driver was sitting low in his seat, his collar pulled up around his face. I gave out a cry and dug my boots into the snow.

  ‘It’s not a taxi,’ I tried to tell Ivan, my words slurring out like a drunk woman’s.

  ‘It’s a private taxi,’ Vera muttered under her breath.

  ‘We’re Australian,’ I told her, clutching at her shoulder. ‘I can call the embassy, you know. You can’t touch us.’

  ‘You’re as much an Australian as I’m a Pakistani,’ Vera responded, opening the car door and shoving me into the back seat, behind the driver. Ivan climbed into the other side with Lily. I gave Vera a defiant glare and she ducked down so quickly that I flinched, expecting her to slap me. Instead she tucked my coat under my legs so that it wouldn’t get caught in the door. The gesture was so motherly that I was struck dumb by the juxtaposition. She embraced me, letting out a laugh that sounded like a mixture of mirth and long-suffering patience.

  ‘Anna Victorovna Kozlova, I will never forget you,’ she said. ‘You are your mother all over and I’ll miss you both. It’s a good thing I know that KGB informer has a mortal terror of germs or it would have been difficult to get you out of his clutches.’ She laughed again and slammed the door. The Lada took off full throttle into the night. I spun around to look out of the rear window. Vera was heading back towards the theatre with her usual straight-spined gait. I clutched my fist to my head. What on earth was going on?

  Ivan leaned forward and gave the driver the name and address of our hotel. The driver didn’t respond and went in the opposite direction on Prospect Marksa, in the direction of the Lubyanka. Ivan must have realised that we were heading in the wrong direction too because he ran his fingers through his hair and repeated the name of the hotel to the driver.

  ‘My wife is sick,’ he pleaded. ‘We must get her a doctor.’

  ‘I’m fine, Ivan,’ I told him. I was so frightened that my voice didn’t sound like my own.

  Ivan glared at me. ‘Anya, what was all that back there with Vera? What’s going on?’

  My mind was swimming. My arms tingled from where Vera had hugged me but the gesture hadn’t registered because I’d gone into shock. ‘They are taking us for questioning but they can’t do that until we’ve contacted the embassy.’

  ‘I thought I was taking you to see you mother.’

  The voice from the darkness sent pins and needles through me. I didn’t need to lean forward to know who the driver was.

  ‘General!’ Ivan cried out. ‘We were wondering when you were going to show up!’

  ‘Probably not for another day,’ he said. ‘But we had to change our plans.’

  ‘Lily,’ Ivan muttered. ‘I’m sorry. We didn’t think…’

  ‘No,’ the General replied, trying to keep the laughter out of his voice. ‘It was Anya. Vera said she was being difficult and was drawing attention to herself.’

  I cringed. I should have been ashamed of my stupid paranoia but all I could do was laugh and choke on my tears at the same time.

  ‘Who is Vera?’ Ivan asked, shaking his head at me.

  ‘Vera is Anya’s mother’s best friend,’ the General replied. ‘She’d do anything to help her. She lost two brothers to Stalin’s regime.’

  I pressed my hands to my eyes. The world was spinning around me. I was changing, transforming from the person I had been all my life. A gap was opening up inside me. The void, so long buried by all the things I’d tried to fill it up with, rose to the surface. But instead of causing me pain, joy was rushing into the empty space.

  ‘I had hoped that you would get to see the whole ballet,’ the General said. ‘But never mind.’

  The tears ran in streams down my face. ‘It was the version with the happy ending, wasn’t it?’ I said.

  About fifteen minutes from the Bolshoi Theatre, the General brings the car to a stop outside an old apartment building, five floors high. A lump forms like a stone in my throat. What will I say to her? After twenty-three years what will our first words be?

  ‘Come back down here in half an hour,’ says the General. ‘Vishnevsky has arranged an escort and you must leave tonight.’ We close the car doors and watch the Lada disappear down the street. I realise now how foolish it was of me to think that the General could be a normal man. He is a guardian angel.

  Ivan and I walk through an archway, the ground under our feet sodden with snow, and find ourselves in a dimly lit courtyard. ‘It was the top floor, wasn’t it?’ Ivan asks, pulling open a metal door which clangs shut behind us. Someone has nailed a blanket around the doorpost in an attempt at insulation. It is almost as cold in the hallway as it was outside, and dark too. Two shovels lean against the wall, melted ice pooled around their tips. We climb the five flights of stairs to the top floor because the elevator is broken. The steps are covered in dust and the stairwell smells of clay. Our heavy clothes make us pant and sweat. I remember that the General told me my mother has problems with her legs, and I cringe to think that she can’t leave her apartment without help. I squint in the weak light and see that the walls are painted grey but the ornate ceiling mouldings and door frames depict faded birds and flowers. Their decorativeness suggests that the building was once a grand mansion. Each landing has a stained-glass window in the corner, but most of the panes have been replaced with cheap frosted glass or bits of wood.

  We reach the landing on the top floor and a door creaks open. A woman in a black dress steps out. She balances herself on her walking stick and squints at us. I don’t recognise her at first. Her hair is the colour of pewter and mostly hidden under a scarf. Her stout legs are twisted and veined beneath the skin-toned medical stockings. But then she straightens her back and our eyes meet. I see her as she was when she was in Harbin, in her smart chiffon dress, the breeze in her hair, standing by the gate, waiting for me to come home from school.

  ‘Anya!’ she cries out. Her voice breaks my heart. It is that of an old woman, not that of my mother. She lifts a trembling hand out to me and then clasps it to her bosom as if she has seen a vision. There are liver spots on the backs of her hands and deep grooves around her mouth. She looks old for her age, a sign of the hardness of her life, while I look young. But her eyes are more beautiful than ever. They glisten like diamonds.

  ‘Anya! Anya! My darling baby! My beautiful child!’ she calls out, her eyes reddening with tears. I step towards her but falter. My courage runs out of me and I find myself weeping. Ivan puts his hand on my shoulder. His kind voice in my ear is the only link I have to reality. ‘Show her Lily,’ he whispers, nudging me forward. ‘Show her granddaughter to her.’ He takes my arms and wraps Lily into them, tugging the blanket away from her face. Lily opens her eyes and stares at me in wonder. She has the same eyes as the woman who is reaching out to me now. Amber and beautiful. Wise and kind. She babbles and kicks her legs, then suddenly turns to the woman and leans with all her strength towards her, veering away from me.

  I am in China again and I am twelve years old. I have fallen over and
hurt myself and my mother wants to heal me. Each step towards her is awkward, but she opens her arms wide. When I reach her, she clasps me to her chest. The warmth of her rushes over me like steam from a hot spring. ‘My darling daughter! My baby girl!’ she murmurs, regarding me with such tenderness I think I will burst with it. We cradle Lily between us and gaze into each other’s faces, remembering all that we have lived through. What was lost has been found. What was ended can be started again. Mother and I are going home.

  Author’s Note

  Russians have a formal way of referring to each other based on their patronymic names. For instance, in White Gardenia Anya’s full name is Anna Victorovna Kozlova. Victorovna is derived from her father’s name, Victor, and Kozlova is the feminised version of his surname, Kozlov. When being addressed politely she would be referred to as Anna Victorovna, but among family and friends she would simply be called Anya. If you have read a Russian novel in translation you can understand how distracting this system can be for the Western reader. Why does a character who has been called Alexander Ivanovich for half the novel suddenly become Sasha?

  To avoid this kind of confusion, I decided to use the characters’ patronymic names only in very formal situations, such as in letters, Sergei’s will, formal introductions and so on, in order to give a sense of the Russian custom. For most of the book I used the characters’ informal names. I also had Anya continue to use her surname, Kozlova, when she arrived in Australia, although she may have chosen to drop the feminised ending of her name to simply Kozlov.