Invented Lives

by Andrea Goldsmith

  Galina stops, and turns to face the unruly sea. ‘Are there lighthouses on Antarctica?’

  So she did hear.

  He shakes his head. Better not to speak.

  ‘Perhaps we should build one,’ she says, with a smile.

  A few minutes later they are standing at the southern end of the beach. ‘Over there,’ he says, nodding at the outcrop of land, ‘beyond that point is a beautiful lighthouse: Split Point Lighthouse, or the White Queen as she’s fondly known. It’s isolated, as you’d expect, but it’s also unusually dainty, and, to my eye, oddly vulnerable perched up there on the edge of the cliff.’

  He describes the slender white tower tapering to the red crown at the top, and the fine black window slits cut into the column; he creates the lighthouse for her. And a smile plays across her face, as if she were truly seeing it, and she squeezes his arm, still linked to hers.

  During the past few months, in the privacy of his mind, he has resorted to the cosmos to describe her. She is out of this world; she is heavenly; she’s a fiery comet; she’s a shooting star. And now here, on this Australian beach, with the roar of the sea and the awakened sky and her arm firm against his body, here on earth with him, how brightly does she shine, how greatly does he love her.

  That evening, they bought fish and chips, and took the food back to Andrew’s studio. He had tried to dissuade her, but she insisted: they always ended up at the saddlery, she said, and it was time for a change. He said his place was a mess; she said she didn’t mind mess. He said his place was cold; she said she was Russian, she knew about cold.

  ‘I have been to your studio before.’

  And on those occasions he had spent hours preparing. He had swept the floor of tesserae, he had tidied up books and magazines, he had vacuumed dog hair from the furniture, he had removed most of his lighthouse pictures (as if an obsession could be so easily downgraded to an interest), he had thrown a blanket over the stained couch and a makeshift tablecloth over the scarred table, he had purchased flowers and arranged them in a jar tizzed up in tinfoil, he had stocked the fridge with drinks and bought an array of food to nibble. Yes, she had come to his place, but on those occasions he had planned, he had organised.

  ‘It looks just the same as usual,’ she said, as they entered the studio that evening.

  Galina set out the fish and chips while Andrew fed Godrevy. Then he joined her on the couch, and together they ate their meal. The only cold drink he could find was a single stubby of beer, and they passed the bottle between them. Galina felt relaxed and contented after their perfect day, and pleased to be here rather than her place.

  There was something intrinsically romantic about Andrew’s studio, that the artist might wake in the middle of the night with a bright idea and go straight to work. It was the romance of creativity, Galina decided, and while she supposed her saddlery provided the same for her, she didn’t think of herself in the same artistic terms as she did Andrew. Émile Zola was a foreign writer readily available in Russian, and Galina had read his novel The Masterpiece as a student. It was this book more than any real experience that had created for her the life of the artist. Andrew’s studio, although far more spacious than the studios in Zola’s novel, was in other respects similar. (While there was much she did not know about the West, Galina had been surprised at how much she actually did know from the novels she had read. Such a cheap and ready source of knowledge, it was surprising no one ever mentioned it.)

  They ate, they passed the bottle between them, Galina relaxed, and Andrew fretted. He worried she was not comfortable, that she’d prefer to be in different company, that he could think of nothing interesting to say, that there wasn’t more alcohol to loosen his tongue. And then, out of the blue, it occurred to him that while his whole mind was focused on her, it was not really on her, it was focused on his worries about her, which meant he was missing out on her now: Galya with him, in his home, on his couch.

  Andrew wanted so much to happen with her; he wanted today, he wanted next week, he wanted next year, he wanted his whole life. Though surely, if there’d been a chance of her falling in love with him, she would have done so by now. As for himself, only a fool or a masochist would fall in love where there was no chance of reciprocity. She was beautiful and interesting and creative and talented, but all these qualities could be enjoyed in a close friendship. And while he longed to touch her, hold her, kiss her, make love to her, sleep with her, wake up next to her, he could deal with these longings — was already dealing with them. He needed to shift Galina into a more realistic perspective; he needed to remove her from the centre of his longings.

  The problem was he didn’t want to.

  They finished their meal, and while he cleared up and made coffee, Galina took herself to the far end of the room where the pool mosaic lay finished. The work stretched in brilliant blueness for close on four metres. She had seen this work at various stages of its creation, but this was her first sight of it completed. She knelt down and ran her hand over the sparkling water.

  In high summer in Leningrad during the white nights, a sheer ethereal blue floats over the streets and squares, the gardens and waterways. It creates a sense of enchantment, as if you are moving through a dreamscape. As unlikely as it was, Andrew’s pool reminded her of Leningrad’s white nights. She felt an almost irresistible urge to lie down on the mosaic and rest in its exquisite blueness.

  Andrew returned to the couch, and Galina pulled herself away from the pool to join him. They sat in silence drinking their coffee. Andrew was waiting for her to say something about his mosaic. Hadn’t she liked it? Or did they have nothing to say to each other? Or perhaps this silence might be described as companionable. And in the end he decided, uncharacteristically for him, to opt for the more favourable alternative. And why not? The evening was progressing well, better than he could have hoped for.

  Then it all blew up.

  ‘We are so lucky to have art,’ she said, breaking the silence and nodding in the direction of his mosaic pool. ‘I thank the gods for such a gift.’

  His reply came without pause. ‘Art never saved anyone.’

  Perhaps he intended to be modest, or perhaps he was trying to be cool by promoting a view currently fashionable in some quarters. Whatever the reason, he found himself defending a position he did not believe.

  ‘You cannot think this about art,’ she said.

  And again without pause. ‘Bombs kill. Starvation kills. Torture kills. Natural disasters kill. Art never stopped any of this.’

  ‘But you said, “Art never saved anyone.” Do you really believe this?’

  The silence that now descended was definitely not companionable. When he failed to answer, she spoke again. ‘Have you never in despair looked at a painting or listened to a piece of music or read a poem, and been returned to life?’

  Of course he had, he wanted to shout. All the time. But his throat had seized up.

  Galina was watching him, she could see his struggle, but on this topic she would not help. Every Russian knows that art saves lives; poetry, music, novels, paintings, all these have saved lives. A million people died in the siege of Leningrad, but the number would have been even greater if not for poetry. Throughout those nine hundred desperate days, so her mother had told her, Olga Berggolts’s radio broadcasts encouraged with inspiring words and stories, but most of all it was her poetry that sustained the people. Who knows how many more Leningraders would have died in the siege if not for the poetry of Olga Berggolts, she wanted to ask Andrew, who had probably never heard of the siege of Leningrad, much less of Olga Berggolts. And another story from the siege: a young woman, an artist, starving like everyone else, who made herself paint through a long freezing night, knowing that if she didn’t she would succumb to the overwhelming desire to curl up on the floor and let death take her.

  This meticulous ability to mute pain — that’s what art can do, and A
ndrew was denying it. Andrew with his comfortable, fear-free life didn’t know what he was talking about.

  Then there was Shostakovich’s life-saving Seventh Symphony first heard in Leningrad during the siege. Andrew probably knew nothing of the great Dmitri Dmitriyevich. The Germans tried to stop the performance, they wanted to silence so powerful a weapon. But they failed and the performance went ahead; recorded and played over the wireless, it energised hundreds of thousands of Leningraders. The Nazis knew what Andrew was now denying: art saves life, art gives life. And the reams of literature circulated in samizdat in the post-Stalinist years — people risked their life for this art because they knew it would make them stronger. And Anna Akhmatova’s Requiem. ‘Can you describe this?’ a woman asked the poet as they stood in the prison lines in Leningrad at the height of the terror. ‘Can you describe this?’ And when Akhmatova said she could, the woman smiled: people would know of these terrible times. Akhmatova’s life was hard. She survived the death of her husband and the imprisonment of her son; she survived censorship and repression; she wrote poetry and she survived.

  Galina wondered what had made Andrew say something so demonstrably wrong. Given his own frailties and the fact he was an artist himself, she expected there had been many times when he had turned to art to pull him out of the mire. Of course he must know about the power of art to fortify and save.

  At last he was speaking. He was apologising, although not entirely coherently. Then, after another silence, he summoned a fresh breath, heralding a change of topic — a less contentious one, she hoped, or, to use one of her favourite Australianisms, one that was less dodgy.

  ‘Do you think love can save lives?’ he said.

  The weather, travel, even politics would have been preferable to love, but at least it was a change of topic. ‘Well, yes,’ she said carefully. ‘Love can save lives in the sense of dashing into a burning house and rescuing your children, or getting your mother to hospital when she has had a stroke.’

  ‘I mean the power of love, in that more numinous sense that you’re suggesting is the power of art.’

  She shook her head. ‘No. Art speaks directly to you. Its effect is private. No one else need be involved.’ The words came slowly, she did not want to inflame either him or her. ‘When it comes to saving a life, art works in a very private way. But love always involves someone else. I would not like to think of my survival being hinged to another person.’

  ‘But falling in love —’

  And all caution abruptly disappeared. ‘Love is too important simply to fall into it thoughtlessly or unwittingly. Love deserves your fullest attention, your clearest consciousness. Love demands a deliberate course of action.’ She paused. ‘I would not fall in love with anyone.’

  He was thinking she used English better than he did, better than most native speakers. He was also thinking how instinctively he disagreed with her — and how she’d hate the idea of anything happening ‘instinctively’.

  Not long afterwards, she rose to leave. He said he’d walk her home; she said she would prefer to go alone.

  ‘Do you forgive me?’ he said at the door. And before she could answer, he added, ‘Are we all right?’

  She nodded, leaned towards him and kissed him briefly on the lips. ‘It was only an argument, Andryusha. Of course we are all right.’

  He did not believe her.

  He’d been such a fool; even as her friend, she surely must be having second thoughts. And what she said about love, it was meant personally, a clear statement she would never fall in love with him. As for the kiss, that was a kindness, a gesture of pity; so too the intimate Andryusha. He wished he could erase the evening, he wished he lived on a lighthouse far from human company, he wished he were not himself.

  His mind raged as he washed the dishes and tidied up, it raged as he took the rubbish out to the bin, it raged as he went up to the roof and smoked in the darkness, it raged when he returned inside. He paced the studio, up to one end and back to the other, up to the end and back again; he gathered some scattered tesserae, added them to his oddments tray, loitered at his workbench, rearranged the containers, straightened his tools, lined up everything with geometric precision, transferred a stack of small picture boards to a shelf.

  Then, with his thoughts banging against one another, he retrieved one of the picture boards and walked back to the bench. He cleared a space, positioned the board, sifted through his oddments for sea colours and sunset colours, selected tiles, glass, mother-of-pearl chips, some pieces of stone; he dragged his stool to the bench and sat himself down. And soon he was choosing and chipping, placing and gluing, working freehand to create a picture, impressionistic and colourful. He cut the chips in crescents and ellipses, and set them into a brilliant sunset of waves and swirls. A whirling Van Gogh sky emerged in yellows, oranges, reds, and pearly whites. And rising up and mingling with it were the peaks and eddies of a stormy sea — blues, greens, greys, and a peachy yellow — in the centre of which he built a lighthouse. Every so often he went to the sink to make up a fresh batch of glue. He did not drink; he did not use the toilet. His mind was quiet, his heart was still, his picture grew.

  He finished just before dawn. He had created a stormy seascape at sunset with a lighthouse. It was unlike anything he had ever done before. He made himself fresh coffee and went up to the roof. It was a vibrant dawn; the sky was lit with the colours of his painting.

  He watched the sun rise. He had survived the night.

  12

  LIFE’S RAFFLE

  Sylvie and Galina had arranged to spend the whole day together, starting with brunch at Galina’s local café. They had planned a walk through the cemetery to read the headstones — they’re like letters, or rather telegrams, Galina had said with a giggle — before visiting a gallery where one of her real estate colleagues was showing his work. But with her book about to go into production, and a number of last-minute queries to settle, her publishers had insisted she come to company headquarters and deal with the issues face-to-face.

  ‘My publishers are located practically in the bush,’ Galina said the previous evening when she telephoned Sylvie with her apologies. ‘And they are paying for me to take a taxi — both ways. I cannot guess what it will cost.’

  When Melbourne Meets Leningrad was shaping up to be a hit. Not only because the Soviet Union was front-page news, but the idea of two cities getting to know each other through their landmarks and customs had excited interest, not only with Galina’s Australian publisher, but also abroad. The book had already been sold into several territories, and a series of city-meets-city books had now been given the go-ahead. Galina’s publishers stood to make a pile of money from her first book. Of course they could shell out for a taxi, Sylvie was thinking. Both ways.

  ‘I already have an idea for my next book,’ Galina continued. ‘I want it to draw on Australian English, Aussie English. Pollie, dero, smoko, brekkie, rellies, drongo, and’ — a snort of laughter escaped down the phone — ‘miseryguts.’ She paused. ‘Do you think I should mention this when I see the publishers tomorrow?’

  Galina sought her opinion as no one else did. Sylvie was about to say she had no idea as to the best way of pitching a new book when common sense took over: Galina seemed to be on a roll with her publishers, and her Australian English book sounded appealing. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘if there’s an opportunity to mention it, I would.’

  The next day was sunny and clear. In her pre-Galina days, Sylvie would have absorbed her disappointment by baking, or visiting the sick, or sewing a few aprons for the annual Royal Children’s Hospital fête. But now she had her letter project, and what a godsend it had been. Sitting at her desk, she could forget about Leonard and her marriage, she could forget about their uncertain future; for hours, she could separate from her usual life, and when she returned to it she felt recharged. Of course she was disappointed not to be seeing Galya, but she was happy
for a day of work.

  She collected the washing from the machine, and went outside to hang it on the line. It was one of those late-blooming days of May that surprise like an early birthday gift; the sun still had some warmth and there was not a cloud in the sky. She bent down to the laundry basket and stretched up to the line, relishing the movement and soaking up the warmth. By the time the washing was neatly pegged, she had decided to forgo her work in favour of the original itinerary. She would drive to the other side of the city, she’d stroll through the cemetery, she’d have a meal at Galina’s favourite café, and she would do all this alone.

  She dressed light and bright in slacks and a pale-pink cotton jacket, and in a similarly light mood drove across town to Carlton. She parked near Melbourne University, at the opposite end of the cemetery from where Galina lived. As she locked the car she was struck by the unlikely neighbours: all those bright young people spending their formative years next door to the city’s dead. It was a geographical oddity that seemed vaguely perverse.

  A moment later she was revising her opinion. Death for most young people is so distant as to be irrelevant. For the students, this cemetery adjacent to their university might easily discard its deathliness and instead become a convenient place for a peaceful stroll or a short cut home, perhaps a lovers’ rendezvous. And at that very moment, a young couple, arms around each other, emerged from a side garden and exited via the main gates. As they passed, Sylvie smiled. They did not acknowledge her.

  The sun was gently shining, a breeze feathered her hair, the carolling of magpies rippled through the clear languid air. As she ambled along, she felt a sublime serenity. Is this the great gift of the dead? she wondered. That in some mysterious way they infuse you and soothe you with their everlasting rest? She could not remember walking here before, but then it was uncommon for her to take a leisurely stroll anywhere — and why she should be so busy with neither job nor young children, she did not know. Of course now, with her letter project, she really did have something to occupy her. And there’d been more time spent with Leonard recently. He seemed to need it; he seemed to need her.