Mr Romanov's Garden in the Sky

by Robert Newton

  It was amazing the things we found under all that rubbish. After a good hour of cleaning, Davey found a pile of old black-and-white photos on the dresser, and the two of us flipped through them while Mr Romanov tidied his bedroom. One in particular, a young man standing to attention in a smart uniform, grabbed our attention.

  ‘My God, that’s him,’ said Davey. ‘It’s Mr Romanov. He must have been a soldier or something.’

  When Davey held it up for a closer look, my eyes were drawn to the next photo on the top of the pile. It was a family snap, a young Mr Romanov, standing beside a lady in a pretty white dress. Nestled between them was a young girl, holding a small dog. It was hard to tell her age, but I guessed she was about nine years old.

  ‘Were you a soldier?’ asked Davey.

  I hadn’t realised Mr Romanov had come out from his room. Now that he was standing there I felt like an intruder. Rubbish was one thing, but helping ourselves to his photos without permission was disrespectful. He walked over and snatched the photo from Davey’s hand.

  ‘A long time ago,’ he said. ‘I was musician. Not soldier.’

  ‘But that’s an army uniform,’ said Davey.

  ‘Yes.’

  Rather than pick it up, I pointed to the photo on the top of the pile.

  ‘And what about that one?’ I asked. ‘I like that one.’

  Mr Romanov let go of the plastic bag he was holding and reached for the photo. He angled it to the light and when he saw who it was, his face seemed to soften in an instant.

  ‘My wife and daughter,’ he said.

  ‘You have a wife and daughter?’ I asked.

  ‘No, cowgirl. Not anymore.’

  All of a sudden Mr Romanov looked as if he was a hundred years old. He took a few steps back, then eased himself down into the battered armchair behind him. I looked around at what we’d done and I wondered if all the rubbish, all the piles of junk he’d gathered over the years had been something he needed, something that had buried the past.

  ‘You don’t have to talk,’ I said. ‘If it’s too hard, I totally . . .’

  ‘They were killed,’ he said. ‘A long time ago.’

  I glanced at Davey and he shifted awkwardly on his feet.

  ‘She’s pretty,’ I said. ‘Your wife, I mean. What was her name?’

  ‘Izabella,’ he said. ‘And my daughter, she was Nika.’

  Mr Romanov lifted the photo up in front of his face and touched it gently with the tips of his fingers. Watching him pour over it reminded me of when my father died and how no one would talk to me about it even though I wanted them to.

  ‘How did they die?’ I asked.

  Mr Romanov brought the photo down and rested it in his lap.

  ‘There was a fire at our house,’ he said.

  I walked over and saw the tears in his eyes. I knelt down beside him and put a hand on his arm.

  ‘I was the first violin,’ he continued. ‘We were playing at a fancy wedding in Moscow, a general’s daughter. We were setting up when they told me.’

  I blinked my eyes and felt my heart break.

  ‘But the general,’ continued Mr Romanov. ‘Ah yes, the general, he was an important man and he refused to let me go. I had to play for his princess. I had to play knowing my beautiful girls had died.’

  The blinking didn’t seem to be working.

  ‘Oh God, that’s the saddest thing I ever heard.’

  ‘I could not stay there after that,’ said Mr Romanov. ‘I could not be a soldier anymore so I ran away. I ran away, as far away as I could.’

  ‘And you came here?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Here.’

  Mr Romanov looked down at the photo in his lap. All of a sudden the cleaning no longer seemed important. I snuck a look at Davey and craned my head towards the door. We retreated from the room as quietly as we could and as Davey headed into the corridor outside, I stopped at the door like I had earlier that day. When I looked back, Mr Romanov picked up the photo and pressed it against his chest.

  ‘I’m starving,’ said Davey. ‘Got anything to eat at your place?’

  I woke the next morning alone in my bed. I got dressed, and after checking on my mother in her room, I walked to the fridge, took a slug of milk and headed out the door.

  It was school holidays, so I collected Davey as planned and the two of us made our way up to the twenty-second floor. Someone had been busy mopping, a kindly neighbour maybe, and the blood stains on the lino floor were now a faded pink, hardly noticeable among the scuff marks and grime that had been trampled in.

  When we arrived at Mr Romanov’s apartment, we found a slip of white paper tucked under the door. Davey picked it up and read the scratchy writing out loud.

  ‘UP HIGH, COWGIRL, IN THE CLOUDS.’

  With Davey’s casual voice, it took a few seconds for the panic to hit. I glanced down the corridor then looked up.

  ‘He’s up on the roof again,’ I said.

  I started to run and Davey followed after me.

  ‘What do you mean, again, Lexie?’

  ‘It’s where we first met. On the roof. He was standing on the ledge.’

  ‘What?’

  Nothing happened when I pushed the elevator button, so I bolted for the stairwell instead. When I got there I pushed the door open and started climbing the steps, two at a time. A few floors up my legs began to burn. I started heaving, sucking in lungfuls of air. The five floors seemed more like twenty and although our pace had slowed, we managed to make it to the top a lot faster than the elevator would have delivered us there.

  Sick with panic, I spilled through the door with Davey close behind and the two of us charged across the corridor for the metal stairs. I hauled myself up and when I got to the landing, I shot through the open door onto the rooftop outside. With all the steps we’d run up, my legs seemed a little confused but after a few metres of running they soon adjusted to the flat surface underneath them. I dodged and weaved through the utility sheds until I burst into the clearing and saw Mr Romanov standing beside the rectangular wooden frame in his familiar grey coat. A wave of relief washed over me and I doubled over and gobbled up the air.

  ‘Cowgirl, you got my note.’

  I wasn’t ready to straighten up, so I stayed bent over and forced the words from my mouth.

  ‘Yes, I got your note. Seriously, you frightened the hell out of me.’

  Davey didn’t seem too bad off. I could see him from the corner of my eye, standing beside me with his hands on his hips.

  ‘I’m getting a bit sick of this,’ he puffed. ‘Can someone please tell me what’s going on?’

  I wasn’t sure myself, so I lifted up a hand and pointed Mr Romanov’s way.

  ‘Ask him,’ I said.

  Although I wasn’t fully recovered, I was straight enough to see most of what was going on. Mr Romanov took a few steps to his right then extended a hand towards the frame, the way models do on game shows on TV.

  ‘Is good, yes?’

  Davey and I shot each other a look.

  ‘Yeah, it’s awesome,’ said Davey. ‘What is it?’

  Mr Romanov seemed a little hurt. He looked down at the wooden frame and when I followed his eyes I suddenly remembered something I’d found when we were cleaning his apartment. With all the junk around I hadn’t given them a second thought, but now, all those packets of seeds seemed to make sense.

  I walked over to the frame, and after placing my palms on one of the horizontal wooden sleepers, I looked at Mr Romanov and smiled.

  ‘A garden,’ I whispered.

  Davey came over and stood beside me.

  ‘What’d you say?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s building a garden, Davey.’

  ‘He is?’

  Davey had a quick look around the rooftop space then turned back to Mr Romanov on his right.

  ‘What, up here, you mean? You’re building a garden, up here?’

  ‘It is not just any garden, my friend.’

  ‘It’s not
? What kind is it, then?’

  ‘It is a garden . . . a garden in the sky.’

  ‘And we’re going to help him,’ I said.

  ‘We are?’

  ‘Why not? It’s school holidays, Davey. Anyway, what else are you going to do?’

  ‘I’ve got plenty to do.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Stuff.’

  ‘Stuff?’

  ‘Yeah. Stuff.’

  ‘You have no stuff, Davey. You have zero stuff.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just know. I mean, think about it. Imagine if we had a secret garden? We could come up here all the time. We could . . .’

  I was rambling again, making things my own like I always did. I turned to Mr Romanov beside me.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Romanov. Would it be all right if we helped? I mean, it’s your garden and everything, and you’ve done so much work already and I’d totally understand if . . .’

  Mr Romanov looked at me and smiled.

  ‘Cowgirl, I would like nothing more.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. But there is one thing I must ask first.’

  ‘Of course. Ask away.’

  ‘No one must find out,’ said Mr Romanov. ‘It must be our secret.’

  ‘Totally. Davey, did you hear that?’

  ‘Yeah, I heard.’

  Davey wasn’t paying attention. He seemed to be focused on the concrete floor inside the frame.

  ‘Can I ask a question?’ he said.

  There didn’t seem to be any point responding. Davey was going to ask it anyway.

  ‘Isn’t a garden supposed to have dirt? It’s going to take us years to fill this thing.’

  Mr Romanov raised a finger up and tapped the side of his head.

  ‘Not so long,’ he said. ‘You have heard of the movie The Great Escape?’

  ‘Hell, yeah,’ said Davey. ‘Steve McQueen. It’s a classic.’

  I could feel one of their chats coming on, so I jumped in before they lost me completely.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Who’s Steve McQueen again?’

  The two of them looked at me as if I was from another planet.

  ‘Really?’ said Davey. ‘You don’t know who Steve McQueen is?’

  ‘No, Davey, I don’t.’

  ‘Papillon? Bullitt? The Magnificent Seven?’

  ‘I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about, Davey.’

  ‘Well, The Great Escape was arguably his best movie, of course. It’s set during World War Two and it’s about a bunch of allied prisoners in a German POW camp who dig these tunnels under the fence and escape. Took ’em ages, like years, because they had to dig the tunnels themselves and they had to get rid of the dirt without the guards finding out. Anyway, Steve McQueen was . . . Are you listening, Lexie?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, tunnels and dirt, it’s fascinating, Davey.’

  Davey was so engrossed in his Steve McQueen story, he hadn’t noticed that Mr Romanov was no longer standing behind him. He was ten, maybe fifteen metres from us now and when I began to walk off after him, Davey turned and quickly followed.

  ‘Where’s he going?’ asked Davey.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said.

  Mr Romanov stopped beside one of the utility sheds and began searching for something in his pocket. He pulled out a silver key and after a few frustrating attempts, he managed to free the padlock from its metal loop and remove it. Davey and I stood there, intrigued, and when he opened the door, our jaws dropped. On the concrete floor inside the shed was a massive pile of dirt.

  ‘No way,’ said Davey. ‘How did that get there?’

  Mr Romanov stood proudly beside the door and smiled.

  ‘Slowly,’ he said. ‘Like Steve McQueen.’

  ‘Are you saying that you brought that dirt up? All by yourself?’

  ‘Me and Boris,’ he said.

  ‘But the elevator?’ said Davey. ‘The metal stairs? It must have taken you years.’

  ‘One year and six months.’

  It was hard to believe that the old man standing in front of me was capable of such a feat. I tried to imagine him hauling up the dirt, him and Boris and all the loads they would have carried in their cart.

  ‘So that’s what you’ve been doing,’ I said. ‘You’ve been collecting dirt. And you’ve been doing it at night so that no one sees.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the huge pile of dirt. In the year and six months it had taken Mr Romanov to collect it, I wondered how many times he’d been tormented, how many names he’d been called and how he’d managed to go on. And just for a moment, part of me understood why he’d been up on the ledge. Everything good in his life had been taken away and now that Boris was gone, he had nothing to live for.

  I didn’t realise I was crying until a wrinkled hand appeared in front of me holding a white handkerchief. I took it and turned away.

  ‘Cowgirl, why the tears?’

  ‘No reason,’ I said.

  I hardly ever cried in front of other people, not properly anyway. Crying was something I saved for my room, when my screen went down and I didn’t have to pretend. Mostly, I managed to stay strong, but when things got too hard, when the river of shit rose too high, I bawled into my pillow and let rip until the tank ran dry and there was nothing left to cry.

  To my surprise it was Davey who spoke first.

  ‘Are you okay, Lexie?’

  ‘Of course I’m okay. I got dirt in my eye, that’s all. Where were we again?’

  Like me, Davey was keen to move on.

  ‘The dirt,’ he said. ‘We’re going to help Mr Romanov line the frame with plastic and once that’s done we can start moving the dirt in. You probably don’t know this but autumn is the best time for planting, so as soon as we . . . Hey, where are you going? I’m talking, you know? Why does everyone keep walking away?’

  It didn’t take long to line the frame with plastic. Davey had done a project at school that involved some extensive research on worm farms and he claimed to know pretty much everything there was to know about plastic linings, so naturally I chose to take my instructions from Mr Romanov instead.

  To help things along we worked out a system and soon we had the lining in place, double layered, triple on the corners to prevent the dirt from spilling through the joins. Next we got busy with the dirt. It must have seemed like a breeze to Mr Romanov after all the loads he’d carried up by himself. We even had the luxury of two shovels and a wheelbarrow he’d found on a pile of hard rubbish to help us transfer the dirt. As hard as the work turned out to be, I began to enjoy it, especially the sight of the dirt rising slowly in the frame. After two solid hours, we’d managed to shift the entire pile and when the last shovel of dirt found its way into the frame, the three of us downed our tools and stood admiring our work. It was hard to believe we’d finished.

  ‘It’s starting to look like a garden,’ said Davey. ‘What are we going to put in?’

  ‘Not so fast, my friend.’

  Mr Romanov drove his fingers into the dirt and pulled up a handful of brown. He lifted it up then scrunched it in his palm.

  ‘First we need to feed the soil,’ he said.

  ‘Oh yeah, I knew that,’ said Davey. ‘Everyone knows you gotta feed the soil. But after that?’

  ‘A rose bush,’ I said. ‘I mean, if that’s okay with you, Mr Romanov?’

  ‘Is okay, cowgirl.’

  ‘What about stuff we can eat?’ asked Davey. ‘Like tomatoes or carrots. We could even have a herb section in the corner. They have one at the prison farm where Dad is.’

  In the short time we’d known each other, I’d never heard Davey mention his dad, not once, and although he hadn’t exactly spilled his guts, it made me realise that each of us had something in common. All three of us had people that were gone.

  Mr Romanov seemed to like the idea of a herb garden.

  ‘Yes, yes, some herbs,’ he said. ‘Parsley and coriander and o
f course sage. Russian sage was Izabella’s favourite. Always sage. She would put it in the porridge if she had her way.’

  ‘So what now?’ asked Davey. ‘I mean, where do we get all the stuff?’

  ‘I have seeds,’ said Mr Romanov. ‘And I have key.’

  Mr Romanov reached a hand into his pocket and pulled out a gold key.

  ‘The council shed downstairs,’ he explained. ‘They will not miss a few bags of feed.’

  ‘And what about the flowers, Lexie?’ asked Davey. ‘Roses, yeah?’

  ‘And sunflowers,’ I said.

  ‘And where, exactly, are you going to get these flowers from?’

  ‘Not me, Davey. Us.’

  It was best not to tell Davey too much, so I waited until we approached the nursery in Brunswick Street before I told him my plan.

  Like I’d thought, he wasn’t pleased.

  ‘You want me to what?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s just for show, Davey. The more you bung it on, the better it will look.’

  ‘But why can’t you be the poor unfortunate kid? Why does it have to be me?’

  ‘Because you . . .’

  I looked up and tried not to focus on his you-know-what.

  ‘Oh, I get it,’ he said. ‘It’s my eye.’

  ‘It’s not your eye.’

  ‘It is. It’s my eye. That’s why you wanted me to come. Poor old Davey, with his spazzie eye. I can’t believe you sometimes, Lexie. I suppose you want me to talk funny too.’

  ‘No, I just want you to stand there.’

  ‘So I can’t even talk?’

  ‘I didn’t say you couldn’t talk. By all means talk if you want.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘So you’ll do it, then?’

  Davey dipped his head then looked back up.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘But I’m not happy, Lexie. I’m really not . . .’

  I didn’t wait for him to finish. I grabbed his arm and steered him along the footpath through the throng of lunchtime cafe-goers waiting to pounce on an outside table the second it was free. Fitzroy was like that. Everyone wanted to be seen.

  Half a block and twenty cafes later, we crossed a street in front of a white four-wheel drive then walked a few metres and swung right. As we headed under the fancy metal arch on the nursery’s front gate, I didn’t feel nervous at all. I was good at this. Lying was my thing.