Moonlight in Odessa

by Janet Skeslien Charles

  Will was alone and lonely. I, too, felt lonely. Jane was in America, Olga was no longer speaking to me, and Florina had emigrated to Germany. My other friends were married and lived in another world as well. Of course, I had my Boba, but there are some feelings a girl can’t share with her grandmother. Sometimes I really missed having a mother.

  I wondered what Mama would say about my Internet beau. Or any of the other boys I’d dated. I was not completely without experience. I’d had two boyfriends – both handsome snouts who felt that since they bought me dinner and took me to the opera I owed them sex. I dated them because everyone expects you to have a boyfriend and to marry by the time you’re twenty, twenty-two at the latest. A woman’s shelf life is extremely short in Ukraine. How many times had I been told that a ripe fruit like me is only hours away from rotting? If you don’t have a cavalier people think there is something wrong with you. Only my Boba told me that I shouldn’t marry the first man I slept with, that sex wasn’t love. But she also said that we didn’t need a man. She said looking for love was like looking for wind in a field. She never talked about her own husband. I didn’t even know if he deserted us or if he was dead. She never had kind words for my father, who’d disappeared long ago. Once, I heard her tell a friend that all my papa knew how to do was get women pregnant and lose money gambling. I didn’t even know what he looked like. Sometimes, I wished that I had a photo of him.

  Although he wasn’t in the picture, I bore his first name and would for life. In Russian, adults use patronymics, a name derived from the father’s. Women add the suffix –ovna to their father’s name. Valentina’s father’s name was Boris, this was why we called her Valentina Borisovna. It was a relief to work in an office where we used only first and last names – I’m Daria or Miss Kirilenko – like they do in the West. Another reason I was grateful to Mr. Harmon: unknowingly, he saved me from this daily reminder of my father’s perfidy.

  What would Jane think about Will? About meeting a man on the Internet? When I met her, she was twenty-three and had no interest in getting married. I was fascinated by this Americanka who was nearly a spinster and didn’t even care. When I asked her about it, she laughed and said no one in America gets married before they’re thirty. Boba was right – life was different elsewhere. And I wanted to go elsewhere, just to see. While with Jane, I’d stopped worrying about getting married, or not getting married, even though all my girlfriends were tying the knot. Of course, it was hard to not worry about them, when Boba told me that they had tied nothing but a hangman’s noose.

  In the meantime, Soviet Unions earned less and less. We checked the mailbox several times a day, waiting, hoping for correspondence that didn’t come. No men, no money. If the situation didn’t change soon, I would be let go.

  ‘Those damned Americans changed the law,’ Valentina Borisovna lamented. ‘Now men must actually meet their brides before importing them. No more deliveries. They have to come here to pick up the merchandise, or at least to order it.’ In a flash of self-pity, she looked up at the ceiling, her bosoms heaving in her dove-gray knock-off jacket, and cried, ‘Why? Why are they doing this to me?’ as if the Americans had enacted new regulations to slow her profits.

  To take her mind off this cruel blow from the American government, she took the train to Moscow to visit one of her former sisters-in-law for a week. She came back full of good food, good vodka, and with a good scheme. When she walked through the office door, the first words out of her mouth were English. ‘Soooo shall. Soooo shall. Soooo shall,’ she said.

  ‘So what shall we do?’ I replied in kind, surprised she was speaking English.

  ‘Darling!’ she said, back in Russian. ‘The future is in Moscow. But we can have it here, too. Soooo shall. I haven’t the slightest idea what it means. But it’s our salvation.’

  She poured us both a kognac and described what she had seen, speaking so quickly the words bounced off my forehead. Men. Lots. Foreign. Rich. Women. Ours. Sexy. Young. Find mates. Expensive for men. Free for women. Music. Money. Alcohol. Sooo shall.

  It all became clear. Never one to let the law get in her way, Valentina Borisovna had quickly found a new, more lucrative kind of traffic. We began organizing ‘socials’ which were advertised as a way for American men to meet one thousand beautiful Odessans in just five days. I looked up the word in my pocket dictionary and found, ‘having to do with the activities of society, specifically the more exclusive or fashionable of these.’ When I told Jane about my new job, she explained a social is what people used to call dances in the 1950s, when people used to dance with a partner and good grooming habits were in style. And there was nothing exclusive about them. She then muttered that socials were ‘the ultimate meat market.’ (Perhaps she meant ‘meet market.’) Her definition only made me more curious. Two days later, I received a dictionary that she sent by Federal Express and learned that a social was just a party with a pretty name.

  Late Saturday afternoon, I helped Valentina Borisovna coordinate our very first social in the ballroom of the Literary Museum, home to Pushkin and Gogol and Tolstoy. The Grande Dame had bribed the curator to close the entire mansion to the public. She somehow procured frilly American wedding decorations for the pristine white walls topped by scalloped molding. She brought in a well-stocked metal bar and a CD player. After we covered the scarred tables with white tablecloths, we hung the disco ball from the crystal chandelier.

  ‘Daria,’ she said in her haughty voice, ‘make sure that we have enough punch. Spike it with a fair amount of vodka. We don’t want any awkward moments. Turn off most of the lights – we don’t want the girls to see how old some of the men are! You’ll have to check the bathrooms from time to time to make sure there’s no hanky panky going on. I want these girls to behave themselves!’ She pushed her pink spectacles back onto the bridge of her nose. ‘I just hope the Stanislavskis don’t learn about my socials. I can’t afford to pay protection money yet.’

  Chapter 5

  A darkened room in a former palace. A music box set to play. A strobe light sends flickers across the parquet. The Literary Museum was about to become the setting for a garish high-school prom for thirty- to sixty-five-year-old men. On the website, the Grande Dame had advertised these socials as five evenings, one thousand women. Of course, she didn’t mention that it was the same two hundred women five times. I wondered if the men would notice. Valentina Borisovna was wearing her very best – a pink, simulated Chanel suit garnished with a pink pearl necklace and pink pumps. Even I’d dressed up in a black cocktail dress.

  When the girls arrived, I felt as if we were backstage at a Miss Universe pageant. Tummies tucked in. Bosoms thrust out. Hips swaying so hard, I was reminded of the back fin of a fish swishing by. There was more make-up on these faces than in an entire cosmetics factory. The smell of two hundred competing perfumes was overwhelming, so I opened a few windows. The women practiced pouts and sultry looks. Sitting around the tables, they joked and laughed, sized each other up and tore one another down.

  ‘Masha, you’ll get someone right away.’

  ‘With that hair and those turkey drumsticks for legs, Louisa will never find anyone, poor dear.’ Cackle, cackle.

  ‘Do you think American men are as well hung as ours?’ one asked.

  ‘I for one will find out tonight – a walrus dick or a tiny radish!’ another responded before taking a drag on her cigarette.

  ‘No smoking, girls! No smoking!’ Valentina Borisovna shouted. ‘Americans don’t smoke and they certainly don’t want smelly dates!’

  Immediately, the girls threw down their cigarettes and ground them underneath their stiletto heels, except for one, who exclaimed, ‘Ahhh, Americans! They don’t know how to live!’

  The Grande Dame glared; the girl put out her cigarette. The floor looked like an ashtray. Valentina Borisovna swung open the doors and fifty Americans entered. The room went silent. I peered at the men in the semi-darkness. Some looked confident. And rightly so. They were a rare c
ommodity here. We looked at them and saw three-course meal tickets with cell phones and credit cards. A direct flight to the American Dream: money, beautiful homes, stability.

  The men stood in huddles near the door, the women sat at the tables. Nervous anticipation surrounded us. We all want love. The men had flown thousands of miles for it. The Odessans had come to the table to place their bets on an American, ready to gamble everything for a better life elsewhere.

  The women broke the silence. ‘They look as nervous as I feel,’ one whispered.

  ‘Who helped them dress?’ another asked, looking at the numerous flannel shirts and faded jeans.

  ‘Why whisper?’ a third asked. ‘They don’t speak Russian.’

  We women laughed to cover up our nervousness.

  ‘They’re older than I thought.’

  ‘Girls, I’m here to tell you that older lovers are better – they last longer and think each time is the last, so they’re just thrilled and grateful!’

  More laughter.

  One of the youngest, in a miniskirt that barely covered her bottom, said to her friend, who wore a top that barely concealed her breasts, ‘I’ll need a few drinks before I find these guys attractive.’

  They fled to the bar. Larissa, a stout, older woman, said, ‘Let them wait a year or two and see what life with an Odessan man is like!’

  Her words underlined the women’s reason for being here. Galya, a nineteen-year-old with wide eyes and a nervous expression, asked, ‘Does that mean romance doesn’t exist?’

  ‘Of course it does, sunshine. In lovey-dovey American novels,’ Larissa replied.

  Galya looked to me. ‘Have you never trembled under a man’s touch?’

  ‘Yes, the dentist’s.’

  The women laughed at the old joke. I remembered how my teeth were ripped out by pliers, and my hand moved to my mouth. You don’t have to do that anymore. I put my hand on my lap.

  Most men were still standing near the entryway. I gave them credit for this. It is proper to be reserved. They stared at the women, some of whom preened, some of whom struck a pose of nonchalance, some of whom danced with each other. The Grande Dame wanted me to create a website as well as a catalog, featuring a profile for each girl with a photo and her vital information – horoscope, height, weight, likes and dislikes (not unlike Playboy) – but I hadn’t yet entered all of the information into the computer. She would charge men $100 for the program, which they could buy before the evening of the social to narrow their list of 200 candidates to ten contenders to cross-examine.

  Some men looked intimidated when they heard the women laughing. And rightly so. They were in a foreign city, outnumbered in a room of women, some of whom were sociopaths who felt no remorse about using their bodies and faces to ensnare. Men who should have known better, and who were smart in so many other ways, became victims.

  Take my former classmate Alexandra. She wore a tight, low-cut turquoise top to match her eyes. Every time she leaned over – and she leaned over a lot – her breasts reached out to mesmerize the eyes. She rubbed herself, seemingly unconsciously, and the men followed her fingers as they crossed her neck, shoulders, her hips, her hand as effective as a hypnotist’s medallion. She’d learned enough English to ask the right questions. Where do you live? (Initials need only apply – N.Y. or L.A.) What do you do? (Only three possible occupations: dentist, lawyer, and/or oil.) She could ask other questions using her elementary English, but didn’t care about the answers. She smiled attentively and rubbed her hand up and down his arm, her eyes never leaving his. Sirens, these women.

  I watched her go in for the kill. Bells should have gone off in that man’s head, but Alexandra had already dismantled his alarm system. Jane and her American friends had called these women ‘Robo-babes’ and said that you could shoot them or set them on fire, but they’d repair themselves instantly and keep moving towards their target. Why am I talking about these women? They are common: girls who think their looks will carry them through life as easily as foam floats down a gentle river. Surely they are everywhere.

  I played romantic Western music, from ‘The Sea of Love’ to Stevie Wonder’s ‘Isn’t She Lovely?’, but the dance floor was nearly empty. A barmaid in a short black skirt and a white see-through blouse ran to the Grande Dame. ‘Valentina Borisovna,’ she said in a panic, ‘some men ordered rosé, but we only have red and white wine. What should I do?’

  ‘Fool! Don’t you know that red and white make pink? Just mix a little together. No one will know – just be discreet. Why isn’t anyone dancing?’ She put on a techno CD and cranked up the volume. The men moved towards the women, choosing partners using the only index available to them – looks.

  I’d been assigned to five women, the first of whom was Maria, a woman twice divorced who took care of her elderly parents while raising her young daughter. They all lived in a two-room apartment. Maria made forty dollars a month as a waitress, though her degree was in physical education. English and math teachers made extra money by giving private lessons. Unfortunately for Maria, there was no call for tutors in dodge-ball. I looked at Maria; her eyes told me that she needed to make a match. Tonight.

  An old man, his every facial capillary broken, approached and asked my name. I made it clear that I was not the one available by instantly introducing him to Maria. He took in her brown eyes and tight figure and barked, ‘How old?’

  Shocking. Not even a hello. No Odessan would ever be so rude. I could not bring myself to show how uncultured this man was and translated, ‘He says, “Delighted to meet you. You look like a teenager. Just how old are you anyway?”’

  ‘He said all that?’ she yelled over the techno music.

  ‘Remember the English you learned in school. Americans use contractions,’ I replied.

  She nodded knowingly and said, ‘Twenty-six,’ lopping nine years off her age as efficiently as my grandmother trimmed ears off potatoes.

  I split the difference and said, ‘She’s thirty.’

  ‘How much money does he have in the bank?’ she asked.

  Odessans did ask blunt questions. Perhaps it was best not to generalize.

  ‘Maria says she welcomes you to Odessa. She wonders what you do for a living.’

  ‘Engineer,’ he replied. ‘Does she have kids?’

  I nodded. He walked away.

  ‘I don’t need a millionaire,’ she said, looking relieved. ‘Just a nice man who is closer to my age. One who will respect me. And be a good father.’

  I squeezed her hand. ‘Don’t worry, Maria. We’ll find you that man.’

  Over the next hour, we talked to James, Pat, Michael, Kevin, and George. Too old, too immature, too vague, too intense, too much talk about sex. Maria was hopeful, since I didn’t exactly translate word for word. I started to despair.

  I surveyed the room and saw a shy, gentle-looking man. I looked into his eyes and could see his yearning. I grabbed Maria’s hand and pulled her towards her destiny. But before we reached him, a Siren appeared. It would have been easy to get rid of her with a whisper, ‘There’s a dentist with a Porsche on the other side of the room.’ But a scene was definitely the best way to proceed – Odessans love drama. Our opera house is the third-most beautiful in the world after Venice and Bratislava’s and we have dozens of theaters. I yanked Maria in front of me so she was standing at the side of the Siren and declared, ‘She is the one for you,’ gesturing to Maria. ‘She is the kindest woman in the room and will make you an excellent life partner. I sense that friendship and love will grow between you.’

  The man looked at both women. His gaze fixed on Maria. ‘That’s what I want.’

  The Siren stalked off. Maria was buoyed because in her eyes the man had been gallant and chosen her over a younger, more beautiful woman. We spoke. Or rather, they spoke and I interpreted – this time no need for lies.

  The Grande Dame witnessed the scene I’d orchestrated, and later that night she gave me a small raise, sighing, ‘If only everyone were as dedic
ated to the cause of true love.’ We stood in silence for a moment, watching the scene unfold. She gestured to the men, who were slowly approaching the women. ‘Look at them! My vodka punch has finally taken effect! Can you help Anya?’

  I interpreted for Anya, Masha, Vera, and Nadia. The Americans seemed pleasant enough, a little rough around the edges, but nice. Of course many needed guidance on clothing, haircuts, and flattering spectacle frames, but what man doesn’t need a woman’s touch? It was strange that their relationship depended on my English. I advised the girls to start studying. By the time we locked up the ballroom, my ears were buzzing with the questions that had been repeated over and over.

  ‘Does she like candle-lit dinners?’

  ‘Find out if he likes kids. (I’ve got two, but don’t tell him just yet.)’

  ‘Does she like going to plays?’

  ‘Does he earn a good pay?’

  ‘Tell her I think she’s beautiful.’

  ‘Find out if he lives independently from his parents.’

  ‘Does she like going to the gym?’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Does she like to travel?’ (Raucous laughter followed this question; most women hadn’t left the city in years.)

  ‘Ask him in a nice way if he drinks, I don’t want a drinker.’

  All fifty men came away with dates, even that rude old man, but over one hundred women went home empty-handed. As usual, the odds weren’t good for our women.

  Meanwhile, at the shipping office, work relations were complicated. Olga circled like a shark on steroids, making sure I didn’t talk to Harmon, making sure he didn’t look at me. She eyed everything on my desk while ignoring me. Olga swiped the digital clock – the only one I owned that didn’t tick, that didn’t make me nervous. I stood and tried to grab it, but she held it behind her back and hissed, ‘You owe me. If I weren’t doing the job you were hired for, you’d be known as the office slut instead of me.’ I let her keep the clock. And sat down, stunned. Why had I cared so much about the trinkets she’d taken? Didn’t she deserve them?