Moonlight in Odessa

by Janet Skeslien Charles

  Boba took my hand in hers. ‘First things first, Dasha. Have you had dinner?’

  I’d been too upset to eat. Boba led me to the kitchen, sat me down at the table, and gave me a loaf of black bread to slice. She lit two burners to heat the pot of borsht and the pan of aubergine caviar, then sat down. ‘Now tell me everything.’

  When I explained about Will from the Internet, Boba reacted just like I thought she would, she blamed The Curse.

  ‘That other woman stole him! Why can we never be happy? It’s the curse, the curse, I tell you.’

  ‘More likely he got more affection from a real woman than from his computer,’ I sighed.

  Anytime anything went wrong, Boba started in about being cursed. The Curse caused milk that seemed perfectly fine at the bazaar to sour once the pail crossed our threshold. The Curse was responsible for babies crying, clocks stopping, and men leaving. The Curse had ruled my life. When I got dumped, the flu, or a bad mark, clearly it was The Curse.

  Neither Boba nor Mama ever said why we were cursed. Was our family cursed more than any other? In our neighborhood no one had had much food or money. ‘Have we done a terrible deed?’ I asked Boba years ago. Everyone knows if you’re cursed, it’s because you brought it on yourself. She averted her eyes. ‘Well?’ I insisted. ‘What did we do?’ She admitted to nothing, saying only, ‘We were born here. That’s curse enough.’

  I thought of Will, about how I’d almost gone to America. How the mirage had been real for me. Tears welled in my eyes. Boba looked at me quizzically and said, ‘I’m sorry you feel sad, my little rabbit paw, but I don’t understand how you can be upset at losing something you’ve never seen or touched.’

  I could only smile at her confusion. She’d never seen a computer, so she didn’t know how e-mail worked. She didn’t know that I went to work in hopes of having a message from Will. She didn’t know how happy his letters made me. It felt real to me.

  ‘Eat, child, eat. You’ll feel better.’

  She served two steaming bowls, each with a dollop of fresh sour cream and a handful of parsley, which she grew on the windowsill. It smelled delicious – like springtime at our neighbor’s dacha. We ate in silence. It’s true that her borscht is a form of solace.

  When Boba asked about Olga, I admitted that I’d set her up with Mr. Harmon, who’d in turn set her up in his flat. ‘She’s changed, Boba. It’s my fault, but she’s changed. She’s become so jealous that Mr. Harmon asked me to wear baggy trousers and turtlenecks instead of my usual clothes. She’s ignored me for months.’

  ‘Can’t you reason with her?’

  ‘I’ve tried. But the only thing that counts for her now is money.’

  ‘Try to talk to Olga again,’ she advised. ‘Maybe she’ll come around.’

  I nodded. As I finished Boba tipped the bowl so that I could scoop up the last spoonful. ‘What were you saying about the Stanislavskis?’ she asked.

  ‘The youngest . . . was rude to me. And Vlad hit him in my defense.’

  ‘You’re on a first-name basis with Vladimir Stanislavski?!’

  She sounded alarmed, so I said, ‘Hardly. I mean, I don’t call him anything.’

  She served the aubergine caviar. Boba was an amazing cook, but I’d never learned how. Her friends thought it odd, but Boba told them all, in a snippy tone of voice, that I’d been much too busy with my studies. To be honest, I’d never even boiled spaghetti or made an omelet. What would I do without my Boba?

  That evening in my bedroom, I made a list of things to do.

  1) Find Vlad a girlfriend.

  2) Warn American men not to open the door when the prostitutes come knocking.

  3) Confront Olga.

  Confront Olga and tell her what? I’d tried to get her to talk to me when she came into the office, though not lately, since I’d been distracted by my work at Soviet Unions. Maybe I let myself be sidetracked because I didn’t want to think about how much it hurt to lose a friend. I just had to try one last time. Maybe when she saw how much I missed her, she would relent. Perhaps she was embarrassed by the compromise she had made. God knows I felt guilty for having compromised her. We had both struggled, yet I hoped there was a way we could go on as friends. For the first time, I prayed. Please God, don’t let me lose Olga, too.

  At work the following day, I warned Mr. Harmon, ‘I’m going to pay a visit to Olga directly after work. If you don’t want to walk in on a scene, you’d better work late.’

  I translated documents, sent faxes to the main office in Haifa, took notes in a meeting, tried to train Vita and Vera to use Excel, and ran to the port to walk our shipments through customs, all the while thinking of what I would say to Olga. Think-thought-thought. Tread-trod-trodden. It was only when I finished work for the day that I realized I’d spent more time thinking about Olga than Will, and I understood the pain – so sharp and sudden – I’d felt yesterday was actually hurt pride.

  From the port, I zigzagged down my favorite streets, walking past flower sellers cajoling, ‘Miss, miss, buy my flowers!’, past babushkas selling hot, honey-glazed buns, past artists on the pedestrian street selling portraits of our opera house, the Black Sea, and naked women in odd poses. I walked through the dusty courtyard of Harmon’s newly renovated building, where his flat was on the top floor. I took the stairs, as someone had peed in the lift. Olga opened the door, expecting Mr. Harmon, not me. She was dressed in a red negligee trimmed in white marabou. She was still the pretty, petite girl I knew, but her eyes seemed different somehow.

  Harder. Colder. Distant.

  ‘I’ll just go get my robe,’ Olga said and stalked off. She didn’t invite me in, so I stood in the foyer. If Olga still considered me her friend, she would have invited me into the kitchen for a tea. No woman in Odessa leaves someone waiting in the corridor. Everyone has an extra pair of tapochki, slippers, for their guest to wear, so that they feel at home, like a member of the family.

  I peeked into the living room, which had been completely redone since I’d last been here. Harmon had favored dark walls and black leather furniture, while Olga preferred pink wallpaper and red loveseats. Bend-bent-bent. Bind-bound-bound. Break-broke-broken.

  ‘We have to talk,’ I said loudly. My voice echoed in the large rooms of the flat.

  ‘I don’t have anything to say to you,’ Olga said when she returned in a tattered cotton robe she must have saved from her former life.

  ‘Olga, Olga, we used to be such good friends,’ I said in my kindest, softest tone of voice. ‘Boba and I babysat your little ones. You came for tea all the time. Boba was just saying how much she misses seeing you.’

  I saw a shadow of a smile cross her face, but the clouded expression quickly returned.

  ‘Are you mad at me then?’ I asked, looking down at my pumps. If she was unhappy, it was my fault. I’d thought with her money problems, Harmon would be a solution – granted, one I’d wanted no part of.

  ‘I just get so jealous.’

  ‘But Olga, why? You know I ran from him for a year.’

  ‘Oh, you think you’re too good for him?’

  ‘No, Olga, no.’ Clearly, this was not an argument I would win, so I focused on his selling points. ‘Mr. Harmon clearly cares about you. Look at all he’s done for you: hired a nanny so that you can paint, let you redecorate his bachelor pad to your liking, paid for a whole new wardrobe. Since you’ve come into his life, he’s had no other woman. Trust me, I would know. I take care of the books.’

  She sighed. ‘He’s always saying how smart and funny you are.’ The way she crossed her arms reminded me of a five-year-old left out of play time at the children’s garden.

  So this was all Mr. Harmon’s fault. ‘He doesn’t mean any harm,’ I said. ‘He thinks that you’re interested because we used to be – because we’re friends.’

  ‘I’m sick of competing with you,’ she said, her voice hardening. ‘I know how clever you are.’ It sounded like a compliment, but wasn’t. In Russian, clever was often us
ed in conjunction with another word: Jew. In this context, clever didn’t mean smart, it meant sneaky.

  Competing with me? Clever? I wasn’t sure what to do or say. Olga solved my problem. She reached behind me, opened the door, and shoved me out onto the landing. Eyes that had once sparkled with humor and friendship now burned with anger. Her robe fell open to show her tacky negligee and heaving chest. She sneered at me as I stood agape, my fingers clutching at each other as if they needed to touch something solid, since my friendship with Olga seemed to disintegrate before my eyes. ‘I don’t need you any more. I’ll get rid of you if it’s the last thing I do, you damn Jew,’ she hissed and slammed the door in my face.

  Chapter 7

  That night, I didn’t sleep. I just tossed and turned my relationship with Olga over and over in my mind. How could I have been so blind? I’d loved her and thought that she cared about me. We’d shared so much. The same ballet shoes, the same classes, the same hopes for love. How often had I helped her with her homework? How many hours had I spent with her children? How many slippers had Boba knit for them? I thought that she was my friend. But then as I looked carefully, I saw that when we were schoolgirls, she barely spoke to me in class. She only spent time with me after school in our apartment, where no one could see, while she copied my homework. Later, in the evenings, she didn’t come for conversation. She came for food. When I told her my problems, she was never supportive. Her advice was more harmful than helpful. When I told her about Harmon chasing me, her response was, ‘Pay up.’ Who would advise a real friend in such a way? Why hadn’t I realized this earlier? I hated myself for being so blind. There were many interpretations of her words and actions, but I’d always given her the benefit of the doubt. I’d always had faith in her.

  I finally understood why Boba had denied her faith – because she was tired of losing. Losing not because of something she did or said, but because of something she was. How could I tell Boba that we’d lost again?

  At breakfast together the next morning, I wondered what to do. Boba sat in her pale blue robe; I was dressed in my gray business suit with a turtleneck underneath, as per Harmon’s request. Harmon. He should know the truth about Olga. Yes. That would settle the score. She’d be sorry when he kicked her out on her plump ass. I pictured her without a kopeck in the street and felt better. Until I saw her three children sitting on the curb with her.

  ‘You look tired, my little rabbit paw.’

  I tried to smile. Should I tell Boba? I had to tell someone. As I drank the last of my coffee, I described the confrontation. Boba just shook her head. ‘This is why you have to leave Odessa,’ she said sadly. ‘You mocked me when I suggested you find an American, but now you see why I want you to find a man who can take you away from this world of hardship and hatred. I lived my whole life among two-faced people like Olga, never knowing who I could trust. I don’t want you to live like that. I’ve shielded you from so much, but I can’t protect you from everything. And everyone. And I won’t always be here . . .’

  ‘Oh, Boba . . .’ I embraced her, folding my body around hers. I didn’t want to think about life without her.

  For the first time in a long time, Harmon and I took our morning coffee break together. We sat in the boardroom, and he asked how ‘the talk’ went. I was prepared to tell him the truth, even relishing it, until I looked at his face – his warm eyes, his tentative smile – and realized that he was just as hopeful as I had been that the situation could be smoothed over. I remembered all the gifts he gave me and how he put up with my moods. I couldn’t tell him. ‘She wasn’t home. I’ll try another time.’

  ‘Good girl,’ he said, patting my hand awkwardly.

  I went to the bathroom so I could cry in peace.

  Once again I gathered the Americans into the ballroom. This time, I told them not to open their hotel doors to any beautiful women who came knocking, citing the undercover agent pretext again. I then added a dose of oozing venereal disease for good measure.

  The upside of the confrontation with Olga was that it had kept me from thinking about Vlad coming to the socials. I didn’t see how we would find him a wife. I doubted that he even wanted one. Despite not wanting to think about him, I felt the moment he entered the room. I looked up and his eyes met mine. Of course, he was dapper and young, he spoke Russian, and had a Rolex and a Mercedes, so the Sirens made a bee-line to him. Unfortunately, he came straight to me. I was interpreting for Alina, a sweet young divorcee, and Jim, a physicist from Nevada. Vlad stood beside me quietly and watched.

  ‘You’re so sexy when you speak English,’ Vlad told me when Alina and Jim moved to the dance floor. ‘Of course, you’re sexy when you speak Russian, too.’ When he said this, his lips curved into a gentle smile.

  I ignored his compliments as best I could and asked, ‘Do you want me to introduce you to some of the girls? What kind of wife are you looking for?’

  ‘I want her to be smart, tall, able to speak English and Hebrew, hard-working, and sexy as hell,’ he told me.

  ‘Are you going to be serious?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, I’m serious,’ he replied, taking my hand.

  I shivered and didn’t know if it was because I was excited or scared.

  Or brain dead. Didn’t chickens twitch and shake after their heads were severed?

  ‘I’m working,’ I hissed, and pulled my hand out of his warm grasp. ‘You’re like my shadow! I can’t get rid of you.’ I called to one of the Sirens waiting in the wings, ‘Tatiana, do you know Vlad?’

  She knew he was rich and smiled at him ingratiatingly. I could see that it grated on his nerves. To be honest, I was surprised that he was annoyed. I assumed he’d welcome the attention.

  Tatiana had already been to fifteen socials and still hadn’t found a mate. ‘We usually have a good turnover of our stock,’ said Valentina Borisovna, clearly puzzled. Tatiana was beautiful with her thick shoulder-length chestnut hair, slim nose, and full lips. One couldn’t help but notice her firm breasts, the erect brown nipples jutting out through her sheer white blouse. Unfortunately, she wore an overpowering perfume, probably from a bottle that someone had used, then refilled with mosquito repellent. (This kind of swindle happens frequently at our bazaar. Just because the box says ‘Chanel’ doesn’t mean it is.)

  ‘Vlad was just telling me he loves to dance,’ I lied.

  She grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the dance floor. He glowered at me and I smiled brightly back at him. She pressed her body to his, but his eyes remained cool and fixed on me.

  The Grande Dame noticed the by-play and said, ‘You’ve got to be careful, Daria.’

  ‘How am I supposed to get rid of him?’ I asked.

  She smiled. ‘Are you sure you want to?’

  She knew me so well. Vlad and I stared at each other as he danced with Tatiana.

  In the moments I forgot everything I knew about him, I was drawn to Vlad. He came to the shipping office, without his brothers, just to say hi. When I pretended to be annoyed and asked what he was doing there, he joked, ‘Daria, I’m your roof,’ which means mob protection, but also shelter or respite. ‘More likely your roof’s blown off,’ I responded, the Odessan way to say you’ve gone crazy, like the American phrase, ‘The lights are on, but no one’s home.’

  Odessan banter. Harmless, yet anything but simple. You see, if English is straightforward, then Russian is twisted. In English, there is one form of address: you. In Russian, in every interaction, there is a choice to be made: vui or tui, formal or informal, foe or friend, work or pleasure, indifference or interest, gatekeeper or girl his age. No or yes. The formal establishes distance and keeps a man away; using the informal is like opening the door a crack. I always used the formal with Vlad, at least at first. But he joked and smiled until I slipped up and said tui. The expression of pleasure – the intimate twist of his lips, the softening of his gaze – was enough to jolt me back into the formal, back into the role of gatekeeper. I crossed my arms and said, ‘Mr. Harmo
n isn’t here, I’ll tell him you stopped by.’ Formal. Austere. I kept pushing him away, he kept coming back. He’d give up and leave soon enough.

  Vlad returned when the song ended. ‘Happy?’ he asked, a look of irritation on his face.

  ‘I’m just doing my job.’

  ‘Will you dance?’ he asked. This is one word in Russian. Tantsouyesh?

  ‘Tantsouyou,’ I replied.

  He put his palm on the curve of my lower back and led me to the dance floor. It was the first time I danced at a social. ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’ by Percy Sledge came on. After I’d played it for Jane at my old flat, she explained it was the number one song played in American supermarkets because it lulled women into buying more. I confess, as I wrapped my arms around Vlad’s shoulders, I would buy whatever he was selling. He held my hips between his hands and I allowed myself to melt, just the time of a song. He looked into my eyes and I saw a shadow of a smile cross his lips.

  When the music ended, I looked for a way to ruin the moment. ‘How’s your brother?’

  ‘Fine . . . I assume.’ He kept his hands on my hips.

  Intrigued, I asked, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I sent him to Irkutsk.’

  ‘What? You sent your brother to Siberia?’ I screeched.

  ‘Hey!’ he protested. ‘Irkutsk is the Paris of Siberia.’