The Bride of Almond Tree

by Robert Hillman

  The second personal letter didn’t come until February.

  Christmas has come and gone. They still celebrate Christmas in Russia, but wherever you see a Christmas tree on display, there is always a portrait of Comrade Stalin set up at the base. And there is no holiday. People give gifts—some people—usually homemade things, like tablecloths and handkerchiefs. Quite a few Christians about. You notice that they cross themselves in front of shops that have a Christmas tree, very secretly. Now here is something that the Soviet Union can boast about (and believe me, I have come to see that there is not much)—public transport is free. I can easily get a police pass to go to the shops, and if I take a bus—free!

  I am forced to go to parades. This is a city of parades. Marx’s birthday, Lenin’s birthday, military parades showing off new missiles, there’s always something. I attended a celebration of I don’t know what outside the Kremlin and Stalin himself stood on the balcony with five generals wearing so many medals, each of them, I thought they’d overbalance and fall over the rail. I shouted out: ‘Hurrah for Comrade Stalin, the guardian of the Soviet people!’ thinking, ‘What an ego.’ I think I have attended ten parades and celebrations in five months. The people around me always clap me because I speak Russian when they know, somehow, that I am not Russian.

  Dear family, what a mess I have got myself into. I apologise to you all. The other, folded page is a private letter for Wes. Can you give it to him Dad? I will get through this.

  Bob Hardy took both letters to Wes’s worksite at the house he was building for the O’Connors on Federation Drive. ‘All the family has heard the letter, but this other one is just for you. I’ll leave both of ’em with you.’

  Wes called to Teddy to leave him be for half an hour. He took the two letters down the back of the new O’Connor house to Sandy Beach, which was not a beach and was not sandy, only a place where the bank sloped into a creek that didn’t have an agreed name, just ‘the creek’. A big willow overhung the creek with one huge bough so low that it sat just above the water. Wes sat on the bough and read first the family letter, then the one Beth had written for him alone. It was brief.

  Wes, I miss you desperately and love you with all my heart. If you can wait for me, I will marry you. If you can’t wait and meet someone else, tell me. I will be okay. I will throw myself under a tank at one of the parades I have to attend, but otherwise, I will be okay. Only not Franny. You cannot marry Franny. I’m not having you with my sister. That would be too much. Write to me. Dad knows where to send letters from you and the family. The British fellow who comes to see me now and again is pretty decent, but he has tiny teeth like a little child and I can never stop staring at them. Sometimes six months go by before he can take a letter from me. It’s exasperating. Marry me.

  Wes read the family letter twice, and his letter five times. The water purling against the bough seemed to harmonise with his rapture. Marry me. He needed to find out if he could visit Beth in Moscow. But a Qantas flight would be far too expensive for him. He would have to borrow from the community. The community had kept a fund for many years for Friends and it would be no trouble. He left Teddy to work on alone while he went home and wrote to Beth.

  Can you have any doubt that I will wait? I’m going to find out if I can visit you in Moscow. That is, if the Russians will give me a visa. They should be sympathetic, since they will know that I was involved in your so-called espionage expedition to South Australia. I will do everything in my power to get to Moscow, my darling. Until your letter came, I was half-mad with worry. Moscow sounds dreadful. The house is finished and ready. I’ve left the elms in the backyard, and also a huge red gum that the currawongs and the ravens love. I have been growing cauliflowers in a plot in the backyard, also cabbages and the most beautiful tomatoes you’ve ever seen. Beans too, and capsicums. Along the back fence, a grapevine has been growing for years and years, and I keep a blackberry vine along the side fence full this year of big, plump berries that I picked and made into jam, much more than I can use. Most of the caulis and tomatoes and cabbages and grapes and blackberry jam go to the community, and the capsicums. I don’t know whether you’ll be interested in what I’m growing, but maybe when you see the garden you’ll be happy to roll up your sleeves and get stuck into the digging and weeding. One day a few weeks back we had our meeting outdoors in the backyard. Everyone prayed for you, which probably means nothing to you, being a communist, but we weren’t praying to God to look over you but Stalin, asking him to protect you. Then my grandmother, who was born in England, asked the gathering to pray for Queen Elizabeth as the coronation approaches. I am building two other houses and adding a sunroom to Jolene’s place. One of the new houses is granite blocks, a lot of work, and one is red brick, much easier. I was working on three places to take my mind off worrying about you, but it didn’t stop me. As soon as I get the houses finished, I will apply for a visa for Russia. About three months. Do you want to know what I’m reading? Hard Times. A lot about trade unions. Enjoying it. I’m only allowed one page for this letter, so I’ll sign off now with all the love of my heart. And may Comrade Stalin protect you. And God.

  Stalin died in March. Beth’s next official letter read: ‘You will have heard that our beloved Comrade Stalin has passed away. He was the guardian of the Soviet People and his kindness and generosity brought joy to the lives of everyone in the USSR. I wept for him, as did all the Soviet People.’

  Two weeks later her letter from the Department of Foreign Affairs arrived:

  Yes, Stalin is dead. He was, I suppose, an egomaniac and perhaps a worse mass murderer than Adolf Hitler and there was a time when I loved him as if he was a second father. Eva wept for three days without stopping; she wanted to know why I wasn’t. I told her that the agony in my heart was too great. (Eva, by the way, has a boyfriend who is forty years older than her, an administrator in Soviet Rail. He asked me once if I’d like to join them in bed and I told him with a big smile, in English, that I’d rather walk barefoot over broken glass.) His funeral was a festival of crying and lamentations. He was laid out in Lenin’s mausoleum and we all filed past, it took three hours. Eva was in line with me, sobbing continuously. She kept saying Beth can you believe it? See, this is what I can’t do anymore. I can’t worship people. I have heard stories of Stalin giving Beria permission to do anything, murder anyone.

  We had the day of the funeral off but then it was back to work on the tedious oceanography. The room I work in is a frightful dump. Here’s an irony: it’s a converted laundry, just like the recreation room in Pentridge. If you asked me which I preferred, I would say Pentridge. Oh God, just let me be a wife and not a translator of oceanography texts and people every day being sent to the Gulag—that’s a whole world of prison camps, mostly in Siberia. One of my fellow workers told me about them. She’s very subversive, Kristina, a Russian girl. When Stalin died, she took me aside and whispered in my ear: Ha ha! The other letter, as usual, is for Wes alone. Love you all.

  Dearest Wes—If you could only get here I would be delirious. The loneliness is unbearable. Before our time together on the poisoner’s bunk, I didn’t know anything about physical feelings. Now, day and night, I think of me in your arms and have such an avid desire to be with you. It must have been in me all this time, this desire, but I somehow squashed it flat. Please don’t touch Franny. I know I have said this before, but it tortures me to imagine you with her. You don’t know how crafty she is. I don’t mean to be unkind to her, but maybe you will have to be. I wish you could do something about me being here. What they have done to me is not even legal. You can’t deport or swap Australian citizens just for convenience. But I understand about the document you were forced to sign. I don’t want you in jail. I want you taking care of your silly old vegetables. And Franny will have her stupid rabbits in your backyard before long, but that doesn’t mean that she lives there, remember that. Does she cook you meals sometimes? I bet she does. Don’t let her. If you want someone to cook you meals, do it
yourself, you’re not paralysed, or if you have to, get some of your people from the community to come in and cook for you, or even Mum. But most of all, borrow that money, finish building your stupid houses, come here to me in Moscow. Darling love, please, please don’t forget me. I keep having these morbid thoughts of you thinking it’s all too difficult. I know it’s difficult, but believe me, it’s more difficult in Moscow. Come to me, please, please! Don’t touch Franny. Remember how crafty she is.

  Not so crafty. Wes didn’t see her for a month and when she came around one evening it was to tell him that she was going to get married to Ricky Devon. They were sitting on the front porch, Wes reluctant to let her inside. He’d made her a cup of tea. ‘His wife died three years ago, you’ll remember, they still don’t know what killed her but something to do with her kidneys and it only took three months. Two little kids, Davie and Sue-sue, they’re four and five now. So I’ll be looking after them.’

  ‘Wonderful, Fran.’

  Her eyes were full of pain.

  ‘Is it? I don’t love him but he’s a good man and he loves me. You know who I love. You know. But you don’t care, do you?’

  ‘I’m fond of you, Fran.’

  Franny threw her coffee mug a fair distance onto the lawn. ‘Fond? That makes me sick. You love that nut case in Moscow. She can’t cook, she knows nothing about housework, nothing, and she’s probably hopeless at sex. But for me, there’s no hope. I can do everything, cook and sew and make your house beautiful and make you so, so happy in bed. But there’s no hope for me, is there? Is there?’

  Wes lifted his hands in a gesture of reluctant agreement.

  ‘Even if Beth vanished from the earth, you wouldn’t marry me, would you?’

  ‘No, Franny. I wouldn’t marry anyone.’

  Franny nodded, got to her feet and fetched her mug. ‘Will you come to the wedding? It’s in three months.’

  ‘I’ll be glad to.’

  ‘How charming. “I’ll be glad to.” I won’t come around again.’

  Chapter 20

  THE ARRANGEMENTS to visit Moscow and Beth became complex. Wes wrote to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra, explaining what he wished to do—visit Russia to see Elizabeth Hardy. Much later, he received a note in the mail directing him to come to Sydney and meet up with ‘Bill’. Where? ‘At Bondi, 3.00 in the p.m. At the Sun and Surf Café.’ On such-and-such a date.

  Wes took the early train to Sydney and the tram to Bondi. He was at the Sun and Surf a half-hour before the appointment and drank tea in the outdoor area where patrons still attired in their togs could find a table—a shirt was also required. It was summer and the beach was packed, big canvas umbrellas, blankets, kids running riot, women stretched out for a tan. Most of the patrons in the outdoor area didn’t bother with a shirt, except for the women. At a little past three, Bill appeared, smiling, old-fashioned black woollen togs, a towel around his neck. He was tanned all over, a perfect deep gold. Wes stood to shake hands.

  ‘The only time I could meet up, Mister Wesley. I have to make the most of the sunshine while I’m here. I’ve been back to London twice since I last saw you. Only too happy to get back to your charming land. Darling,’ he called to the waitress, ‘nice cup of Earl Grey, if you can manage it? Yes? And one for my associate. I’ve been on Coronation duty, Wesley, than which you cannot imagine anything more tedious. Clerics and choir boys costumed as if nothing had happened since Richard the Lionheart. And Her Majesty’s Windsor accent. It grates on my teeth. I was only two yards away when they plopped that bloody great creation on her head. Skinny little thing that she is, twenty pounds of jewels supported by a neck as thin as a pencil. Pardon?’

  ‘I asked if you are in MI5.’

  ‘Now, as close as we are, Wesley, I must with humble apologies give you no answer to that. I am in the service of Her Majesty, suffice to say. In a certain capacity. Odd situation for a republican, but it’s the only work I’m suited for.’

  He leaned forward on the table and lowered his voice. ‘You spoke in your letter to a colleague of mine on the subject of travelling to Moscow to see Elizabeth Hardy. You would be required to apply in person for a visa at the Soviet Embassy in Canberra. The application would then be followed by a six-month wait, and you wouldn’t know if your application had been successful before those six months had passed. The Soviets do not encourage tourism. They don’t rule it out, but they certainly don’t go to any lavish lengths to attract people. If you wish to go ahead, the Australian Government will not rule it out, withdraw your passport, for example.’

  Wes lifted his hands in resignation, and let them fall. ‘What can I do? I’ll apply for a visa, wait six months, then finally see Beth.’

  ‘So you hope. I admire your tenacity, Wesley.’

  ‘It’s not tenacity. I love Beth. I have no choice.’

  ‘Well then, I admire the love you have for her, I should say. Never experienced whatever is in your heart, dear friend. It baffles me. But what do you say to a plunge in the surf? I do hope you brought your trunks.’

  Wes went by bus two days later to the Soviet Embassy in Canberra to apply for a visa for the Soviet Union. A security guard asked him in terrible English if he was carrying a weapon, ‘under apron’. A large portrait of Stalin framed with black crepe paper was still displayed behind the reception desk. The man at the desk directed Wes to the first floor, where visas were dispensed. He was accompanied up the stairs by two men, one on each side, wearing identical loose-fitting dark suits, shown to an empty desk, told ‘Sit, wait.’ Nothing on the desk other than a buzzer to occupy his attention, but the upholstered chair behind the desk was as spacious as an armchair. Finally a very tall man in a suit identical to those of the two men who’d shown Wes to the visa desk came strolling across the garish purple carpet and lowered himself into the chair.

  He said: ‘Good afternoon. You have come for a visa to visit the Soviet Union.’

  His English was clear and perfectly enunciated.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To see my girlfriend, Elizabeth Hardy. She was expelled to the Soviet Union.’

  ‘Yes? Write please for me on this pad her name.’

  Wes wrote Beth’s name, and the visa officer rendered it in Russian, then pushed the buzzer on his desk. A middle-aged woman in a heavy woollen skirt and jacket, far too hot for the summer weather, came out of a door some distance away and shuffled across the awful carpet. The visa officer gave her the page of the notepad on which Beth’s name was written.

  ‘I will see her file. I think I remember her name.’

  Not so much for the visa officer to do during the day. He sat gazing about for ten minutes then stood and repaired the black crepe paper around the portrait of Stalin, which had come loose in two or three places.

  ‘Comrade Stalin,’ he said when he sat down again. ‘He passed away this year. Terrible, terrible sadness for all the Soviet people. Now we have no leader. Maybe Comrade Khrushchev. Maybe Comrade Malenkov. Both of these men are excellent.’

  ‘I am sure,’ said Wes. ‘Both excellent.’

  The woman in the woollen suit returned with a thin red folder and handed it to the visa officer. She said something animated to him, then departed.

  ‘Red folder is good,’ he said. He opened the folder and leaned back in his chair to read the contents, which amounted to three pages. He made sounds of mild pleasure and approval as he read, encouraging to Wes. When the visa officer had finished, he closed the folder and lay it on the desk. ‘Miss Elizabeth,’ he said, ‘is a hero of the Soviet people. Is this right for a woman, hero?’

  ‘Heroine,’ said Wes.

  ‘Yes? Heroine? Same like the drug?’

  ‘Yes, same as the drug.’

  ‘Huh. Strange. Miss Elizabeth is a heroine of the Soviet people. I salute her. Maybe we can make visa for you to see her in Moscow.’

  Well, good; except that Wes was instructed to take the visa application away and bring it back completed in one month. Wes s
aid he would do it on the spot. ‘Not possible,’ said the visa officer. Wes asked, already despairing of the answer he would hear, how long it would take for the visa application to be processed. ‘Six months,’ he was told. Could it be done quicker, by any chance, for a heroine of the Soviet people? The officer lifted his shoulders and let them fall. ‘Not possible.’

  Wes had to tell Beth in his next letter that it would be at least six months before he could get a visa for the USSR. Her reply came in October, three months after he had returned his visa application to the Soviet Embassy.

  Wes, that’s dreadful. I was counting on seeing you so much. My only solace here is music. I met a young couple in the Pushkin, Oleg and Bessie. Bessie’s real name is Svetlana but she calls herself Bessie after Bessie Smith, a great blues singer of years ago. They have Bessie Smith records smuggled in, and Billie Holiday, and Woody Guthrie. They only have six records but we listen to them over and over in their apartment. It’s forbidden to listen to jazz and blues and American folk music, but Oleg and Bessie live on the fifth floor of a block in which the fourth and sixth floors and all the other apartments on the fifth floor are too much of a shambles for habitation. So Oleg can play the records on his little turntable without anyone hearing. I’d never heard this music before. It thrills me, Wes! It’s the only time I’m happy. Our house has to be full of jazz and blues and folk. Blind Willie McTell—have you heard of him? When you do finally get here, my darling, I’ll introduce you to Oleg and Bessie. She’ll say, ‘What a gas.’ It’s her response to anything she likes—she picked it up from a Canadian tourist. Wes, is there no way you can get here sooner? We only listen to the music two hours a week—if Oleg uses more electricity, the authorities will notice. Two hours of happiness in a week is not enough to live on. Sick of the Soviet Union. I haven’t entirely lost faith in communism, but it has to make a better society than this drabness everywhere and in everything. What hope is there for a society that bans Woody Guthrie? He’s a communist himself. Do you know what they have against him? That song ‘This Land Is Your Land’. They say it invites the bourgeoisie to participate in the building of America, instead of only the proletariat. Don’t they listen? ‘This land is your land, this land is my land.’ Where is the beauty, Wes? The beauty in material things, the beauty in thought. I heard Katherine Susannah Prichard talking once and she said the only real beauty in the world was in the poetry of equality. I have to tell you, Wes, there’s no poetry of equality in Moscow. And it’s so cold! Winter is early this year. Eva’s boyfriend gave her a little electric radiator but she hogs it and won’t even let me warm my hands with it. I spend the whole day and night shivering. I was out in the street the other day and an old man died on the footpath, just dropped dead, and the ambulance came. The medics took his overcoat off to listen to his non-existent heartbeat and when they put him in the back of the ambulance they left his overcoat on the ground. About a dozen onlookers tried to grab his coat, fighting for it, and Wes, I was one of them. Shameful. When you finally come, bring me a big woolly overcoat, my darling, and I will love you even more. Everything is a mess in Moscow right now. We have no leader. Khrushchev and Malenkov are fighting for the leadership. Khrushchev has more support in Pravda, but Malenkov is fighting back. The thing is, nobody wants another Stalin. That’s why they shot Beria, who had murdered thousands and thousands. People are tired of living in fear. I’m sorry my writing is so small, but I’m trying to fit in as much as I can. Oleg and Bessie introduced me to a fellow by the name of Anton, a bit crazy, quite young, about eighteen. He’s in college. He asked me to take up what is known as samizdat, which means self-publishing in Russian. Many writers in Russia are forbidden from publishing and the only way they can get their books to the public is to copy them out by hand. One person copies out a manuscript and hands it on to another person, who also copies it out and gives it to someone else to read and copy. It’s illegal, but it works. And I’m doing it now. I go to Oleg and Bessie’s flat and spend two hours each night copying manuscripts. It’s Oleg who passes them on. Darling, it’s arduous but exciting!