Betty had baked a batch of her ginger biscuits and left them in a jar on my desk. I took one out and nearly broke my teeth trying to bite it. I put the kettle on and made some tea, softening the biscuits in it before eating them. I lay down on the bed with the intention to rest for a moment, but I fell into a deep sleep.
I woke up an hour later to a knock at the door. I struggled to sit up, my limbs heavy with sleep and sadness. I saw Ivan through the peephole. I opened the door and he strode into the flat, his arms laden with frozen pies. He headed straight to the kitchenette and opened the door to my mini-fridge. The only thing in it was a jar of mustard on the top shelf. ‘My poor Anya,’ he said, stacking the packages. ‘Irina told me about your terrible wait. I am going to stand outside the postmaster’s office tomorrow until he tracks down that letter.’ Ivan closed the refrigerator door and threw his arms around my shoulders, squeezing me like a Russian bear. When he broke away, his eyes fell to my waist. ‘You’re so thin,’ he said.
I sat down on the bed and he took a seat at my desk, rubbing his chin and staring out to the dark ocean.
‘You’re very kind to me,’ I said.
‘I’ve been awful to you,’ he replied, not looking at me. ‘I’ve tried to force you into feelings you don’t have.’
We lapsed into silence. Because he wouldn’t look at me, I stared at him. At his big hands, fingers linked on the table; his broad and familiar shoulders; his wavy hair. I wished that I could love him the way he wanted me to because he was a good man and he knew me well. I realised then that the lack I had felt for Ivan had been the lack in myself, nothing to do with him.
‘Ivan, I’ll always care about you.’
He stood up, as if I had given him the signal to leave, whereas in truth I wanted him to stay. I wanted him to lie on the bed next to me so I could snuggle up to him and fall asleep on his shoulder.
‘I’m moving back to Melbourne in a fortnight,’ he said. ‘I’ve hired a manager for the Sydney factory.’
‘Oh,’ I said. It was as though he had stabbed me.
After Ivan left I lay on the bed again, feeling the gap inside me widening and spreading, as if I were bleeding to death.
The day after Ivan’s visit I was at my desk at the paper working on an article on iron-free cotton. Our office faced west. The summer sun was streaming through the glass windows, turning the women’s section into a hothouse. The wall fans whirred pathetically against the oppressive heat. Caroline was working on an article about what the Royal family liked to eat at Balmoral. Every time I glanced at her, I noticed that she was slowly slumping forward a bit more, drooping like a thirsty flower. Even Diana looked faded, little strands of hair adhering to her shiny forehead. But I could not get warm. My bones were like ice, freezing me from within. Diana told the junior reporters that they could roll their sleeves up if they needed to, while I put on a sweater.
My telephone rang and my heart fell to my feet when I heard Irina’s voice. ‘Anya, come home,’ she said. ‘The letter is here.’
On the tram home I could barely breathe. The terror was becoming more real. Once or twice I thought I would faint. I hoped Irina had called Keith as I had asked. I wanted him and Irina to be there when I read the letter. The hum of the traffic made me think of the hum of my father’s car when he took my mother and me for Sunday drives. Suddenly her image loomed up in front of me much clearer than it had for years. I was taken aback by the vividness of her dark hair, her amber eyes, the pearl studs in her ears.
Irina was waiting for me outside the apartment. I stared at the envelope in her hand and stumbled. It was grubby and thin.
‘Do you want to be alone with this?’ she asked.
I took the letter from her. It was light between my fingers. Perhaps it said nothing at all. Perhaps it was just a pamphlet from Vitaly’s uncle on the righteousness of the Communist party. I wanted to wake from the nightmare and be somewhere else.
‘Keith?’ I asked.
‘He said he has to finish an urgent article, but he will be over as soon as he can.’
‘Thank you for calling him.’
‘I’m sure it’s good news,’ said Irina, biting her lip.
Across the road, next to the beach, was a patch of grass under a pine tree. I nodded towards it.
‘I need you,’ I told her. ‘More than ever.’
Irina and I sat down in the shade. My hands were jelly and my mouth was dry. I ripped open the envelope and stared at the Russian handwriting, not able to read a sentence at a time, but rather looking at all the words at once and not taking in anything. ‘Anna Victorovna’ was all I could read before my vision blurred and my head began to swim.
‘I can’t,’ I said, passing the letter to Irina. ‘Please read it to me.’
Irina took the paper from me. Her face was grave and her mouth quivered. She began to read.
‘Anna Victorovna,
My brother has informed me that you have been seeking news of your mother, Alina Pavlovna Kozlova, after she was taken from Harbin for transportation to the Soviet Union. When your mother was deported that day in August, I was on the same train. However, unlike your mother, I was returning to Russia of my own free will and so was in the rear passenger carriage along with the Russian officials who were overseeing the transportation.
About midnight the train was travelling towards the border when it came to a sudden halt. I remember the look of surprise on the face of the officer next to me, so I knew that the stop had not been expected. In the gloom outside I could just make out the military car parked near the front of the train and the outline of the four Chinese men who stood in its headlights. It was an eerie sight. Those four men and the car in the middle of nowhere. There was some discussion with the train driver, and before long the door to our carriage was prised open and the men entered. I could tell from their uniforms that they were Communists. The officials in the carriage stood up to greet them. Three of the men were unremarkable Chinese but the fourth will stay in my mind forever. He had a serious, dignified and intelligent face but his hands…they were stumps in padded gloves and I swear I could smell the flesh rotting. I knew immediately who he was, although I had never met him. A man named Tang, the most notorious of the leaders of the Communist resistance in Harbin. He had been interned in a Japanese camp, sent there by a spy who had posed as a fellow Communist.
He had no time for our greetings and immediately began asking after your mother and which carriage she was on. He seemed nervous about something and kept glancing out the windows. He said he had orders to take her off the train. I knew about your mother too. I had heard of the Russian woman who had housed a Japanese general. I knew that she had lost her husband, although I didn’t know about you then.
One of the officials objected. He said all the prisoners had been spoken for and must be delivered to the Soviet Union. But Tang was adamant. His eyes were red with fury and I became concerned that there would be some violence. Finally the official acquiesced, assuming, I guess, that arguing with the Chinese would only delay the train. He put on his coat and with a nod of his head led Tang and the other Chinese through the train.
A short time later I saw the men leave the train. The woman I believe was your mother was with them. The Soviet official returned to the carriage and ordered us to close the shutters. We did so but the bottom slat of mine was broken and I could see some of what was going on outside. The men marched the woman to the car. There was some sort of argument and then the lights of the train went out and a round of shots rang through the night air. The noise was horrendous but the silence afterwards was even more chilling. Some of the prisoners began to cry out, demanding to know what was going on. But a few moments later, the train started to move. I bent down and peered through the broken slat. All I could make out was the body of someone I believe to be your mother lying on the ground.
Anna Victorovna, let me assure you that your mother’s death was quick and without torture. If there is any comfort then take it from the
fact that the fate awaiting her in the Soviet Union would have been far worse…’
The sun dropped like a ball and the sky turned dark. Irina stopped reading; although her lips continued to move she made no sound. Betty and Ruselina were watching us from the step but when I looked at them they read my expression and crumbled. Betty grasped the railing and stared at her feet. Ruselina sank down onto the steps, clutching her head in her hands. What had we expected? What had I expected? My mother was dead and had been for years. Why had I lived in hope? Had I really believed that I would see her alive again?
For a few moments I didn’t feel anything. I was expecting someone to arrive and say the letter was a mistake or that it was another woman who was taken from the train. They would take the letter back and wipe out everything it had said and I could go on living again. Then, suddenly, like a house struck by an explosion, I crumbled from inside. The pain gripped me so hard I was sure I would split open with it. I fell back against the pine tree. Irina stepped towards me. I grabbed the letter and tore it to shreds, throwing the pieces towards the sky. I watched them drift like snowflakes into the summer air.
‘Curse you!’ I screamed, shaking my fist at the handless man who was probably long dead but had still found a way to hurt me. ‘Curse you!’
My legs gave way. My shoulder slammed into the ground but I didn’t feel anything. I saw the sky above me and the beginning of stars. I had fallen like that twice before. Once in snow when I was following the General on the day I met Tang. The other time when Dmitri told me that he loved Amelia.
Betty and Ruselina crouched over me. ‘Call a doctor!’ Ruselina screamed to Irina. ‘She’s bleeding from the mouth!’
I had an image of my mother on the isolated plains of China, lying face down in the dirt. She was full of puncture wounds from the bullets, like a beautiful fur coat ruined with moth holes, and bleeding from the mouth.
Some people say that knowing is better than not knowing. But it wasn’t so for me. After the letter I had nothing to hope for. No pleasant memories to draw on, no happy daydreams about the future. Everything behind or ahead came to a stop with the sound of bullets ringing out in the night.
The days rolled on with a relentless summer heat and no respite. ‘Anya, you must get out of bed,’ Irina scolded me daily. But I didn’t want to move. I shut my blinds and curled up in my bed. The smell of musty cotton and the darkness were my comforts. Ruselina and Betty brought me food, but I couldn’t eat. Apart from having no appetite, I had bitten my tongue when I had fallen down and it was painfully swollen. Even the melon they cut up for me stung it. Keith didn’t come to see me the night I got the letter. He came a day later and stood in the doorway, half turned to me and half to the hall, a bunch of wilted flowers in his hand. ‘Hold me,’ I said, and he did for a few minutes, although both of us understood then that there was nothing of substance between us.
Never mind, never mind, I told myself after he left and I knew it was over between us. He would be better off with a happy Australian girl.
I tried to understand the sequence of things, how it had all come to this final blow. Just a few weeks earlier I had been at the Town Hall talking to Hades Sweet; Keith and I seemed to be falling in love; and, although my searching had come to a dead end, somewhere I still had the possibility that I might find my mother. I tortured myself by remembering all the times I thought I had somehow been getting closer to her. I recalled the gypsy in Shanghai who stole my necklace, then Tubabao where I had been certain I could feel my mother’s presence. I shook my head with the irony of how angry I had been with the Red Cross when Daisy Kent had said that they wouldn’t be able to help me. As it turned out my mother had never even left China, she’d been executed only a few hours after I last saw her. Then I remembered Sergei’s sad face and Dmitri’s warning against expectations. I wondered then if they had known my mother was dead, but had chosen not to tell me.
I had believed for so long that one day the great void my mother’s absence had left in me would close, and suddenly I had to admit that it would not.
A week later Irina stood in my doorway with a towel and sunhat in her hand. ‘Anya, you can’t lie there forever. Your mother wouldn’t have wanted that. Let’s go to the beach. Ivan’s competing in the carnival. It’s his last before he goes back to Melbourne.’
I sat up, even now I don’t know why. Irina herself looked surprised when I moved. Perhaps after a week in bed I realised that the only thing that might stop the pain would be getting up. My mind was foggy and my legs were weak, like those of someone who has suffered a long illness. Irina took my getting up as permission to open the blinds. The sunlight and sounds of the ocean were a shock to my vampire-like state and I lifted my hand to shield my face. Although we were going swimming, she insisted that I shower and wash my hair.
‘You’re too pretty to go anywhere looking like that,’ she said, fingering my straggly mane and pushing me towards the bathroom.
‘You should have been a nurse,’ I mumbled, then remembered what terrible nurses we had been on Tubabao the night of the storm. As soon as I stepped into the shower and turned on the taps I felt spent again. I lowered myself onto the edge of the bath, buried my face in my hands and began to cry.
It’s my fault, I thought. Tang went after her because I got away.
Irina brushed my hair away from my face but paid no attention to the tears. She pushed me towards the stream of water and began lathering up my hair with strong fingers. The shampoo smelled like caramel and was the colour of eggs.
The carnival was a sudden return to the world of the living. The beach was crowded with oil-slathered sunbathers, women in straw hats, children with rubber rings, men with zinc cream on their noses, old people sitting on blankets, and lifesavers from every club in Sydney. Something had happened to my hearing in the past week. My tubes were blocked. Sounds would seem unbearably loud one second and then fade away into silence the next. The discomfort caused by a baby’s crying made me cover my ears, but when I dropped my hands away I could hear nothing at all.
Irina grabbed my hand so that we wouldn’t lose each other trying to squeeze our way to the front of the crowd. The sun sparkling off the water that morning was deceptive, because the ocean was full of rips and the waves were high and dangerous. Three people had been pulled from the sea already, even though they had been swimming between the flags. There was talk of closing the beach and cancelling the carnival, but the boat race was judged safe enough.
The lifesavers marched behind their club flags as proudly as military men. Manly, Mona Vale, Bronte, Queenscliff. The lifesavers from North Bondi Surf Life Saving Club wore bib and brace-style costumes in the club colours of chocolate, red and white. Ivan marched as the belt man. With his head held high, his scar seemed invisible in the bright sunlight. I felt for the first time that I was seeing his face as it really was, the jaw set in the determined expression of a classic hero. Scattered throughout the crowd, clusters of women were shouting encouragement to the men. Ivan cringed from their attention at first, assuming it wasn’t for him, but egged on by the other guards he accepted a hug from a blonde woman and the kisses her friends blew to him. Seeing his shy pleasure brought me the only happiness I had known the whole week.
If I had been wiser, healthier in the heart, I might have married Ivan when he asked me, I thought. Perhaps we would have given each other some happiness and comfort. But it was too late for that. It was too late for anything except regrets.
Ivan and his team pulled their boat to the water’s edge. The home crowd cheered for them, whistling and shouting, ‘Bondi! Bondi!’ Irina called out and Ivan turned to us, his eyes meeting mine. He smiled at me and I felt the warmth of it run straight to my heart. But the minute he turned away I became cold again.
The whistle blew and the teams crashed into the water. They thrashed against the high waves which broke over the bows. One boat was twisted sideways in the surf and overturned. Most of the lifesavers jumped out in time but one
was caught underneath and had to be rescued. The race official ran out to the shore, but it was too late to call the others back, they were beyond the breakers. The crowd became silent then, because everyone understood that the excitement was over, that the race could be fatal in these conditions. For ten minutes the four remaining boats were out of sight beyond the waves. My chest twisted into a knot. What if I lost Ivan too? Then I saw the oars of the returning boats, high above the waves. Ivan’s boat was in the lead, but no one cared any more about the race. I struggled with my sense of dread. I heard the wood groan and saw it start to split apart, like pieces of straw from an old hat. The lifesavers’ faces were frozen with fear but Ivan’s expression was calm. He shouted orders to his team and by some miracle they held the boat together with their bare hands while Ivan held the rudder steady and got them back onto the sand. The supporters for North Bondi went wild. But Ivan and his team were not concerned with their victory. They leaped out of their boat and jumped back into the waves, helping the other teams pull their boats onto the beach. When everyone was safely back on the sand, the crowd let out a roar. ‘Show us the man!’ they chanted. ‘Show us the man!’ The guards around Ivan lifted him into the air as if he were as light as a ballerina. They carried him towards the crowd and threw him into a mob of girls, who jumped on him, giggling and squirming.
Irina turned to me, laughing. But I couldn’t hear her. I had lost all sense of sound. Her tanned skin glinted in the sunlight; the salty air had given her pretty mermaid curls. She rushed towards Ivan and began a playful tug of war with him over his cap. The crowd moved forward and I was jostled further and further towards the back of it until I found myself standing alone.
Like a fist into my stomach the pain returned, even harder and sharper than before. I clutched my gut and sank to my knees. I retched but could bring nothing up. It was my fault my mother was dead. Tang shot her because of me. I had got away and he couldn’t hurt me so he went after her. Olga too. I killed them all. Even Dmitri. He would have come looking for me if I hadn’t changed my name.
White Gardenia Page 42