The Man in the Shed (24 page)

As the train flew by a section of state housing, Neil closed his eyes at my command, and I talked him through a Moldavian neighbourhood of small circular cottages made of splintered timber, plaster walls painted an indigo colour to ward off evil, and tea-cosy roofs of thatched bulrushes.

Near Naenae, where the walls of the valley close, the hills covered in the yellow flower of gorse and broom filled the top part of the carriage window. Take away the broom and the gorse and these same hills could be found fringing Judith’s Russian neighbourhood—although with another slight difference. If we may refer to a hill as a man, then in the Ukraine the man is shorter and cleaner shaven.

I told Neil to think of Moldavia as a gentle short man in round glasses. Many of them. Row upon row of gentlemen in glasses, humble clerks rising from desks, one after another, from the east of the Ukraine all the way to the Romanian border.

The lessons had been going several months now. Twice a week, Neil drove over the hill to my flat in Wellington. I don’t know where he told his wife he was going. And as summer shifted from this part of the world, his impatience found new expression.

One afternoon he showed up at my door looking shamefaced. Some unpleasantness had gone down at home the previous night. He had started drinking early in the evening and later stood on his camp stretcher shouting in Russian through the bedroom wall.

Of course, by now he was desperate to break into Judith’s Russia, to make his smash-and-grab and dust her off from her Russian adventure. I cautioned that certain experiences lay outside his grasp. Winter, for example. He had no idea how brutal it could be. I suppose I was nervous of failing him as well. I cribbed stories from the library—accounts of Siberian cities where frozen crows announce the arrival of spring by toppling from window ledges, and small children run to gather up the black ornamental pieces to thread into necklaces and wear as good-luck charms to ward off pneumonia. Or the fate of drunks in old Tsarist Russia, of fellows with a skinful driving sleighs into snowdrifts, and dawn finding their expressions of hilarity gnawed down to the bone by the wild dogs of Moscow.

The stories were meant to be cautionary. But at the same time they allowed Neil to see how Russia could attract and detain his wife after the temperate character of the Wairarapa.

There was one thing I had almost overlooked. I hadn’t invented a character for Neil. He couldn’t possibly venture into Russia looking the way he did. Judith’s Russia was Old Russia with its horses and carts and peasants squatting in the fields. We couldn’t have him bounding in there with a pair of Nikes. I told him he would need another identity. I knew
just the place to find one. We bundled into Neil’s ute and I directed him to the night shelter. We parked opposite and studied the shuffling lines, the bearded barefoot men in coats; others with running sores, mumbling curses into their matted beards. They would have been holy men in Tsarist Russia.
Yurodivy
describes the pious traveller, barefoot, ragged, bringing news and stories from far away.

My idea was for Neil to enter Judith’s world by this subterfuge; dressed in rags, he would ghost from one world through to the other.

The cheques kept rolling in, and throughout the summer Neil absorbed my stories and my local Russian landscapes. I’m going to pinch one of Neil’s words here to describe a ‘mulching’ process. Most market gardeners these days use black polyethylene—Neil says there is no better ground-cover protection. But for feeding and nourishment you can’t really go past a mulch of wet straw and leaves. What is laid around the plant eventually ends up inside the plant. That’s the miracle of mulch.

Point number four: time is the other element at play. Time will stare down the pyramids, eventually.

If I explain how Neil was able to enter Judith’s kingdom then it is important to keep hold of the idea of mulch—or the ground I prepared with Masha Venyukova’s stories, her
experiences with the Turk, the sparrow and the artist of Shevchenko Park and, of course, my own descriptions from the carriage window.

It was late March when Neil dreamt his way into Judith’s Russia. Why this night and not another? Why does a plant choose that particular moment to burst through the last layer of soil into daylight?

When he later reported back he described the wet rooftops of Odessa, the grey rectangular areas between the buildings that divide the Black Sea.

Neil is comforted to find everything in its place, and familiar. Over there, that must be the Odessa Railway Station. A line of crows sits along the top of the copper-roofed pergola. Outside the station is a flea market where women stand elbow to elbow, making clothes-hangers out of their limbs to display blouses for sale, and men sell dill out of black leather caps. The only thing that is challengingly new is a sweet smell of old sweat that he traces to the bedrolls on the top bunks. Otherwise he feels the same unhurried hip-rolling movement of the train. On the slow climb to Kishinev, he gazes out at the slightly rounded, clerical aspect of the hills.

He watches the countryside pass slowly. Bulrushes, this paddock, that paddock, bulrushes again. Another hill, another bald clerk rising from his desk, then another.

He left in daylight, but it is dark when he reaches Kishinev. And it is not until he leaves the train and steps onto the platform that he feels the cold sensation of the unfamiliar. He
looks down to discover he is barefoot. And there, in the window, is the reflection of a stranger—the ragged reflection of a Russian tramp. A tangled beard, a rat’s nest of hair. As Neil raises his hand the figure in the window does the same; the same hand appears to touch the same beard, nose and chin.

I had told Neil to look out for a priest’s grave to sleep beside—to ensure he would go unmolested by roaming mobs. Look for the graves planted with blue forget-me-nots. But in what direction? Where, for god’s sake? The tremors of panic are stirring in his belly. The air is astonishingly cold and his thoughts are full of the stories I have told him—of Russia’s past invaders turning to ice mid-stride; of Napoleon’s men lying awake at night, afraid their breath will freeze over and block their breathing passages. He remembers that in the depths of winter a spoken word can quickly turn to ice inside one’s mouth. In this way a skull may creak open with the name of a loved one. This is why in Russian postcards we see so many corpses with their mouths stretched wide. Some even with their mouths bandaged, to ensure the name of their loved one will escort them to their grave. On the platform in Kishinev, Neil is thinking of those skulls wrenched slowly open with the longer names of Henrietta, Rebecca, Josephine, when a man with a lantern pushes forward out of the shadows.

‘Friend, have you come far?’ The man measures Neil up close, then lowers the light to crouch beside his running sores. He shakes his head and advises Neil to have the wounds seen
to. ‘Without proper treatment they will soon fester.’ He rises, spits on the ground and looks around. ‘The doctor’s house is not far from here. I’ll take you there, myself.’

So this is Russia. So this is the night. Russian air. Neil is alert to every possible detail. Along the way the kind stranger offers him words of encouragement. Soon the nights will be warm and the countryside will recover its senses.

After a short while, the horse’s rear hoof comes to rest and the driver leans forward to point with his whip to a lit window set back from the road. ‘There is the doctor,’ he says.

Neil thanks the driver. He struggles down and lands gingerly. He can’t believe his luck so far.

The driver’s parting words are ‘Pray for me.’

In the doctor’s garden a great variety of scents cling to the air, among them the green scent of unripe tomatoes. But it is too dark to see. In the distance Neil can hear the soft slapping progress of the horse. He takes another step towards the window and a chicken splashes out from under his feet.

He counts to twenty and sets off again for the window.

There is Judith, sitting by the fire grate with a lace frame on her lap. Naturally Neil is beside himself with excitement. He is thrilled, full of achievement and wonder. All caution is tossed aside as he moves more fully in to the window.

She seems content. Or is that little frown for the needlework or for some general condition? He is mulling this over when Judith looks up and sees him in the window. He cups his hands, as if he’s about to explain. He wants to reassure her. But she is pointing at him, her hand raised. Her eyes, mouth,
everything is pegged to the outer limits of alarm.

‘It’s me, Neil,’ he says back at the window.

But no—she apparently doesn’t recognise him. It’s clear that when she’s in Russia he doesn’t exist, which is what he suspected all along. He is still digesting this unpleasant fact when there is a rush of air—a heavy hand falls upon him and Mikhail’s Russian breath fills his ear. There are dark threats, bold plans of punishment as he is dragged round to the courtyard.

But in the light everything changes.

‘Why, my poor fellow. Look at you.’ The doctor pokes around the infected areas of his shins. ‘Did some kind soul send you here?’

Then Judith calls out from inside the cottage, ‘Who is it, Mikhail? Did you catch him?’

They could be back in the Wairarapa. It could be Judith calling back from the garden to ask who telephoned.

‘Just a poor traveller in need of running repair,’ answers Mikhail.

Mikhail is less imposing than Neil had thought. Beetle-browed. A small, puckered mouth—not like his own, which is long and thin-lipped. He wonders if Judith has difficulty adjusting. She likes to kiss.

‘Inside with you, good sir,’ says the doctor. ‘I need to clean those wounds.’

Inside is wonderfully warm, but Neil hardly dares to raise his eyes in case Judith recognises him beneath his tramp’s garb.

‘Wait by the grate. There’s a good fellow,’ says Mikhail.

Judith is on the far side of the room, but even from that distance Neil said he could feel her hostility. Now she unleashes it on Mikhail. Why must the tramp violate their privacy? Why must he stay the night? Hadn’t the doctor done enough already? The doctor smiles good-naturedly. He is amused by the spirit shown by his pet golubchik. He reminds her that it is good luck to provide a pious wanderer with shelter. They should be so lucky that their house was chosen. More so to have the tramp arrive at the end of winter. This way, luck will shine upon them for only a brief period of inconvenience.

‘He can sleep by the grate,’ continues the doctor. ‘And when he gets better, I will set him to work in the garden. In another two weeks it will be spring. There will be cherry blossom in the trees, fresh grass for his bed. He can get on his way then.’

In the morning, Neil woke in a ball at the end of his camp stretcher. He was still in Russia, shivering by the grey embers. A small bird must have flown against the window because he looked up and saw the Belgian elms outside and, in the distance, a pohutukawa. He remembered that Judith had wanted to turn him out.

For the rest of the day he was short with her, yelling at her at the slightest opportunity—for standing the cutlery up the wrong way in the dishwasher, for leaving the butter out, for leaving the oven elements on.

But this is not the way Mikhail treats his little bird in
Russia. They never argue. It’s remarkable, said Neil.

Well, there was that disagreement over his arrival. Otherwise Judith has only to ask for something for it to be hers. There is just the one thing denied her, and that is her memory of another life. The moment the events of the rape and violence bubble from her, Mikhail is quick to act. He seals her lips with a little nonsense. He babies her, shush-shushes her, rubs the darkness from her neck, her shoulders, her loins.

At night, said Neil, the doctor sits in his rocker and runs his eyes over his beautiful captive—closing in on the fault. Something is not quite right with her jawbone; something is weighing it down at the rear, and it makes her eyes pool with apprehension. She appears to be constantly on the verge of fright. This does not reflect well on him, of course, so he rocks in his chair, scratching his chin. He ponders and dreams up ways to correct this defect. If only the darkness would shift from the back of her eyes, then she might take her place with the other young, confident women of Russian parentage, and stroll about with a parasol in Pushkin Park.

Neil sees more clearly at night—the doctor’s motives, his wife’s captivity, everything that Judith cannot see for herself. On the other hand, he might as well be wallpaper, for Judith barely acknowledges him. She relays any request or comment through Raisa, the doctor’s trusted servant.

Still, at night he has the freedom of the house. In the dead hours he may stand in the bedroom doorway and watch the love-making of Judith and Mikhail. The doctor is always in his nightshirt and nightcap, all rigging and sail; and Judith
is all arms and legs, trying to haul in the mainsheet.

Neil had an idea that if he could return to Russia with a shred of evidence from Judith’s old life, that might be enough to jolt her away from Mikhail’s grasp.

But he needed to act soon. In Mikhail’s garden everything speaks of quick awakening. Green buds have burst along grey limbs. During the day the air is lazy and warm. Soon the doctor will have no reason to detain him and Neil will pass from the doctor’s charity out of Judith’s life for good.

Another day and he finds a small section of Mikhail’s garden wall collapsed. He steps through and feels the abrupt shift from solidity and guardedness to the shrieks and cries of young children chasing each other up the strada. He moves along to an intact section and places his eye to a hairline crack in the wall. His plan requires that he be furtive. Judith arrives, trailing breadcrumbs beneath the bedsheets hanging in the trees near the primrose. She is sweet-talking the chickens. Zdes’ Anna. Tam Marya. Privet, Aleksandr. As she ventures out to the garden she inhales new scents; once she draws such a deep breath of satisfaction that Neil experiences a change of heart. She appears happy, does she not? Content with Mikhail in his garden. Perhaps he should respect that and withdraw. The feeling soon passes.