White Gardenia (49 page)

The window seal in the taxi had a leak in it and I pressed my arm over the hole to prevent the
whistling draft from blowing on Lily. I hadn’t seen a car in worse condition since Vitaly bought his first Austin. The seats were as hard as wooden planks and the dashboard was a tangle of wires and jangling screws held together by cellulose tape. When he needed to indicate, the driver opened the window and thrust his hand into the freezing air. Most of the time he didn’t bother.

At the airport exit, the traffic was jammed. Ivan pulled Lily’s shawl around her nose and mouth to block out the built-up exhaust fumes. The driver patted his pocket, and then sprang out of the car. I saw that he was attaching the windscreen wipers. He jumped back in the car and slammed the door. ‘I’d forgotten I’d taken them off,’ he said. I looked at Ivan, who shrugged. I could only assume the driver had taken the wipers off because he was afraid they’d be stolen.

A soldier tapped on the window and ordered the driver to move to the side of the road. I noticed the other taxis and cars were doing the same. A black limousine with its curtains drawn glided past like a sinister hearse. The rest of the cars started up their engines again and followed in its wake. A word hung in the air of the taxi but none of us voiced it.
Nomenklatura
. The party-privileged.

Through the water-spotted window I could see that the highway was flanked by birch trees. I stared at their thin white trunks and the snow balanced on their bare limbs. The trees were like creatures from a fairytale, mythical beings in a story my father might have told me before bedtime when I was a girl. Although it was early afternoon, the sun was slipping away and darkness was falling. After a few miles, the trees started to give way to blocks of
apartments. The buildings were drab with small windows and no embellishments. Some of them were half finished, with cranes perched on their roofs. Every so often we would pass a snow-covered playground or courtyard, but more often than not the buildings were crammed side by side, the snow around them stained and icy. For miles they stretched on, exhibiting a uniform grimness, and all the while I was aware that somewhere in this city of concrete my mother was waiting for me.

Moscow was a city of layers, its pattern of growth like the rings of a tree. Each mile took us deeper into the past. In an open plaza, watched over by a towering statue of Lenin, people were standing in a line outside a store where the clerks were adding up the totals on abacuses. A grocer sat by his stock, which he kept under a plastic sheet lest his potatoes freeze in the bitter cold. A man or woman, I couldn’t tell, bundled up in a padded coat and felt boots, was selling ice-cream. An old babushka held up the traffic, limping across the road with an armload of bread and cabbage. Further on, a mother and her child, wrapped like a precious parcel in a woollen hat and mittens, waited to cross the street. A trolley bus rumbled by, its sides caked in mud. I studied the occupants, who were barely visible through their layers of scarves and fur.

These are my people, I thought, and tried to take in the truth of it. I loved Australia and it had loved me, but somehow I felt drawn to the people around me, as if we had all been cut from the same stone.

Ivan tapped me on the arm and pointed out the front window. Moscow was transforming before our eyes into charming cobblestoned avenues and majestic buildings with pastel walls, gothic
apartment buildings and Art Deco street lamps. Draped in whiteness, they were pure romance. Whatever the Soviets had to say about the Tsars, the buildings erected by the monarchy remained things of beauty, despite the climate and neglect, while the Soviet buildings that loomed over them were already suffering from peeling paint and chipped masonry.

I tried to keep the distaste off my face when I realised that the block of glass and cement that the taxi driver had pulled up in front of was our hotel. The monstrous building dwarfed everything around it and was incongruous against the backdrop of the golden domes of the cathedrals within the Kremlin. It was as if they had deliberately tried to make something awful. I would have preferred to have stayed in the Hotel Metropol, magnificent in all its imperialist glory. The travel agent had tried to persuade us out of the hotel the General had told us to book by showing us pictures of the Metropol’s lavish fittings and the famous stained-glass ceiling. But it was also the KGB’s favourite haunt to watch rich foreigners and we were not in Moscow for a holiday.

The foyer of our hotel was artificial marble and red carpet. It stank of cheap cigarettes and dust. We had followed the General’s instructions to the letter and, although we were a day early, I searched every face in the lobby for him. I told myself not to be disappointed when I couldn’t find him among the sombre men reading newspapers or loitering around the magazine stand. A dour-faced woman looked up from her cramped space behind the reception desk. She had startling pencilled-in eyebrows and a mole on her forehead as big as a coin.

‘Mr and Mrs Nickham. And our daughter, Lily,’ Ivan said to her.

The woman flashed a gold-toothed grimace that wasn’t a smile and asked us for our passports. While Ivan filled in the registration form, I asked the woman as casually as I could manage if there were any messages for us. She checked our room box and returned with an envelope. I started to open it and noticed that the woman was watching me. But I couldn’t take the envelope away half-opened, that would have looked unnatural. So I hoisted Lily higher onto my chest, as if she were becoming heavy, and made my way over to a chair. My heart thumped with anticipation, but when I opened the piece of paper in the envelope I found that it was a sightseeing itinerary from Intourist. I felt like a child who wanted a bicycle for Christmas and got a school case instead. I had no idea what the itinerary meant. From the corner of my eye, I could see that the receptionist was still staring at me, so I slipped the envelope into my bag and lifted Lily into the air. ‘How’s my pretty girl?’ I cooed at her. ‘How’s my pretty girl with the wiggly nose?’

When Ivan had completed the form, the receptionist handed him our key and called over the bellboy, an elderly man with bowed legs. He pushed the trolley with our suitcases on it in such an erratic manner that I began to suspect he was drunk, until I noticed that the trolley had a wheel missing. He pressed the elevator button and then leaned against the wall, exhausted. There was another man, about the same age, with bags under his eyes and holes in the elbows of his cardigan, sitting behind a table of dusty trinkets and matroshka dolls. There was a smell about him, like garlic mixed with some sort of antiseptic. He examined every inch of us, including our luggage, as if he were trying to lock our image into his memory. In any other country I
would have assumed he was an old man trying to supplement his pension, but after the General’s stories about the KGB, the man’s stern-faced curiosity sent a shiver through me.

Our room was small by Western standards and unbearably hot. The tasselled lampshade dangling from the ceiling threw an orange glow over the worn carpet. I inspected the steam heater under the window and discovered it was the kind that couldn’t be adjusted. A man’s tinny voice was praising the Soviet constitution. Ivan stepped around the bed to turn the radio off and found that there was no on-off switch. The best he could do was turn the volume down to static level.

‘Look at this,’ I said, pulling aside the lace curtains. Our room faced the Kremlin. The pinkbrick walls and the Byzantine churches glistened in the fading light. The Kremlin was where the Tsars used to be wed and crowned. I thought of the black limousine we’d seen at the airport earlier and remembered that new Tsars resided there now.

While Ivan sorted out our bags, I laid Lily on the bed, undoing her heavy clothes and changing her into a cotton jumpsuit. I took our scarves and hats out of her basket and secured it between the pillows of the bed before laying her in it. She blinked her eyes sleepily. I stroked her tummy until she fell asleep, then sat back and watched her. The pattern on the bedcover caught my eye: intertwined branches, like vines, with pairs of doves perched on them. I remembered Marina’s grave in Shanghai, with the two engraved doves on her headstone, one fallen in an attitude of death, the other standing loyally by. Then I thought about the itinerary. My stomach heaved. My mother had been a day away
from me in Peking before she had been thwarted by Tang. The General had come right to the door of the Moscow-Shanghai before Amelia had sent him away. What if, just as I was about to see my mother, the KGB had caught wind of our plans and had taken her away to a labour camp? This time for real.

I looked up at Ivan. ‘Something’s gone wrong. They’re not coming,’ I mouthed to him. He shook his head and stepped towards the bed, turning the volume on the radio up a notch. I took the itinerary from my handbag and handed it to him. He read it once, then again with a puzzled look on his face, as if he were trying to find clues in it. He gestured for me to follow him to the bathroom, and after he had turned on the tap, he asked who had given it to me. We had not booked an Intourist guide, although guides were compulsory for foreigners. I told him I was afraid that the itinerary had something to do with the KGB.

Ivan rubbed my shoulder. ‘Anya,’ he said, ‘you’re tired and you’re thinking with an overheated brain. The General said the second. That’s not until tomorrow.’

There were circles under his eyes and I reminded myself that the situation was a strain for him too. He had spent days and nights putting his business affairs in order to make things easier for his partner while he was away, and in case he didn’t come back. Ivan was willing to sacrifice everything for my happiness.

I felt the months of waiting bear down on me. With only a few hours left till our scheduled meeting date, it wasn’t the time to lose faith. And yet, the nearer the time came, the more doubtful I felt. ‘I don’t deserve you,’ I said to Ivan, a tremble in my
voice. ‘Or Lily. I’m not a deserving mother. Lily might get the flu and die.’

Ivan studied my face. His mouth broke into a smile. ‘You Russian women always think like that. You’re a beautiful mother and Lily’s a tubby, healthy baby. Remember after she was born, you and Ruselina rushed off to the doctor because she “didn’t cry much and slept right through the night” and he examined her and said, “Half your luck.”’

I smiled and leaned my head against his shoulder. Be strong, I told myself, and went over the General’s plan again in my mind. He had said that he was going to get us out through East Germany. When he first told me that I had visions of guards in watchtowers, bloodhounds, tunnels and being shot at as we made a run for the Wall, but the General shook his head. ‘Vishnevsky will get you a permit to cross the border, but you will still have to be wary of the KGB. Even the
Nomenklatura
are watched.’ I wondered who this Vishnevksy was, and what my mother and the General had done to make friends with such a highly placed official. Or was it possible that there was some compassion behind the Iron Curtain?

‘Thank God I married you,’ I said to Ivan.

He put the itinerary on the basin shelf and clicked his fingers, his smile growing wider. ‘It’s a plan,’ he whispered. ‘Weren’t you the one who told me that we are in the care of a master spy? Have faith, Anya. Have faith. It’s a plan. And a good one too, knowing the General.’

The next morning, while we sat in the hotel restaurant for breakfast, I wavered between
hopefulness and anguish about what the day would bring. Ivan, on the other hand, seemed calm, tracing the grain of the table with his finger. The waitress automatically brought us scrambled eggs and two pieces of toast, although the Russian breakfast of black bread, dried fish and cheese looked more appetising. Lily chewed the collar of her playsuit while we waited for the waitress to warm her bottle in a saucepan. When she returned, I dripped a bit onto my wrist. It was the perfect temperature and I thanked the waitress. The girl wasn’t afraid to smile, and said to me, ‘Russians, we love babies.’

By nine o’clock we were in the foyer, coats, gloves and hats bundled on the seat beside us. Lily was sleepy after her meal and Ivan tucked her up in his coat. Our reasons for going along with the Intourist guide were precarious, but it seemed our best chance for the moment. Ivan believed that the General had arranged the tour to throw the KGB off our scent, to make us look like normal tourists, and that we would meet my mother somewhere along the way. I, on the other hand, couldn’t help worrying that the tour was a trick by the KGB to get information out of us.

‘Mr and Mrs Nickham?’

We turned around to see a woman in a grey dress, with a fur coat slung over her arm, smiling at us. ‘I am Vera Otova. Your Intourist guide,’ she said. The woman had the upright bearing of someone who had been trained in the army. She was the right age to have fought in the last war, perhaps forty-seven or forty-eight. Ivan and I stood up to shake her hand. I felt fraudulent. The woman smelled of apple blossom perfume and her hands were manicured. She seemed nice enough, but I couldn’t be sure
whether she was friend or foe. The General had told us, if questioned, to deny everything about our plan. ‘Anyone I send to you will know who you are. There will be no need for you to say anything. Beware. They could be a KGB agent.’

It was going to be up to Vera Otova to let us know whose side she was on.

Ivan cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry that we overlooked booking a guide when we left Sydney,’ he said, taking Vera’s coat and helping her into it. ‘Our travel agent must have done it for us.’

A dark look washed over Vera’s face, but was quickly dispelled again by her gap-toothed smile. ‘Yes, you must have a guide for Moscow,’ she said, perching her woollen beret on her head. ‘It makes life much easier.’

I knew that was a lie. It was necessary for foreigners to have guides so they wouldn’t go to places they weren’t supposed to and see what the government didn’t want them to see. The General had told us about it. The tours were set for museums, cultural events and war memorials. We would never get to see the real victims of Russia’s corrupt Communism: chronic alcoholics dying in the snow, old women begging outside train stations, homeless families, children who should be in school digging up roads. But the lie didn’t make me dismiss Vera as a fake immediately. What else could she have said in a crowded hotel foyer?