The Knife Sharpener's Bell (10 page)

My mother's hand pulls me along as we go window-shopping along the wide sidewalks of Deribasovskaya Street, the March sunlight warm, the brown knobs of buds on the trees splitting to a yellowy green. Soon there will be roses in Odessa. The wind is hurrying after dried-up bits of leaves left over from the fall and I'm being pulled along by my mother's talk, how beautiful Odessa is, how ugly Winnipeg. I don't want to agree with my mother, not even in my head. But I can't help remembering the sad buildings of Winnipeg. I turn my mother's voice down to a hum and look at the buildings: the doors and windows, the curlicues above the windows, the peaks above the doors. And I find a rhythm to them, a sense of being finished, right. Like faces with the features all in the right places. It's what I want. I stare at the faces of the buildings, trying to memorize them so I can draw them when I get home. Uncle Lev is teaching me to draw in perspective. The fronts are called
façades
, Poppa says, a French word.

All the nice words are French, my mother tells me. That's why they gave me a French name: Annette. Back in Winnipeg, and now in Odessa, when people ask where I got my name, my mother says,
I named her after me
. It's a
good name, Annette. My auntie Manya, who likes French words too, says it's an elegant name. Manya herself is elegant, her clothes, the way the fabric lies on her shoulders, the little trim of lace. French lace, French words.
Façade.

My mother talks quickly but her walk is slow. Her legs hurt all the time from when she had to stand fourteen hours a day at the store. We're at the Arcade, where a glass roof stretches between the buildings on each side of the street. Just like pictures she's seen of the Galleria in Milan, in Italy, my mother tells me. Italy's not that far away. Ben might travel there some day, to the
cosmopolitan
city of Milan, a sophisticated city, elegant. The Arcade is elegant too, as good as any store in Moscow, my mother tells me.

When I look hard at the shopfronts I can see that my mother's wrong: they're not elegant. There are too many curlicues and statues: they're showing off. The shopfronts aren't quite right; none of them is just right. My mother tells me we're not going to buy anything – it's too expensive. That's what she says, but it's clear she likes to look. Most of the clothes in the windows are too fancy too. I'd be embarrassed wearing them. Manya's clothes are simple. Does Manya sometimes shop here? My mother tells me that an honest worker can't afford the shops in the Arcade. Manya doesn't work at all.

I'm tired of walking, and I'm more tired of listening to my mother talk. She's scrubbing at my face with a damp handkerchief.
Stop slouching and stand straight or people will think you're uncultured.
I yank my face away and she stops.
Don't get yourself into another temper! Whether you're tired or not, we're going to see the opera house.
I haven't seen it yet, the famous Odessa Opera House where my mother worked as a cashier, where she looked through her opera glasses at all
the ladies far away in their velvet evening cloaks and long white gloves. A different world. And now I'm here. We cross Theatre Square, under the curls of the lampposts. Fancy, but not too fancy: beautiful.

“Just like Venice,” my mother says.

“Look,” my mother says.

And, looking up, at last I see what I want, what's exactly right: the rows of windows set in half-circles and columns, the entrance with its two-storey porch, though it's too grand to be a porch, a tower almost. And the curve of the domed roof with a smaller dome on top of it, to finish it off, so that it's complete. Perfect. That sweet arc. I look and look and some of the sadness in me is taken away. When I get home, I'll put it down on paper, save it, have it for myself, forever.

It's my favourite skirt, plaid with red elastic suspenders. When I put it to my face I can smell Winnipeg: the delicatessen, the stiff smell of laundry puffing like sails on the line in the backyard. “Come here, Annette. Your suspenders are twisted.” Poppa kneels to tug them straight. There's no hair whatsoever left on the top of his head. With all the blotchy shapes, the bumps, it's like a map of some country nobody's discovered yet. He smells different now; he's using a different tobacco.

“You're growing like a weed: last year the skirt is too long and today – look – it's just right.”

“Poppa, will you be home late again today?”

He kisses me on the top of my head. “I'll try not to, Monkey. Go see how nice you look.”

In the hall mirror the new white cotton blouse Poppa bought me looks altogether crisp. My mother has brushed my hair and tied a bow at the top. This time I didn't argue
the bow's a perfect match for the red of the plaid. My winter coat is warmer than I really need for the make-believe Odessa winter. Though it's a hand-me-down from our next-door neighbour on Main Street, the navy blue wool is hardly worn and the brass buttons down the front shine. My friend Cassie told me it looked brand new. Cassie said she'd write, but I haven't had a letter from her. I didn't really believe she'd write, and now I'm not sure she even thinks about me, remembers me, though it's only been a couple of months. And I'm suddenly frightened that, if she doesn't remember me, it's as if I never was, as if we never spent all those hours playing hopscotch or digging in the garden. As if there never had been the smell of cinnamon buns or the wide blue Winnipeg sky open above the triangle of roof of her family's house.

But I remember. I remember everything.

I make a face in the mirror.

When I go down the stairs, I unbutton my coat, let the breeze lift the collar of my blouse.

My new friend Elena's waiting for me in the schoolyard. She's wearing two striped yellow bows in her hair. They perk up from either side of her head like the ears on a Scottish terrier. Elena has the eager, friendly look of a Scottish terrier: friendly but also calm. Nothing seems to bother her. When Raya asked her to help me with my school work, I thought Elena would make a face, stick her tongue out behind Raya's back. But she just smiled. Helping me was part of her volunteer “social work.” All the students have to volunteer for at least two hours a week. But now I don't need any help with reading, and it's me who's helping Elena with arithmetic. Elena wears her little red Pioneer scarf tied under her collar or around her neck. Once she let me try it on.

“Luba just told me,” Elena says, “her class is challenging our class to a socialist competition this term!” She's hopping up and down, balancing from one foot to the other.

I smile back at her smile. “What're we supposed to do?”

“Comrade Ivanova will help us draw up a socialist agreement between the two classes. This is how it goes. There are three points of competition: first, superior discipline during class; second, always being ready for lessons; and third, having the class's soap and towels always in order. So we elect two representatives from each class and it's their job to check on the class's progress. Maybe they'll elect you! And, best of all,” she's so excited that the bows are vibrating, “we're going to draw a big poster to chart the contest: two railway trains, one for each class, racing from Odessa to Moscow. I'm going to draw the engine for our class!” Elena is the best drawer in the class, much better than I am. In Winnipeg I was the best. “We'll move the engine forward one space for each point we get.”

“But what do we win?”

“Well, if our class does well enough, we get a red banner.”

“Oh.”

“If all the classes in the school are red-banner classes, then the school has a chance to compete in the district competitions.”

“Oh.”

“A red-banner class gets prizes, too, Annette. We get to go to the children's theatre and the museum.”

“Oh! That's great.”

A tall thin girl wearing glasses comes up to us.

“Luba, I'm explaining to Annette about the socialist competition.”

“Don't you know what a socialist competition is, Annette?” Luba drawls out the words.

I look down at my shoes, the bump where my big toe sticks up. “Elena was just telling me.”

Luba's playing with one of her braids. She doesn't have any bows in her hair, just elastics to keeping the braids tidy. “I guess they don't have socialist competitions in America, do they Annette?”

I'm not American. I'm from Canada. It's a different country.

“
Do
they have socialist competitions in America, Annette?” Elena's head is cocked to the side, making her look even more like a Scottie. I shake my head.

Luba's friend Sonya, a sturdy girl with bright button-blue eyes and masses of red curls, has come over too. She puts her hand on the sleeve of my coat, runs her fingers along the knitted wool cuffs.

“Did you bring this coat from America, Annette?”

I nod.

“My mother says you probably brought diamonds, too. And a whole trunkful of saucepans.” Sonya tugs at the cuffs.

“Don't be silly, Sonya,” Elena says. “Annette's father is an ordinary worker, a good Soviet citizen. How could he have diamonds?”

Sonya shrugs. “She dresses pretty fancy. Who knows what her father did in America?”

“Her father dresses real swell. I saw him. In a camel hair coat. He dresses like a real bourgeois.” Luba gives me a little shove.

“That wasn't my father. He's my uncle Lev.”

“Well your uncle's pretty fancy looking too.” She gives me a second little shove.

“Leave her alone,” Elena says. Both their chins are jutting out, about an inch from each other.

I want to tell them I'm not American.

“She's a show-off,” Luba says.

“Is not.”

“Is too.”

Luba gives me another good shove, and then Sonya shoves from the other side.

“Cut it out,” I tell them.

“Two against one isn't fair,” Elena says.

They both smile. Sonya steps back, and then Luba suddenly rushes at me with a big shove and I'm sitting in the gravel on the playground, my elbow scraped red and full of little stones. Luba's standing above me, and suddenly every-thing's bright, white, and I can't see anything but her, can't see Elena, though I hear her yelling, can't see the sky. Luba's still smiling. I want that smile.

The brightness swallows everything but I want what I want, that smile, and then it's Luba on the ground beneath me, I don't know how, brightness pouring through me and I'm happy, so happy, and I'm sitting on her stomach and I can feel myself pounding my fists on her shoulders, my voice spilling out words in English, the language I'm not supposed to speak.
Leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone.
The soft give of her shoulder as my fists connect. I look at Luba's face and she's afraid. The whiteness recedes and colours come back. I can see that Sonya's gone and can hear Elena saying quietly, “Get up, Annette. Get off her. C'mon, the teacher's going to see.”

I look again at Luba's face, her mouth open in surprise, the tears. That's what I wanted. I wanted her face to change. I changed it.

I get up.

“How'd you do that?” Elena asks. “How'd you throw her off you like that? She's so much bigger.”

Luba's blubbering. “I'm going to tell,” she says.

You started it,” Elena says. “We'll tell.”

“You're both getting in trouble.”

“You shoved her first.” Elena says. Luba stares at Elena, but Elena stares right back. “And you know what? I'm going right now to tell Comrade Ivanova that you were intimidating a new classmate. And that you were making fun of her because she's American, when you should have been making her feel welcome in the Soviet Union. And that you shoved her right on the ground and she hurt her elbow and she had to defend herself.”

Elena twirls around, takes hold of my good arm and starts pulling me towards the school. “Come on,” she says, “we're reporting her to Comrade Ivanova. Luba's not allowed to taunt you and she shoved first – it's against the rules.”

“No, Elena. We can't. We can't tell on her.” My elbow smarts. I'm going to have to pick the stones out.

“Why not? She was pure mean.”

“We can't be tattletales.”

“Don't be silly. She's not supposed to make fun of you and she's not supposed to shove you. It's anti-social behaviour.”

“But we'll get her into trouble!”

“She deserves to be in trouble. They might even expel her from her Young Pioneer troop. She started it – she knows the rules. Pushing other students around is definitely not allowed. And she's way taller than you, and stronger. And older. It isn't fair.”

“Elena, please. I don't want to tell Comrade Ivanova.”

Elena stops walking.

“Elena, I can't.”

It was the first time I ever got in a fight. Something took over, and I found out that if you pushed me, I'd push back.
It was a surprise. Maybe my mother wouldn't have been surprised. I found out also that I wasn't outnumbered: Elena stayed. And Sonya vanished as soon as I pushed back. One of those people eager for a fight until it starts, ready to run. I wonder more about the likes of Sonya than I do about Luba. People recur. I met a Sonya much later, when there was nowhere for me to run. Tattletale button-blue eyes, a red curl straying over one eyebrow. Blue eyes with no specific malice, no interest. A guard by a door, a staircase, a locked gate. “Raise your hands,” she told me, no expression on her face. “Turn around.” That was years later.

In Odessa, my mother was getting very tired of me, my tempers, my moods. Nothing about her city pleased me, not Alexander Park, not the beautiful spring day, not the picnic she'd prepared. I hated Alexander Park and I hated Odessa, even in spring, even under the high blue skies, and I told my mother so, and I told Poppa he should never have brought me there. On this particular day the source of my outrage was that I hadn't been allowed to invite Elena to the picnic: it was too much trouble, my mother had enough children to look after already. Beside our picnic blanket was a little light building, a roof but no walls, and I walked around it, trying to make myself dizzy, refusing the sunlight. It was a
gazebo
, Poppa told me. Good for a party, nothing serious – a building that was hardly a building. Can a building have no walls? Beside the gazebo was the bronze statue of a monster, lion body, eagle's head and wings, claws. A
griffin
, Poppa told me, as if by offering me these new words, he could make up for taking me away from everything. A griffin with its monster head. I put my fingers in the open mouth, and when I closed my eyes I was back home, back in the front room in the apartment on Main Street,
where it was always dusty, where the light always filtered through the yellowed Venetian blinds. I was standing beside the carved creature whose lion body made up the wooden armrest of the davenport, running my fingers around the open beak of its eagle head, the dark polished wood silky under my touch. Griffin. This was where I really lived, in a house with no walls, nothing to keep the outside out. In a park of monsters.