White Gardenia (41 page)

It was so hot in the room. The heat seemed to be coming in great waves. Why don’t they set up a fan,
I thought. Do something about the air circulation. I fumbled with my hat. I took it off and laid it on the chair next to me. It seemed such a silly, frivolous thing now. How stupid I was to have been so delighted with it. Everything was shifting. I felt my chair lift. The ceiling seemed to come closer. It was as if I was riding the crest of a wave and at any moment I would be tugged underwater.

‘Anya, this is a terrible shock to you,’ said Dan. ‘Can I get you a brandy?’

Dan seemed better. What he had been dreading was already underway. Suddenly he could be himself again, my strong friend helping me through another crisis. ‘No,’ I said, the room swaying before my eyes. ‘Just more water.’

He signalled to the waiter to refill my glass. The waiter kept his eyes averted, trying to be discreet. But there was something morbid about him. His pale hands pouring the water seemed hardly human. His clothes smelled like an old church. He had the air of a funeral director rather than a waiter.

‘Please continue,’ I said to Dan. ‘What happened when you saw Dmitri? Is he all right?’

Dan shifted in his seat. He didn’t answer my question. The sensation came over me that everything was about to change. That everything I had felt since Shanghai was about to be turned over. I had not understood Dmitri. The man I was hearing about was not the man I had imagined for so long. Where was his easy life? His nightclub? Where was Amelia?

‘I arrived in Los Angeles the day after I saw the newspaper article,’ Dan said. ‘I went straight to the hospital. The priest was waiting for me there. Since I’d given the police Dmitri’s name they had done a
background check. It seems he had been working for a gangster called Ciatti, helping him run an illegal gambling den downtown.

‘On the night he was shot he was at some big gun’s house in the hills. The guy didn’t trust banks and it was rumoured that he had stashes of money and jewels all over the place. Ciatti somehow knew about that and figured he could pull a walk-in, walk-out job. Easy money when his gambling business was going down. He used a couple of his thugs to enter the place. Dmitri was just the driver. He was left with the car. But it went wrong when the big gun’s seventeen-year-old granddaughter turned up at the door. Her appearance hadn’t been figured into the plan. Dmitri watched her run up the steps to the house, knowing she was heading straight for a death trap. In fact, Ciatti was already pistol-whipping the girl when Dmitri burst inside. There was an argument. Dmitri struggled with Ciatti, copping a bullet in the lung and one through the top of his head. The screams and gunshots got the attention of the neighbours and Ciatti and his men fled the house.’

‘He saved someone?’ I asked. ‘Dmitri saved a girl he didn’t know?’

Dan nodded. ‘Anya, when I saw him in the hospital he was incoherent most of the time. When I asked him about what happened that night he seemed convinced that the girl he had saved was you.’

I felt a rip down my centre, as if something that had been buried for years was reawakening. I rubbed my hands over my face but couldn’t feel my fingers or my cheeks.

Dan watched me. I had no idea what his taut expression meant. I had no idea what anything
meant any more. ‘But Dmitri also had moments of lucidity,’ he said. ‘And in those moments he told me of a girl he once loved. A young woman who had danced the bolero with him. It was almost as if he understood who I was, and that I had come to represent you. “You’ll tell her, won’t you?” he begged me. “You’ll tell her that I always thought of her. I ran away because I was a coward, not because I didn’t love her.”

‘“How will she know?” I asked him. “How will I convince Anya of that when you left her to die?” Dmitri didn’t answer me for a long time. He fell back on his pillow, his eyes rolled back in his head. I thought he was lapsing into a coma again, but he suddenly looked at me and said: “As soon as I got to America, I knew I had been a fool. That woman? Do you think that she loved me? She left me overnight. When I asked her why, she said it was to defeat Anya. I can never explain to you the hold she had over me. How she could sing the worst in me to life. Not like sweet Anya, who could bring out the best. But between the two there must have been more blackness in me or how else could Amelia have won?”

‘The nurse came in to check on him then,’ Dan said, running his fingers through his hair. ‘She checked his pulse and his drip and said that I had asked enough questions and I should leave and let him be. I turned once again before I left the room and looked at Dmitri, but he was already asleep.

‘The priest was waiting for me outside. “Dmitri went to the IRO office the day he arrived in Los Angeles,” he told me. “There wasn’t any record of an Anya Lubenskya. So he asked them to check under Anya Kozlova. When he found out she had changed back to her maiden name, he said he knew
that she would be all right. That she knew how to survive.” I asked the priest when Dmitri had told him this, and he said it had been that morning. During his confession.

‘I went to see Dmitri the following day. His condition had deteriorated again. He was very weak. I hadn’t slept all the previous night, so heavily was he weighing on my mind. “But you didn’t go back to her, did you?” I said to him. “You didn’t try to help her any further after that?” Dmitri looked at me with sadness on his face. “I loved her enough not to ever want to hurt her again,” he said.’

Tears stung my eyes. All the time Dan had been talking my mind had been racing ahead. I would go to Dmitri. I would help him. By his very deed he had shown me that he was not a monster. He had saved a seventeen-year-old girl. And he had saved her because she had reminded him of me.

‘How soon can we get back to America?’ I asked Dan. ‘How long before I can see him?’

Tears welled up in Dan’s eyes. He suddenly seemed old. It was a moment of agony. We stared at each other without saying anything. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a brown packet and handed it to me. My trembling fingers fumbled with the wrapping. Something fell out and tinkled onto the table. I picked it up. A wrought-iron key with a Parisian bow. Although I had not seen it for years, I recognised it immediately. The key to our apartment in Shanghai.

For eternity.

‘He’s gone, isn’t he?’ I asked, tears streaming down my cheeks. I was barely able to speak.

Dan reached over the table and grabbed my hands, holding them tightly as if he were afraid that I would fall.

The restaurant was filling up with people, the lunchtime crowd. All around us were happy faces. The patrons were chatting over their menus, pouring wine, clinking glasses, kissing each other’s cheeks. The waiter seemed lively all of a sudden, running backwards and forwards with the orders. Dan and I clung to each other. Dmitri was dead. I felt the knowledge of it spread across my chest and enter my heart. The irony of it seemed too much. Dmitri had fled to find riches and instead found pain and death. I had become a refugee and had never once gone hungry. All the past years I had been trying to hate Dmitri, he had never stopped thinking of me.

I clutched the key in my palm.

For eternity.

Later, much later, when I moved into my apartment in Bondi and found the strength to take the key from the box where I had hidden it the day Dan gave it to me, I had a lock made to match it. It was the only way I could think of to share my life and good fortune with Dmitri.

For eternity.

A
few days after New Year’s Eve 1956, I was sitting in my flat on Campbell Parade, looking out to the beach and watching the crowd that spilled over it like mismatched clothes from a basket at a jumble sale. On the first day of January the seas had been high with waves over fifteen feet. The lifesavers were frantic, dragging people from the surf and rescuing two boys who had been washed onto the rocks. But today the sea was flat and flocks of seagulls bobbed lazily on its surface. It was hot and I had all the windows open. I could hear the sound of children playing on the sand and the whistle of the lifesavers urging people to swim between the flags. The ocean might have looked calm, but underneath it was riddled with dangerous rips.

I was working on an article for the women’s section, where I had been appointed fashion editor the year before. Ann White, after exhausting herself on coronation gowns and the Queen’s wardrobe for her royal visit to Australia, had married into the
Denison family. Her flair for fashion was considered a bigger asset to the department store dynasty than her dowry and she was appointed head fashion buyer for their Sydney store. We saw each other at social occasions and had been out for lunch two or three times. It was ironic that after our shaky start we should have ended up needing each other’s patronage.

For the article I was writing I had asked three Australian designers to submit their ideas on how they would dress Grace Kelly for her wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco. Judith put forward the most beautiful gown, an ivory organza sheath dress with a taffeta bust and swan-down collar, but the dresses submitted by the other designers were also worthy of the title haute couture. One was a mermaid-line dress with curved seams and fishtail hem, and the other was sable-trimmed brocade and iridescent silk. That dress had been submitted by a Russian who had come to Sydney via Paris. Her name was Alina, and when I wrote her name on the back of the photographs to go with the article, I started thinking about my mother.

Stalin had died in 1953, but that hadn’t stopped the West and the Soviet Union entwining themselves in a Cold War that made any sort of transfer of information impossible. Vitaly’s father had never heard back from his brother, and I had written to every organisation I could: the Russian–Australian Society, the United Nations, the IRO and many other smaller humanitarian organisations. But none had been able to help me. It seemed that Russia was impenetrable.

Australia was far removed from anything my mother and I had known together. I couldn’t see her
in the trees or associate her with the sea. I still harboured my terror that I would forget the details of her: the shape of her hands, the exact colour of her eyes, her scent. And yet I could not forget her. Even all those years later she was still the first person I thought of when I woke up in the morning and the last person I imagined before I turned out the light. We had been separated for almost eleven years and yet, somewhere in my heart, I still believed that my mother and I would see each other again.

I slipped the article and photographs into an envelope and laid out my clothes for the office. A few weeks before I had put together a fashion spread titled ‘Too Hot for the Beach’ featuring the new bikini styles that were making their way to Australia from Europe and America. Because swimsuits were intimate wear, I had asked the model if she would like to keep the bikinis she had posed in, but she told me that she already had drawers full of swimming costumes from other shoots. So I’d brought the swimsuits home to wash, intending to give them to the junior reporters. I opened my wardrobe and rummaged through the straw bag where I thought I had put the bikinis after they had dried on the line. But they weren’t there. I stared at the empty interior of the bag, puzzled. I wondered if I’d been so busy with deadlines that maybe I had already taken the swimsuits to the office and simply forgotten. At that moment Mrs Gilchrist, the building supervisor, knocked on the door.

‘Anya! Telephone!’ she shouted.

I slipped on my sandals and rushed to the shared telephone in the hall.

‘Hello,’ Betty whispered when I picked up the receiver. ‘Could you come and get us, love?’

‘Where are you?’

‘At the police station. The police won’t let us go unless someone comes to pick us up.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Nothing.’

I heard Ruselina talking to someone in the background then the sound of a man’s laughter.

‘Betty, if nothing’s happened, what are you two doing at the police station?’

There was a moment’s pause before she said, ‘We’ve been arrested.’

I was too surprised to say anything. Ruselina called something out but I couldn’t catch it.

‘Oh,’ said Betty, ‘Ruselina asked if you would mind bringing us some clothes.’

I hurried to the police station, my mind overflowing with possible scenarios of what Betty and Ruselina might have done to get themselves arrested. Betty had retired, and after selling the house in Potts Point had bought a three-bedroom apartment for herself and Ruselina and the bedsitter above it for me. Vitaly and Irina were living in a house in Tamarama, one suburb away. Since moving, Betty and Ruselina had begun to exhibit odd behaviour. Once they leaped off the rocks near the headland with knives between their teeth, claiming they were ‘going to fight the sharks in honour of Bea Miles’, who had been Bondi’s crazy lady for a number of years. The tide was out and the sea was calm and clear so they hadn’t been in much danger of drowning, but the sight of our dear old ladies floating around in an unpatrolled area was enough to terrify Irina and myself. We made Vitaly jump in after them to coax them back to shore.

‘Don’t worry so much about them,’ Vitaly told us
afterwards. ‘They’ve both had tragedies in their lives but have had to be strong and carry on regardless. This is the time in their life when they want to let go and be irresponsible. They’re lucky to have found each other the same way you two have.’

I hadn’t telephoned Vitaly and Irina before I left for the police station. Irina was four months pregnant and I didn’t want to upset her. But all the way to the station I couldn’t help worrying. Why couldn’t Betty and Ruselina take up painting or bingo like other old ladies? The Bondi tram rattled past and I glanced up. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a solitary old woman sitting on a bench in the park. She was throwing bits of bread to the seagulls. The image of her lonely figure seemed to burn itself into my mind, and I began to wonder if I would be that old lady in another fifty years’ time.

When I turned up at the police station Betty and Ruselina were sitting in the waiting area in their terry-towelling robes. Betty was blowing rings of smoke into the air. Ruselina grinned when she saw me. There was an elderly man sitting next to her wearing a white singlet and shorts. His skin was as brown as leather hide and he was leaning with his elbows on his knees, deep in thought. In the opposite corner of the room a solid-looking man in a bib-style swimsuit and shorts was holding an icepack to his jaw. I read the word ‘Inspector’ printed on the ribbon around his straw hat.

The sergeant in charge stood up from his desk. ‘Miss Kozlova?’

I glanced at Betty and Ruselina but they weren’t giving anything away.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked the sergeant, lowering myself into the chair opposite his desk.

‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered, ‘nothing serious. It’s just that the beach inspector is strict about “decency”.’

‘Decency?’ I cried. Ruselina and Betty giggled.

The sergeant opened his desk drawer and pulled out a diagram of a man and a woman standing on a beach. He pushed it towards me. There were lines and measurements drawn over the figures. My head was swimming. Decency? What on earth had Betty and Ruselina done?

The sergeant pointed to various parts of the picture with his pen. ‘The legs of the swimming trunks, according to the inspector, must be at least three inches long, and women’s swimsuits must have straps or other support.’

I shook my head, not understanding. Ruselina and Betty had elegant one-piece suits. I had bought them for them from David Jones last Christmas.

‘Your grandmothers’ costumes,’ whispered the sergeant, ‘are a little too brief.’

There was another giggle from Betty and Ruselina. Suddenly what had happened dawned on me. ‘Oh God! No!’

I strode over to Betty and Ruselina. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Open up!’

Ruselina and Betty opened their robes and strutted around the reception area, mimicking catwalk models. Betty was wearing high-cut sarong pants with a strapless bikini top. Ruselina’s costume was patterned like a tuxedo with a v-shaped neckline. They were the bikinis from the fashion shoot. Although both women were in good shape for their age, they certainly weren’t the young women the costumes had been designed for. Betty’s bony hips were far too skinny for her pants and Ruselina’s
bust wasn’t quite up to a low-cut front, but they both walked with an elegant poise.

I watched them dumbstruck for a few seconds then burst out laughing.

‘I don’t object to you wearing those costumes,’ I told Betty and Ruselina later, when we were sitting in the local milkbar and drinking strawberry shakes. ‘But why do it on the beach that has the strictest inspector?’

‘Getting chased by that old fart was half the fun!’ cackled Betty. Ruselina started to laugh too. The owner of the milkbar glanced over at us.

‘Who was the other guy at the station?’ I asked. ‘The one in the shorts.’

‘Oh, him,’ said Ruselina, a twinkle in her eye. ‘Bob. He was a real gentleman. When the inspector started marching us off the beach, Bob stepped in and told him not to “manhandle ladies”.’

‘Then he bopped the inspector one on the chin,’ said Betty, slurping her shake.

I glanced down at the airy pink bubbles of my own drink and thought about how the two old ladies who had looked after me for so long were turning into my children.

‘What are you doing this afternoon, Anya?’ asked Betty. ‘It’s Saturday. You want to come to the pictures with us?
East of Eden
is showing.’

‘I can’t,’ I shrugged. ‘I’ve got to finish an article on wedding dresses for tomorrow’s paper.’

‘What about your own wedding, Anya?’ said Ruselina, sucking up the last lick of icy milk through her straw. ‘You’ll never find a husband if you’re always working so hard.’

Betty patted my knee under the table. ‘Ruselina, you sound like a Russian babushka,’ she said. ‘She’s
still young. There’s no hurry. Look at her marvellous career. When she’s ready she’ll pick someone out at one of those glamorous parties she’s always going to.’

‘Twenty-three’s not that young to be married,’ said Ruselina. ‘It’s only young compared to us. I was married at nineteen, and that was considered quite late in my day.’

After I said goodbye to Betty and Ruselina I walked upstairs to my own flat and lay down on the bed. My bedsitter was small, most of it was taken up by my bed, and one of the walls was nearly all windows. But I had a view of the sea and a corner with plants and an overstuffed armchair and a desk where I could write or think. It was my retreat and I felt comfortable there. Away from people.

You’ll never find a husband if you work so hard,
Ruselina had said.

There would be two other people working at the paper that afternoon: Diana, because Saturday was Harry’s golf day, and Caroline Kitson. The junior reporters took it in turns to cover weddings and dances. Despite all her ambitions, Caroline had not been able to catch one of the young men of her social class. Perhaps she had offended too many of their mothers in the social column. Whatever the reason, Caroline, at twenty-nine, had come to see herself as a spinster. She had started to wear frumpy clothes and thick glasses and had an air about her more suited to a widow than a young, healthy woman. There was a pretty brunette among the junior reporters who had her eye on the social editor’s position, and because of that Caroline had become much nicer towards Diana and myself. Though there was one habit Caroline had adopted that annoyed me much more than the snubbing she
had given me in earlier years. ‘Hello, here’s Old Maid Two,’ she would say whenever I walked into the office. ‘Are you feeling just like me?’

Every time she said it I felt instantly depressed.

I turned and looked at the matroshka dolls lined up on my dresser. There were five altogether, two after me. A daughter and a granddaughter. That had been my mother’s vision for our lives. She probably once believed that we would all live out our days peacefully in the house in Harbin, adding a new extension each time another member of the family came along.

I lay back down on the pillows and squeezed the tears from my eyes. To have a family I would need a husband. But I had grown so used to living without a man’s love, I didn’t even know where to begin. It was four years since I had found out about Dmitri’s death, seven years since he had left me. How many years would it take to stop mourning?

Diana was already at her desk when I arrived at the paper. I dropped into her office to say hello.

‘What are you doing this Friday night, Anya?’ she asked, fingering the collar of her Givenchy-style dress.

‘Nothing special,’ I told her.

‘Well, I have someone I want you to meet. Why don’t you come over for dinner around seven? I’ll have Harry pick you up.’

‘Okay, but who is it you want me to meet?’

Diana’s face broke into a smile that showed all her pearly teeth. ‘Is that a yes or a no?’

‘It’s a yes but I’d still like to know who it is I’m meeting.’

‘Don’t you trust me?’ she asked. ‘A dashing young man, if you must insist. He’s been dying to meet you
ever since he spotted you at the Melbourne Cup ball. He said he followed you around all night but you paid him no attention. Which, I might add, sounds just like you, Anya. He’s the best-looking man on this paper, has a great sense of humour and couldn’t even get you to say “boo”.’

I blushed. My embarrassment seemed to make Diana even more amused. I wondered if she’d had some way of reading my mood that afternoon and had worked quickly to find a solution.