White Gardenia (51 page)

Vera was waiting for us in the hotel foyer. She stood up when she saw us step out of the elevator. Her coat was beside her but she’d kept the rose-coloured scarf over her hair. The apple blossom scent had
given way to something stronger, lily of the valley, and I noticed a slash of lipstick on her lips when she smiled. I tried to smile back but it came out as a wince. I couldn’t keep up the show. This is ridiculous, I told myself. If I don’t see my mother at the Bolshoi, I’m going to confront her.

Vera must have noticed my irritable mood because she glanced away from me and spoke to Ivan. ‘I think you and Mrs Nickham will enjoy tonight’s performance very much,’ she said. ‘This is Yuri Grigorovich’s
Swan Lake
. Ekaterina Maximova is the principal dancer. People are desperate to see this performance, which is why I wanted to make certain you wouldn’t miss out. It was wise of your agent to book you tickets three months in advance.’

An alarm went off inside my head. Ivan and I didn’t look at each other, but I could tell he was thinking the same thing.
We didn’t see the travel agent until we had received our visas. We only went to see her a month before we left, and only to book our air tickets. Everything else we had organised ourselves.
Was the agent Vera was referring to the General? Or had the whole tour been a ploy to keep us separated? I glanced around the foyer for the General, but he was nowhere to be seen among the people chatting near the reception desk or waiting in the chairs. When we walked through the doors towards the taxi Vera had waiting, there was one thought in my mind: tonight would either end in me seeing my mother or inside the walls of the Lubyanka, the KGB headquarters.

Our taxi stopped in the square in front of the Bolshoi Theatre, and when I stepped out of it I was surprised to find that the air was fresh rather than cold, a Russian winter’s version of balmy. A sprinkle
of snow, as fragile as petals, fluttered against my cheeks. I looked across to the theatre and drew a breath, the sight of it making me forget all the evils of Moscow architecture I had seen yesterday. My gaze followed the giant columns to Apollo and his chariot draped in snow on the pediment. Men and women, wrapped in fur coats and hats, were scattered about the colonnade, talking or smoking. Some of the women had fur hand-muffs and pouches. It was as if we had gone back in time, and when Ivan took my hand and we walked towards the steps, I felt as though I were my young father, accompanied by his bejewelled sisters, rushing up the stairs to be in time for the ballet. What would he have seen then?
Giselle
or
Salammbô
? Or maybe even
Swan Lake
choreographed by the infamous Gorky. I knew that my father had watched the great Sophia Fedorova II dance before she went mad, and Anna Pavlova perform before she left Russia for good, and that he’d been so taken with the latter that he had named me after her. I had the sensation of being lifted into the air, and thought that perhaps for a moment I would catch a glimpse of old through his eyes, like a child peering into a richly decorated shop window.

Inside the theatre doors, usherettes in red uniforms were urging people to take their seats, for if there was one thing that started on time in Moscow, it was the Bolshoi Ballet. We followed Vera up the stairs to the cloakroom and found over a hundred people already packed in there, each trying to push their way to the counters to check in their coats. The noise was louder than a crowd at a football stadium, and my jaw dropped when I saw a man shove an elderly woman aside in order to get by her. Her response was to pummel her fists into his back.

‘You hold Lily,’ Ivan said to me, ‘I’ll take your coats. You ladies are not going in there.’

‘If you go in there, you’ll get a black eye,’ I warned him. ‘Let’s take everything with us into the theatre.’

‘What? And make ourselves look uncultured?’ He grinned, then pointed to Lily. ‘We’re already sneaking in more than we should, remember.’

Ivan disappeared into the swarming mass of elbows and arms. I slipped the ballet program out of my handbag and read the introduction. ‘After the October Revolution classical music and dance became accessible to millions of workers, and on this stage the best revolutionary characters based on heroes from our history were created.’ More propaganda.

Ivan returned twenty minutes later, his hair dishevelled and his tie askew.

‘You look like you did on Tubabao,’ I told him, patting down his hair and straightening his jacket.

He pressed a pair of opera glasses into my palm.

‘You won’t need them,’ Vera said. ‘You have excellent seats. Right near the stage.’

‘I wanted them for the novelty,’ I said, lying. I had wanted them so I could get a better look at the audience, not the stage.

Vera put her arm around me, but she wasn’t being affectionate, she was trying to hide Lily as she guided me towards our section. The usherette slouching by our box seemed to be expecting us. Vera slipped something into the woman’s fist and she pushed open the door, releasing a blast of violins tuning up and the pre-concert chatter. ‘Hurry! Quick! Move inside!’ the usherette hissed. ‘Don’t let anybody see you!’

I rushed to a seat near the front of the box and
laid Lily down in my lap. Ivan and Vera slipped into the seats on either side of me.

The usherette held up her finger and warned me, ‘The moment she cries you must leave.’

I had thought the outside of the theatre was beautiful but the auditorium left me breathless. I leaned over the balcony, trying to take in the red and gold interior all at once. There were five tiers of balconies, each ornamented in gold, reaching up to a crystal chandelier that hung from a ceiling decorated with Byzantine paintings. The air was tinged with the scent of old wood and velvet. The giant curtain across the stage was a sparkling montage of sickles and hammers, music scrolls, stars and tassels.

‘The acoustics are the best in the world,’ Vera told us, smoothing down her dress and smiling with such pride we could have been forgiven for thinking she had been responsible for the design.

From where we were seated we had a good view of the audience in the front section of the auditorium but not in the boxes above us or towards the back of the hall. Still, I searched for my mother and the General among the people making their way into their seats, but I didn’t see their likenesses anywhere. From the corner of my eye I noticed that Vera was staring across the hall. I tried to be subtle and slowly followed her gaze to the box opposite us. At that moment the lights started to dim, but before they went out completely I caught a glimpse of an old man sitting in the front row. It wasn’t the General but for some reason he seemed familiar. There was a rush of coughing and rustling before the orchestra hit the first note.

Vera touched my arm. ‘Do you know how this is going to end, Mrs Nickham?’ she whispered. ‘Or are you trying to guess?’

I caught my breath. Her eyes looked pink in the glow from the stage, like a fox caught in the light. ‘What?’

‘Happily or unhappily?’

My mind blurred then came into focus. She was talking about the ballet.
Swan Lake
could have two endings. One where the prince was able to break the spell the wicked magician had cast and save the swan princess, and the other where he couldn’t and the two lovers could only find each other again in death. I squeezed my fist so tightly I snapped the opera glasses.

The curtains swung open to reveal six trumpeters in red capes. Ballerinas in festive dresses with huntsmen for partners dashed across the stage, Prince Siegfried leaping after them. I hadn’t seen a live ballet since Harbin, and for a brief moment I forgot what I was doing in the theatre and became transfixed by the dancers and the graceful shapes they were making with their bodies and feet. This is Russia, I told myself. This is what I have been trying to see.

I glanced down at Lily. Her eyes were sparkling in the glittering light. My ballet lessons had been cut short when the Japanese came to Harbin. But Lily? She was a child of a peaceful country and could do anything she wanted. She would never be forced to flee her home. When you are older, Lily, I told her with my eyes, you can do ballet, piano, singing, anything that makes you happy. I wanted her to have everything I had missed out on. More than any of those things, I wanted to give Lily her grandmother.

I heard the first strain of the swan theme and turned back to the stage. The scenery had changed to
a craggy mountain and a blue lake. Prince Siegfried was dancing, and the wicked magician, disguised as an owl, was mirroring the dance behind him. The owl was a terrifying shadow, always near, lurking with ill intent, pulling the prince back when he thought he was moving forward. I glanced across at the man in the box Vera had been looking at earlier. In the blue light he seemed unearthly. The blood drained from my face and I clenched my teeth, convinced for a moment I was looking at Tang. But the light in the theatre brightened and I realised that wasn’t possible. The man was white.

Even when the second scene finished and the lights came up for the interval, I couldn’t recover my senses. I handed Lily to Ivan. ‘I have to go to the ladies’ room,’ I told him.

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Vera, getting out of her seat. I nodded, although it wasn’t my intention to empty my bladder. I wanted to search for my mother.

We made our way through the crowded corridor to the washroom. It was as chaotic as the cloakroom had been. There was no line to wait for the stalls. The women stood in a huddle and pushed against each other to get to the front when a stall became free. Vera pressed a tissue as stiff as cardboard into my hand. ‘Thank you,’ I said, remembering that there was no paper to be found in public toilets anywhere in Moscow. The toilets in the Tretyakov Gallery hadn’t even had seats.

A woman came out of the stall in front of us and Vera pushed me forward. ‘After you,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait for you outside.’ I hooked the door behind me. The cubicle stank of urine and bleach. I watched through the crack in the door for Vera to go into a stall and, as soon as she did, I pulled the chain in
mine and raced out of the ladies’ room and into the corridor.

I scurried past the clusters of people chatting on the stairs and ran down to the first floor. There was a smaller crowd there and I searched every woman’s face for someone who resembled my mother. She’ll be grey now, I told myself, and there will be wrinkles. But in the jumble of faces around me, I couldn’t find the one I was longing for. I pushed open the heavy doors and ran out onto the colonnade, thinking that for some reason she might be waiting out there. The temperature had dropped and the air bit through my blouse. Two soldiers were standing on the stairs, breathing puffs of condensation into the blackness. There was a row of taxis outside but no one else was in sight in the square.

The soldiers turned around. One of them lifted his eyebrow at me. ‘You will catch cold out here,’ he said. His skin was the colour of milk, his eyes like blue opals. I stepped back inside the theatre, feeling the warmth from the central heating rise up around me. The soldier’s image stayed in my vision like a sunspot and I recalled the station in Harbin the day my mother was taken away. He reminded me of the young Soviet soldier who had let me escape.

By the time I tried to squeeze my way back up the crowded staircase, the auditorium had emptied and the foyer was crowded with people. I managed to inch my way almost to the top and I noticed Vera leaning on the balustrade. She was turned away from me, talking to someone. My view of the other person was blocked by a plant urn. It wasn’t Ivan because I could see him at the far end of the foyer with Lily bundled in his arms, peering out the window to the
square. I craned my neck to see around the urn and caught a glimpse of a white-haired man in a maroon jacket. The man’s clothes were clean and pressed, but the back of his shirt collar was frayed and his trousers had a worn sheen to them. He was standing with his arms folded across his chest and every so often he gestured with his chin towards the window where Ivan was standing. I couldn’t hear what he and Vera were discussing above the hubbub of the crowd. Then the man shifted his foot and turned a degree. I caught sight of the pouches under his eyes. I knew I had seen his face before. He was the souvenir seller at the hotel. I pressed myself against the balustrade and strained my ears to listen to what he was saying. For a moment there was a lull in the chatter and I heard the man say, ‘They are not simple tourists, Comrade Otova. Their Russian is too perfect. The baby is a front. It may not even be theirs. That’s why they should be taken in for questioning.’

My breath caught in my throat. I’d guessed that the old man was spying for the KGB, but I’d had no idea that he suspected us. I stepped back from the balustrade, my legs trembling. I’d only half believed Vera was with the KGB, but I had been right. She had been setting a trap.

I darted up the staircase, pawing at people to get out of my way so that I could reach Ivan. But the crowd seemed to be jammed together shoulder to shoulder. I was hemmed in by mountains of poorly made suits and twenty-year-old dresses. Everyone seemed to reek of camphor or honeysuckle, the year’s standard issue perfume. ‘
Izvinite. Izvinite.
Excuse me. Excuse me,’ I said, trying to push my way past them.

Ivan had seated himself discreetly by the window and was bouncing Lily in his lap, playing with her fingers. I tried to will him to look at me but he and Lily were too captivated by their game. Get to the Australian Embassy, I told myself. Grab Ivan and Lily and go there.

I glanced over my shoulder. At that same moment Vera swivelled on her heel and her eyes met mine. She frowned and glanced towards the stairs. I could see her mind ticking over. She turned to the man and said something before pushing her way through the crowd towards me.

My head throbbed. Everything seemed to be in slow motion. I’d felt this way once before, when was it? I remembered again the day on the station in Harbin. Tang inching towards me through the crowd. I grabbed and clawed at the people around me. A bell chimed for the next act and suddenly the crush of people loosened and began to fall away, like apples dropping from a burst bag. Ivan turned around and saw me. His face blanched.