5

UNSTUCK BUT NOT UNDONE

Andrew Morrow put down the phone. It was the Russian girl, Galina Kogan. After all this time. The phone had rung, he had let it pass to the answering machine, he heard his abrupt, uninviting message followed by a drawn-out silence, and in that moment something alerted him, something insisted he take the call. He jumped up, his cup crashed to the floor, he lunged for the phone. And there she was, Galina Kogan, hesitant and apologetic, reminding him who she was — as if he could have forgotten after her starring role in his thoughts and imaginings these past couple of years. She was here, in Melbourne, the real Galina Kogan, and living just a short distance away.

The phone call had been mercifully brief. They arranged to meet the following Saturday for an expedition to the Queen Victoria Market; he would pick her up at nine and they would travel on the tram together. Saturday, just four days away: too short a time to contrive a reason for cancelling, too long to prevent his nerves from hitting fever pitch.

He rolled himself a cigarette and went up to the roof. Under the radiant sky, with Goddy pattering beside him, he paced and smoked and replayed the phone call. Had he said anything inept? For that matter, had he said anything of consequence? He wondered how long she’d been in Australia, and why she was contacting him now. He suspected she was lonely, that she didn’t specifically want him, she just needed someone, anyone, for company. As to what he might want from her, in real life, he had no idea: within a few weeks of their first and only meeting, it had ceased to be relevant.

Only four days to prepare. Ninety-six hours to work himself into a state of terror. His heart was racing, his mind was a riot, he was already in a state of terror. All the conversations he had imagined now seemed empty, and any new ones he quickly dismissed as puerile or gobbledegook. He tried to calm himself. With so much to see at the market there would be little need for talk; it would be like going to the movies. But they would not be sitting in the dark, they would not be silent, and it would be nothing like the movies. What on earth had he done?

Galina hung up the phone. What on earth had she done? She should have waited, as she had numerous times before, waited for the loneliness to ease. Be a Russian, she had told herself, seek out what you need. What about Russian resilience? She should have gone for a walk, she should have forced herself to work, she should have telephoned Zara or one of the Soviet Jews. Or she could have sought solace at the cathedral — the Catholic or the Anglican, it made no difference; all churches, she had discovered, were havens for the lonely. Surrounded by the glorious windows and the silent statues, she could have settled in a pew and waited for the loneliness to slip into solitude. But she hadn’t gone to the cathedral and she hadn’t worked, she’d been impatient and foolish. She held nothing against Andrew; she was happy to see him, but not as a solution to her weakness.

There were four days to prepare for the visit to the market. Andrew said they could buy food and later make themselves a meal — either at his place or hers, he did not specify. Galina had heard about this market, and expected she would enjoy the expedition, despite the circumstances that had brought it about. But as a novice cook, she would not enjoy cooking with a stranger. Yet when Andrew suggested they prepare a meal together, she had not hesitated. This, she decided, was a measure of her desperation. What on earth had she done?

Two years had passed since her mother had died, two years since Andrew Morrow had toppled her in the street, yet Galina thought she had retained a clear image of him; but at exactly nine o’clock the following Saturday morning she opened the door to a stranger. In her memory his hair had been white-blond and closely cropped, but this man’s hair was golden and fell past his shoulders in lush, Jesus-like waves. And the body, bulked out by the sheepskin jacket he had worn in Leningrad, was now slender, even thin, and he was just a couple of centimetres taller than she was, and not the two-metre man of her memory. He was wearing jeans and a sky-blue, tie-dyed T-shirt, and he was unrecognisable.

He stood outside her door, arms dangling in the awkward space of an Australian greeting. Russians were lavish kissers, and in Italy you shook hands, but here the men seemed at a loss to know how to greet a woman. In exasperation, she held out her hand. He grasped it — gratefully, she thought.

She slipped on her jacket, grabbed her shopping bag, and they walked to the tram stop along the main road bordering the cemetery. The weather was mild with a cool breeze; cottony clouds bulged white and motionless in the astonishing blue of the Australian sky. She buttoned her jacket and wondered if Andrew, with his bare arms, was cold. He seemed nervous — although what he, at home in his own city and in charge of this expedition, had to be nervous about, she could not guess. As they walked, he asked the usual predictable questions: how long she had been in Australia, how long she was planning to stay. A year, she answered to the first, and forever to the second, even while hoping for the questions she most wanted: ‘Why did you come?’ and ‘How are you faring?’

She was grateful for the arrival of a tram. She took a window seat — she nearly always managed a window seat on these Melbourne trams — and gazed through the glass at the passing scenery. They travelled in silence; if she’d been less aware of Andrew, she could have pretended she was alone.

And then they were at the market. It was huge, it was astonishing, it was marvellous. Filled with people and surprises, it was how she imagined a carnival might be.

‘If I was not seeing this with my own eyes, I would not believe it,’ she said. ‘You must show me everything.’

Her dark eyes were sparkling, her whole face was alive; she was a joy to watch. Andrew wondered at this unguarded delight of hers. Was it attributable to her Russianness and a direct result of her former deprivation? Might it be typical of any migrant? Or was it specific to her, Galina Kogan? That she could be from London, Nepal, Palermo, or Palm Springs and she would still display such exuberance. Whatever the explanation, it was captivating — she was captivating.

He started their tour in the fruit-and-vegetable section. They entered the area and Galina immediately stopped, right in the middle of the main walkway. Quickly, he guided her away from the stream of shoppers to one end of the open-sided shed so she could observe undisturbed.

The air was cool, and plump with summer fruits; pigeons flapped beneath the roof beams, and sparrows darted from one side of the shed to the other; people laden with bags and shopping trolleys jostled together in the aisles. There was the clarion call of stall-holders spruiking their bargains, of parents shouting at straying children, and bursts of laughter trumpeting above the general noise. Galina stood at the end of the shed, transfixed by the extraordinary sight. So many times in the past year she had been struck by the plenitude in Australia, but nothing could compare with this. There must have been a hundred stalls in the section, each piled high with fresh, unbruised produce. It was heavenly: the colours, the appetising smells, the good cheer.

As they walked the aisles, she noticed Italian and Greek names on the placards above the stalls, and quite a few Asian ones, too. Perhaps these were the Vietnamese boat people she had heard so much about; she was on the verge of asking Andrew about this when she noticed a Russian name above one of the vegetable stalls. The elderly vendor was talking with an equally elderly customer, and she lingered over some potatoes in order to listen. It was not Russian she was hearing but Yiddish, a language she did not herself speak but quite a number of Soviet Jews did. She was tempted to try some Russian on them, but though she was sure they’d understand, her nerves failed her.

Sometimes the crowd was so dense, she and Andrew couldn’t move — not that she cared, there was so much to see. One stall sold only berries, another potatoes, a third displayed several different varieties of mushrooms. She bought some dark-brown ones: she would make Russian comfort food for their meal, a buckwheat kasha with mushrooms, which should offset cooking with a stranger. And Andrew bought an avocado — for their lunch, he said (how many meals did he intend they eat together?) — before guiding her into the delicatessen hall.

This area was even more fabulous than the fruit-and-vegetable section: an entire building of delicatessens. If only her mother were here. The smell was luscious with cheeses and sausages, smoked meats and pickles. They started down the first aisle. Standing outside one of the stalls was a woman with a plate of cheese. The cheese had been cut into small cubes and she was offering them to passers-by. Some people helped themselves, others declined, and no one was giving her any money. When she and Andrew drew near, the plate was held out to them.

‘Go on,’ Andrew said. ‘Take a piece.’ And when she hesitated, he added, ‘These are samples. They’re free.’

While she stood there dithering, other people were helping themselves, so she did too, although moved away quickly. The cheese was delicious, and she wondered if you were allowed to go back for more; but with another woman just up ahead offering little biscuits covered with a pink cream, she decided not to risk it. The pink cream was a caviar dip, Andrew said. Again she hesitated, and again Andrew said she should help herself, that these were samples. The pink cream was even more delicious than the cheese.

There were many more vendors in the deli section who were giving away their food. Andrew occasionally tasted something, but she took everything on offer, even while perplexed at such largesse: didn’t these people want to make the best profits? At least with the two-for-one deals at cafés and shops, the owners were earning some money; these deli people were getting nothing.

She noticed that most of the stall-holders in this section were Italian. ‘So it is true,’ she said to Andrew, ‘Italians are the main immigrant group here.’

Galina’s words caught Andrew by surprise. He’d gone out early to buy the Saturday papers to find topics of conversation; he’d been particularly pleased to find an article about the USSR under Gorbachev. ‘What’s your take on the current situation in the USSR?’ he had imagined asking, an excellent open-ended question that would keep her talking with only an occasional prompt required from him. But now she was asking about Italians and immigration.

He swung the shopping bag over his shoulder, shoved his sweaty hands into his pockets, and gathered some words together. He told her there were many Italian immigrants, particularly in Melbourne, but they were probably outnumbered by Greeks. Melbourne, he said, was the third-largest Greek city in the world. It sounded like a boast, which was not his intention at all.

‘We’ve a large Chinese community too, they’ve been here since the gold rush, and of course there’s the new Vietnamese population. And Jews, they came after the war.’ He looked around. ‘A lot of Jews used to have stalls here at the market. I expect they still do.’

Had he guessed she was Jewish? But how could he? Russians would recognise Kogan as a Jewish name, but he wouldn’t. Should she tell him she was Jewish? And quickly dismissed the thought: there was absolutely no reason why he needed to know.

They stopped at a deli that specialised in salted and smoked meats. Hanging from hooks were sausages that looked very much like sosiski. She made a mental note of the location of the stall: she’d return by herself to investigate these sosiski lookalikes. For now, she bought some bacon for the kasha, and at another stall, Andrew bought a loaf of bread. He then led her into the seafood area.

She was from Leningrad, she knew about seafood. Meat might not be available, and oranges and bananas could disappear for months, but there was always fish: pickled, salted, sometimes even fresh. But a glance at the very first stall was sufficient to prove that her understanding of fish was like an infant’s understanding of the world. Behind the glass were large, shallow trays, each filled with a different type of fresh fish: white fish, pink fish, whole fish, fish portions, and not a herring to be seen. And oysters arranged in lines next to piles of mussels in their shells, and bright-pink cooked prawns — she read the label — a mountain of them spilling into the adjacent tray.

‘Have you ever tasted prawns?’ Andrew asked.

She shook her head, not shifting her gaze from the display.

Andrew checked his wallet, and then bought eight large ones to eat with the avocado.

‘It’s a special occasion,’ he said.

And immediately wished he’d remained silent. It was a special occasion for him, the first outing, perhaps even a date, with a girl who’d previously been confined to his fantasies. But was it special for her? And he decided as he watched her that it was. This trip to the market had been an inspired choice.

They wandered slowly through the fish section to the meat department. Galina would stand in front of a particular display for a long time, sometimes with a frown as if she could not quite believe what she was seeing, but mostly with a delighted smile; on a couple of occasions she actually laughed aloud.

There was something extravagant about her, he decided, a largeness of personality, an inexhaustible enthusiasm. Galina Kogan was … oceanic. And again he wondered whether it was connected to her Russianness, or whether it was unique to her. (And could she be separated from her Russianness anyway? Not everyone was as schizoid as he was.) Whatever the reason, her joy was more abundant, her curiosity more intense, her vision more sharp, her delight more fulsome. Even when they left the market, she was still thrilling to the wonders of the place. To be so at ease in the world, he was thinking, even when the world was not your own, was something he had rarely known.

He hefted the shopping bags over his shoulder, and they set off towards the tram stop. With no vehicle in sight, he was about to draw on his list of prepared questions when his attention was caught by a drunk reeling on the opposite pavement, shouting to the skies and gesticulating wildly. Other pedestrians were giving him a wide berth, some even crossed the road to avoid him. He was an unusual drunk, it seemed to Andrew, dressed as he was in surprisingly neat and respectable clothes. Nonetheless, he was relieved that the man was on the opposite side of the road; drunks made him nervous, their being so out of control. He feared for them, feared for himself as well.

Galina, too, was watching the drunk man, surprised to see here a scene so commonplace back home. She was wondering whether her reaction meant she had separated from Leningrad more completely than she’d realised, or, having learned how different life was in Melbourne, anything shared by the two places now struck her as an anomaly, when the man suddenly lurched forward and fell into the gutter. The traffic was banked up at the intersection. The lights would soon change. He needed to be hauled off the street. She started forward, but Andrew yanked her back. She shook herself free, turned to him, and was thrown for a moment by his expression. ‘What are you frightened of?’ she asked, more an accusation than a question, and went again to cross the road, but a man and a woman were already helping the fellow to safety. She watched them guide him to a seat; he was so drunk he could barely walk. The couple were talking to him, then the woman wrote something down and hurried to a phone box. The man kept a hand on the drunk’s arm to keep him from falling off the seat.

Andrew, too, was watching, although not really seeing. He felt such a fool.

‘You looked so scared,’ Galina said. Her voice was quiet, her face overwritten with curiosity. ‘This man can hardly stand on his feet. The only person he will hurt is himself. What is so frightening to you?’

Andrew had no answer. The drunk was small and slight: even if sober, he could not have done any harm. Andrew shrugged. ‘I’m not much of a drinker,’ he said. ‘And I try to be in control.’

She was staring at him, she must think him ridiculous. He should have kept silent.

‘That makes us alike,’ she said with a laugh. ‘We both prefer to be in control.’

The tram arrived, and they boarded it. In the silence during the short trip, he floundered in his foolishness. He needed to be alone; lunch now was impossible; he could freeze the prawns; they could eat avocado another day. He grappled for excuses, but with his mind in disarray, nothing was making sense.

Galina, in contrast, was trying to make sense of him. Her circumstances demanded a strength that made empathy an indulgence, yet she found herself feeling for him — not sympathy, but kindness and a certain understanding. She could see he was as discomforted in his accustomed life as she was in her new one.

It had occurred to her that the easiest solution to the difficulties she faced as an émigré would be to find an Australian man and marry him. It would also be an out-of-character solution for one who prided herself on her independence. Nonetheless, the temptation remained: marriage would provide a passport to Australian life, and it would strip a good many of the stresses from her days.

The marriage solution had not prompted her telephone call to Andrew, desperation alone had been responsible, but as the tram trundled past the university and sped more smoothly along the tracks beside the cemetery, the possibility surfaced. He would be an easy catch, the sort of man who would love more than he was loved in return. The thought flickered and just as quickly died. Andrew was not a man to use. And besides, he was an artist, and she respected artists.

‘I would like to come to your studio.’ The words were uttered without forethought. Quickly she added, ‘I would like to see your work.’

They had disembarked and were standing in the street at the northern end of the cemetery. Andrew was still in a quandary as to how he might escape, but at the same time he was desperate to see her again. A visit to his studio was not what he would have chosen, but under the circumstances it would have to do. He managed to nod his agreement, said he would call to arrange a time, and then, pretending he had forgotten about their plan to eat together, extended his hand to say goodbye in the European fashion. She leaned towards him and kissed him in the Russian one.

He sorted through their purchases, handed one of the bags to her, and stepped into the street. He wasn’t looking, he wasn’t seeing, and she grabbed his arm and pulled him back, just as he had done with her earlier. Although she had better cause. There was a stream of traffic, a huge cortège travelling alongside the cemetery in the slow rhythm of mourning. The cars turned from the main thoroughfare into the side street where he and Galina were standing, heading towards the northern entrance of the cemetery.

The two of them watched the procession. Eight, nine, ten — Galina was counting silently as the cars passed — seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, and still the cars kept coming, their headlights flatly yellow in the bright Australian light. The funeral was clearly for a very important person, she was thinking, an official of some sort, perhaps a government leader. It was almost Russian in size, although not in style. For a large state funeral at home, the procession would be on foot, with musicians tolling out a plangent patriotic refrain, and there would be a huge crowd of onlookers. Ordinary Russians like a good state funeral, not simply for the time off work and an excuse to drink, but as an excellent opportunity to mourn their own squeezed lives. As for the dead official, there was usually little grief felt for him.

Here in Melbourne, the trail of cars with their black-clad mourners was still crawling along the broad thoroughfare and turning at the corner. There was something mesmerising about the scene, like a moving frieze.

‘Russians,’ she said, keeping her gaze on the cortège, ‘are experts at big funerals.’

Andrew looked at her, wondering what he might reply. But there was no need for him to speak, Galina Kogan was far away. He wanted to be away too. He raised his hand in farewell and set off down the street, leaving her to her thoughts.

Slowly, Galina set off in the other direction, and a couple of minutes later she arrived home. She dumped the bag of produce on the table, and sank onto the couch. And there she remained, stilled not by nostalgia nor by indulgence, but the sheer force of the past.