Parachutes and Kisses (58 page)

Mikhail and Glotarchuk ducked into a cabana to change into suits, indicating where Isadora might do the same.

Soon they all reemerged, Glotarchuk looking pasty, pale, and vulnerable without his clothes, like the proverbial creature who has crawled out from under a rock. Isadora had brought her Nikon and was madly snapping pictures—as if photographs could ever really capture the essence of a place.

Noticing her touristic avidity, her fashionable American bathing suit, a huge dark-haired man with a long nose, a black beard, and an immense hairy belly toddled up and cordially demanded:

“Da,”
said Isadora.

“Relatives in Brookleen,” said the man cordially.
“Mishpocheh.”

“Me too,” said Isadora, marveling at this open confession of Jewishness and the ubiquity of “relatives in Brookleen.”

“Brother-in-law drive taxi,” said the man, but after that, English failed him. How did he know she was Jewish and why had he approached her? Was this another message from Papa?

Glotarchuk jogged to the water, beckoning Isadora and Mikhail to follow. They ran past the walls of half-naked women and threaded their way to the very edge of the sea.

With Chaplinesque pantomimes of invigoration and seaside delight, Glotarchuk stooped to the water and began rubbing his pallid, hairless body with seawater.

“Brrr,” he said theatrically. Then he pranced into the waves.

Isadora and Mikhail followed, and for a little while this curious trio bobbed together in the Black Sea like matzoh balls in soup. The water was very salty, very buoyant. Isadora let her mind wander to the battleship
Potemkin,
to her grandfather's samovar stories, to her grandmother's cooking. Why had she come all this way and what was she really looking for? She had—somewhere in her luggage—a little notebook with the names of possible Odessa relatives, the names of streets where Papa may have lived—all as yet unverified. But she knew she was not really looking for relatives or streets. She was looking for the spirit of the place, the
Geist,
the breath of Black Sea air which her grandfather had breathed into her own lungs.

Back at the hotel, they were finally given quarters. Isadora drew a damp and mildewed suite, with huge armoires and overstuffed furniture much too big for the rooms. The water in the tub was brackish; none of the drains worked (so both sink and tub water leaked depressingly on the floor). The toilet also leaked when it was flushed and there was no toilet paper whatsoever. Ah, Eastern Europe—where a plumber could be king!

When Isadora came to unpack her luggage, she had the definite impression that both her large folding dress bag and her book bag (which had contained all the notes for
Dreamwork,
poetry worksheets, yellow pads, “The Pink Notebook,” and another small notebook containing Odessa names and addresses) had been rifled. She went through both bags in a hurry. Neither “The Pink Notebook” nor the little address book was anywhere to be found. Her elegy to her grandfather had also been stolen, and indeed so had the whole Grandfather memoir she had read at the funeral. Yet she was
sure
she had packed all those things in Kiev.

“The Pink Notebook” contained her jottings on the conference (she could live without those—the memories were so vivid—and at home she had other copies of the Papa memoir and the elegy), but without the book of names and street addresses, her trip to Odessa was virtually useless as research. Why would anyone have taken these things? Why, indeed. Isadora knew that a police state does not have to conform to reason in the confiscation of written materials. A police state confiscates writings just because they carry the word (and the word represents power). Whether it has any
immediate
utility is not the issue. Seize first and question later is the rule.

Panic claimed Isadora. First the fire on the plane, then this. Were they planning to confiscate
her
next? She hastily redid her makeup, changed clothes (damp, creased, and smoky as all her garments were), and went down to the bar to meet Mikhail and Glotarchuk. What should she say? Anything? Was she possibly
imagining
the loss of her notebooks and writings? Could she have left them in Kiev by mistake? Not a chance. She would have sooner left her clothes and cosmetics, her cameras and jewelry. Her book bag was always the first thing she checked on departure, the first thing she reclaimed on arrival.

Glotarchuk and Mikhail were waiting at little tables in the lounge to welcome her with warm, sweet, Georgian champagne (which tasted, for all their raving about its quality like poor German
sekt).
They were exhilarated by their swim, by the prospect of dinner, and by the anticipation of seeing Rimsky-Korsakov's
The Czar's Bride
at the opera that night. Isadora couldn't have cared less. She was obsessed with finding a way to call the States, especially to get in touch with her cousin, Abigail (who had given her some of the names and addresses in the lost notebook), and also to warn Bean that she might be in danger. His family knew State Department types who could possibly bail her out, but perhaps even more than that—she just wanted to talk to him to prove to herself that America still existed.

“Do you think I can call the States?” Isadora asked Mikhail.

“We shall inquire,” he said cordially. “Sit down, my dear, sit down.”

So, despite the fact that she was trembling with an incipient anxiety attack, Isadora sat down and quelled her anxiety in Georgian champagne, followed by a mediocre dinner served as slowly as possible by a waitress who seemed to be walking underwater. (“Typical inefficient female behavior,” said the charming Glotarchuk—but Isadora no longer even rose to his bait; she had other worries now.)

On the way out of the hotel, they enquired at the desk when they could call the States. After considerable cumbersome translations and further enquiries by telephone to invisible “proper authorities,” it was concluded that there
were
no international connections out of Odessa except one day a week and even that appeared doubtful.

“You see,” said the cordial Mikhail, “the phone is on—how do you say?—relays. No direct lines.”

“Oh,” said Isadora, doubting him, doubting everything.

“But we can send a cable tomorrow morning if you please. Now —to the opera.”

It was hardly likely she could say what she wanted to say by cable (which Mikhail would have to translate and god knows who else would have to approve), so Isadora merely shook her head and they left for the opera to see
The Czar's Bride.

At the beautiful, columned opera house, with its rotund façade, its rampant rooftop statuary, Isadora's anxiety attack reached major proportions. Her heart began pounding as if it would fly out of her chest. Her mouth went dry, her hands cold as the grave.

They had been given a red plush box where other Odessa Writers' Union dignitaries were already ensconced; down below, the opera had already commenced. A very threatening-looking Ivan the Terrible was about to ax his umpteenth mistress so he could take the umpteenth plus one.

“The heroine is a pure Russian type,” Glotarchuk whispered to Isadora, pointing to the bejeweled, beauteous soprano who played the new mistress (in actuality, number seven), “obedient and passionate.” He looked at Isadora with a mixture of hostility and lust. Isadora knew full well from talking to the Russian women at the conference that this was pure Russian rubbish—Russian women were no more obedient than American ones—but she was too far gone with anxiety to argue the point. She felt that
she
was Ivan the Terrible's sixth mistress and was about to get the ax. She remembered one of her grandfather's favorite lines: “In Russia they used to have Ivan the Terrible and in Russia they
still
have Ivan the Terrible.” How would she ever sit through this opera, she wondered, feeling the way she did? She reached into her bag, hoping against hope to find the little bottle of five-milligram Valiums she usually carried in anticipation of hotel-room insomnia. There was one left. (She had only brought a dozen.) She popped it in her mouth and swallowed. It stuck.

As Ivan the Terrible thundered on, as the mistresses trilled and chorused, the Valium slowly made its way down her dry gullet. It seemed, in her present state of panic, big enough to choke her. But maybe that was the lump in her throat.

The opera was interminable—and dreadful. Despite the fame of the Odessa State Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet, the production was ghastly: stagy, stilted, old-fashioned, and not even very well sung.

Isadora felt she
had
to escape. Sitting still was impossible for her. So, she escaped to the ladies' room. Then she paced the marble rotunda, found a water fountain to take care of the lingering effects of the stuck Valium, and finally trudged up and down the broad marble stairs in her spike-heeled shoes, hoping against hope that all of Russia would prove to be “only a dream” and she would fall asleep and wake up home in her cozy waterbed in Connecticut (wake up to find herself merely facing an IRS audit rather than Ivan the Terrible!).

It was not to be. Soon Glotarchuk and Mikhail came looking for her. She had been away too long—and they were assigned to monitor her.

“What is trouble?” asked Mikhail. “You have some
tsuris?”
Did she have
tsuris! Tsuris
was her middle name!

“Only a terrible headache and a disc in my spine that makes it hard for me to sit.”

They both clicked their tongues sympathetically. Oh, the universality of the “bad back” as an excuse to get out of everything from bad operas to bad sex!

“Then let us go at once without further ponderment,” said Glotarchuk.

“No—I couldn't ruin your good time,” Isadora said. “Not to mention the other writers‘.”

“Nonsense,” said Mikhail. “We come to entertain you. They may stay. If you are not entertained, then we are not either. Let us go then. More champagne! That is answer!”

The three of them strolled out of the opera house (admiring its noble architecture), then they returned to the hotel, where they put away two bottles of Georgian champagne and listened to a group called The Sevastopol Four play twenty-five-year-old American rock music in a style that could only be described as Eastern European.

“Nice music,” Isadora said.

“Bourgeois decadent American music,” Glotarchuk riposted, eyeglasses twinkling. He was apparently still hoping either to rile her or to arouse her (perhaps he was one of those men who think both are the same?) but Isadora no longer cared. She was merely hoping now to become so blotto that she could get to sleep. She did not relish the thought of tossing and turning all night while she speculated about why her notebooks had been taken and what that might portend. Finally, when she thought she was somnolent enough, she excused herself. Both men insisted on accompanying her to her room, as if to tuck her in.

“Good night and thank you,” she said as they redeemed her key from the matron of keys.

“Good night,” Mikhail cheerily sang as he walked her down the hall.

“Good night, sweet princess,” Glotarchuk said, helping to open her door. “It is from
Hamlet
by your William Shakespeare,” he added.

“He's yours as much as mine,” said Isadora. “Let's just say—ours.”

The two Russians waved good-bye cheerfully and went downstairs to resume drinking.

She staggered into her room (half expecting to see jackbooted secret policemen out of some Hollywood movie) and closed the door. Quickly she stripped, put on a blue and white yukata she always used while traveling, removed her eye makeup, washed in the dingy water with her black soap (how silly the conspicuous consumption of Lazlo products seemed here in Russia—sillier even than in the U.S., if such were possible), and crashed on the lumpy mattress. A momentary fear of not sleeping seized her, but she was drunk enough and she drifted off almost immediately.

In her dream, Papa and Mama were not dead, and when they turned up and realized she had sold their apartment on West Seventy-seventh Street, they were dismayed. Their furniture was all gone, dispersed among relatives, sold at auction, stolen by Isadora's ex-husbands, but their mail had been piling up for years (as if everyone but she knew they were not really dead). They wandered aimlessly around the old apartment, waiting for Isadora to ransom their home. For her part, she was vaguely guilty; she should have known they were not really dead. Everyone else seemed to.

She woke up with a start. Though the metal shutters were closed, an eerie blue light was filtering into the room. The room was unnaturally cold—like a cold spot in the sea. Papa, she was sure, was there. Somnambulistically, she got up, opened the shutters, and walked out on her balcony. Her bedroom window faced a church with two silver domes, flanking one larger rusted iron dome that resembled a rotting red onion whose outer peel is half decomposed. Onions had figured in her early poems. They were metaphors of the self, with its endless introspection, its pursuit of the pungent green heart (which also peels away in layers leaving nothing but scent and spirit).

“Papa,” she said. “Papa.”

She looked up at the domes, down at the street. Then she put on low-heeled shoes, a sweater, and slacks, and she quickly left the hotel.

The blue dawn was coming up and she walked briskly through the unknown streets (with their illegible street signs), led by she knew not what force. She walked over bluish cobblestones, over gleaming trolley tracks, past shadowy marketplaces where the first few produce trucks were arriving from the country and huge bluish women in babushkas were carrying buckets of bluish cherries, buckets of bluish apricots. She walked past public buildings, past rows of apartment flats, always smelling the sea, always feeling Papa around her like a prickle in the scalp, like a cold chill at her shoulders.