White Gardenia (52 page)

‘Anya!’ he cried. My blouse was soaked. I touched my face, my hands were slippery with sweat. ‘We have to get out of here,’ I wheezed. The gripping sensation in my chest was so ferocious I thought I might be having a heart attack.

‘What?’

‘We have to…’ but I couldn’t get the words out fast enough. My throat was swollen with fear.

‘My God, Anya,’ Ivan said, clutching at me, ‘what’s happened?’

‘Mrs Nickham.’ Vera’s fingers clamped on my elbow like a vice. ‘We must get you back to your hotel immediately. It appears your flu has taken a bad turn. Look at your face. You have a fever.’

Her touch sickened me. I could barely keep myself upright. It was too surreal. I was about to be taken in for questioning by the KGB. I stared at the people hurrying through the doors back into the auditorium and resisted the urge to scream. I couldn’t imagine anyone coming to our assistance. We were trapped. The best we could do was to cooperate, but deciding that didn’t make me feel any calmer. I clenched my toes in my shoes, bracing myself for whatever would come next.

‘Your flu?’ Ivan cried. He touched the wetness of my blouse then turned to Vera. ‘I’ll get our coats. Can the hotel call a doctor?’

So this is how they do it, I thought. This is how they make their arrests in public and snatch you away in front of everyone.

‘Give the child to me,’ Vera said to Ivan. Her face was unreadable. I didn’t know her well enough to imagine what she was capable of doing.

‘No!’ I screamed.

‘You should think what is best in terms of the child,’ Vera snapped at me; her voice was like nothing I had heard from her before. ‘The flu is extremely contagious.’

Ivan passed Lily over to Vera. The moment I saw her arms wrap around Lily something inside me broke. It occurred to me as I watched them that in trying to find my mother I could lose my daughter. Whatever is to happen, I prayed, let it come. But let Lily be safe.

I glanced at the man with the white hair. He was looking at me with a fixed stare, holding his hands to his chest as if he were witnessing something distasteful.

‘This is Comrade Gorin,’ Vera said to me. ‘You may know him from your hotel?’

‘The flu can be very bad in Moscow in winter,’ he said, shifting his feet. ‘You must stay in bed and rest until you are better.’

He kept his limbs tucked in tight to his body, and the way he leaned with all his weight on his back foot would have been comical under other circumstances. It made him seem afraid of me. I decided it must be his loathing of foreigners that produced such a posture in him.

Ivan returned with our coats and wrapped mine around me. Vera tied her scarf loosely around Lily’s mouth, making it into a mask. Gorin watched her, his eyes growing larger. He took another step back from us and said, ‘I must return to my seat or I’ll miss the next act.’

Like a spider running back to his hole, I thought. He’s leaving the dirty work to Vera.

‘Take Lily,’ I whispered to Ivan. ‘Take Lily please.’

Ivan glanced sideways at me but did as I asked. When I saw Lily lifted out of Vera’s arms and in her father’s again, my head cleared. Vera pretended to help me down the stairs when she was really pressing me against the balustrade so I couldn’t wriggle away. I willed myself forward, watching my feet on each step. They won’t know what I don’t tell them, I thought. Then I remembered all the stories I’d heard about the KGB putting babies into boiling water to make their mothers confess, and I became weak in the legs again.

The soldiers outside the theatre were gone. Only the line of taxis remained. Ivan walked ahead of us, his head tucked to his chest and his arms wrapped around Lily. One of the taxi drivers stamped out his cigarette when he saw us walking in his direction. He was about to get back into his cab when Vera shook
her head at him and pushed me towards a black Lada waiting near the kerb. The driver was sitting low in his seat, his collar pulled up around his face. I gave out a cry and dug my boots into the snow.

‘It’s not a taxi,’ I tried to tell Ivan, my words slurring out like a drunk woman’s.

‘It’s a private taxi,’ Vera muttered under her breath.

‘We’re Australian,’ I told her, clutching at her shoulder. ‘I can call the embassy, you know. You can’t touch us.’

‘You’re as much an Australian as I’m a Pakistani,’ Vera responded, opening the car door and shoving me into the back seat, behind the driver. Ivan climbed into the other side with Lily. I gave Vera a defiant glare and she ducked down so quickly that I flinched, expecting her to slap me. Instead she tucked my coat under my legs so that it wouldn’t get caught in the door. The gesture was so motherly that I was struck dumb by the juxtaposition. She embraced me, letting out a laugh that sounded like a mixture of mirth and long-suffering patience.

‘Anna Victorovna Kozlova, I will never forget you,’ she said. ‘You are your mother all over and I’ll miss you both. It’s a good thing I know that KGB informer has a mortal terror of germs or it would have been difficult to get you out of his clutches.’ She laughed again and slammed the door. The Lada took off full throttle into the night. I spun around to look out of the rear window. Vera was heading back towards the theatre with her usual straight-spined gait. I clutched my fist to my head. What on earth was going on?

Ivan leaned forward and gave the driver the name and address of our hotel. The driver didn’t respond
and went in the opposite direction on Prospect Marksa, in the direction of the Lubyanka. Ivan must have realised that we were heading in the wrong direction too because he ran his fingers through his hair and repeated the name of the hotel to the driver.

‘My wife is sick,’ he pleaded. ‘We must get her a doctor.’

‘I’m fine, Ivan,’ I told him. I was so frightened that my voice didn’t sound like my own.

Ivan glared at me. ‘Anya, what was all that back there with Vera? What’s going on?’

My mind was swimming. My arms tingled from where Vera had hugged me but the gesture hadn’t registered because I’d gone into shock. ‘They are taking us for questioning but they can’t do that until we’ve contacted the embassy.’

‘I thought I was taking you to see you mother.’

The voice from the darkness sent pins and needles through me. I didn’t need to lean forward to know who the driver was.

‘General!’ Ivan cried out. ‘We were wondering when you were going to show up!’

‘Probably not for another day,’ he said. ‘But we had to change our plans.’

‘Lily,’ Ivan muttered. ‘I’m sorry. We didn’t think…’

‘No,’ the General replied, trying to keep the laughter out of his voice. ‘It was Anya. Vera said she was being difficult and was drawing attention to herself.’

I cringed. I should have been ashamed of my stupid paranoia but all I could do was laugh and choke on my tears at the same time.

‘Who is Vera?’ Ivan asked, shaking his head at me.

‘Vera is Anya’s mother’s best friend,’ the General replied. ‘She’d do anything to help her. She lost two brothers to Stalin’s regime.’

I pressed my hands to my eyes. The world was spinning around me. I was changing, transforming from the person I had been all my life. A gap was opening up inside me. The void, so long buried by all the things I’d tried to fill it up with, rose to the surface. But instead of causing me pain, joy was rushing into the empty space.

‘I had hoped that you would get to see the whole ballet,’ the General said. ‘But never mind.’

The tears ran in streams down my face. ‘It was the version with the happy ending, wasn’t it?’ I said.

About fifteen minutes from the Bolshoi Theatre, the General brings the car to a stop outside an old apartment building, five floors high. A lump forms like a stone in my throat. What will I say to her? After twenty-three years what will our first words be?

‘Come back down here in half an hour,’ says the General. ‘Vishnevsky has arranged an escort and you must leave tonight.’ We close the car doors and watch the Lada disappear down the street. I realise now how foolish it was of me to think that the General could be a normal man. He is a guardian angel.

Ivan and I walk through an archway, the ground under our feet sodden with snow, and find ourselves in a dimly lit courtyard. ‘It was the top floor, wasn’t it?’ Ivan asks, pulling open a metal door which clangs shut behind us. Someone has nailed a blanket
around the doorpost in an attempt at insulation. It is almost as cold in the hallway as it was outside, and dark too. Two shovels lean against the wall, melted ice pooled around their tips. We climb the five flights of stairs to the top floor because the elevator is broken. The steps are covered in dust and the stairwell smells of clay. Our heavy clothes make us pant and sweat. I remember that the General told me my mother has problems with her legs, and I cringe to think that she can’t leave her apartment without help. I squint in the weak light and see that the walls are painted grey but the ornate ceiling mouldings and door frames depict faded birds and flowers. Their decorativeness suggests that the building was once a grand mansion. Each landing has a stained-glass window in the corner, but most of the panes have been replaced with cheap frosted glass or bits of wood.

We reach the landing on the top floor and a door creaks open. A woman in a black dress steps out. She balances herself on her walking stick and squints at us. I don’t recognise her at first. Her hair is the colour of pewter and mostly hidden under a scarf. Her stout legs are twisted and veined beneath the skin-toned medical stockings. But then she straightens her back and our eyes meet. I see her as she was when she was in Harbin, in her smart chiffon dress, the breeze in her hair, standing by the gate, waiting for me to come home from school.

‘Anya!’ she cries out. Her voice breaks my heart. It is that of an old woman, not that of my mother. She lifts a trembling hand out to me and then clasps it to her bosom as if she has seen a vision. There are liver spots on the backs of her hands and deep grooves around her mouth. She looks old for her
age, a sign of the hardness of her life, while I look young. But her eyes are more beautiful than ever. They glisten like diamonds.

‘Anya! Anya! My darling baby! My beautiful child!’ she calls out, her eyes reddening with tears. I step towards her but falter. My courage runs out of me and I find myself weeping. Ivan puts his hand on my shoulder. His kind voice in my ear is the only link I have to reality. ‘Show her Lily,’ he whispers, nudging me forward. ‘Show her granddaughter to her.’ He takes my arms and wraps Lily into them, tugging the blanket away from her face. Lily opens her eyes and stares at me in wonder. She has the same eyes as the woman who is reaching out to me now. Amber and beautiful. Wise and kind. She babbles and kicks her legs, then suddenly turns to the woman and leans with all her strength towards her, veering away from me.

I am in China again and I am twelve years old. I have fallen over and hurt myself and my mother wants to heal me. Each step towards her is awkward, but she opens her arms wide. When I reach her, she clasps me to her chest. The warmth of her rushes over me like steam from a hot spring. ‘My darling daughter! My baby girl!’ she murmurs, regarding me with such tenderness I think I will burst with it. We cradle Lily between us and gaze into each other’s faces, remembering all that we have lived through. What was lost has been found. What was ended can be started again. Mother and I are going home.