Moonlight in Odessa (2 page)

He poured the champagne. The bubbles glistened like tiny
brillianti
. Diamonds.

We clinked glasses and he proposed a toast, ‘To a significant . . . partnership.’

Did that mean I got the job?

He watched as I took my first sip. It was bitter. I wanted to cough, but held it in. He extended his hand and I placed mine in his, feeling that our meeting was destiny. Feeling that after so much struggle and loss, something good would finally happen. Then he winked and said, ‘Of course, sleeping with me is the best part of the job.’

I snatched my hand away. He’d made it sound like a joke, but he was serious. Suddenly, he resembled a walrus in a puce jacket that he’d been quick to point out was Versace. The silver threads at his temples became dull smears of gray. He was just like other men, only with shinier teeth and fancy cologne. We stared at each other. The only sound in the office was the ticking of a clock.
Weep-wept-wept. Win-won-won. Withdraw-withdrew-withdrawn. Stop it!
I shook my head.
Think!
In addition to fetching his coffee and translating his documents, was I capable of sleeping with him? Could I do
that
for a job? The thought of his meaty hands touching me made my skin crawl – I’m a vegetarian. Behind his tinted glasses, he observed me with hot black eyes, waiting for me to decide.

He’d come from Israel and quickly got used to being treated like a VIP. Many Western men came to the former Soviet Union because of the clout they had here. At home, they were invisible and barely eked out a living. Here, they were considered rich and had large apartments, cooks, cleaning ladies, and plenty of other ‘ladies.’ (For Odessans, everywhere from Tel Aviv to Tokyo is considered Western; geography is not dictated by the compass but rather by abundance.)

I thought of my friends. Of Olga, who had three children but no husband, no job, and no money. Of Valeria, a teacher who went to work every day but didn’t get paid, like most government employees. Of Maria, a conservatory graduate who’d recently become a waitress and had to wear a skimpy skirt as part of the job. I thought of ten, twenty others. I didn’t want to end up like my girlfriends, with no choices and no money. Maria, with her beautiful voice, was mistreated by her boss and the bar patrons. If I took this job, at least I would be harassed by only one man.

I’d graduated from the university six months earlier and still hadn’t found a full-time position. I needed to support myself and my Boba, who’d taken care of me since I was ten. Our situation was dire – Boba’s pension was only twenty dollars a month. (Ukraine had declared its independence in 1991; five years later our currency was still unstable, so we used dollars.) I shouldn’t have been surprised by his proposition – it hadn’t been the first. I just hadn’t expected it of a Westerner. Maybe Boba was right. Maybe we were cursed. I looked at Mr. Harmon again.

Chess. There’s a reason the former Soviet Union has more world champion players than any other country. Chess is strategy, persistence, cunning, and the ability to look farther into the future than an opponent. The bloodlust of killing off others, one at a time. Chess is every man for himself. Building traps and avoiding them. It is mental toughness. And sacrifice. In Odessa, life is chess. Moves. Countermoves. Feigns. Knowing your adversary and staying one step ahead of him.

I took the job.

An hour after the interview, I found myself wandering around the city center on trembly legs. What had I done? If only I could afford to sit at a café and have a tea, just the time to collect my thoughts. Home seemed so far away. I found myself walking towards the sea, towards Jane. She was so positive, so encouraging – like no one else I knew. Odessans are fatalists and pessimists. Whenever I spoke of travel, my friends would say, ‘Wake up! There’s a reason they call it the American dream.’ My Boba’s friends shook their heads at me and said, ‘Horses dream of sugar,’ the Odessan way of saying that good things are for other people. With Jane, I could talk about my hopes and dreams and she made me believe that they would come true. Her flat in the city center, only three blocks from the sea, was a haven, a heaven. High ceilings, parquet floor, a balcony with grape vines. She had her own kitchen, her own space. No one else our age lived independently. Maybe it was easier to be an optimist when you had so much.

An
Americanka
who’d come to perform what she called ‘community service,’ Jane had tried to teach Odessan pupils about democracy. She lived like she’d never learned the meaning of the word ‘no.’ She wore trousers to school. It was as if she didn’t know that it was against the rules for females – even the teachers – to wear them. I’d seen her win a shouting match with a bureaucrat
and
punch a corrupt cop! I kept a notebook of words and phrases she taught me. Awesome. Cool. Fuck. Whatever. It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission. Go for it. Just do it. Her vocabulary was as colorful as her red hair. And the stories she told. I loved hearing about America. Even her impressions of Odessa were interesting to me. In this shady city famous for its shades of gray, Jane saw only black and white. She made life seem so . . . uncomplicated.

I slipped into the courtyard and tiptoed into her building, but the babushka on the first floor heard me anyway and opened her door a crack.

In Odessa, there is always someone watching.

‘Going to see Janna?’ she asked.

‘
Da
,’ I replied, though it was none of her business.

‘Well, don’t stay too long. She needs her rest. The poor thing’s been packing all day.’

I didn’t need a reminder that my dear friend was going home. I walked up to the third floor. Jane opened the door before I could knock.

‘How did the interview go?’ she asked and pulled me inside.

‘I got the job.’

‘Awesome!’ she said and hugged me tight. She put on the tea kettle and we sat at her table. The pure joy on her face, the way she said, ‘I’ve been so worried about you and I was leaving and felt like I was totally abandoning you. But now I know you’ll be okay.’

‘I’ll miss you,’ I said, looking into the living room at the piles of clothes and books – her two years in Odessa reduced to two suitcases. ‘You’re so different from my other friends.’

‘Friends,’ she snorted. ‘I know they mean well, but don’t listen to them, especially not to that Olga. Don’t listen to anybody.’

‘You’re right. . .’

‘“Nothing I do matters. Nothing ventured, nothing lost,”’ she mimicked the fatalist Odessan refrains. ‘No. Don’t let the bastards get you down. You need to believe in yourself. Not your Odessan superstitions, not your Boba’s curses, not fate. Yourself. You’re stronger than you think you are.’

‘I’m not so sure. . .’

‘Believe it. I would have died without you. I was so lonely and scared when I got here, but you called every evening, you helped me learn Russian, you taught me all I needed to know about Odessan men . . .’

We laughed.

She stroked my cheek. ‘God, what would I have done without you? I’ll miss you. But now I know you’ll be fine. You’ve got a good job. No, a great job. You’ll be speaking English all day, your dream.’

‘Do you think my English is good enough?’

‘Hell, yes. You speak better than most native speakers. Your vocabulary is better than mine. You’ve mastered the language. You even know differences in British and American English. I’m telling you, you know more than I do. Remember how disappointed my colleagues were when they learned I was “only an American” as they put it? When they were disappointed because I didn’t speak “real English,” who helped me learn the vocabulary?’

I basked in the glow of her praise. And decided to quiz her. ‘What’s a “flat”?’

‘An apartment,’ she shot back.

‘Queue!’

‘A line. Or to wait in line.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘What would I have done without you?’

We sat in silence and doubt crept back.

‘But what about my accent?’

‘How many times do I have to tell you? Everyone has an accent. I have an accent – you can tell right away I’m American. British people have accents. Canadians have accents. Yours is almost imperceptible – that’s not something New Yorkers can say!’

I laughed. She knew how to put a person at ease.

‘My God! Think about it. You’ll be earning a huge salary. You’ll probably be running the place within a year. I’m so proud of you.’

So how could I tell her the truth? That nothing in Odessa is entirely good. That this contract had a cost. For excellent-paying jobs, candidates paid a bribe, which Odessans called ‘an investment.’ And with this position, my investment would be more personal and painful than most.

Chapter 2

On that first day, I went to work filled with great trepidation. When? And how? At the office? Or some hotel? Right away or after lunch? How do these things happen? How could I put him off? It’s that time of the month. That time of the year. I don’t feel so good. Let’s get to know one another. It could take years . . .

I sat at my desk, tense, ears pricked, waiting for Mr. Harmon to pounce, ready to fight him off with words or fists. But he didn’t even want to sleep with me. He said he didn’t like my teeth. (I’d been careful not to smile during the interview. Napoleon’s wife Josephine also had bad teeth. But aside from being married to a murderous dictator, Josephine was lucky. She was born in an age when fans were a popular accessory. She held one in front of her mouth when she smiled. When Mr. Harmon summoned me to his office, I imagined holding his electric fan in front of my face and I started to giggle.)

Like many Odessans during Soviet times, my grandmother had had to choose between luxuries like buying food and going to the dentist. (Philosophically, health care in the former Soviet Union was free. In practice, however, things were slightly different. You had to take a gift to the doctor. No gift, no treatment. No present, no future.) My teeth weren’t perfect, but at least I’d never gone hungry. I was surprised when Mr. Harmon said he would pay to have my smile fixed. I declined, he insisted. I declined, he insisted. I declined, he insisted. Thus, I knew he meant it and I made an appointment. For the first time in my life I went to the dentist, who sat me down in the gray leather chair and pulled a light over my face. To evade the glare, I turned my head and saw a menacing arsenal of picks, hooks, and pliers on the table next to him. I looked away and saw that in the sink, there was dried blood and spit. (In Odessa, the city ‘conserved’ water by turning it off during the day.)

I clenched my teeth.

‘Open up,’ he said.

I couldn’t. I didn’t want him to see my blackened teeth.

‘It’s not that I don’t appreciate a tight-lipped woman,’ he joked, ‘but I have a job to do.’

I smiled. He frowned and said, ‘It’s worse than I thought.’

‘Can I come back tomorrow?’ I asked, barely opening my mouth.

‘What difference will a day make?’

I returned the next afternoon and sat down in the chair. The dentist shone the light in my eyes. I stood – I knew what he would do. I didn’t know if I could go through with it.

‘Today’s not the day?’ he asked, hiding his annoyance fairly well.

It took one more appointment before I felt comfortable on that chair with the light blaring in my face, highlighting my foremost imperfection. I’d spent my life hiding my teeth, never smiling without my hand in front of my lips. It was hard for me to open up.

‘There, there,’ he crooned, ‘that’s not so bad. So your teeth are crooked and black. Soon, you’ll have white, straight ones.’

He promised the process would take less than a month. But the sooner I had beautiful teeth, the sooner Mr. Harmon would be interested, so I told the dentist to take his time. This tactic alone bought me four months. I was happy to have a nice smile. Though I was sad when the dentist yanked all my teeth out.

I loved those first days, working in English, the international language, communicating with our branches all over the world. Growing up, I’d learned English sayings and songs and sonnets, but never thought that one day I would
need
English, that this knowledge would be useful: we Odessans lived on the Black Sea but we’d been landlocked by the Soviet Union. English had been my pastime, my passion, my solace. I loved everything about the language. I read the English dictionary the way nuns read psalms. I craved new words the way Russian leaders crave power. I loved the alchemy of English, how a ‘t’ and an ‘h’ come together to form a completely different sound. Thistle. Thunder. I loved how speaking English made me feel. Smart. Sophisticated. Foreign. Better.

I loved answering the phone in English. I loved running my hand along my computer monitor. Everything in the office was of the best quality. Quality that I, and most Odessans, had never seen before – even our light bulbs gave off a dingy, sad light. I felt proud to be a part of a company that imported space heaters, washing machines, and videocassette players from the West. I enjoyed speaking with the ship’s captain in English as the sailors unloaded the large metal containers filled with our yearnings. Mr. Harmon took a photo of me at the helm, then the captain snapped one of us together. I didn’t even mind that Mr. Harmon snaked his hand around my waist. In Ukraine, having our picture taken was very special. Most people didn’t own cameras. We didn’t even have color film until the eighties.