Moonlight in Odessa (6 page)

‘Keep going the way you are and no one will ever want you.’ She took another square of chocolate. ‘I just hope your uterus doesn’t start to shrivel up. That’s what happened to my friend Inna. She’s practically thirty. You know her, she lives on Kirova Street.’

Don’t listen to that Olga. You’re stronger than you think you are.

‘What about your boss?’ she continued. ‘He must be loaded. If I worked there?. . .’

People often said I didn’t see things the way others did. Perhaps it was thanks to Boba, who encouraged me in my studies and shielded me from much of the ugliness of Soviet life. She had made me feel secure, despite the blackouts and shortages, and she constantly reminded me how lucky we were. Perhaps it had to do with Jane, an alien from another world (America!) who showed me that it was all right to be different. But maybe I wasn’t so different after all. Here I was asking if my friend wanted to be my boss’s mistress. I took a deep breath and asked, ‘Do you want to meet Mr. Harmon for lunch tomorrow?’

There. I’d said it. Now it was up to her.

When her expression stilled, it was clear she knew what I was really asking.

‘If he wanted you, he’ll never want me! I’m not smart and I’m no beauty like you. With your tiny waist and big green eyes, it’s no wonder you got the job!’ She sighed. ‘Who would want me, a single mother with a flabby gut? No one, that’s who.’

‘No, Olga, no! The boys at school always preferred you.’

She smiled at the memory. ‘You were just a skinny splinter with your nose in a book. Look at you now. Shiny dark hair, brows like an archangel’s wings. A mouth made for kissing, even if you only use it for arguing. If only you’d shut it, they’d be lining up to date you. Look at your skin with no stretch marks! How can I compete? As far as romance goes, I’m on death row.’

Yet another thing we had in common.

‘Olga, you’re talented and pretty. Men always like curves.’

‘They go for your bony ass, too.’

We laughed together.

‘All I want is a sliver of security,’ she said. ‘Is that too much to ask?’

I shook my head. We sat in silence.

Boba came into the kitchen and brewed us a pot of chamomile tea. Olga looked at the cup as if she had never seen one before. When she had drunk her tea and made up her mind, she simply asked, aware of my grandmother, ‘What would I wear?’

‘I might have something,’ I said to acknowledge her response.

She ransacked my armoire with glee. ‘You have better things than the bazaar! Such quality!’ She tore out dresses then ran to the mirror and held them in front of her. Finally, we found a skirt she could hem. Olga looked longingly at my sandals, but I wore a size ten, she a six. Olga could never fill my shoes.

Perusing the Western perfumes that clients had given me as thank you gifts, she grabbed a bottle of Dior off the shelf and said, ‘I’ll take it for luck.’

For the first time ever, Harmon was already in his office when I arrived. He’d left a ten-page logistics report on my desk with a note to translate it into Russian. I started immediately, hating the strange tension, but relieved that I didn’t have to deal with him. At 10.30, I heard him get up for his morning coffee, then plunk back down in his black ergonomic chair. Perhaps he was as embarrassed as I was – he didn’t even come out to look over my shoulder like he usually did.

When Olga walked though the door at noon, her squeaky voice cut through the tension. ‘Such a beautiful office. Superior light fixtures, satiny paint. Look at these bare walls! You need some artwork.
Ooh tee
! What a fancy desk!’ She caressed my cordless phone and the snowy white paper, surely thinking of her rotary phone with the beat-up cord and the rough, gray Soviet paper she used as her canvases. I could almost see Harmon’s nose twitch at
my
perfume – it smelled like she’d used the whole bottle. I went to the door of his office, but did not cross the threshold. ‘Olga and I would like you to join us for lunch.’

Would Olga change her mind? What would she think of him? When he came out of his office, she greeted him effusively with a kiss on his cheek. ‘Daria has told me so much about you – such a
kind
and
generous
gentleman.’

When I translated Olga’s words, Harmon looked at my face sharply, expecting to find irony. He found none – I had told no one about the incident.

‘How many times have I told Daria she’s lucky to work for such a boss?’ I translated the words, but this time Harmon’s eyes remained fixed on Olga’s face, feasting on her plump raspberry lips. She took off her rain coat to reveal velvety thighs in
my
blue skirt and a silver lamé halter that barely contained her breasts. Harmon ushered her into the boardroom and seated her on his right side, where I usually sat. When I returned from the kitchen with the hummus, pitas, crab, and avocados, Harmon was leaning over Olga, practically sitting in her lap. He’d taken off his glasses and I could see that his eyes sparkled with interest.

‘You nice,’ she said, trailing her finger along his cheek. ‘I like. You need girlfriend?’

Harmon looked at me as I finished setting the table; I scowled.

When he saw me frowning, he smiled and looked back at Olga, ‘I need girlfriend.’

She cooed.

I crossed my arms and bit my lip. This wasn’t at all how I’d imagined it.

That evening, as usual, I waited for Olga. I expected her between nine and ten after her children fell asleep. But she didn’t come. At half past ten, I put together a plate of food and took it up to her flat. No one answered, though I heard faint voices. I left the food in front of her door. I waited every evening for two weeks, but she never came. Not even to give back our plate.

Before returning to Haifa, Mr. Kessler asked me to give him and his three Israeli colleagues a tour of Odessa. He surely asked out of pity. Harmon was happy with Olga, if his baby talk and her giggles were anything to go by. Still the office atmosphere was tense. Harmon was terse, I nervous. Vita and Vera hovered in the hall, waiting for the next installment.

Feeling like a prisoner unexpectedly released on parole, I stood on hustling bustling Soviet Army Street and raised my face to the sun. I closed my eyes and listened to the voice of the city: babushkas perched on overturned pails coaxing passers-by to buy sachets of sunflower seeds, ‘Come, come, a taste of sunshine!’; the gypsies begging in front of the sky blue Orthodox church; the whispers in the park across the street where people watched the old-timers stare at their queens and make their moves.

‘I didn’t realize chess was a spectator sport,’ Mr. Kessler said.

His comment returned me from my reverie. Under a canopy of majestic acacias, I guided the men past the dark brick
philharmonia
(formerly the stock exchange – ours was founded in October of 1796, earlier than New York’s), past the apartment of the white witch who could cure any complaint (from a cold to a curse). Sharing my love of Odessa – the most beautiful, cosmopolitan city in the world – with foreign colleagues was the best part of my job. ‘Odessa is the humor capital of the former Soviet Union! It’s no coincidence that Odessa Day is on April the first. Odessans love wordplay and jokes. For example: In Russian, what is the plural of “man?”’

The men looked at me expectantly.

‘Queue!’

They laughed and continued to look at me with warm interest as I guided them down the boulevard of pastel neoclassical architecture.

I continued: ‘Odessa was founded by Ekaterina the Great in 1794. Legend has it that she gave an order to name the city for Odysseus, the hero of the Greek epic. They even say that there was once an ancient Greek colony here. Visitors are surprised to learn that we Odessans speak our own blend of Russian, mixing in Yiddish phrases, a bit of Ukrainian, as well as a little German and French. Odessa was a part of a region called ‘Little Russia.’ But Odessa is not Russia! Russia is cold and hard – a nation of czars, madmen, and tyrants. Odessa is a warm, welcoming harbor that thrives thanks to the Black Sea – and the black market.’ Thinking of another black aspect of our history, I added, ‘Odessa is beyond the Pale.’

‘What does that mean?’ the youngest asked.

‘Didn’t you read any history books?’ Mr. Kessler responded. ‘Because of the Pale of Settlement, Jews weren’t allowed to settle in Moscow, St. Petersburg, or Kiev, so they came to Odessa.’

The men looked at me with pity in their eyes. I straightened my spine and met their gaze. I didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for me.

Four emaciated soldiers – they were no more than nineteen years old – wearing gray uniforms three sizes too large, approached us on the street. ‘Please, just a slice of bread,’ one said.

I emptied my pockets of candy and apples, which I carried because in Odessa it was important to have something to smooth over bureaucratic difficulties. I called this goodwill; Jane called it bribes. She learned quickly that a box of chocolates could open doors more quickly than arguing.

‘Thank you, miss!’

The Israelis were shocked. I explained that all young men, except those who paid large sums to be ‘medically unfit,’ were drafted. Unfortunately, the military couldn’t afford to feed its conscripts. It was true we had problems with poverty. But what city doesn’t struggle to feed its poor?

‘When I look at the detailed ironwork on the balconies, I think of New Orleans,’ Mr. Kessler said.

The others agreed, and I felt proud that they compared Odessa to an American city. Afterward, I took my parole board to a seaside café. As his colleagues chatted up the waitress in their basic Russian, Mr. Kessler handed me an envelope and said, ‘Thank you for such an interesting tour.’

Of course, he was really saying that he was sorry about the incident.

Two months later, the office atmosphere still hadn’t improved. Vera and Vita kept stirring up rumors that I’d spurned Harmon because he was impotent. He fought back by inviting Olga to the office and by snapping relentlessly to show our colleagues that he was the boss of me. (‘You’re five minutes late!’ ‘Daria, get me a coffee!’ ‘Dammit, it’s not hot enough! Make me another!’) If the gossip didn’t die a natural death soon, he’d fire me to regain face. With Mr. Kessler in faraway Haifa, there was no one to stop him. I was careful not to raise my voice, talk back, or even smile. Sometimes, I even held my breath.

And Olga. Olga never came back to visit Boba and me, though I did see her in the office. As always, she arrived in a burst of designer perfume.

I smiled and stood. ‘Hello, Olga,’ I said tentatively. ‘You look lovely today.’

And she did. Quality make-up. Sparkly dress. White go-go boots. Shiny platinum bob styled at a fancy salon. No blue paint in her hair.

She breezed by me into Harmon’s office, never looking me in the eye or saying more than hello. I didn’t want to press, to make her feel uncomfortable, but I didn’t want to lose her, either. It made me sad. I didn’t know what to do. How did she feel? Was she embarrassed? It was true that everyone from the security guards to the junior executives knew about her. Did she hate me for using her as a shield to protect myself?

During this tense period, something wonderful happened. Harmon became slightly less jealous of the computer technicians, and after several trying weeks, I finally got the Internet! You can hear about something, then be disappointed, but the Internet was much better than I’d imagined! The technician showed me how to fly from page to page and to navigate the sites. I could see why it started with a capital letter, like a country or a city. It was a whole new galaxy, like the Milky Way. I could read the BBC news, see the latest fashions from Paris, and read Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry. I could search for a new job on Western employment sites. I could plan my escape.

What Jane said about America flowed through my mind like fluffy white clouds.
Wide open spaces. Courtesy. Kindness. Everyone had a car. Marriages were partnerships. People were treated the same. Laws and the police protected people, all people
. I wanted this for myself. Jane had seen my world. Now I wanted to see hers.

I wrote dozens of letters and résumés with Harmon breathing down my neck. ‘Why are you typing so much? I didn’t give you any typing to do.’

I felt as if I’d joined the ranks of our great writers. Penning cover letters was as challenging as writing a novel. But Tolstoy could go on for pages, while I had only four paragraphs. Of course, I was no Pushkin, but Harmon acted like a czar, threatening, snapping and spying on me.

After weeks of no response, I asked Jane what I was doing wrong. She e-mailed me a revised résumé that made it sound like I’d been elected president of Ukraine while eradicating world poverty with my bare hands. The minute Harmon left the office I phoned her. ‘Such bragging. It makes me uncomfortable.’

‘People who have no scruples about showing how great they are are the ones who get hired.’

‘That’s depressing,’ I said.

‘That’s life.’

Maybe that was life in the rest of the world. But everything was the opposite here. When I wrote to Jane, I put her name, street address, then the city on the envelope. When Jane wrote me, she put the city, then the address, then my name. When Americans ask questions, they are phrased in the positive: Do you know? Will you help me? In Russian, they are negative: Don’t you know? Won’t you help me? If I gave a Russian employer the résumé Jane wrote – even if it were the truth – he’d think I was uncultured, the worst insult, the worst offense, in the entire former Soviet Union (that’s almost nine million square miles). In Odessa, no one passed around résumés. When he hired me, Harmon had no information about my academic background. He probably told people he was looking for a pretty secretary. His neighbor, a friend of Boba’s, told him I was a smart girl who could keep her mouth shut and help him navigate the black sea of corruption in Odessa.