Nine Perfect Strangers

‘Mine also,’ said Masha.

Frances was taken aback by this unasked-for personal revelation.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Frances. She thought of her last memory of her dad. It had been summer. A Saturday. She was going out to her part-time job as a checkout girl at Target. He was sitting in their living room playing Hot August Night, smoking a cigarette, eyes closed and humming along with deep feeling to Neil Diamond, whom he considered to be a genius. Frances kissed him on the forehead. ‘See you, darling,’ he said, without opening his eyes. For her, the smell of cigarettes was the smell of love. She dated far too many smokers for that reason.

‘A lady driving a car didn’t stop at a pedestrian crossing,’ said Frances. ‘The sun was in her eyes. My father was going for a walk.’

‘My father was shot in a market by a hitman for the Russian mafia,’ said Masha. ‘Also an accident. They thought he was someone else.’

‘Seriously?’ Frances tried not to look too avid for more exotic detail.

Masha shrugged. ‘My mother said my father had too common a face. Too plain. Like anybody’s, like everybody’s. She was very angry with him for his plain face.’

Frances didn’t know whether to smile. Masha didn’t smile, so Frances didn’t either.

Frances offered up, ‘My mother was angry with my father for going for a walk. For years she said, “It was so hot that day! Why didn’t he just stay inside like a normal person? Why did he have to walk everywhere?”’

Masha nodded. Just once.

‘My father should not have been at the market,’ she said. ‘He was a very clever man, he had a very senior position for a firm that made vacuum cleaners, but after the fall of the Soviet Union, when inflation went . . .’ She made a whistling motion and pointed up. ‘Our entire savings, gone! My father’s company could not pay him cash. They paid him in vacuum cleaners. So . . . he went to the market to sell the vacuum cleaners. He should not have had to do that. It was beneath him.’

‘That’s awful,’ said Frances.

For a moment it felt as if the giant chasm that separated their different cultures and childhoods and body types could be bridged by the commonality of the loss of their fathers, through terrible chance, and their bitter, grieving mothers. But then Masha sniffed, as if suddenly disgusted by some unmentionable behaviour. She closed the file in front of her. ‘Well. It has been nice to chat with you, Frances, to get to know you a little bit.’

She made it sound as if she now knew everything there was to know about Frances.

‘How did you end up in Australia?’ asked Frances, suddenly desperate for the conversation not to end. She didn’t want to go back to the silence now she’d experienced the pleasure of human interaction, and it was fine if Masha didn’t want to know more about Frances, but Frances most certainly wanted to know more about her.

‘My ex-husband and I applied to different embassies,’ said Masha coldly. ‘The US. Canada. Australia. I wanted the US, my husband wanted Canada, but Australia wanted us.’

Frances tried not to take this personally, although she had a feeling that Masha wanted her to take it personally.

Also, ex-husband! They had divorce in common too! But Frances could tell she wouldn’t get anywhere trying to exchange divorce stories. There was something about Masha that reminded Frances of a friend from university who had been both deeply egocentric and deeply insecure. The only way to make her open up was with flattery: extremely careful flattery. It was like dismantling a bomb. You could accidentally offend them at any time.

‘I think it’s a very brave thing to do,’ said Frances. ‘To start a new life in a new country.’

‘Well, we did not have to travel the open seas in a rickety boat, if that’s what you are thinking. The Australian government paid our airfares. Picked us up at the airport. Paid for our accommodation. You needed us. We were both very intelligent people. I had a degree in mathematics. My husband was a talented, world-class scientist.’ Her eyes looked back into a past Frances longed to see. ‘Extremely talented.’

The way she said ‘extremely talented’ didn’t make her sound like a divorced wife. She sounded like a widow.

‘We’re lucky you came then,’ said Frances humbly, on behalf of the Australian people.

‘Yes. You are. Very lucky,’ said Masha. She leaned forward, her face suddenly alight. ‘I’ll tell you why we came! Because of a VCR. It all starts with the VCR. And now nobody even has a VCR! Technology . . .’

‘The VCR?’ said Frances.

‘Our neighbours in the flat next to ours got one. Nobody could afford such a thing. They inherited money from a relative who died in Siberia. These neighbours were good friends of ours and they asked us over to see movies.’ Her gaze became unfocused, once again remembering.

Frances didn’t move; she didn’t want Masha to stop this sudden sharing of confidences. It was like when your uptight boss goes to the pub with you and loosens up over a drink and suddenly starts chatting to you like you’re an equal.

‘It was a window into another world. Into a capitalist world. It all seemed so different, so amazing, so . . . abundant.’ Masha smiled dreamily. ‘Dirty Dancing, Desperately Seeking Susan, The Breakfast Club – not that many, because the movies were insanely expensive, so people had to swap them. The voices were all done by the same person holding his nose to disguise his voice because it was illegal.’ She held her nose and spoke in a nasal voice to demonstrate.

‘If it wasn’t for that VCR, for those movies, we might not have worked so hard to leave. It was not easy to leave.’

‘Did the reality live up to your expectations?’ asked Frances, thinking of the glossy, highly coloured world of eighties films and how bland suburban Sydney would feel when she and friends emerged blinking from the cinemas. ‘Was it as wonderful as in the movies?’