Nine Perfect Strangers

‘That’s not the right question,’ said Masha tenderly, her eyes on the computer monitor as some of the guests gathered around the door to the studio. They were taking it in turns to punch in different combinations of numbers. Lars punched the door with his fist like a spoiled child.

‘I think I should let them out now,’ said Yao.

‘They must open that door themselves,’ she said.

‘They can’t,’ said Yao.

‘They can,’ said Masha.

She thought about the sunny Australian lives these people had been handed at birth. They had only ever known supermarket shelves that overflowed with choice. They had never seen an empty grocery store with nothing but boxes of Indian tea. They did not need attributes like ingenuity or resourcefulness. The clock struck five and they turned off their computers and went to the beach because they did not have a hundred university-educated candidates all too willing to take their job off their hands.

‘Oh yes, I did that for U2 tickets once,’ an Australian woman at Masha’s work had said when Masha described the horrendous queues that lasted for days at the embassies and how she and her husband took turns to wait, and Masha had said, ‘Yes, very much the same.’

She remembered how, when they were right in the middle of the application process, her husband received a card in the mail to report to the KGB office.

‘It will be fine,’ her husband said. ‘Do not worry.’

It was like he was already an Australian, the phrase ‘no worries’ built into his psyche before he even knew the words, but in the Soviet era people had received those cards and never come back.

When Masha dropped him off outside that tall, grey building he kissed her and said, ‘Go home,’ but she didn’t go home; she sat in that car for five hours, the simmering terror in her heart misting up the windows, and she would never forget the relief that detonated through her body when she saw him walking down the street towards her, grinning like a boy on an Australian beach.

Only a few months later she and her husband stood at the airport with American dollars hidden in their socks while a sneering customs office upturned the entire contents of their carefully packed suitcases, because they were traitors betraying their country by leaving, and her grandmother’s necklace broke and beads scattered like pieces of her heart.

Only those who have feared they will lose everything feel true gratitude for their lucky lives.

‘We must terrify them,’ she told Yao. ‘That is what they need.’

‘Terrify them?’ said Yao. His voice quavered. He was probably tired and hungry himself. ‘I don’t think we should terrify our guests.’

Masha stood. He looked up at her; like her child, like her lover. She could feel the unbreaka

ble spiritual connection between them. He would never defy her.

‘Tonight will be their dark night of the soul,’ she said.

‘Dark night of the soul?’

‘A dark night of the soul is essential for rapid spiritual progress,’ said Masha. ‘You’ve had your own dark night of the soul. I’ve had mine. We need to break them before we can make them whole again. You know this, Yao.’

She saw the flicker of doubt in his eyes. She stepped closer to him, so close that they were almost touching.

‘Tomorrow they will be reborn,’ she said.

‘I just don’t know –’

Masha stepped closer still and for the merest fraction of a second she let her eyes drop to his lips. Let the darling boy think the impossible was possible.

‘We are doing something extraordinary for these people, Yao,’ said Masha.

‘I’m going to let them out,’ said Yao, but there was no conviction in his voice.

‘No,’ said Masha. She lifted her hand tenderly to his neck, careful not to reveal the silvery glint of the syringe. ‘No, you’re not.’

chapter sixty

Frances

Frances twirled an empty water bottle on her finger, round and round, until it flew off and skittered across the floor.