Nine Perfect Strangers

‘I did,’ said Masha. ‘But I will never regret that time. It was very important to me.’ She lifted her chin. ‘My time behind bars was a transformative experience. I learned so much, and I explain all my experiences in this book, which is available now, in all good bookstores.’ She picked up the book and held it in front of her face.

The interviewer cleared her throat. ‘Masha, what do you say about the rumours that people have been attending these courses you offer, held in different secret locations across the country, and that you are, in point of fact, offering LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs to your attendees?’

‘That is absolutely untrue,’ said Masha. ‘I unequivocally deny it.’

‘So you are not running these programs in secret locations?’

‘I am running very unique, tailored, incredibly effective personal development programs to small, select groups of people, but there is nothing illegal going on, I can assure you of that.’

‘I hear there is a waiting list,’ said the interviewer. ‘And that people are paying quite hefty fees to attend.’

‘There is a waiting list,’ said Masha. ‘People should visit my website if they would like to go on the list, or call the toll-free number I believe is appearing on the screen right now. There is a special offer for those who call within the next twenty-four hours.’

‘If there is nothing illegal going on, I wonder why the locations are kept secret and change on a regular basis,’ said the interviewer. She looked at Masha expectantly.

‘Was that a question?’ asked Masha, with a seductive smile straight at the camera.

‘What a nutter,’ said the man’s daughter-in-law. ‘I bet she’s making millions.’ She stood, and held out the baby to her father-in-law. ‘Will you hold her? I’ll make us some tea.’

The man moved the spanner off his lap and took his granddaughter. His daughter-in-law left the room.

Masha was talking about something called ‘holotropic breathwork’, which she said was ‘psychedelic therapy without the psychedelics’.

‘That’s where you breathe fast to get high, right?’ said the interviewer, rather rudely and sceptically.

‘It is a much more complex, sophisticated process than that,’ said Masha.

An image appeared on the screen of Masha at some kind of conference centre, striding about a stage with a tiny microphone attached to her ear, while an auditorium packed with people looked on with rapt attention.

The man held the baby up and spoke in his native tongue into her ear. ‘That crazy woman is your grandmother.’

*

He remembered the day their second son was born, only three months after they lost their firstborn so tragically.

‘He is yours.’ Masha had refused to look at the baby. Her averted face, her sweat-soaked hair flat against her forehead, could have been carved from marble. ‘Not mine.’

A nurse at the hospital said, ‘Mum will come around.’ It was the grief. She was still in shock, probably. Such a terrible thing to go through, losing her son when she was six months pregnant with her second. That nurse did not know his wife’s strength. She did not know Masha.

Masha discharged herself from the hospital. She said she was going straight back to work, that very day, and she would send money. She would make enough money in her job so that her husband could take care of the new baby, but she wanted nothing to do with him.

She spoke very calmly, as if this were a business arrangement, and she only lost her temper once, when the man fell to his knees and clutched her and begged her to let them be a family again. Masha screamed into his face, over and over, ‘I am not a mother! Can you not understand this? I am not a mother!’

So he let her go. What else could he do? She did exactly what she said she would and sent money, more and more each year, as her career became more successful.

He sent her photos. She never acknowledged them. He wondered if she even looked at them and he thought that maybe she did not. She was a woman with the strength to move mountains. She was a woman as weak as a child.

He remarried two years later. His son called his Australian wife ‘Mummy’ and spoke with an Australian accent, and they had two more sons and lived an Australian life in this lucky country. They played cricket on the beach on Christmas Day. They had a swimming pool in their backyard and his sons caught the bus home and on hot summer days they ran straight through the house, tearing off their clothes, and jumped into the pool in their undies. They had a large circle of friends, some of whom dropped by their house without phoning first. His second wife grew up in a small country town, and her accent was from ‘the bush’, broad and thick and slow, her favourite phrase was ‘no big deal’ and he loved her, but there had been occasions over the years when he would be standing in his backyard at the barbecue, turning steaks, a beer in his hand, cicadas screaming, a kookaburra laughing, the splash of water, the smell of bug spray, the early evening sun still hot on his neck, and without warning Masha’s face would appear in his mind, her nostrils flared, her beautiful green eyes blazing with superiority and contempt but also childlike confusion: These people! They are so strange!

For many years he had given up communicating with Masha. He didn’t bother to send photos of their son’s wedding, but five years ago, when their first grandchild was born and he was awash with the fierce, all-consuming love of a new grandparent, he had emailed again, attaching photos of the baby, with the subject heading: please read, masha. He wrote that it was fine that she chose not to be a mother, he understood, but now, if she wanted, she could be a grandmother and wasn’t that wonderful? There was no reply.

He looked now at his granddaughter. He thought he could see something of Masha in the shape of her eyes. He held the baby with one arm and extracted his phone from his pocket with the other, and snapped a photo of her exquisite, sleeping face.

He wouldn’t give up. One day Masha would answer. One day she would weaken, or find the strength, and she would answer.

He knew her better than anyone.

One day she would.