Chapter 8 - First sign of trouble

Tonight we all went out to a concert held in an old wooden building down a dark lane, lit with bare light bulbs and one unprepossessing leaded glass window. The performers were dressed casually, most definitely amateurs but terribly earnest. After the concert we were taken to a French restaurant obviously meant to impress us, which worked for Babby who declared it “quite posh”. It was filled with well-to do people that Auntie Galina whispered to us were black market mafia. I wondered if others whispered the same about us. Everyone is beautifully dressed in exquisite, delicate fashions, probably because in here, like everywhere in Moscow it is extremely well heated. Too well heated – I sweltered in my wool dress.

We drank cranberry flavoured vodka and ate well. I guess what Svetlana calls “boring old Russian food” is passe for locals now that new cuisines have become available after ‘glasnost’. Except for German cuisine, I suppose not so surprisingly. Galina hates anything German. Babby is not so keen either and they both start badmouthing a country they know nothing about and to which they have never been, all due to a war that ended fifty years ago. I couldn't stand it. “Germany is not just about the Nazis. There’s more to it than that, thousands of years more.”

“You don’t have to tell me, dear,” Babby said. “I’ve seen The Sound of Music.”

I laughed. It sounded like something Mom would say. Then I caught myself. If Mom had really said something like that I’d be rolling my eyes but with Babby I just laugh. I wonder why we are harder on the generation that brought us up. Especially our mothers. Women are so hard on their mothers.

What I really wanted was “boring old Russian food”, which wouldn’t be boring to me at all, but it might be hard to sell the others on this. Auntie Galina is a bulldozer, knowing what everyone wants without taking the time to actually find out. “Arkady, you know you can not have the lamb. You always want the lamb and then say how bad it tastes. So you are not having the lamb. Have the salmon instead. Svetlana, don’t squirm. The baby will not sleep through the night if you squirm. Arkady, our young guest is almost finished her drink! Order another one right away. What will she think of us if we allow her glass to go dry? I noticed this morning your bed was wet. Are you wetting the bed again?”

“That was the dog. And what do you mean ‘again’ Mama? I haven’t wet the bed since I was eight.”

Svetlana sits quietly with a miserable face as her mother-in-law tells her what to eat and what to wear, then she leans over the table to whisper conspiratorial criticisms of every other woman in the room to me. Getting her own back I guess. I guess it's not confined to mothers - women can be so often mean about other women.

Svetlana asked me why I wasn’t married yet and wasn’t it unfair to my parents who no doubt want grandchildren. Before I could answer Babby got in there. “She's sowing wild oats these days by the bushel full. And needlessly! She had a perfectly good opportunity she let slip away. A lovely young man. Perfectly well suited husband material.”

“Babby!” I said disturbed at the blush I could feel, “That was over a year ago and you never even met the man.”

“I spoke to him on the telephone. You can tell a lot from voices.” She said with as haughty an air as a 4 foot high chatterbox in a voluminous orange shawl is able to produce. I was about to silence them all and take the focus off the subject by saying this perfect man of Babby’s had chosen Germany in which to study, but I was too slow.

“You didn’t get all modern on him did you?” Auntie Galina asked. ”Young girls today, feeling they are worthless unless they drive men away with their independence. Working themselves out of marriage. Putting off having children until they are too old and tired to be good mothers.”

“Oh he was perfectly willing to let her work,” piped in Babby.

“Well what’s the problem then? No money?”

“He had a good job, and was studying to get even more education. I don’t think money was really a problem was it dear? He gave her lovely presents. An enormous globe, the biggest I've ever seen, full of countries I've never heard of. And books. Anyway, things she wanted.”

Who's 'she' I want to shout - the cat's mother? I'm sitting right here!

“Was he ugly then? It is very hard to be with an ugly man but when the lights go out they all look the same. And even an ugly man is better than no man at all.”

I jerked into the conversation. “Excuse me, but if I could get in one sentence about the topic of my life, I would like to say that I am perfectly able to choose my own partner if I even need one at all, which is debatable. Besides what happened between Hamish and me is my business.”

Babby patted my hand and soothed, “Of course it is dear, we only want to see you are happy and looked after.” Then, hastily, after seeing my response “I mean, not lonely.”

Auntie Galina had to have the last word of course. “I think it is disgraceful for women these days to think they know so much better than their mothers and grandmothers what life is.” She looked, no, glared, at Svetlana who shrank into her seat and I felt like kicking the old shrew under the table. But of course I didn’t. I’d like to think it’s because I’m a polite house guest but I suspect I’m merely a coward.