Here in sunny Melbourne, Galina saw happy faces and carefree children; there was freedom and opportunity in this country, but most of all there was an absence of fear. Yet she was all too aware that she, a Russian Jew, was formed by Russia — the Russia of her lifetime and the earlier Russia of her mother and grandparents. She might well be surrounded by freedom and delight, but she carried her past with her. It was as if she were inhabiting two lives simultaneously, and much of the time they were not an easy fit.

To know her past was to go some way to knowing her, so perhaps it would help if she were to share it with some Australians. Andrew perhaps. Take him back as a guest through the Brezhnev years to Khrushchev and her own birth, back to Stalin, the war, the terror, the revolution, back to the beginning. This, she might say to him, this is how I came to be who I am. She considered this only for a moment before letting it go. She suspected that to speak in Australia of her past was as impossible as it had been in the Soviet Union.

7 LANDMARKS OF A LIFE

7

LANDMARKS OF A LIFE

A few days after their trip to Victoria Market, Andrew telephoned Galina — not to arrange a visit to his studio as she had expected, but to invite her to his parents’ place for dinner.

‘It was my mother’s suggestion,’ he said.

Inviting strangers to your home and feeding them was a Russian gesture, not an Australian one, and Galina wondered why the mother would invite her. What could she possibly want?

‘She thought you might welcome a home-cooked meal.’

As so often happened in this new life, Galina didn’t know what she wanted to do about this dinner invitation, nor what she should do. Exasperated with herself — why did everything have to be so complicated? — she decided to take the invitation at face value.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Tell your mother I am happy to accept.’

Andrew proposed a number of dates. Galina chose an evening a couple of weeks away to give herself time to prepare — not that it helped, because when the day finally arrived she was more rattled than she would have thought possible. It was a simple dinner, she told herself, and while it was at an Australian home with strangers, she had managed far more difficult situations in the past. She needed to calm down.