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?’
‘It was as wonderful,’ said Masha. She picked up the glass ball that Frances had put down and held it in the flat palm of her hand as if daring it to roll. It stayed completely still. ‘And it was not.’
She put the ball back down decisively. Suddenly she seemed to remember her superior status. Like when your boss remembers you have to work together the next day.
‘So, Frances, tomorrow we will officially break the silence and you will get to know the other guests.’
‘I’m looking forward –’
‘Enjoy your evening meal because there will be no meals served at all tomorrow. Your first light fast will begin.’
She held out her hand in such a way that Frances found herself automatically rising to her feet.
‘Have you done much fasting before?’ Masha looked up at her. She said ‘fasting’ as if it were an exotic, delightful practice, like belly dancing.
‘Not really,’ admitted Frances. ‘But it’s just a light fast, right?
Masha smiled radiantly. ‘You may find tomorrow a little testing, Frances.’
chapter twenty-four
Carmel
‘You have already lost some weight, I see.’ Masha opened Carmel’s file to begin her counselling session.
‘Have I?’ said Carmel. She felt like she’d won a prize. ‘How much?’
Masha ignored the question. She ran her finger down a sheet of paper in the file.
‘I thought I might have lost some – but I wasn’t sure.’ Carmel heard her unused voice tremble with pleasure. She hadn’t dared to hope. It seemed that Yao deliberately stood in such a way that she couldn’t see that dreaded number on the scales each day.
She put a hand to her stomach. She had suspected it was getting flatter, her clothes looser! She’d been secretly touching her stomach, like when she was pregnant for the first time. This retreat was just like that euphoric time: the feeling that her body was changing in new and miraculous ways.
‘I guess I’ll probably lose even more when we start the fast tomorrow?’ Carmel wanted to demonstrate her enthusiasm and commitment to the retreat. She would do whatever it took.
Masha said nothing. She closed Carmel’s file and balanced her chin on her folded hands.
Carmel said, ‘I hope it’s not just fluid loss. They say that in the first few days of a diet you mostly just lose fluid.’
Masha still said nothing.
‘I know the meals here are all calorie-controlled. I guess the challenge will be maintaining my weight loss when I go home. I’d be really grateful for any nutrition advice you can give me going forward. Maybe a recipe plan?’
‘You do not need a recipe plan,’ said Masha. ‘You are intelligent woman. You know what to do to lose weight, if that’s what you want. You are not especially fat. You are not especially thin. You want to be thinner. That is your choice. I find this not so interesting.’
‘Oh,’ said Carmel. ‘Sorry.’
‘Tell me something about yourself that is not related to your weight,’ said Masha.
‘Well, I have four daughters,’ said Carmel. She smiled at the thought of them. ‘They’re aged ten, eight, seven and five.’
‘I know this already. You are a mother,’ said Masha. ‘Tell me something else.’
‘My husband left me. He has a new girlfriend now. So that’s been –’