Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

My salary goes into the same account. There’s a standing order that transfers most of it to the hospital department where my mother is and to Madeleine, her carer. I want that to stay as it is, and I also want you to leave for my mother’s benefit the funds that have accumulated there.

Yogev, is everything OK? Now her voice sounded really worried.

Everything’s OK, Or, I said without thinking, and from the other end I could hear a stifled cry.

Is that all? she asked, in a choking voice.

Apart from my not having yet given you the bank information, I said, and read her the details of the account I’d opened in Montreal. Since I was presenting myself in Russia as a Canadian I couldn’t very well allow a direct transfer of the money from Israel to here. Orit went over the bank details in a mechanical and still audibly strangled tone of voice.

Can I ask you please to do it today if that’s possible? And if you are going to the Sapir Centre this morning, then to do it this morning?

I’ll go there now if it’s so urgent for you.

Thanks, thank you. And I also wanted to know if by chance you’ve heard something from my mother.

I visit her about once a month. She looks the same but now doesn’t communicate with anyone.

I wanted to cut the conversation short. The FSB most probably listens to every call to Israel and it was best that I get away from the place quickly before a surveillance team arrived and linked the conversation to me. And yet, something inside me was shaken by the sound of her crying.

You want to tell me what’s happening with you?

Oh, Yogev, Yogev, things are not easy here. Not easy with two children–you know that we had another little baby girl?

I muttered something vague.

Well, there are dreams and then there is reality. And I don’t know how in touch you are but we had someone killed in Gaza, Shmilo’s son. Did you know that there are rockets and military operations all the time? And overall the country leaves a lot to be desired.

I kept quiet and tried to remember Shmilo’s children, but couldn’t. He came to the village in the 1980s and his children, it would seem, were born after I was enlisted into the army.

Orit was also silent for a while. And what about you?

I’m alive, I said. And it’s bloody cold here.

That’s not terrible as long as you’re not killing anyone there, she said. And with that the call was cut off. Orit? The Shin Bet? The FSB? Somebody took fright at these words.

I hurried out of the place and took a cab to a branch of one of the banks in the centre of town. There I opened a new account that required me once again to produce my full ID and fill in endless forms. The Russians want foreign currency but are still slaves to the totalitarian bureaucracy which remains part of their way of life. Happily, bank officials were more polite than other governmental clerks who continued to stick to the communist tradition of service. No metro ticket seller, for example, could be bothered to explain to me how the multiple journey magnetic card worked and so I continued using the single trip tokens.

When I’d finished at the bank I went into another internet café and after a few minor problems–not understanding the instructions in Russian on the screen, and Google insisting on linking me only to local websites–I transferred the details of my new account to the bank in Montreal with the instruction to forward the whole sum sent from Israel to that account.

Up to the time I’d arranged to meet Anna, I sat in a Coffee House on Nevsky Prospekt, giving myself a chance to calm down from the exertions of the morning and in particular from talking to Orit. That conversation had suddenly re-injected my former life into the here and now. For the first time I realized how fragile my new identity really was, and the ease with which it could be uncovered as a fiction. Then Anna arrived, her head wrapped in a grandmotherly kerchief against the cold. She giggled at the amused look I gave her and said, like a babushka, yes? And it wasn’t till she’d removed the head scarf and bent to kiss me, that Orit and the Arava contracted and returned to that drawer that I didn’t want to be opened ever again.

In the afternoon, together with a new real estate agent, we began to view apartments and shops for rent in the centre of St Petersburg. Because of the prices, we very quickly decided to look at places a bit further away. I knew that in a few days time I would be able to afford even those exorbitant rents but had no way of explaining my sudden wealth to Anna and I didn’t want to come to the attention of the authorities. As much as possible I also wanted to get away from the hustle and bustle of the centre, from tourists and from the prying eyes of the Mossad who would most probably be arriving any time now.

Annushka, let’s make it as simple and as distant as we can. Here, in St Petersburg, of course, don’t worry, I hurried to add when I saw the look of concern on her face. But just as it’s difficult to find an apartment in the centre it will also be difficult to find a shop here. And I saw in advertisements that new big residential complexes are being built on Vasilyevsky Island.

That’s where the university is, you know? I studied there and I’ll be able to show it to you, she said happily. But the areas where they’re building, on the western side of the island towards the Gulf of Finland, were a wilderness then. We called them golod , from the Russian for hunger. Only those who had nothing went there.

Vasilyevsky is the biggest of the islands in the Neva delta on which the city is built. In the estate agent’s car we crossed the one bridge that separates it from the Hermitage and the city centre, and I could see the imposing buildings of the university among which, apparently, there were also a scattering of governmental buildings since the people in brown uniforms outnumbered the student population. We drove on along Bolshoi Prospekt, a wide thoroughfare that led to the new housing estates in the western part of the island.

Close to the water’s edge, alongside a harbour created by the small river that cuts across the island, rose a few clusters of huge steel and glass apartment blocks. Each one was painted in a slightly different colour–one blue and glass, the second brown and glass and so on. In each cluster there were a few high-rise towers of twenty storeys with lower buildings next to them. Walking in one of the estates we found there was a wide avenue within the complex with shops, cafés, and a hint of gardens-to-be.

In the sales office, a young real estate agent agreed to accompany us to view the available apartments.

We were like a young couple. I had never been a spontaneous, lighthearted type and I could never freely express my emotions. But Anna had changed that in me. Her happiness at looking at apartments made coming to a decision a bit difficult. But it clearly wasn’t necessary to cast the net too widely. Satisfying her, and indeed me, was easy. The various estates were similar to each other and offered a choice of apartments for both sale and rent. The rental prices turned out to be high, much higher than what I’d paid in Moskovsky and similar to the prices in the centre. They ranged from one thousand dollars a month for a small apartment looking directly on to the next building, to a few thousand dollars for a big one with a sea view. Without the Mossad’s reimbursement of the rent this wasn’t going to be easy but I decided to do it anyway. In the end we agreed on a nice three-roomed apartment on nearly the top floor in one of the new buildings facing the sea.

The sunsets you will see from here make it worth double the rent, the agent said. A rounded balcony stretched the length of the sitting room. I didn’t know if a balcony in St Petersburg was a practical thing to have, but Anna was already planning the pots of herbs and flowers she would grow there. What attracted me was the huge expanse of glass, half of which was a door and the other half a window we could sit by and gaze at the promised sunset. A side window overlooked the rest of the buildings in the complex. Beneath it was the avenue of shops, and beyond that, as far as the eye could see, the rest of the city’s buildings.