He slides the documents
out of the KGB safe
into an envelope
and settles his future
under his shirt –
its straight edges buckle
against his belly.
He buttons his jacket.
It’s the end of the day.
He saunters out the front door
along Canberra Avenue.
Cypresses line
neat concrete paving.
He slows his breath
to breathe naturally
slows his pace
to walk slowly.
At home he shoves
the thick envelope
under the mattress.
For the first time in Australia
he feels like a spy.
He won’t leave until April the third,
the day his successor is due.
He’ll tie up all the loose ends
and hand over the codes
the accounts
his notes.
He’ll do everything right –
till the end –
just like anyone leaving his job.
He’ll be as good as a robot
and maybe Moscow will think
he’s an ordinary agent
and defection
is part of his job.
He buys the lovely stuff duty-free
as a diplomat. The spirits are sealed
in their bottles like genies in jars.
Bialoguski helps load up the car
and they’re away. The slosh and gurgle
inside the boxes tempts
Volodya: he liberates one
to drink as they drive round the pubs
where they offer bargains in booze.
The money makes firm wads
in their wallets. Volodya stows some near
his breast where its touch might be
a girl’s mouth. (Back in Canberra Dusya
will handle the Embassy’s books –
the Ambassador never need know).
Capitalism’s so easy.
Dusya knows she looks good. Western clothes
flirt with her hips and breasts while her blonde hair
curls like a film star’s. She sees how men look.
(They may look – but no more).
With each greedy glance her power swells.
Wives dislike her. Their husbands’ lust is hers
to spend – if she chooses. The big flowers on her dress
make her look so delicate.
The Ambassador’s eyes glide over her.
(All the Embassy knows his last secretary
did more than type).
But when he smooths his hand over Dusya’s hips
she wheels around. She’s a snake: a viper,
an asp – she hisses him to his dark place.
Over the coming weeks Verity La will be publishing a series of poems by Canberra-based poet Lesley Lebkowicz exploring the infamous Petrov Affair. The poems, ‘Canberra’, ‘Snake’, ‘Booze’, ‘A Charm . . .’ and ‘Done’, are from Part I of a manuscript for a verse novel called The Petrov Poems. In the 1950s the USSR and the West were engaged in the Cold War, a time of fierce political opposition with threats of – but no actual – direct military engagement. Vladimir (Volodya) Petrov and his wife, Evdokia (Dusya) Petrova, arrived in Australia from the USSR in 1951 (‘Canberra’). Dusya worked as the Ambassador’s secretary and Embassy accountant (‘Snake’). Volodya, a KGB official and nominally Third Secretary at the Embassy, travelled freely in Australia, especially to Sydney, to establish a network of spies outside the Embassy (‘Booze’). He had little success at this.
Volodya defected without his wife (‘A Charm . . .’ and ‘Done’). After his defection Dusya was imprisoned inside the Embassy. The Soviets attempted to hustle her out of the country but she defected in Darwin. The Petrovs were taken to safe houses in Sydney by ASIO. After the Royal Commission into Espionage, a show trial mounted by the Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, they were granted Australian citizenship and lived in Bentleigh, a suburb of Melbourne where Vladimir worked processing film for Ilford. Dusya was a typist at William Adams Tractors. In 1990 Dusya’s beloved sister Tamara joined her in Melbourne.
Volodya died after a stroke in 1991.
Dusya died in 2002.
*
Canberra
Dusya likes it here: the quiet, the space. They live
close to the Embassy and walk to work through
a silence broken only by birds. She learns their names:
magpies, currawongs, parrots and tiny bright wrens.
Kookaburras. There are few buildings. Grassland
surrounds them – dun-coloured stems
catch the sun. Cockatoos
screech past her ears. Their house is between
Kingston and Manuka where shops
for clothing and food squat close to the ground.
There’s a newsagency, a shop for sewing materials,
a furniture store – but no cafés, no restaurants.
Civic has two-storey buildings with cloisters
where in winter the wind from Cooma sharpens the cold
into blades. She shivers. All around sheep huddle
and graze, but in Griffith they have a whole house
to themselves: a whole house and plenty of food.
