1. Emigrant
Of all the despicable vices of humanity, prudence
is the most abominable one.
Giordano Bruno
The rainy October night was over. Concrete edges of tall apartment buildings were already visible through a fogged window, silhouetted against the gray Moscow sky. We were laying on our backs, side to side, so tired that we couldn't even sleep. Our blanket was on the floor, but we weren't cold - we still couldn't cool down.
Suddenly Irina got up, sat on my thighs, put her hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eyes, and said:
"Don't leave."
I touched her breasts with my fingers. Hard velvety nipples bounced back and kept staring at me.
"Don't leave, please," she repeated. "Am I not beautiful enough for you?"
She knew perfectly well she was beautiful enough. I looked her over one more time - dark brown eyes, that wonderful transition from thin waist to perfectly rounded thighs - and tried to catch her stubborn nipples with my lips. She forced me to lay back and insisted:
"Don't leave. It's so boring here without you!"
What could I tell her? In six months since we had first met, we only managed to spend four weeks together. First, I was traveling in Europe, then in China. Now I had to hit the road again. In 1993, science could no longer be considered a profession in Russia. Since the onset of the Perestroika, I'd been working for a small private company. Now it was almost bankrupt, as the demand for both kinds of product we were selling had plummeted. People no longer had money for children's books we were publishing, and the Karabakh freedom fighters didn't need more assault rifles - they were already winning the war. Our boss couldn't pay us in rubles, not to mention dollars, so we got paid either in smuggled whiskey or in veal that couldn't pass the State sanitary inspection.
It was really disgusting. Twice a month, we had to drag recently slaughtered calves to the fifth floor of an apartment building in the center of Moscow, cover the floor with plastic sheets, and cut the meat, walking knee-deep in blood. Add to this picture some old ladies - authors and editors of children's books - running around on the verge of collapse. And every time we would throw the bones in the dump, half of the city police would converge on our office. Very unnerving when you have a stack of grenade launchers and surface-to-air missiles in your back room!
By the time I got back from a long and exhausting trip to China, even those payments were gone, so I had absolutely no choice but to emigrate, at least temporarily.
Fortunately, in four weeks I'd spent with Irina, I learned how to distract her from unpleasant topics. I put my fingertips on her nape, just below the mane of brown hair, and slowly moved them down her spine. She stretched her back and closed her eyes, but then opened them again and said:
"Do you hear me? Don't leave!"
I continued to slide my hand up and down her body, at the same time softly touching her nipples with the tip of my tongue. They tasted of salt after the long night. Irina bent downward and tried to shift her soft buttocks up my body to get closer. I moved my tongue all the way to her chin, then forced it between her lips and started kissing her. She moaned, and I felt warm liquid flowing out of her, as her harsh pubic hair was tickling my stomach. Suddenly she relaxed and whispered:
"Lay back."
"Wait", I said.
"Lay back, I want it now."
"Just one more minute of rest, please..."
But she already went down on her elbows, carefully pulled back the skin from my poor exhausted penis, and began to tickle it tenderly with her tongue - first the underside, then the tip. I thought it was useless, but Irina would probably be able to revive me even if I was really dead. At first I felt nothing but her soft touches, then something clicked inside me, and now I was getting some sensation from the penis itself. A minute later, she covered it all with her lips and began to move her head up and down, massaging the tip with swift strokes of her tongue. I felt it filling with hot, pulsing blood, but at that very moment the girl stopped, and I had to begin moving.
Then Irina seized it with her hand and carefully led it - no, allowed it to enter - into her warm vagina, soft after the long October night. She tried to move up and down, but she was too tired, so I had to do it all myself, carefully sliding in this hot, wet, tender space, as each cell of my penis was flooding me with sweet waves of pleasure.
I was, of course, also tired, so it took me a long time, and my poor girl got a bit too excited. A few times she would begin screaming and wiggling on my penis like a fish on a hook, driving her nails into my shoulders with such strength it made me worry she'd break her fingers. Finally I came, too, and with the last scream of the last tide of pleasure she dropped on my chest, whispering something. I realized that our night was over, that we'd fall asleep now, as if going into hibernation, and then I'd have to go away. Irina would probably sleep with my penis still inside her, but our bodies were too slippery with sweat, so she slid down on wet sheets.
And yet, she managed to say it one more time, her eyes closed, her voice almost too soft to hear:
"Don't leave..."
...Lying on a dusty bunk in a railway car, I watched the shadows of roadside utility poles move across the ceiling. I felt like a ball of twine, rolling away with one end tied up back in Moscow, slowly falling apart as the train was carrying me South.
I hated Moscow winters, and always wished to be able to skip them by moving to some place with life-sustaining climate. Now I'd finally managed it, but it didn't feel good at all. Rapidly growing distance was now separating me from my home, so comfortable after almost a year of travel, from my friends, and from my wonderful girlfriend. In the South, I could expect nothing but loneliness and hard work.
Before leaving Moscow, I consulted with a guy who'd just returned from Israel to Russia.
"OK, listen here," he said. "First, forget about chicks. Local ones don't consider us human; Soviet immigrants immediately dump their husbands and try to get themselves a local man, no matter how poor and ugly. Second, don't expect to find a good job. The country is full of immigrants, most of them unemployed. All you can count on is construction work, usually reserved for Palestinians. Ten hours a day, seven days a week, two dollars an hour. If your foreman sees you taking a one-minute break, he fires you. If he doesn't watch you, the Arabs cut your throat. The most important thing is to have enough money for the ticket back home. Better still, don't go to this damned country at all. Shithole, rotten province of nothing, inhabited by racists..." And he went on and on, describing that awful place, even worse than Russia.
I couldn't keep enough money for the ticket back - I didn't even have money for a ticket from Moscow to Israel. So I had to move step by step. First, I took a train to Chishineu in Moldova, then a local train to Ungeny - the last station before the Romanian border. After two days of travel across muddy fields, bordered with endless rows of mistletoe-infected Lombardy poplars, I finally got to the border and had to wait for Moscow-Bucharest train. International trains were more expensive, so I could only use them for border crossings.
The Chief of Customs in Ungeny was a big fat woman in her forties.
"For how long are you leaving CIS?" she asked.
"About six months".
"Aha! How much cash do you have?" It was illegal to take more than $1,000 out of CIS.
"200 dollars."
"You're lying."
"200 dollars."
"Search him!"
They searched me and counted the money - $198 in one-dollar bills. The woman was impressed. She came down to the train to see me off, and said:
"Be careful there. All Romanians are thieves. We would help you with money, but right now we don't have much ourselves. Few shuttles (trans-border merchants) pass through here in winter. God be with you, son..."
In the total darkness of the train I fell asleep in a corner, and woke up in Bucharest. The city was shrouded in morning fog and cold rain. Streets looked deserted, except for a few Soviet shuttles, wandering around the station, waiting for a train to Sofia. There were still leaflets from the Revolution days on the walls, and in one yard I saw an old portrait of Chaushescu, dotted with slingshot holes.
In the next train, I shared a cabin with a Ukrainian family: a pretty girl of about 17, accompanied with her mother and aunt. The chaperones gave me a suspicious look. My khaki coat and self-made backpack didn't impress them, so they interrupted all my attempts to start a conversation with the girl.
Eventually, the girl and I had to share a bunk, our heads sticking out of a blanket on the opposite ends. Under the watchful eyes of her relatives, we remained silent, and her black eyes were as sad and lonely as mine. We both tried to sleep: watching the endless wet fields and grim low clouds through the dirty window was too boring.
I turned and accidentally put my hand on her foot. To my surprise, she didn't move it away, and her face remained still. But she couldn't be asleep yet! I didn't feel like flirting, but there was nothing else to do; besides, I was interested to see how long she would pretend she didn't notice. How could I resist the temptation? I began slightly caressing her leg from the heel to the knee - as far as I could reach. The chaperones were still watching, so I almost closed my eyes, and tried to keep the blanket still.
She pretended to be sleeping, but her eyelids trembled a little bit. Still massaging her calf through her tight jeans, I stretched my leg and touched the inside of her thigh with my toes. We both seemed motionless, but I felt her leg strain, and she bit her lip. A tender wash of pink, almost invisible in the dim yellow-gray light, touched her cheeks. A minute later, totally confident that she'd accepted the rules of the game, I stretched my leg even further, and began to slowly stroke her groin throw the hard front of her jeans. We had plenty of time. The train was still drumming its monotonous rhythm, the older women were reading some long novels, and my big toe patiently played with pubic mound, groin, and lower buttocks of my pretty travel companion.
After about half an hour she couldn't stand it anymore. Pretending to be stretching her back in her sleep, she managed to undo the zipper of her jeans. Then, slowly as a clock hand, avoiding any movement of the blanket, she pulled them down. Another half-hour, and she took my foot with her cool fingers, caressed it for a moment, and led it into her hot, wet inside.
I don't know how she managed not to give herself away during the next three hours. She would blush, then turn pale, tremble, shut her eyelids tight, roll her eyes, scratch my foot, but she never moaned and never moved too sharply. A few times, exhausted, she would pull my toe out, but next minute she would seize it again and put back in, as a drug addict grabbing a syringe. Blue shadows began to appear under her black eyelashes. Finally, she moved my foot away, carefully pulled her jeans up, and fell asleep.
Her mother and aunt were also asleep, their books dropped to the floor, but once in a while one of them would briefly awaken and give us an inspecting look. I got up, and went to the corridor. There was nothing between the train and the horizon, except for boring Romanian plains.
The door of the cabin quietly opened, and the girl sneaked out. She took my hand, led me to the toilet, sat on the seat, pulled down my pants, gave me two quick Lewinskys, and disappeared. She wouldn't even let me kiss her. When I got back to the cabin, all three were chatting happily, eating the usual railway meal - chicken, boiled eggs, and tomatoes. We were approaching the last station before the Bulgarian border.
I managed to write my Moscow phone number on a tiny piece of paper and quietly put it in the girl's sock under the table. But she either never called, or missed me. A long time has passed since that strange encounter, but I still feel sorry it was so brief. We don't know each other's names. Our eyes never met, really.
"You are an idiot," I kept telling myself next day, while crossing Bulgaria by countless local trains. "You left the best girl in the world back home. The most tender, hot, loving girl. Now you'll have nothing but pervert teenager-style sexual exercises for six months. May be not even that: such occasions as you had yesterday don't come often."
I had to cross the Turkish border by foot. In difficult moments, nothing cheers me up as effectively as a good walk. Even if cold rainwater is running down my back, and passing trucks splash mud all over me. For a while I felt better, but by nightfall the loneliness engulfed me again. I hitched a truck ride to Istanbul, and wanted to spend the night at the roadside, but it was raining too much. Walking towards the city center, I got to the first city wall, found some construction site, crawled into my sleeping bag, and tried to sleep.
Next morning, I managed to get up and leave before the workers' arrival. Narrow streets were rapidly filling up with busy crowds: clerks in spotless suits, fat loudmouthed housewives, criminally-looking Kurd boys, blonde Western tourists, Russian merchants with loads of leather coats... Slender minarets were sticking out of morning haze, making the city skyline as unique as Moscow skyline with its towers, or Riga skyline with its Gothic domes. Istanbul would drag anybody out of depression as fast as good oral sex. But the feeling of loneliness was still with me, like a small piece of ice that wouldn't melt.
It would be a crime not to spend at least a day in such a lovely city. I walked to Aya Sofia, climbed to the second floor, sat on a massive oak bench, and looked at the frescoes around.
Aya Sofia doesn't seem particularly impressive from the outside. After taking Constantinople, the Turks began emulating its design in their mosques, and eventually got so good at it, that some mosques looked much more beautiful. But none of them, not even the gorgeous Blue Mosque, gives you the unique feeling of space that Aya Sofia's high dome is famous for.
About a thousand years ago, a Russian prince named Vladimir decided it was time for Russia to become monotheistic. He sent envoys to neighboring countries to study Islam, Catholicism, Judaism, and "Greek Faith". When his envoys returned, the ones who'd visited Constantinople were the most impressed. "We don't know if it was on Earth or in Heaven we've been," they said, recalling Aya Sofia. It's hard to tell if that was the real reason Russia converted into Orthodox Christianity, but that's how an ancient chronicle describes it.
On the bench there were some old graffiti, almost polished away by butts of forty generations. I recognized Elder Futhark runes, probably cut by one of the emperors' Norse bodyguards. Proud Vikings, rulers of the sea, regularly signed up for guard service at the palace. But then they would often give it up and go on a pirate vacation trip in their knorrs.
What made them leave the luxury and safety of Constantinople and embark on risky raids to unknown shores? Icy loneliness, memories of a girl left somewhere in a terribly distant land? Or not wanting to be bound by anything, even by the love of the best girl in the world?
The floor, suddenly lit by sunlight from stained-glass windows, turned colorful
as a butterfly wing under a microscope. I looked outside. The clouds were breaking
apart, the green coast of Asia was already visible across the Bosporus, and halfway
in between, on the piercingly-blue surface of the strait, a tiny white sail was
flying South.
Skaldic Song
"Forget
that girl!" would say to me a Viking old and kind.
"Just come
to our drakkar and get her out of your mind.
Get up, shake
off that witch's curse, friend - hey, join us for the sport:
We'll throw
a feast for hungry swords, we'll take a Roman port.
We'll spill
enough of their blood to feed the axes well,
And you will
see that all your pain is but an evil spell.
A lot of girls
behind the walls - take all you want and more,
And city's coffers
full of gold are, too, worth fighting for.
Our oars will
break the skulls of waves - we have a fast drakkar!
And there's
more of prey to hunt on shores both near and far.
Some day we
will return up North, to our rocky land -
Pick up a fair
Norman girl you can afford to wed.
Don't stay too
long with her, my friend, back to the stormy straits!
Man's fate is
not a boring life, but seas, and squalls, and raids.
Your wife will
wait for you at home, your house up the fjord,
And you will
die a Viking's death, your hand upon your sword!"