The Russian Wife Ch. 03

I nodded. He felt responsible, for me, towards me. And towards my parents too. Especially towards my father. Not fear: responsibility. "Nastoyàshi mujìk, nastoyàshi soldàt". A real man, a real soldier...

"You are not obliged..." I said.

"I know. I'm not even obliged to keep living. But I'm seriously intentioned to do it..."

"You're not even obliged to keep living?"

"Well, we are at the sixth floor..." he folded his hands and pointed them to the ground, as to simulate a dive. I snorted, shaking my head. No, I was sure he would have never done it, not even if I would have gone mad an told him "no"... Seriously intentioned to keep living. And seriously intentioned to marry me... He had pondered the matter seriously, no doubt. But I kept talking. Then he wanted me.. But later? Some years, some decades later?

"I will be not a nice young woman forever," I said. I look at my side. "I will become a "bàbushka..."

"A what?"

"A "bàbushka", a granny!" I snorted: he knows perfectly that. "An old, fat, weird, mumbling "bàbushka"!"

"And what will I become? A kid?" he snorted too. "We'll get even!"

There was no way to make him boggle. I kept talking, because it's better a lost husband than a disillusioned one. But he... Olympically calm, slouching on the chair, and pragmatic. First of all, pragmatic. He had no romantic idea about marriage. He knew and approved our proverb: even the most successful marriage is a penance. But he wanted to receive that penance from me. And he had no doubt that I wanted to get it from him.

And he was not presumptuous, he was right. I had never desired a penance as I desired that one which he could give me.

Whatever it could be...

When I went back in the "mitrò", about one hour later, I was walking one feet above the ground.

I had been possessed by a man, for the second time in my life, but it was all another deal. The first time, coming home in the "mitrò", I was hating all the male sexes, and all the males who were attached to them, and of course, I was hating myself. Now, I was at peace with the whole world.

My man had insisted for to accompany me, down to the road. He had greeted me, hands in hands, eyes in the eyes, talking in Russian, with a voice loud enough to be heard by the policeman on duty, who of course was not the one of last evening. He did not want that he, or anyone else, could mistake me with one of "those" girls... And to make it clear, bomb-proof, had asked me to ask my father, when he could come to our home to talk with him.

THen he had waited for the policeman to give me back my passport. When I get off the building, after a last greeting with my hand, he was talking in Russian with the policeman. It seems there were good relations between them. Surely, if someone has checked the data of my passport, now "all who had to know" knew where I had pass the night, who was my father and everything about me. But I had no fear. I did nothing bad. And maybe my man was inviting the policeman to our marriage... Why not, he was a handsome guy...

I felt his blows inside too yet. Especially the last ones, when I asked him to "do it stronger" and he did it... But it was nothing compared to my first time, at all. It was not pain. It was as it had to be. If I closed my eyes, I felt myself below him, spread, subdued, his sex inside of me, pounding me... And happy of all that... Yes, my love, do it to me, do it...

I caressed my belly, where I felt him yet. Not between the legs: just between the pubes and the hub. As if I had a child from him already... Oh, sure, I had counted and re-counted the days, the possibility to get pregnant was almost zero. But even in that case, "yèsli shtò", I had no fear. Not that time...

When I got to my home and opened the door of my flat, I was still thinking about my man, and what he had done to me. And I was still smiling. My mother did not like that so much. There was not so much to say too.

"Did you ask him to marry you, at least?" she asked, bluntly.

"No." I said, always smiling, seraphically. I let her roll her eyes above and placed my torpedo. "He asked me to."

My mother looked at me with the eyes like an owl. Hit and sunk. My father had heard it all and he burst out laughing. He was not mistaken, about "that guy"...

"Tell him to come here, before he changes his mind!" shout my mother, trying to have the last say. Desperate attempt...

"Chush kakaya!" answered my father. What a crap! "Let him come at his ease!"

"He would like to come," I say, "But he would like to have a date, so he doesn't bother you when you are busy..."

"Right. I will think about it." my father approved. He came to me and put his hands on my shoulder, with a manly smile. "Are you fine? Are you happy?"

I nodded. My father too wanted to follow the traditions: the would-be son-in-law who discusses with the parents of his girl, explaining what he can do to make her happy and safe, to be a stone wall to protect her... But unlike my mother, he excluded the possibility that my man could ever "change his mind". And as for the rest, he had enough information and knew my man enough to be sure where his daughter was ending up. So the proposal would have been kind of a formality, although important. Our wedding was as sure as the rise of the sun.

"There is a point," he said looking at me, when he sit down. "You will marry him, and may God give you both love and wisdom, as the poet says." I smiled. "The poet" was Pushin, always in "The captain's daughters", but that phrase was quite common, for marriages. "It can be in a month or in a year, it's just a question of bureaucracy, nothing fearful. But then? Where will you live? Will you keep working or not? What are your intentions about it?"

I really did not think about it, I was too happy to bother me for those menial, trivial questions. But my father was right: the real life has his rights, even when you only would think about love. Maybe he had his ideas about those issues.

"I don't know." I admitted. "We have to talk about that yet."

"Well, talk about, and then make him come. Say, next saturday?"

I nodded, and he considered closed the business talk. Smiled again to me, and filled three small glass with Vodka. "Sto gram", a hundred grams, for each of us, a very low quantity, just to celebrate the event. My mother was a bit mumbling yet, but at the end, she too raised her glass, and smiled to me.

When I had the chance to talk with my father only, I gave him a more detailed report of what me and my men had done (well, not TOO MUCH detailed, of course). First of all, I thanked him on behalf of my man, as he had asked me to do.

""Nyè za shtò"!" he laughed. Not at all, don't mention it, "nothing for which"... you're welcome... Especially the last one: I knew that.

"You know... I think he feels obliged to marry me... for not to disappoint you. He has a great respect for you... "

"It's mutual," he confirmed my impression. "But nobody marries a woman just to please her father. For all the respect he could have... "

"Yes, he wanted me, but... Maybe only once, indeed... "

"He wanted you, he wants you, and he will want you. Because he is not a fool. And you are you."

"Hm." I smiled. Who has said that Russians are unable to talk to the women?

My and my man talked about the questions my father has raised, and then, the next saturday, we talked with my father about them. No problem, for them and for anything else. Let's go to the Zags... The next monday, of course...

But that "no problem", strangely, made me feel uneasy. It was all too smooth, too easy, too fast. Was I really doing the right thing? Yes, I wanted to marry my man, it was the "most wanted" thing in the world for me. But now that marriage was just some paper sheets away, so close, "rùku podàt"... I was almost frightened...

My man, all the other way, was absolutely tranquil. Not even impatient, just tranquil. He was living his last days of free man, single, "kalastòi", and he was conscious of it, but he was calm. Not "resigned": calm. He loved a girl, the girl wanted to be married, and he was going to marry her. Her parents were agreeable, his mother was enthusiast. Where was the catch? "V-ciòm problèma"?

"Are you sure you mother want a Russian daughter-in-law?" I asked him. "Some of us have a bad reputation..."

"No worry!" he smiled. "She knows about you since we started to meet each other, more or less. Her dossier about you is richer that the one of KGB!"

"Hm!" I snorted. "And who is her informant?"

"Me, of course!" he laughed. And me too. It was nothing bad, not a sign of "mama's boy-ism". When a man talks to his mother about a girl, that means, that girl is important for him.

"And what was your first report?"

"Well, I told her I had known you... Se asked me if we went to bed, I said "no"... And she said: "Very well! If she did not give it to you on the spot, it means she is serious! If you like her, go ahead!"..."

We were speaking partly in Russian, partly in Italian, but he reported the words of his mother in pure Tuscan dialect, which I know was the base of modern Italian, very more than Latin. It was a spirited, lively language, even more musical than Italian, It gave much strenght and cheer to the words. And of course, "it" was referred to my sex. I laughed.

"So if we had gone to bed then, she would have discouraged you... "

"I'm afraid yes. But it was unlikely, right?"

"Very unlikely! I'm a serious Soviet girl!" I said, eyes closed, hand on the heart, righteous tone. Then I laughed. And my man too.

"Hm..." he said, after a while. "It seems to me you are worried, lately. Why?"

"Are you sure we do well, marrying?"

"Why not?"

"Have you read the statistics?"

"What statistics?" he wondered. It was the "glasnost" era: every day, lots of statistics came out, on everything.

"In Russia... each third marriage fails!"

"Really? Well, that means, one marriage fails... But two don't..."

I hugged him. It was right: TWO marriages DID NOT fail. The marriage of Carlo and Galina did not fail. Our own marriage won't have failed. And those of the third marriage... well, good luck...

Some time later, I heard that in the USA, each SECOND marriage failed.

And in Russia, during the 90es, more or less the same.

But that's another story...