The Russian Wife Ch. 10

And what should have done MY MAN for not to be a "weakling""? To beat me? To kill me? To throw me on the street? Madness! Madness!

No: "ciòrt s nièi", go straight to Hell, girl.

And the same applied to proofs, experiments, "verifications"...

The only thing I had to prove (and I felt it, so, no problem at all) was my love for my man. And my sympathy for the kids who still "counted my steps", looked at me when they saw me passing by. Before, they did it because I was Russian, and beautiful. Now... Because I was beautiful. And Russian. Yes, Russian woman, three times a woman... Even "easier" than the other, maybe...

They looked at me already as a man looks at a woman: my cleavage, my bum, my legs, my belly... Even my face... yes, they struggled to look into my eyes, to keep my strange, blue-eyed, Slavic glance. And then they dreamed that I, for any reason, as a good, exotic witch-priestess, would initiate them to that secret magic called "sex"...

No, of course, I would have never been "easy" for them, let alone "initiated" them. And not only for well deserved faithfulness to my man. You can't make "certain things" with the kids...

If only I had been content of their glances, glances of small, starving wolf cubs, I could have spared me all that jazz with that nerd... Sure, Sashka, you are beautiful. Don't you see how they look at you? You could be the mother of the youngsters, but they all would be very happy to jump in your bed... And not to hear the lullaby, oh, no... "Bàyu bàyu shi bayù, niè lojìtsya na krayù"... Though I would have sung it for them... Tender wolf cubs...

Yes, I was happy of those clumsy glances, I smiled at them, in answer. Sometimes I asked them, enhancing my Russian accent, what were they looking at... And I unbuttoned a bit my blouse, so they could look better at my breast. Or if they were looking at my legs , I showed my knee, my thighs... "Is this what you want to see?" I asked... And they blushed and run away, frightened and aroused by me, by my voice, by my body. By my being a woman, nice, ripe, self-assured and sexy. And I laughed...

They had just natural and sound curiosities: I was the keeper of a mystery, for them. The mystery of the body of a woman, of all the women... I was real, not one of those girls on kinky magazines or cassettes or the like. And I let them play with that mystery: you can look, but you better not touch. It was so fun!

And at the end, I had appeased myself with my "new" body. No more shame to show it, and even my cheeckbones, my cheeck who became fuller, always with a good rosy shade on my pale rosy face, my eyes who became more liquid, meek and mysterious at the same time, in a nutshell, my Slavic face, no more of a girl, but of a WOMAN... They are not defects, they are weapons. No use to hide them or to pretend you don't have them. You have a wide body? Dress so that it looks well! Some like it so!

My man, just for starting!

So I asked a tailor to "enlarge" and cut a bit my "sarafan" and I kept using it, some days, in Summer, and I bought simple dresses like that, maybe a bit shorter. And I looked fine! The kids, even out of our borough, turned their faces to look at me. And not for LAUGHING about me... While sometimes they laughed at how the tourists dressed themselves. And they were right.

In Russia, there is a traditional tourist dress code: "jisnyotdikàyushi", those who rest, who enjoy the life. Especially if you are not at the beach or in the "dacha", the country house (country hut, sometime), but you are visiting a town. It's a style, simple and comfortable, but nothing run-down or sloppy (no "grunge", in two words). Blouses with short sleeves (no T-shirt), long trousers of light fabrics, hats, some things like that.

But what I saw was different. .. Women of my age, with my sizes, dressed like big scarecrows! No, galls, you are out!

The one thing left from all that story (the cheating) was the fact that, sometimes, I thought of that guy on the train. Really: ONLY to THAT guy. I almost did not remember that nerd, I had "slept" with. Although...

Well, as we say. "Jìzn niepredskasùema", life is unpredictable, really... Once me and my man were strolling in the center of Florence. Wonderful day, not too many tourists, not so much noise, not so much heat... And at a certain point I saw HIM. No, no flashbacks out of a sense of guilt or the like: it was HIM.

I don't know what you would have done, but me, I was totally blocked. My man realized that there was something going on.

"What's that?" he said. I kept mum. He followed my glance and, bingo! He saw him, for the first and last time. Maybe he realized that it was him, that underachiever... And he smiled, looking at him. Smiled!

Then, all happened in a wink. My man grabbed me, made me do a half turn and printed a kiss on my face, but a kiss as only a sailor just landed after a travel around the world can give!

I remained stunned for a while, hugged by him, kissed by him, without knowing what to do. People around looked at us, maybe, but I was unable to see it. My man kissed me, touched me, groped me... There, facing all those people... And the more he did, the less I cared about all those people...

When my man got short of breath, he stopped kissing me and looked at that guy. That guy was shocked, open mouth. Look, "gavlyùk", look at this ("gavlyùk" was not "asshole": it was worse)! See TO WHOM BELONGS this woman! Look at what I do to her, how I treat her... And how she LIKES it! She is nice, she is hot and she is MINE! You're not man enough for her! You've got your chance, and you blew it! Now move along, if you know what's good for you!

And I LIKE what he did to me! He could have gone ahead, make me kneel, put me on all four, pull up my skirt on my back, push aside the crotch of my panties... And I would have thanked him, and asked for more! I looked at that "gavlyùk", feeling the hands of my man on my body, on my butt and my breasts. They made me feel a whore, but they feel me safe too, as a splinter jacket, a hurt locker gear. Who was that guy, and what could he do to me? Nothing. Move along, folk: you are nothing... nothing!

A city policeman, urged by an old lady (a "babushka", indeed) came and told us not to go too far with our effusions. My man tried to explain him that we were married, but he did not want to listen to any reason.

"Well, then, my best wishes, but you have to go home to do such things! You too, madam!"

And we go home, laughing like mad, at the policeman, at the old lady, and at that nerd not so far from her. And impatient as if we were 20 years less...

And we did "such things". You bet we did...

Well, what husband would have acted that way, in that situation? Very few, ain't it? One on a thousand? On a million? No one? Well, that "no.one" existed, I had found him. And I liked him, madly!

But I kept thinking to that boy on the train.

I would have liked to tell myself it was just a fantasy, surely my man too had some of them. But the boy on the train was not a fantasy. He was a phantom. I knew nothing of him, no name, no address, I could not find him. Maybe he had forgotten me already. But I didn't.

It was unfair, I know. Unfair for my man, first of all. He was getting old, but he was more than sufficient for me, for all a woman can expect from a good husband. And I knew very well that "do it with another male" could mean half an hour of confuse but significant wave activities, and nothing else. Pleasure for me: zero. "Bòje mòy", what a hard choice, what a heavy renounce!

Yes, I could find a man, good in bed like him. But I HAD such a man already: it was HIM... And a man better than him, in bed..., I could hardly fancy it...

But a boy was different. Yes, he would have been clumsy, not so clever. But THAT could be the funniest. To be the most experienced, the mistress of the game, the one who "knows", to teach him... What could I "teach" to my man? He had learned all he had to, about how to make a woman happy, and how to make ME happy too, in bed... No, I was not sick and tired of him, from no point of view. All the way round... I loved him, I wished his body, his hands, his "chlen"...

I just wanted that boy. No, not necessarily that one: even a boy whatsoever. And this was even worse. "Blùdniza", "blyàd"... Whore, bitch...

"Shlyùka"!

As for all the rest, our marriage went on, so well that it's useless to mention. We virtually did not fight anymore: we just teased each other. Like in that Isaac Babel's tale, in the "Horse army" book: "Everyday we tease each other, now about a thing, now about another..."...

In the December of 1999, my friends in Moscow, my "odnokùrsniki", fellow students, organized a reunion to celebrate the end of the XXth century (even if somebody said that the last year of the century would have been 2000. The charm of round figures, you know...). And of course, me and my man went there.

It was a very nice, wonderful reunion. I found there all my friends, and all my girlfriends, even those who went abroad, like me. Many of them came from America. And among them, there was Bortei, my half-Mongolian girlfriend. She had married an American, of the "second kind", and she introduced him to us with pride. Not as if he was a trophy: as a loving and beloved woman can talk about his man.

And she was right to be proud. He was the American version of my man, or as we say in Russia, the "American answer" to my man. Not only nice, but kind, attractive, smart. And when we could talk to each other privately, she told me that he "engaged" a lot in "that matters". And with very good results.

It was self-evident. Bortei was the portrait of the sexually happy woman. Healthy, bright eyes, especially when she talked of her man. Her body was flourishing, relaxed, her skin, perfect, a sign that her hormones were working smoothly and full throttle, stimulated by the closeness of a good, very clever man. She was enthusiast of her man, as I was of mine.

I could imagine them in bed, his hands over her body, sure, soft and strong, as the hands of my man over me. I figured my girlfriend enjoying it, enjoying him, eyes closed, ready to let him do to her whatever he wanted, happy to belong to him, body and soul...

And I was happy for her. We have a secret in common: OUR secret. I was SURE she liked my man, and she had renounced to have him, with my consent, for not to put at risk our friendship... It was good that destiny, or God, even if she was a Buddhist, had rewarded her for that...

"Do you have always that fantasy?" I asked her. She nodded.

"Always."

"Did you repent it remained just a fantasy?"

"Never. It was my FAVORITE fantasy..." she shook his head.

"Mine too!" I said. And we chuckled. And now?

"Now it's not, because I have a real man!" she said. And you love him, I thought.

"Did you tell your man, about it?"

"Oh, no, he is too much puritan!" she giggled. "You don't know how hard it has been for me to convince him to let me do to him something just a bit weird! He thought it was umiliating for a woman. He could not believe that I LIKED to do it to him... "

"What kind of things?"

"You know what..." she smiled. Then she told me in my ear what it was. And I laughed.

"It's the same thing my man had never asked me to do to him! But when I do it, he always likes it a lot..."

"What a pair of whores we are!"

And we laughed together...

Of course we met Carlo and Galina too, and their daughter. She was just like her mother, a decade and a half ago. As if she was a thorough breed Russian girl, and not half-Italian. But Carlo was not puzzled at all by that. The genes of Galia were more fixed and strong, and however, she was a wonderful woman: it was better that his daughter had taken more from her. And she was HIS daughter, beyond any reasonable doubt.

We talked about a lot of things. Even about the second Chechen war, which had started four months before. A sad story: neither we nor the majority of Chechens would have Wanted another war. But this time, at least, it was not our fault, we didn't start the fire. There had been the invasion of Dagestan, in August, on behalf of the "International Islamic Brigades", lead by "first minister of Ichkeria" Shamil Basaev. And then the four big terroristic attacks in September: three apartment blocks, blown away, in Moscow, one in the provinces. Lots of dead. Sad story, indeed.

There were words passing by, our "services" has set up the "attacks" to have a "casus belli" for the war. Our friends, mostly denied this hypothesis, and my man preferred not to insist about it. But I wanted to know what he thought, sincerhemely, So I asked about it, in a moment when we were alone.

"Well, as a rule, you can expect everything from the "services". There was a time, in Italy, in the 60es and the 70es, and 80es, when there was a series of terroristic attacks, bombs in the squares, on the trains, in the stations. And later the investigations proved that a part of teh "services" supported and protected the authors of the attacks, or at least, acted for to muddle the water, to block the investigations, to send them on false tracks... In order to cause tension in the country and push towards an authoritarian regime...

"So?"

"So, theoretically, I can think that it's possible. If there had been a need of a "casus belli" to start the war, it would be realistic. You know that quote: The secret agent is the second oldest profession..."

"As honorable as the firs, I know..." I said, and he nodded. "But? You are skeptical..."

"Yes, I'm skeptical." He nodded again. "First, if you need a "casus belli", you don't set up four of them. You set up one, and then you cry havoc and unleash the dogs of war. "Aux armes citoyen", "Remember Maine", "Avenge the 7th December". One Pearl Harbor has been enough... right?"

"Right. And second?"

"Second, you don't need a "casus belli" in September if they gave you one in August. Basayev was the first minister of "Ichkeria", and he led the attack in Dagestan. When Beauregard attacked Fort Sumter, he was just a general, not the premier of the Confederation. And Fort Sumter was just a fort, not a federated republic as Dagestan. And as a battle, it was a joke, compared with Dagestan. Just two dead men, by mistake too. And then there was the American civil war. Do you know that story?"

"I know. So the "casus belli" was already there..."

"Exactly. A wonderful, full-blown "casus belli", courtesy of the enemy. So, why bother?"

"But why the Chechens have put the bombs? They had their republic, they were virtually independent."

"Not the Chechens: some Islamic fundamentalist dummy heads did it. You know, they say that terrorist is the poor men's bomber. But you have to use your bombers wisely, if you really want to use them. They put the bombs when they see that Russia was not so weak, and the war in Dagestan was going nuts for them. They wanted to sack your home front. But they failed. Same mistake of English bomber command in world war two: hit the German towns at night instead of hitting the industries at day... They wanted to get the Germans to give up, but they got the opposite result..."

"That is, they got the Germans to support Hitler?"

"To a certain extent... The Germans hated more those who bombed them at night, hoping they "go marauding". They could not be their friends. Americans bombed at day, hitting the factories, the railways, military targets. It was logic, to some extent, acceptable. The British bomber command hit the towns: a pure terroristic tactics. They thought to lose less planes that way, but it was less and less true: The Germans improved their night fighter planes and their anti-air defense. They simply prolonged the war.

"Prolonged the war?"

"Yes, they did it. First, getting the Germans to support Hitler, and second, wasting bombs on non strategic targets. Albert Speer, the architect and minister of industry of Hitler, after the war, declared that if the British bombers would have been employed on industries and infrastructures of Germany as the American ones, the war could be ended in 1944. And he was not a fool, he knew what he was talking about..."

I remembered what my father said: my man liked history, as he did, and he REALLY knew it...

"So Basayev made the same mistake... Undervaluing our "home front"..."

"Right. The difference was that the Germans, after 1940, could not invade England anymore. You could invade Chechnya, to take Basayev down. And you did it, That's all... Maybe you would have done it all the same, one fine day. But he gave you a reason to do it then. All the worst on him...

Carlo was one of the very few foreigners who could say to have "survived the 90es" in Russia. Maybe he had not become a Russian at 100%, but he saw Russia from within, and understood the aspects of Russia which remained unclear for many foreigners. He could think like a Russian, and like an European at the same time. And so, he shared the opinion of many Russians about the "West". A very bad opinion, in the end of the 90es.

This led him to argue with the man of my girlfriend, Bortey. He was a real "all American boy", sincerely and adamantly persuaded of the "indispensability" of his country and of the good intentions behind its own politics. They were two educated and civilized men, so the discussion never went too far. But it always was. It was like a talk between a missionary man just arrived and someone used to the lay of the land already, with no illusion about the chances of that zealous young man to understand the place and the people, let alone to convert the people.

So it happened at Carlo's house, right the New Year's eve of 1999, when Eltsin, out of the blue, decided to announce by TV his own retirement from the charge of President of Russian federation, and the appointment of Putin (till then, chief of the government) as his successors. We all were quite surprised. Carlo said "It was long overdue", the man of Bortei asked "Why?". And it started all over again...

"You have lost a wonderful chance here, John. You have won the war, but you have lost Russia. You could could make it a real ally, a real friend. But you have failed. Because you have treated it like a bitch!"

"What do you mean? The Russians are our friend, now, aren't they?"

"No: they WERE. You should have been here at the end of the 80es, in the early 90es, THEN they were FRIENDS. Then, 80 % of Russians appreciated USA. They all tried to speak English, and to show they could speak it. They were trusting you, Europe, the West, even too much. They have thrown away the kid with the dirty water. Yes, the dirty water was a lot, and dirty a lot, but there was not only that. And for what?"

"And what did they expect?"

"To be treated at least as you treated the Germans after Hitler: Marshal Plan. They said: what's the buzz, the Germans deserved it after Auschwitz, after they fought for Hitler till the last bullet, and we don't? We have closed Auschwitz, and now we have closed Kolima, we have fought against the Putsch, in 1991. We got rid of Communism, on our own, with no foreign army coming in to free us. And then? What were we fighting for? For this mess?"

"We have sent loans through IMF, and advisors, from Harward, and..."

And what have the advisors done? I'll tell you: a full disaster. They had not the first idea of what Russia is, what was possible here and what was not. They just have tried to implement here their doctrine, that neo-liberist stuff from Chicago boys. Of course, between a hottie and the next, because they came here for that, plus the pay. Or to feel themselves as missionaries in a wild land full of Aborigens..."

"And Russians are sinless about their problems, right?"

"Who has said it? Russian former communist fat cats were mostly quite corrupt. They took the chance of chaos to seize bits of powers in the regions, or bits of State property. The oligarchs, you know. And Russian "liberals" did more or less the same, when they could. And more than this, they implemented the doctrines of the "advisors", blindly, and as dogmatic as the Bolsheviks were in 1917. As the Jesuits say, "perinde ac cadaver", like corpses, like Zombies... "