Obedient stranger

Obedient stranger

Gleb Karpinsky

© Gleb Karpinsky, 2025

ISBN 978-5-0068-0280-3

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

AN OBEDIENT STRANGER

THE STRANGER AT THE TABLE

In one of the shopping centers of the capital, it was crowded. After a long winter, the first warm weekend came to Moscow. Everyone began to smile, joke, and transform more noticeably. This was especially true for our dear women. In general, it felt like a real spring, which marketers took advantage of, offering various promotions and discounts to the public. All this caused a stir, there was a crowd in boutiques, people hurried to make new clothes for themselves, and then, tired of shopping, went up to the floor above, to the so – called food court – a chain of fast food establishments. By midday, there were queues at the ticket offices, and the main hall was crowded.

A family of three was sitting at one of the tables. They had just picked up a tray full of fast food and started eating. The man and woman were both in their late forties, and their son, who looked too much like his father, was about twelve. The boy was dressed in teenage clothes with a baseball cap on his head. I watched him as he greedily unwrapped the paper wrapper with his thick fingers, freeing up a double hamburger to devour. Then a smug smile would appear on his round face, as if he was enjoying the moment of contemplation, and he would stuff it into his mouth with such greed that I was even afraid that he might accidentally bite his finger. Maybe the boy was less than twelve years old. Now children are growing up fast. I was more interested in his mother. I preferred not to look at the father of the family. He looked indifferent, exhausted, and lethargic. Either he had a bad heart, or he was tired of running around the shops. He was also munching on a sour-mien burger and frowning. There were shopping bags under the table.

His wife turned half-sideways, almost with her back to me, as if dismissing me, even though she had a chance to sit in another chair. Nevertheless, she sat down opposite her husband, who sometimes raised his head and looked at me with displeasure. They weren’t signs of jealousy, but rather annoyance that I was just sitting next to her.

I liked the way she dressed. She was wearing a light, stylish jacket made of soft, high-quality leather and a pleated white skirt, very short, barely covering her slender legs. They were especially piquant in small checkered stockings with garters (these lace garters were very clearly visible) and black shiny boots with high heels. She was evidently very fond of these boots, and sometimes, stretching out her foot, she admired them and adjusted the fringe and spangles on them. To all this precious, and really, I wanted to fall down and touch, and the woman, feeling the eyes of other men on her, sometimes allowed herself some kind of prank, such as throwing her leg over her leg in public. It is worth noting that there was some charm magic in this graceful movement with signs of French charm. It was obvious that she liked this game, that she was clearly enjoying this unobtrusive exhibitionism, and that she was making fun of us mere onlookers. The woman seemed to be trying to convey to everyone: “Look how beautiful I am, how good I am, and, by the way, I’m still a naughty girl.” Unfortunately, I was sitting behind her and was saved from the temptation to look up her skirt, but I knew that she was smiling, and I pictured that smile in my mind. And when this woman turned her pretty head slightly so that I could see her beautiful, graceful profile with its regular features, her plump, sensual lips, sparkling under a layer of scarlet lipstick, barely curved at the corner of her mouth. I froze, feeling a little excited, not without reason assuming that such lips, in moments of intimacy with men, undoubtedly knew many shameless and self-denying scenes. I had no doubt that she had been unfaithful to her husband.

Time passed quickly, and I admired her silky brown hair, which was loose and slightly touched, apparently by the street wind, so as not to get bored at all. It fell over her shoulders in a neat handkerchief, reaching to her shoulder blades. Their color was natural, and the faintest hint of gray didn’t mar them. My stranger’s hair was obviously cut by a man, probably in love with her. His skillful hand was felt in every position of the strands and curls. He seemed to have put everything into that simple hairstyle, even the impossible.

The woman was on a diet plan, even though there was a milkshake with a straw in front of her. I expected that she was about to take this tube in her sensual mouth and suck it, as if reluctantly, but the stranger hesitated, as if on purpose, teasing me. Her thin fingers, with their expensive manicures, were equipped with a modern communication device. Either an iPhone or something like that. A page, her personal page, was open on the wide, convenient screen. Then I could take advantage of my husband’s absent-mindedness to get a better look at his wife. But I didn’t quite succeed. She quickly flipped through the photos, most of them intimate, until she came to one that showed only her pretty hand with a bright red manicure. On the third finger was a thin ring with some kind of dull stone. The woman herself was apparently sitting inside the car with her hand on the BMW’s leather steering wheel. That ring was missing now. Perhaps she was hiding it from her husband.

I needed to get another beer, but I was justly afraid that my table would be taken. Besides, I was wondering if my husband knew about this page. Looking at the apathy with which he pushed French fries down his esophagus, probably not. And I became an unwitting witness to her secret. There was no doubt that she enjoyed sharing her intimate photos with outsiders, flirting with them, provoking them, and now, dangerously close to being exposed in the contrast of fiction and reality, this woman seemed to rise up in my eyes, becoming even more beautiful and desirable.

The bored family members, having finally finished eating, also took out their phones and began to look at something and point lazily with their fingers. Her husband especially upset me. Well, he might have noticed the changes that were taking place in my presence with his wife. This conspiratorial look, avoiding eye contact and a rush of adrenaline, expressed by red cheeks and rapid breathing. She was clearly playing with fire now, boldly exposing her soul to the stone throwers, but maybe I was exaggerating the risk of exposing her. After all, even if the husband could look into her display, it is unlikely that he would recognize in these candid pictures his life partner and the mother of his child. The stranger skillfully concealed her face with good angles, and those immodest poses of her body bending in desire in expensive underwear, all these provocative pictures would not have aroused any suspicion in a person who knew her.

Her husband had long since ceased to be sensitive to the desires of his woman. It would seem that he had a job, albeit not so highly paid, but sufficient to meet the needs of his family in clothes and food, there was an apartment, albeit small, but with a good and high-quality repair, there were acquaintances, friends, stupid and envious, but with them it was possible to have fun celebrating the New Year… And everything went as planned. My son was finishing school, my wife was a homemaker, and I went on vacation abroad once a year… In our time, stability is important for maintaining a marriage. In addition, he was never a tyrant, always went along with his wife, yielding to her whims. Apparently it turned out that their once strong feelings grew into a habit, and the spouses needed each other only for status, as business cards of their wealth. Of course, I could have been wrong then, since I was assessing everything at first glance and had a few beers, and I was in a rather playful mood. I wondered how many lovers she had, and how perverse she was in bed with them. After all, when her beloved man grows cold to a woman, she inevitably, unless, of course, she is a holy martyr, finds another, and in most cases the opposite of the beloved, a monster, a scoundrel, a scoundrel, a complete egoist. Maybe, of course, in her case, there was no love at all. I was just guessing on the coffee grounds.

Meanwhile, I suddenly wanted to find her page on the Internet, join her countless, which I did not doubt, army of fans, leave some enthusiastic and full of pure truth compliment-comment, but how? I was faced with a difficult task, and I took a deep breath of air and let it out resolutely, figuring out what tags I should use to find this interesting person in every sense, and this trend touched her silky hair, and it played with an iridescent fire. She suddenly felt me and started, and I don’t think I remember now, shifted in her chair and, to hide her excitement, leaned back, switching her legs. Her son said something to her while he was playing Tetris on the phone, and she just nodded. Then he got up heavily, asked his father for money, and waddled off to the cash register to get another tray. Left alone, the couple exchanged a couple of phrases that vaguely resembled a dialogue, something like “Today promised rain”, “Yes, rain is good” or “I want to smoke”, “So go” and again buried in their gadgets. After a while, her husband got up and said to her:

“I’ll go.”

She nodded to him as she had nodded to her son, and was left in proud solitude. That’s when she picked up her milkshake, turned her profile slightly to me, and began to suck gently on the straw. After sucking a little, while in short breaks licking her lips with pleasure, she noticeably smiled, as if to someone invisible in the hall, feeling my inquisitive gaze on her. Then, setting the cocktail aside slowly, she held the iPhone up to her face and looked at it as if in a mirror, and only then did our eyes meet for the first time in the reflection of the display, and it was as if a spark burned through me.

“Obedient stranger,” I said aloud, so I wouldn’t forget her name.

SERGEANT YEGOROV

Sergeant Yegorov saw a lot on his way. He saw severed fingers, shattered skulls, and sectarian stars burned into the chest. And if at the very beginning of the journey, so to speak, in his youth, he had savored every detail of the crime almost to the point of trembling, knowing the true causes and consequences like a tick, now all this had long since fed up with him. It was as if he had grown stale in the service, like a hundred-day crust of bread, and without noticing it, he had become a cynic, often allowing himself inappropriate jokes in “normal” society. Why did this “normal” society in the face of prostitutes and petty thieves squeeze into the cold bars, rightly fearing that he had long gone off the rails. For him, as for a true patriot of his Fatherland, the picture of the world by his twenty-eight years was built up a certain one. America is to blame for everything, and, of course, the beautiful women. And everything was drawn by the ears to this theory and fit smoothly into it, like dominoes in a tin box, without causing any questions from the authorities who turned a blind eye to everything.

Of course, there were complaints about Sergeant Yegorov, and usually there were complaints from lawyers who were sulky and shiny from an overabundance of material assets, but he had a short conversation with them, or rather he did not talk to them at all, considering that all these liberal habits, veiled Semitism and flirting of the authorities with democracy lead to the destruction of Russian statehood itself.

“The government must be tough and uncompromising,” Sergeant Yegorov would bang on the desk in his office, usually in the late afternoon, waving his hand.

The bouncing and tumbling of countless files with hanging cases confirmed the correctness of his words. The sergeant frowned as he was littered with them, and grinned slyly at the old portrait of Dzerzhinsky, which had miraculously survived from “those glorious times” even after a single major overhaul in 2011. The time when the militia was renamed the police.

“America with all McDonalds and Hollywood should be equated to a vigorous mother long ago! he continued with conviction and truth, as if at a party meeting. “You don’t want to seduce our man with cheeseburgers, negroes, and homosexuals… And our women, all beautiful women, let them give terrible ones to those who “want”, we must forbid them to wag their ass in front of people, well, like in Iran, and basta! and again there was a merciless thump on the table against all the enemies of the Fatherland, which could be heard even in the distant barred corridors where the detainees languished. “All crimes will end here. That’s when you remember Sergeant Yegorov, your mother, but it will be too late! Here he would drop a tear, his voice trembling. For some reason, Sergeant Yegorov was convinced that he would end up badly in the service and did not expect to retire.

“You’re going to laugh, Felix, but they’ve had peace and quiet in Iran since’ seventy-nine… except that they execute terrorists and drug addicts, and there’s a certain amount of natural selection, so to speak, and a certain amount of calculation error. Plus again the machinations of our beloved Amerishka, who brings up all these non-Christians…”.

Iron Felix, too, seemed to be grinning under the centimeter-thick layer of dust.

– America and women… And basta! Yegorov expressed his decisive thought aloud, and moved it with all his might, so that if it hadn’t been for the concrete floor, the table legs would have bent like nails in butter right under the hat.

Somewhere in the corridor, the woman he’d detained the day before was howling hysterically, demanding a lawyer, but her plaintive wails didn’t touch the sergeant’s soul at all. Serving in the police force has long been routine for him. The state paid him a good salary for this routine, and also gave him a social package, which included health insurance. According to it, Sergeant Yegorov was required to pass specialists once a year, including a psychiatrist. And each time, after the necessary consultation for order, he received the coveted certificate “fit” and again began to serve. But this criminal case shocked even a seasoned employee.

Staggering a little, blowing a cloud of smoke in front of him, he left the office and walked down the corridor. All the detainees had been asleep for a long time or pretended to be asleep, except for “this one protester,” as he immediately described her.

“Calm down, young lady! Calm down… not a full moon tea … " he frowned as he approached the bars. “Wait until morning for a little while, and then my duty will end, Figeev will come. So he’ll let you out. He is kind, and I am evil. Do you understand?”

A decent, well-dressed woman with tear-stained eyes and mascara running down her cheeks like Pierrot replaying a scene in a children’s play, suddenly clung to the bars and shouted angrily:

– You have no right to keep me here!”

“I have, I have no idea, these are not questions for me, young lady! My superiors demand reports, giving me certain rights and responsibilities. I can detain anyone who looks suspicious for twenty-four hours, and even shoot them when they are apprehended. And who is to blame? America is to blame! I’ve seen enough of your liberasnya Hollywood with all its shooting games and police brutality. Here is the result. Reap what you have planted.

“Well, what’s that got to do with me?” What am I being accused of? and the woman herself looked around in surprise, adjusting her canvas skirt. – If you thought I was a prostitute, it’s just a sick fantasy of yours. How suspicious am I?

“Well, I thought you were suspicious right away. Agree, in a public place late at night in a short skirt and even with sharp scissors, you run out of the bushes and immediately kiss me. And, by the way, although I am a woman’s hunter, but not to the same extent, I have some decency.

– I want a lawyer right now!”

– Yeah, now at one o’clock in the morning, their fat w… will come crawling here… Young lady, don’t be naive.

“I protest!” The smell is awful in here! And a bed with bedbugs!

– It doesn’t make any sense, young lady, you didn’t come to the ball as Cinderella, did you?” You’d better wait for Figeyev. He’s a former dancer. You can also save a polka with it if you want. Thank God the camera’s capabilities allow it, but I can only break bones.

And the policeman took his fingers in the lock and cracked them unpleasantly.

– I beg you, Yegorov, one call to my husband… – the detainee did not give up and pretended to be a good girl.

She even smiled through her tears and sniffed hopefully. Yegorov heaved a heavy sigh and spread his hands, pushing humanity away from him. “I can’t help it. Like, I know all your tricks.”

– Who is to blame, young lady, what do you lose? Of course, it was Sergeant Yegorov’s fault. Who else? I can’t give you my own, sorry, it’s running low.

– I have the right to one free call! You have official phone numbers in the department…

“Yeah, we’ve seen enough Hollywood. And we have here, young lady, force majeure. The cable must have been chewed out by rats.

– Damn, I have a schoolboy child who is not fed at home. And he needs to prepare for the Unified State Exam. Do you understand that?”

– All I know, young lady, is that I kept you late at night, when all the obedient children have to go bye-bye. And I recommend you also buy-by. As they say, the morning of the evening is more complicated. Here in the morning Figeev will come, and talk to him about establishing communication with the outside world and organizing meals for all those in need.

The woman gritted her teeth in frustration and howled again, trying to make the cop feel better. The sergeant just grinned.

– Well, at least give me a glass of hot tea – — the woman suddenly resigned herself, hugging her bare shoulders.

“You’re not supposed to!”

– I’m cold.” They don’t heat it here.

Yegorov calmly took a drag on his cigarette, thinking about something.

“No, they don’t, and they never have. So to speak, the old habits of 1937 are on the face. But it is not I who should be addressed, but the Gazprom shareholders who have laid pipes all over the Earth, from Port Arthur all the way to Lisbon, while forgetting about the simple Russian people languishing somewhere in the Lubyanka region. I can only buy you a cigarette, young lady, so to speak, for purely humane reasons. The 1931 Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War has not yet been repealed.

“Well, you’re a bastard, Yegorov.

– I know.

“Okay, give me a cigarette!”

He handed “Peter the Great” through the bars to a tearful woman with big warning letters reading “Smoking kills!” and she scratched out one of the cigarettes with her nervous fingers. In the dim light, Yegorov’s lighter flared up, and his satisfied voice was heard:

“That’s it…”

Now he could go quietly to his office and enjoy nostalgic philosophical debates alone with an open bottle of vodka and “iron” Felix. Without saying goodbye, the sergeant turned around, showing the woman his broad, indifferent back.

“Put out the bull-calf later, young lady, with your heel.

But the detainee stopped him suddenly.

– Yegorov, and Yegorov?! Do you have a wife?” I know you don’t.

FIFTEEN MINUTES, NO MORE

It was late in the evening. Nightingales were singing in the lilac trees. Their extraordinary singing excited the soul, set up a romantic mood. The sky was clear, with no clouds. The first stars were just beginning to appear on the horizon, and in their unfathomable glittering patterns, the familiar constellations were discernible. I stood for a long time at the city fountain with a bouquet of roses and waited for the lights of the looming high-rise buildings to start going out. My mysterious companion promised to come here around eleven and take me for a little walk in the square. That’s what she called a small leafy park located in the heart of the sleeping quarters.

“No more than fifteen minutes,” she said, setting out the main condition for our meeting. – We’ll get some fresh air before we go to bed and get to know each other better.”

I knew exactly what “getting to know each other” meant to me, and so did she. I’m sure she was looking forward to a fleeting adventure with no strings attached. After this meeting, we promised not to communicate again and forget each other. Then I planned to go to a friend’s house for some sabbath and demand that the banquet continue, so to speak, and she was going to go back to her husband and son and assume the hateful mask of wife and mother again. Everyone was happy with everything.

I looked at my watch. It was past eleven o’clock and my date still hadn’t arrived, but I didn’t give up hope, because I knew such women liked to be late for dates. Another half hour passed. My roses, without the life-giving power of love, began to wither noticeably, and out of boredom and impatience I began to brush them away from midges and night moths. In my mind’s eye, the mysterious image of my stranger would appear, and the desire to possess her would become unbearable. I imagined how we made love in the dark shade of the bushes, how she whispered obscenities to me, biting her earlobe until it hurt, and moaned softly under my gentle caresses, how passing people walking dogs, hearing a suspicious rustle in the darkness, avoided us.

The stranger did not come, and I, discouraged by her long absence, became visibly sad and slowly moved towards the nearby house, whistling something under my breath. My phone was silent, and I sometimes rebooted it, thinking that I had a problem with the connection. But it was all in vain! There were no messages from her, nothing, no hint. It’s like I’ve been played. Then I plopped down on a bench near the entrance and hung my head. I needed time to recover and think about my future plans.

But at that moment, the door of the entrance opened and a woman ran past me in tears, in whom I recognized yesterday’s stranger. She was very upset about something. I was startled. It was like a gust of cool, wet wind in dry weather. So refreshing and easy was her unexpected appearance. I watched her go, listened to the rustle of her flowing dress, and couldn’t believe my eyes. And what a miracle that out of the thousands of entrances surrounding me, I chose the only one where she lived?!

I jumped up as if I had been woken up and had not yet lost touch with the dream, and in a kind of fog I quickly followed her, afraid to frighten her away, like a night bird, while she practically flew over the ground, her heels softly clicking on asphalt crumbs past some playgrounds, parked cars and garbage cans. I felt dizzy. Barely discernible in the dim lamplight, the image of the stranger was so deliciously beautiful and heartfelt that I could even feel every bitter tear rolling down her cheek, and I also seemed to cry. Even the scarlet roses in my hands became animated, rose in petals and leaves, and reached out to this fleeting phenomenon of wet, loose hair, a sail skirt, and fresh perfume.

No, there was no more lust in me, no more stupid animality, and no more pronounced selfishness. All this strong impulse from her appearance seemed to have blown away all the dust of my sins and vices, and I, still washing my face with these tears of revelation, felt a quiet joy and at the same time a bottomless, overflowing compassion for her who had saved me. A believer will probably feel something similar after many days of fasting and merciless self-torment at the sight of the crucifixion in heaven, and I, a sinner, even felt shame for the demoniac that was in my soul before. Yes, I wanted to take advantage of her condition as a woman tired of marriage, who, hoping to find love on the side, sees nothing better than to take revenge on her husband with the first person she meets.

“Wait, wait, where are you going?” I called out, worried that I might lose sight of her.