My Women

We opened one of the cans. It was watery rice in fish juice — cold, it was an absolute abomination. Heated up, it turned out to be even worse. It was simply impossible to eat. We gave the opened tin to the local cat — even he refused to eat it.

We decided to head to the plant — there was a canteen there, they’d feed us, and the promised sauna was a warming thought. They weren’t exactly expecting us at the plant yet; having heard from our boss that we were going to Selivanovo, they figured — it’s going to take them a long time to get here!

How delicious they were: the borscht, the navy-style pasta, and the compote in the warm factory canteen — a fairy tale! We sat with the workers, smoked, shared our travel impressions, listened to their successes, smiled at the pretty female workers, and, promising that with our help those successes would be even more tangible, reminded them about the promised sauna. After someone from the plant made a call, the — women’s day — at the sauna was converted into a — men’s evening — just for us.

On the way to the sauna, we popped into a department store and bought clean underwear. Being a man without prejudices, I held a pair of those — family-style — masterpieces up to my trousers, since the stack held trunks of various sizes. Soso and Rezo, being true Caucasians, refused to try them on and just grabbed pairs from the same stack I did! We had a great soak; the whole sauna was ours, and the beer — which appeared from out of nowhere — was also quite welcome. After all those tribulations — pure bliss! We started to get dressed and… it turned out that for short, stout Soso, the trunks reached almost to his ankles, while for tall, thin Rezo, they simply fell off! We laughed until we cried, as their trunks turned out to be the largest size possible! And so we returned to the hotel, flopped onto the beds clean and fed, and began to recount all the nonsense that had happened to us, teasing one another. Suddenly… a snore. A distinct, clear snore. We looked at each other. At first, we thought one of us was playing a joke, but when we realized it was a real snore, we started roaring with laughter, as there were only three beds in the room and a built-in wardrobe — no bathroom or toilet, so there was no one to be snoring and no place for it to come from. The snoring stopped; we joked around some more, and Rezo decided to hang his things in the wardrobe. Imagine his surprise when, opening the door, he found himself in another tiny room — a — luxury suite — barely larger than the bed, where a drunk man in boots lay on top of the covers! There was our snore!

The Sleeping Beauty

Finally, back to Moscow by bus, in comfort. We departed from Krasnaya Gorbatka at midnight and arrived in Moscow at 6:00 AM — convenient, you can sleep on the bus through the night. Well, you can, but it doesn’t always work out! First things first.

As I mentioned, it was the end of January. For reference, the seasons according to Tbilisi concepts: Winter — when it’s not very cold, but women wear fur coats to show they have them. Spring — when it’s already warm, you wear jackets, and snow can fall — out of the blue. Summer — it’s summer, even in Africa! Autumn — in Tbilisi, it’s when it’s still summer, but the watermelons are gone!

So, when I wrote that it was winter, it meant we were dressed like Muscovites in October — transitional wear. A raincoat and a scarf were enough for a Tbilisi winter, and the intelligentsia didn’t wear those — airport-style — flat caps at all! As we were saying goodbye to Krasnaya Gorbatka and leaving for Moscow, nature apparently decided to show us — Kuzka’s mother — it turned bitterly cold. The temperature dropped past minus thirty, the wind picked up, noses turned blue and runny, ears began to wither, and the skin under our clothes turned into goosebumps.

Thank God, it was warm in the bus. And where I was sitting, it was practically Tashkent, because there was a heater right under the seat! For the first half hour, it was fine, but then it started to bake! But you can’t just change seats — they are numbered. At every stop, people kept boarding, and within half an hour every seat was taken. I tried sitting next to the driver to cool off a bit, but then I had to return to my place, as his relief driver boarded along the way and gave me a look that said — your reign is over. Rezo and Soso were snoring in their seats across from me.

And then, like in a fairy tale:

— Young man, could you please switch seats with me? I have sciatica, and there’s a draft here, but you have the heater under you!

I didn’t pause for long, fearing the old woman might change her mind, but I still hesitated a bit so she wouldn’t see how happy I was! But trouble, like luck, never travels alone, and after switching places with the old lady, I discovered that my neighbor was a — Sleeping Beauty. — The scent of her delicate perfume set a lyrical mood! She sat by the window, covered in a fur coat and wearing a fox-fur hat. The dim night-lights were on in the bus, and in that faint glow, her perfect blonde features were like something out of a storybook. I was enchanted. But she was sleeping! I wasn’t about to wake her just to introduce myself. I fidgeted in the seat as much as I could, coughed more than necessary, but alas! Then I changed tactics: I began to — fall asleep, — and with every lurch of the bus, my head rested more firmly on her shoulder. Out of the corner of my half-closed eyes, I noticed the girl turn her head and look appraisingly at me, sleeping on her shoulder. Apparently, I didn’t seem dangerous, and the sight of my thin raincoat prompted her to cover me with the flap of her fur coat too!

What a — sleeping — man can get away with is limited only by what a — sleeping — woman won’t allow! Apparently, the — sweetness of my sleep — was contagious to the beauty, as my arm, wrapped around her waist, caused her chest to rise deeply. And so we rode, locked in an embrace — one pretending it was accidental, the other pretending not to notice. We traveled like that until the bus suffered some kind of breakdown. The bus stopped for repairs.

I — woke up — from a candy being placed in my mouth and a squeeze of my hand under the fur coat:

— Lana.

— Yura. Shall we go for a smoke?

— I don’t smoke, but let’s go!

It was about two in the morning. Snow was falling in large, shaggy flakes, but strangely enough, it had grown warmer, or perhaps the wind had just died down. Lana — slender, in heels, slightly taller than me, blonde with big blue eyes, a proudly set head, and a slightly husky voice — looked very striking in the light of the streetlamp and the falling snowflakes. I felt almost proud as I caught the interested glances of other men. She was traveling from home, where she’d been on some family business, to the institute dormitory at — Stroiteli — station, on the Yaroslavl line.

After the repairs, we traveled like old acquaintances. The space under the fur coat became shared, and it didn’t bother anyone! Until we reached Moscow, I didn’t even think of Rezo and Soso; they either were asleep or were tactfully keeping out of sight. In Moscow, each of us had our own anchors, and we had agreed beforehand to meet at the Lira at three o’clock to go to the Sanduny Baths. On the way to Stroiteli station, we fooled around sweetly, but the closer we got to the station, the more the tension grew.

How beautiful it is when certain circumstances strip away specific conventions — or perhaps not conventions, but simply narrow the frame of perception to a shared personal space, outside of which everything happening is of little significance. A sort of soap opera for two. And it is completely irrelevant how it looks from the outside, since its content is entirely of one’s own directing, and the space is dotted with sexual markers. Like wolves hemmed in by flags bolting toward the hunter, so too this opera was bound to lead onto the path of sex!