The Lodger

9

I was meeting with Nelia, because nobody, except the Rayevskys and two or three people in the city didn’t know. We with the girl were whiled away the time and that’s enough!

Our cultural program is usually was ended in uncrowded bars over coffee with cognac, or we left away to sunbathe in Strogino, where even on weekdays the idle people consoled themselves with warm water of a big muddy puddle.

We were roasting in the sun in the red dust from the energetic trampling of beach volleyball players, among the burnt thighs, assholes, noses, which were pasted scraps of newspapers, colorful exhibition of blankets, bedding and air mattresses. On the beach I was resting from the voracious thoughts.

«Where are you living in Moscow?» asked Nelya.

She propped herself up on her elbow and looked at me over the dark glasses from under the Panama painted like a fly agaric. Her axillary hollow has deepened, and the shoulder straps of her bathing suit sagged down, and weak chest in the freckles, with swollen pink nipple looked out of her bra shyly. I buried my face in my fingers.

«So… At an acquaintance’s house.»

The girl, obviously, also laid down prone. Her voice sounded muffled:

«Dad said you are living at some woman.»

I pricked up my ears.

«He also said she was retired…»

«She doesn’t need handouts. Uncle reported?»

«Probably…»

We listened to the maiden squeal for a while: three jokers dragged her to the water.

«Katya told me why you had a fight with your uncle.»

«And what do you think?»

She shrugged and sighed. I felt like I was being x-rayed, and with professional curiosity poked their fingers at the dark spots of black and white picture. It is easy to guess how my relatives found out about my shelter. I grimaced at the thought, as if the dentist’s drill had dug into the fabric of my tooth: whether mistress said anything unwanted?

«Isn’t it hard for your mother to support you for the third month?» was pestering Nelia to me.

«May be!» I shrugged. I was too lazy to remind about the work in the seaside boarding house.

«My cousin is the third year was not working and not studying nowhere, and his mother can’t inhaled on him…»

«This is a common thing for Moscow. My sisters don’t work anywhere either. Thanks for the analogy.»

«Please don’t be angry. Just… I don’t think you’re what they say. And what kind of man you are, I don’t know.»

«And I don’t know either!» Imagination drew a confidential meeting of old friends, their participation in the boy. I bit my lip. «Why for she did that?»

For the rest of the day, I answered beside the point, and Nelia seemed to regret the beach conversation. At the bar I had too much and trudged behind the girl. I was annoyed by her manner to slow pace on high heels («Yes still with her stilts!» – thought I with drunk angry.), causing the hair on the back of her head were swaying like the mane of a horse, which is slowly climbing up the hill, revealing a thin neck and sharp vertebrae. In addition to pettiness, this evening I found inside me a huge store of spite to Kurashina. I also remember the crimson sunset with storm clouds over the flat roofs and the floating target of the keyhole.

The hostess opened the door, and the tenant tumbled into the hallway. The image was jumping to the right and to the starting point with the frequency of the pulse in the ears.

«Are you drunk?» Kurushina was stunned.

«A little bit!» answered I modestly and staggering hobbled past on the move discarding clothes. «Greetings from uncle»!

«Did you say something?» asked stunned Elena Nikolaevna.

«Did you call uncle?»

Kurushina talked to me like I’m sober. For this reason, she nervously wrapped herself up in a shawl, and replied somewhat arrogantly: «Yeah, I talked to him…»

«Then everything is clear!»

«Clear what?»

«And the fact that he is talking bosh! That I live at your expense and…» I gave a small sob: probably, I really fairly slurped of vodka.

«What a bullshit!» Kurushina perplexedly walked into the room. «Who told you that? Arkady got a call from your mother saying you were in Moscow. You haven’t written to her in a month. Arkady was very surprised and called back. I confirmed that you at me».

She was so upset she didn’t notice my nudity. I collapsed on the couch naked. I took deep breath: the woman became a silent accomplice of my naturist performances. All the spite and insulting words to her, like a pile of rubble spilled out the window. I was carrying tearful nonsense, was confessing to her in love, try to embrace and stumbling hobbled to the bathroom. She nursed with me, allowed me to molest and laid me on her sofa upon which I collapsed. I was laughing. And she was repeating with joking astonishment: «How awfully you’re drunk!»

But alcohol has little effect on my memory. In excitement, I tried to touch her hip, hands, belly as if playing little rough with a girlfriend, and was distracting her by chatter. I was drunk enough to overcome my shame, but sober enough to enjoy the forced touch of a woman’s clothing, sliding palm. I was hugging and pressing her hips (surprisingly firm) to my stomach. At one point the woman did not pull away and for a moment her hand froze on my shoulder, her head drooped, and it seemed to me, Elena Nikolaevna shuddered. But, guessing my tension, almost of ecstasy as she quickly pushed the admirer to the bed. I collapsed on the couch and pulled her along. She rested her fist to my pubic hair, jerked away, looked intently into my eyes. But I pretended to laugh and tried to stretch my lips to her cheek. She was not leaving, she fixing the pillow, padded the blanket, and when I was trying to grab her palm or to hug her waist, sliding by hand over the bottom of her belly, the woman firmly, but not abruptly was pulling away. It seemed that we both play and write off the game on a drunken night out, which tomorrow will forget. And this bliss continued until I fell into a motley starfall.

I lay in the predawn gloom with my eyes open, looking at the flowers on the Wallpaper, protruding in the transparent light of dawn, and timidly remembered the previous fun day. Imagination in vain drew a decrepit old woman, her wrinkled, dry hands, sluggish body. The obsession drove me crazy, but I did not resist the terrible lustful desire – it seemed shameful – to repeat…

In the kitchen, I was asking embarrassedly about yesterday’s riot, apologized and eagerly caught her gestures, facial expressions, with which she will betray herself. I wanted to kiss those hands that caressed my body without caressing. Kurushina was slowly stirring the spoon in the pot and ironically repeated: «Has amused himself, has amused!» And both of us were silent about my pranks which perfectly remembered.

10

One of those August evenings in Moscow, when the cramped apartment seemed to turn into a matchbox, and you feel like a caught bug, you want to go free, was fading away.

We were walking in the Park next to the house. Trees carefully hidden the scarlet sunset behind thick crowns, and in crystal silence, on the mirror surface of the pond clearly, the voices of people rolled to every word.

Kurushina asked if I had a girlfriend. I told her about Nelia.

«In vain I’m fooling her head…»

«You mean a fake marriage?» I nodded. «Invite her to us!»

I estimated: on the one hand Nelia will satisfy curiosity, with another – snorted – Elena Nikolaevna will see my «love».

«Good. When?»

«Yes, even tomorrow!»

«Goes. I’ll call her.»

Morning was busy: shop, kitchen, cleaning the apartment. Kurushina was preparing in earnest.

«Try to be easier!» I advised. «The girl without complexes, will indulge tea with crackers…»

«So and offer her a choice!» Kurushina joked.

She’s transformed! It gave me pleasure to spin in the kitchen, to beat egg yolks with a mixer in an iron bowl, to perform simple culinary tasks.

«When the father was alive,» Elena Nikolaevna was talking, «we even didn’t close doors. We had guests all the time. There was someone in the kitchen, either me or mom. Our housekeeper is aunt Ira… What are you grinning? Bourgeois manners?» she spread her hands, stained with flour, as saying – what can I do – we are like that! – and it amused me. «She taught me many delicious things!»

Where did her languor and measured movements, which I learned by heart, disappear? I suddenly realized: she was always sociable and cheerful, and only Arthur gloomy awarded her in his imagination the affectation, imprisoned her in this apartment. What did I know about her, her surroundings? The tenderness to the hostess did not leave me all the hours that I interfered with her.

We set up a meeting with Nellie After work at the subway entrance.

Kurushina even the night before made elaborate hairstyle using curlers —she did not have time to the hairdresser – and now bustled in the gas kerchief. Before leaving I looked into Elena Nikolaevna’s room. The woman was going through some dresses in the wardrobe. This ancient monster was exhaling from the open door, the thick odor of naphthalene.

«What will you wear?» I asked.

«This!» she answered boldly, straightening one of the antediluvian blouses with a frill and the hem of the mourning skirt. «Or, this!» catching the expression of the pretentious costumier, she showed me a dress-hoodie. I twisted my mouth skeptically.

«This is a friendly tea party, not an official reception. Evening dresses are inappropriate. Permission!» I gently pushed away from the wardrobe door the hostess, who was sitting on a chair, and buried himself in things, which were tightly pressed to each other on the hangers. «Wear something simple. But not washed to holes bathrobe. It’s too early for you to wear black headscarfes for crones’.»

«Should I dress like a girl?» Kurushina laughed and tried to pushed away me from things in the wardrobe. I stopped her.

«None of these things fit! Have you updated anything from your wardrobe over the past year?»

She thought for a moment, and pulled out of things cute beige sweater. A store tag hung on the collar. I mentally paired the sweater and dark straight skirt, and pulled her out of things.

«You’re crazy!» Kurushina threw up her hands. «It was worn in the sixties, when I was a little older than you…»

«Fashion returns every twenty years, with each new generation. You have beautiful legs, like girls who are hard to get!»

I slammed the wardrobe shut.

The woman snorted, but took her things, rose from her chair, and began to apply them alternately and examine them in outstretched hands.

To the subway by bus, then on foot, plus real women are always late and back, took an hour and a half. Nelya, as always before going to an unfamiliar place, was keeping silent. She was getting ready for the meeting. The girl was wearing a denim dress with short sleeves, universal for all occasions, and she looked quite solemn-ordinary with a bouquet of tea roses in a transparent cocoon.

Finally, we came.

At the domestic box office were at one time a popular movies about the transfiguration of the homely female-boss, or the matchmaker from the women’s hostel in charming beauties. At the end of the film, they were braughting colleagues, acquaintances and the audience into ecstasy, comparable, perhaps, with the shocks from Izaura or Mexican Marousi (although Latin soap Opera is far from our Russian cinema).The metamorphoses of real life shocked the young cynic (at least, who considered himself such) much more than the reincarnation of Alice Freundlich on the screen.

The door opens, I stumble into the denim back of the companion, a golden-haired lamb obscuring the view, and when the daylight finally painfully breaks narrowed pupils, I’m shocked.

Later, on the street, Nelya remembered not only mistress’s bracelet – a gold snake with diamond eyes – and earrings, but added with unusual swagger:

«She was a gorgeous woman when she was young. It’s awesome!»

Coming out of the grog state, I caught the subtle scent of perfume and fogs. My heart got worried. Before the charmed couple stood a graceful woman of thirty or barely more, in a beige light sweater, favorably outlined her high chest and slender waist. Straight, just below the knees skirt, beautifully outlined the narrow hips of a stranger. Her tiny feet in patent-leather pointed high-heeled shoes, with leather butterflies perched on them, struck with the proportion of all the fine thoroughbred stately beauty. The woman held the flowers presented to her, as they hold a newborn, gently and tenderly. I know, more picky looks immediately would have dug into her neck, to, as by the teeth of the horse to determine its freshness, with a ruler and a magnifying glass in the pupils began to measure millimeters of powder on the face, counting wrinkles. Let them! I was shocked by the identity of my imagination, which depicted the youth of a woman, and the reality, which crushed the myth of the evil omnipotence of years. Unfathomable! And I did not want to comprehend anything and do not want to.

Her face… Her face? How was I supposed to remember her face, in that enchanted distance, where my heart’s memory takes me! The magical glow of her eyes, the light that poured from her soul into mine, blinding every nook and cranny of the magic palace of the fairy. Perhaps from the side solemn view of mistress looked ridiculous in comparison with two gray sparrows-guests from everyday life. But when the queen invited us to the room, I – enchanted, timidly trudged after the young passion.

Elena Nikolaevna, as well as in the morning, remained herself. But this is the uniqueness of this woman: no effort to be yourself at the top, inaccessible to many, even in the moment of highest tension. If I had dared to suspect two women of rivalry, even her youth, which gave odds to the tricks of experience, would not have saved Nelia in my eyes.

How did she do that? Very simply! She showed mother nature her tongue in the mirror, winked, and remained what nature had made her: perfect.

From inattentively read books and cheesy productions I absorbed the strange idea of small talk: revived mannequins with sugary smiles are exchanged word stamps. And the table chatter of guys of my circle usually ended cuddling with the owner «s urinal.

Kurushina was talking absolutely ordinary, in my opinion, things, but, fascinated by her charm, demure Nelya, an hour told her the story of his life from his childhood to the commercial store of her father and half an hour later the women are about something whispered, on a smoke break in the kitchen.

I hung around after them and felt myself like a nothing.

Who did you want to seduce, to whom thought to steal into the soul, evil excellent student yard universities? I looked at Elena Nikolaevna and laughed at myself evil, maliciously, with mockery. That’s when the bastard in me plaintively squeaked, fluttered and subsided, releasing a poisonous slime.

I already saw the only friend at the bottom of the glass, strong alcohol muddied the mind, but kept the memory. I wish I could forget that night, the month. And would not moaned on the inside soul is so sweet and hurts from the toothed memories.

I’ve pretty drunk. Then I put Nelia in a taxi and by some miracle returned to the right entrance. The girl’s voice drummed into the tightly clogged barrel of my mind: «She is lonely, because the people of her circle to have forgotten her. And such as we she does not understand. She loves you like a son. She talked about you a lot!»

Then I climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and, buried in knees, howled, licking sickly-bitter tears from the corners of mouth. I loved her. And was quite soberly measuring the insurmountable distance between the island and the mainland, which will never connect.

11

I was blowing my nose bitterly on the steps in front of my first love’s apartment, crushed by an unnatural feeling: the mother is the same age as my beloved woman. And just a minute ago I saw off a pretty girl. My girlfriend! I saw off the girl indifferent, like yesterday’s rainy day. Who else if not she would have laughed evil at a daffy lover.

I barged into the apartment, as in garden of Gethsemane, and with the courage of the condemned, hobbled upon the kitchen – Calvary.

«I’m leaving!» I turned a cast-iron tongue, and how the bale fell ass-down on a stool.

«Did the girl not like something?» asked woman cautiously, putting down a rag.

How I wanted to hug her waist and with my palms draw a line of her hips! I buried my chin on my chest.

«Сonversely…»

The hostess relieved continued rinsing the dishes.

«Have you quarreled?»

«Yes.»

«Sadly. Touching girl. I hope that everything is not so scary, and you…»

«I told her that I love you!»

Kurushina put the last washed saucer in the dryer. She wrung out the rag and wiped her hands, dragging out an already huge pause by all these manipulations. Then she moved the stool and sat next to me. She adjusted my short forelock to one side and leaned her elbows on her clasped knees, looking into my eyes.

«Thank you, my sweet boy…»

«I love you not the way you think!» suddenly almost shouted me in drunken desperation. «I love you, as a man loves a woman! Scoff! Talk sense! It won’t help! – I jumped up – the stool crashed to the floor. I wanted to kick you out of your apartment, like an old rag by which no longer wipes up shoes! Do you understand? You let a scumbag into your house who holds nothing sacred except his vile desires. Well, what, what I found in you that I have not seen in other women!»

I spoke evilly about the hatred of the early days, about the mockeries with which I had insulted her habits, clothes, appearance, and, finally, of my admiration for her.

«Why did this happen to me?» – I groaned. «Well, if I had not seen women! So no! I’m drunk! Tomorrow I will be bitter, but not ashamed, for this evening. How can I be ashamed of the most precious thing I have? I love you, even if I drunk, even if I dead!»

I sat down on the floor and covered my head with my hands.

Kurushina smoked cigarette after cigarette, the muscles of her face sagging, the corners of her lips Curling down like a horseshoe. She seemed to immediately grow old, hunched over, and her nose with a small hump turned red ugly, her eyes faded, and only the clean, cold stones of gold threads in her ears quivered every time the woman flicked the ash.

«I’m glad you told me everything…»

«I don’t think so!»

«You probably think me an old fool, with the reflexes of a childless… Sorry, my sweet boy, I’ve already begun to express in elaborate words as you! I won’t lie, I didn’t know what you just told me. I like you. And this is not a fable about a rooster and a cuckoo. I do not presume to analyze your merits. Although you might be curious to hear it. You know something about my past. I haven «t always lived here…» she thought for a moment, as if remembering. «You’ve backed yourself into a corner. You are blinded by the brilliance of my former life. You are blinded by the desire to touch her. Wait! I’m just an ordinary aging woman. I live, as many do, in the present day, and perhaps a little in vain memories. Let’s say I liked you, as you put it, as a man. But this is not enough. Didn’t you meet just good people? Maybe I’ll feel awkward later, but frankness for frankness. If you think that in a woman under fifty, for you – an old woman, dies interest in a multi-faceted life, you are mistaken. I don’t get many the guests now. And your appearance is an event for me. Young, handsome! But my youth has passed. Humble ourselves! Don’t put us in a hopeless position. This is not worthy of people able to find a compromise. And thank you for your recognition! It’s nice to feel a little younger than what you are!» Kurushina smiled conciliatingly.

«Chewed up like for baby. Like – don’t like!» I said through my teeth, and asked stubbornly. «So you like me after all?»

«Surely!» there was no irony or coquetry in her tone, her face was tightened to the smallest features again, and her piercing eyes flashed.

«What to do now?» I asked in a deathly voice.

«Go sleep! Tomorrow I go to people who agreed to help us. Their girl has returned the other day.»

I nodded resignedly and sat for a while with my hands dangling from my lap, staring blankly at the floor.

Laying down to sleep, I knew this was only the beginning! And fell asleep with joy and fear.

12

We tried not to notice the memorable evening loitering between us. But you might as well walk barefoot through spring puddles, suggesting that there are warm, impenetrable boots on your feet.

I sent a dry «notice» to my mother about my health and lied that I had been hired as a handyman. There were a few small bills and coppers left in my leather «bumblebee».

Two days later, Elena Nikolaevna woke me up in the morning and showed a gift to my bride. I lazily drew back from under the covers in the morning coolness of September and, yawning, bent close: Kurushina sat at the table. A golden snake with tiny diamond eyes coiled in a double spiral on the white tablecloth. The magnificent jewelry work was striking in the fineness of the finish of the smallest fused scales and resemblance to some small arboreal original.

«Not sorry to give?»

I picked up the bracelet to get a better look at it.

Kurushina folded her hands into a fist and rested her chin on her shoulder, glancing sideways at the snake. Then she sighed decisively, as if saying goodbye to the bracelet, and straightened.

«Go today, meet them.»

Grayish-blue clouds-lambs had frolic racing with the cold wind. Future relatives lived near the Paveletsky railway station, in a yellow five-story building with a fractional number and shabby courtyards. I was given the name of an old bathhouse as a reference point. To go to strangers with a recommendation of the groom from a woman to whom I had confessed my love a few days ago – is not this the stupidest grimace of circumstances!

If, climbing the stairs, I doubted whether to give the benefactors the jewelry of a loved one, then outside the apartment, after the visit, I confidently showed a weighty thumb to the fish-peephole of the door.

The bride’s daddy, thin, sharp-faced and leggy as a grasshopper, with a slicked-back hair comb after a shower, in training trousers and leather Slippers on his bare feet, was sprawled in a chair, absently kept saying» uh-huh» to his wife, and was picking soundly by his tongue between his teeth. Maman, a perfectly ordinary wife of «grasshopper», in a long robe, in front of the TV turned on, was flipping through the magazine «Moscow». Phlegmatic, moon-faced daughter with black curly hair and red eyelids with big kind eyes, as if serving a sentence. When I entered, the women stared at me as if I were a ferocious rhinoceros in a menagerie, with respect and fear. It seems that the family of «pygmies» was rarely visited by giants over one hundred and sixty centimeters tall.

I sat on the couch under cross-examination of future relatives: who are my parents, circle of hobbies, do I suffer from indigestion…

After the first answers, they became wary.

«If Elena Nikolaevna’s recommendations are enough for you, what is your price for the service?» I cut short the daddy’s curiosity.

He shifted in his chair, his wife glared at him, and daughter stared at me.

«I am not going to appear at your place again. All expenses are my matter. The main thing is that you do not change your mind. Otherwise, it will be a pity for the lost time!»

Crimson spots covered dad’s face. He seemed to be turning boulders of thought in his head. But I didn’t let him pin me down with them.

«Elena Nikolaevna needs your … „I paused, barely perceptible,“ … friendly help. There is nothing shameful in reward. Isn’t that right?»

Dad frowned. Eh, you have no merchant grasp, grasshopper! There is no luxurious, self-righteous daring in you! Didn’t trained to bargain!

Of course, if I were older, I wouldn’t risk teasing people who were already scared. But I could not tolerate their condescension to Elena Nikolaevna!

In the hallway, dad coughed into the fist and named the amount. Two thousand rubles, at the then rates for registration of one and a half thousand.

«What have you told them?» Attacked me Elena Nikolaevna, as soon as I crossed the threshold of her apartment. «Alexey Vladimirovich (didn’t even try to remember!) just called me. He’s shocked! Says you’ll gobble me up in half an hour. He told me not to contact you. He said, «you’ll survive…»

«Isn’t it?»

Kurushina left abruptly, but returned a minute later with a lit cigarette. Her eyes swelled with tears.

«You put me in an awkward…» She sniffled.

«I haven’t placed you anywhere!»

I gave her the conversation in detail.

«Let them chat! Fatherless and a yard boy me! Quite good for nothing! And your friends are trash!»

Kurushina heaved a sigh. She sat down next to me on the sofa, wrapped oneself up in a shawl. Then she snuggling cosily to my shoulder.

«Thank you, my sweet boy! This is the first time I encountering this. Heavy!» And after that. «You’ll be lost because of your character! You don’t like people!»

I was ready to sit with her forever under the drowsy ticking of the clock. I wanted to kiss her hands, hair, lips. But the fear of breaking the solemnity of the moment, frightening away the happiness, restrained me.

13

Even now I can’t say why, besides my youth, Lena liked me. To impress the imagination of an experienced, intelligent woman was unthinkable to me, a half-illiterate guy. She easily distinguished tiny spots on my conscience. My presumptuous judgments about life, about people were stained by two opposite colors. I read a lot and haphazardly. My hasty conclusions amused her. For example, I despised Turgenev’s Rudin. The non-resistance of the intolerant Tolstoy was considered a farce. Dostoevsky, in my opinion, treated his mind damaged by the shooting down by writing gloomy novels. I found modern national literature biased and boring. And imported literature I called the fantasies of the well-fed. But I didn’t know her well. Fresh spots of childhood: Hemingway, Remark, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, London and others – they appeared in our country as they were translated, therefore, in personal libraries, everyone had about the same set of books – gave a vague idea of their literature. In my opinion, the captain’s daughter Pushkin, could have married Deerslayer Cooper, and they would have whiled away one hundred years of solitude together in Kafka’s gloomy castle. I made Elena Nikolaevna laugh to tears with my tasteless puns. Concepts of musical culture swirled in my mind like the purple smoke of heavy rock. In painting I liked three the bears on a candy wrapper…

Spiritual poverty is a bridge to moral poverty. For me, military service divided people into shepherds and a herd: the stronger the whip, the more obedient the wards. I despised poverty: I despised people fed on spiritual food and without a penny, or vice versa. The circle of my acquaintances had neither one nor the other. Of course, I was sorry for mom and I remembered my childhood friends…

It is unlikely that Elena Nikolaevna was attracted by the spiritual mediocrity of the pink rebel. Kurushina met people more worthy than the provincial Mowgli. Met in the past! But people get attached to Pets! And I was a good pupil, quickly studied, was attentive to her, and could well squeeze out sad memories in her heart. Finally, I made all my mistakes, wanting to please.

If a woman is older than a man by two or three years, this is alarming. Six or ten years is suspicious. The difference of twenty or more years is forgivable, may be Piaf, and then only with a vulgar discount on her husband’s cunning calculation. Or forgivable for Julia Roberts, who is just a literary character. Imagine the love of a fifty-year-old woman and a twenty-year-old boy as a harmony of spiritual intimacy and sex? – drivel. But in some African tribes, unequal marriage with a woman’s age priority is a cultural tradition that is exotic to European thinking. If, I imagine, you put different-sex, healthy peers in a closed space during their sexual heyday, nine cases out of ten will end predictably, even with the most puritanical imagination. And the story of king Oedipus has its own zest, if you exclude the edifying pathos and do not go too deep into the tradition of Euphrates magicians to marry their mothers.

Elena Nikolaevna and I were being carried towards the fatal whirlpool, and the Golden oar was lying on the bottom of the boat. The possible gossip of friends and neighbors differed in essence, like reflections of one object in crooked mirrors and frightened Kurushin. And yet my love was gradually undermining her discretion.

A real man does not struggle with love for a woman, he just does not remind you of love if the woman does not want it.

Bathing evening. Kurushina’s light short steps rustled from the bathroom into the room.

Before bedtime, I absentmindedly drove languid thoughts between the lines of the same paragraph of the book. Outside the window, the autumn rain was sad.

The splash of shower water, the tapping of shampoo and gel jars on the glass stand. My imagination envied the soap suds and the elastic jets of liquid that caressed her body. It seemed that I knew her by heart, to the touch of an unforgettable drunken evening.

The door to her room banged softly. I got up from the sofa and, folding my hands behind my head, went to the window and rested my hot forehead against the cold glass, peering at the bright spots of reflected cheeks and chin, at the transparent eye sockets. I was on my knees before my first love, and she didn’t notice me. «Muzzled» me with her indifference.

I decisively measured the perimeter of the table (for acceleration), and ran out into the hall. And there… chickened! The landlady was making the bed, and a large shadow from the night-light moved on the frosted glass of the door. I backed away. But the hand slowly quietly pushed the sash.

Elena Nikolaevna with a turban made of a terry towel in front of the mirror was putting a nightgown over her head. Whether the optical illusion of light, or the grace of time, spared the perfection of its forms from the barbarian chisel of years, but I admired the mature beauty of a woman. And while she was squeezing into the narrow loop of her collar, the light of the nightlight polished the lines of her slender figure with rounded knees and protruding ankles. Two small cone-shaped hemispheres with sharp peaks – from one of them a blue vein streamed under the milk of the skin – trembled at the hostess’s hasty efforts. The hem of the curtain fell lower, and left in view the elastic, untouched by childbirth belly with a tiny cave, stopped at the smooth cleavage that completed the interbederye with a dark smear. The breath of years barely dried her pointed thighs, the juicy fruit of her buttocks. I absorbed with my eyes the magic of her beauty, invulnerable in my memory, enjoyed the seconds of bliss.