Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

She remained in my bed, and in the middle of the night we made love again. This time I was, at long last, really drained and was able to make love to her slowly, as she wanted me to. Let’s try spooning, she said, and I groped a bit under her full buttocks until I was able to penetrate, my one hand trapped under her body, the other embracing her and stroking her breast. I upped the pace of my movements and soon felt a series of quivers running from her fingers to her arm. Anna pleasured herself with rapid movements and after what seemed like a very long minute I heard her come.

No, don’t say anything, she whispered. Just hug me and let’s sleep.

Just before daybreak her internal clock woke her up. Her hand stroked my face, my chest, and slipped down to my penis. I moved towards her and we again made love in the way I wanted to and then in the way she wanted. It was good for us both.

Annushka, I whispered, as she lay beside me, panting. She wrapped herself round me, covered my face with kisses and said, I have to go.

Are you some sort of a siren, a mermaid who grows a tail if she sleeps with someone in the light? I asked with a smile.

I don’t want you to find an old, flabby, fat woman by your side she answered sounding sad. I wasn’t waiting for a man to come along and since Mikhail’s death I haven’t been taking care of myself and I’ve got fat.

You look beautiful, I said.

With the help of a corset and a push up bra. It’s a pity you didn’t know me before.

I didn’t want to imagine a youthful Anna. This most feminine of women beside me, beautiful and in full bloom, was everything I wanted. But I felt the need to apologize for my own body which had also lost its youthfulness and in doing so comfort her a little.

I also didn’t have this paunch until a year or two ago. But we are not children, Annushka.

Aren’t we? Since I was eighteen I haven’t felt like I do with you, and offered me her lips in a long lingering kiss.

Don’t get up, she ordered, and went to the shower.

By the time she’d reach the beam of light from the bathroom, a poised, white woman with large buttocks and firm thighs, I was already yearning for her return. I too was a teenager in love. And when I thought about it, it seemed to me that maybe even way back then in the Arava, I hadn’t experienced love in this way. I’d grown up with Orit, she was there when I’d first experienced sexual arousal. Now it was different. Suddenly, for the first time in my life, a woman wanted me. A beautiful, mature woman. And for the first time in my life I felt worthy of a woman’s desire and her love had made me worthy of being loved. She could, after all, have chosen whomever she wanted. And she picked me. Childish, perhaps, but I even felt a sense of pride, and this, together with a feeling of contentment, caused me to tremble. A broad smile spread through my whole body.

Anna returned from the shower fully dressed. I’ll go by my house to put my make-up on, and then to work. Shall we meet tonight at Vashkirova’s? Yes, at Vashkirova’s, I said, retaining that smile of happiness, pride and wonder at what I’d experienced.

She called a cab, kissed me, and went downstairs.

Still naked, I watched her through the window. The chill I could feel on my back was at odds with the warmth in my chest. As she stood there in the mist of early morning I was already missing her, again full of desire and apprehensive about how I would protect this love. Then the cab arrived and with Anna inside, it disappeared into the dawn of a new day.

THERE WAS A dispatch from the Mossad. The front company was asking me to check price quotation number 2007, meaning that I had to activate the secret communication system because HQ wanted to relay something to me in code.

After the previous evening and night, this was a saddening return to reality. I wasn’t my own master after all. I typed in the password and up came a regular commercial letter. I locked the door and typed in an additional password which reversed the message’s lettering.

HQ informed me that the intelligence I had gathered formed the basis for two planned operations for which I would have to return to Makhachkala and Dushanbe. They also wanted me to open up for them two additional locations in Caucasia and along the shores of the Caspian Sea. The outline of these operations had already been prepared and I would have a role to play in them–at the very least as the one who receives, briefs, accompanies and assists the operatives. But some important pieces of intelligence were still missing, principally in relation to the conduct of the security forces, the locations where there were permanent roadblocks, and I had to hurry.

A feeling of rebelliousness welled up inside me. What about the long period of rehabilitation which they had talked about? I asked myself, my mood defiant. And what, all of a sudden, was this idea of me taking part in the operation? Hadn’t it been agreed that I would no longer take part in that kind of activity?

Before sitting down to write my reply, I remembered that I was supposed to give an account of the night Anna spent in my apartment. Strictly speaking my report should also mention the few moments she was alone while I was taking a shower, explain who she was, what she meant to me, how we’d met, and who’d initiated the relations. In other words, all the information that the security people would want to know to be convinced that this wasn’t some kind of a trap. These were sensible, set procedures, yet at the same time very irksome so far as I was concerned.

While thinking about this, terrified by the prospect of a possible intrusion into my life and my love, I reconstructed in my mind the story of our liaison and answered my own questions–the sort of questions they would undoubtedly be asking me. I don’t know if she was a customer at Vashkirova’s before I started going there, but it would seem that she was. We ate there many times without approaching one another. She was brought to my table by Vashkirova, almost against her wishes, because the restaurant was packed and while sitting with me was uncommunicative and embarrassed. Then came the conversation about Dostoyevsky’s Demons all of which was perfectly reasonable given the nature of her work. Then she went back to being alone and didn’t attempt to establish any form of contact with me. She brought me a copy of Demons with the additional chapter, but that was entirely predictable seeing as she owned a bookshop. Sitting with her later on was my initiative as was the conversation that followed. She remained withdrawn and distant after that as well. The concert was the only event that she proposed, but that was done in such a natural way and her understanding of the music was so profound, it was obvious that this was her field. People with seats next to hers at the Philharmonic knew her and knew about the tragedy that had befallen her. It was I who suggested escorting her home and going up to her apartment. She was the one who asked me to leave her apartment and subsequently restored our relationship to one of ‘friendship’. And yesterday night–that was so natural, for God’s sake.

It could be said that it is surprising, even strange, that such a beautiful woman–who I saw with my own eyes turning away a suitor–should want me. I am now a man of forty, not at my peak. Even at my best I was no Apollo. Nor could her desire for me be based on my being a western intellectual. I knew a great deal less than she did about every subject we touched on. Perhaps the very fact of my relative inadequacy was what prevented her from being turned off me at the beginning, and then slowly it happened, an adult friendship that gradually developed into love. And not for a moment could I say with any certainty that on her side it was also love.