Irene Guilford - Waiting for Stalin to Die

From the lake his sister called back:

The servants raced to tell the king that they had heard a singing lamb being answered by a singing fish.

The next morning, the king hid at the lake’s edge.

Once again the lamb sang out to his sister. Once again she replied.

The king returned to his castle. He summoned his villagers. He directed them to weave a silken net. And they caught the golden carp.

They pulled the carp from the water. The fish became once again a woman. The lamb became once again a man. And the king recognized his true wife.

He ordered the witch killed.

And Elenyte and Jonukas lived happily ever after with the king in the castle.

When Mrs. Moynahan opened the front door, Steponas saw the leap of interest in her eyes. Letting her gaze linger, the russet-haired woman in a silk turquoise robe took him in bit by bit. Her robust Canadian body would be firm, white and smooth. She would give as good as she would get. And his interest leapt too at the prospect of pursuit and possible capture.

“Maryte never told me you were such a handsome devil,” she said, pleasure scudding across her face like wind ruffling the surface of the sea.

He followed her upstairs, watching the solid buttocks shifting under the silk. Surveying the room, noticing only the bed where he would sleep, he paid her scant attention. He felt her eyes upon him. It had always been thus. And after the war, women were drawn to the deprivation pulsing off him like heat.

“It’s a back bedroom,” she said. “Dobilas and Maryte face the street.”

He nodded but said nothing. Looking around, he pretended to consider.

“They cook their own meals. You can take yours in the kitchen with me.”

He turned to her, his gaze full and direct.

“Bedroom eyes,” she murmured.

She was bold this Canadian, bolder than any Lithuanian or German girls he had known.

“Okay. I take.”

He could almost see her going weak at the knees.

“Dinner isn’t until six,” she said, “but come downstairs if you’re hungry. I’ll make you a little snack if you like.”

“I wait for dinner.”

“Cheeky bugger,” she said with a curling smile before going downstairs.

Steponas stretched out on the bed, hands behind his head, legs crossed at the ankles. Already he could imagine lifting himself off her white bulk after love. She would reach up to keep him close. She would soothe and assuage. He didn’t mind being rescued for a time.

He looked at his watch. Six o’clock. He would not go downstairs yet.

Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he pulled his tan leather briefcase towards him. Carried from Lithuania and always kept close, it held his documents. A soft green notebook, a diary started on the day he left and no longer kept. The truck-driving licence earned in the American sector working for the army. The identification card for his ten-month contract in the gold mines in Central Patricia. And his certificate of admittance to Canada. They were his only credentials. Then putting the papers away, he fell once more to musing about women.

They liked to tease and invite, playing hard-to-get or making forthright advances. More than seduction they wanted love, especially the lonely ones like Mrs. Moynahan who pretended not to be. Moira, he would say, My Moira. It was so easy to murmur endearments and bestow caresses, easy to give them what they wanted, to make them happy for a time.

He looked at his watch. Six fifteen. He would go downstairs and begin the seduction of a woman who wore a turquoise silk robe in the afternoon, a robe with an embroidered peacock on the back, a gold and silver peacock spreading its tail. She knew how to spoil herself. And she would spoil her man. Sensing the pleasure to be had, he decided to stay for a while.

Steponas would lie on his bed after dinner, his door ajar. He would watch Mrs. Moynahan saunter past on her way to her evening bath. He liked seeing the thin turquoise silk against firm flesh and hearing the slap slap of her satin slippers against naked heels. He wanted her to see him. And he liked the feeling that at a moment’s notice he could push the door open.

He knew that she saw him, that she was feigning indifference, her head lifted and turned away. Who did she think she was fooling? Perhaps herself. Well he would wait.

He heard the drum of rushing water in the next room and imagined her disrobing. She would admire her breasts and buttocks in the mirror. Sinking into the hot water with sighing pleasure, she would splash about. She would soap her breasts. She would rinse herself and rise out of the water like a Venus. She would rub herself down briskly. Flushed, she would walk back to her bedroom, damp patches of turquoise silk stuck to her skin.

He must wait. He must await an invitation. And one evening, passing on her way back to her room, she cast him a swift glance. He visited her that night.

Her room was so blindingly white that, for a moment, Steponas couldn’t see. Waiting for his vision to clear, he discerned a white armchair set upon a white shag rug, a white dressing table covered with women’s trinkets of cut glass. Mrs. Moynahan lay upon a white bed like a goddess, her russet hair on glorious display. She lifted her arms to receive him. And moving towards her, he fell into the downy whiteness of a snowstorm.

Afterwards he asked politely if he could leave the door slightly open.

“Oh no, love,” she said. “I couldn’t do that.”

He visited only at her invitation. Never taking the first step, asking only with his eyes as she passed on her way to the bath, he would wait to see if she wished company. If she nodded, he would lie back on his bed. Hands clasped behind his head, he would anticipate the pleasure of love. It was the closest he came to feeling happy.

Steponas never talked to women about himself or his past but, if he was in the mood, he would tell Mrs. Moynahan bits that he thought she might understand. He had lived in a house by a forest. His father had been a woodsman. He was probably dead now. His mother had died long ago.

“Oh my darling,” Mrs. Moynahan said, reaching a hand up his face.

He caught her hand, stopping it. He did not like to be touched in that way.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, turning it over and kissing the palm.

She leant back, a smile of deep satisfaction on her face. In the pure whiteness of the room, atop the white body, inside the oblivion of a snowstorm, he made love to her again.

He did not tell her that his drunken father used to beat him until he grew big enough to hit back. He did not say that Germans had surrounded churches on Sunday mornings, snatching up young men for the Russian front. He did not say that he had hidden on a barge plying up and down the Nemunas River. He did not tell her that he had slipped back to see his father. He did not describe their last conversation, the words driven into his skull like nails.

“Go then, if you want,” his father had spat across the kitchen table, slumped in the gloom of drink and a doomed future. “It will be no loss to me.”