Guillermo Erades - Back to Moscow

‘It’s so nice that we met,’ she said.

‘Sudba,’ I said, sliding myself closer to her.

We kissed. I wrapped my hands around her waist, pulled her against me. My entire body was electrified. My hands, which I no longer seemed to control, began to move up and down her body. We went on kissing and I found myself fantasising that Vika was not someone I’d just met but my actual girlfriend. The thought filled me with an unexpected sense of well-being. After a few minutes we took a breather. I was sweaty. Vika was blushing.

‘This is so weird,’ she said, smiling.

I had four hours before Tatyana came back from work.

‘I live nearby,’ I heard myself saying. ‘Would you like to come to my place for a cup of tea?’

She remained silent for a moment, staring at the ground, which was strewn with the empty shells of sunflower seeds.

‘Maybe better if I don’t come,’ she said.

‘I understand.’

‘I really like you.’

‘I like you too.’

We kissed again.

‘Maybe we can meet tonight and go to the cinema?’ Vika said with a wide smile, her brown eyes sparkling.

I wanted to say yes. I wanted to take Vika to the cinema. I wanted to kiss her in the darkness and, after the film, I wanted to take her to Café Maki. I wanted us to drink loads of wine, share a plate of blinis with preserved strawberries and mascarpone. And, after that, I wanted her to come to my place for tea.

‘I can’t tonight,’ I said, feeling a squeeze in my chest.

Vika looked confused, disappointed.

‘Maybe we could meet over the weekend?’ I said.

‘Sure, that would be nice.’

We exchanged phone numbers and walked down the Boulevard, towards the metro. We kissed one more time, said do svidaniya.

As I walked home, I texted Yulya Karma, who I hadn’t seen for a while, and asked her if she was free to meet for a quick cup of tea.

FOR THREE DAYS I’D been picturing Vika in the flowery dress she wore when we met, so when, on Saturday morning, underneath Pushkin’s statue, I was approached by a girl wearing sunglasses and a bright yellow dress, it took me a few seconds to realise it was her.

‘You no longer remember how I look?’ Vika said, lifting her sunglasses.

‘Of course. You look beautiful.’

She laughed and kissed me on the cheek.

It was a sunny morning and Muscovites had taken to the streets en masse. At least ten other couples had agreed to meet by Pushkin at the same time.

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ I said.

We crossed the perekhod, emerged on the other side of Tverskaya, and passed through the terrace of McDonald’s, where all the tables were occupied. We reached the Boulevard and strolled down the path, under the trees, as we had done the day we met.

‘I remember the first time I went to McDonald’s,’ Vika said. ‘Just after it opened, during the perestroika.’

‘You must have been young.’

‘I was a little girl. A friend in school had gone and he told us about the Happy Meal. For days and days I asked my mum to take me to McDonald’s. Finally, one day, she took me and my cousin. When we arrived, the queue was so long that people were waiting outside the restaurant, all the way to Tverskaya.’ Vika pointed back, to the corner of Tverskaya and the Boulevard. ‘We had to wait for at least three hours.’

‘Three hours for McDonald’s?’

‘It was the first McDonald’s in the Soviet Union, everybody wanted to try it. It was something exotic, from the West. Everything that came from the West was considered superior. Besides, people were used to queues at the time.’

‘I’ve heard,’ I said.

‘We had to stand in the queue for so long, I was exhausted. And the worst thing was, by the time we arrived at the counter, there were no Happy Meals left.’

‘What did you have?’

‘A cheeseburger.’

‘Liked it?’

‘I was so disappointed,’ she said. ‘All I really wanted was the box with the toy.’

It was always a pleasant walk along the Boulevard, especially in summer, if you ignored the lanes of traffic on either side and the drunks on the benches. We passed other couples, dyevs carrying bouquets of flowers, men holding bottles of Baltika. Vika walked slowly, as if savouring every step, her sandals treading elegantly along an imaginary straight line ahead of her. She took my arm. I let her hold it a minute, then withdrew it.

At the junction of the Boulevard and Malaya Nikitskaya, we crossed the road into a small park that ended in a circular open space with a gravel path and a few benches. Vika wiped the surface of one of the benches with a paper tissue, we sat down.

‘That’s where they got married,’ she said, pointing at the yellowish church across the street.

‘Who?’

‘Pushkin and Natalya.That’s why they made this fountain.’

The benches formed a circle around a fountain, at the centre of which stood a bizarre shrine with a golden dome and thick Greek columns. It looked like a tacky burial monument and, although I’d passed in front of it many times during my walks, I’d never noticed the statues sheltered by the golden dome. Now, as Vika pointed inside, I realised the statue was none other than Aleksandr Sergeyevich himself, standing next his wife, Natalya Nikolaevna.

‘It’s so romantic,’ Vika said. ‘Pushkin, Natalya, such a beautiful love story.’ She took her sunglasses off and threw them into her handbag. Her lovely eyes were framed by long eyelashes, thick with mascara.

‘It is,’ I said, ‘except, she was a bit of a slut, wasn’t she?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know, she was cheating on Pushkin and all that.’

‘We don’t know that.’ Vika inched away from me, seemingly annoyed by my remark.

‘Of course,’ I said, ‘we don’t know. But I always assumed that if Aleksandr Sergeyevich challenged D’Anthès to a duel it was because something must have being going on. Why would Pushkin risk his life if his wife was not cheating on him?’

‘To defend her honour.’

‘So you think D’Anthès and Natalya didn’t have a thing?’

‘Of course not,’ Vika said, fiddling with her glossy hair. ‘Natalya loved Pushkin very much.’

‘It doesn’t mean she couldn’t have had a little fling with the French guy.’

I squeezed Vika’s arm and laughed, but Vika remained serious.

‘If you truly love someone,’ Vika said, ‘you would not want to be with another person.’

We remained silent for a couple of minutes. A duel, I thought, what a stupid way to die. And yet how beautiful and poetic. Pushkin. Lermontov.

I wrapped my arm around Vika’s waist. She closed her eyes and threw her head back, facing the sun. I kissed her. She kissed me back. I could hear the heavy traffic, as our kissing got faster and deeper.

Now my hands were under her dress and I was kissing her neck and shoulders, with the bitter taste of suntan lotion. Abruptly she pushed me away. ‘Ne nado,’ she said. Then she took a deep breath and laughed. She opened her handbag, took out a small mirror and put on some lipstick. People on other benches paid us no attention.

‘Nu, tak,’ she said.

‘Tak,’ I said. ‘Let’s walk.’

‘Davay.’

As I stood up I realised I was all sweaty, my shirt stuck to my back. We walked into Malaya Nikitskaya, then turned right through Spiridonovka and meandered among the quiet streets and alleys of this old part of town. I knew these streets well because they headed towards the back of my building. We walked in silence, my entire body aching with expectation. I put an arm around Vika and slipped a finger under the strap of her dress. Her skin felt soft.

As we turned a corner into one of the smaller pereuloks, we bumped into a Caucasian fruit seller, sitting sleepily on the shaded pavement, next to a large cage brimming with enormous watermelons. I bought one of the smallest melons, which he handed me in a black plastic bag.