Guillermo Erades - Back to Moscow

Back at the dacha, the Antons started to prepare the mangal to cook the shashliks. I went into the kitchen and offered to help the girls with the salads.

‘Go help the men with the meat,’ Tatyana ordered, mock-threatening me with a large knife.

Dinner. Vodka. Toasts. We were sitting around the table, eating grilled meat, which I found delicious, and I wasn’t sure if Diana was looking at me or if it was just the vodka clouding my head. I was haunted by the image of her red bikini. She was now wearing a white skirt and a white shirt — the milkiness of which accentuated her fiery red hair. I felt Tatyana squeezing my hand. Tatyana was listening attentively to one of the Antons, who was sharing his secret recipe for the shashlik marinade. I didn’t know if Tatyana was squeezing my hand because she’d noticed my attention drifting towards Diana or if she meant it as a spontaneous act of affection. I tried to focus on what Anton was saying, something about yoghurt and herbs, but I was missing most of it — he was speaking in drunken chubak slang, and I wasn’t used to Russian spoken by men.

We drank and drank, until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. My brain shut down, my stomach lurched. I stood up, staggered down to the toilet hut, closed the door behind me and vomited. I made an effort to keep it a silent puke, which I managed to place entirely into the shitting hole, and then I threw a few twigs and a bit of soil on it, as I had been instructed. When I came back to the table I felt better.

I forced myself to drink water, and then Marina made tea, but I was too wasted to put anything other than water down my throat. I needed to lie down.

‘I think I’m going to bed,’ I said as I got up from the table.

Tatyana stood up, looked at me, laughed. ‘Let’s go, my little drunkard.’

I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to let it all out — vodka, wine, shashlik, salad — but I didn’t have the strength to crawl out of bed and go all the way to the toilet. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on soothing thoughts but what I saw was the lake and Diana in the red bikini and the table strewn with food and vodka and the cherry tree, and it was only when I heard Lyudmila Aleksandrovna shouting that I was a superfluous man that I realised I was dreaming. I forced my consciousness to abandon the drunken dream and return to the room, where the air was now steamy. I was sweating. Tatyana was fast asleep, breathing rhythmically. I tried to keep my eyes open for a while. I threw one of my legs out of the bed, to the floor, but, after a couple of minutes, I felt I was about to be sick again and decided not to risk it any longer. I tumbled down the stairs, holding the walls, trying not to make too much noise, but the floorboards creaked all the same. As I crossed the garden towards the toilet, wearing nothing but my underwear, my stomach lurched once more, and I managed to reach the hut just in time. I knelt down over the hole, which smelled of fresh shit, and vomited at length.

Feeling better, I spat in the hole, wiped my mouth with toilet paper and stepped into the fresh air. As I was about to go back inside the dacha, I saw Diana sitting on the grass.

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

She was wearing the white shirt but her legs were now uncovered, extended in front of her. ‘Couldn’t sleep.’

‘And the others?’

‘Everybody’s sleeping,’ she said. ‘You OK?’

‘I’ve been better.’ I sat next to her, keeping my breath away from her face. The ground felt wet.

Diana drew in her long legs and embraced them, her head now resting on her knees. ‘You shouldn’t try to drink as much as Russian men.’

‘Do you know any stars?’ I asked.

‘Over there.’ She pointed above the cherry tree. ‘I think that’s the Great Bear.’

I moved closer to her and with my eyes followed the direction in which she was pointing. I tried to swallow as much saliva as possible to kill the smell of puke on my breath.

‘That must be Orion,’ I said, pointing to the sky.

‘Where?’

‘There. I think.’ I grabbed her arm and directed it towards a place in the sky where Orion may or may not have been. When I dropped my arm I held her hand.

‘Here, zagorod, you forget about everything,’ she said, clutching my hand. ‘It’s like a different life. Moscow feels so far away.’

A dog was barking in another dacha. I put my arm around Diana and she leaned her head on my shoulder. I swallowed more saliva. We remained in silence for a minute or so, our hands clasped. Then I kissed her. She kissed me back. We kissed for a couple of minutes. I could hardly breathe. I pushed her back on the ground, my left hand under her shirt. She rolled away and, just when I thought she was about to get up and leave, she took her shirt off. She was wearing no bra.

‘Let’s go to the forest,’ I said.

‘Ne nado. Everybody’s sleeping.’ Then she rolled her knickers down her long legs.

All lights were off at the dacha. I took off my own underwear.

I lay next to her, kissing her neck, holding her breasts, breathing heavily but realising in a panic that I wasn’t ready. I tried to calm down, focused on her elongated body, on her pretty freckled face. I rubbed my groin against her thighs for a minute or so but, to my horror, my body was not reacting.

Diana put her hand between my legs. ‘Relax,’ she said.

‘I really want you,’ I whispered, embarrassed.

‘I want you too.’

We kissed, and she tried for a while, but down there nothing worked.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I drank too much.’

‘Don’t worry. Let’s go to sleep.’

Back in bed, Tatyana remained in the same position I’d left her, face up. Her breathing was heavier now, with a hint of a snore.

My head was flooded with dark, impenetrable thoughts that vanished as soon as they appeared, leaving traces of bitterness. A black hole was growing inside me.

Tatyana remained peaceful in her sleep.

I kissed her.

She rolled over and dropped an arm over my chest. Her body exuded warmth and moisture.

‘I love you,’ I whispered.

Tatyana didn’t react. She was sleeping.

THE LATE-AUGUST MORNING was fresh and lovely. I was sitting on the terrace of Coffee Mania, reading The Master and Margarita . I felt cheerful as I nibbled my slice of Napoleon cake and sipped my coffee, glancing occasionally at the square and the trees and the façade of the Tchaikovsky conservatory.

Ever since Tatyana had moved into my flat for most of the week, I felt as if my body had more energy to face my Moscow days. This new vitality didn’t come so much from the novelty of sharing my flat with Tatyana, I thought, as from the fact that, coincidentally, I was sleeping better at night.

Besides, things had changed since the draining weekend by the lake. In the days that had followed our trip to the dacha, I’d felt a gradual but definite change in my mental state — an unexpected re-set of my inner self. The thought of meeting a new girl — which had in the past motivated a large number of my daily actions — now made me feel exhausted. I couldn’t face the prospect of taking someone to Pyramida or Café Maki for the first time, of having to deal with all the misplaced expectations. After almost three years in Moscow, I realised, I couldn’t be bothered to meet more Russian women.

I finished my coffee, raised my empty cup to order another one.

These days, when Tatyana visited her aunt for the weekend, I would usually stay home in the evenings, enjoying the novelty of waking up fresh the next day. Cooking, walking, reading. These activities, which at present occupied the greater part of my day, felt somewhat meaningful. Even on the rare occasions when I’d gone clubbing, it had been mostly to catch up with the brothers. The time had come for me to do other things. Perhaps, I thought as I looked around the square, I could start writing my thesis. After all, I had collected enough material. My red notebooks were brimming with observations.