A FEMINIST AND POSTMODERNITY

She never gave me anything, I mean her body or anything, except for

that kiss, but then I didn�t know yet that she was not going to. I was a poor student at the Morgues university in Prague, the royal city, and I wanted a woman, and she was very attractive, the girl from Kiev, half-Pafnutian, who befriended me once in the corridors of the university hotel, which we called the Submarine because we didn�t have many chances to get out to the city. She asked me for a cigarette and thus we got to know each other. She was there, I needed a woman and I needed to talk. I would take her out often and once I took her out to Kaetanka, that bar in front of the Charles monastery with gargoyles, on the hill, if you take the steps downstairs, where I had once been, on my first visit to Prague, with Dasha from Bratislava, who also did not let me to do everything with her, but at least I played with her breasts once, in her aunt�s small apartment, wich was at the outskirts of Prague and had cracks on its walls, because her aunt was a lonely independent working woman and didn�t have either money or a man who would repair the walls.

Inside Kaetanka, while drinking a martini and smoking pall mall, and after we left Kaetanka, we woud kiss crazily with Dasha. That was ten years ago, in 1984. A year before Gorbachev. After that last time, I never saw Dasha again. We lost touch. Now we went with Helena to the same place, and after we drank the martini, chatted about everything and came out, memories pressed my throat, and I said to her �Kiss me, please, I can�t stand it anymore�, and she kissed me freely with open mouth, gave me a real true kiss of a female who knows how to be wild and crazily promiscuous but has not yet made up her mind as concerns yours truly. She gave me more of a kiss than I expected, far more than the innocent mouth to mouth�French and African�Pafnutian and Slovak�that I experienced with Dasha ten years ago. My legs started to shake. Of course I used the Dasha story to get at least a kiss from Helena, because psychologically it was becoming clearer and clearer to me that she was not planning to give me her body, or at least I was afraid of that, even if I didn�t know for sure. Or I was programming myself to fail in advance. I don�t know. My legs shaked and I had to sit down for a moment, giving her an impression that I was a pitiful little nerd, which was true.

Then she told me this story. She told it for two reasons: one, to show me how strong men should be, and what kind of men does she like, and the other, to console me for my weakness and failure to bed her. Both reasons came together and were inseparable, even though the story was a contradictory message. It was the times of Malcolm Bradbury, she was studying him, they had exchange of letters, and probably at that very point in time he was writing his Doctor Criminale. Perhaps influenced by him, Helena�s story was slightly too well-made to be totally true.

* * * * *

It was a long dark corridor with the doors on the left side, and there was only one bathroom in its end. Everybody was waiting for me to go to the bathroom at an unusual time. They were all watching us from their slightly open doors and they were listening to any motion of any of us. But there was no reason for me to go there at an unusual time. No cause. My roommate, a horse-like tall and nice English woman, was doing that every weekend with a new person, and she didn''t care about noise or about going to the bathroom in the afternoon. She had in addition a permanent boyfriend living downstairs, at the second floor, who was sleeping every weekend with a different person, just to have fun. During the working week, when they didn�t have time to get new partners, they slept together. He was fat like a German burger because of beer, although he was rather English. They were all Marxist, it was terrible. Never before saw I that many Marxists together. In the Soviet Union, there were long ago no Marxists who really believed in Marxism. But these people were Marxist because they were from an industrial British center and, moreover, the industrial center was in decline. It is natural for a capitalist to get Marxist when your standard of living is in decline, I suppose. We all were studying transition. I was studying transition to democracy, and they were studying, as they said jokingly, transition to unemployment. Most of them bore rings. They bore rings in their ears, noses, eyebrows, cheeks, sometimes in their breasts and on the clitoris. Boys had bullets inserted in their stuff which they cut if they circmsize you. I had no rings and no opportunity to go to the bath through the embarrassed watches and murmur of the old professors, but when Jack appeared, I changed my mind. My God, what an effaced name - I wouldn''t be able to take him seriously if only I would get to know his name before I got to know himself. But when I really got to know himself, it was already too late, I couldn''t stop anything, although nothing was to be stopped. So, after I met Jack, I wasn''t quite sure that I wouldn''t go to the bathroom at a strange time. We became friends in the pub. Jack read me his verses by heart, and I liked them. Jack explained me the words which I misunderstood. Jack too did not feel himself quite Marxist. We secretly teased the old professors. Jack was a famous poet, though not quite well-known. Jack too was accidentally selected for that program on transition, just like me. Jack did not know anything about our countries and, moreover, he did not care at all, did not want to know anything, contrary to other people over there. They all asked questions waiting for the answers which they had already expected in advance. "It is a catastrophe there, isn''t it?", asked they. I usually answered "It''s fascinating", and they were slightly shocked. I was tired of questions about unemployment rate, rising mortality and Russian threat to the new Ukrainian democracy. I liked Jack, who did not ask me anything at all, and I wanted just to say to him everything straightaway. Also, Jack did not drink at all and me too. However sober, he decided to fight some Irish guys just because they invited me to dance. Jack gave me his glasses and ordered to save them. So I did. The Irishmen were surprised of his bellicosity. Me too. I had no choice but to take him out of the pub. We walked to the dormitory. He told me to come to his room to see his new book. We chattered for half an hour, then I told him good night and went out with his book.
We became close friends. Once Jack came to my room with his stuff and asked me to sleep there, because his brother and brother''s wife had arrived unexpectedly and Jack had given them his room. I said OK, and we slept on separate beds, (un?)fortunately there were two of them, as in every room there. The morning, of course, Alice and Irina came to see me. We were already cooking breakfast, and they were, of course, very surprised, and "jealous in a positive way" (as they told me later), especially when Jack walked back from the bathroom, told them "Sorry" and calmly began to shave looking into my mirror, just as if he did that in my room every morning.
After a month, we got a free week, and Jack invited me to Paris. I was in Paris for the second time without being in London at least once - because nobody invited me there. We lived in a small hotel, in separate rooms, Jack was very kind and did not allow me to spend any money, which was strange for a western guy (I mean no aspiration to sleep with but conformity to pay for - what for? For my nice eyes?). I said "OK, only because you are so rich and famous". We walked everywhere, and there was a small restaurant near La Tour Eiffel, a calm place and not as expensive as the other restaurants. I had already been in Paris with my husband, as a tourist for three days, and now we were exactly in the same restaurant. I drank a martini, I broke my rule of no drinking, because of my memories, but Jack didn''t. It seemed that Jack had no memories, or that Jack just spent them into his verses completely. It was there that for the first time I realized that I could not stand it anymore. I told him "Jack, I''m an old mad cow, I got the mad cow desease, help me, please&". I told him that I had already been there. Jack knew the story of my marriage, he knew everything about my life, my parents, everything. Jack understood me and told me "Let''s go", and we went out. And there, under La Tour Eiffel, it was exactly the place where my husband and I kissed. I told him "Jack, kiss me, please, at least", and Jack... touched my neck with his lips. That is why I kissed you now the way I did, because then I needed that kind of kiss and I didn�t get it. I can kiss you like that, see, and Jack couldn�t.
But even from that "fraternal" kiss I felt dizzy, and I took Jack''s hand because I couldn''t stand on my feet. The world was like a carrousel arund me. My neck always was more sensitive than my lips, I suppose. But this was all. Jack knew everything about me, and I knew nothing about him, except Jack''s three thin books and Jack''s brother-and-brother''s-wife and also that Jack''s father was a billionaire and that Jack liked him. It''s strange, isn''t it, it would be more typical if Jack disliked his too rich a father.
It was all, and everything was over, because it was the end of our short study program, and I forbade myself to think about anything but purchasing the ticket, collecting the luggage, checking it in, flying, being delayed, searching for lost things, and seeing my old lovely parents. I canceled all my thoughts and returned to Kiev without ever going to the bathroom at least once at an inappropriate time in that damned dark old building in that British industrial center where I met Jack.
We wrote some short letters to each other. I was working hard, I had three jobs simultaneously, trying to make some money, but it was impossible. It was a really difficult time, and I knew it would be difficult forever. It was difficult even though both my parents continued to work, albeit their age and pensions, and my Mamma had even more concerts than when she was younger, and she made even more money than my Papa, and he felt nervous because of that but he shouldn''t, because all our money became coarse toilet paper faster than we made it. Three of us got together about $60 every month, and bread cost $2 for kilogram. OK, I told myself, I''m OK, I''m a feminist, I''ll work hard, I''m strong, and I have my good parents, and I''ll never get married again, and that''s OK. I''ll live in our nice two-bedroom apartment with windows toward Dniepr, in my green Kiev, and I''ll become old, an old furious woman, as ma tante whom my father did not like so much that when they would fall out he would hate my Mamma too... Just when I was thinking that Jack called me and told me to fly to Moscow. He had to go there for some reason, as a representative of his father or something like that, and I had to go there too, to work for him as an interpreter and make some good money. I realized that I am a feminist only insofar as there is no Jack around. And of course I got permission to be on leave from my three jobs for a while, and I flied to Moscow.
I was living in the apartment of a friend of mine, and Jack was living in "Cosmos". It was at the other side of Moscow. Every day he came after me on taxi, and we went to places, talked to people, discussed business, a meaningless roundabout. When we saw each other in the airport, he kissed my neck again, and I became sick again. Jack was all right, skinny, as usual, with red fire in his eyes, and he read me his new verses, and it was delightful to find there the episodes from our common experiences, my sickness and our kiss in Paris, under La Tour Eiffel, and even his fight in the old Manchester bar with crazy Irishmen. After our business visits, we went to his room, he wrote verses, while I was walking around and making some coffee or just staying in his bed and staring at magazines. I couldn�t remember to ask him a very important question, but all of a sudden I remembered and asked him, trying to speak nice and easy: "Jack, are you homosexual?". Or, rather, I asked him the other way: "Did you ever have homosexual experience?". We were speaking overtly about everything and particularly that was why I was crazy about him. It was strange for me not to ask him directly, but I couldn''t help myself not to ask at all and I couldn''t help to ask directly. And Jack answered me sincerely, as always, Jack answered me completely, to both overt and covert parts of my question: "Yes, I had, once, when I was twelve-years-old, with my schoolfriend. But I am not a homosexual". And Jack smiled with his kind smile, well-known to me. His glasses were spoiled, Jack usually forgot to clean them. "Jack, may I clean your glasses, I would like it''? Jack gave me his glasses, and I cleaned them thoroughly with my handkerchief. Then Jack told me: "It''s late, we should go".
"I can stay here, there are two beds", I told him. "You are tired, aren''t you, Jack, let''s stay here, I won''t disturb you. Just continue to write, you should work, you should finish your poem, and I want to hear the result". But he told me "Let''s go", and we went.
It was really late, a cold Moscow winter night, and there were no taxis. It were not yet the times when every car became a taxi in Moscow. A driver agreed to pick us up for an enormous price, and Jack said OK. We got in. When we arrived where I was staying, Jack asked him to stop. The driver stopped and told us he wanted twice more than what we had agreed. I told him it would be unfair, but the driver got a knife from underneath his seat and told Jack to give him all his money. Jack''s door was already open, he got out, opened the driver�s door and hit him in the face. I got out too and the driver followed us, with the knife. Jack told me "Run!", and we run as quickly as possible. The driver did not follow us. When we recovered our breath, Jack told me he was really afraid of the knife, because he had hemophilia, and his blood would not coagulate. We went to my friend''s apartment. She was asleep. Jack took a shower. Jack looked really exhausted. I massaged his head, then we drank some tea, and... nothing. I tried him to convince to stay there, but I did not succeed. I told him maybe the driver was waiting for his return, but Jack did not believe me.
So I did not sleep that night, even though Jack called me and told me he had arrived to his hotel OK. I was sitting in an armchair and I was thinking.

I could not believe how two persons could decide that they loved each other, and that they were confident that they would love each other forever and they would marry. There are so many nice men and women in the lifeworld, I thought, how can one be confident in his random choice? Because I really could not understand that, I was not jealous. I was not as jealous when I was told that my husband had a pregnant girlfriend in addition to me, his pregnant wife, as I was surprised. And because I was surprised and because I was pregnant and it was a very difficult pregnancy, I became ill and I had a miscarriage. So I divorced and became free and empty, and I decided that love was not for me. I decided that I would never meet a person who is exactly for me, and that I did not want to chojse again randomly and fail.
Then the USSR collapsed, and this postmodernism and these foreigners appeared. But I wasn''t as young as my friend Lena and for example Katia, at least psychologically, to go to some other country to get married, or to make money with my body and to enjoy life. On the other hand, I did not also feel myself as old as my friend Natelka to become a Lesbian. Maybe I had no opportunity. There were usually some men around me and I did not know if I was really beautiful, I mean really, because I know that I was not ugly at least. My legs were too fat, I run every morning, because I was to become an old maid in good form. But my body was thin and my breasts were although small but of good shape and, the main thing, my nose was proud. My hairs were of bad quality and my skin was too, and my fingers were too fat. I was only aware of my nose. It was all my monther�s heritage. But I did like my breasts, really. I liked them so much that I thought that notwithstanding the absence of current male-judges there should be some female-judges who could assess them, and I thought that I did not need a male to make my breasts happy. I thought that I wanted to discuss with some other girl if she had similar feelings and to see her breasts and to have her nipple in my mouth - because I could not do that with my own breast. I
liked the breasts in the women�s body more than anything else. But I had no such a female friend and I was afraid of the Lesbians. In England, where it could be possible, because there were a lot of psychologically free women who were not at least complete Lesbians, I did not dare to find one, or I had no opportunity, especially when I met Jack and spent all my time and energy with him.
So my friends were in New York and Natelka became complete Lesbian as if she run away to another world, and we only sometimes wrote each other letters. But they could not understand my feeling to Jack. When I wrote to Lena and Katia about Jack, they just decided that I simply chose their strategy - either marriage or at least money (they meant marriage included both simultaneously), and they asked me to describe him, but I failed. I could not describe him, I could not say, was he handsome or not, was he strong or not, were his red hair and rather small eyes behind thin glasses attractive or not. I supposed because rather really not than yes, maybe, but I did not want to accept that he was not the best one in the world, just as myself, simply as myself. I could say only that he had thin glasses, a PhD in philosophy, verses, a fine smile, and that''s all. They told me that I was not in love with him because I could not imagine his face, and they were quite right - after Britain and Paris, I wanted rather to forget him than to continue to think about him. However, first thing which I did in Moscow I made some photos of his face - I selected the angles myself and made some good pictures. Because, you know, I just started to believe again that something was possible. If you have an imperfect and difficult personality, and everyone around you has the same, there is no difference between you and any other person, also difficult and imperfect one. There is a very small probability that you will find a person whose imperfection and difficulties complement yours in such a way that both of you more or less confidently feel that you don''t want to continue your search and that you won''t need to continue your search for a more or less significant time, some five or ten years, and maybe for all your life.
So when you find such a personality standing in front of you, for quite a long time you don''t dare to believe that this is really so, that you really found him. Because you are not sure in yourself, you don''t want to be obtrusive, and nothing happens. But if you suddenly feel yourself certain, you are obliged to express yourself, to convince him that you are sure and that this is not a compromise but a proud self-confidence. You are obliged to make him know about your feelings, because otherwise the loss will be too precious. Because love is not something wide-spread and regular, and nobody has a right to sacrifice its rare instances to the disbelief in it.
Out of these thoughts, I decided to get my answer as soon as possible. I told him the next morning:
"Jack, I couldn''t stand this anymore. It''s enough for me. It''s enough for you too. It would be enough for anybody, I suppose. Don''t continue on to play that role, please. I love you. Just say to me if I''m an old stupid cow, please".
Jack smiled, with the eyes looking seriously behind the glasses. It was two days before he left, and I thought that it was my last opportunity to say to him that, just to say to him that. To get my answer as soon as possible - two days before the end, before the deadline. Later on we were walking, dining, chattering again, and later on, it was in Jack''s room, he asked me for my handkerchief to clean his glasses. I told him that this time it was not that clean, but he insisted. I gave him the little dirty piece of cloth, and he did as if he was cleaning, and then he asked me if I could give it to him. Sure I gave, and we also made some other presents to each other, and Jack gave me a lot of money for my interpreter role, and I signed the official receipt and took the money. I could scream that he was stupid and that I hated him and that he was a sadist, but I understood that it was no help, and it was not my style. Jack told me: "Tonight you can stay here", and it was just that: stay there on the second bed. And I stayed there. I undressed and approached him naked, while he was working by the table. He saw me, stood up, embraced me as if I was a
statue and... kissed my shoulder. I tried to touch him with my breast, but he calmly returned to his damned verses. I did not sleep the whole night. However, I also did not cry.
And this was the end of it, because even in the postmodernism and even if you are a billionaire''s son you won''t fly thousands of kilometers second time just to see somebody who is only your friend, an empty, clean, free, unattractive and allegedly not jealous friend, and nothing more. You won''t fly even if this friend admires your stupid verses. The last thing which he told me: "Do you have a boyfriend?" - a question for the very first meeting, not for the last one! I answered, as usual, trying to be honest: "No, nobody permanent, only some old schoolfriends which my parents think are my boyfriends but they aren''t, actually". I finished the sentence and then I decided that I hated him, and I couldn''t see him clearly because of my tears. But Jack kissed my neck and his nose touched my neck and his nose was wet - I was unable to hate him. "Jack!!!" I took his face in my hands and tried to look beyond his ugly glasses. We stood breast-to-breast. For a moment, I almost felt Jack''s motion toward me, I almost believed in thousands of scenarios appearing in my mind: we are going together; he stays; after a month he has to return; he''ll invite me all around the world... Then he left. I was lying to myself, to Lena and Katia, and to you that we spoke about everything and that we exhausted every topic - because he didn''t know if I had a boyfriend and I didn''t know if he hadn''t one, and I couldn''t describe him and I suppose that he too, the moment he left me he probably just couldn''t remember precisely my face, the short-sighted bastard.
I returned home. I received two letters from him with the Moscow verses and later on nothing. I didn''t reply. Six months passed, and there was a terrible spring night, when I couldn''t sleep; it was the 24th of April. That is why this is a postmodern story, you see? What has a genocide to do with this age and my love? It became an Atom Egoyan movie, you see? I will remember that night forever. Three weeks later, I received a small box and a short letter from his brother. In the box - you have already guessed - were his glasses. His brother wrote Jack was gone April 24, because of AIDS. I was alone at home at that moment, my parents were out, so I cried loudly.

* * * * *

I didn�t know what to do with that story then. I said to Helena the old tasteless joke that I was a feminist and a Lesbian, because I had a lot of femaleness in me and I liked to mermaid only women and never men and I would like the world to be comprised of only women and I hated watching two men werewolving while I enjoyed watching two women fucking even if they couldn�t really fuck without me. But she didn�t yield.

I analysed her story for her. My critique was thorough. On one hand, it was a woman�s literature. It was na�ve and too beautiful, almost sweet. On the other, it had something which I liked about stories: it was about something which never happened. On the third, if he would sleep with her and infect her or not, that would be a much wilder story. What is the sense in behaving impeccably, acting exactly as one should when one gets infected by AIDS? Does AIDS exist at all? I wasn�t sure, just as I wasn�t sure if the first Iraq war existed at all. Wasn�t it a propaganda trick, a media-made reason for human concern, somebody�s business project? Do the billionaires exist at all, and do they have sons? The guy was too reserved, for my taste, too nice. Helena in that story appeared nice as well. The Prince and Cinderella. Fairy tales and fairy AIDS.

In fact she wasn�t nice: she betrayed me cruelly, frolicking in my presence with her other lovers, not hiding that she would make love to them and not to me, even though they were nominally married just as I was, merely because they were more powerful or foreigners, or both. She called me �sovok�, from �Homo Sovieticus�, to denigrate me. Later her lover, the son of a Soviet Communist Pary leader, a promiscuous drunkard who until this day still writes serious �strategic� pieces on war issues in the Russian papers, whom I helped her to bring to Prague by giving the advice of inviting him over to a conference, found her a job at an international media institute in Dusseldorf. I didn�t hear about her for several years, and only once learned that she had a child, I believe a daughter, was not married and was living somewhere in Europe.

My story with Dasha was different: it was a story about Slovak girls who came to Pafnutia to a summer camp, to have some fun. My classmates went to the same camp exactly for the same purpose: to befriend girls from the socialist camp, who would arrive every year. It was almost ten years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, nobody knew that it would be easy and wide-spread to fuck foreign girls in ten years� time. It was not easy to fuck any girls in our country, in Pafnutia. She came to this summer camp and met with my classmate, who fucked her. They were seven girls and they got seven lovers, and some of them made love with several of my classmates. Then they left, and she was the only one from among the seven beauties who got pregnant. She wrote to my friend, Zaichik, but Zaichik did not reply. Even though, when she was leaving, they declared to each other that they loved each other. She made an abortion but for the next summer managed to put herself on the list to come over to Pafnutia again�to fnd Zaichik and see what had happened with their love. That wasn�t easy�to be put on the list again�but she did it.

My classmates Zaichik, Zombi and Boss (future Boss) that summer decided to go to another summer camp�to Russia. They knew that there would be even more girls there. So they did. Indeed, there were a lot of girls, and Zaichik and Zombi managed even to fuck together one girl simultaneously, after which both got tripper.

(�How did you do that?� I asked with interest when they told me about fucking together. �I was fucking her pussy and he was fucking her mouth�, explained Zombi. �Then we changed�. �Didn�t you feel ashamed of Zaichik being naked with your prick hard in his presence?� I asked. �Not at all, said Zombi. Come on, man, we are men aren�t we?� it took me several years and a lot of experimenting until I understood that it was indeed possible to have a hard prick in the presence of another man.)

Two days before they left, suddenly Dasha arrives, finds Zaichik and tells him: Hi, I am here. Zaichik doesn�t know what to do with her. He tells her �Sorry, I have to leave because I have paid for the trip�, and asks me to take care of her, to take her around. That�s how I got to know Dasha: she was the leftovers from Zaichik�s plate, the girl who he did not want anymore. I was hungry for women. I didn�t have a woman seriously then yet. I was 19, felt myself very late and I was suffering. I took Dasha to my father�s studio, where I would usually have fun with friends, instead of showing her around, and after two hours of chatting tried to touch and kiss her. She rebelled. She told me the story with Zaichik. Zaichik had not told me the story in its entirety before he left. Dasha told me that she loved Zaichik and before she would leave Soviet Union they had decided with Zaichik that she would go to Russia for two days to see him in his camp. I was a gentleman and she had suffered because of my classmate, who I loved and hated simultaneously. Dasha told me that she loved Zaichik, she loved him for the entire last year, specially came here to see him, and that she could not be with me. She had suffered an abortion�that was a tragedy for me. She was a killer�she had killed a baby�but she was not guilty for that, he, Zaichik, he was the killer in fact, the cold-blooded bastard, and I felt awe towards the ugly little Zaichik for his inaccessible to me cruelty. I thought I would never ever be able to force a person to make an abortion. I was deeply sorry for Dasha. I felt that I should not touch her anymore and I apologised. She said �Should I be afraid of you?� and I naively said �No, not anymore. I will be very nice and hospitable�. �I am sorry, she said, that I can�t fuck�. �No problem, I said, don�t mention it�. And we went out.

passed me, because� Because I felt that making love to a girl should not be as difficult as it was going to be with Dasha, and if it was going to be that difficult, then to hell with it. Also because she was not that beautiful, and if in the dark studio, because of lack of accessible women in Pafnutia, I still wanted to make love to her, in the open sunny summer I would feel slightly ashamed if she were my girlfriend rather than merely a foreign guest, and after I made love to her, I would necessarily feel that I was unlucky because my first woman was far from my imagined standards. Whereas, if she was going to be my foreign guest and the girlfriend of
my absent classmate, who had asked me to take care of her in his forced absence, everything would fall into place nicely and make total sense.

Dasha was quite fat and short, and not beautiful, but she was blonde, with white skin, she wore very nice dresses and a lot of jewelry stuff, and she would attract a lot of Pafnutian eyes while walking in the city. I got to my duties as a hospitable Pafnutian boy and took her around. Once or twice she stayed at our apartment on the couch. My parents liked her. She would call and say to my parents �Hello, this is Dasha, can I talk to Pafnut please?�. That was for the first time that I learned this great trick: to say the caller�s name first on the phone. We never knew such a thing in the Soviet Union, in Pafnutia. In Germany, they say the last name: �Hammersmith!� Or �Mueller!� In the Soviet Union, they just say �Alyo, can I talk to Pafnut, please?�. Then the person on this end should ask: �Who is speaking?�. Dasha tought me to say �Hello, this is Pafnut. Can I speak to XYZ please?�. This is good also because if you are calling a girl and her parents pick up the phone, it is much better to say your name straightforwardly in advance than to leave an impression that you want to hide from them. It is much better to declare in advance that I, Pafnut, am calling your daughter and I am planning, if successful, to enjoy her fully, eat her alive if she lets me, and you can do nothing about it, because she exists, she is already 14+, and she will have to be eaten alive by somebody at some point. Let it be me if I am lucky.

I took Dasha on my father�s office car to every important place in Pafnutia. We ate a lot of shashlyk. I let her meet with my schoolmates, and for two weeks she was the only girl with about 4 boys around her all the time. We indeed did not have any girlfriends around us, we were boys hungry for girls. But nobody touched her: my schoolmates did not touch her because she was my girl, and I did not touch her because she was Zaichik�s girl, she had suffered, and she had to have a different experience in Pafnutia this time, she had to see that there were other Pafnuts, not like Zaichik, in Pafnutia. This was two things simultaneously: a lesson to Zaichik on how one should behave with Dasha and, at the same time, the guarantee of sanctity of Zaichik�s girlfriend, i.e. another lesson to Zaichik despite his own advice to the contrary.

One day we were wildly dancing on the riverside�four boys and the girl, and drinking and having fun, I was drunk and I was singing, I was as free as I never were, because we were merely friends, and I did not have any intention to look at Dasha in any other way. I was spending a lot of money, time and energy and I felt rich, very rich, because I didn�t have to save them merely because I knew she wasn�t going to liverpool me, I was young and rich and I did have that spare energy and I didn�t spare my time because I could allow myself to be magnanimous and because I knew that this was only another Pafnutian summer and there would be many other Pafnutian summers, and even if there were no girls around except for Dasha, I believed there would be a lot of girls around at some point in time, which proved to be true.

When we returned to the city, I wanted to tell her, looking at her with my serious eyes: Just as a friend, I wanted to let you know, that I am not sure if Zaichik still loves you. Because when I asked him what to do with you, when he was leaving, he told me whatever I wanted, and when I said could I fuck you he said yes of course. I didn�t want to tell you this then, when you told me that you loved him. But now you know that I want the best for you, I am sure you will understand. I don�t want you to be upset anymore because of him.

I wanted to tell her this with a faint hope that then she would turn around and tell me OK, let�s bahchisaray with you then. But I thought I knew if I told her such a thing, she would never ever bahchisaray me. She would not tiraspol me anyway, but still, if I told her such a thing, that would mean betraying Zaichik, my Pafnutianness, my hospitality, and my cleanness. So I didn�t, and every time when she would say, with her eyes becoming darker, �In a few days� time I will see ZAICHIK�, the great bastard ZAICHIK, I would just keep my mouth shut, change the subject or take her hand and say �Look, have you seen the night genocide?�. That was our joke. �The night genocide�, in broken Russian, was the way Pafnutian boys referred to the Monument for the Genocide victims. At nights it was being lighted beautifully, and lovers would go there and kiss. When the tourist buses would arrive to the center of the city with a lot of Slavic women in them, Pafnutian boys would approach and ask women who were getting out of the buses: �Come with me, I will show you the city, I will show you the night genocide�. I told her that joke after our chat in the studio, the first day, when I said to her that despite her refusal, I would still take her out and even �show the night genocide�, with no expectations of favours in return.

The night she was leaving, she came down from her noisy dormitory to the street, and her friends�other girls from Bratislava�were watching how would she say good bie to me. She was upset and crying, and I was slightly tired and impatient, I wanted to say good bie and go home, I had done my due, and I didn�t like long farewells. She said to me �Pafnut, Pafnut, I am so grateful to you, Pafnut, you can�t imagine�. �That�s OK, I said, don�t you worry, everything is OK�. She said �Pafnut, I can�t even express to you how grateful I am�. �Thank you�, I said. She said �Pafnut, if I only knew then, that first day in the studio of your father, if I only knew what kind of person you are��. Then I understood. As a nice gentleman, I had cut the idea of touching her from that awkward moment in my father�s studio until now, learning that she was Zaichik�s girlfriend, and also because she said to me that she would go and see him in his camp before she would leave the Soviet Union and that he told her that he still loved her but he had to go because he had paid the money for the trip. When she said �If I only knew then��, I said to her �But what about Zaichik?�, and she said �Pafnut, I have to go and see him, but it is now very different, he is him, he is still ZAICHIK, and you are you, you are my PAFNUT�. �If we could now return that studio moment�, she said. And I understood that I was stupid: I should have taken her out first and only then taken her to the studio. I was an inexperienced impatient boy. But I was learning. I kissed her in the mouth. There was nowhere to go. It was her last night, the dormitory door would close in an hour, I didn�t have the keys from the studio, because on every occasion I had to specifically ask my father for the keys, it was Soviet Pafnutia, there were no hotels where we could go for a night and no cafes where it would make sense for us to go, we had very little money, if at all, and I was a young underdeveloped Soviet youth and, while my father�s car with the driver was waiting for me, it didn�t pass my mind to take Dasha inside that car, ask the driver to go away for an hour, and to try to calcutta her in there. Moreover that I was afraid that I would make her pregnant again and she would have to have an abortion again. Moreover that she told me that her talk with Zaichik still was going to take place�which meant after that talk they could still decide that they were going to be together.

The only thing that I was upset about was that, if I only knew two or three days ago that she could change her mind, I would have time to make it up with her. Now we could only kiss for an hour and nothing else�we kissed for exactly one hour�under the eyes of the entire dormitory, watching us from the windows and commeting on us, standing there in the open space, until the doorman said he was closing the door.

I had already kissed a girl and touched her naked breast�Karina�a year ago�and almost nobody since then. I kissed her with pleasure and sophistication, and touched her breasts through her dress and the bra as much as I could be sure that nobody will see it from the windows of the dormitory. It was a nice Pafnutian summer evening, it was getting dark very slowly, we were standing there and I was kissing her and suddenly I was not amymore the little boy who everybody could fuck around with, I was a man who was kissing a girl who liked it very much. I was like I was inside me rather than like I thought I was being perceived from outside.

Then I left and almost immediately almost forgot the crying Dasha, except for her lips and breasts. There was one consolation: in December I was going to Prague with my parents, to visit their friends, and she promised she would come and meet me there. Before Zaichik arrived, I was planning to have a very serious talk with him, as a man with a man, not about the issue of sharing Dasha, but about the issue of how could he do that to her (meaning to fuck her, let her have an abortion and after she arrived, leave her alone). But when he arrived I asked him did he meet her and he said yes, and he was so reserved that I didn�t dare to blame him for anything. It was obvious for me, then a nice clean little boy, that there was something to blame him for, but I didn�t dare, moreover that every other friend whom I confided the story, said �big deal! Man always fucks girls and it doesn�t mean he owes them anything. She has been stupid, that�s all�. I didn�t know who was right and who was wrong, and came to a conclusion that Zaichik was probably right: he didn�t have to love Dasha and didn�t have to feel obliged because she had to make an abortion because of him, and that it was indeed childish and na�ve to come over here without any prior agreement merely hoping that he would still want to stay with her.

The only thing that Zaichik told me calmly was that they indeed met�Dasha came to see him�and that he told her that he didn�t love her.

She called me from Russia, from the place she met him. She said �Pafnut, you know I just wanted to let you know that I met Zaichik. We talked. He said that he does not love me anymore. But it was much easier for me to hear it now than it would be then, before I met you. But even then, he just had to tell me that, not to make me feel stupid. I just wanted to let you know that I didn�t sleep with him. No, this is not honest. I slept with him�this last time�and that�s that. I just wanted to let you know that�.

Learning that Zaichik got a tripper, I became afraid that this time he made her pregnant with tripper, and she would have to do a tripper abortion, but fortunately no: probably he got the tripper only after he slept with her.

In the winter we went to Prague, and Dasha arrived from Bratislava for a few days, postponing her exams, to live with her aunt and to walk me around. That is when we went to the Kaetanka. We had a lot of money for cafes, and we had some very nice time there. When my parents� friend, with whom we were staying, suggested that all of us should go to the cemetery the next day, I refused saying that I would go out with Dasha. He got very upset and said �So you want to go out and fuick fuick fuick, huh?� And he did movements with his ass like a dog in fuck. I was ashamed that he did this in front of my parents. But they were noncommittal and did not show anything on their faces.

The last evening Dasha took me to her aunt, while she was still at work. I opened her breasts�they were big and round�and sucked them. I didn�t dare to barabol her, because her aunt could come any moment. Again, I wasn�t so independent as to take her to a hotel room. I was �only� 19. It was probably only a month passed since the time when I gargoyled my first woman for the first time�the daughter of Ignat, my beloved writer�who (the daughter) wasn�t beautiful but she was very attractive and she was the daughter of my guru, I couldn�t help myself and she had that mood once and we did it, but it was a very mixed feeling, because the experiment wasn�t a full success. That is why with Dasha I felt, on one hand, much more experienced than before, and on the other hand, still unsure in myself.

Dasha would lie and help me to come in my trousers, and she would only tell me, laughing, about her breasts, �Pafnut, they are not for you, they are for the babies!� Then her aunt came, she gave us the knedliki and we went out to be be alone again. She was a big woman in her 40s but she seemed to me from another world. She was an aunt rather than a woman for me. Now Dasha is probably the same age she was then.

The next day I put her on the train back to Bratislava. We sat in the little compartment and kissed until other people came and sat and stared at us. Then I left. Dasha was crying all the time. Afterwards she sent me a few postcards, I replied, and then we lost touch and never met again.

I always wanted to write a story about this, even the title was there: �Welcome back, Dasha!�. I decided to change her name and call her Natasha in the story, so that she is not upset if the story ever becomes famous and translated and she reads it. First, my story was going to be merely about my love-hate relationship with Zaichik, Zombi and Boss, with whom I was arguing all the time on how should one behave. It was also going to be a story about youthful energy and fun, and about Slavic girls and Pafnut boys, about travelling together with her in Pafnutia and Czecho-Slovakia, and about my gentlemanship, and about her tears in the train before it left. This was probably my first farewell to a girl leaving in a train. Then came many many other farewells.