(dedicated to my husband)
I bought a ticket to London on that day. A very last minute decision! Well, I'm always doing this but this time it was a very-very last minute decision. I need to be on my friend performance. Don’t even have the time to check my visa properly, I rely on the visa centre advise that it will be OK like this. 'Risk it,' was my decision, which I usually do not make.
On the plane some man sits next to me. I was tired, without make up and not in any particular mood. I asked if he didn't mind if I kept his place, he didn't! (this is how he looses his first battle of many))
“I prayed you were English,” he told me later, “so we can stay in the same country.”
I prayed you were Russian - at least their wealthy, those who fly to London.
During the flight we are chatting about everything, including the kitchen sink (well, my personal life) I remember only his strong hands, green eyes and wide shoulders, where I put my head and get asleep after a meal. Strangely it feels very comfortable.
My stranger leaves the plane. We have a friendly hug, like people who have shared too much and will probably not see each other for the next few lives. Then this lucky guy, who was born in the right country, quickly passes the border and I stay before it. They do not like my visa and put me in a special room for 9 hours, like a criminal or something. I sit there reading a book, only once they do allow me to use my telephone. I get a message from the man in the plane, which surprise me. I expect just a polite message in a few days, in case he intends to visit Russia again and needs a friendly face.
In my little cosy Guantanamo are two guards – one old and one young. With the old one I become good friends. We chat for a long time. He brings me food, a pillow and apologizes for all the inconvenience. He can tell its a mistake and he is honoured to be a guard for a poet. He asks me to read something and to write later. The younger one looks at me with a dull light of desire in his eyes. He brings me a mobile phone with a text from the man in the plane. Nothing special, but for 9 hours it was the only nice news, so I was very surprised and I tell the young guy the full story. “Maybe it’s your destiny?” he replies – “And you have come all this way to just meet him?” I have a long silence cos like all Russians, I believe in destiny.
When I come back home my stranger from the plane starts to write me flattering letters. Overloaded with sugared compliments which I try to scroll down. Firstly, I don’t believe in words. Secondly, he saw me just once, so all this is just his imagination and loneliness and desire at being creative. Nothing to do with the real me. But I decide to keep in touch, for practical reason – brush-up my English and I also miss the Britishness, which was a big part of my life.
I try to resist. I don’t dream about anything or get too exited consciously. Been sceptical after many years in journalism and because after thirty your not enchanted with good qualities of a man, you try to figure out which of his bad ones you can contain.
Anyway, we chat almost everyday and it feels very comfy. Like with old friends. I share my fears, desire, plans and dreams.
But in general I don’t have any intention of falling in love or giving the wrong impression to this nice chap trying to seduce me with his literature ability’s.
His letters irritate me a bit, because I know quite well the price of words. Everything can look like a lie. Well all literature is a lie! It’s just if you have a talent it looks better than reality sometimes. But I don’t want to deceive myself. I cannot allow games any more.
I am in the middle of a crisis. For the first time I am trying to survive on my own and figured out what I really want in life. To be alone and honest with myself. I also decide to take a second job to get out of debt, being independent is not cheap.
After a few weeks I realise the new job is not for me at all, it takes too much time and hassle, and you need to love this thing, otherwise even money cannot make you happy. I also decide to make an effort with my literature career and go to the Paris book fair.
My skype friend notices I am overloaded with work, loneliness, looking after a baby and endless Russian winters, which drains all my immune strength. I become half of me. And then one day he suggest that we go on an island holiday together. Well, he manages to surprise me, I must admit, because its first time in my life somebody actually did it for me, not vise versa, with someone or through a press trip etc. I was very exited and start preparing. I buy a new outfit for hot weather and so on. But then a trip to China occurred and with a very muscovite method they take me by the throat, emailing and calling me twice a day so I don't have time to hesitate. I start making a visa application but then I realised I have no time to produce it, if I am away. So I need to tell him, it was hard, his sunny face immediately becomes cloudy and he just mumbles - I knew…
I think this is it, but strangely enough he decide to come to Moscow anyway! Just not to loose his visa and tickets, I presume. But I had no time to think about it, so I go to the last row of my winter obstacles. I get robbed on the street of my phone, which is like my second heart, and I need to move flat. I have so many things going on and this visit from UK on top of all that was SO not in time!! I don’t mind a romantic holiday in a hot climate, but entertain him in snowy-sluggish Moscow, which I hate to even look out of window for. With a baby. And work. Oh, nooo!
The day he arrives everything went wrong completely, I loose the key from my flat. Slept on the other side of Moscow. Missed the nursery. Have a talk with land lady. My new phone doesn’t work.
He is waiting for a few hours on the street. Horrible. Its not me, I am responsible and reliable. I feel even worse about everything. He cannot find a path, I have no time to even make me look better. So put cartoons on for my daughter and I am absolutely pissed off under the wet snow in this disgusting mood I come to collect him. But when I saw his serenity face, suddenly something touched my chest and I think - anyway even if everything totally wrong and this is upside down romantic, I need to make en effort for the sake of Russian hospitality, at least!
Marusya was in a capricious mood, I broke the window in that weather on top. We don’t have any plans of how to spend this holiday. It turns out in the end I need to organize the trip myself, again! Like always! Where’s a nice surprise? I need to take a holiday from work, which I don’t want cos I cannot use them later, if I need. Everything was not what I want!!
But I get a grip and I try to do something in Moscow first… It turns out quite nicely, surprisingly.
We go to a restaurant, a zoo and the planetarium. We buy food for home, wine and flowers. Read books to my daughter and have our favourite cheese & wine party at home. When your comfortable with someone life is such a better place.
He went well with my daughter and was a gentlemen, so I think I can survive a little trip to the sea with him.
In Crimea, which we chose (but it was out of season), we found a nice little hotel, then an even nicer one, and then … tension was growing. I don’t know how to behave cos I start to get use to him and notice different things I start to like, which was blocked from me under strong stress in Moscow. But he keeps telling me it hurts, and I don’t know? should I offer medical advice, or just be like a friend, or maybe buy a hijab to not disturb him.
We went on a mount walk, I still feel awkward and then he admits – this is it: there is thick ice between us and no chemistry whatsoever, there is not a reason to kid ourselves. I feel disappointed cos just started to get used to him and it was kind humiliating from the woman’s side of me, like I can not turn him on. But well, fair enough, friends is easier. Then we decide probably try one last farewell kiss or something, and then … we did it, tears flow down me, but the level of his passion and my reaction on it overwhelmed me.
I go to cry in the bathroom, realising it’s all my previous life and boyfriends screaming out of me. I feel so much rejection towards him, I want to immediately change my flight and go back to Moscow, but then … I decide to have a walk.
It was raining outside and the sea smells of oysters. Then the sun comes out and raindrops on the bushes leaves looks like precious necklaces, carelessly scattered by someone wasteful here and there. The sea coast was peaceful, just like Monte-Carlo bay but 10 times cheaper and exclusively for us. No people were around for miles. I start to collect flowers and gather the post soviet architectures, which look so mysterious without little pioneers. Then I catch the thought that I missed something. Well, somebody. I just want to show him this and that view and tell him I found a caf; near us so we can have a meal. Then I come back home and he’s left as well. I am sitting on the sofa bed and thinking what can be next. Good end for the bad story? Or the new beginning for the better ending? Guess what I choose?
When he come back with a guilty, unhappy and confused face, expecting me to be packing my bags, I come to him with a smile pointing to the flowers which I put already in the vase saying– let’s celebrate! What? He seems very surprised. What, what? We are officially kind of couple now. Look, I bring port and we have some cheese left. If you want I can even put an evening dress on for you. Yes, I want, he smiles. And then a new chapter of our happy future begins. We chat and laugh and feel comfortable together, like its usual.
We find a very nice restaurants, visit palaces and the weather becomes better - sea shore looks really like South of France. His erotic abilities surprise me even better, I feel like a real woman in the hands of a strong, caring and passionate man. It feels incredible!
But there’s a twist of course. My mind, which brilliantly produces anxiety and all sorts of fears never sleeps. I am like a Chinese box, when you open it, there’s a new box with surprises again and again. I have an insomnia, I often wake up early to sit and write. I wrote a little poem about him in English and few in Russian. I am fulfilled with the light of emotions we produced. Then I decide to download our pictures from his camera to my computer. I find some videos taken from his job. I look at one of them, then another, my mood drops down to the floor. The man on it wasn’t my amazing sleeping knight in the next room. It was ordinary and banal, typical bore British from a different universe. Even the sound of his voice was different. That’s not who I see in him: inspiring, reliable, clever and a kind man, who is strong and witty and so sexy. This is like a step into a parallel reality. God, it’s all just my imagination again! I was so disappointed and I understand it’s nothing to do with reality, there’s no possibility for us together, It will be better not to try.
I cannot find anything better to say, just to tell it to him straight away. He was very hurt and it’s so not positive in these circumstances, so I want to run away again. But then I realise I want to run from myself and it’s just an adjustment of our lives, trying to confuse us, trying to hide from us the real meaning of everything, trying to make us work on it. On ourselves. It’s the only way to develop – your arrogance, prejudice, old settings and so on.
I tell him all this when he is able to listen. He agrees and we become closer, on a deeper level. Not just like two nice people spending quality time together, not just like man and woman, but like two people whose destiny’s want them to be changed in the best possible way.
Since then I feel it’s our mutual secret and we trust each other on that level, and I am open to him to believe.
Everything else was divine! Every second of it. Nights, days, hugs, long chatting in the morning, quick champaign in the opera, sunlight in the plane, choosing treats in the duty free with our last money. We chose each other for a treat, we don’t really need anything else. Just feel near the person who is yours by mind and soul, who inspires you and makes you want to live.
Somehow the L word came out of me so easily, even though I swore I would never say it again, but it’s something bigger than me, or us, or everything. It’s just visited us and we should be very graceful, to everything nasty that happened before, to somebody who put our places in the plane together, to the future which is waiting for us just around the corner.