“The lesser of two evils is still evil.”
King Solomon
The major problem for me was not the voyage itself, but arranging my plans with my parents. I knew one thing for sure — not for love or money, or any other thing of value, would they have let me travel solo through the Siberian forests. One day, I decided to talk to my father about my journey. I started vaguely, telling him a story about a brave man, who had, all alone, crossed the arctic desert somewhere in Canada. When I finished, my father turned to me and said, “What a fool. I hope you’ll never do something like that son, will you?” He had a clever, keen mind, my father. I left his room wondering whom the word “fool” was referring to.
For all that, I couldn’t go for an overt lie. But perhaps, I could tell them a sort of half-truth, or let’s say, a half-lie. I spent long hours composing ambiguous phrases, something like, “Hey, folks. I’ll be absent for a while; my friends and I are gonna spend a few days in the forest!” It could have sounded true, except I hadn’t mentioned that we were going to spend that time separately. I tried to calm down my conscience, explaining to it that I wasn’t a little boy anymore; however, in my parents’ eyes, I still was. So I had to show the world who I was really meant to be, and so on. Finally, I succeeded to pass off my lie as a truth, but only because I mentioned the name of my friend Gleb. Our fathers had known each other for a long time. They weren’t close friends, but I knew that my father did call Gleb’s dad to confirm what I had told him. Then, it was done.
Again, it wasn’t a bold lie. At that particular time, Gleb and his old buddy Sergey were indeed planning a short escape to the bosom of nature. Talking about bosoms, they didn’t forget, of course, to invite their girlfriends.
A few days before the action, Sergey threw a little party in his apartment to talk about the details regarding our trip and have some fun. I was a new guy in their company, so Gleb introduced me shortly to his friends as a “prospective doctor.” All in all, I got a warm reception; as Gleb said later on, “It never hurts to have a good doc in your orbit.”
Gleb and Sergey were cool guys, tall, well-dressed, and handsome. Their girls were even more good-looking and well-dressed, and seemed to have no flaws. Unfortunately, I cannot recollect their names. Out of all those guys’ exterior merits, I had only one: I was reasonably tall. One could say that I was clever. The guys themselves would say I was clever. But who cares for your intellect at the age of seventeen?
Sergey’s parents held senior positions in the local merchant bureaucracy, which meant they belonged to the top level of the Soviet social strata. That evening, we were left to fend for ourselves in their big, richly furnished apartment in the center of the city, which we surely could do.
There was no popular habit of “eating out” in those times. An ordinary visit to a cafe was quite an event that might precede a breakthrough in relations. The food there, in general, wasn’t great; the prices were high, and you had to wait in a line outside. But, thanks to Sergey’s family, we were saved from that trouble. His parents had gone over to their country house, having left the fridge full of delicacies that you would never find in the dying Soviet shops; there was a good deal of alcohol too.
Sergey, however, wasn’t a spoiled brat, like many other young people of his ilk. He was an agile, attentive and well-mannered kid and treated us very nicely. He laid scrumptious meals on the living room table, which he modestly called “snacks.” With exclamations of delight, we took places around the table, and then suddenly, everybody stared at me as if I was Gonzo — a character from the Muppets show — who had tried to sneak onto Noah’s Ark without a proper mate. However, that problem was fixed in no time. After a compelling look from him, Sergey’s girl grabbed the phone and made a call. Soon, the doorbell rang. Those boys and girls were people of action and never beat around the bush.
It was Redhead — the sweetest thing I had ever seen. It’s all long-gone past now, but still, just for personal reasons, I would like to keep her real name private. She trotted in and smiled like a little girl who had just got some candy. Her dark red curly hair, bright green eyes and a cute oval face with divine cheeks and dimples enchanted me. Besides that she had a well-shaped figure with, as they say, all the curves in the right places. She wore a simple dark-green dress that fit her perfectly. As far as I could judge, she knew all of the present company but me. Gleb once again introduced me as a very clever guy and a hope of the future of medicine. He knew how to present things, that boy. Redhead gave me a radiant smile — she was really pleased to see me. I had never seen such a smile. A clever guy? A hope of medicine? Me? I felt over the moon, or even higher, and decided to confirm such a luxurious recommendation immediately.
I started to talk about late ancient Greek philosophers and their influence on… But nobody listened to me. My friends were eating and chatting cheerfully about everyday life and other simple things — things, not existential notions. So, I decided to go with the flow and ended up, like anyone connected to medicine, answering various, at times pretty explicit, questions. I fended them all off gracefully and earned their respect. And some more shiny smiles from Redhead.
By that time, we had cleaned our plates and moved on to discussing our, or rather their, journey. I have to mention that before we met at the party, I had told Gleb about my plans and asked him not to tell anyone before we reached the station where I meant to get off the train. Gleb was a practical guy who never wasted his time trying to treat other people’s ill brains. He stared at me for a moment, pondering, then wished me all the success and promised to keep my plans confidential. Then, he and Sergey retreated to the kitchen, apparently plotting something. Their girls moved quickly to Sergey’s vinyl collection, and I sailed to a small bookshelf in the corner. Redhead came over to me.
“Hi,” she said. “Are you really gonna be a doctor?”
I nodded.
“So…” she continued, “what do you like to do?”
I looked blankly at a couple of worn erotic novels on the bookshelf.
“You like reading books, do you?” she herself had found the answer.
I nodded again, but without much confidence. Then, there was a pause.
I opened my mouth to say something, but at that very moment, music burst out of the man-sized speakers that stood in the corners. “Freeze, I’m Ma Baker, put your hands in the air, gimme all your money!” It was Boney M — the mega-pop idol of the Soviet times. The music was deafeningly loud, and the girls started to dance to it. “She was the meanest cat, oh she was really tough, she left her husband flat, he wasn’t tough enough…” That was life!
Gleb and Sergey rushed back into the room, taking wide but unsteady strides, and started to dance too. The two girls went on a rampage, wildly twisting and shaking to Boney M’s beats. The boys were more careful — they had to stay on their feet and pretend to be sober. Gleb was smiling, carelessly shaking and waving his hands; Sergey performed something that fairly resembled Russian folk dance if it was being performed by a decommissioned robot. Redhead wasn’t anywhere in sight.
I found her in the kitchen. The light was switched off. The heady scent of spring oozed in from the slightly cracked window — the breath of young leaves that had just broken out of their buds. She stood in the dark and looked devotedly outside as if she had been told to do so, a gentle glow on her profile from the whitish street lights. At that moment, she looked different — pensive, even sad. I coughed. She turned to me. Through the dark, I couldn’t see her face, but I knew — she was smiling.
“Not feeling like dancing?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Me neither.”
“Why?” those were the first words I had spoken to her.
“I don’t go out much,” she laughed quietly.
“Why?” asked I, like a clockwork parrot.
“I’m a redhead,” she whispered. “Guys don’t like us.”
I frowned. But it was true. Red hair wasn’t that popular in Russia then; in those days, very few people had heard about Celts and their glorious history. There was even a proverb one would utter in case of an unfair accusation or an unexpected job he was supposed to do: “Why? Am I a redhead?” which roughly meant “Why? Am I the last bastard here?” But I loved my Redhead, and not only for the color of her hair. She looked sweet, naive, like someone who lived in her own world which, who knows, might have bordered mine.
“They’re wrong. Your hair is beautiful…” I paused. “You are beautiful.” Those words slipped away from the prison of my mind.
“Really?” she smiled warmly, the corner of her lips outlined by that neon-like glow. Now that my eyes had adapted to the darkness, I could clearly see her face — smooth, quiet, sculpted by the light sifting through the lace curtains.
“Yes,” I said and dared to stroke her hair gently. She came closer to me, her back military straight, and her hands resting on her thighs. We stood close to each other for a long moment.
“I’m cold,” she said finally, rubbed her shoulders, waited for my reaction, then returned slowly to the window and started to stare outside again.
I took my jacket off and put it cautiously on her shoulders. Still looking outside, she didn’t move. Perhaps it wasn’t what she had meant. We stood silently in the dark room. Very few people and even fewer cars were passing by on the desolate street. The lit windows of the apartment house on the opposite side of the road were fading away, one by one, like a broken light panel. Little pieces of life, nothing more than overgrown coral polyps separated by concrete walls, were going to bed. Should we follow that game? Live a small life in a small flat, bringing up children and hoping for a better lot for them?
I had to do something. I still felt her fresh, gentle breath clinging to my face, bewitching, making me mad. My heart was pounding like a broken piston engine. A sweet, amorous feeling was growing in my chest, a kind of vulnerability, and, at the same time, a great sense of power — the feeling people might call “love.” But at the same time, I felt miserable and inept, and couldn’t make out why. I felt unsure, as if she had taken me for someone else. Can a man simultaneously be in love and feel despondent? The Greek philosophers gave no answer.
I thought about our acquaintanceship. We hardly knew each other. But… Why should I care? The music had changed now. A sublime, soul-piercing melody drifted slowly across the big, dark apartment. It was Another Heart Breaks by the E.L.O. The guys were dancing with their girls, hanging on to them and snogging them passionately — I knew that. But we… we took no action. I took no action.
The music died out gradually and didn’t return. The silence was as tangible as my bored girl. Then I heard a gentile creaking sound as if a giant centipede was sneaking down the corridor. Suddenly, a switch clicked, electric light flooded the room, the door swung open, and the whole company broke in, laughing, screaming, hugging and kissing, and shouted out loud in one cheeky voice, “There you are!”
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