We married with a civil ceremony because this was the only valid marriage, which could be registered at the Italian consular offices. My mother would have liked that we had a church ceremony too. Orthodox church, of course. The atheism of State was becoming history, and however, my mother had me baptized, when I was born (in a hush-hush way, of course, but with the consent of my father). It was quite a common use.
So the only problem was him. Or at least, I thought it was a problem, for him, to change religion. I knew that he had been baptized a Roman Catholic, as most of the Italians. But when I talk with him, about that, and I was very worried about his reaction, he looked at me, surprised of my awkwardness, and just said: "Is that all?"
Indeed, it was not all. Strangely, to arrange a religious marriage between an Orthodox girl and a man more than willing to become Orthodox, for her, was harder than to arrange a legal marriage between a Russian girl and a foreigner, from a supposedly hostile country. The State put few or no hurdles on this road, but it was not easy at all, all the same.
Nobody cared too much of these problems. We were married enough, for all the practical issues. I felt more than legitimate to make love with my man. And for the rest, we thought, we had all the time of the world.
Not all of us had all that time. Some months after our marriage, my father left for Heaven without warning. Really without warning. He died during the night, while he slept. And then my mother left too. Maybe she simply did not take it: she let herself go. They did not manage to die the same day, but they almost made it.
Of course, I was destroyed. When life hits you below the belt that way, you can have all the Russian-Asian-fatalism you want, you suffer all the same. And I was suffering as a dog without his master. They had been my world, till then. My man had entered my world, with respect, and he was welcome, but he was not ALL my world. Not yet.
I swear. If I had been on me own, all alone in the world, I would have commit... say it "a crap"...
And my man had his problems for to prevent me from doing it. He took all the day-offs he could for not to leave me alone. He learned to cook and to look after the house, because I could hardly do it.
And the night, for six months in a row... well, nothing.
"Bedolàga", poor beggar (as Kipling said): It was as if he had a daughter, not a wife. A little, traumatized daughter. At night, I laid on him, he hugged me, and we talked, talked, talked, talked... Till we fell into slumber (and I don't know how he managed not to fall into slumber first). And he talked to me like a Papa Bear. Wise, calm, the right words, in the right tone... And I liked it, I felt a bit better: loved, safe, protected... Did you say "regression"? Well, then I NEEDED to regress. Yes, I WANTED to REGRESS! Regress... Regress...
"Have you ever thought to become a priest?" I asked him, in one of those long, long talks.
"Why? Am I so good at talking about these kind of things?"
"Yes. You don't pretend you can explain them, but... You make them look less bad, less senseless... Almost bearable, acceptable... " I looked at him. "You could have been a good priest, really."
"Well... Maybe if I were born in an Orthodox country... and If I had found a "Màtyushka" like you..."
"Màtyushka": the wife of the "Bàtyushka", the ordinary Orthodox priest... I got his point, and smiled.
"So you did not become a priest because you wanted a woman? Because Catholic priests cannot..."
"Right on target!" he confirmed, nodding. "And I'm not the only one!"
"Do you think celibacy is against nature?"
"Well, not against nature, but... You know, you renounce to something that God gave to you: your sexuality. It's a bit like to jump with the parachute from a plane which is perfectly working. I know, there are people who do it, even as a profession... "Desàntniky", and airborne firemen too, here in Russia... But it's not so "normal", right? It's good for a... "corps d'Elìte", not for a whole army... It was not good for me, that's all. "Know your limits"!"
"Well, then... it must be very hard for you... All these months, without..." I looked at him. "Isn't it?"
"To have a women is not good just for "that"!" he snorted.
"And for what else?"
He hugged me stronger. I felt more his heat, his strength. Feelings I had almost forgotten. And he too was feeling my body more. My soft body, maybe my heartbeat too...
"That, for example... Do you think I could feel what I'm feeling now, if I were a Catholic priest? Hell no!"
"And what are you feeling?" I asked.
"Softness... Sweetness... The intimacy of a woman... The glance of a woman's eyes... A woman's skin under my hands... The smell of a woman... the heat of a woman... Even the sweat of a woman... I couldn't live without that... " he smiled. I was perplexed. All nice things, but...
"And is it enough for you? Is it so important?"
""Beati monoculi in terra caecorum"!" he shrugged. "Blessed the one-eyeds in the land of blinds... And there's a lot of "blinds", out there..."
I got the point. "Blinds", men without women.
"And you don't want to be "blind", right?" I asked. He shook is head no.
"Not even for the Heavenly Kingdom..."
Slowly, gradually, the emergency phase went away, and he could come back to work. He had lost almost all the vacations he was entitled to. And I knew that. He said it was nothing, "Moscow is nice in Summer". We both knew that Moscow in summer is definitely hot: maybe it's the worst season to see it. But I had no will to disagree with him...
We started to go around again, on Sunday or whenever we could, wherever the "mitrò" could lead. A habit we never lost, going around, even in Italy. We liked to go to Ismailovsky park: more than a park, a small wood, a forest just a bit "civilized" here and there. You arrive at the station of Ismailovo, and you see only trees, on the right-hand side of th wagon, if you come from the center. And then, a pair of stairway, up and down, you enter the wood, and there is no more concrete, for kilometers.
Gorky park was closer to where I lived, it's not too bad, but it's another deal: too much in the center, too much "official", starting from the entrance on, too much people, too much monuments, too much noise, inside and even more outside.
Compared to that, Ismailovsky park was a piece of "taigà"... You could walk for hours, on your own, wherever you liked, you could find little squirrels, or small lakes and ponds full of ducks... And we walked, and talked... We were like a "medsestrà", a nurse, and a veteran, in some field hospital, during the war... somewhere between Moscow and Berlin...
But the "veteran", the "rànenny frontòvik", the wounded from the front was not him: it was me. I had the battle stress, the PTSD, I had "seen the elephants", I had gone to the hell and back. Now I was recovering: to walk, to chat, to enjoy the trees, the birds, the sky, the sunshine, the good days, the fly of a white butterfly, seemed to me almost a miracle. Yes, my parents were dead, as our song says, "they didn't come back from the battle". But I was alive, and the life went on, and it was nice, and I had to live it. That was what they would have wanted me to do. Not to mourn: to live. to enjoy life, for them too. Because they could not...
And with a man like my man, close to me... Why not to live? There's always time to die...
