The Russian Wife

When we came back from Sardinia... well, nothing more happened. I mean, nothing noticeable, for a while. A normal life. Really, nothing despicable, just normal. He worked, I took care of the house.

It was not heavy, for me: I had wanted it. Before we arrived in Italy, he had suggested me to find a job, and not as anyone. He had some relatives at the university, I could have worked in the political sciences faculty, or at the "languages" faculty, that is more or less the Italian version of the "faculty of philological sciences" in Russia. Not exactly as a professor, my graduation had no value in Italy, and it took time to get a title to teach. I could become an assistant: "lector", something alike. A good job, for me.

"You have studied for that: to teach, or however to work in a university. The university of Florence is good, though it's not the MGU. If you want, if I can help you... why not?"

But I did not want to work "on two fronts". I knew, he could help me at home, but that was my turf, my duty assignment. He had his job outside, to "kill the dragons", to take the money home. I had my job at home. And on the other hand, many of my girlfriends dreamed to have the chance to be just "domkosyàiki", housewives. I could be just it. Why not?

Every now and then he asked me, whether I had changed my mind. The day he had offered me that "lifeboat", in case I wanted to leave the Titanic, he had that in mind: I could even get that work at the university, for not to live just of his alimony.

But I did not feel myself on a Titanic, neither then nor never. We loved each other, we needed each other. It's true, "ot chumi i ot turmi nè sarekàisya", about plague and jail, never say "it can't happen". "Brown stuff" CAN happen, always. But you have to face the problems "po poryàdku postuplènya", as they occur. Don't figure them out all together, all that can go wrong, or you can't live anymore. As the Italian saying goes: never bandage your head before you get it broken...

So we met our problems as they occurred. He, on the job, me, at home. I worked, read, watched TV and VCR, and began to use the Internet, when it commoditized. And every time I could, I walked around, alone or with my man. We walked with each other, talked with each other, fought with each other, appeased with each other, made love with each other. Normally.

What was wrong?

No, it was not the "nostàlgia". I did not feel I had lost my country. I had my parents no more, but I had my friends, in Russia. We wrote to each other, we phoned each other, we started to exchange e-mails, and they invited us, we invited them... And in Florence there was the "obshìna" of the church, "Bàtyushka" and "Màtyushka", and my man who spoke Russian with me... That is, yes, I was living "na chujbìne", in a foreign land, but not so much...

And I kept hearing about Russia on TV, to read about Russia on the papers... "Do bòli", till the pain, till I couldn't take it anymore... Even our friends, our Italian friends, asked us about it, they wanted to understand, what the heck was going on over there, they asked me what I thought about it.

And what "the heck" could I say? Me too was confused, discouraged... As Chinese said, "may you be damned to live in interesting times". And the 90es, in Russia, were really "interesting". Even too much... The end of the USSR, which was a feast almost for nobody, then the shelling of the Parliament in 1993, then the first Chechen war in the following years, then the "default" in 1998...

And this, with many other bad surprises (crime, etc.) was "the democracy" for everyone to see, to taste and to live. No wonder if that word became a weird pun: "derhmòcracy" (let's say "brown stuff" has something to do with it... yes, yes, you got the picture...).

My father had nailed it: new "troubled times", no "Marshall plan", all the other way, just "advices" (supplied by Harward-graduated "advisors", of course) which seemed purposely made to destroy and colonize the country ("fragment and put under tutelage" it, as someone had said... Mr Brzezinsky, you know...).

And Russian "democrats" and "liberals" took those "advices" at face value, as if they were Gospel, and they implemented them with their eyes wide shut, at the cost of putting the REAL democracy under foot, as they did with the Parliament... That's why someone called them "bolshevik liberals"... It was not easy to make people long for USSR, but they made it: honor is due!

No, it was not just ME who started longing for the USSR. It was a slow process, and I saw it among my friends. When I left Moscow, they all, as all the young Russians or thereabouts were "liberals", "democrats", or however loved America, the West and everything. But year after year, their number got fewer... Someday no one would have left at all...

I'm not saying that my friends got killed or jailed or the like. Thank God, all of them grew old in good health. They simply stopped being "liberals", or the like. I saw this change in their letters, in their e-mails, or when we met each other, either in Moscow or in Florence. Sure, they did not want to come back to Communism: they knew what it was. But, they disliked what was happening too. They wanted Russia to be integrated in the West (say, associated in the European Union), not to be still "contained", lectured and disregarded in its own interests by the West, as if the Country had been militarily defeated and occupied (and it was not).

In a nutshell, they felt as if they had been fooled around. My father said that the "West" (he meaned the United States) fought not only and not so much against Communism, but against Russia. And now they were afraid that he was right. But they have supported "Gorby", and then Eltsin, to be treated by the "West" as partners, not as defeated enemies, or even worse, as aborigens to be converted. And now they felt treated that way. No man likes that sensation. Even less, a Russian man. Or a Russian woman...

And no: all of this was not happening "because of Putin". Putin came later, a few years later. Mostly, because of this.

I was sad to see all those fine young men (and women) so disillusioned, and even angry. Most of all, angry against themselves, against what they saw as their own "naìveté", in the past years. At least, I was out of that mess. And not even alone, thanks to my father, and my man...

No, it was not even the defects of my man. You know, the end of the honeymoon effect, and so on... Yes, my man was not the Perfect Being, he could be nervous, worried for his job, besides for me, tired, sometimes careless, even lazy, and most of all, "bearish". His little Sardinian heritage, I could say, after our trip down there. Even our friends were not so effusive, with the strangers. And not so talkative too...

But he was my man, the man I had married, with my eyes wide open, after having thought about it and tested him for months. And the man I would have surely married again, and again, and again, and again, and again...

Yes, he was my penance. And I was his own. I, so emotional, headstrong, potentially jealous to the bitter end, to the point of killing someone... And God knows how many other defects could he find in me. And maybe he had found them, already...

And how sweet it was, sometimes, that penance...

Yes, I too was "sweet" for him. When I cooked what I knew he liked, when I let him play with my body... And it was really "play". I laughed when my girlfriends said that "sex" for men was just to poke THEIR sex in OUR sex... "Sùnul, vìnul I pashòl", get in, get out and get away, "Vlam, Bam, merci madam"... It could be this and nothing more, for you, but not for me... That's what I thought. I did not say it, not too explicit. It would have been as to "shoot on the Red Cross", so to speak...

Our fights? So what? My mother and my father fought with each other like us, and even more. And my mother told me, when she was sure we were alone, that if I would have ever found a man like my father (almost "nepyùshi", first of all), I would have been damn lucky. And I had found a man like my father. Of course, beside his habit to have a beer whenever he could...

But, I don't know why, he never had got the "beer lover's belly". And his beer-flavoured kisses were so... manly...

No, it was not even the child. I had overcome the sorrow, the shock and everything, I got used to the idea. Yes, maybe I would have been happy with him, but maybe not. "V mìre nièt schàsti", there is no happiness in the world, and if it is, it's always where we are not... There are the serenity and the freedom. I was serene, and regarding freedom... I had done all I had done freely: married my man, followed him... And I would have done the same again, I would not have changed anything.

And I did not change my mind about the child. As in that old song, "Five miles out": "don't take that dive again"...

Bàtyushka was not agreed: he tried to get me to have another child. He knew many women who had waited too long, and then repented not to have had a child. And on the other hand, for the Church, the children were one of the purposes of marriage. Not the only one, but one of them. "Chadoròdie"...

I respected Bàtyushka, he was the best man I ever knew, after my father and my man. And I knew that, since I had joined the Church, then I had to "follow the line", as we said once, right, in another context. And "the line" suggested to have children. Not "ordered": suggested...

But my fear had not passed by. And Bàtyushka was too smart to say something stupid like "if you fall from a horse, you have to mount him again on the spot, or never more". A horse is a thing, but a childbirth is another...

And he respected my fear. There were people who were scared to take the Communion, the way we use to take it: bread and wine, a piece of bread in a bit of wine, taken with a spoon, the same spoon for many persons. Yes, it was not the maximum as for hygiene, maybe... But I trusted in God, and in my immune system. Very serious. My aunt, the war nurse, had told me that my white cells were like "T34"s. And "T34" was a tank. A serious tank...

So Bàtyushka knew I was not so coward. I had just experienced what I was scared by. To overcome that fear was only up to me. Nobody could force me to do it. And he never forced me.

On a sunday, he came to me after the service and asked me something he thought could help me to overcome my fears, maybe. Since I did not have to work, and was one of the very few who had this luck, then he proposed me to do something for the "obshìna": to become what the Germans called a "Morgenmutter", a "mother of the morning". That is, to take care of the children of the other women, at my house, if and when it was necessary. Yes, "Màtyushka" did what she could, but she had her son and her daughter to take care of already.

My man was there with me, and he did not raise objections, except one: the kids could not be too many. "Three is a company, four is a crowd" he said. Bàtyushka agreed.

And the children came. They were polite, not too much perky, and never created serious problems. Once came two twins, two little girls, and there were two kids already, but that was nothing bad: there's no two without three, and the fourth has to be...

I was happy to take care of them: I felt, so I was useful to the other people. I showed them some of our videocassettes, many of them from Russia, cartoons and some movies, so I could teach them to love Russia, as my father would have liked I did with my sons and daughters. And it was funny to hear them call me "tyòtya Sashka", aunt Sashka... It was a respectful way to address adult persons, nothing that could make me feel old, or the like.

And, being with them, I felt not so alone, when my man was not at home.

Alas, they did not help me to silence all my fears. Or maybe, all the other way, it helped me to calm my maternal instinct. I had all those children to care for, no matter if they were not mine, blood of my blood: the needed me, and they made me feel so good. And tired, sometimes, at the end of the day...

Anyway, once I tried to "follow the line". I told my man I wanted to stop taking the pill, to try to have a child. I told him I thought it was the right thing. He did not try to change my mind: I was risking, I decided. He just told me to do it all under medical control, pills are not toffees, and hormones are not toys... So I did as my gyn told me to do. And for a month, more or less, I made love with my man, "rough", without any precaution.

But when my "period" came again, I was happy I was not pregnant... I thought of Abraham, when they told him to let alone Isaak and take that ram caught in the groove. The Bible, you know... And I too took it as a sign: I had passed the ordeal, no need to risk my life in the hospital again. I asked my man, whether he wanted to try to have a son again, for another month, but he told me "no": it was not necessary. You risk, you decide. Another proof of love.

I kissed him, and decided: no...

So, it was not "nostàlgia", nor my man, nor the regret for my child... And let alone our relation. We live together well, I had created a house as I loved, and it was fine to live there, to stay there, alone or with my man. And I was proud, of all of that. Yes, a man can take care of a house. But, a house in the hands of a man is a "kelh", a monk's cell, in the best case, If not, a "blindàge", a trench, ideally furnished with sandbags on the walls, barbed wire and machine guns in the windows, and crates of ammunitions everywhere: a refuge from the hostile world, "Charlie can be everywhere in that jungle". Or just a den, a pure and simple lair: disordered, dusty, hardly livable, a place to sleep and eat... and nothing else.

If my man loved me even because I allowed him to avoid all of the above, well, nothing bad. On the other hand, he saw our home as a "blindage", but better furnished. And I consider it the same way...

Maybe I was disillusioned by "the West"?

Impossible: if you have no delusions, you can't be disillusioned, and I had not. He had wanted so, and he was right. Besides the breadlines, it was all the same, and in some parts, even worse, maybe... The "freedom"? Not so much more than what we had under Gorbachev: we too could openly contest the government, there were the elections... Maybe in Italy they were more "democratic" than those first clumsy experiments in Russia, but it was nothing so special. I always heard people say: "No matter who you vote for, they are all the same... "... Every way you look at this, you lose...

Yes, the breadlines, until they disappeared, in Russia, were the only big difference, in the dayly life. I recalled that old joke: "the West is just like us: with the Western currency, you find all"... And what my man said, about it: "the hard point is to have enough Western currency, here and there"... Well, it was right. We had enough "currency", but many people had not, and they lived quite badly. Even worse than many people in Russia. And even this was not a surprise...

What was the rub, then?

It was "Toska". No, not the lyric opera "Tosca": it sounds like "taskà", the accent on the last vowel. "Taskà", or "khandrà", or something alike, let's say "spleen", maybe...

No, it was not simply "boredom", and however, my man was not "boring". He asked me about that, one night. He had come home and had found me, quite drunken. It had never happened before, but that day "taskà" had been too strong... Vodka, of course, "por hacer patria", as the Spanish say...

He did not preach at all. He just asked me, how many glasses I had drunk.

"And is it your business?" I answered, just as a "huliganka", a wayward girl.

"It is." He said. Then he filled my same glass and drank in one draft.

"No..." I said. I was expecting everything, a fight, a pounding, but not that...

"More than this?" he asked. I did not answer, and he did it again: glass filled, down by his troath, another question. "More than this?". Another glassful, another draft, another question: "More than this?"

"Please, don't do that..." I begged him, my voice marred by alcohol. "Don't do that to yourself!"

He put down the glass, propped himself on the table, his arms stretched out.

"Then tell me what's the buzz. What's wrong..."

Poor boy, I thought. He had drunk a bit, only "za kràbrost", to get courage, He thinks I will tell him that I love another man, that I'm tired of living here with him, or of living at all... No, no, none of the above... I downcasted my eyes.

"Taskà... Tòlko taskà..." I said. Only "taskà".

""Taskà" or "skùka"?" he asked. I looked at him.

"What do you mean?"

"If is "taskà", then you are just in a bad mood. If it's "skuka", then it's my fault. I'm "skùchny"..."

I snorted, shaking my head. No, he was not at all "skuchny", boring... Or at least, he did all he could for not to be it. If I just asked, he played his guitar for me: nice songs in English or French or Italian and of course in Russian language. And we even travelled a lot, throughout all Europe, and he was the best guide I could ask: he knew the story of many countries, and always something funny for all of them... What boredom?

What else could he do? To be my clown, maybe? Red nose, laughter therapy? He did it too, every now and then...

I opened my arms, smiled to him. "You're my "neskùchny mush"!" I said. smiling. "Neskuchny", literally, means "not boring", but also "enjoyable", and to some extent, "magic". My enjoyable, magic husband...

He snorted, reassured, came to me and raised me from from the chair.

"Do you want some beer?"

"What?" I said, letting my arms drop.

"I've heard that in Russia, when someone is a bit drunk with Vodka, they give him a beer or two, to sober up. We usually use coffee without sugar, but, country you go..."

"No, no... The beer is for the morning after... You know, you must follow the rules... "Pokhmèlye shtùka tònkaya"!" I smiled. Booze is a delicate matter... He snorted again and caressed my head. I put a check on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry," I said, "I did not cook anything..."

"I'm not so hungry. I'll fetch myself a French toast, later." he answered. I nodded. "Then now I better put you to bed, right?"

"Yà kochù tanzevàt!" I stated, pulling my head back and looking at him. I want to dance!

He started turning around, holding me tight, so I didn't fall, singing a Russian tango: "Niè govorìte mniè "proshài", niè govorìte... "... Don't tell me "goodbye"... And I felt is Vodka-flavoured breath, as if we were not in our cozy house, but in an ill-famed "kabàk"... And I was a woman like those whose stories are talked in the songs they play in the "kabakì", the "blàtnye pièsny", the songs of the underworld... A woman doomed to a very bad end, killed by his man, or in order to defend his man...

Always "dancing" (I COULD NOT dance, I just let him hold me tight), he carried me to the bed, lay me down and started undressing me. Maybe he just wanted to help me to undress and then to wear the paijamas, but I thought he wanted to take me, when he took off my bra, and looked ny breats. And to think about it and to offer myself to him was a single thing... Yes, I was REALLY drunk!

"Trakhnùi menyà, davày!" I mumbled.

"No. No "trakhànie", today." he said.

"Why? Do you want to punish me because I'm so drunk? You don't like me so?" I told with a sad face.

"I like you always. But when I bone a girl, I want her to realize what is happening..."

"But I can realize!" I whined... He snorted.

"The way you are, either you feel bad, or you will fall asleep..."

"You can bone me while I sleep!" I said, trying to have the tone of a queen who allows something to a subject. You have my royal permission! He just smiled.