Chapter 4

A year passed. They never discussed their relationship or made any plans for the future, but gradually, Nina came to believe that Igor had always been there and always would be – how could it be otherwise? Besides weekends, Igor started coming over on weekdays. He was clearly in need of a home, and she liked having him about – washing and ironing his shirts, giving him massage for his beginning osteochondrosis, treating his colds. Gradually, his stuff accumulated in her apartment: toothbrush, razor, slippers, bathrobe, books. Then Igor brought a pair of trainers and a tracksuit – trying to lose weight, he was running every morning and would not break his routine when he stayed overnight at her place.

Imagining her future life with Igor, Nina tried to listen to the woman inside her. The woman kept silent, but rather in an approving way – she did not seem to mind.

It all ended on the very day of their anniversary. Preparing to celebrate, Nina made a special dinner and laid the table nicely for the occasion. She had a plan for that night – she was going to make Igor a proposal. Her idea was to sell her apartment so that then they could buy jointly a new one that was larger and located closer to work – a place for them to settle down together. She was sure that Igor would agree – she did not imagine what objections he could have against such a sensible scheme. Nina did not insist on getting married. According to Igor, he was not seeing his wife – the woman would not let him cross her threshold, not even in order to see his son, – but they were not formally divorced, and Nina did not mean to rush things. She was sure that everything was going to sort out with time.

On hearing her out, Igor remained silent for a while, and then spoke in a thick voice, with his head down. “Well, it’s just as well… It’s for the better, I guess. You see, I’ve been meaning to talk to you, too.”

Nina listened to him unable to grasp the meaning of what he was saying. It took her some time to realize that Igor with whom she had grown so close was going to leave her and was telling her so. “But why?” she cried out. From his confused explanations, it appeared that actually he had been seeing his wife all that time. According to Igor, it was all for the sake of his son. The boy was to go to school that year, and Igor wanted to be there for him – wanted his son to have a father.

Nina kept silent. Logically, she admitted that everything was fair – that she had no claim on Igor, and so she should accept his leaving with good grace – but she was paralyzed. Nobody had dumped her like that before, and she had not known how hurtful it was. When Igor had collected his things and was already standing in the doorway, he said something else. “Excuse me, but I don’t think it’s so very important to you. You don’t feel anything in bed, do you? … I can see it, I’m not an idiot. I’m not saying you’re frigid – maybe, you just need another man, I don’t know.” Nina thrust the door open furiously: “Go away!” And he did.

That night, Nina did not have a wink of sleep, agonizing over Igor’s treason and her own humiliation. For some time, her logical mind tried to reason with her, arguing that Igor had not made any promises to her and thus, had not betrayed her – that there was nothing especially humiliating to her in that whole story – but soon her logical mind had to shut up overridden by the wounded, indignant woman. Together with billions of other women on this planet, Nina delivered the verdict that all men were swine – and cursed the stupid skirt whom she had never met and who had managed to get her husband back in spite of all her flaws. To be sure, that skirt was not frigid, oh no. She was probably doing all sorts of dirty tricks in bed – everything that males, those lewd apes, were so crazy about. Nina, who had never uttered a bad word in her life, cursed the woman in the meanest possible expressions.

The next day Nina phoned in sick and then even wangled a two weeks’ leave. She could not imagine running into Igor at work.

It was her first proper leave since she had come to work in the company. For a young employee, she was drawing a good salary while spending very little, so she had some savings. Now she decided to treat herself to a grand vacation. Since she had never been abroad before, she went to the country that was visited by all those of her compatriots who managed to earn some spare cash – Turkey.

On her first day in Turkey, she got a terrible sunburn.

The trouble of making reservations and buying tickets had done her good – she had got distracted from her agonies of a rejected woman and by the time she arrived at the seaside, she was open to new impressions. She stayed in a large hotel – allegedly, a four-star one. One half of the guests were holiday-makers from Russia while the other half were Europeans, mostly Germans. Having dumped her bag in the hotel room, Nina ran off to the beach at once. The beach was occupied by the Russians, while the Germans disdained Nature and spent their time in a civilized way, by the swimming-pool. Nina was not impressed by the water – it struck her as too salty and not as clear as that in the Black Sea. Nevertheless, she enjoyed a good swim and then stretched herself on a chaise-longue. She felt free and independent.

All around her, there was the bustle of beach life going on – naked bodies, joyous screams and laughter, the tumbling of volley-ball players, and the romping of children. Nina made acquaintance with a married couple from Novokuznetsk. The husband had a business of his own – a small shop manufacturing cast-iron fences for private residencies. It was the couple’s second visit to Turkey, and they were planning to do Italy the next year. Apparently, the fences were in demand. Seeing Nina roast in the sun, her new acquaintances offered her sunblock lotion but she waved it away laughingly. “Not to worry! It’s nothing, I’ll be all right.” The sunshine did not seem very strong, the sky being overcast with a light haze and a cool breeze blowing from the sea.

Nina went to swim another couple of times, lolled about on her chaise-longue, and when she came back to her room, she was surprised to discover that she had spent a good four hours on the beach. Then nightmare began. Her skin turned tomato-red from head to toe, blisters sprang up, and it all hurt unbearably. She recalled that cologne was supposed to help, and that she had a bottle of it in her bag. She got the bottle out and poured the contents onto herself. It did not help any, but now she was stinking of a cheap hair-dresser’s. Sensitive to smells, Nina was suffering doubly.

She thought of another folk remedy – urine. It took her some time to pluck up her courage, but finally she dragged herself to the bathroom. The folk remedy did not help much but now the stench of cologne was mixing with that of piss. That was too much for her. Nina jumped into the shower and washed it all away. Then, without wiping, she wrapped up in a bed-sheet and lowered herself onto the bed with a groan.

She was shivering with fever. Late at night she managed to doze off for a while, but then she woke up again. It was dark outside. Nina heard some noise coming from the bar on the same floor as the last customers were dispersing for their rooms. Everyone was going to sleep while she was in for a sleepless night. “Idiot,” she scolded herself. “Serves you right. Such idiots wind up in hell where the devil casts them into fire. Ah-a-a… Damn, how it hurts.” She recalled a summer when she had been taken to the Black Sea by her parents. A little girl, unaccustomed to the southern sun, she had got a little sunburned at first. What was it that her mother had used to treat her? Her memory gave her a prompt – it was sour cream, the Russian smetana. The idea of cool, dense smetana which she could spread all over herself, was beautiful. But where was she to find smetana in the middle of the night, in a Turkish hotel? Desperate and hopeless, Nina went out of her room to search of it.

In her bathrobe and slippers, she dragged herself to the bar. The door was closed, and it was dark inside. Nina knocked and waited, then knocked again. At last a fat Turkish barman appeared. He pointed at his watch – the bar was closed. Nina pleaded, “Pozhaluista, please. Just a second.” With a displeased look on his face, the barman opened the door. But how was Nina to explain to him that she needed smetana? The Turk did not speak Russian, and Nina did not know the English for smetana – it could be that the English people did not eat smetana and accordingly, did not have a word for it in their language. Using to the limit her scanty stock of English words, she made up the sentence, “Please give white put in salad.” The barman frowned in bewilderment, then smiled and nodded. He went to the kitchen and came back with a jar of some light substance. Heartened, Nina slipped him five dollars and hurried back.

The jar was icy, right from the fridge, and Nina wanted to use all of it as soon as possible. Once in her room, she threw off her bathrobe, scooped up a handful from the jar and spread the substance generously over her shoulders and the back of her neck. For a few seconds, she really had a sensation of pleasant cool, but then it started to burn twice as bad, ten times as bad! It was as if a red-hot iron was being applied to her shoulders. Nina smelled the substance, then tasted it. It was mayonnaise – a very hot, mustard-based kind. Nina started to cry. She was the most miserable person in the world.

Throughout the next several days, she was staying confined within the four walls of her room, recovering slowly. She ordered food from room service, but she had no appetite, and the contents of the tray remained almost untouched. The paperback detective story which she had taken along on her journey had long been finished, the local TV was impossible to watch, and she had got tired of the view from her window. For days on end she was lying in bed with headphones on, listening again and again to a course of conversational English. She never learned how to say smetana in English but it occurred to her that she should have simply asked the barman for some yoghurt.

She bought a large box of it from the same barman and, standing before the mirror, spread the yoghurt all over herself. It was a terrifying sight. “A new dish – roasted idiot under yoghurt,” she said aloud and stuck out her tongue at her own reflection. Still, the yoghurt helped.

Gradually, the pain subsided. Her burned hide started to peel off, revealing a new skin – thin, glistening, and already touched by suntan. On the sixth day, Nina went out of her room. The burns still hurt in various spots, but she could live with that. Beach was out of the question. Instead, Nina went on a touring spree. Before that, she had not realized that what was now called ‘Turkey’ had once been part of the antique world with Greek cities, theatres, baths, and arenas for athletic contests. The ancient world whose vestiges emerged from beneath the ground here and there was much more exciting than anything that was on that land now. An old fan of history, Nina bought up all the guide-books that were available and within the next few days visited every historical site within reach.

On the advice of her Novokuznetsk acquaintances, she also went to a folk restaurant located in desert highland, a half hour’s drive from her hotel. The restaurant was decorated in the oriental style and served dishes of local cuisine, but its main hit was a show of folk performers who sang and danced, involving the guests, Russians and Germans, in their dances. The fiery rhythms and throaty foreign voices had their effect on Nina. “In the final account, my holiday has worked out well,” she thought, clapping her hands. “It surely is something to remember.” A young mustachioed Turk wearing super-wide trousers with a super-wide belt drew her out to the center of the circle where she imitated – awkwardly, but gaily – a local dance. Then she drank strongest coffee, tasted oriental sweets, and inhaled the fumes from hookahs. Everything was perfect.

The show ended after midnight. Nina went out into the velvety southern night. There was a small crowd by the restaurant – the Germans were pushing for seats on the last cheap route bus. Nina avoided the crowd and went on to the taxi stand. A young man sprang up beside her. He smiled at Nina, “You danced splendidly.” Then he suggested, “Why don’t we share a taxi? What hotel are you staying in?” It turned out that they were staying in neighboring hotels, so they rode back together.