Moldavian Lina

We went to Kishinev together, since Rodion wanted to introduce me to his mother. We had together something resembling a love affair, and Rodion was impatient to get married after finishing Leningrad University. He was a friend of my brother’s, three years younger than I. He had an extremely attractive appearance: curly hair, black eyebrows, a good build, and was always sharply dressed. It was a pleasure to walk down the street with him, heads turned. In my opinion, honestly, he had too much likeness to a “Latin lover”– gigolo – with his classic thin mustache and his defiant self-confidence.

I don’t know what drew me to Kishinev. Probably my passion for traveling. I wasn’t in any hurry to get married, as I associated family life with deprivation of freedom. I had never been to Moldavia. I knew only one of her fiery songs and Moldavian grape wine. We arrived there in March, when Moldavians celebrate the beginning of spring and give each others snowdrops, mimosa, and miniature people wearing the national costume in the form of broaches. A spirited and welcome feeling in Kishinev pleased me. Rodion’s home turned out to be strict, and his mother – a tough woman. I didn’t fit in well there with my liberal ideas. Rodion, noticing my displeasure, began to suffer. It wounded his vanity. I looked for the psychological reasons behind the awkwardness between us; he the physiological: “I know that I have one shortcoming,” he confessed in manly way, “the same one that Mayakovsky had.” Mayakovsky couldn’t bring a woman to orgasm because his genital organ was absurdly small in comparison with his huge stature.

“Why do the most representatives of your sex love arithmetic? Not everything, my friend, can be measured with a ruler. Mayakovsky was too macho, and women sense that. It is known that he maltreated even our ingenious poets, calling the poem of Marina Tsvetaeva “Gypsy romance” and about another saying scornfully, “Akhmatova is nothing special… all these Akhmatovas.”

“You’re stepping on me like a tank,” Rodion interrupted my tirade.

“Does it really not revolt you? After all, Mayakovsky himself did a gift inscription in one of his books. “To my beloved self”. Everything should be forgiven and he should be pitied that he committed suicide. Tsvetaeva also committed suicide in the end, and he put his mite in her decision. Our Weltamschauung takes shape like a mosaic…”

“My mother loves Mayakovsky. How do you explain that? After all, she’s a woman too.”

“In the first place, she may not know many facts of his biography, which have been disclosed only recently. She is an old Party member, and, without a doubt, she didn’t read Ilya Erenburg or Karlinsky.”

“Take the times into account. Mayakovsky was a revolutionary poet and he loved to shock people.”

“To shock people! There are still things about which one does not joke. Some kind of boundary to cynicism! He wrote, for instance, “I love to watch as the children are dying…” – for what? For cheap thrills?”

“Come, let stop this. My mother is a person of the old, hardly breed, and doesn’t want to see the shortcomings of her idols. In particular, the same shortcoming with which we started… let’s go to Lina’s instead. I was in love with her until you.”

Rodion telephoned Lina, and we met within only hour. Green-eyed, Moldavian Lina embraced me and Rodion and led us to the dining area. On the round table were some flowers, apples, and Moldavian wine. A white embroidered tablecloth draped down almost to the parquet floor. Lina, laughing for some unknown reason – maybe it was simply spring playing with her – proposed that we drink to friendship between Leningrad and Kishinev.

“Lina is a dancer, you know,” Rodion said. “She traveled to Leningrad with her ensemble.”

“Right. Let’s dance,” Lina exclaimed and invited me. Rodion was dumbstruck. I, too, was mystified. Mystified and delighted.

“To tell the truth, I’ve never had to dance with dancers.” “In any case”, I said, “what if it doesn’t work out?”

“Dancers live to teach. It will work out!”

Then Lina took me by the waist and whirled me around. We were of the same height and approximately the same proportions. Lina led, and it was inexplicably easy for me with her. We fused with the music. We twirled round and round the table in the wide room. I noticed that Rodion was looking quite sour sitting on the couch. But now I didn’t want to let go of Lina. Everything was swimming with her on the waves of the fast tempo music and plunging into the sea of her green eyes.

“It turns out that you are not only a dancer, but also a sorceress,” Lina laughed and drew closer to me. Our nipples brushed together. While moving I plucked a white flower from the bouquet on the table and stuck it into her hair. Her thick, shimmery coppery-red hair, which smelled of tenderness.

Rodion and I returned home in silence. It was clear that there would be no wedding.