Читать книгу Uninvented Stories of Invented People - Svetlana Isaenko - Страница 8

Alevtina came into my life when I was three years old. We were like sisters. She was a bright, eye-catching girl, but a 'victim' in the head. She needed to suffer, to be concerned about and literally needed men “to wipe their feet over her”. Yet, she dreamed of a prince charming, whom she would serve, since, in her opinion, a woman’s sex-role task should have been just like that. Coming over in the middle of the night “to save Oleg, because he was lonely and sad, and needed me” – easy. It didn’t matter that Oleg called her only at such moments, when he was bored of sitting alone in the kitchen, after a three-day alcohol marathon with chicks and drugs, when all the adequate ones had already been fed up with his post-weekend crap. Whereas, she considered it to be her vital necessity and a perseonal fulfillment of her woman’s nature.

In fact, Alevtina had issues with self-esteem. None of the crippled Alpha males was rescued and, as a result, there she was, a 30-year-old savior of married alco-drug twaddlers, anticipating her prince of Wales alone.

Lo and behold, one day he burst into her mortal life. Handsome as God (in her words), however, a bit limped and with one eye skew. Yet, he held all the virtues, the spirit and soul, the charisma, the fortune, with inexhaustible vital energy, which would extinct without a woman of his dream, since all the previous ones made him suffer. “He is the ONE!” stated Alevtina and naively threw herself into the overwhelming affair.

They met at a party of common friends. Our hero’s name was Simon and he was the owner of an advertising agency. He was thirty-eight. He was a tall, a bit askew and lame, curly blond. A spark of light flashed between them at the first glance. There was a restaurant, a night club, a karaoke and a breakfast, then the night club again and so it went on for three days in a row. Alevtina and Simon were a finger and a thumb. A noisy company was replaced by sitting down at his place. That was the way she found Him.

Alevtina lived in Kiev at that time and soon her smart phone reminded of the ticket back home.

“I have never had anything like this, give birth to my children,” muttered he waking up one morning.

Alevtina’s heart pulled back for a second and joyfully fluttered of such long-awaited words. In her mind, she had already quitted the job of an MP assistant and moved to nurse her three future kids into a mansion on the banks of Dnieper Bay in Koncha-Zaspa, acquired two seconds before in Alevtina’s imagination.

“Don’t rush me,” she whispered playfully, removing all the means of contraception from her lover. However, the plan conceived by the both was not destined to work out due to a number of reasons drank. That night he had a “false heart attack” (I quote the ambulance medic) and nightlong she was applying fomentations to his head, smearing his chest with tiger balm, stroking his feet and listening to the story of the tough life of his, where Alevtina “would be the most beautiful thing to happen, if I die.”

He recovered in the morning and took her to the railway station. Thousands of messages per week and then he came to visit her in Kiev. It was Spring. The air was fragrant of chestnut blossom. They were tête-à-tête with Khreshchatyk street downtown.

It was his second cousin’s birthday. She had nothing to wear for that evening introduction to the future relatives. (Which was announced purely for bravado reasons, since Alevtina knew from clever books and close friends’ advice that: ‘a man’s appreciation is directly bound to the amount of money he spends on a woman, which, in turn, equivalently reflects the feminine energy balance of the latter’). They came to the Central Department Store, visited dozens of boutiques, tried dozens of dresses on, but tough was the luck, everything was “not worthy of her.” Even Jimmy Choo’s boots made her ‘look hideously chubby, in fact’, while discounted slippers fit incredibly well ‘the extremely beautiful leg for future vacation”.

What an incredible birthday it was: kisses, holding by hands, lots of wine. Then, there was Alevtina’s tale about her former boyfriends – big shots and sharks of business (well, she decorated the story a bit, but who wouldn’t), with his reaction of: “I’m probably not worthy of you.” Alevtina burst into tears (like I said – lots of wine). Then, were vows of undying love, hugs and a night of passion, when he finally made it to reveal himself as a man…

Railway station was followed up by tears again.

“I love you. We are going to call our first daughter Amelie!” “I love you too…”

They both kissed each other’s hands at parting for a long time…

A persistent call wakes me up early in the morning. Half-awake I hear Alevtina’s wild sobs:

“Marie, he died!”

“What do you mean by ‘died’?” I jumped out of the bed completely unaware of where to call or run and how to be of help.

“What has happened?”

Simon was none of my close acquaintance, yet was close enough to let the emotional numbing and burning into my body. While I was frantically going over our friends in common in my mind, I heard on the other end of the line:

“He doesn’t answer my messages and calls for 24 hours.”

“Alevtina, stop! How did you come to the idea of his death?” confused I began to analyze.

“What do you mean by ‘How’? How in your opinion can it be explained that he doesn’t text me in reply and would not pick up the phone?”

Two days later, a miracle happened. WhatsApp and Viber showed that the owner of the phone was alive and read her dismal messages of ache, sorrow, grief and impossibility of life without her “sweet Simie”.

However, after the first clarifications of the situation and life instructions Alevtina’s anxiety about Simon’s possible death did not vanish.

“These are the morgue attendants. They hacked his phone.” However,

when his animate flash appeared in Instagram, against the backgrounds of Egyptian provinces, yet, at evident absence of Alevtina’s new slippers, the arguments in favor of death were replaced by facts, in favor of the ‘douche bag’ attitude (I shall not quote the direct speech for moral and ethical reasons).

Through my persuasions and psychotherapeutic assistance, we, nevertheless, came to the conclusion “that he had just tragically passed away as a personality.” Yet, she could not take that blow. It took lots of tears, thoughts, hours of talking and scrolling through the plot:

“What if I were like that then … but I had to do the other way, it’s my fault, I frightened him away, I’m not good enough” and tears again.

“We were meant for each other…” tears, tears and tears.

“He could have just told me to fuck off, said at least something. It’s unbearable. What happened?”

Alevtina had a difficult period of “blocking Simon”, when in fact she was

banned everywhere by him. Nevertheless, the time heals.

Three months later

Alevtina got back to Kharkov and smile appeared on her face over and over again. The issue gradually lost its relevance.

Once we were sitting in a restaurant. My longtime acquaintance, a successful business woman, a young, beautiful and erudite person, who had just gone through a divorce process, arrived. It was a summer evening, full of laughter, hearty talks, memories of old happy times along with a delicious dinner.

“I don’t understand men,” says leggy beautiful Christina.

“What do they want? We are young, successful, without a “trailer”, interesting, capable to converse, sexy, well-groomed and good looking, while having a soul mate is still an issue to us. It’s time to have children and we are still unable to find suitable fathers.”

“True, I have recently had a story. I met a young man in the train from Kiev to Kharkov. We talked all night through about Tesla, pace and Dostoyevskiy. He captured me by his erudition and beautiful courtship, brought flowers, sent fruits and medicines when I got ill, showed concern. Then, all of a sudden, he disappeared, just was up and off. Did not answer either calls or messages. Despite the fact that he limped a bit and had one eye askew…”

That sepulchral sound, with admixture of coughing and choking, followed by a creaky lightning-fast question from somewhere in the depths:

“Simon?” I will remember for the rest of my life. “Yeah, Simon, why?” asked Christina with surprise.

That evening, neither I, nor Alevtina or Christina fell asleep. I think Simon stayed awake too, since his ears should have been blushing like hell.

Perhaps, hereon I shall bring down the curtain for this interesting and informative story about Alevtina in this context, in order not to deface her in front of the reader.

To draw the bottom line: the core of our problems dwell in our beHEAVYor patterns.

P.S. And yes! You Simon, burn in Hell too!