The Lodger. Valery Osinsky
morning the rain still did not dare to sprinkle the city, dried by the heat. I was sitting in bed lowering in the flip flops of the legs, and pondered how to kill the day.
«Are you up, fireman?» jokingly asked Kurushina, floating into the room door with a plastic watering pot. She squinted at me – am I dressed? – and, accustomed to my frivolous appearance, she peeled back the tulle curtain to water the flowers on the windowsill. Inventive attaboy stretched herself luxuriously, slowly extricated himself from the blankets and strode to the chair behind things, just as the woman turned. Kurushina petrified, caught herself and impulsively walked up to the flowers on the balcony window.
«Are you dressed up?» asked she dryly over her shoulder.
«Mm-hmm…»
Then she went out without looking at me.
The chills that accompanied the extravagant act replaced shame and self-loathing. I was cleaning the bed, things, for a long time splashing in the shower: I was preparing to play out the scene to the end. I came up with a dozen excuses…
But I blushed after the first its phrase.
«Arthur, I’m a woman,» reproachfully uttered Kurushina and dragged on a cigarette. From the windowsill, her arms crossed over her chest, she looked at the shame of the guest: I’m timely sat on the stool. «You’re not being nice. You’re not a boy anymore!» I almost fell on the ground floor in shame, but I held on with all my strength. «Don’t look at me with innocent eyes, sweet boy. You know exactly what I mean!» Her mouth twitched into a smirk. «I noticed it the first day! (What she noticed – it was obvious to the donkey!) Is that how you act in front of your mother? I don’t know, maybe it’s customary for you…»
«No, not in front of my mother!» I muttered.
«There is such a disease…»
«No-no!» I buried my flaming face in my hands and exhaled noisily through my nose. And here – epiphany! In me has awakened the actor. «That’s a first time with me. From the first day, as I saw you, I wanted to touch you. I’m talking nonsense, right? But, but…» I swallowed, and rubbing my closed eyelids (what a passage!) quieted the trembling in my voice, «I can’t get rid of the obsession.»
Kurushina turned pale and squinted from a trickle of cigarette smoke.
«Yes,» she coughed. «Let’s forget this conversation, Arthur!»
She understood my desperate shame and paused speaking so I can calm down. But I could not nohow to calm down and spelled insinuatingly: «If you didn’t like my behavior right away, why didn’t you say so on the first day?»
Kurushina frowned, and her cheeks turned pink. But suddenly she silently laughed and embraced her chin by her palm. The lace edge of her nightgown floated out of her sleeve. Just as quickly the woman calmed down, and with the same irony in her eyes looked at the lodger.
«Ladies «man, you’re a real ladies’ man!» she nodded reproachfully. «Eat, the potatoes are cold!» She put out her cigarette and gently shoved my head.
I had a feeling that I was trying to fool myself.
8
Shameful exposé broke in me a mainspring of evil. From schoolboy unwillingness to acknowledge the superiority of the experience and mind Kurasini on pathetic childish stratagems I continued the farce. Through the force. With a sticky feeling inside. And she kept quiet. And her silence was infuriating me.
I hated everything about her: as she smokes, a cigarette between two fingers of the hand, a palm props up the elbow – such a kind of secular lady from the third entrance; as carefully and slowly she straightens jabot of old-fashioned blouse, made of green silk; paints lips with bright lipstick at the mirror; mannerly tidies up by studs lush hair, wound around the head; was infuriating her somnambulistic gait in a moment of reflections; delicate the paper rustling in the outhouse, at my approach; her cleanliness; the mysterious smile of Mona Lisa; miniature Slippers with POM-poms, that made her walk inaudible; fragile shoulders. I wanted screamed into her powdered face, into her eyes, tinted with cheap pencil: «Old broad! Funny comedic old broad»! I wanted to enjoy the helplessness of a well-bred man in front of the boor. But her femininity, her majestic bearing – seemed to me amazing! Can’t remember my girlfriends of the same age having such effortless grace: without any violence to themselves. My imagination was carrying her back thirty years, was enlivening the image of a young girl, the daughter of a major head, careless, easy, unaware of the existence of tens of millions of my kind. Her education was amazing me, an ignoramus. She was reading in the original Stendhal, Goethe and Steinbeck. Somewhere in the depths of her heart smoldered unfulfilled hopes, experiences. But she was simple and sociable. Where did the stupid, cruel evil of my original conception go! Now every morning I waited for her to Wake up. I forgot the funny tricks of the strip, forgot the city, my ambitions. And hopelessly watched in myself symptoms of sickness, severe, prolonged, poorly treatable.
9
I was meeting with Nelia, because nobody, except the Rayevskys and two or three people in the city didn’t know. We with the girl were whiled away the time and that’s enough!
Our cultural program is usually was ended in uncrowded bars over coffee with cognac, or we left away to sunbathe in Strogino, where even on weekdays the idle people consoled themselves with warm water of a big muddy puddle.
We were roasting in the sun in the red dust from the energetic trampling of beach volleyball players, among the burnt thighs, assholes, noses, which were pasted scraps of newspapers, colorful exhibition of blankets, bedding and air mattresses. On the beach I was resting from the voracious thoughts.
«Where are you living in Moscow?» asked Nelya.
She propped herself up on her elbow and looked at me over the dark glasses from under the Panama painted like a fly agaric. Her axillary hollow has deepened, and the shoulder straps of her bathing suit sagged down, and weak chest in the freckles, with swollen pink nipple looked out of her bra shyly. I buried my face in my fingers.
«So… At an acquaintance’s house.»
The girl, obviously, also laid down prone. Her voice sounded muffled:
«Dad said you are living at some woman.»
I pricked up my ears.
«He also said she was retired…»
«She doesn’t need handouts. Uncle reported?»
«Probably…»
We listened to the maiden squeal for a while: three jokers dragged her to the water.
«Katya told me why you had a fight with your uncle.»
«And what do you think?»
She shrugged and sighed. I felt like I was being x-rayed, and with professional curiosity poked their fingers at the dark spots of black and white picture. It is easy to guess how my relatives found out about my shelter. I grimaced at the thought, as if the dentist’s drill had dug into the fabric of my tooth: whether mistress said anything unwanted?
«Isn’t it hard for your mother to support you for the third month?» was pestering Nelia to me.
«May be!» I shrugged. I was too lazy to remind about the work in the seaside boarding house.
«My cousin is the third year was not working and not studying nowhere, and his mother can’t inhaled on him…»
«This is a common thing for Moscow. My sisters don’t work anywhere either. Thanks for the analogy.»
«Please don’t be angry. Just… I don’t think you’re what they say. And what kind of man you are, I don’t know.»
«And I don’t know either!» Imagination drew a confidential