The Lodger. Valery Osinsky
manner to slow pace on high heels («Yes still with her stilts!» – thought I with drunk angry.), causing the hair on the back of her head were swaying like the mane of a horse, which is slowly climbing up the hill, revealing a thin neck and sharp vertebrae. In addition to pettiness, this evening I found inside me a huge store of spite to Kurashina. I also remember the crimson sunset with storm clouds over the flat roofs and the floating target of the keyhole.
The hostess opened the door, and the tenant tumbled into the hallway. The image was jumping to the right and to the starting point with the frequency of the pulse in the ears.
«Are you drunk?» Kurushina was stunned.
«A little bit!» answered I modestly and staggering hobbled past on the move discarding clothes. «Greetings from uncle»!
«Did you say something?» asked stunned Elena Nikolaevna.
«Did you call uncle?»
Kurushina talked to me like I’m sober. For this reason, she nervously wrapped herself up in a shawl, and replied somewhat arrogantly: «Yeah, I talked to him…»
«Then everything is clear!»
«Clear what?»
«And the fact that he is talking bosh! That I live at your expense and…» I gave a small sob: probably, I really fairly slurped of vodka.
«What a bullshit!» Kurushina perplexedly walked into the room. «Who told you that? Arkady got a call from your mother saying you were in Moscow. You haven’t written to her in a month. Arkady was very surprised and called back. I confirmed that you at me».
She was so upset she didn’t notice my nudity. I collapsed on the couch naked. I took deep breath: the woman became a silent accomplice of my naturist performances. All the spite and insulting words to her, like a pile of rubble spilled out the window. I was carrying tearful nonsense, was confessing to her in love, try to embrace and stumbling hobbled to the bathroom. She nursed with me, allowed me to molest and laid me on her sofa upon which I collapsed. I was laughing. And she was repeating with joking astonishment: «How awfully you’re drunk!»
But alcohol has little effect on my memory. In excitement, I tried to touch her hip, hands, belly as if playing little rough with a girlfriend, and was distracting her by chatter. I was drunk enough to overcome my shame, but sober enough to enjoy the forced touch of a woman’s clothing, sliding palm. I was hugging and pressing her hips (surprisingly firm) to my stomach. At one point the woman did not pull away and for a moment her hand froze on my shoulder, her head drooped, and it seemed to me, Elena Nikolaevna shuddered. But, guessing my tension, almost of ecstasy as she quickly pushed the admirer to the bed. I collapsed on the couch and pulled her along. She rested her fist to my pubic hair, jerked away, looked intently into my eyes. But I pretended to laugh and tried to stretch my lips to her cheek. She was not leaving, she fixing the pillow, padded the blanket, and when I was trying to grab her palm or to hug her waist, sliding by hand over the bottom of her belly, the woman firmly, but not abruptly was pulling away. It seemed that we both play and write off the game on a drunken night out, which tomorrow will forget. And this bliss continued until I fell into a motley starfall.
I lay in the predawn gloom with my eyes open, looking at the flowers on the Wallpaper, protruding in the transparent light of dawn, and timidly remembered the previous fun day. Imagination in vain drew a decrepit old woman, her wrinkled, dry hands, sluggish body. The obsession drove me crazy, but I did not resist the terrible lustful desire – it seemed shameful – to repeat…
In the kitchen, I was asking embarrassedly about yesterday’s riot, apologized and eagerly caught her gestures, facial expressions, with which she will betray herself. I wanted to kiss those hands that caressed my body without caressing. Kurushina was slowly stirring the spoon in the pot and ironically repeated: «Has amused himself, has amused!» And both of us were silent about my pranks which perfectly remembered.
10
One of those August evenings in Moscow, when the cramped apartment seemed to turn into a matchbox, and you feel like a caught bug, you want to go free, was fading away.
We were walking in the Park next to the house. Trees carefully hidden the scarlet sunset behind thick crowns, and in crystal silence, on the mirror surface of the pond clearly, the voices of people rolled to every word.
Kurushina asked if I had a girlfriend. I told her about Nelia.
«In vain I’m fooling her head…»
«You mean a fake marriage?» I nodded. «Invite her to us!»
I estimated: on the one hand Nelia will satisfy curiosity, with another – snorted – Elena Nikolaevna will see my «love».
«Good. When?»
«Yes, even tomorrow!»
«Goes. I’ll call her.»
Morning was busy: shop, kitchen, cleaning the apartment. Kurushina was preparing in earnest.
«Try to be easier!» I advised. «The girl without complexes, will indulge tea with crackers…»
«So and offer her a choice!» Kurushina joked.
She’s transformed! It gave me pleasure to spin in the kitchen, to beat egg yolks with a mixer in an iron bowl, to perform simple culinary tasks.
«When the father was alive,» Elena Nikolaevna was talking, «we even didn’t close doors. We had guests all the time. There was someone in the kitchen, either me or mom. Our housekeeper is aunt Ira… What are you grinning? Bourgeois manners?» she spread her hands, stained with flour, as saying – what can I do – we are like that! – and it amused me. «She taught me many delicious things!»
Where did her languor and measured movements, which I learned by heart, disappear? I suddenly realized: she was always sociable and cheerful, and only Arthur gloomy awarded her in his imagination the affectation, imprisoned her in this apartment. What did I know about her, her surroundings? The tenderness to the hostess did not leave me all the hours that I interfered with her.
We set up a meeting with Nellie After work at the subway entrance.
Kurushina even the night before made elaborate hairstyle using curlers —she did not have time to the hairdresser – and now bustled in the gas kerchief. Before leaving I looked into Elena Nikolaevna’s room. The woman was going through some dresses in the wardrobe. This ancient monster was exhaling from the open door, the thick odor of naphthalene.
«What will you wear?» I asked.
«This!» she answered boldly, straightening one of the antediluvian blouses with a frill and the hem of the mourning skirt. «Or, this!» catching the expression of the pretentious costumier, she showed me a dress-hoodie. I twisted my mouth skeptically.
«This is a friendly tea party, not an official reception. Evening dresses are inappropriate. Permission!» I gently pushed away from the wardrobe door the hostess, who was sitting on a chair, and buried himself in things, which were tightly pressed to each other on the hangers. «Wear something simple. But not washed to holes bathrobe. It’s too early for you to wear black headscarfes for crones’.»
«Should I dress like a girl?» Kurushina laughed and tried to pushed away me from things in the wardrobe. I stopped her.
«None of these things fit! Have you updated anything from your wardrobe over the past year?»
She thought for a moment, and pulled out of things cute beige sweater. A store tag hung on the collar. I mentally paired the sweater and dark straight skirt, and pulled her out of things.
«You’re crazy!» Kurushina threw up her hands. «It was worn in the sixties, when I was a little older than you…»
«Fashion returns every twenty years, with each new generation. You have beautiful legs, like