from her agronomist husband. She hadn’t actually moved in with us bag and baggage—she was
careful to make it appear she was still living with her husband so as not to jeopardize her rights to their flat, and eventually her Moscow residence permit. But she had taken to spending two and
sometimes three nights a week with us in Herzen House, more often than not in our bed, the other times on a thin mattress in the tiny kitchen if my husband was exhausted or preoccupied with what I
delicately called his mountaineer mission .
The timid mistress of shamefaced glances, with her burning cheeks and incendiary orgasms (half stifled in deference to the thinness of the walls of our bedroom), had become adept at the protocol
of a ménage à trois. She devoted as much attention to me as she did to my husband, partly to compensate for his paying more attention to her than to me, partly (I flatter myself )
because she found me, as I found her, physically attractive and sexually stimulating. Mandelstam is on record as saying that loving a third person is not without risks, though the risk in this
particular instance was not his falling insanely, or even sanely, in love with Zinaida. I can say that she was the kind of sexual animal who shrinks on you with time. Her constantly on display
intelligence, her fastidiousness, her gushing admiration for the poet were already wearing thin. What remained was her body. And what a body! She was one of those females who didn’t
object to being lusted after for their bodies and only their bodies. And even I will concede her adroitness at certain techniques of lovemaking normally associated with harlots. Which is to say, no
major orifice was left unexplored. Not one. Mandelstam, enthralled by the newness of the delectable corpus at his disposition and somewhat awed by what I might call the exotic smorgasbord set out
on the sideboard, tended to forget that I was present as a participant and not a spectator. I suppose the phenomenon of the male focusing on the third person singular, to the exclusion of the ty in his life, is the hidden pitfall of all love triangles. I must remember to compare notes on the matter with Akhmatova one of these days.
Where was I? On the morning of the day I propose to recount, Zinaida stirred in my arms, sleepily fondling my breast with one hand, reaching out for Mandelstam with the other. Finding his side
of the bed empty, she sat up abruptly.
“Did you manage to get some sleep?” I asked.
“Afterward I did. After our beautiful white night. My God, that husband of yours is insatiable.” She looked around the tiny bedroom. “Where has he gotten to?”
“He’s been up for hours,” I said. “You can hear him pacing in the next room.”
“Is he composing a poem?”
“So it would seem.”
“For me?”
I had to keep from smiling. “Not for you, darling girl. Though perhaps he will let you interpret it into existence, as he says, when it’s completed.”
Talk about insatiable, she melted back into my arms and started caressing my skin with the tips of her fingers. “It’s true what you said about women’s bodies being far more
attractive than men’s,” she said. Her hand worked its way down over my pelvis. “It’s no accident that all the great sculptors and painters preferred the female nude to the
male. Our skin is silkier, our curves softer, our sensual penetralia trickier to locate but, once located, effortlessly stimulated. Isn’t that so, Nadezhda?”
I cannot exclude that I was unable to articulate a response.
“I especially love our breasts,” she went on. “Sometimes I caress my own to remind myself how beautiful women are.”
“Did you love your agronomist the way you love us?”
“You are mocking me, Nadezhda, aren’t you? I married the first man I slept with, and I slept with the first man I came across who had a Moscow residence permit. He was my
ticket out of the Urals to civilization. Can you see me spending the
careful to make it appear she was still living with her husband so as not to jeopardize her rights to their flat, and eventually her Moscow residence permit. But she had taken to spending two and
sometimes three nights a week with us in Herzen House, more often than not in our bed, the other times on a thin mattress in the tiny kitchen if my husband was exhausted or preoccupied with what I
delicately called his mountaineer mission .
The timid mistress of shamefaced glances, with her burning cheeks and incendiary orgasms (half stifled in deference to the thinness of the walls of our bedroom), had become adept at the protocol
of a ménage à trois. She devoted as much attention to me as she did to my husband, partly to compensate for his paying more attention to her than to me, partly (I flatter myself )
because she found me, as I found her, physically attractive and sexually stimulating. Mandelstam is on record as saying that loving a third person is not without risks, though the risk in this
particular instance was not his falling insanely, or even sanely, in love with Zinaida. I can say that she was the kind of sexual animal who shrinks on you with time. Her constantly on display
intelligence, her fastidiousness, her gushing admiration for the poet were already wearing thin. What remained was her body. And what a body! She was one of those females who didn’t
object to being lusted after for their bodies and only their bodies. And even I will concede her adroitness at certain techniques of lovemaking normally associated with harlots. Which is to say, no
major orifice was left unexplored. Not one. Mandelstam, enthralled by the newness of the delectable corpus at his disposition and somewhat awed by what I might call the exotic smorgasbord set out
on the sideboard, tended to forget that I was present as a participant and not a spectator. I suppose the phenomenon of the male focusing on the third person singular, to the exclusion of the ty in his life, is the hidden pitfall of all love triangles. I must remember to compare notes on the matter with Akhmatova one of these days.
Where was I? On the morning of the day I propose to recount, Zinaida stirred in my arms, sleepily fondling my breast with one hand, reaching out for Mandelstam with the other. Finding his side
of the bed empty, she sat up abruptly.
“Did you manage to get some sleep?” I asked.
“Afterward I did. After our beautiful white night. My God, that husband of yours is insatiable.” She looked around the tiny bedroom. “Where has he gotten to?”
“He’s been up for hours,” I said. “You can hear him pacing in the next room.”
“Is he composing a poem?”
“So it would seem.”
“For me?”
I had to keep from smiling. “Not for you, darling girl. Though perhaps he will let you interpret it into existence, as he says, when it’s completed.”
Talk about insatiable, she melted back into my arms and started caressing my skin with the tips of her fingers. “It’s true what you said about women’s bodies being far more
attractive than men’s,” she said. Her hand worked its way down over my pelvis. “It’s no accident that all the great sculptors and painters preferred the female nude to the
male. Our skin is silkier, our curves softer, our sensual penetralia trickier to locate but, once located, effortlessly stimulated. Isn’t that so, Nadezhda?”
I cannot exclude that I was unable to articulate a response.
“I especially love our breasts,” she went on. “Sometimes I caress my own to remind myself how beautiful women are.”
“Did you love your agronomist the way you love us?”
“You are mocking me, Nadezhda, aren’t you? I married the first man I slept with, and I slept with the first man I came across who had a Moscow residence permit. He was my
ticket out of the Urals to civilization. Can you see me spending the
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