the fact is, I didn’t. If I’d had the chance, I would have stolen her.
I yanked the door open, felt the hot air rush over me pungent with coffee, cigarettes, and smoked fish—the specialty here was paper-thin slices of sturgeon on meager wafers of stale white bread; that, and tiny cups of coffee, which required many cubes of sugar to overcome the fact that they tasted like beets. Irina wasn’t there. Lonya, on the other hand, had brought someone with him. “My cousin,” he announced, “Chernova, Collette Petrovna. As kids we always knew her as Galya, but now she bravely employs her very foreign first name. Collette, this is my friend, Guttman, Roman Leopoldovich. He is in need of a good woman. You could be it. Look! He blushes! A good sign.”
“Please,” I said.
She smiled in a friendly enough way.
As usual someone said, “We should have gone to the Green Beast. The coffee’s better there.”
As usual, everyone agreed. Then the talk began about the weekend, and it was decided, also as usual, that we would drink. Collette melted effortlessly into our little group, as if by a sort of coffeehouse osmosis; we knew that she was a distant cousin of Lonya’s, and that they had only recently reconnected. Aside from that, no one asked her anything about herself; in return, she showed no interest in anyone. We passed around cigarettes, had a few more coffees, more sturgeon, another round of pastries—exactly as we always did. Later we went together to some party, I can’t even remember where—maybe at Volodya Menchkin’s—we ate from whomever’s table it was, we got drunk, the same as always. Fima passed out. Lonya wandered off with some girl. Marik headed home, or maybe decided to stop by Alla Friedman’s, which he often did—she was always glad to see him. I don’t know what happened to Pavlik.
It was about two in the morning. Most of the guests had gone home or fallen asleep on one of the couches or were curled up on the carpets in a heap. I had gotten into several raucous political discussions—the kind that only happened in the kitchen after several bottles of vodka—and I felt riled up, strangely excited. Naturally, someone produced a guitar at this point and began playing “Kalinka Kalinka,” and then someone else, Tolya Lucharsky, cursed at him, grabbed the guitar out of his hands, and started in with the chastushki:
My sweetheart has great sex appeal / Gives me a blow job every day / And by the way we are all outraged by the actions of General Pinochet
. And then there was:
Uncle Saveli had a trick / Broke three boards with one stroke of his dick / Just another confirmation / Of the growing might of the Soviet nation!
But soon no one could think of any more verses, and Tolya’s fingers were so benumbed by alcohol, the guitar kept falling to the floor. I wanted to escape before they decided to make breakfast and start all over again. That’s when I noticed Collette standingon the balcony smoking a cigarette and spitting bits of tobacco onto her fingertips. The sound of the door surprised her, and she turned to face me, revealing a remarkably pale skin in the glow of the apartment lights, a skin so white and flawless it was almost like a geisha’s mask, troubling, erotic, necromantic. Against this skin, cascades of profoundly black hair glistened even in the dark of night, and beneath this sea of hair blazed bloodred lips. When she smiled, however, I saw that her teeth were slightly crooked and widely spaced, a sign of good luck. She brought her cigarette to her mouth and released a languid cloud of smoke. Once again she spit out the few shreds of tobacco that had clung to her teeth.
She was utterly unlike Irina. Where Irina was slender and tan with short blond hair, upturned nose, a sharp tongue, and a straightforward, rather hard intelligence, Collette was rounded, with a full bosom and voluptuous thighs, and when she spoke, as she did to me that night, it was more in circles than straight
I yanked the door open, felt the hot air rush over me pungent with coffee, cigarettes, and smoked fish—the specialty here was paper-thin slices of sturgeon on meager wafers of stale white bread; that, and tiny cups of coffee, which required many cubes of sugar to overcome the fact that they tasted like beets. Irina wasn’t there. Lonya, on the other hand, had brought someone with him. “My cousin,” he announced, “Chernova, Collette Petrovna. As kids we always knew her as Galya, but now she bravely employs her very foreign first name. Collette, this is my friend, Guttman, Roman Leopoldovich. He is in need of a good woman. You could be it. Look! He blushes! A good sign.”
“Please,” I said.
She smiled in a friendly enough way.
As usual someone said, “We should have gone to the Green Beast. The coffee’s better there.”
As usual, everyone agreed. Then the talk began about the weekend, and it was decided, also as usual, that we would drink. Collette melted effortlessly into our little group, as if by a sort of coffeehouse osmosis; we knew that she was a distant cousin of Lonya’s, and that they had only recently reconnected. Aside from that, no one asked her anything about herself; in return, she showed no interest in anyone. We passed around cigarettes, had a few more coffees, more sturgeon, another round of pastries—exactly as we always did. Later we went together to some party, I can’t even remember where—maybe at Volodya Menchkin’s—we ate from whomever’s table it was, we got drunk, the same as always. Fima passed out. Lonya wandered off with some girl. Marik headed home, or maybe decided to stop by Alla Friedman’s, which he often did—she was always glad to see him. I don’t know what happened to Pavlik.
It was about two in the morning. Most of the guests had gone home or fallen asleep on one of the couches or were curled up on the carpets in a heap. I had gotten into several raucous political discussions—the kind that only happened in the kitchen after several bottles of vodka—and I felt riled up, strangely excited. Naturally, someone produced a guitar at this point and began playing “Kalinka Kalinka,” and then someone else, Tolya Lucharsky, cursed at him, grabbed the guitar out of his hands, and started in with the chastushki:
My sweetheart has great sex appeal / Gives me a blow job every day / And by the way we are all outraged by the actions of General Pinochet
. And then there was:
Uncle Saveli had a trick / Broke three boards with one stroke of his dick / Just another confirmation / Of the growing might of the Soviet nation!
But soon no one could think of any more verses, and Tolya’s fingers were so benumbed by alcohol, the guitar kept falling to the floor. I wanted to escape before they decided to make breakfast and start all over again. That’s when I noticed Collette standingon the balcony smoking a cigarette and spitting bits of tobacco onto her fingertips. The sound of the door surprised her, and she turned to face me, revealing a remarkably pale skin in the glow of the apartment lights, a skin so white and flawless it was almost like a geisha’s mask, troubling, erotic, necromantic. Against this skin, cascades of profoundly black hair glistened even in the dark of night, and beneath this sea of hair blazed bloodred lips. When she smiled, however, I saw that her teeth were slightly crooked and widely spaced, a sign of good luck. She brought her cigarette to her mouth and released a languid cloud of smoke. Once again she spit out the few shreds of tobacco that had clung to her teeth.
She was utterly unlike Irina. Where Irina was slender and tan with short blond hair, upturned nose, a sharp tongue, and a straightforward, rather hard intelligence, Collette was rounded, with a full bosom and voluptuous thighs, and when she spoke, as she did to me that night, it was more in circles than straight
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