Things worked well until the old man started to intimidate the poor woman. First there were vulgar jokes and suggestions, then his harassment became more demanding and aggressive. The old man started threatening her: ‘I will go to the police and report on you and your bastard son, and you will go to jail or be deported back to Russia.’ He kept repeating it until Ayshe couldn’t resist anymore and let the prick climb on top of her.
Ruslan couldn’t understand why his mother cried at night, and why the lusty, satisfied smile wouldn’t leave the old man’s face. But it was not in his nature to question his mother and get involved in the adults’ lives.
With time, Ayshe complied, for Ruslan’s sake. She and the German even started living as husband and wife. Five years later she died of cancer. Ruslan left the house and never saw the man again.
He moved to Luxembourg, where he found a job at an IT company. In just a few years he progressed from being a clerk to a programmer.
My heart bled listening to that. The image of the boy who’d been through more at his young age than most people had experienced in a lifetime, tore me apart.
I hugged him tightly. ‘It’s all good now … it’s all behind you. You were a very brave little boy who’s grown into a not-so-smart but very handsome man,’ I teased Ruslan, and his face brightened with a smile.
26
It is the last week of our trip and I am busy packing. It turns out I’ve bought too many clothes and shoes during these six months. Damn shopping therapy. Half of my stuff doesn’t fit into my bags; I have to mail a few extra boxes to Ukraine. I’m doing all of these chores – including buying souvenirs for our family and a few friends, having goodbye lunches with some of my regular clients, and, most important, going to the post office to draw all the money I’ve made – with a great thrill and an irrepressible smile on my face.
Yay! I am going home!
I take off the night before my departure. Ruslan invites me to his favorite Italian restaurant. I look forward to a pleasant night with the person to whom, in just a couple of weeks, I have got so attached, even more so than to my sisters.
It’s an amazing night. As always, there is a lot of laughter, easy-going fun and interesting conversation about everything and nothing. However, I notice a shade of sadness on Ruslan’s face. Obviously, he is thinking about me leaving tomorrow. Both of us try not to talk about my departure. I think we both know that there is no point in planning anything or giving each other useless vows that neither of us can keep. It is unspoken, but we both know that we’ll try to keep in touch, and that if there is a chance, we will meet again.
The dinner is easy and pleasant. A bottle of vintage Chianti, some home-made pasta, a cheesecake to share for dessert, followed by a shot of grappa and a cup of hot and sweet espresso. Then Ruslan pays the bill, rejecting my offer to contribute, and insists on walking me home. As we get closer to my place we both fall silent – neither of us want this evening to end. I cheer up when Ruslan, fighting his usual sweet modesty, suggests stopping somewhere, getting a bottle of something and coming up to my place for one last drink.
It’s club policy that no men are allowed in the girls’ accommodation. Us girls never break those rules. But it is my last night and I don’t give a shit about the rules. I smile ‘yes’, relieved that I don’t have to say goodbye to him yet. We stop at a 24/7. Ruslan gets a small bottle of whisky, complaining that there are no good wines or champagnes available.
We make ourselves comfortable on my bed because I don’t have any chairs. The room looks pretty messy with my suitcases all over the place. Instead of glasses, we use cups. It turns out to be a Soviet realism improvisation, which we keep joking about. As Ruslan pours the whisky, he accidently spills some onto the floor and his knees. I go to the kitchen to bring a cloth. When I return he is standing in the middle of the room, holding the cups and looking at me. His whole face is screaming love, tenderness and great pity at the same time.
I drop the cloth on the floor and step right in front of him. He hands me my cup without taking his eyes off me even for a second, and whispers, ‘I want to drink to you, my new but precious friend, who ...’ he hesitates for a second, clears his throat and continues, ‘... who I’ve fallen in love with … with all my heart …’
It is so moving; I’m unexpectedly emotional. We empty our cups, lean into each other, and lock in a long and passionate kiss.
The floor starts moving under my feet ... my head insanely swinging …
27
The vigorous whack on my door wakes me, painfully echoing in my head. It is Natalia: ‘Jul, the cab is downstairs! Come on, the plane is not going to wait for you, princess!’
I find myself on the floor, without any comprehension of what is going on or what my sister is talking about. I rush towards the door but unbearable dizziness forces me to sit back. I feel a sudden surge of nausea. Strange, I’ve never had such a bad hangover before … and I didn’t drink that much last night. I try again – slowly this time – holding onto the bed. As I move towards the door, it feels like I am on a boat riding the waves during a storm.
When I finally manage to open for Natalia, I race to the toilet because I can’t fight the retching anymore … a couple of minutes of hugging the lavatory seat and I feel relieved for a moment … but a second later, I hear Natalia screaming the tonsils out of her throat. I come out and see that all my suitcases are open and my clothes scattered on the floor, all over the place.
‘I can’t believe you haven’t finished packing yet!’ shouts Natalia. ‘Don’t you know what time the flight is?’
I am staring at the floor, trying to understand why the suitcases are open. I know I finished packing them yesterday morning. I struggle to recall the events of last night, but my head is spinning, my temples pulsing painfully.
‘Can’t you act like a grown-up, just once?’ continues Natalia, going down onto her knees and throwing my stuff back into the suitcases. ‘Why are you standing like a statue, Jul, when we have five minutes to get your ass, together with these suitcases, to the cab?’
But I can’t hear her. I am trying hard to concentrate and understand what is going on. I drop to my knees, too, like a zombie, repacking the clothes, tensely doing my damnedest to recollect at least something about last night. I notice my vanity case, which is also lying on the floor upside down, and heavily sigh, ‘No fucking way!’
I reach for it.
Of course, the black plastic bag into which I rolled all the money I withdrew from my account a few days before – all the money I’d earned in six months – is gone.
The blood rushes into my head and another bout of nausea fills my body. Natalia storms out to the kitchen and comes back with a glass of water. Then she goes back to packing and asks, ‘What the hell happened to you last night?’
I fight through the dizziness, look at her and whisper, ‘The money is gone … I don’t remember anything … Maybe I was spiked or something … I don’t understand how that could happen.’
I sob. A stream of hot tears starts running down my cheeks.
Natalia’s eyes widen as never before, but she remains quiet and doesn’t stop packing my stuff. As soon as she finishes and everything is ready to be tugged down to the cab, she looks at me calmly but scornfully, and throws, ‘Sure, as always …’
I stop crying, get off the floor and wipe the tears from my face. ‘And what is that supposed to mean, Nata?’
Her eyes are full of disgust and disappointment.
‘Haven’t you noticed, Jul, how bad stuff keeps on happening to you? And that it’s always somebody else’s fault? Don’t you find it strange? Huh? First the incident with Lena’s boyfriend, then all your drug and fighting stories, and now this?’
‘What? An incident? This is what you’re calling that now? Was it my fault?’
An enormous ache hits my chest. It is unbearable, along with the pulsating kicks in my head. I think I would feel better after five rounds in the ring with both Vitali and Vladimir Klitschko at t
he same time.
Natalia just looks away, distant, heads to the door and hisses, ‘You have five minutes to get ready. We’ll be waiting in the cab.’ And before she walks out of the room, she adds, ‘I hope this you can complete without getting into trouble.’
We manage to get onto the plane in time. Neither Natalia nor I say a word all the way home. Lena tries to get us to talk and explain what happened, but soon falls silent as well.
28
I can’t stop thinking about what happened. Maybe it was not Ruslan’s fault at all, and he was also a victim of the robbery? I wish I could remember something. The only helpful idea that comes to me on the way home is to have a blood test as soon as I get there.
The check-up with the GP, plus the blood and urine tests, confirm that I have been poisoned.
‘After two days, it is difficult to say what exactly you were poisoned with, Julia. But I can tell you that something definitely happened, and considering your symptoms, I think it was Clonidine.’
The doctor is talking to me while writing something at his desk.
Then he stops and looks at me with eyes full of concern. ‘Who did you spend that night with?’
I explain what happened, insisting that Ruslan couldn’t have done it to me, and that I thought there was somebody else involved.
The doctor knits his brows and continues, ‘You are too naïve, young lady. He is a typical, experienced spiker. In 95 per cent of such cases, the victims think they know their beguiler very well and can trust him or her too. A Clonidine overdose is extremely dangerous, especially when consumed with alcohol. You are very lucky to be alive, Julia, and my suggestion to you would be to go to the police.’
While the doctor is giving his opinion, dizziness drowns me again and my head bursts with the pulsations in my temples. Vivid memories of Ruslan asking the ‘right’ questions to get the ‘right’ information to carry out his fucking brutal plan begin to run through my head as if I am awake but dreaming:
‘For how long are you going to be working still, Jul?’ ‘I guess it’s an exhausting job, Jul, but do you at least make good money?’ His always considerate way of never impeding my working schedule – to make sure I made as much money as possible. His phone call a few days before my departure, after I’d come back from the post office with my money, extracting details of how I spent my day and what I did, covering it with his ‘concern’ for how tired I must be. His coming up to my room on our last date and the drink that he spilled on his pants, to make sure I wouldn’t see him putting something into my glass while I went to the kitchen to get a cloth.
Everything is falling into place. It is becoming so obvious now!
Oh my fuck! It was him! That son of a bitch!
Without a doubt it was Ruslan who’d been hunting me down since the very first time we met.
Unfuckingbelievable! How stupid I was!
I go over and over our short but intense acquaintance, putting all the details together. He’d calculated everything, even the fact that I wouldn’t have time to look for him or to go to the police.
I continue, recollecting the tragic life story that the motherfucker had told me with tears in his eyes, realising that even his name was most likely fake, and that I was probably not the first – or the last – idiot from which he’d stolen money. I feel like screaming in anger and desperation.
Stupid! Stupid! I am so stupid!
Most painful is to think about the last evening we spent together. How could I have been so green, so blind?
For a few days I feel nothing but rage, which shifts to a real despair that I’d lost my money and the friendship I’d enjoyed so much. This deep self-pity then mutates into a numb depression, which crumbles and chews me up from the inside. I have no idea how to escape it.
I decide not to tell my parents and ask my sisters to keep quiet about it too. Bugger all could be done to get my money back anyway – my mom and dad would get worried and upset for nothing. My sisters keep giving me looks of pity – mostly Lena, of course – and can’t stop saying bullshit like, ‘Everything that happens in life happens for the better’, or ‘Money is not everything; the most important thing is that the bastard didn’t kill you,’ which drives me even more nuts. That is why I go for broke to spend as little time at home as possible.
I party and consume with my pals, sleeping over at my girlfriends’ places or with some random guys I hook up with in nightclubs, wasting the last of the money I have. When I was packing in Luxembourg I decided to take €1,500 out of the total I’d earned, in case I wanted to shop at the airport, and put it into my handbag. Luckily, when Ruslan had got his hands on the money in my vanity case, he’d been too generously lazy to search for more.
Oh, I hate the bastard! I hope all his limbs fall off, including his cock!
While I am busy trashing my depression and myself with booze and drugs, my sisters, after a little research and conversation with a few hooker co-workers, decide to go to France. The contract is only for three months and the waiting period can stretch up to seven weeks; what’s more, the impresario fees and travel expenses make it impossible for me to go on that run.
Aside from the fact that I can’t afford it, I really don’t feel like going anywhere with Natalia. Since the fight in my room in Luxembourg, we’ve spoken only a few times, growling at each other more than speaking. Even when she found out about the doctor’s explanation of what happened to me, she never came up with an apology, probably still thinking it was somehow my fault. I can’t get her words out of my head and don’t even try to pretend that it is ‘fine’ between us. It is not ‘fine’, and I am never going anywhere with miss-bitchy-perfection ever again.
Despite my constant comatose state, I settle on a plan of my own. During one of my nights out, I bump into Inna, one of my school friends. It turns out she is regularly contracting in Istanbul. When she hears about my situation, she suggests that I go on the next trip with her. She explains that no paperwork or waiting time is required to go there, and the ‘business’ is easy, describing it as a free-rider’s paradise. She is planning to go back in two weeks herself.
Just a few more shots of tequila with Inna and I make up my mind.
29
In the meantime, Lena’s Michel decides to come to Ukraine for a holiday. She is ecstatic – she distorts her interpretation of his visit in her usual manner, deducing that he is coming all the way here to propose to her.
Aargh … what a hopeless dreamer …
Natalia and I just roll our eyes and don’t even try to convince her not to draw such a forward conclusion so quickly.
Michel’s difficulties begin when he first starts to plan his vacation. Besides the fact that there is no functioning airport in Kherson, and that from Kiev he has to take a train, bus or taxi, turning a four to five-hour journey into a trek of 15 hours or more, the only hotel that he finds online is the three-star Soviet-era-pride inn, the Liner. When Michel sees the pictures of its rooms and ‘suites’ on the Internet, the scene plunges him into serious doubt. But the idea of spending some time with his Lena, and a chance to experience the country famous for its beautiful women, ancient and glorious cathedrals, and the spirit and taste of a life that was hidden by the iron curtain and soaked in communist utopianism for more than 70 years, keeps him firm about this adventure.
They both are very excited when he arrives, spending the days lollygagging and the nights partying.
Michel is getting the sought-after post-Soviet experience in full – from the local restaurants (including some trendy ones that even have menus written in English, where they serve salads drowned in mayonnaise, or chips with suspicious meat, proudly called sirloin steak, that float in a puddle of burned sunflower oil on the plate), to becoming familiar with the public toilets of ‘perestroika-collapse’ Ukraine.
When Michel gets off the train and waits for Lena, he realises that he very much needs to do a number two. He waits until Lena shows up, hurriedly hugs and kisses her on the cheek
, asks her to watch his luggage and canters towards the sign – 13 – that is thoughtfully adorned with little stick figures of a man and a woman.
The toilet is a small, single-level brick block about 50 metres away from the central train station building. When Michel jumps inside, the stench hits him – a mixture of urine, crap and chlorine that burns his eyes, nostrils and throat. An old lady – the paymistress – sits in a small anteroom next to a little wooden table with a roll of greyish toilet paper and a pair of scissors in her hands. A metal plate with coins, a sign saying 50к14, and a few pieces of evenly cut toilet paper folded next to each other decorate the table.
Michel searches his pocket, without taking his wondering eyes off the woman, grabs a handful of coins and places it on the plate. She glances at him, mutters ‘’15 and hands him one of the toilet paper pieces. Michel slowly takes the sheet, staring at it, and starts shaking his head, knowing that it wouldn’t be enough for his morning evacuation. He thinks for a second, impatiently shifting from one foot to another, and then takes a €10 bill from another pocket. He waves the bill right in front of the old lady’s face while pointing at the roll in her hand. The woman smiles, takes the money and hands him the whole roll.
Michel, satisfied with himself, walks into the loo holding the toilet paper as if it’s some kind of trophy. The scenery inside makes him stop in a complete shock. There are no toilet seats – instead, there are only four tiled holes in the floor, separated by brick walls with no doors to give people any privacy. The floor around the holes is smeared with dirt, crap and urine; huge green flies hum around and enliven the picture.
Ha ha! Poor Michel! His spoilt European eyes never saw anything like that before!
The rest of his vacation goes quite pleasantly until the day before his departure.
He and Lena are walking back to his hotel after having a romantic dinner in one of the restaurants. At the hotel’s entrance they stop to have a cigarette. They’re busy discussing something, and don’t notice the teenager who walks out of the darkness and heads towards them. The young man asks for a cigarette, and when Lena pulls one out of the box, he thanks her and leaves.
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