From Siberia With Love

by Ilana Cohen

  Because he never had enough time and no real interest, Alex never went to the city of Sochi. During high season, the resort town was crowded by tourists, the stores boasted inflated prices and the beaches were packed with vacationers. Unlike him, his girlfriends occasionally paid short visits to the city, travelling there by bus in order to buy themselves the latest summer fashions at the tourist center.

  Many times during the night-flight back home, the plane would be almost empty, other than some sleeping passengers flying back to Siberia. Alex and his friends had made sure the cockpit was properly locked then the three of them crowded together in the flight attendants’ cabin. Behind the curtain, the two flight attendants modeled for him their perfect and sexy bodies, the finest lingerie fashion sold that season in Sochi: Bras, interesting underwear and garters made of brilliant satin and decorated with soft lace.

  The two stewardesses, Ola and Katia, had become good friends of his. He helped them to perform the difficult tasks that arose during the flight and proved to be of great service. He volunteered to pick up passenger’s heavy baggage to the overhead compartment, cleared all the trash that had been left after meals and was the one who would approach a passenger that went a little crazy and wild here and there.

  In the early hours of one morning, they disembarked from the plane in their home airport of Krasnoyarsk, and his girlfriends told him, “It’s night now and we’re all tired, what will you do at home by yourself? Come with us, we’re inviting you to our house. Sleep with us, get some rest and tomorrow, you’ll continue on your way. What do you say? Do you accept our invitation, kid?”

  He agreed wordlessly. Silently, he followed them to their apartment on the other end of the city. Their invitation was shrouded with mystery and he was overcome with excitement.

  “Take off your underwear, kid, you’d be much more comfortable,” the two girls suggested when the three of them lay in their double bed. He lay down trapped between his two experienced girlfriends, shivering all over. Trembling like a leaf, he did as he had been told to do, and at the same time, they both took off their underwear as well. The intensity of his sensations caused him to lose control. He had seen both of them naked before, during the moonlit nights down by the shore in Adler, but this was completely different. The moment the girls drew closer and touched him, he felt the warmth of their bellies, the wetness between their spread legs, where they both pulled both his hands to, he couldn’t understand what was happening to him. His entire body hardened to pain, he trembled, perspired, groaned aloud and wept from the happiness that flooded his entire body.

  “Shhh, take it easy, kid, shhh, take it easy, this is what your life will be like from now on,” he heard the girls trying to calm him down, because he had expressed his intense emotions in extremely high octaves. Between the two naked girlfriends in a single bed, he was lost in the wild sensations of the sex he had not yet known. He must have been exceedingly hungry. They did not leave the apartment for three straight days, until they ran out of food. He left the apartment as a man to a new and interesting world, tranquil and content, head over heels in love with his two stewardesses. Ola and Katia had taken a very important mission upon themselves, “to nurture the flower”. He had never had any kindergarten teachers as a child, now he received a ‘special edition’, two for the price of one.

  His love for the two stewardesses sent its tender arms to influence all aspects of his life. He would meet with the girls during the weekends at their apartment. His girlfriends fed him with delicacies they had brought from their flights and took good care of him; he ate enough to last him for the entire week.

  Meanwhile, autumn had arrived and the university school year began, but he didn’t change anything in his happy and relaxed lifestyle. His heart was celebrating and his mind wasn’t available for the demanding university studies. The girls around him did not interest him in the least and did not draw his attention.

  “The most beautiful girl in class is interested in you, why aren’t you reacting, why don’t you do anything, not interested and not even moving yourself, you remain indifferent. Tell me, is everything all right with you, comrade?”

  His roommate in the student dorms, Victor Bolokov, tried to draw his attention to what had been happening on his home turf. He did notice a beautiful girl that had been visiting their room often along with her girlfriends.

  Even without being told, he had noticed the most beautiful girl among the visitors stealing quick glances at him, but he wasn’t interested yet. She may be beautiful, but she’s not for me, he naively thought.

  “Leave me alone, can’t you see I haven’t got the time?”

  He came up with his familiar reply that had always worked well for him, shrugged with disinterest and carried on with his head held high and pride in his heart. He wasn’t about to explain to people he had everything he needed and was content and in love. He didn’t want any other girls other than his stewardesses, Ola and Katia, he remained faithful to them.

  Ever since Victor, his roommate, had bought himself a record player, Alex saw dozens of girls almost every evening. They would come to listen to the Beatles records. Victor owned a sizeable collection of the band’s records and was an avid fan of the band. Such avant-garde music was strictly forbidden in soviet Russia. During the evenings, the room would fill up with dozens of fans who came to them from all corners of the university. Sometimes, so many people arrived that the room was too small to contain them and they would stand in the corridor to listen to the music. Distributing the Beatles records was done in secret, a black market of music. Alex’s friend hadn’t told anyone about the source of his forbidden merchandise. The band of the four young musicians from Liverpool was banned at the time, but even so, their music erupted with a tremendous force into the country, much to its rulers’ discontent. The messages of the new spirit of freedom had been transferred on the airwaves with wonderful creativity and freed the minds of the youths in the dictatorial communist empire. The Beatles reaped a huge success in the Soviet Union during the seventies, even though the band never performed on its stages. They entered the collective consciousness like a hurricane that devastated the old and cleared room for the new. Due to Beatlemania, young Russians stopped cutting their hair short and grew long hair and bristles. Boys boasted crests on their heads and used hair dryers, just like the girls. An obsessive preoccupation with hairstyle began. Long hair requires constant care, unlike cropped hair that pretty much takes care of itself. The fashion lines changed, pants descended from the navel line and expanded downward. Black ties were released from collars and white shirts were painted with all the colors of the rainbow. Everyone wanted to resemble Paul McCartney and his friends.

  “Are you done with all the exams for this semester, kid?” that was the first question Katia always asked when Alex called her, right after his final exam.

  “That’s it. I have a two-week vacation now! I’m free and I don’t need to retake any tests, I’ve passed them all successfully.” He broke the happy news to his dear girlfriend, elated with joy. Fortunately, Katia picked up the phone, which meant his stewardesses were home and not out flying. He could expect a wonderful vacation: Beautiful days with lots of sex and good food in the two girlfriends’ apartment in the northern part of the city.

  “Don’t forget to bring a cake and a bottle of Muscat with you.” She reminded him about the traditional wine from their days of nightly dipping at the Sochi shores. He had an annoying tendency to come to them empty handed. He didn’t know why, but he had always felt he deserved to get everything from the girls in return for his presence in the apartment. They were always equipped with various delicacies, cheeses made in the Netherlands or Denmark, Swiss chocolate and Hungarian cold cuts. They bought special food from the big cities they flew to, Moscow, Leningrad or Kiev.

  During the winter, there were only a few flights from Siberia to Western Russia, so they had the opportunity to spend several especially beautiful winter vacations together. He sha
ved and showered, carefully scrubbing behind his ears with a nailbrush, combed his wet hair back, gathered it with a hair tie and off he went for his vacation!

  He boarded the bus that left once a day from the university campus and drove for an hour to the center of town. There, he took a bus to the northern part of the city, to the neighborhood called “The Green Grove”. The place possessed a misleading name because the new neighborhood was comprised of tall building blocks and he never saw any shrubbery there, not grass nor trees.

  On the short vacations and sometimes also during the weekends, the girls welcomed him warmly and hosted him royally.

  He wasn’t a freeloader; he gave them a hand with everything that required a man’s physical strength. He helped them clean the house while having fun with them, and peeled vegetables and potatoes for soup, a chore which for some reason they disliked, wetting their hands in cold water. He oiled locks on the doors and unclogged sinks that had been blocked by their long, blond hair.

  He loved watching them while they were busy with their feminine tasks. He looked at them while they would roll their hair after washing it with large hair curlers they attached to their heads, and while they manicured and pedicured their nails. He happily ran to refill buckets filled with warm water they would use to rinse their feet before cutting their nails and to soften the skin on the soles of their feet. He quietly sat on a stool next to them and followed their every motion while they applied red nail polish on the nails of their hands and feet. He was very pleased with himself because he had innocently thought they were dolling themselves up mainly for him. He was the only one who had the pleasure of seeing their sexy feet in the nude. Others only saw them hidden in black, low heeled pumps during their work on commercial flights, or in large boots when they were off-duty and roaming the streets of their muddy city.

  His first love to the two stewardesses had been the perfect arrangement for him and lasted for three entire years of his youth.

  The Novosibirsk University was established as an independent initiative of local humanists, scientists who had been exiled themselves or who saw their parents exiled to the Siberian labor camps. There were highly intelligent people among the prisoners, most of them Jewish, who arranged study groups among the Siberian prisoners. These brave people conducted sacred work in the realms of the intellect and the spirit.

  At the end of a gruesome workday, on the dark and chilly evenings, they would all gather together in a heated room, round the open fire, so they could teach one another. The men taught the other men and the women taught the children that had been born in that accursed place.

  There, at the bottom of the world, the famous Novosibirsk University had been established during the communist era – a university with a worldwide reputation in the areas of natural science, reputable in Russia even more than the universities of Moscow and Leningrad. International scientists from prestigious institutions in America and Europe held research ties with their fellow scientists in Novosibirsk. The Novosibirsk University published many important scientific articles and was behind many important scientific inventions. It boasted the talents of groundbreaking and brilliant minds, including Nobel Prize winner. From the depths of distress and the humiliation of genocide, aided by resolve and determination, a magnificent academic institution had been created, one that stands for life and progress.

  Alex had taken the admission tests without having the proper high school education to help him pass them. Why did I spend all my time playing hockey instead of going to school? He asked himself. His chances of being admitted to the sciences department were close to zero. He did not possess enough of the required mathematical knowledge.

  But the Jewish mind is always busy inventing patents and coming up with clever tricks, and so had Alex’s mind during the admission tests. He racked his brains during the important exam, even though it wasn’t clear to him what he was supposed to do. He abused the equations and toyed with the numbers, until he reached results that appeared logical to him. Professors, teachers and teaching assistants, all those who checked the candidate’s admission exams were in awe when they checked his test. He had managed to confuse them all. When he was summoned for an interview so he would explain his mathematical methods, his examiners discovered there wasn’t any method or system, just a chaotic mess that swirled in his head. They also discovered he was determined to get admitted to the university. It worked. He was admitted as a regular first year student.

  He began his studies with all the enthusiasm he could muster, with a true desire to learn and become educated. During the mornings, he would be the first to arrive to class, so he could get a good seat in the middle of the first row, right under the lecturer’s nose. This was where he would sit every single day, writing everything he heard, word for word. He documented everything he could possibly write on paper. He needed every piece of information because his chances of success were slim. After a while, he had gotten used to writing as quickly as the lecturer would speak, and it happened more than once that his notebook wasn’t thick enough to contain the entire lecture.

  At the end of the school day, he went to the University’s large library, to copy all the notes he had written and add his impressions from various books he found on the library’s shelves. He went out of the library only when he was driven away at night, when the late closing hour arrived.

  He barely knew his roommate in the dorms. He got back to his room only to sleep, bathed in the common showers and tiredly fainted on his bed. During the first year, he avoided taking part in the dorm’s active social life, even though he had been invited many times. He never hung out with his fellow students or any of the girls. He never danced or drank vodka with them.

  Once, his roommates decided to play tricks on him while he was sleeping. They took him outside to the corridor while he was still lying in bed. He woke up early in the morning, freezing in an empty corridor. Inside the room, he found his roommate with a few sleeping drunkards. Without thinking twice, he beat his roommate until he bloodied his face. The rest got scared and ran for their lives to their own rooms. From that moment on, he had gotten what he wanted, peace and quiet and respect. No one in the university would ever challenge him again.

  On holidays and during the long winter vacation, the university would empty out. The lecturing halls, the classrooms and the student dorms remained silent and barren. The few students who didn’t return home during the holidays stayed in the dorms and so did Alex. There was always something more to learn and do. In the deep snow of the parks and the university campus square, he paved narrow pathways with his skis, and during the breaks he took from his work in the laboratory, he went out for some fresh air. Luckily for Alex, his professor had given strict instructions to open the laboratory for his exclusive use. He was invited to visit the laboratory at any time and devote his time for his research group. He felt as if he was on the verge of a breakthrough in his research as early as his first year as a science student.

  He passed the holidays in peace and quiet. He did not feel lonely, even though he was mostly by himself. He was entirely absorbed in his research and in following the construction of hardened matter crystals in the ocular of his physics lab microscope. He also continued to indulge in vigorous sports activities.

  One morning, Alex returned from his morning run. Suddenly, the sound of knocking sounded on his dorm room door. “Who’s there?” he was surprised. He hadn’t spoken with anyone for days and felt like a lonely king reigning over the academic empire. He received no answer, but the door opened and to his surprise, a girl entered the room. It was a girl he wasn’t familiar with, with long light hair falling loosely on her shoulders. She looked at him and with a single movement turned the key, which had been left there, and locked the door.

  “Excuse me, I don’t understand.”

  He was embarrassed, half naked, wearing only his trousers. His upper torso was exposed after his shower, a wet towel still hanging on his shoulder. It all happened very quickly. Sh
e stared at him wide-eyed, then immediately and quickly, began to take her clothes off. She removed from her body a pink tracksuit, then her underwear. She didn’t wear a bra. She exposed the wide, deep curves of a plump, round girl. She did everything herself and he stood shocked and unmoving in front of her. Naked as the day she was born, she approached him and with a single pull, took off his blue sports shorts. He wasn’t wearing any underwear. The young man was ready and willing, ripe just for her. He felt her lips sliding down his abdomen on their way down, tasting and sucking his flesh. She pushed him wildly to the bed and with lust-filled sighs climbed on top of him.

  “Who are you? Do we know each other?” Alex asked the stranger after the act, while the girl was curled up on his lap and on his bed.

  “I’ve known you for a long time,” she admitted, satisfied. “Me and all the girls on our floor, the girl’s floor below, are familiar with you, know about you. We always see you jumping over the stairs of our dorms every evening, two flights with a single bound. You are such a strange character, you look amazing but live by yourself, leaving all the girls in the building to fantasize about you, but not even looking at anyone… What’s with you, man? We don’t see you anywhere other than in the stairway of the dorm building late at night. You never come to dance at the parties, don’t take part in any of the sport games or join us at night for a drink at the pub.”