We Are Still Married (46 page)

We got something much more open: surfing. Big waves in October on the Crimea, we'll get a board and two wet suits from the Surfburo and find the beach, what do you say, Sonya? Surfing opens a person up. You don't care for it?

I don't either. There's a difference between openness and emptiness. I admire you very much for that you choose right. You're an okaynik, you're so honest. Your purity appeals to me.

What should we to do? I am open. Whatever you want, baby.

Shall we ride the hydrofoil?

Do you play chess? volyibol? tenyisneya? Or should we sit in the cafeteriya and enjoy big glasses of hot tea with all the sugar and talk and talk and talk.

What do you wish to talk about, my little
pirogi?
My beauty.

You request to know the truth about me?

Me, Leonid? Hey, baby.

That question is exactly the question I hoped you would ask. You want me to be open, I
want
to be open. I am sick of lies. Time for complete openness, my
blini,
my little
muzhitshka.
I am not like other men, they
lie
because they have no eyes to see beauty but I look upon you, my darling, my
stupendous dumpling,
and you inspire me to tell the truth from my heart—O Tanya your eyes are the blue of Lake Baikal, your hair is the brown of a new-plowed field in the Caucasus, your lips are the red of you know what, and your breasts, my gosh, your breasts...

Your breasts.

How can a man once given the opportunity to look upon your beautiful young breasts ever tell a lie again?

Your body has the power to make a man good.

Let me see your breasts.

Be open with me as I will be open with you.

Now I reveal the truth in a few simple clumsy words, this is no speech memorized by me to tell to every
girl
who rides in my cab. Nyet. I was one-hundred-percent open
years
before Gorbachev. He is an old man, I am thirty-seven, a different generation. Women are my best friends. Always have I stood on the side of women in their struggle against lies and cruelty and the closed doors of prejudice. Openness is my middle name.
Leonid Glasnostyevich.
It is true. I changed my name to say who I really am. I am a man but I am a true feministiya!

I am a liberatchik!

I have chocolate, nylon stockings, and
cigaryeti.
Also a twentiya-carat gold bracelyet and a bikinyi. For you. I take you anywhere. I am free. We go to Gastronom and buy all the best. Caviar, sausage and crackers, cheese of all kinds. You say. Anything you want.

I say this so you know I am yours completely and openly. I am a warm person and sensitive, who is crazy about you. Touch me. See how warm I am, don't take my word for it, see for yourself.

I give you my body.

Don't speak right now,
devushka. Glasnost
is beautiful and extremely delicate. A careless word can shatter it forever.

Here in Kiev, tonight, a man and a woman are not to be ashamed to take
glasnost
further and more beautiful than ever it has been before.

Take off your
platye,
Natasha. Your
bluzka,
your
kombinatsiya.
My beautiful one. You trust me. Your puyas, your liyifchik, your
trusiki. Liebchen,
darling. You
are
openness, dear delicious Galina, you make it real, daring me to know you as you are. Now have I told you everything that can be said.

Kiss me, you fool. Love me!

W
HEN YOU HAPPEN TO STEP off an edge you didn't see and lurch forward into space waving your arms, it's the end of the world for a second or two, and after you do land, even if you know you're okay and no bones are broken, it may take a few seconds to decide whether this is funny or not. Your body is still worked up about the fall—especially the nervous system and the adrenaline-producing areas. In fact, I am
still
a little shaky from a spill that occurred two hours ago, when I put on a jacket, walked out the front door of this house and for no reason whatever took a plunge down five steps and landed on the sidewalk flat on my back with my legs in the air. I am in fairly good shape, not prone to blackouts or sudden dizziness, and so a sudden inexplicable fall comes as a big surprise to me.

A woman who was jogging down the street—a short, muscular young woman in a gray sweatshirt and sweatpants—stopped and asked if I was okay. “Yeah! Fine!” I said and got right up. “I just fell, I guess,” I said. “Thanks,” I said. She smiled and trotted away.

Her smile has followed me into the house, and I see it now as a smirk, which is what it was. She was too polite to bend over and hoot and shriek and guffaw and cackle and cough and whoop and wheeze and slap her thighs and stomp on the ground, but it was all there in the smile: a young woman who through rigorous physical training and feminist thinking has gradually taken charge of her own life and rid her attic of self-hatred and mindless competitiveness and other artifacts of male-dominated culture is rewarded with the sight of a middle-aged man in a brown suit with a striped tie falling down some steps as if someone had kicked him in the pants.

I'm sorry if I don't consider this humorous. I would like to. I wish she had come over and helped me up. We might have got to talking about the fall and how each of us viewed it from a different perspective: that she perceived it as symbolic political theater, whereas I saw it as something that was actually happening to me at the time. I might have understood that the sight of a tall man in a suit folding up and waving his arms and falling helplessly and landing flat on his back was the punch line of a joke she had been carrying around with her for a long time.

I might have seen it her way, but she ran down the street, and now I can only see my side of the fall. I feel cheapened by the whole experience. I understand now why my son was so angry with me a few months ago when he tripped on a shoelace and fell in the neighbor's yard—a yard where the neighbor's sheepdog had lived for years—and I laughed at him.

“It's not funny!” he yelled.

“Oh, don't be so sensitive,” I said.

Don't be so sensitive!
What a dumb thing to say! Who has the right to tell someone else how to feel? It is the right of the person who falls on the dog droppings to decide for himself or herself how he or she will feel. It's not up to a jury. The fallen person determines whether it's funny or not.