16

When I went down and was nearing the entrance of the restaurant, Mary was not there. Anyway it was five minutes too early. To be five minutes early would be humiliating for a woman. I wondered if there were two or more women invited would they try to outdo one another in being late.

The restaurant indeed was almost full, but not seemed overcrowded thanks to large intervals between the tables and semi-darkness. The light was subdued, flickering candlelight on some tables added intimacy and mystery to the atmosphere (at least the management was sure of it), there was background light music coming from a white piano with a black and white pianist who seemed engaged in a soft-voiced confession before himself. The tables were occupied by couples, a man and a woman in beautiful evening dresses, engrossed in conversation, exchanging smiles and tender glances, touching lightly each others' hands – quite casually but always deliberately -, every now and then taking their glasses to their lips...

I felt a light touch on my sleeve and turned. Mary was standing beside me, smiling faintly. She was wearing a magnificent dark blue dress with rare golden flashes that vaguely sparkled like stars on an early autumn night. She had a small white rose in her hair. She seemed relaxed and pleasantly excited.

"We're in a private room, you know," I said, taking her by the arm and opening the door of the restaurant.

We were ushered by an athletic headwaiter – perhaps an ex-boxer, judging from his unnaturally flattened nose , - with a crash course in English - into our private room. Walking after him past a row of other private rooms, I caught a glimpse of two twisted hands on a table, and a profile of a woman, in which I had no difficulty to recognize Lena's face. I couldn't stop to look better, but what I had seen was enough to give my heart a twinge of pain. We were led to the next door. There was a candlelight on the table covered with snow-white tablecloth.

I gave a glance to Mary. Did she notice who were seated in the room next to us?

A few seconds after we had sat down, a waiter came in and offered us the menu.

"I would prefer to taste some typical Russian dish," said Mary, opening the menu.

"This is the wrong place for Russian cuisine," I said, looking at the first page. "Anyhow, they are universal here. They call it European kitchen, including here Italian, Spanish, French, you name it, dishes, and cooking them rather decently, as the connoisseurs say, from standard frozen precooked kits. Then there is an inner specialization, like here, where they have an English chef and every dish is prepared individually from scratch."

"From butchering a cow to preparing stewed meat?" Mary gave a laugh.

"I don't exclude they have their farm here."

Mary leafed the menu and said:

"Oh, really, they've got traditional dishes."

"What would you recommend to me?" I asked, pretending ignorance that, frankly speaking, needed not be pretended.

"Well, try a Lancashire hotpot. If you like lamb meat, you'll appreciate it."

Mary chose a steak and kidney pudding. She muttered to herself:

"The chef here must be pretty sure of himself if he ventures doing such things."

We agreed to take a bottle of Burgundy wine.

"A very good combination," said Mary.

"No whisky or vodka?" I dared.

"No. I would like to be lucid tomorrow."

"This is a common prejudice about vodka," I observed. "One need not drink it by glasses, on the contrary, it's highly unadvisable. Two small shots during a meal, that's the maximum, and much more healthy than half the bottle of the best red wine. You will feel only a pleasant excitement and a surge of energy in your grey matter."

"Oh, really? I didn't know that. Let's try it sometime tomorrow in a Russian restaurant."

"Do we order appetizers?" I said, looking at the first page.

"Well, let's take some common vegetable salad for two," agreed Mary. She closed the menu and gave me a smile.

"You're dressed like an experienced restaurant-goer," she said looking approvingly at my jacket. "Do your wife follow your wardrobe?"

"I have no wife," I said avoiding her eyes.

"How come? Of course, it's none of my business, but with your looks? Or...?"

"I'm not a gay," I said. "I was married two times, but both marriages have been a failure. No wonder, with the line of work I'm doing..."

The waiter came in with his pad and pencil to take the order. He was a young man with smoothly brushed hair and hollow cheeks.

"Will it take long to prepare the dishes?" asked him Mary.

"Well," he gave a look at his notes and shook his head in doubt. "They are rather complicated. Perhaps, it will take an hour. In the meantime I'll bring you some free nibbles and your salad. And the wine, of course" He had a clear Russian accent but spoke fluently.

When he left we returned to our talk.

"But what's so special about your work, that it ruins your family?" Mary said.

"There's little or no family life with this kind of work," I said with a sigh. "I come back home at incredible hours, or may come not at all. I have a lot of amorous contacts with different women."

"Is it part of your work?" Mary tried to be ironical, but somehow I felt that her voice got a little tense.

"It's practically unavoidable, I never seek them by myself."

"They seek you."

"Who?"

"The women." She paused a little, then resumed her reflection:

"I can understand them. They come to Russia, for them an entirely exotic country, they meet you, a fantastically charming and exotic young man, they try to get the most of such a meeting, knowing that it would never get a continuation... For most of them the lightning relation they had with you was perhaps the most wonderful experience of their life. Yes, I understand them. And you."

I kept silent sipping the wine. Mary said:

"How many women have you had? It's probably something every man can boast of?"

"Not me," I said quickly, putting my glass on the table. "I may sound rude, but it's much the same as asking "how many times have you enjoyed your dinner?" Every time it was a different story, I remember every woman that loved me and that I loved. You may not believe me, but I wept so many times parting with the woman of the day. Every story was genuine, my feelings were authentic every second of our relation. So your question would have been more correct if you'd said "how many times have you been in love?" Can you reformulate it like this?

"I can", whispered Mary hiding her face behind her glass of wine.

I took my glass and made a sip, then put it back on the table.

"You know," I said, wondering at how agitated I was, "I never counted my victories. What a vulgar word, victory, referred to a woman. No man who considers a woman not a fortress to conquer, or an object to obtain or buy, but a soul to open with all her deepness and tenderness, would never undertake operations similar to military ones, would never use special strategy or tactics, or rhetorical tricks to talk her into going to bed with him. "

"I would never believe that you don't have your arsenal of words and moves to persuade a woman to come to bed with you! The most eloquent and artful denial of it will never convince me!", said Mary, taking her glass off her face. In her eyes - wider than usual thanks to artful makeup - was flickering, like a hellish flame, the candlelight.

"You know what? At the highest point of falling in love I can't even imagine taking to bed the woman I'm in love with. She becomes so a divine creature in my eyes that taking her to bed would be an immensely vulgarizing act, destroying all her ethereal essence."

I took another sip and said:

"Ok, you know the best way to open the heart of a woman?"

"I'm all ears."

"It's opening your heart and soul to her. You know, it's very difficult, practically impossible to act out the genuine love feeling. So, to act out being in love you must be really in love. So, every time I came in contact with a woman with whom I had to stay a few days, I tried to find in her a person, to learn as much as possible..."

"I beg your pardon, why should you have done all this? You could well coexist with her those few days you have to stay beside her? Why necessarily fall in love? What is it, a habit or what?"

I caught myself going too far and telling things I oughtn't to. I readily accepted her suggestion:

"You're right. I have been too much time in this business, not to develop this habit of life."

Fortunately, she was pursuing her secret thought:

"So, if you're coherent and I'm right in my deductions, you must be applying the same tactics – let me use this old right word - toward me? Is that so? Don't try to pussyfoot around."

I looked straight into her eyes and kept silent exactly for five seconds.

"Yes", I said finally.