A Simple Soul by Vadim Babenko (top 100 novels txt) 📖

It all turned out easier than he expected. The masculine voice on the line was courteous and velvety, he wasn’t asked anything superfluous – in fact, the conversation contained not a single note of vulgarity. The administrator’s manners called to mind a concert hall, elegant dresses, long-awaited vouchers to the orchestra seats. And, indeed, when he offered Frank a girl for the evening, he described her as a violinist down on her luck, a musician from a good school reserved for demanding clients.

“I can tell you’re an intelligent man,” the voice warbled. “You’ll be satisfied: she is a Muscovite, an angel, with long, sensitive fingers...”

At this, White’s heart sputtered again, and afterward he was truly not disappointed, though the violinist turned out to be a Ukrainian from Donetsk, confessing with a chuckle that she had no ear for music. They laughed together at the deceit over the phone, and then she was nice enough, especially when she disrobed without any shyness or affectation under his intense gaze. Her love seemed a bit mechanical, but the automatic nature of it didn’t feel humiliating. She even said she enjoyed him, and Frank believed it, in turn shaking off his bashful constraint. Besides, the girl was called Natasha, a name ringing with sweet pain in his heart and adding content to prepaid passion.

Just before parting, as he came out of the shower, Frank saw his guest inspecting his wallet, which he had carelessly tossed on the nightstand. “I wanted to take a gander at your wife,” she laughed in response to his raised eyebrows. “All Americans carry photos around with them, right? And you, I’d wager, are not even married.”

She looked at him with brazen eyes, yellow like those of a taiga lynx, and grinned from ear to ear, then they kissed goodbye and only the odor of her perfume remained in the room. Frank drank some cognac from the mini-bar and counted his money, prepared for the worst, but realized he didn’t remember how much cash he had, and just laughed at himself.

Overall, he had to acknowledge the evening was a success – and he admitted this and drank himself drunk again. The nocturnal faeries at the bar now looked like the guardians of a collective secret that bound them to him, as well as a good half of those sitting here in the smoky twilight. With a faint sadness, he peered into their faces, cognizant that his one life was not enough to learn all the paths through forbidden grounds. He imagined how one could live for years here, in the city of sin, in lechery and alcoholic debauchery, without once recalling a single taboo. In the morning he felt ill and wallowed in bed until midday, then went to the central park and strolled for a long while. And then everything was repeated again: the newspaper ad, the phone call, and the insinuating baritone. Shop assistants and waitresses no longer interested him. The road to truth was much shorter, and it was not worth wasting his valuable time.

On this occasion they sent him Olga, dark haired, with high cheekbones and a slightly Eastern slant to her eyes. He spent the evening with her, and then the three following nights. At first, though, it turned out embarrassing: after two hours of lovemaking and a wholehearted goodbye kiss, he, probably remembering the night before, decided to take a peek in his ill-fated wallet and discovered the pocket of his pants dangling from the chair was completely empty. This was too much, and Frank grew acutely alarmed. He remembered right away that he was in a dangerous land where crime ran rampant and no one could be trusted. With shaking hands, he dialed the number of the insidious service and shouted at the dispatcher in a falsetto, full of weakness, knowing his senses had come to him too late. The dispatcher was genuinely surprised and promised to get to the bottom of it without delay. For a quarter of an hour, Frank stomped from corner to corner, cursing his own idiocy through clenched teeth. Then, as if by some hunch, he kicked the hateful chair, forcing it toward the wall, and saw his lost wallet, which had fallen to the floor in the most harmless of ways.

Everything was there – his credit cards and his money. Frank’s despair knew no bounds. The escort service, as if out of spite, gave a busy signal for a long time, and he mumbled in chagrin, his palms pressed to his temples. And once he got through, he unleashed such a barrage of emotions, mixing up his Russian out of agitation, that it fully confused the owner of the baritone, who began to justify himself without knowing what he was guilty of.

Soon all was settled. Frank White was assured with appropriate empathy that such a thing could happen to anyone, and there was no reason for worry or concern. And with regard to the girl, whom they had already asked for her side of the story, she would simply be happy with the resolution and would bear him no ill will. Frank, however, ardently insisted he wanted to apologize in person. At this, the insinuating voice advised him to do it the very next evening, in the course of receiving romantic services, which, of course, Olga would take gracefully as a combination of the pleasant with the useful.  “Especially if it’s for the whole night,” the voice hinted cautiously, and they agreed on that, ending the conversation with considerable warmth.

The next day she came with a turquoise ribbon in her hair. She was downcast and laconic, admitting with a sigh that no one had ever before accused her of theft. Frank fussed about like an anxious newlywed, saying a lot of unnecessary words and not knowing where to place his eyes and hands. Then they quickly reconciled and headed off to dine at an Italian restaurant, and that night they hardly slept, sharing stories from their lives mingled with erotic games full of unexpected quirks. Olga brought elegant handcuffs, scaring him slightly at first, but they shone so invitingly and seemed so innocent, he was ashamed of his suspicions. However, the game they played, while remaining close to an innocuous joke, revealed something really new. Frank was bewildered; he was being offered an unaccustomed form of freedom. There was more to it than he’d realized at first sight, and he assumed Russian women were really and truly insane, perhaps ready to believe anybody who was capable of sharing their own crazy thoughts.

He was uncomfortable for a moment with her submission, which went a bit too far, but then he saw the same was expected from him as well, and Olga, his black-haired slave, was now waiting for him with an imaginary horsewhip. Then it began to seem natural and desirable; she said to him, “Trust me,” and he accepted trust as the essence of the action. And, afterward, they whispered tender words, as if they had survived enough dangers together to suffice for a few years.

Olga left in the morning, and Frank White knew he was about to lose his head. He roamed the Moscow streets, sleepy and sullen, muttering as if carrying on an endless dialogue with her. He had never told any woman so much about himself – supposing, reasonably, that none would listen; this was also new, and it imparted a strange relief. He suddenly realized he had outgrown himself – such as he was before – and he wondered with fatigued irony what else might he have to explore and how many more nights like that were needed to get used to them and not be surprised later.

After lunch he dropped into a heavy slumber, and then there was Olga again and her impetuous whisper. They didn’t speak now of their former lives, but about each other and the burdens of loneliness, guardedly admitting mutual sympathy and selecting their words carefully to avoid being pathetic. Therefore, perhaps a lot was left unsaid, for which Frank subsequently suffered, squinting his eyes in the daylight.

When the next night came, Olga came too, wearing not turquoise, but a scarlet ribbon in her black locks. He lost all control and blurted out to her everything a man who had been snared by the most enticing bait could possibly say. When it came to him promising to take her away to Washington, get her a job, and, who knows, maybe unite their lives at some point, Olga squeezed his hand – from excitement or perhaps something else. Frank suddenly collected himself and started kissing her in gratitude. Later, standing under the shower, he berated his wagging tongue, recognizing he had gone too far. Returning to the room, he told her he was about to travel to another city on business. It was becoming scary to continue their nightly appointments, like wandering into foreign territory where disguised traps waited. She shed a few tears and left her phone number, which he fervently pledged to call – the minute he got back.

So, they had said and done all that was proper but, left alone, Frank sighed in relief. Something seemed out of hand; he clearly needed a reprieve. All the same, he ought to finally get to business: another city was not just a redeeming lie, and he had already gotten more from Moscow than he bargained for.

He had slept into the afternoon and was now sitting in a cafe with a view of the cobblestones of Stoleshnikov – grooming his somewhat somber spleen and reliving the last night and his words, of which he should probably be ashamed. But he felt no shame whatsoever; in fact, he liked himself for the first time in many years. Of course, he had said too much without thinking, Frank White conceded, drinking the cocktail he was brought. He had probably broken the girl’s heart: she would be hoping and waiting. Perhaps she would even leave her profitable business, at least for as long as her hope endured. But one can’t plan one’s life around a woman’s tears; that’s too much trouble and the consequences are unclear. And Olga, after all, didn’t have the nicest past: what if that later became a sore point for him? Frank studied with interest two young lasses languidly traipsing by, then waved to the waitress, pointing at his empty glass, and felt himself to be a freedom-loving male, full of vigor and desires.

“It’s too bad for the girl,” he thought again with feigned grief, leaning back in his chair and stretching out fully. “But Axel was right: there are a lot of them, and the choice is so hard!”

This false grief would have been easily forgotten, however, had he by chance known the thoughts of his recent lover, who was sitting at that very moment in a bar in the southeast of Moscow. She sipped her martini, exchanging glances with the bartender, squinting contentedly as she anticipated intense shopping ahead. A profitable client had turned up right on time; Olga praised herself for the skillful game and pitied the American simpleton who seemed such an easy mark. Her conscience even bothered her a little, which happened quite rarely, and might be considered an amusing exception. She recalled how Frank had shoved money at her that morning to get out of the situation he had put himself in, and how she lathered on some fake waterworks to strengthen the effect.

“Fucking life!” she said to the barkeep, as if he were an accomplice who should be up to date on the latest, and he nodded his consent. “I’m a Moscow bitch!” she added with pride, already slurring her speech a little, and the bartender grinned in reply. Meanwhile, Frank White, Jr., departing his café of