A Decent Woman

Olga Sergeyeva

Here’s your tea, please, Mikhail Valerianovich," were the words she used to start her day, day after day, for over two years now. Standing with a cup of tea at his table side, she knew that she would have to wait for some un-pleasantly long seconds before he would turn up from his papers and put them aside to clear some space for a cup on the desk. That was a required ceremony, and both parties followed it with rev-erence. After the tea, she would have to sort incoming mail. They did not allow her to operate all these modern office devices, as they thought that younger personnel was better suited for this pur-pose. And other purposes, for that matter... "Whores, that’s what they are," she used to think.

"Just look at their apparel! With leaving most of their parts naked, they largely save on clothes." Another of her piercing notions was that their feelings were as short as their skirts. As for brains, they seemed to hardly have them at all under their absurdly cut hair. On some consideration, Lidia Danilovna, ex public school executive manager for education, expert bilingual teacher, who had a box of acknowledgement papers now useless and two grownup unemployed children, had to admit that she was the only representative of a decent kind of women in this company.
     Occasionally throwing glances of disapproval at her younger colleagues, Lidia Danilovna engaged in sorting letters. Stupid job, she thought, but I should feel grateful. If not for Valerian Petrovich, her old friend of days so long ago, who recommended her to his son, owner of this stupid business, she would not get even this position. Two years before retirement seemed not too long to wait, and she was sure that she could endure it. Lifetime is fleeting, she thought... In her past life, she used to call him simply Valerian. Not in public of course. At school, she called him Valerian Petrovich. He was the school director, and her position was the one of an executive manager for education, and all around them were those jealous kissers of her fellow colleagues...
     His directorship did not last for long. After a few years, he was appointed to a higher post in a so-cial security department. She heard that he was highly successful at that position. First, he "appropriated" luxurious apartments for his son and for himself. Next, humanitarian aid was distrib-uted through his fund... And he was such a person that would easily grab whatever might flow by with his trained hands... Including her...
     Lidia Danilovna stealthily looked around, as if someone could read her thoughts. No, telepathic skills were beyond their job descriptions. The next thing was to extract her mirror and carefully sweep droplets of sweat from above her upper lip. Somehow, they would always appear whenever she felt uneasy.
     She would not say that there was something special in Valerian. On the opposite, he looked pretty common for a man of his age with his hair already thinning, neither tall nor short (rather short, to be honest)... Yet there was something about him... some reckless spirit which made Lidia Danilovna’s pedantic heart soften and never resist him...
     Their rendezvous used to be as brief and piercing as guerilla war missions. Once, her beloved spouse came to visit her at school, which was rather unusual. Well, it was actually too late, classes long since closed, but she had to complete her report for the next day’s peer board meeting. Just as she was finished and they started to the door, the phone rang. The director would like to see her and discuss some details of her report. She had no delusion as for what the discussion would be about. Entering his office, she was scared to death. "Hush, my husband is out there," she reasoned. And Valerian laughed: "So we make it quick and noiseless, like a couple of mice in underground." He placed a cushion under her behind and... When they were almost finished, the phone rang. He reached over, picked it up and answered the call. It was his wife, she was worried about him late, too. "Don’t hang up, please," he told her, "I’m about to finish with the report and be back," and winked at me that I’d take the handset. And so I did, and I was all numb with panic, trying to cover the microphone with my hands. And he continued, as if nothing happened, until he came. The next thing I knew, her wife (she was such a scoundrel) was barking on the phone something like, "Don’t cheat me with your dirty tricks, you screwing machine!" And he shouted back: "Stupid woman! With your silly shouts, Lidia Danilovna is gone, and tomorrow we’ll have to start it all over again on her report," and winks at me like ‘will we?’. All that was so funny and disgusting all at once...
     She looked around once again. Everyone busy with their jobs... pretending to be busy. "Effort imi-tators! Their only effort is to swagger with their butts in the face of the Boss," she pondered. "The Boss, you hear?" For them he was the Boss, for her, he would forever be the same old Mickey the Bonehead.
     That was exactly what everyone in school used to call him. Teachers couldn’t stand him, regardless of his father directorship. Despite his angel-like look, in fact, he was a nasty traitor and a chicken. For these qualities, classmates used to punish him time to time with teenage severity, in hope to re-store impaired equity. Of course, no teacher would dare to evaluate his scarce knowledge with fair marks. So, director’s son bore the false look of a good student in all arts and sciences. That was another reason why teachers despised him. In such a contradictory environment, Mickey felt com-fortable. While everyone seemed to hate him, he successfully graduated, and, after some further invisible evolution, emerged in the role of 30-years old successful CEO of his own business.
     "Own? His stupidity is the only thing of his own! Everything else is his father’s!" the very next mo-ment Lidia Danilovna found herself feeling sorry for such an inappropriate and ungrounded bitter-ness.
     Having finished with correspondence, she turned to papers and periodicals. She had to review them and find out anything of relevance to Mickey’s business. It was part of her job description. While habitually gliding throughout paper columns (anyway, financial and business periodicals rarely cov-ered retail trade in hygienic appliances, which was the major line of Mickey’s business), she could relax and give a deeper thought to what had happened then.
     Their romance happened to be short. One day, she simply faced the fact of Valerian having been appointed to some other place and no longer present in their school. First, she missed him so much, and he would not even let her know anything about him. As! for her, she decided not remind him of herself — at least, for some time. In school, nobody had learned anything about their affair (God thanks!). So it happened, Valerian was her last man. What would you expect? Could anyone else discern her actual passionate nature and longing for love behind her habitual mask of austere look and rigid behavior? Their condensed times together, though they had ended so abruptly, would help her ever after and make her feel that her life was filled with some secret meaning... Of course, some men tried to approach her, but she would turn them away. They all were so slack, so... inferior to Valerian. As for her, she was always a decent woman and would never indulge in something like talking to a man first. She was different from these corrupt bitches of today who imprudently stick up to anyone. All they need is men’s money and expensive gifts of attention. As for her, she never solicited any gifts. She would not accept a gift even from Valerian, if he ever dared to offer any. The unspeakable between us was the most delicious present he could offer, wasn’t it?
     In compensation, the ‘dear’ husband’s gifts were abundant, including her full-time responsibility for children, housekeeping, raising family budget and so on; and his full-time freedom to do whatever he want, such as expending family budget on alcohol, friends of his like, sauna, and so forth. That’s why she never felt guilty; that’s why she never felt accountable before him. In their family, she per-formed all thinkable roles usually associated with a male partner, including those of a ‘bright head’, ‘strong bones’ and ‘live shield’. To be honest, she was ashamed of her husband. She would never go out with him to public. His apparel was terrible, and his manners awful. Moreover, he continu-ously emitted a strong stink from his rotten mouth. On the most part it was attributable to his habit to furnish vodka with onions, though he used to claim that the bad odor resulted from his bad teeth. Because of this stench, they used to sleep in adjacent rooms (thanks providence for this opportu-nity). In this sense, Valerian was incomparably superior to him, too. His clothes were always freshly ironed; his chin and cheeks cleanly shaven, his hair and moustache handsomely cut. And he always smelled of some exclusive French perfume for men. In those years, French perfumes were not available in a simple over-the-counter fashion of today. You had to find some approach to a sales-person to get it from under-the-counter reserve for some surplus, or you had to seek an opportu-nity to stand a day-long line with no guarantee of sufficient supply of it. Those days, a small con-tainer of French cologne was the best gift to any man on the Army Day or his birthday. With the exclusion of her alcoholic husband. The dear one would never understand it. She felt an upsurge of repulsion, trying to imagine what his face would be like at the moment of realization of the fact that the price of this exotic bottle of greenish fluid could pay the cost of a weeklong debauch for him and his friends.
     At this point, an inappropriate vision suddenly visited her: she remembered her first time with Vale-rian. She was reluctant to give up and go with him for the sole reason that on that day her under-wear was... She paused for right words to fall in... ! Her underwear looked unpresentable. That was the lesson worth learning. From then on, Lidia Danilovna was always equipped with finest lace garments ‘fabriquee en France’. Time to time, however, she would even suffer a sudden upsurge of unhappiness arising from the fact that her fellow colleagues would never see and appreciate her new panties hidden under her regular gray costume of a schoolteacher. They would die of envy! Not-withstanding, it was Valerian who taught her that lesson: a woman must be ready to undress re-gardless of whether she’s going to visit her physician or not...
     Yes, that was a real romance, and wasn’t it heaven-sent? At least, she has all these memories with her...
     These blockhead purses will never understand it! They are so uncovered and impertinent in their go-by passions! They are neither afraid nor ashamed of what they do... Or do they really believe that they have nothing to lose anymore?
     Suddenly she remembered the long troubled hours of uncertainty after she had suspected that Na-talia, a minor technical staff, had learned something about them. That was all her cunning oriental eyes, and her favorite saying: "It takes a good man to make a woman happy." Day by day she seemed to spell it out with increased frequency and look at Lidia Danilovna with those evil black eyes of hers. And each time she felt more and more uncomfortable, as if some weapon were aimed at the very bottom of her belly. For this reason, she used to pay omnipresent Natalia as much at-tention as she could. She would stop her in a corridor and ask questions about her health, family, children... Sometimes, it might look as if they were closest friends on earth... Time to time, how-ever, she came to realize that her suspicions were silly, that it was all nerves... And she kept on fidgeting around that minor employee, just to make it sure that she knew nothing about her and Va-lerian... Today, she would simply dismiss her, that’s it! Then, she granted her all the possible social benefits just to send her off to some prepaid resort for a couple of weeks time to time...
     "We were different from what they are," Lidia Danilovna summarized. Another workday was moving towards its inevitable end, and she began to redistribute the remaining limited work time in such a manner as not to forget about calls she had to make to keep her household going. Usually, she would not leave the office before the Boss is gone. Usually, it did not take long to wait, as the primary interests of the Boss were located on the outside. Today, however, something different was going on in their office. "Forest stinks of carrion," she thought, for he was in his room, and someone else was there with him...
     "Screwing machine!" Lidia Danilovna felt sick with repulsion to whatever her Boss was doing there, behind the tightly shut door of his room. "Don’t you do it! Mind your behavior in front of the pub-lic!"
     The thread of her accusative pearls was long enough to cover the terrestrial equator...
     In fact, Lidia Danilovna was so enthralled in addressing Mickey and his probable partner behind the door with her indictments, that it was like an electric shock for her to hear the material voice of her Boss on the intercom:
     "Lidia Danilovna, could you, please, bring in some mineral water."
     With a look of insulted dignity and two bottles on the tray, she entered his room. That’s it! In the chair opposite the Boss, her ‘colleague’ slouched and casually played with a lock of her red hair. One dexterous look was enough to detect the traces of what had just happened here: her untidy dress and that afterglow of lust in her eyes. The red girl took a bottle from the tray and began to drink in disgusting little thirsty gulps, not bothering even to pour it to a glass.
     "Bitch! She feels like sore in her throat!" Lidia Danilovna thought and left the room with a rigid and indifferent appearance, feeling on herself Mickey’s mocking eyes.
     "How may this nasty boy dare! Does he think her job is to serve his whores? Slow stupid bone-head!" Although the ‘boy’ was already balding at the top of his head, she felt schooltime epithets to be the most descriptive of his rotten nature.
     "I’d leave this whorehouse in no time, but I have nowhere to go! I can’t risk changing jobs two years before retirement, with two children unemployed, can I?" The red bitch emerged from behind the door and commenced to tidy-up her make-up.
     Lidia Danilovna felt like a bomb ready to go off. "Immodest bawd she is! I wish I could tell her my opinion of her and not get fired! Does she really think she may do whatever she wants?"
     "Something wrong with you?" queried the red girl and giggled. That giggle, offensive and shameless, was the last straw. The bomb exploded: "Nothing wrong with me. I just wonder why you spare your fantastic talent in such a hole like this? With your aptitude, the best place for you would be... Well, you know where!"
     In the very last moment she was reasonable enough not to name the place. In the like fashion, a tor-nado would suddenly cease and withhold its destructive power... Striking silence filled the office and only Lidia Danilovna’s outraged harsh breath disturbed it. Predatory narrowing her eyes, the red girl silently approached her to finally stand face to face — and suddenly began to laugh. She laughed for long and very sincerely right in the face of Lidia Danilovna. And when she stopped...
     "Do you really think you know, where? Does your pedagogic expertise suggest you the answer, or is it your natural disgust to a younger generation? You know, Lidia Danilovna, why do you play all this decency games of yours? Because no one would want you any longer! You missed the train. Can you hear it going? Choo-choo! Everything Gone, a masterpiece by some celebrated artist, have you seen it? Did you think you would last forever? Now is the time for you to step aside and clear the way for the young. Everything’s fair: we pay you tributes for not blocking our way."
     The red girl returned to her desk singing a popular tune Get out of My Way.
     "By the way, your past adventures back in school are known to everyone here. Oh, you finally seem to be interested in what I say! Stop popping your eyes, lady, it never was a secret to anyone. We know everything about you, including the story with the cushion the pappy of our boss used to stick under your buttocks to facilitate the process and make it noiseless. Do I sound offensive to your virtue? By the way, the cushion in your seat, isn’t it the authentic one? Do you keep it to re-mind you of your heroic past? If you think I bluff, you may ask everyone here. Yes, it was him who personally told us everything about you when he recommended you to your present position. Okay, don’t worry. You may as well regard us as your clever disciples. As for the cushion, I admire your inventiveness. May I ask you to let me use it from time to time, since you seem not to need it so much any longer..."
     The meaning of the red girl’s last words failed to sink through to Lidia Danilovna. She listened and couldn’t hear, as if something had shifted in her head, or was it the floor swinging... Lidia Danilovna mechanically wiped sweat off her upper lip and resumed her attempts to breathe in some air, while making it as stealthily as possible. She realized that she was looking funny and pitiful.
     The red girl kept on saying something, other girls kept on giggling, and Lidia Danilovna suddenly felt as if she was undressed to reveal her old worn-off undergarment not intended to be seen by any-one. "A woman must be ready to undress regardless of whether she’s going to visit her physician or not..." Then everyone was gone. The work day ended. "I shall stand up and go," she thought. But she found out that she could neither stand nor walk. So she remained in a sitting position for some time. She sat there, and there was nothing particular she could think about. She felt unclear pain in her chest, on the left side where her heart was supposed to be. Something throbbed unpleasantly in her temples, and her legs went numb.
     "Old cushion," an offensive calling popped up in her memory, and for the first time in her life she applied this description to herself, "Old cushion, that’s what I am!" Somehow, realization of her actual age and status helped her out of her haze.
     She stood up, collected her belongings into her pouch. After some consideration, she took the small cushion from her seat, laughed, and shoved it into he purse, too. Of course, it was not that cushion! And that cushion, had it ever been?
     "I should tell Mikhail Valerianovich that I’m leaving this job and won’t be here tomorrow..." She surprised herself calling the boss with his full name... Maybe, for that reason, a sad smile returned to her face... Funny, but with every step towards his door pain and bitterness were leaving her, as if a substantial part of herself was dissolving in a dizzy nothingness.
     "Two years before retirement. And time... Time is fleeting..." She came back to her desk, extracted from her pouch a small calendar, and checked this day out with thick cross, just like she would do any with any other day.