Short story "B-lives" (English audioversion and text)
English version of the story "B-lives".
Great thanks to @mgaft1!
In a small town in Russia, young gyus and ladies quietly live out their "second-class" lives with "love", "betrayal" and "Amaretto" produced in Belarus.
Author and narrator: Eldar Adov (Moscow, Russia)
Translated by Michael Gaft (USA, California)
Original photo by Eldar Adov, made in the Tosno (near the Saint-Petersburg).
At first, a couple of notes to make it more understandable.
Unlike the United States, Russia has a system of «registration of citizens in their place of residence». If a person comes from the village to work in the city, (where wages are significantly higher) he or she needs to get a city registration. This system works in such megacities as Moscow and St. Petersburg, and in smaller cities – regional centers such as Saratov, Krasnodar, Samara and others.
A person from a small town or a village can obtain a work permit, but it only offers him or her permission to work. To obtain a real city registration a citizen must own a property in that city or some part of the property. This, however, is hard to do as the wages of people in small towns and villages are much smaller. Therefore, some girls from villages and small towns try to marry «for registration» – because even in cities like Saratov or Samara there are many more opportunities for earning and comfortable life than in small villages and towns. Besides, marrying a citizen who is registered in a city gives a girl subsequent property rights in case of a divorce.
In American cinema, the movies are divided into categories: A-movies (the highest category), B-movies (fighters with Van Damm and Seagal, which many Russians perceive as masterpieces of foreign culture), and Z-movies (thrash with names like «Tomatoes-killers from Outer Space»). Jokes about «category B» long ago entered the Russian youth slang.
The story is based upon a few real incidents from life.
B-lives
The room was acceptable; it was large, with the ocean view and a balcony, a king-size bed in the middle, the bathroom had not only shower but also a small Jacuzzi, spacious closets, where Vera easily placed all her stuff, a TV and a small fridge with drinks.
«Two weeks. Two weeks of the sea and sun» – chanted in her head.
The quarterly report was done, the boss was pleased.
«You, Vera, a sweetheart! Good job!»
Vera grabbed this Ariadne's thread.
«Thank you, Vitaly Karlovich! By the way, I missed my vacation last year»
The old fart had nothing to retort. He looked at the report once more and said
«All right. Go ahead. Two weeks are yours».
Vera put on the swimming suit underneath a light dress, a dark glasses from «MARIO ROSSI» and, having looked at herself in the mirror, touched up her hair. Not bad: stylish and at the same time not pretentious. No one would recognize that she’s just an office rat. Especially him – the tall dark and handsome, educated and witty. Well, blond isn’t so bad also.
Feeling hungry, she closed the door of her room, went to the elevator to go down to the restaurant. When the elevator door opened and she wanted to step inside, she suddenly startled. «Is that him?»
It’s him… Yeah. Sure. Once again the alarm clock ring brought Vera back to reality from her favorite dreams about a vacation in a luxurious resort, about time travel to the court of Louis the Fourteenth or to another planet to peaceful and kind beings with purple skin…
She rummaged the phone on the nightstand, opens her eyes to swipe the screen and dive into oblivion, at least for another bit.
She didn’t want to go back to reality. Who was she in her dream today? A grey office mouse, pretending to be in a luxurious Turkish hotel room? Without opening her eyes, Vera smirked. To envy someone else's wealth or beauty is understandable, but to other people's psychological complexes, it’s too much.
Accepting finally in her head her daily reality, Vera opened her eyes and rose slowly from the bed. That’s all right for Sunday. The melody on the alarm clock follows Sunday’s mood. Not the invigorating music of «ATB», which raises her on weekdays, but the gentle relaxation music of Karunesh.
«I should change the weekend melody,» Vera thought, «or else I will soon start to shake from Karunesh's music.»
Brewing the tea, she looks out the kitchen window. In the twenty-six years of her life, the view has not changed. Same broken asphalt in the yard. Several cars parked on the remains of a lawn. Only the pine tree under the window grew up. Earlier its top was at the level of the kitchen window, now it was going to conquer the third-floor level. «Even a coniferous tree conquers new heights… and what about me?»
Then there were habitual dialogues with the mother during breakfast; automated, as if without engaged consciousness. It’s about the weather, the price of potatoes, the health of Aunt Clava. She wishes she could get out and run… but where?
It’s already been for three years now, five times a week Vera runs her morning marathon route: to the railway station, then an hour on the train – to arrive at her «favorite» job. A supermarket in the heart of the regional capital. The most modern shopping mall for hundreds of miles around.
Above her store, on the second floor, a smart toy store featuring radio-controlled models opened up. She stopped there at times. More often Vera’s interest occupies the small department of elite perfume on the opposite side of this buzzing kid fantasyland with helicopters, quadrocopters and visionary radio-controlled machines. She stopped by there just to smell the aroma. Only once she was only able to afford elite perfume… on a huge promotional discount.
Vera's job is easy, but… there is no way to call this position of a cashier at the grocery store interesting. Eight hours a day; a part of the time – behind the cash register, and a part – placing the goods on the racks. Not rocket science. No carrying of heavy items like the boys. All actions are simple and uniform.
The wage is greater than the administrative secretary in her local town. All because she works in the big city! Still, she is way apart even from even a «grey office mouse.»
It's unlikely that Vera will ever get hired for an office position. Even though she graduated from college. A former technical college of light industry, which now became the college of design and small business in her district center. It was easy to study and get a diploma from a manager-economist.
«So you know how to count! That’s nice,» the interviewer was happy and Vera got the position in the supermarket.
She comforted herself that she’s working for the most «elite» supermarket in the region, but she yearned for more, at least for a vacation to Turkey.
«Something needs to be done,» Vera decided, finishing the last sip of morning tea. «Starting today. Something!»
Closing in herself in her small room, Vera takes out a smartphone and decidedly texts the guy from the travel agency. A couple of days earlier she overheard him saying about discount tours to Antalya.
Smartphone… It’s nice that she has it. It’s so small, but it became Vera's best friend. During the morning train ride, she listens to music, closing her eyes; disconnecting from the world.
Romantic melodies from other corners of the Earth, so different from the monotonous landscape of her homeland: towns, forests, fields, industrial zones, and the capital of the region. All these landscapes have long been known, from the school years, from the first trips to the market of the regional capital.
Vera remembered every frame of a movie flickering outside the train window at any time of the year. Green in summer, yellow in autumn, white in winter, and dirty in spring. Now it is summer. It is easier in the summer.
Maxim from the travel agency responded to her message. An «unobtrusive» correspondence between them started. Vera was determined to spend the next weekend with this guy. Because she needed some change; because she couldn’t take it anymore.
The last time she made love to a man was almost two years ago. Vlad accumulated a little money – and went to Moscow, hoping to obtain a warehouse manager position and promising to take Vera with him. Maybe he would have done this… but, suddenly, Vlad became a successful blogger. His silly videos collected hundreds of thousands of YouTube views. It is not surprising that he couldn’t resist the attention that Moscow beauties began to pay to his new persona. Vera watched the clip where Vlad… that is, now – the blogger Atlas – was having a drink of expensive whiskey, groping a blonde chick sitting on his lap.
For several days, Vera systematically attacked Maxim. She went to his travel agency on her break. Exchanging messages with him in the evenings, clutching the smartphone in the warm palms, getting into the chair of the train and seeing nothing around, only a screen on which a complicated flirting dance took place. It was surprising! At last – an adventure!
Finally, she had a goal!
Usually, while on her evening train, Vera read books on her smartphone. It was historical novels about old times, that necessarily contained nobility, luxury, love... esthetics. Vera could easily imagine herself at a royal reception in ancient Madrid or snobby London in the early twentieth century.
The reality was more solemn – the source of butterflies flogging in her stomach was not a noble lord, not a former pirate, drawn into intrigues of a famous court, but… Maxim from the travel agency.
Maxim lived alone, on the outskirts of the city, to which Vera commuted every day and seen it as a beacon of civilization. He lost his mother soon after he reached adulthood and barely remembered his father. As his family had no savings, Maxim had to quit the university and work so he wouldn’t starve to death. He was a minor vendor at the local markets. He sold vegetables, fast food, smartphones, and finally – jumped the level higher, into a travel agency.
This summer, Maxim was just going on vacation to Antalya and paid for a discount tour. He not only wanted to get the tan on the beach under the hot southern Sun but also to have an affair with some rich and beauty girl. He thought it would be ideal to get together with a lady from some foreign country, but a girl from Moscow would also suffice. He envisioned going on vacation in a month, allowing himself for a couple of weeks to forget about his travel agency, lonely evenings watching endless TV serials and pornographic movies.
Then, all of a sudden, here came this girl Vera… For days she was coming on to him really strong, almost throwing herself at him right at work; one more village girl who was excited about his residency in the «Big City.»
Maxim didn’t have much luck with girls. He recalled how during his first university days the «beauties» from the dormitory, who came from villages to conquer the city, tried to get acquainted with him. One approached him quite directly:
«You are local, aren’t you? Born in the city… Do you have a large apartment?»
After his mother’s death, he closed up from everyone for a while. He understood that he was easy prey at the moment; and not just for village beauties, but for freshly baked friends who needed a «free flat» for partying all the time.
He had to cut off contacts with everyone except Valerа, a childhood friend. Valerа helped organize the «iron curtain» so that the greedy to his square meters «dancing queens» would not break into his apartment. Thus, it turned out that he narrowed his world to the size of «work-home».
When Maxim was selling phones, his boss – a married woman ten years his senior – seduced him. With her, it was easy. Maxim understood that she needed not his apartment and not his money but him. He was quite comfortable with such a relationship, but her husband found a job in St. Petersburg and moved the entire family there. Of course, who will refuse such an opportunity – to go to the very heart of the «civilization?»
«To get the hell out!» is the spirit, in which any Russian province has lives for decades.
When Maxim didn't know what to do, he always asked Valerа. That guy stood firmly on his feet all his life, with the support of his father, who made a career in the administration of the district, the city, and then the region. Valera, having listened to the question «What do I do with this Vera?» briefly advised:
«Mess around with her before your Turkey trip. Reinforce in your memory how it’s done. Think of it as a rehearsal!»
Maxim was looking through Vera's pictures on his smartphone… He noticed that she reminded him of one of his favorite actresses – Jenny Green, a girl from sunny California who didn't shy from posing topless in several popular movies.
«I guess,» he thought, «I go for it!»
There are strange ways at which people come to the point of intersection of two bodies in bed. Fears, psychological complexes, loneliness, thirst for pleasure – all that push them on a slippery slope that they often don't even like. Having gone through this experience one might think, «I wanted something completely different! I’d never think I end up going this way… I’d never believed it was me who chose it…»
These thoughts were in Maxim’s and Vera’s minds on Friday night when they drove in a trolley to his apartment. He was glad he bought a bottle of Amaretto in advance – the liquor of the Belarusian bottling that, according to Valerа, tasted indistinguishable from the real Italian Amaretto.
Amaretto produced in Belarus, sushi from «Japanese» fast food prepared by Kazakhs, film with Jenny Green watched online via free Virtual Private Network… Vera's jeans shorts with the brand label «Love's» – a little mistake made by the Chinese manufacturer in an attempt to clone «Levi's». Everything of a category B: the food, the cinema, life, the feelings.
After a few gulps of Amaretto, Vera plunged into her dreams of the Sun-King Palace in Versailles… She didn't care that the guy was methodically undressing her.
Maxim was thinking about Jenny Green. It seems that Vera didn't notice when he looked at the screen more often than he looked at her. Surprisingly, he noticed similarities between them. Or was it just because he was under the influence? Maxim turned off his consciousness and focused on the sensations. Jenny was on screen, in his memory, in front of him, around him and in him.
Versailles tapestries, beautiful and noble French knights surrounded Vera. Beyond these virtual realities, in a «category B» room, two young bodies fell to a wide bed, amplifying their arousal with hugs and rapid movements.
«I feel good», Maxim's voice rang out in the dark after everything was over and they just lay there, breathing hard. «I didn't expect it. I am just not very talkative».
«Me too», Vera pressed her body closer to his. «I feel good. I feel soooo good!»
The day of Maxim's departure to Antalya was approaching and he wondered how to tell about this to Vera. He rather used to her presence, but did he had any feelings for her? Did he need this simple village girl? Or should he try his chances of fighting for the attention of some high-ranking lady at the resort? Maybe he should even go to Moscow and try to seduce a rich beauty there? Nah! He understood that he did not have the strength to conquer Moscow. Moscow is too lofty. Vera is too shabby. What remains? The resort.
«You know, I'm going to Turkey for two weeks. Sorry, I didn't know how to tell you. I bought the ticket for a tour before you and I… you know… I mean… what was I supposed to do – cancel my vacation? But, mmmm… I will return – in just a couple of weeks. Everything is going to be all right».
Yet again, the morning train for Vera. Good thing it's summer. It’s warm and everything is green behind the window. Today Vera could neither listen to the music nor read novels from her smartphone. She felt bewildered. Did it indeed happen? Such an adventure; a man in her life, even a passion… It seemed, like a passion. Yet, it changed absolutely nothing in her life. Neither moved her to the left, nor the right. All she knew this adventure happened – and now it’s over. Does it make sense?
Maxim put the suitcase on the floor, locked the door and looked around.
The room was acceptable; it was large, with the ocean view and a balcony, a king-size bed in the middle, the bathroom had not only shower but also a small Jacuzzi, spacious closets, where he easily placed all his stuff, a TV and a small fridge with drinks.
«Two weeks. Two weeks of the sea and sun» – chanted in his head. Two weeks of life in the «category A».