They have made outwardly austere Moscow endlessly provocative. I remember July evenings in New York, when the sultriness screamed of the sex I hadn't had for weeks. I'd prowl Third Avenue, my nerve endings pleading for the smart women in hot pants and halters. Anyone of a hundred from Forty-eighth to Fifty-ninth streets would do—or all of them together; their names and faces were irrelevant. Here, this fantasy is real. Make your choice. Pluck her away for an ice cream or a pastry; envision her fully revealed before midnight. With this secret knowledge, just to loiter on Mayakovsky Square is a forbidden pleasure, your body warm under your overcoat.
From the sea of silent shufflers that floods the downtown streets, a limitless stream, effortlessly tapped and funneled, ffows to our tables and our embraces. Only one sweetheart in a dozen stays with us long enough for us to remember her last name; yet collectively, I seem to know them better than any of the New York girls with whom Fve spent a thousand more earnest and less revealing hours. Fve been given a glimpse of the Russians' spirit and secret, something mysterious and profound in their
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very anonymity—for this is truly a country of the masses, an immense reservoir of sorrow and strength. This Nero's roll call of Galyas, Svetlanas and Natashas has a meaning I can almost grasp, something even more elemental than the lust they provoke and satiate. Something related to the attitude of Russian mothers, perhaps: the breast is here and full; take it when you will.
But when I try to probe this meaning, it wriggles from my grasp or drifts into patronizing cliches. I can only record the images, so strong that they must be symbolic. Ill-cut, loose-fitting skirts dyed dark brown as if, as among nuns, to discourage any thought of what lies underneath. (Or, in the shortage of dry-cleaning facilities and money, to conceal a winter's dirt?) Pink rayon brassieres stained by underarm sweat: supremely functional, wholly ungainly articles smacking of women war workers in Detroit. An odor of open pores and physical exertion, as outside the girls' gym in high school. Sometimes lurking under a sickly sweet eau de cologne, usually sharpened by the effects of the same garments worn daily, the scent is often spiced by the unexpectedly "southern" accent of garlic and onions. And the vodka goes down easily after the usual protests.
Faces that speak of peasant hardiness, refined but not smothered by city living: an intriguing combination of sensuousness and innocence. Bodies muscled by walking and work, protected against the cold by a coating of fat, yet surprisingly supple and lithe. A light growth of leg and body hair; rarely the stout squatness of the popular Western image of Russian women. Most will turn quickly to that after marriage and children, but in their youth the stereotype of Olympic gymnasts is closer to the truth. "Fresh, sturdy, comely, smiling"—just as Tolstoy wrote of the peasant girls of his prurient youth.
Unhappy about their brassieres and the clumsy bloomers of discoloring wool, the girls insist on undressing themselves, resentfully rebuffing any encroachment by us on a button or a zip. "That's my concern, I'll do it myself" Even many who have invited themselves for a second fete protest when a man's hand reaches for their skirts. But undressing effects a transformation: the girls have a startling lack of modesty about their naked bodies, especially their breasts (which are smallish compared to
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their hips and thighs). Within minutes of meeting, they are persuaded to expose them—to cup them out of their own blouses themselves—for appreciation and caresses.
The contradictions go further. Unashamed of their bodies in the presence of girls as well as of men, many of our guests reach out to one another. Kissing her mouth, adjusting the hair, fondling her breasts while murmuring their language's tender endearments, one helps prepare another—a stranger until the second rang Alyosha's bell forty-five minutes ago—for the mating she herself has just enjoyed. This seems no indication of homosexuality as such, but an expression of Russian "togetherness," always strongest among tight, private groups convened for pleasure. Often the sex itself is secondary to the larger satisfaction of sharing—especially, in the general gloom, the sharing of frivolity and flourish. I wonder whether this is the same instinct that moves Russian prisoners to divide their food parcels; or whether, as my University friend Leonid suggests, it is a hidden sense of shame, rather than good fortune, that they want to apportion.
But this lack of inhibition is wholly unrelated to the sophistication it may suggest. Ignorant of deodorants and contraceptive techniques, many girls also know little about the danger days of their cycles and blush fiercely when we ask. They would rather not be put through this shame than insure that the evening will be safe. And few use their hands, let alone fingers, before or during "bed-love" as they stiltedly call it; even those who groan lie almost still, scarcely moving themselves. Supposing orgasm to be a male pleasure, many consent to strive for their own only in the general spirit of accommodation. From deep in their upbringing, they sense that women should not be too active.
Free of complexes, modest of expectation—above all, they are complacent, seemingly in the spirit of the Russian masses' patient acquiescence. Scanning old literature, I repeatedly find the explanation of last night's revel in the serf mentality. "I motioned to something pink that looked very nice from a distance," Tolstoy confessed to his diary. "I opened the back door. She came in."
Seven of ten girls enter the car immediately on the strength of a genial invitation; one sends us packing and the other two
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promise to meet us later, with barely any compunction about cheating a new husband or skipping work. Guilt and superego being as absent as the pill and boutiques, many girls spend the next forty-eight hours lazily pottering around in Alyosha's apartment, insulated from the outdoor cold. The paradox—or law of nature?—is that in this rigid society, they are so personally free.
But what do I care about sociological paradoxes? I need not apologize for my plenitude, nor placate my professors with dispassionate analysis. I adore the darlings not for their artless-ness or innocence, but because they are mine. Lips like avocados, beings as simple to penetrate as warming to hug, they are my comfort and joy. Each one whispering "my closest sweetest precious" as she surrenders is dear; each shapely overcoat a searing temptation because it can be taken directly to Alyosha's to touch what makes it bulge from underneath. I become excited in the most unlikely places: spying a pretty face in a museum, pressed up against a young body in a creaking bus. "Excuse me, miss. May I trouble you for just a moment?" Surfeited on this vast harem, my appetite grows.
She is in the Central Post Office when I mail a letter one evening, and leaves with me as a matter of course, knowing she'll sleep wherever I arrange. Eighteen years old, just arrived from Irkutsk, she had nowhere to stay in Moscow, and didn't know where she'd go when the post office would close several hours hence. The look of her in the taxi so arouses me that my hands are inside her dress the moment Alyosha locks the door. Happy for this, she nevertheless questions my haste: can't we stay here the full night? Before morning, she has found the romance she wanted. Alyosha and I are "my darlings," "my dearest dear ones" and "my soulmates."