Women like Nina are rare. Her strength is in her femininity. You have to be born with it and be able to preserve it. That’s an almost impossible task in our society.
NOVEMBER 28. I got hold of an American book, The Joy of Sex. Everything is described very well and in great detail, with marvelous illustrations. You can read and learn. Until just recently sex was a banned topic. Children learned the basics of sex in school hallways and, at best, from their parents, who warned them against it. The main question was: Are you having sex or not? No one discussed how to have it. All forms of sexual contact, besides the most traditional, were considered deeply perverted and were discussed only in whispers. I remember Mama telling a friend about an affair a mutual friend was having: “And then he tried to get her to do a perversion, and she refused, naturally.”
“What’s a perversion?” I asked. It turned out she meant oral sex, for which we don’t even have a proper word in Russian.
We always considered pregnancy the inevitable punishment for sex. All the warnings adults gave us were that you’d get pregnant and you’d have to have an abortion and it would hurt. In addition, no one would want to marry you later. You could also catch some vile disease, and that would shame you for life.
No joy was supposed to be connected with sex. I guess we talked about sex more in college, when sex was a theory, not a practice. As adults we readily discussed the consequences—that is, unwanted pregnancies. I never knew if my friends were ever satisfied, if their husbands and lovers were skillful and enlightened.
Now times are changing. There are erotic scenes on television and discussions of sexual problems, and women are no longer ashamed of their desires. Now every movie has to have a sex scene to be considered a movie. I suppose it’s time for my friends to get together and share our experiences. We might learn a lot.
NOVEMBER30. I wonder where Lena is. Could she be walking around New York, enjoying American life? I envy her being in such an unusual city, although Americans have different opinions of it. “It’s the center of the world, the city with everything,” some say. “Disgusting, scary city, it’s not American at all,” others have told me. Lena will see for herself, but I doubt she’ll tell me about it. I don’t think I’ll ever see her again.
Today Anya and I confirmed that Moscow can’t compete with New York, tier family’s away, she’s free, and we decided to go out to eat. I put on high heeled boots, a black hat, a lovely
Swiss coat, and we met in the metro and rode into town. We went to almost all the restaurants on Gorky Street. Some were full; others were closed for the mysterious “special service/’ It’s never clear who is getting special service. My feet were beginning to hurt, and I was very hungry. We got back in the metro and went to the Praga, one of the biggest restaurants in Moscow. There wasn’t a table in any of its many rooms. We sadly wandered down the street and heard music coming from the Doctor’s Club. “Maybe we’ll be in luck here,” we said, holding our breaths. Alas, the young men at the door said, “Today is an evening for internationalist Komsomol members.”
“We’d like to go to the snack bar,” we said meekly.
“The snack bar is only for Komsomol members tonight.”
By then all I wanted was to go home, take off my boots, get into my robe, eat in my kitchen, where there is a free table and you don’t have to be a Komsomol to be fed, and then go to bed. But on the way home Anya persuaded me to go to her place. We took out a bottle of wine, heated up a fine dinner, and gradually forgot about our misadventures. I came home happy and relaxed. “Where did you go, which restaurant?” Mama asked on the phone.
“The best—Anya’s kitchen.”
DECEMBER 1 . I don’t know what the hell’s the matter with me, I’m swearing right and left. I have an almost scientific theory about it. People swear for two reasons: a limited vocabulary or an excess of emotion, usually negative. Of course, I put myself in the latter category. Russian swearing is unique. It’s not your
twenty or thirty English curses. We can combine over two hundred words to create the so-called big circle. There’s also a small one, which uses around seventy words, if I’m not mistaken. At Moscow University this story circulated. A pretty and frail woman was walking through the university courtyard. She heard horrible swearing coming from a manhole where workmen were fixing the pipes. She bent over and told them that they weren’t swearing properly. She ended up sitting on the ground, her elegant legs dangling in the manhole, lecturing the workmen on Russian cursewords. They didn’t know that the lady was a famous philologist, a Ph.D., whose dissertation had been on that very expressive part of Russian. Russian village women have the most expressive vocabularies. A friend once heard a peasant woman talking to a rooster in her hen house. It was an incomparable monologue, juicy and funny.
There are a lot of jokes in Moscow about weakling intellectuals using swearwords. A meek intellectual in glasses and hat is riding in a crowded bus. His huge neighbor keeps stepping on his foot. The intellectual keeps asking, “Comrade, please move your foot.” The reply is always “Fuck off.” At last the egghead gets really mad and counters with “On principle I refuse to fuck off.”
My girl friends curse a lot, too, but there is a taboo: not in front of men. Men restrain themselves in front of us, too.
I’m certain that it’s impossible to live in our times without swearing. You’d choke on suppressed emotions. Say you come to work and learn that you’re scheduled to lecture on Saturday, when you’ve made weekend plans. “Shit! ” you say inadvertently. Or you’re watching a session of the Supreme Soviet on TV. A dyed-in-the-wool conservative is defending the unshakable
foundations of socialism. “Asshole, look around, see what’s happening to the country,” you say. The audience applauds wildly. “Go fuck yourselves” is the only reply to make as you turn off the set.
DECEMBER 3. I watched a sad and rather disgusting scene today. I was visiting friends. The head of the house is a writer, almost a dissident. We were having tea in the kitchen when a friend came over with her new date. She looked awful and was stinking drunk. Her companion was strange and suspicious- looking. He said he was with the circus. Where does she dig them up? These attempts at happiness won’t lead to anything good. She’s divorced and lives with her school-age son in the same apartment as her ex-husband; they can’t trade their small two-room apartment for two apartments. Of course, she wants to remarry and have a normal life, but where can she find a decent man at her age? They all have families, too.
She got sick and went to the bathroom to throw up. The circus guy kept chattering about something. The writer suddenly blew up. He felt bad for Tanya and decided to throw out her date, who stood in the corridor and refused to leave. I thought there would be a fight. We stayed in the kitchen, keeping quiet. After fifteen minutes the door slammed. Tanya, pale, came out of the bathroom. We gave her some strong tea. The furious writer came back in. “You bitch, why do you bring people like that into my house? I have enough stool pigeons around without you.” He loves nonliterary language and isn’t ashamed to use it. He imagines informers everywhere, and I think he has good
reason. He’s a daring man and not on the best terms with the authorities. Tanya wept and through her tears said piteously, “You have to understand, I’m tired of being alone. Whatever he is, at least he’s a man.”
“He can go fuck himself,” the writer said. “You’re better off alone.” I agree.
DECEMBER 6. People combat loneliness in different ways. Natasha is the eternal type of Russian woman, courageous, radiant, and infinitely kind. She would have made an ideal wife and mother, but life didn’t arrange it. She lives with her parents, to whom she gives all her spiritual warmth. She is tall, slender, and feminine, with blue eyes, light hair, and a childlike pout. She is shy and indecisive, but these traits hide a will of iron and an ability to work hard. Even on her days off Natasha gets up at six and goes to work. Along with her main job as an engineer, she has a second job for her soul, as she puts it. She leads tours to places connected to the lives of famous writers. In preparing such an excursion, she reads everything about the writer, gets archival materials, and moves into his era. He becomes a friend and idol for her, and Natasha can quote endless excerpts from his works.