the kept woman
Ihar Navitski
Translated from Russian by Alexandr Gibayev
© Ihar Navitski, 2020
ISBN 978-5-4498-4100-1
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
«My name is Svetlana. I am a kept woman. For someone this word will cause disgust, someone will be interested, and for someone it won’t matter. My confession is not about moral principles. Every human chooses his own path in life. While standing at the end of the line, he will answer to the Savior himself. It’s also happened to me: I am at the last line. No, I do not regret the life lived. It is not possible to fix anything… If I had the opportunity to go back, I would rewrite some moments, but life is not a manuscript, you can’t redo it. Why had I decided to take this step – to create my diaries? Probably, every person, when his days are close to end, wants to leave something behind to be remembered. I lived an exuberant life, but, frankly, empty. Maybe my confession will serve as a good lesson for those people who also burn their life.
My story began simply. I was born in one of the republics of the former USSR. The younger generation, oh how strange it already sounds for me, although I’m still 37 years old, does not know those times when it was necessary to stand behind a sausage in a long line, and in order to buy foreign-made boots, take turn in the evening and stand whole day. And these boots were the pinnacle of happiness for a young girl. And nearby was totally different life. People in expensive at that time cars drove around the city, throwing a look at the long «sausage» queue. Their companions, dressed in expensive mink coats, which we, ordinary girls, had only to dream of, with arrogance, left these expensive cars to buy the next expensive jewelry. And somewhere, just a hundred meters away, there were people who were no different from these, in expensive cars. Maybe only because they are just people who also want not to stand in line for their boots, not to spend time behind the shops, thinking about how and what to feed their families. They just wanted to live. It was a time when the old was dying, and the new was still unable to grow. Then one household motto was popular: «Be like everyone.» Beautiful motto, by the way, and very convenient for the elite in expensive cars. All in those days were cut with the same comb. The same clothes (simple things that created the grayness of the human mass), the same type of food… Even then, as a teenager, an internal rebellion against this way of life was arising in me. I could not understand why my mother, who gave so many years of her life to the factory, cannot afford to buy a more expensive and elegant dress? Why is the father, the foremost worker who «lives» at the factory, constantly repairing our old car to take us to the country during the weekend, where we have to work hard and long while growing vegetables – the only salvation, according to mom, in a hungry winter? I had many unanswered questions in those years.
My youth coincided with the times when a certain part of people tried to get out of the gray mainstream human mass. They were few. They were called co-operators. They worked differently, but most importantly, they thought differently. Most people did not accept them as a useful unit of society. And the reason for this was simple human envy. They had more expensive cars. Their wives did not stand in line at regular stores and did not think about how to feed the family. They had money, and therefore the problems of ordinary people were unknown to them.
Only after I learned that life from co-operators was not sweet. Behind the external well-being was a tense and dangerous life. But me, as a teenage girl, of course, did not know all this. I was internally drawn to some kind of life unknown to me. I did not want to be like everyone else. Like everyone, finish school, preferably with a medal. Like everyone else, go to college. Like everyone else, find a husband and wait for him from work, preparing him delicious borscht. For me, the phrase «like everyone else» was akin to red sheet for a bull. From an early age I made my choice: I will not be like everyone else!
My favorite season was summer. I could not think about the lessons all day long. I must say that I didn’t love studying, although I always had good grades and my parents were proud of me. The school helped me. It helped in developing in steadfastness and perseverance. And immunity. Immunity to everything that was imposed on us by the school of that time. No, I did not rebel in class and did not shout out slogans. I just lived the lives of millions of boys and girls of that time: I tried not to upset my parents, I studied and studied again. Outwardly, everything was as befits a Soviet student.
Internally, I already had a different life. My friends and I tried to make the dresses shorter. We started to like the guys from high school. The first time I painted my lips secretly from my mother… Oh, how was I punished then! Mother kept lipstick for special occasions, and I turned these occasions into everyday ones. I wanted to look beautiful in front of that older guy. I specifically lingered after class, just to see him. He passed by and sometimes glanced in my direction. I was in seventh heaven. But it was only the looks. Only later, when I became a little older, I realized that I was not interested in him.
Who was I? Little girl, instead of a breast I had two small peas. In those years, I already attracted the views of the male sex, but I was still an unformed ugly duckling. Of course, later I turned into a beautiful swan, and the men could give a lot for my opinion in their direction, but then it was still so far for me. In general, as is often the case with young teenage girls, my first love ended without starting. No, there were no tears in the pillow, no emotional conversations with my girlfriends about this. I just experienced this moment of my life, and that’s it.
Let’s return to summer, more precisely to one of the moments of one summer. At that time I already considered myself an adult. The following year I graduated from school. My parents had already made plans, how would I go to the local institute, how would I finish it, well, and so on, in short, they had already painted my life to me. I did not want to upset them.
I really matured. Instead of two peas, my body was decorated with elastic breasts. The legs were flat and looked very appetizing on high heels. I became a girl. Almost everything suited me in my appearance. But hair… I was a brunette. From the pages of fashion magazines, blond beauties looked at me, and I really wanted white hair color. Later, having repainted in a blonde, I began to look more spectacular, but in those years for me it was the ultimate dream. In the country, I rested and indulged in dreams of a future life. I reviewed magazines many times. I liked everything about glossy women. I didn’t understand why my mother looked at one magazine so sadly once. The answer came to me later. All this glossy world was very far and incomprehensible for her.
In the summer, my friends gathered at the cottage. We shared news and fresh girlish stories. Girls have already awakened in us, and we behaved differently than before. Now we began to pay attention to our yesterday friends from a different perspective. Yes, and our yesterday friends began to look at us differently. Very often we noticed that their views glide over our figures and, as it were, undress. But these were just looks. Touching the hand caused such a thrill that it was impossible to be next to the guy, so the girls were thrilled with excitement.
It was a time when something new and unknown came to me. I already wanted more than sighs and hand touches. Intimate topics were not discussed in an ordinary family. Many of the teenagers drew information on forbidden topics from conversations with more experienced peers or from other sources. Parents were embarrassed to talk with us on such topics. No, my mother told me about the rules of hygiene and how a girl should behave, but for some reason it seems to me that mother herself would gladly close her eyes to these principles of behavior. It seemed to me at that time.
That summer, a new military family appeared in our village. The head of the family repaid his homeland in one of the fraternal countries and went into reserve. The family had two sons. One is my age, the other is older. The family is sociable. The guys were smart, I especially liked the older one. His name was Vadim. I do not want to say that he was handsome, as in the pictures of fashion magazines, but he had the pageantry of that time. Firstly, his clothes. He didn’t dress as stereotyped as our guys. Everything was selected with taste. His demeanor sharply put him on a higher level among our local guys, for which they did not like him.
Several of my friends immediately