in the picture.
Natalya’s eyes went back to her lover. Her voice was kind but firm. “I will never marry you. That is all I have to say.”
Tears came to his eyes and he took her hands and kissed them. “Please, Natalya, my love. Please. I beg you.” Tears were streaming down his face now. “Do not refuse me. Do not break my heart. Marry me. We will have beautiful, fat babies and live happily for the rest of our lives. Please.”
Natalya looked into his eyes.
He thought maybe she was weakening and softened his voice. “Please, my love. I beg you. Please.”
She continued to search his eyes. Then one word came from her mouth. “Neekogda - Never.”
When he left Yakutsk, she said goodbye at the Blue Diamond air terminal and watched him board the plane. That was three years ago and she had not even kissed a man since then. They still wrote each other, exchanging news about their lives – nothing more. The letters were becoming less frequent.
As Natalya left her school, she bundled up in her furs to protect herself from the cold. It was January and her world was in almost perpetual night. The hours of darkness were very long and very cold. The days were very short and very cold. The sun, hanging low on the horizon as if it were only making an appearance out of politeness, rose about 10am and set about 2pm.
She stepped off of the concrete stairs into the snow, hearing and feeling the crunch under her small reindeer boots. Moving with natural grace and femininity, she walked through the very dense white fog caused by so many people living in close proximity in such extreme temperatures. As she walked, a tunnel trailed behind her that slowly closed in on itself. She saw other tunnels where people had recently walked, the tunnels crisscrossing in a network of surreal honeycombs. It was a strange phenomenon. A person could easily lose his or her way in such a fog but she was sure of her direction. Occasionally, people got lost and froze to death. Most frequently, drunken men wandered into the surrounding areas and the bodies were not found until the spring thaw. Siberians called such finds ‘snow flowers.’
Natalya didn’t mind the winter. Why hate it? It was a hard fact of life, like so many other things in her world. She just lived with it. Life was hard in Yakutsk. She was a college graduate, a teacher of English, Russian, and art, and made the equivalent of forty-five dollars a month.
Sometimes food was scarce. Her cousins would often bring her reindeer, horse, and beef, as well as mare’s milk and soft potatoes and other vegetables from their storage. They were wonderful people who came from the northwest driving sleds pulled by their tough Siberian dogs. She was very lucky to have such a good family. She sometimes became a little weary of listening to them go on about her finding a husband. But she was very patient with them because that’s the way she was - very patient.
Her babushka still lived with her. The old woman had told Natalya that she thought she was about seventy-five years old but wasn’t sure. Her mind was still sharp but her leathery skin looked like she was frozen in time. She hobbled around on her toeless feet and cackled at everything. Natalya loved her babushka and did everything she could to make her happy and comfortable. She still chewed food and fed her like a bird.
As Natalya walked to her apartment on the edge of town, she stopped by the post office. There was a letter from her cousin in California. Her cousin lived a fairytale life: she had a big, beautiful house and a good husband who loved her. She had a beautiful little girl and plenty of money to do whatever she wanted. Natalya wasn’t jealous. She was happy for her cousin. Ludmilla was a good and honest woman and deserved her happiness.
She picked up the letter and then walked the mile to her apartment. She was fortified against the cold with thick furs and wool scarves. The only part of her which could be seen was her beautiful almond-shaped eyes peering out into the frozen world.
Her apartment was a small wooden building with a high pitched roof to allow gravity to shed the abundant snowfall. There were four separate apartments in her building, two upstairs and two downstairs. Natalya and her babushka shared a downstairs apartment. It consisted of a kitchen, a living room with some functional furniture, a bedroom with a small bed where both of them slept, and an open area containing a metal stool which served as a toilet. The landlord paid a boy to bury their human waste which was caught in an old fifty-five gallon drum cut in two and placed under the floor where the metal stool was. The cold kept the smell down in the winter, but in the summer, since the boy only came once a week, Natalya would often open the insulated trap door herself, drag out the heavy drum, and bury the contents.
There was some storage area in the apartment for food and personal things. Most of their clothes, however, hung from hooks and nails on the walls. She also had a telephone. It was old but it worked, most of the time. There was no bathtub or shower. Natalya and her babushka used one of the public baths in town. The baths only operated for women on Thursdays. They would go and undress in the large dressing room and then bathe in the wonderful hot water and talk with other women about local scandals. They each took two sheets provided by the city and dried themselves before dressing again. Natalya always looked forward to Thursdays so she could feel clean.
Natalya’s one indulgence was clothes. She owned a small Russian sewing machine and made clothes for herself and her babushka. She also bought clothes at second hand stores selling items donated from Germany. She knew she spent too much money, but she loved to look nice and noticed men’s heads turn as she walked by. Good, she always thought, my husband will like the way I look.
Her husband was her dream. She still had faith, believing that her husband would one day find her. She often took out the drawing she made so many years ago. She had retraced it many times and drawn it again and again. The later drawings were much better and were expertly rendered. Often, when no one could hear her, she would look up into the sky and ask in her native Yakut, “Where are you, my loved man? I am still waiting for you to find me.”
She would speak to him sometimes in Yakut, sometimes in Russian, and sometimes in English. She knew he would love her voice - all men did. It had a deep, sexy tone which drove men wild. There were many men interested in her, but she kept them at bay. She encouraged no one; she would wait.
But the owner of her apartment building was a problem. He was a fat Yakut with a fatter wife and little fat children. He owned several apartment buildings in the city and some small businesses. He always collected the rent from Natalya in person. She was the only one he came to on a constant basis; and, when he did, he was always offensive.
“Natalya Ivanova,” he would say. Her father’s name was Ivan and the name meant, literally, Natalya, daughter of Ivan. “Natalya Ivanova, if you do things for me you can live here without charge. I am a reasonable man. All I want is for you to be nice to me. You are a beautiful woman and I dream about you. If you are nice to me, I will let you live in the beautiful place for no money.”
The first time he said this, she asked, “What do you want?”
“Something very easy for you. I want you to lie down and spread your beautiful legs for me to enter you. It will be ten minutes of easy work for you. What do you say?”
Natalya used every ounce of self-discipline to not throw a pot of hot borsch on him. She handed him the rent money, the equivalent of seventeen dollars, and opened the door for him.
“No,” was all she said.
“Suit yourself,” he said. “But next month your rent will rise to twenty dollars.”
Natalya closed the door behind him and cried. She would not do that thing. She didn’t care what happened. She’d heard about women doing things like that for rent. A woman alone in Siberia is an easy victim. She was no stranger to sex being forced on her because her Russian lover had sometimes demanded sex acts when he came to her after an evening of drinking vodka. It was just something women had to do, like washing clothes by hand. But she would never do any of those things for that fat pig. She didn’t want any part of him touching her, let alone his evil seed squirting inside of her. That would make her a whore, and that was one thing she was not. So she paid the twenty dollars a month. Sometimes when he came he made the same offer,