The Vanishing Futurist by Charlotte Hobson Read Free Book Online Page B

voice gave way a little.
    ‘No.’
    He approached my bed. I did not move; my mouth was dry. He crouched beside me, avoiding my eyes, and spoke in a ponderous monotone.
    ‘Comrade Freely, I have long thought you a very rational, intelligent woman. I have known your positive attitude to the Revolution and to women’s rights for some time, but when you told me your reasons for staying in Moscow, it struck me that you would see my situation clearly, without sentiment. I hope I deduced this correctly . . .’
    He gulped audibly, and in the half-light I saw his Adam’s apple leaping up and down in his throat.
    ‘In order for me to work productively certain physical comforts are occasionally necessary. For some time now I have been wanting urgently to visit you with the proposal that we might . . . we might become intimate, so to speak. That in the light of the new world we are building, we might ourselves enjoy free, mutually satisfactory, er, beneficial . . .’
    He hesitated.
    For a moment my mind whirled. Then I noticed that he was trembling, the hand clutching his knees white-knuckled.
    I reached across and touched him.
    ‘Oh, comrade—’
    Suddenly we were together, and he was kissing my face, and pushing up my nightdress, and we were both shaking with urgency, and I was only astonished that I had never felt his hands on my waist before, or touching my breasts, and he was hurrying, hurrying, and pressed himself upon me, cried out, and a moment later fell still. I was aware of a wet patch on my thigh. The whole had taken perhaps five minutes.
    My heart was galloping, I could not quite understand what we had done. After a while Nikita raised himself from me, stood up and straightened his clothes.
    ‘I greatly value and respect your honesty and your generosity,’ he said, serious as ever.
    I sat up, flooded with shame. I covered myself with the sheet. ‘Oh . . . I see.’
    He was avoiding my eyes again. ‘You will assist me on my great task, I hope, comrade. We will work together, shall we?’
    ‘Yes indeed,’ I answered.
    ‘Well, good night then. I’m tired,’ he said, retreating. ‘A peaceful night . . .’
    Was that a ‘dear one’ that I heard at the end of his sentence? Perhaps it was. When he was gone I got out of bed, took off my nightdress and washed, staring at myself in the mirror. My shame evaporated and I was filled with joy. What had happened? It was very puzzling. I had only the vaguest knowledge of such matters, only my mother’s hissed and encoded warnings. For some reason, however, I was certain I would not fall pregnant or catch anything nasty. Shame? No, no, here in Soviet Russia there was no place for shame – here men and women were equal, we were honest with each other and we had no time for sentiment. And yet for some time he had been wanting urgently to visit me! I could hear my mother’s poisonous tones: ‘I’m afraid you’re not the type men like, dear.’ Every cell in my body rejoiced that night: she was wrong, wrong, wrong.
    *
    For several long days afterwards, I saw nothing of Slavkin. I began to dig the children’s vegetable plot in the courtyard, tripling its size, thinking of the winter ahead. In the afternoons I brought the old ladies outside and settled them in the shade of the lilac trees in the corner, where they watched and chatted.
    ‘I can’t think why we troubled to go all the way to Mikhailovka all those years,’ Anna Vladimirovna said. ‘Why, it’s just as pleasant here, without that terrible travelling!’
    ‘It was only an hour on the train,’ I reminded her.
    ‘No, no, much longer, and quite dreadful.’ In some way Anna Vladimirovna seemed invigorated by the strange new situation in the house, less tetchy, more energetic. ‘Where is the boy? Is he avoiding us?’
    Oh dear God, did she somehow know how desperately I was asking the same question? My every nerve was alive to his presence in the house, and listening involuntarily to his