‘What do you want to know?’
‘Why would a man like you join the Mafia?’
His face closes over. He shrugs. ‘I had my reasons.’
I rise to my knees and, leaning over, kiss him on his eyelids. ‘Tell me. Let me in,’ I plead.
He lays his cheek on my breast. ‘I needed money, a lot of it, and quickly,’ he says.
‘Why?’ I whisper.
‘I was fifteen and my mother was ill. I didn’t know how else to get it.’
‘What about your father?’
‘My father disappeared after he had impregnated my mother.’
‘Oh, Noah,’ I sigh. In my mind’s eye I could see him, a tall, lanky boy, whipcord lean, his eyes anxious. ‘What happened?’
‘Yeah, I got the money, but she passed away in less than two months. I tried to get out of the brotherhood by paying the debt back, but of course they didn’t want the money. Less than £20,000 for a soul is a bargain.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
He shakes his head. ‘For two months she was comfortable. I would do it all again if I had to,’ he says fiercely.
‘I’m sorry you were forced into this terrible life.’
‘It wasn’t terrible to start with. I was just a thief, but this job slowly seeps into every crack and crevice of your life. It takes more and more of you until it becomes you and you become it. You are a thief, a counterfeiter, an enforcer, a murderer.’
‘So how did you come to England?’
‘I was on a job and I met Alexander Malenkov. He was called Zane then. He was leaving Russia for England. I had nothing left in the motherland. Babushka had just passed away that year so I followed him. We worked well together and we formed our own thing.’
He picks up the plate of Chak-Chak and offers it to me. I take one.
‘We were Mafia, but we only specialized in the finance industry. We targeted banks and large financial organizations. We were stealing from the biggest crooks of all time. It felt good.’
I chew the Chak-Chak and swallow it.
‘Occasionally we were forced to do business with your father or people like him, but as much as possible we kept away from organized crime outside of our small but loyal group. Then a couple of years ago Alexander met Dahlia and she persuaded him to follow his true talent and become the pianist he is now. By then I had saved a lot of money from our dealings together so I bought all his clubs and restaurants. And here we are.’
Outside the first fat drops of rain fall. They become a torrent quickly. I turn towards him. ‘Isn’t it beautiful? It’s like there is no one else in the world except us in this house.’
He stares at me.
‘Shall we go out in it?’ I ask.
His eyebrows fly upwards. ‘You want to play in the rain?’ he asks incredulously.
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s autumn rain. It’ll be cold.’
‘So what? We’re Russian. The cold doesn’t bother us.’
‘It was you I was thinking of.’
‘I love the rain.’
He stands and opens the door. Fresh air hits us. He is naked and I am only wearing his shirt. I take his hand and we go out onto the springy wet grass. Indeed, the rain is cold and we are quickly drenched, but we both laugh like children.
‘Will you dance with me?’ I shout above the noise of the pouring rain.
‘It might not be—’
‘When a lady asks you to dance with her, you dance with her,’ I mock sternly.
‘Don’t take that tone with me young lady.’
‘Or what?’ I challenge.
‘Or this.’ He slams me against his body and kisses me passionately. Water runs down our fused bodies. It’s beautiful. And … I will never forget this moment.
Afterwards, we go back inside, dry ourselves, and he makes love to me on the shag carpet. Outside the rain pours and lightning flashes across the sky. I will never forget this night.
Tasha Evanoff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWeg-W0xyok
I Got It
Yay! Papa is away!
It is the third day with him away and Noah and I are on a day trip to Nice. Blue seas, blue skies, and gorgeous sunshine. The car Noah hired is an open-top, green BMW, and the wind rushes into my hair as we coast along the Promenade des Anglais.
Wintering British nobles of the 19th century who came here to escape the dreary English weather set the snooty tone by paving a marble walkway to run alongside the beach. It goes all the way from the airport right into the city. We pass people rollerblading on it as we drive along. The sight fills me with a happy, carefree buzz. Nowhere else in the world can you rollerblade from the beach all the way to the airport if you so desire.
I hold my hair plastered to the sides of my face and direct a face-splitting grin at Noah. The wind has pushed his hair away from his, making his cheekbones look cut and chiseled. I stare at him. He looks like a movie star, a god, an angel, or something impossibly gorgeous.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ I say, still grinning uncontrollably. I’ve never been this happy in my life before.
He smiles back.
I turn away and gaze contentedly at the blue-green ocean. I have never been to the French Riviera before, and this one-day break with Noah is just pure magic.
Actually, it has been pretty magical ever since Papa left.
I’ve spent every wonderful, lust-filled night with Noah. I also bought a pay-as-you-go cellphone, and the sensation of having him at the other end of my phone at any time of the day is simply exhilarating. It is like we are truly boyfriend and girlfriend. On the second day I even took Sergei out to the park to meet him. Yeah, Sergei completely adored Noah.
‘Meet my son, Sergei.’
Noah smiled. ‘He’s as gorgeous as his mother.’
‘Shake hands, Sergei,’ I told my boy, and beamed proudly when he lifted his paw to be shaken by Noah.
‘He’s well trained,’ Noah noted, impressed.
Proudly, I told him that I never trained Sergei. In fact, when he was a small puppy he was the naughtiest, wildest devil you ever saw. He was just terrible. I would come into my bathroom to find that he had shredded the toilet paper to bits. The whole bathroom floor was covered in it, and he’d be sitting there with an expression that said, so what are you going to do about it? Nothing was safe from him. He would come to me with something he shouldn’t have in his mouth and challenge me to chase him for it.
Everybody told me I was spoiling him. I shouldn’t let him sleep with me. I should cage him. I should send him to obedience classes. I was ruining him, but I refused, because I didn’t want him to feel that he was my little slave. Sit, stand, or roll over when I told him to. To me he was my baby. Besides, every time I went to scold him, he would look at me with his great big puppy dog eyes and I would melt.
He was my heart and I loved him.
When he broke Baba’s glasses, Papa was furious, but I had no concern other than he might end up swallowing a fragment of glass. He remained a thorn in all the servants’ sides until he was about a year old. Then he slowly started to change. He grew up. He became so good I didn’t even need a lead to take him out. He knew what made me happy and he immediately did that. We were so bonded, words were not necessary. He instinctively knew if a man coming towards me had bad intentions, and he’d growl and bare his teeth until the man backed off.
Noah laughed. ‘A dog after my own heart.’
Afterwards, we bought hotdogs. Sergei had his with no mustard, I had mine with just one line, and Noah very bravely had two.
‘That’s where the kick comes from,’ he said wolfing it all down easily.
In the evenings we went to restaurants outside London and we behaved as if we were just another ordinary couple having a night out. No bodyguards, drivers, or fear of anything. We fed each other little bits of food, we laughed, and we hired rooms in little-known countryside hotels. We spent all night having wild sex then, wrapped up in
each other’s arms, we talked the rest of the night away. Well, I did most of the talking. He’s not much of a talker.
And now here we are in Nice.
The lazy October sunshine is deliciously yellow and warm. The architecture and buildings are so Mediterranean and baroque you could be forgiven for thinking you are in Italy. Nice is also the place some of the best Russians families came to so they needed a house of worship that was worthy of their status. Hence, Nice boasts one of the finest Russian orthodox churches outside of Russia. Baba has asked me to pay a visit to it and light a candle for Papa.
‘Can we go to the church? I promised my grandmother that I would light a candle.’
‘Sure,’ Noah agrees easily, ‘but first breakfast.’
Breakfast is socca at a stall in the Cours Saleya market in the colorful old town. It is brought piping hot in the back of a scooter by a man. Turns out it is a traditional peasant snack and is basically a very large chick pea pancake with a lots of pepper. It is served on paper with no cutlery, and is surprisingly delicious served with a glass of local rosé.
Feeling pleasantly tipsy after the one and a half glasses of rosé so early in the morning, I lean into Noah’s hardness as we pass by a myriad of sounds and sights. We walk together, our bodies sometimes touching on the vehicle-free streets. The sun beats down on my head and I can taste the salty air on my lips. In the butcher’s window I see a tiny whole dead piglet tied up with string.
‘Oh my God. Look! Why would anyone keep something so gruesome in the window?’ I exclaim with surprise.
‘That’s prochetta. An Italian style specialty. It’s actually a hollowed-out pig filled with chunks of meat, fat, herbs, and lots of garlic before being roasted on a spit. They slice right through it and serve it in large thin slices as you would luncheon meat.
‘Ugh. Food with faces. Just no.’
‘It’s actually very delicious,’ he tells me.
‘Why did you buy a house here?’ I ask him nosily.
He shrugs. ‘The weather is pleasant and I like that there is a big Russian community here.’
‘Do you speak French?’
‘Nope. I get by with English and Russian. Do you?’
‘I studied it at school, but I’m rusty.’
‘Good, you can do all the speaking from now on,’ he says.
‘Tell me, what were you like as a child?’ I press. Left to his own devices, he says very little. I want to know everything there is to know about him.
He gives my question some thought as if no one had ever asked him such a question before. ‘Serious. Eager to please. Loyal, very loyal. And you?’
There it is again. Turning the conversation back to me. I look at him behind my eyelashes. Never mind, he cannot hide forever. Little by little I will teach him to trust me and reveal himself to me.
‘I was a plump, terrible, little thing. In the summer months I lay on the cool floor totally naked and refused to get dressed, and in the winter I ran around looking for places to hide so I could jump out with a great roar and frighten my mother and Baba.’
He laughs.
I smile. ‘Yup, I did that. They would pretend to scream and I thought that was hilarious, and I would fall about laughing. I mean, I would be clutching my stomach and rolling on the ground.’
‘I would have liked to have seen that,’ he says, smiling. ‘I’ll have to get you to hide in one of my cupboards.’
‘It won’t work. I lost the ability to laugh like that. Now I find it almost impossible to laugh uncontrollably.’
He stares into my eyes. ‘I never laughed like that even when I was a child.’
‘Why?’
‘Probably because my mother was always so sad. She never got over being discarded by my father.’
‘Do you ever miss Russia?’ I ask softly.
‘No.’
‘No?’
He shakes his head. ‘When I was younger I used to dream of my childhood days. I could even remember taking my first steps holding on to my mother’s finger. The memories came so close I could feel them breathing into my mouth, but there is nothing left of them now. The house, the people, the memories. They’re all gone … I don’t think of them anymore.’
Tasha Evanoff
The church is located in a green area of the city, and you cannot see it until you are actually almost upon it. It has six onion domes and an exterior that is richly decorated in mosaic. Add those features to the fact that it is nearly hidden makes it seem foreign, isolated, almost an oasis in that bustling city.
There is a guard at the door, a man in all black. Even his glasses have black frames. He has a dour totally Russian personality, but strangely, he doesn’t speak Russian. He speaks to us first in French then in English. He is apparently there to enforce the rules. Basically, no taking pictures or videos. No talking loudly. No shorts. No naked shoulders.
I brought a scarf with me and use it to cover my hair before we enter the church. The interior is even more grand and fabulous than the exterior. There are no chairs, but it is very much a working church attended by the large Russian community that live in Nice. In the Orthodox Church the congregation stands.
It is full of stunningly beautiful and intricate icons and paintings. Hundreds of candles burn, adding to the hushed, otherworldly atmosphere. Religious artifacts include a huge hammered silver cross, and delicate icons made of silver and studded with semi-precious stones.
‘I have to light a candle for Papa,’ I whisper into the solemn air.
He looks at me strangely. ‘My grandmother asked me to,’ I explain with a shrug.
He waits for me while I go up to the icon of a saint. Bowing my head in veneration, I say a prayer for Papa. ‘Please make Papa repent. Enter his heart.’ Then I look deep into the icon’s eyes because Baba says that if you do this while meditating, you will enter a lake where you will meet your own soul. Of course, I have never prayed long enough for that to happen, and it does not happen now either.
Pulling a tissue out of my purse, I wipe my lipstick off before I kiss the icon on the hand as a sign of love and faith. We never kiss the faces of icons as Judas betrayed Christ with a kiss on the cheek. I light my candle and plant it before stepping away, then make the sign of the cross over my face before going to join Noah.
‘You love your father,’ he says, almost to himself, as we leave the cool exterior of the church and come out into the sunshine again.
I stop and look up at him. He seems surprised that I would, and I can understand why he would be. He needs to know how I feel.
‘I know Papa has done some really bad things to my mother. When I was small I saw him push my mother to the front door and kick her so viciously she flew out the door and fell sprawled on the front steps. In one instant all those years with her came to that. I wouldn’t do that to a stray dog. He treated her like she was nothing. While she was still standing there bleeding, crying, and screaming that he was wrong, she had not been unfaithful to him, he closed the door on her and forbade me to ever see her again.’
Noah stares at me, shocked.
‘The thing is, my mother hadn’t been disloyal to him. You have to be a very brave fool indeed to be unfaithful to my father.’
Noah’s eyes widen. ‘And that was the last you saw of your mother?’
I shook my head. ‘No. My grandmother made sure I saw her regularly when my father was away. I still do. Secretly.’
‘Good,’ he mutters softly.
‘When I was young I used to dream of a father who loved me, took me out to eat ice cream, or watch a movie with me, but my father is not like that, and I’ve learned to live with it.’ I smile. ‘It’s better to have a father than to have none at all. He’s the only father I have, maybe I do love him. In his own cold way Papa loves me too.’
He tilts his head and looks at me as if I am a creature he doesn’t understand. ‘Doesn’t it bother you though that he is forcing you to marry a man you don’t love?’
‘He’s not forci
ng me to marry Oliver. He … suggested it and I agreed.’
‘Really? You had a choice?’
I bite my lower lip. ‘When I agreed to marry Oliver I had no one and it didn’t seem like a bad thing. He was from a good family and he was easy on the eye. I had met him a few times and he was always courteous and solicitous. However, I recently found out something about Oliver. He’s not what he seems to be. I think he may be into perverted things. I know Papa has ambitions, but he wants me to be happy too, and I could never be happy with such a man. When Papa comes back I’m going to tell him that in these circumstances I cannot marry Oliver.’
To my surprise Noah doesn’t make any comment at all. Instead he veils his eyes so I won’t be able to tell what he is thinking. ‘I thought we could try some parasailing before lunch,’ he says, completely changing the subject.
‘Parasailing? I’m game,’ I say immediately.
We make our way to the water sports center on the Promenade des Anglais, and I see the yellow parachutes with their distinctive yellow smiley faces floating in the hot blue sky over the sea. Noah has already booked a slot for us and he hands our vouchers over.
An instructor with a bronze tan and strong French accent gives us a safety briefing and a lesson on parasailing basics. Then I step into a safety harness together with Noah. We wade out into the warm water. Our instructor connects our harness to the giant parasail and a pull rope attached to a speed boat. The boat pulls forward, our sail fills with air, and we rise into the sky.
‘Oh, my God. We’re airborne. We’re flying,’ I scream as we soar up more than a hundred meters into the sky. The wind rushes into my face and it is the most thrilling sensation to be so high up. Giddy with excitement, I whoop like a child when we rise even higher.
‘Whoopeee … check out how far we are from the ground,’ I shriek, pointing to our small shadows on the sea’s surface.
Noah just chuckles at my enthusiasm.
As we glide effortlessly over the Baie des Anges, we enjoy stunning aerial views of the French Riviera’s sandy coastline, the turquoise blue waters of the Mediterranean, the rolling hills of Provence, and Nice’s historic streets. As the boat makes its turn we drift back down for a water landing as the boat slowly comes to a stop.
Blackmailed by the beast Page 23
