Letters from Yelena (6 page)

As we sat down together to eat, I realised how time experiences separation in such scenarios. While we talked I grew to know the endless chasms that can stretch out between one sentiment and
another. It occurred to me that a date was perhaps nothing more than a matter of joining the dots. I could see you thinking that you constantly needed to have the next step of the evening ready to
disclose. And it felt as if it was my job to calm that process, but more pressingly to validate it. That tension soon broke into a sense of expectation. An interesting question opened out on the
fertile terrain, which we felt indulgent to remain on for long, so charged was each moment with awareness of the next. In coaxing one another through that it occurred to me how quickly the two of
us took our mutual attraction for granted. I found pleasure in the rolling momentum, which we took it in turns to hurry and suppress. In so doing I temporarily forgot the appeal of your fragrance
and the curiosity in your eyes. But when such charms hit me – between one wry observation and another – they were completely disarming. Gradually, as the plates started to clear, it
became apparent that there was laughter in the air, laughter that was now unburdened by fear. Indeed, the two of us had found enough fertile patches in the conversation to return to at later dates.
That generous sprinkling of promising moments was the glitter that would soon illuminate our relationship.

The flirtatious energy remained as you took the plates inside and fussed over the hot sauce for the pudding. I was stood at the entrance to the chalet, wondering if I could venture inside when I
heard you draw closer. You pressed a glass of wine into my fingers – slightly steamed by the heat of the kitchen. You lingered as our eyes held one another’s. Your eyes darted to my
lips, and the moment I raised my chin you kissed me. I cupped your ear in my hand and giggled, kissed you back as your hand darted down the suddenly thin fabric of my summer dress. The tang of
white wine was on your lips; the sun bloomed overhead. I felt it nestle in my back and I laughed. ‘Our pudding, I’ll burn that as well!’ you said.

‘Then fetch it quickly,’ I answered. ‘And we can enjoy the last rays of the sun.’ I sounded imperious, and you shouted something inaudible back. ‘Can we eat on the
steps of the chalet?’ I asked. Inside it I had seen a typewriter, and the notebook you’d had with you when you first saw me dance. I  was  intrigued  by  the 
thought  of  its  consequence,  and what it might reveal about your life. On your way back you momentarily looked concerned. ‘If you like,’ and then, ‘of
course.’ You handed me a bowl of caramel tart and ice cream, at once hot and cool to touch. A dish I would never have allowed myself to enjoy normally, and yet here – in this role
– I was able to. I realised I had now shed my role as a seductress; it had slipped away and revealed the real Yelena for the first time. You knew nothing of the self-loathing, of the
isolation, of the silence of my past. It didn’t need to exist anymore. Your intense, flashing gaze told me it was unnecessary now. But I promised myself I would tell you about it one day, if
only for my own sense of integrity.

You asked me how I really felt in the city. I said I still felt pretty lonely, and I wondered if I was ready to dance as a Principal. I told you about my need to please Michael, about Alina,
about how desperate I was not to go back to the Ukraine with my tail between my legs. That I felt on the edge of achieving something momentous, but that there was little evidence as to why. And
then I asked how you felt in the city, and what was happening in your world. In snatched, self-conscious sentences you told me that an eccentric uncle had left you this house three months ago,
which had forced you, for financial reasons, to return to the city that you had lived in as a younger man. ‘Hence the state of disarray.’

Over the last crumbs of tart, as we looked back at the house, you told me about the progress of your book. You said the breakthrough of your second novel had been a pleasant surprise, given that
it had been written mainly to satirise a certain genre of ‘cutting-edge’ fiction. ‘I wrote it in a fit of despair at my life, as a desperate attempt to do something of meaning.
For years I had worked in dull bureaucratic jobs, and writing had been my escape. My first book had been written under another name as a bit of a trial run, but my second one had instantly gained a
lot of coverage. After years of frustration and hardship it brought me the kind of lifestyle I had always wanted. One which gave me the room to write. Now I suddenly find myself as a full-time
writer, but I’ve done no groundwork to understand that role. And I’m still learning to be domesticated, and yet I have this great big house. It’s so strange.’

You said you still felt like an outsider in the city, as if by returning you were outstaying your welcome here. But that as time went by, you were rediscovering what you had first loved about
it. I asked how, with no-one telling you what to do, you had developed the rules by which to govern every moment of your own life. You looked at me as though there were years of consideration tied
up in that question. ‘I am still learning,’ you said.

The bottle of wine was almost at an end. As its effect began to take hold, you amused me with your impression of Michael, lizard-like and effete one minute, then a kind of camp Nazi the next.
You had him down to a tee, the slightly leering gaze which crawls up your face as he considers you, the twitch of discomfort that whips around his shoulders when he momentarily realises how
disingenuous he is. I found myself laughing so hard I almost fell off the rickety rail I was perched on.

We passed the rest of the bottle of wine between us, like guilty schoolchildren. I saw that in fact having the freedom to run your own life gave you room for small decadent pleasures, which
another’s rules could never encompass. You showed me that I didn’t need to see decisions as an unending pressure, that in time they could be a cause for celebration. I saw how addictive
you found it to make me laugh. Once I began you didn’t want me to stop, and you quickly went on linguistic flights of fancy, surreal and imaginative that had me giddy with the absurdity of it
all. Through the sheer dexterity of your words, Michael suddenly became a meerkat in a gilet, clambering sleazily up a ballerina’s leg one minute, kicked disdainfully off the next, and then
suddenly asserting his homosexuality the minute he was addressed. Given the hesitant start to the evening, it felt great to find that groove with you. Suddenly the evening felt ignited with a sense
of spontaneity. We drained the last of the wine, and you asked if I was ready for the grand tour. Throwing off my shroud of caution, I said that I was.

The house was like a dusty jewellery box, its many compartments still hidden even to you. There were grand drawing rooms, decked in mahogany and rich leather, lined with ancient glass cases all
containing antique books. There was a dining room with a long oak table, surrounded by portraits of woodland scenes, like something out of the first act of
Giselle
. ‘And this,’
you said, pulling open two high wooden doors. ‘Is the pool room, where my uncle gambled away the last of his inheritance with his many alcoholic friends. I don’t even know what half of
these pool cues do.’

I felt as if I had entered a C.S. Lewis novel, as if Toad of
Toad Hall
could come bounding into our company at any moment. The house resembled the most charming turn of the century
English fantasy, every detail evocative of some new eccentricity. As you kicked a gramophone to life, I tried to show you the trick shots I remembered from my teenage days at the local pool hall.
As the second bottle of wine flowed, we placed some of the antique statuettes on the table and tried to play crazy golf around them with the snooker balls. ‘We’ll tear the felt!’
I said.

‘And then I won’t have to maintain it!’ you replied, passing the bottle.

We found the cigars your uncle had hidden in a cabinet, and on top of them his old poker cap. With a Cuban cigar smouldering between your teeth, you kept scores on the chalkboard – Y
versus N. As the wine began to take hold I danced with the pool cue, singing huskily along to the jazz numbers you played. I berated you, with wandering hands, whenever you started to cheat at our
customised game, snooker balls flying noisily onto the wooden floor. In the corner of the room you played the role of decadent barfly, cradling a bottle of wine in the tips of your fingers. I
played the role of a gangster’s moll, serenading you with torch songs, the façade only broken by me occasionally coughing on cigar smoke. ‘Finish that bottle before you take the
shot,’ you said.

‘Are you trying to get me drunk?’

You muttered something about it being your only chance of winning, as you fiddled with a Nina Simone LP.

‘I said, are you trying to get me drunk?’

As if about to address an errant child, you set the record down, and came over to me. I looked up at you, my mouth opening as I laughed, embarrassed at having said it. As you kissed me I dropped
my pool cue with a clatter. For the first time, with my nervousness having vanished, I felt lust surge through me. The feeling was almost unrecognisable; it made me giddy and weak. You kissed me
harder and our mouths opened. You pushed me up against the pool table. I giggled, but you suppressed that slightly feverish sound as you kissed me again, harder. I felt the strap of my dress fall
around my elbow, our waists pressing into each other’s. ‘The neighbours will see,’ you whispered. ‘Shall we go upstairs?’

‘Bring the wine,’ I said. That lust swung inside me as you led me up the stairs, into a room filled with canvases, books, and a messy bed. The rich sun tumbled through the broken
shutters. I felt a round throb rise in my middle, which spread through my torso as I stepped over to the bed. After setting the wine down by the bed, your every step acted as percussion, forcing my
desire to build. I wanted to be placed so far within your world that I’d be irretrievable, and I kissed you as if seeking from your lips the very essence that would keep me there. As you
kissed me your fingers explored the straps of my dress. I pushed you back onto the sheets and then reached behind me, unzipped the dress, and let it fall to the floor. Except for a tiny slip of
fabric at my middle, I was completely exposed and yet I felt strangely empowered. Our eyes fixed upon one another, yours ablaze with curious lust. I unbuttoned your jeans, urged you to lean back. I
felt a new urge, one I had never experienced before – the need to please. Carefully, as if your body was too refined to ignore, I unbuttoned your shirt and eased it from your back. Our lips
closed again and I reached down to find you. And then, as sunlight spilt onto our faces, there was that glorious moment as I found my body with yours and you eased, determined and yet tender,
inside me. That clamouring moment when our bodies assured one another’s that the pleasure was only going to build. I draped my arms around your shoulders, and felt my hair stroke your face.
Your eyes clamoured over my breasts and the slim delicacy of my shoulders. I leant back, the sunlight splayed through my hair, and you gave me a look of such tenderness and resolve, that I knew
something had just begun. And I looked back at you, as if slightly afraid of what you might be about to unleash from me.

I’d never made love to someone so quickly before, Noah. That night we only revealed shards of ourselves, the type of glistening shards one usually reveals to a stranger in passing.
There  was  that  exhilarating  sense  of  reckless  disclosure, and yet there was something more elemental between us too, which we then began to build from. Our
consummation in one sense was sudden, forceful, but within it there were shades of tenderness we both knew were too rich to neglect. And yet in that bright flash of sensuality we had satisfied one
another with the present and with promises for the future. I saw the way that your eyes greedily took in my body, which I wanted to give generously to you. Not as a stranger would, as an
indulgence, but more as a promise. I had never seen my body in that way before, but that night, for the first time, I saw its power. And in that look, I saw that you knew I had presented you with a
gift too magnificent to be consumed in one evening. That you would find it almost indecent to neglect that truth. And then I prised my body from you, not yet ready for the state of intimacy that we
would soon enter into so readily. I wanted you to feel that you would have to work to experience that again. So many men, I knew, might have their curiosity satisfied by such an encounter, but I
knew you were not one of them. Not with your mental cravings and your creative insatiability. Until then my body had always been a foreign object, bent into shape for a stringent purpose, using bad
temper and relentless hunger. It had never before been a tool of pleasure, an object of appreciation. Merely a long, pale curve, wan and fragile; hardly a plane on which a man could find himself.
But from your starving expression, which betrayed how rarely you had felt such sensations, already I knew it would soon become just that.

I moved over to the other side of the bed, but you came over to me and firmly took the flow of my hair in your hands. You pressed your body against me, and though you did not see it, I felt you
had given yourself to me then, more completely than I had given myself to you. Your eyes searched me for confirmation that you were not alone in what you felt, but I held back. I knew that in so
doing you would be forced to make the room to express your feelings, and through that confirm them. ‘You make me ravenous,’ you said. I leant back, and pulled the sheets around my body
until I knew its concealment would frustrate you. In the night you would have to reach out for me, so you could detail the next portion of your private map of Yelena. And when that time would come,
I knew I would turn to you in the dark and embrace you.

With love,

Yelena

Dear Noah,

I’m sorry for my delayed response to you. There are some good, and some rather less good reasons for this. The most important reason is that I found parts of your reply
very difficult to read.