Nobody pulled Masha's pigtails much when she was a child. And not only because she rarely wore them — more because everybody knew what it would lead to. Masha could hit back. She was often hurt, of course, wondering why the boys chased all the other girls and pulled their pigtails and left her alone, but she soon explained to herself that idiots whose only trick is pulling a pigtail were the last thing she needed. And from then on the "idiots" gave her a wide berth.
Background: The stories are published from the feedback we received and with our clients’ consent. The names have been deliberately changed. At the end you will find a counsellor’s commentary analysing the relationship.
Skip to the counsellor’s commentaryMaria grew into a beautiful, self-assured woman. Her friends envied her luxuriant dark hair, her perfect posture, her confidence, even her habit of speaking in absolutes. She always knew what was good and what was bad, what was right and what was not. She had an outstanding mind and bulletproof logic, she was not shy of arguing even with the management and somehow managed to convince them that she was right. For this she naturally earned a good many sidelong glances, mostly from male colleagues, and the nickname you would expect in such cases: "bitch".
She did not let it get her down, though, and threw herself into her career with inhuman persistence, dreaming of the editor-in-chief's post at their monthly business magazine. Nothing could get in the way of her plans... Except yet another idiot. He was a "specialist" full of enthusiasm, poached from somewhere or other, utterly reckless, who belonged in the gutter press rather than in their serious publication. And the further away from her, the better! But the director decided otherwise and put Maria in charge of mentoring the "new boy". Nobody would do it better than her, he said.
And this "idiot" was not merely reckless, he was downright explosive. Lanky, angular, with a "perfect" three-day stubble, bright T-shirts bearing provocative sexist slogans, fashionably ripped jeans and bright trainers (what struck Masha most was that his socks did not match, clearly picked from different pairs on purpose). He would stare at Masha with wide, delighted, childlike eyes, brazenly ignore half of what she said, laugh out loud and could simply turn round and walk off in the middle of her sentence. He gestured expansively, filled all the space there was, fidgeted, sniggered, turned everything into a one-man show (starring himself, naturally) and seemed to be deliberately trying to needle Masha, to make her lose her temper. All in all it was a kind of level-80 pigtail-pulling: maddening beyond words, yet impossible either to answer or even to catch red-handed.
– «Marivanna, oh Marivanna?» — the "idiot" had either asked somebody or spotted her patronymic somewhere, and now unfailingly addressed her the way schoolteachers are addressed in Russian jokes.
– «What is it, Vovochka?» — Masha snapped back, naming the troublemaking pupil from those same jokes. The "idiot" was in fact called Oleg.
– «I like that!» — Oleg beamed — «we've already got code names for each other!»
– «What do you want?» — Masha sighed bitterly.
– «Why did you spike my piece on Kremnev?»
– «Because we are not the gutter press, to be publishing rumours like that.»
– «You wound me, Marivanna, those are not rumours! I have verified informants!»
– «And when Kremnev sends his lawyers round here, where will your informants be then?»
– «We'll fight them off with an axe!» — Oleg shrugged.
– «What axe?!» — Masha was not sure whether he was joking or not.
– «The fire axe. It hangs behind the glass on the staircase.»
– «Idiot!» — Masha sighed hopelessly.
Another time Oleg rang her in the middle of a meeting and switched on the video.
– «If they kill me, you're the witness!»
– «If who kills you?!»
– «Don't say a word, I need silence!» — he whispered, and for the rest of the meeting Masha had the pleasure of watching some boxes being loaded into a van.
– «That, by the way, is drugs! That's how your pharmacist, the one we're interviewing the day after tomorrow, props up his finances!» — Oleg announced happily once everyone had driven off.
– «All I saw was cardboard boxes!» — Masha cut him off drily.
– «Then ask him the day after tomorrow, when he starts spinning you the line about super-profits from aspirin!»
– «Have you lost your mind?»
– «Then I'll ask him myself!»
– «Give it a rest!»
– «I will, honestly I will, and then you can defend me with the fire axe... Or kill me with it, whichever you prefer. For you I'd agree to anything!»
– «Idiot...»
Masha genuinely could not understand what drove Oleg in all these stunts of his. The more sharply she brushed him off, the more absurd the ideas that came into his crazy head and the more surprises she found at her desk. The surprises, at least, were not quite as reckless as Oleg's ideas. One day all her neatly sorted papers had been swept into a plastic bag and her desk laid out with rose petals; another day there was a bar of chocolate in every drawer. Except that Oleg had left the chocolate from Friday to Monday, and the weekend was so hot that it all melted... Worse was the day when she flopped into her chair and, on top of the whoopee cushion, set off a hidden mechanism that inflated balloons behind her back. That was the end even of her iron patience.
– «Nikita Sergeevich, get this idiot away from me, right now!!!»
– «Mashenka, what's the matter?»
– «I can't take it! Honestly, I can't take any more! Even if he is three times a genius and twice a Pulitzer laureate, keep him away from me, please!»
– «What has he done?»
– «He's forever doing something... This time he put that... that whoopee cushion on my chair! And balloons as well. I put up with it for a long time, I honestly thought I could handle it, but this is impossible!»
– «And there I was thinking nothing could get to you...» — Nikita Sergeevich muttered — «you do see he doesn't mean any harm...»
– «I know he doesn't mean any harm, he's just an idiot... But it would be easier if the two of us crossed paths less often.»
– «A pity, I had hoped his nose for a scandal and your rationality would help you work together... All right. I am officially moving you to opposite ends of the office. And yes, it's a pity you can't handle him. I had hoped you might take over from me one day, and a head of department cannot afford the luxury of ignoring a member of staff...»
– «Nikita Sergeevich!» — Masha almost wailed, flushing deeply — «I will sort this problem out myself!»
But there was not much left to sort out. Oleg, unusually grim, was already waiting for her by her computer. He looked like a man about to take the decision of his life.
– «Masha, have you really not understood what this is about?»
– «What are you talking about?»
– «You're not blind, for heaven's sake! Can't you see I would do anything for you? That I'll always be there if you need me! Am I really nothing at all to you?!»
– «No, we work together, after all...»
– «Work... Right... Work is all you want? » — Oleg waited for an answer, but Masha had turned to stone — «Fine! I won't get in the way of your work any more!»
And Oleg backed off, spared Masha his presence. The long-awaited silence came back to the office. But the silence no longer pleased Masha. She did not want to admit it to herself, but without Oleg everything was dull and grey. Life seemed to be passing her by: spinning along like a bright carousel full of laughter and candy floss, vivid pictures and coloured lights, while Masha stood off to one side, in the shade, unable to join in. Just like in childhood, when the other girls had their pigtails pulled, were tagged and invited into the game, and she was the one nobody wanted to tangle with.
And why had nobody warned her that when boys pull your pigtails they are simply asking you to notice them? That you are only supposed to pretend to be cross, to give in and play helpless? And, most importantly, why does nobody tell her what to do now, when proudly tossing her head, calling all boys idiots and losing interest in them is simply not an option? This time she wanted Oleg back. She missed his stunts and his jokes, his messing about and his fun. But pride, that damned pride! Masha did not even want to imagine going to Oleg to eat humble pie — and besides, he had surely crossed her out of his life. Masha would have done exactly that herself. It is only the spineless who can never make up their minds, saying yes one moment and no the next, leaving without quite leaving and coming back only for a while. No means no! ...Even if it hurts...
Oleg really did try to cross Masha out of his life, as far as that was possible while working for the same magazine. He tried to spend as little time in the office as he could, disappearing on interviews and investigations, exploding at the slightest mention of her and glowering at the floor whenever they met in the corridor. He did not quite understand how it had come about that whatever he did only made things worse and worse; evidently it was not only Maria Ivanovna who had turned against him but fate itself, refusing to let them be together. There were plenty of girls at the publishing house making eyes at him, of course — but there was only one Masha. Brave, clever, beautiful, determined and unapproachable as the wall of ice in the north of Westeros.
This is where one might put an ellipsis, as in the film "Spring on Zarechnaya Street", where the question of whether the leads, with characters just like these, end up together was left to romantically minded viewers. Alas, I do not have that freedom. The heroes of my story also told me how it went on from there. And if I do not write it down I shall never forgive myself, because what I love most are stories so true that they are hard to believe. So instead of an ellipsis I will say: YES, they did end up together, and how!
After almost six months of pretending that nothing had happened, Oleg landed right under Masha's wheels. She managed to brake in time. Oleg jumped up, looked around, recognised the only familiar face, got into the car without asking, lay down on the back seat and yelled: "Drive!". Masha pulled away as if nothing had happened, keeping to the speed limit.
– «Drive, I said!!!»
– «No need.»
– «We have to shake them off!»
– «Or not draw attention by driving like something out of a cheap action film. Let them think I didn't pick anybody up. Calm down and tell me what this is about.»
– «It's about the subsidiaries of that oil company I'm doing the report on. There's a very ugly story there, I got it on video...»
– «And they caught you?» — Masha did not wait for the end of the story. It was clear enough that Oleg had again dug up some crime the magazine had had no use for in living memory. At that moment a black jeep with a set of very grim heavies inside came flying round the corner.
– «They're still on me, I'm telling you, drive!» — Oleg howled.
Masha sized up the situation in a flash. She had been driving along this road anyway, there could be no suspicion, and if they stopped her she could talk her way out of it.
– «There's an old blanket under the seat on the right, it stinks of dog», she said calmly, «get under it just in case and let me not see you.»
– «What do you need blankets stinking of dog for?» — Oleg grumbled, briskly pulling his camouflage over his shoulders.
– «My sister has an Alabai. We took him to the vet.»
– «You owe me a shower...»
The heavies in the jeep drew level with their car and slowed down, peering inside. Maria gestured at them irritably, as if to say stop crowding me. The main thing was to behave as though nothing had happened — and had she not known who they were looking for, she would have been furious at such cheek. The calculation paid off: the heavies visibly relaxed and even laughed at her crudely. Masha stuck her nose in the air and put her foot down. The heavies in the jeep could not afford to be sidetracked from the hunt for Oleg, so they soon turned off.
– «You can come out», Masha allowed, «I'm not their type.»
– «But you're mine! That kind of nerve — unbelievable! I'm in awe!»
– «Stop it.»
– «No! They practically had us in their hands, and she still managed to swear at them! You're a superwoman! By the way, where are we going?»
– «Now we are going to my sister and her Alabai at the dacha, in case those heavies decide to double-check whether I drove you off in the boot right under their noses. They'll have taken down the number plate, that's for sure...»
– «Listen, from now on I'm only going out on a job with you! We'll show them all! Hold on, let me just climb into the front!»
Counsellor’s commentary
Maria is the manic personality type. These are introverts with an active life position who are governed by logic. She has her own fixed beliefs and principles, together with the notion that she is the sole bearer of the truth. At the same time it is the notion that the idea stands above the person, and a service to that idea. In their search for this truth of their own, manic people will go quite deep into a subject and study a great deal, but their conclusions and verdicts will still be largely "black and white". Maria is afraid to express emotions herself, because it is hard to prove you are right with emotions and very easy to be wrong. At the same time she is drawn to emotions, they attract her, they warm her. What she is not afraid of is expressing a well-founded point of view, or speaking up for herself. She is forceful and aims at climbing the career ladder.
Oleg represents the hysteroid personality type in the S-Theory. His foundation is an open and explicit bid for attention, by any means available. These are bright, noticeable people, often fond of shock effects, striking details in their clothes and scandals, and it is quite impossible to keep them within any given limits. Hysteroid people are very emotional, have practically no forbidden topics and do not really understand where other people's boundaries lie. For them all of life is a game, and they play it with the greatest enthusiasm.
He catches her attention like a funny little animal. At first she does not take him seriously: he behaves incorrectly, he breaks something, though he causes no global trouble and only plays up in small ways. He hooks her on her wish to sort things out: "look what a troublemaker I am! Go on, try and re-educate me!" She takes him on for re-education without realising that he is entertaining her.
Oleg colours in Maria's black-and-white world like an explosion in a paint factory. It does not occur to him at all that anyone could live differently. At the same time he is attracted by her focus, her self-assurance, her ability to explain everything rationally and the fact that she will not restrict him. Bring him up — yes, and that is a form of attention; but restrict him — no.
In fact hysteroids, for all their brightness and appeal, do not really believe that they can be loved. And when they see genuine interest, they respond to it very readily. And she, caught up in the game, begins to love this little creature. He is like any pet: they start to return the affection.
This is a second-rate marriage; to live together successfully, Oleg and Maria will have to work out a set of rules of their own and negotiate every day about who is passive today and who makes the compromise. Relationships are built on agreements in any case.
