Privileges. Dating story no. 40

Remember how Forrest Gump compared life to a box of chocolates? There it seemed to go without saying that you take one at a time and marvel or despair at each different flavour. Part of the population goes through life exactly like that. And part behaves however it likes, as long as it is not that boring and predictable.

For Anton, for instance, the whole world was a kind of sweet shop. Every shelf in sight was crammed with different flavours, shapes and scents that could be touched, sniffed, bitten into and stuffed into your pockets. And around every corner new treasures were waiting for him. No one on earth could have convinced him that you have to take one sweet at a time, and blindly at that. Anton agreed to any experiment and any adventure, tried to be in several places at once so as not to miss anything, and revelled in every breath he took.

He was a striking young man, very charismatic, seeming to set energy swirling by his mere presence. He knew how to speak beautifully, how to fire people up and send them off to great deeds and achievements. And his love of life and his restlessness were so infectious that around him people forgot about everything else. Looking at him, you felt that even his eyes were ready to run off in different directions so as not to miss a thing. And then one day Sonya crossed his path.

Sonya — or, to be precise, Sofia Nikolaevna — knew perfectly well how thoroughly she could mess with people's heads when she had to. No, it gave her no particular pleasure, and the time could have been spent more usefully, but when some upstart at an evening marking the opening of a new multi-ethnic cultural centre started passionately spouting incredible nonsense, without having looked into the subject at all and with a nationalist-chauvinist slant to boot, she simply could not keep out of it.

Yes, she was perfectly aware what a bitchy impression she made at such moments. And the epithets she heard about herself then were endless: from militant feminism to plain marital (or simply sexual) frustration, and that she was an upstart, and that she was after publicity, and that she just hated men (as if it were her doing that men far more often hold forth pompously about things they do not understand in the slightest). What can you do — it is precisely people that narrow-minded who are used to judging others and pinning labels on them. And it was precisely such people she most wanted to put in their place, defending everyone they hurt in their narrow-mindedness. At such moments eloquence quite literally came over her and her rhetorical skills went off the scale. She tore the speaker to shreds, managed to explain the seemingly inexplicable in the simplest terms and withdrew in self-satisfaction. In cases like that it is always better to slip away gracefully before people come to their senses. Alas, that very chauvinist speaker came to his senses faster than anyone, grabbed a spare glass of champagne and a handful of canapés from the table in a napkin, and set off after Sonya.

‘You know, I am full of admiration! Such conviction, such fire, and above all, such a sharp mind!’

‘Oh, do stop it...’ Sonya waved him away.

‘I cannot! It was sexy, at the very least! I will not be able to live if I do not get to know such an astonishing woman! No one has ever shut me up as beautifully as you have!’

For some reason Sonya had never mastered the art of politics, hints and evasions, so among other things she loved and valued directness in people. She also valued it when people knew how to admit defeat — a very scarce skill in our difficult times. Anton had both qualities, and on top of that he was clever, open to new things and turned out to be nothing like the windbag and the show-off he had first seemed to her. He was interesting to talk to, brilliant to trade quips with, and truly easy and enjoyable to spend time with. He amazed her with his boundless energy, he disarmed her with his unpredictability and his openness to everything new and hitherto unknown, and above all he gave off such a strange sense of celebration that all of a sudden Sonya too felt she was in that very sweet shop where everything was allowed. And they became friends.

It was a wonderful friendship, built on shared recklessness, shared interests and the absence of limits. They could talk with ease about anything from deep-space research to trips to the doctor. They understood each other from half a word, and the further it went, the more they liked each other and the more plainly they wanted each other. Before long the friendship grew into something more. He suggested giving it a try. She agreed. Nobody has repealed hormones, after all. And the main thing was that even after it grew into something more he did not hold on to her. Each of them ran their own life as they wished, and they spent time together purely for their own pleasure. Is that not what people call friendship with privileges?

Anton felt he had got the sweetest chocolate he had ever found. If until now he had flitted from flower to flower like a butterfly, trusting to luck, now he had Sonya, who knew exactly which flowers were the best and who understood him like no one else. Understood him from half a word, and accepted him. Beside him she too gradually opened up, like a casket full of secrets, revealing ever new facets, ideas and wishes that it was the height of pleasure to fulfil. For once in his life he had met a woman who managed to live at his speed with ease, and to enjoy it too. At first she blushed sweetly at his below-the-belt jokes and his over-eighteen hints. Then she got used to them, and even started firing back in the cheekiest possible way.

Sonya felt that her life had finally got moving. The stagnation she had regretfully diagnosed in her personal life gave way to constant motion, a stream of surprises and romance. Anton could ring her at work and ask whether she fancied having dinner in another city or waking up in another country. The experiments began with the choice of coffee at lunchtime and ended in sleepless nights, toys and ideas that would never have occurred to Sonya. It was like some kind of spell, and at the same time it was real. Until she realised that the stagnation had simply taken a different shape. If you decorate the tussocks in a swamp with fairy lights and bows, the swamp is still a swamp: it will still suck you into the mire and will not let you out into the fresh air. And she took fright.

She was afraid she would get so bogged down in this stream that she really would never get out. She felt that she was no longer herself, and that she was not able to control either the situation or her life. And if at least this life had been flowing somewhere good — towards a wedding, say — that would be one thing. But it was a stream whose edge and whose purpose she could not see, almost a whirlpool. And when Sonya took fright, she acted. Against the background of her fear of losing control, the fear of losing Anton faded. So she stepped aside and tried to get on with her own affairs, her own life. That had always worked before. Not this time.

‘Where are you? I will come over!’

‘Do not, I have an awful lot to do...’

‘Right, I will help!’

‘Please, another time. Seriously...’

‘Another time it is...’

But the next day he wrote again, and by then Sonya had had time to miss him, so they met again and she was drawn back into his unstoppable whirlpool. And sometimes he was the one who disappeared. Just like that, without warning, he would suddenly dash off somewhere on business, and that was completely impossible to predict too. He did not know himself what he would be doing tomorrow. Such was the work of restaurant managers. Or of Anton in particular. Sonya was no longer sure of anything, except that for Anton this way of life was simply convenient.

At the beginning of the relationship Anton had been convenient for her too. A relationship with no obligations, each responsible for themselves and each the master of their own life. Sonya revelled in the fact that at any moment she could turn on her heel and walk away, move on to a more reasonable man, or at the very least not waste time on such useless things as washing his socks and waiting alone for him to deign to come home. She knew enough stories from her friends about putting up with any inconvenience, with unbelievably toxic relationships, just to have a relationship at all. Sonya, on the other hand, could always say with a clear conscience that she got nothing but positives out of her relationship. Could she have imagined that this would not be enough for her? That she would willingly admit that there is no development in a relationship like that?

Anton noticed that the spark was going out of the relationship. The ease of talking was still there, the trust was still there, but the spark was fading. It was as if Sonya had been replaced: every so often she sank into some unknown thoughts of her own, took up defensive poses, looked at him almost appraisingly. He did not know what was wrong, and Sonya, who normally always said straight away what she was thinking, was in no hurry to tell him this time. Usually such behaviour in a woman meant she was planning to leave her man. In another situation Anton would have stepped aside himself, but with Sonya he had realised that she was the one who gave him strength. Without her he genuinely did not understand why he did all the things he did. Without her all the running about looked like a kind of running in a wheel, and he had only just realised it.

Knights come in different kinds. Some fight the dragon because the dragon is evil. Others realise that the dragon is not always evil, but do it for the glory. Others still do it out of sheer boredom, since one cannot just sit around doing nothing. And a fourth kind perform the impossible for the sake of one single, most beautiful lady. And if Anton had always belonged to the third category, he had now moved into the fourth. Indeed, if some bored dragon looking to stretch its fists had come his way just then, Anton would have infected it too with his gloom and his unwillingness to do anything at all while Sonya was behaving so strangely. If only defeating that dragon would have brought back his ‘old’ Sonya.

Meanwhile he learned through mutual acquaintances that the management had changed at Sonya's work. The new boss was ruthlessly replacing staff and forcing out anyone who disagreed. And Sonya, of course, waded in to speak out against it, putting her whole career at risk. Alas, the new boss was a lady with connections, and those connections were so extensive that rumours about Sofia Nikolaevna's outrageous professional incompetence reached even his ears. Anton knew enough people to keep getting information about how events were unfolding. He also understood that when Sonya is on the warpath it is better not to get in her way. On his side he could do only one thing: talk to people and, where possible, explain what the conflict was really about. Enough people knew him, too. So by the time Sonya gave up on it all and handed in her notice after all, two potential employers who were none too fond of her new boss were eager to meet her.

Anton came to collect Sonya from work, insisting on helping, knowing she would never ask herself. She came out of the lift holding the traditional paper box filled with all the odds and ends from her desk. Sad, but proud and unbroken.

‘You will see, nobody will give you a job!’ came the gloating boom from the balcony one floor up — that same boss.

‘They already have,’ Sonya replied perfectly calmly.

Her voice echoed round the foyer. Someone applauded. The boss snorted and withdrew. Anton kissed her almost demonstratively and took the box. Something told him that deep down this was exactly what she would like. And then they got into the car and drove to his place.

‘So, you have said yes to ‘Finsters’?’

‘How do you know?’

‘They run all our corporate parties and business meetings...’

‘Wait! So this is because of you?!’

Sonya stopped as if she had been hit over the head with a pillow. And there she had been, thinking she had been invited for her skills, not through connections.

‘Sonya, I assure you, I do not have enough influence to make anyone hire anyone. My influence went only as far as hinting that your boss could only slate someone she was scared stiff of, so if anything, the credit is hers.’

‘You should not have...’ Sonya said doubtfully.

‘I should. You matter far too much to me.’

‘And if I matter...’ Sonya began, and suddenly broke off.

How do you explain to someone that the format of the relationship you yourself chose is not what you yourself want? And how do you say what it is that you do want? It is easier to say what you do not want — but then Anton will take you for some kind of fool. And in the end he is taking her for that very fool right now, while she stays silent and thinks what to say.

‘We cannot go on like this...’ she forced out.

‘Like what exactly?’

‘The way we have been living so far.’

‘Why?’

‘I... I understand that everything suits you, but it does not suit me.’

She fell silent. It cost Anton an incredible effort to say nothing. He understood that it would be better that way. At last Sonya brought herself to speak.

‘At some point one has to start a proper family, have children... And I think I have grown into that... But if things stay as they are now, it is simply not possible...’

‘We were born to make fairy tales come true, to overcome distance and space; reason gave us arms of steel for wings, and in place of a heart, a flaming engine...’ said Anton. ‘Let us give it a try and see what comes of it.’

And they really did manage it. It did not happen at once by any means. They moved in together, then moved apart again. They tried a living-apart marriage and a classic one. They separated, then could not bear it and got together again. And finally, after long moral and ethical torment, it happened: a home, a family and children, the ideal that matches every classic view and idea. Only not with each other.

They remained friends, though now without the privileges. They wrote to each other, shared news and photographs of their children, and now and then sent each other clients. Every so often Anton suggested they relieve some stress together; his wife did not seem to mind, but Sonya did. The family she had imagined and idealised did not allow for such things. And her husband would not have allowed it either. Anton, however, did not despair. He saw how many people end up disappointed in their relationships and was almost certain that sooner or later Sonya too would abandon her principles. And besides, cheating with a good friend with whom everything has already happened anyway hardly counts as cheating.