 What's a Girl to Do? By John Marone |
This is the story of little Luba (the diminutive for Lubov, or Love in Russian - believe it or not, it's a common name among girls in Ukraine and has nothing to do with the country's infamous sex industry). After my story last month on marriage agencies, our readers may get the impression that I have taken up the banner of gender issues. Think again! This month, Ukraine celebrates International Women's Day, and I had to come up with something appropriate if I wanted to get paid by those two older looking guys with southern accents whose photos appear elsewhere in this publication. If, on the other hand, you feel this article is another titillating topic chosen at the expense of those who have enough problems (i.e. post-soviet women) for the enjoyment of those who don't (anyone who reads English and has enough spare time and money to frequent the places where this magazine is found), please write us and let us know (whether we are being read). If the reader is more inclined to punch-ups, foul language and throwing beer in people's faces, Glen and Michael Willard can be found at O'Brien's Pub on Saturday mornings discussing what makes a good breakfast sausage.
Luba was a little lady before the age of 10. She bloomed like a butterfly in the best of Tolstoyan traditions: From plump cheeks and curious eyes poking out of a swaddle of blankets to a Tinkerbell in tights gliding along the ice at the Sport Palace.
With the exception of those after-school events that she attended in a bright kerchief to recite poems in honor of Uncle Lenin, Luba was as cosmopolitan as you get for a little squirt with pigtails: Mama stocked the family bookshelf with hard-cover copies of Robert Louis Stevenson and Alexandre Dumas; the family piano took a beating every evening after supper; and Lidya Ivanovna showed up on Saturday mornings to instill a serious if not contemporary knowledge of English.
Papa was an officer or engineer - at least he wore a uniform to work. Like a real man's man, he brought home the bacon, which was often salo (bacon without the strip of meat). Actually, he didn't bring it home but gave the money to mama, who had to do hours of queue-cutting to supplement the salo with bread, sour cream and vegetables (in warmer months). At any rate, Luba wasn't raised on sugar- coated corn flakes and fizzy soft drinks. At the age of 16, she had a lovely feminine figure and knew how to wear the clothes she could get her hands on, some of which she or her mother sewed.
But the family flat, for all its coziness, was just big enough for the three of them. Luckily, Papa's mother liked it in the village or they would have had to sell the piano. At least that's what mama had always told Luba. Nevertheless, at the age of 17, Luba began to reconsider her childhood dream of becoming a modern-day Scarlet O'Hara (“Gone with the Wind”).
In Ukraine at this time (the late 1980's), the winds of change were blowing, indeed knocking most people on their rear ends. The Soviet Union had lost the cold war and socialist serfs were freed to fend for themselves. Meanwhile, wave after wave of Yankees arrived to buy up everything in sight (and none of them spoke English like Lidya Ivanovna had taught).
Since her family's three-room flat in no way qualified as a vast southern plantation, Luba decided to do like most of her friends and enrolled in university, secretly hoping that a Russian-speaking Rhett Butler would eventually show up to save the day. She envied those few well-connected worthies who went off to study in England, but considered herself lucky that she didn't have to sell contraband cigarettes or Polish - made women's underwear at the local market.
However, after the first semester, it became clear that a degree in design of hydraulic systems for mass food production wasn't going to provide the kind of income needed to pay for all those Italian designs now being sold at local boutiques. Moreover, the matrimonial bliss envisioned by her childhood sweetheart Vasya, who was studying immunology at the same university, no longer turned her on.
So one spring evening, after convincing Vasya that she couldn't meet him for their usual stroll through the People's Park of Culture because she had to help her parents plant potatoes at the dacha, Luba headed off to a basement disco with her friend Natasha and two Tunisians who were in their 10th year at the same medical school as Vasya, but who sidelined selling fake French jeans and thus could afford to treat young ladies to cinemas and fancy cocktails.
Despite Papa's earnest encouragement, Vasya soon got the hint and started dating a high school girl. Things didn't last long with the entrepreneurial North African either. Luba didn't know Arabic or French but she could tell that those photos he showed her of his castles in the sand were just tourist postcards.
Enter Rhett Butler! Like his Hollywood prototype, Dima was dashing (usually from the militia) and handsome (even with that Terminator hair cut). Also like Clark Gable, he made his money in contraband: i.e., buying cars and other goodies in Germany and taking them back for a hefty profit in Ukraine. He spoiled Luba with scarce if sometimes tasteless Western luxuries and frightened her enough to make sex more interesting than it had been with Vasya.
He drove a fast car and led an even faster life, taking Luba along for the ride to places like Berlin, Warsaw and Prague. Fortunately for Luba, Dima made his last business trip alone. Unlike Rhett Butler, Dima didn't know how to deal with the Yankees or apparently Ukraine's Customs Service. He therefore leaves our tale at this point but remains at Penal Colony # 351 in Zhytomyr region as well as in the memory of little Luba.
Poor Luba! But this isn't the end of our story. Using her connections from university, Luba soon gets a job in a bank. The hours are long and the salaries short, but what a great place to meet New Ukrainians looking for a place to put their money. Moreover, she could always take a peek at a prospective husband's equity before agreeing to that initial date at the sauna.
And for that matter, why sit around watching deposits when an even better investment is right under her nose? Sergey Pavlovych, the bank's president, is relatively young and already sick of sleeping with his wife. After a week or two of working late, the attractive Luba finds she and he have much in common: They both like money, sex and occasional thrills to break up the monotony of bureaucratic bovine excreta.
Once the initial terms of the relationship have been agreed, interest is accumulated and compounded: First gifts of perfume and fashionable clothing (Sergey can't be seen with a poorly dressed woman); then travel abroad (what - take his wife to the Red Sea!); then the apartment (hotels are expensive and they can't keep trusting it in his office); and finally her own beauty parlor or clothing boutique (that's right - she can't keep working at the bank with all that gossip going around and here is a chance to for her to be a really independent women - unlike that spendthrift wife of his).
With independence achieved, Luba is a free woman (assuming she knows how to make money from the beauty salon). She has gone completely around the monopoly board and thus doesn't need Sergey Pavlovych anymore. He's sick of her, too. It's been a long, hard journey, but then again - What's a girl to do?
Editor's Note
We asked John to write an article for our Woman's Day issue. This story is it. Well, one receives that which one pays for. And we make allowances for John. At least the editing was confined mostly to word substitution (e.g., the noun "excreta" for what the reader might correctly suppose. John is in no way implying a stereotype here in his little Luba. In real life he is engaged to a very beautiful Ukrainian woman. That fact no doubt reflects his true attitude and feelings as we honor our Ukrainian women an March 8.
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More in the section:
YANA
Read also previous issue' articles:
Cows and Parachutists
Vietnam, Cobra-laced rice moonshine and those smiles
Gambling on the Slope
Manners Cost Nothing
A Roger By Any Other Name
Never Underestimate the Mark!
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