Emotions rule

Chapter 1

Katya, Yulya and Tanya go to Berlin

The girls became friends at Moscow State Pedagogical University, Foreign Languages Department. Although they’d been learning German for a year already, they could hardly speak it. Thus, the ladies had decided to spend their summer holidays together and brush up their German. The trio believed the fastest and surest way to learn the language was to stay in the country where the very language was spoken. That was their recipe and they felt a strong urge to give it a try. What they had to do was to mix the following ingredients: A) socialize with native speakers, B) stay open to communication, where making mistakes was not only inevitable but also contact-finding and amusing, C) get acquainted with the culture and compare it with your own and D) have fun obviously. If you followed the instructions correctly, you would master the language pretty fast. Bon appetit!

Back to Moscow Vnukovo airport.

The blonde-haired Katya, a tall, slender girl was in her hyper mood waving happily b’bye with her long palm at her parents. Her Mum and Dad were masters of a farewell scene with a real pep talk of be careful here and there spiced up with lots of examples from newspapers, books, news and movies of young ladies who go on adventures abroad and end up deceived serving foreign pimps. Every time they saw her off they would spill on her the same stories. They wanted to give her all the opportunity in the world but at the same time protect her. She was an only child, as her Mum had been advised against any other pregnancies due to her catastrophically bad eyesight.

Katya didn’t want to let down her worrying parents and like a really good-natured daughter, she pretended to listen to them with great attention. To herself though, she was thinking if she took to these horror stories she would spend the rest of her life in Moscow being afraid of the rest of the world. Or she might even consider going back to her home town, where there were only about one hundred thousand people compared to Moscow official thirteen million. Instead, Katya chose to trust in good. And the good would take care of her. She cherished the notion of thinking positively in order to attract it in her life. That was her faith.

She was so excited to escape. Freedom was about to come! No irritating small laws of parents, teachers, elderly people to obey, at least for the time being! You could forget all about ‘Don’t swear! Don’t come home late! Don’t get drunk! Don’t mess up with guys till you’ve graduated from the university!’ Although in the back of her mind she knew being alert would do no harm obviously. Shit happened. No one was ensured against crooks.

Red-haired, miniature pretty Yulya with her outstanding lips and freckled face was hugging her Mum and Dad telling them in her high-pitched voice not to worry. Having never flown in a plane, they were really worried about the flight, more than Yulya herself. While the latter was just thinking of a new experience with the excitement of discovering a new world and new feelings, her parents had these terrible pictures in their heads of plane crashes they’d seen so often on TV. On seeing her Mum’s wet eyes and Dad’s absent look Yulya was obliged to quote the three Musketeers saying ‘All for one and one for all’. She squeezed her Mummy hard and cheek kissed her.

‘I’ll be very prudent, Pa, I promise,’ she whispered in her Dad’s ear. After all, it wasn’t like going alone, but with very, very good friends of hers. They were like her elder sister, very care-taking.

On her own stood dark-haired Tanya with a thick fringe of hers which had provoked her friends to call her just Fringe. She was chewing gum, eyeing the ceiling. She looked as if she was somewhat irritated with her friends whose parents were such Mummies and Daddies as if their kids were leaving for war. She had handled her b’bye procedure at home telling her Mum not to worry as she was capable to get to the airport on her own. She didn’t need that puppy-love scene performed at the airport.

Since the age of sixteen, Tanya had been making clear to her Mum that she’d grown up. Fringe began to feel her growing independence when she started earning her own, though little, money by typing texts for some publishing house. With her own money, she could indulge in her own wishes without begging her Mum to give her some cash. That was the turning point for the newly-acquired phrase she threw whenever her Mum was about to lecture her. With a slight note of irritation Tanya would say, ‘I’ll decide by myself what to do with my life, I’m big enough, Ma.’

Maybe it had not been only her own money that had made her rely only on herself as a teenager.

She had become aware that life was not only honey and sugar at the age of twelve, the personal experience mutated through a psychological trauma into the secret she’d kept to herself in the lowest drawer of her memory.

Plus, at the age of fourteen, she’d witnessed her Dad get himself utterly drunk and bit up her Mum. In a panic, Fringe’d called an ambulance to take her Mum to a hospital where the latter had spent a week. That week Tanya’d spent alone with her beast Dad home. Fringe had been afraid he might perform the same beating act on her, so she’d always kept a pocket knife on her for defense, even though she hadn’t been quite sure she could raise a hand on her own Dad. Surprisingly, she had been relieved to observe his permissive beating had only been directed onto his wife. The attitude toward his daughter hadn’t altered. Nevertheless, she could not forgive him for her Mum’s beating.

When her Mum had been released from the hospital Fringe’d told her she didn’t want to live with her Dad and she would run away if they kept on living together. Mum’d replied she needed time to think.

When Mama Irina had been beaten one more time, she’d filed for a divorce and arranged to stay at her sister’s place where the latter lived with a daughter of hers. Two sisters and cousins had to endure a little inconvenience of being packed like sardines in a one-room apartment during the process of changing the beating husband’s three-room apartment to two one-room apartments. As a matter of fact, Tanya and her cousin, Anya, had become quite close at that time and had been determined to keep their friendship after their inevitable separation. Soon the exchange had been performed. The sisters and their daughters had been back to living apart.

Since then Fringe had been living in a one-room apartment with her Mum. Tanya believed she was deprived of her private room only temporarily. She valued that she and her Mum resided in a safe and non-violent place now.

Maybe because of all the family cataclysms Fringe looked older and wiser than her besties. It was her eyes that could flicker a sullen twinge at times. In reality, she was even a year younger. Besides, her looks were just super womanly as she was shaped like the yummiest donut on earth. Such an appearance was due to her big heavy breasts which she only used to curse when she ran in PE classes – so dangly and heavy they were that they even hurt. But in all other cases, Tanya was extremely proud of them. The pride that was strengthening with each lustful male stare or an envious female glare.

Finally, the girls lost a glimpse of their parents. If they could’ve screamed without frightening the airport staff, they would’ve gladly done it. Instead, Katya began singing as if an opera singer ‘Parents, see you soooooon and freedom, weeee are cooooming!’

Yulya just made a silly-goose dance and jumped forward to the pass control as if she were a ballerina. Pretending to be embarrassed, Tanya said to the security guy, ‘I AM NOT WITH THEM!’ and rolled her eyes up.

Finally, Moscow Duty Free was offering its services to them: Vodka or Tequila would help them celebrate their soon arrival. They chose a huge chocolate bar and Tequila Silver for their dinner in Berlin.

‘Shall we take one or two ciggie cartons?’ Tanya was referring to Yulya with a mocking seriousness.

While Tanya adored the act of smoking in general and treated it as a means of thinking, relaxation, and meditation, Red-haired didn’t much care about inhaling and exhaling the smoke, she just did it to keep a company, because everybody did it, so she never felt real satisfaction in the act. Her elder sister smoked too, but her parents didn’t know Yulya was smoking. They still treated her as their little one. And Red-haired was trying to preserve the corresponding behavior of an ignorant, innocent girl. When they felt the cigarette smell around her, she would always say it was the university girls who had smoked her over, her hair and clothes.

‘I thought you were going to quit, young ladies?’ Katya needed to drop her word in there too.

‘Alright, alright, we’re taking only one carton. One carton should be quite enough for a month. Katya, you should become a damn health coach,’ uttered Tatyana in a fake irritation. And so their trip began.

Berlin. Everything seemed different. Even the air seemed different. The smell of bread and freshly-baked buns greeted them at the airport. In the train from the airport they heard a couple speaking Russian, who appeared to be living in Berlin for a long time already. Katya was holding a note with the address they were to live at and asked if, by any chance, they knew the street.

The couple had a look at the address and uttered, ‘Nope. But we’ll help you to find out when we are at the railway station.’

No one seemed to know where the street was.

‘Look, there’s a city map,’ there came Tanya’s voice.

No such street to be found. The map was enormous. Berlin seemed to be as big as Moscow. Taxi-drivers should know! Beige Mercedes taxis were lining up for their clients. Everyone was asking what district the street was in. But the girls had no idea. No idea the first driver had as well. What about the second one? Alright, at least he managed to find the street on his map. Quite easy to find if one knew that it was in Charlottenburg-Wilmesdorf, West Berlin. And the happy girls put their luggage in the trunk; gave the Russian couple a Russian chocolate bar Alyonka and got into the car with relief. Why it was such a riddle for Berliners to find a street remained a big question.

‘Twenty euros,’ pronounced the taxi-driver. The girls paid and got out. What now?

It took them about twenty minutes to look for the landlady. Not a soul seemed to know where she was. Their first brainstorming idea was to call up all the apartments one by one and ask. They started with the basement.

A tall, brown guy with long arms and fingers, his body wet, wrapped up in a towel, gestured vividly to come in. A broad smile on his face. Yves was his name. He excused his wet appearance as he’d been taking a shower when he’d heard the doorbell ring. He suggested calling the landlady. What a cutie pie! No dangerous crooks so far. He called, told the girls to go to the second building, fourth floor imitating the landlady’s voice melody. The ladies thanked him and left.

Katya volunteered to be a pioneer that day.

‘These walls definitely need some repainting,’ she thought observing the dilapidating walls as she was climbing the stairs with wide steps skipping every second step. She saw an open door, knocked and in she went. The old wizened lady with unkempt grey hair was standing in the middle of the room vacuuming.

‘Hello, are you Frau Wolf?’ yelled Katya to deafen the vacuum cleaner.

The decaying lady turned off the noisy machine, greeted the girl with a fake smile and began telling things about the flat. Katya had to explain that she first needed to call up the other girls and left. The German landlady resumed vacuuming while Katya ran down the stairs in the same hyper mood.

‘Oh my!’ Blondie yelled to the girls. ‘Ancient building with an ancient landlady. The Wolf lady is much more like a Lamb lady, wizened Lamb lady.’

Blondie grabbed her luggage and hauled it to the fourth floor. She went down again to see how little Yulya was handling her luggage, the size of nearly her own height.

‘I’ll help you with your giant stuff. Did you pack your whole wardrobe or what?’ Katya offered a helping hand feeling like Hercules energized with excitement of an adventure.

Evening. Unpacked. Windows wide open. Hot, stuffy air of the apartment was slowly being mixed with transparent waves of a slightly fresh evening of the outside. Fringe was opening the bottle, Blondie fetched the cups (the only drinking vessels they had) and Red-haired was breaking the thick chocolate bar against the table into small squares with loud bangs. After feasting over the chocolate and the booze they were ready to go out.

They popped out with the question ‘Hey…. Anyone knows where the city center is?’

They tried to ask the cute Yves, but nobody answered the doorbell. Luckily, within a minute they bumped into a German lady who happened to be a colleague of theirs, an English teacher! How good of her to offer them a lift to the clubbing district.

The club they chose incredibly sucked. How could they choose the worst club ever in the partying paradise of Berlin clubbing stage? They should’ve asked someone for recommendations or at least read 10 tips to go clubbing in Berlin article in the net. Instead, they stood on the almost empty dance floor, with the music they couldn’t properly move to unless you were high like Johnny Depp’s character in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Some two German chaps approached the ladies and disappointed them as soon as they opened their mouths to speak. Either they were stupidly boring or programmed on a one-night stand small talk. Perhaps both. As if just being there empty-headed but gel-haired would make any girl open her thighs. Do you get horny by looking at a good hair-style and a dumb face? Perhaps sometimes you do. But the girls felt otherwise. That night the Russian trio just wanted to dance the whole night away, to feel their bodies uncontrollably moving to good tunes, meet some pleasant company and stay tuned into the pleasant reality, not get wasted right away with unpredictable consequences, didn’t they? Was it really the adventure they wanted? Or maybe a bit more sensible one?

The ambiance disappointed them. The hyper mood evaporated. And the girls decided not to lose time with the boring male company in the wrongly-chosen club and head home instead and get some sleep before their first day at the language school. If only they knew the way back to their new home. At least, they remembered the name of the street, the district, and the Berlin TV tower they saw from their window. So there couldn’t be a big problem. Three hints would help them to find their way.

On their way back the ladies were making their way through the jolly partying youngsters. Unexpectedly they bumped into two bright-faced Brits. What luck after all! A surely better way to finish the day! Why is it always two specimens of the opposite sex to three of another kind? Not that the girlies were eager to jump in bed with them that very night, but still, who knows, how charming a man might be and how weak a girl might appear under the magic spell of a good-looking experienced womanizer.

In a second five of them were sitting outdoors in some pub learning new swear words in English, British English, to be precise. After vigorous negotiations over some drinks, the ladies concluded that the grossest and funniest one was a purple-headed monster.

Although, at first, Katya was obliged to ask, ‘Who is it?’

‘Rather WHAT than WHO… It’s a penis, honey!’ retorted Yulya sipping her Dry Martini.

Katya gave a thoughtful smile and then burst out laughing. Thank God no such reaction repeated after the words ‘twat’, ‘knob head’, ‘wanker’, ‘bollocks’, ‘bugger’, and so on.

‘Well, I learnt my first swear words in English when I was five, I remember it vividly,’ chuckled David, one of the Brits, ‘my Mum used to work as a bartender, so I spent some of my childhood in bars,’ he began his story gulping his beer, ‘you can imagine what kind of language I heard in those bars. Most of them were quite clear to me, so I never asked what they meant. And only one-word combination really puzzled me, though it consisted of sorta decent words.’

‘The old boy always tells this story to everyone. No shit, it impressed him greatly at that age,’ the other Brit addressed the Russian trio with bored but amusing eyes.

‘Funny fart really left my brains puzzled. Since I always asked my Granny questions as she was the only one willing to answer them. All of my whys and whats she’d answer with a smile. The day I asked her what funny fart meant was the last day I spent time in bars. From then on she babysat me all the time,’ finished David.

‘And did she tell you what funny fart meant?’ wondered Katya also feeling herself like the puzzled five-year-old David.

‘She didn’t. She just said I would learn it when the right time came,’ chuckled David.

Tanya watched Katya’s unsatisfied face expression and stepped on the latter’s foot when Blondie uttered again, ‘And what is this f-?’

‘Excuse us for a moment,’ said Tanya to the guys and addressed Blondie with a wink, ‘Come with me to the ladies room.’

As they reached the toilets, Tanya said with a grand smile, ‘Honey, you don’t go around hinting everyone that you are a virgin.’

‘What? I wasn’t hinting anyone. What did I do wrong?’ asked Katya perplexed.

‘You were going to ask those two men what funny fart was, hel-lo?’ Tanya reminded her.

‘And? What is this damn funny fart? I have no idea, so I asked,’ Katya defended herself.

‘Damn, Katya, funny fart is the sound of the air escaping from the vagina when having sex. It’s like a burp from out there. Got it?’ Tanya explained with a look of an expert.

‘Eew,’ the voiced air escaped Katya’s mouth, ‘Thanks. I would’ve felt embarrassed hearing this from those two chaps. And, anyway, if I weren’t a virgin, I would not know what this is, cuz we don’t have such an expression in Russian. I wonder why you know it in English.’

‘I heard it in some TV series, I think,’ Tanya explained herself.

‘Tell me, if this funny fart is..? I mean, does this creepy fart happen all the time when having sex?’ wondered Blondie with a worrying look.

‘Hell, no, sometimes, depends on your vagina muscles though,’ Tanya was to explain again, ‘Mostly mamas have those funny farties as they have given birth already, so their muscles are pretty loose.’

‘Damn, I have to learn a lot. Keep me informed,’ Katya pleaded, letting that funny fart topic drop, ‘let’s go back I will keep my mouth shut and just listen.’

Chapter 2

Beforehand, in the plane, the trio had talked over their new household routine, now they were to practice it. Being students, having not much money to give away, though sponsored by their parents, the girls decided to see a bit of Europe so they were not to lavish on eating out but spend money on train fares getting around. Thus, they were to do shopping in supermarkets, cook themselves. Each of them had even brought a kilo of buckwheat from Moscow, pretty cheap corn back home.

Being an early bird and responsible as a Soviet comrade, Katya was supposed to be the first to get up, have a shower, wake everyone up, and cook buckwheat.

Humming Guten Morgen, Sonnenschein, Blondie stepped into the kitchen with a red-towel dress around her waist. She was surprised to see Tanya sitting at the table with a notebook, pencil behind her ear, a stab in her right hand. Boiling buckwheat blobs could be made out in the background.

‘Wow, is anything wrong? You’re an early bird today,’ said Blondie as her morning greetings.

‘Everything’s cool. Just after yesterday’s British vibes am in the mood of speaking BBC accent. Am actually trying to remember the tongue twisters we played with at our Phonetic classes. I just adore them,’ Tanya finished her speech and tried to have a drag, but there was just a filter left.

The red-toweled girl sat beside and started reading, ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,’ she began aspirating the ‘p’s and ‘k’s sounds, but the voice from the bedroom finished the tongue twister for her, ‘blah-blah, Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?’ yelled Yulya with the BBC accent as well, ‘Make up your own tongue twister, Tanushka, I’m fed up with the old ones!’

‘Yup, good idea, try with the word fuck, f sound,’ suggested Katya standing up and let out her usual, ‘Oh, how I hate this smoke, smoking cows,’ she looked at Tanya with reproach and headed to get dressed.

‘As promised, I smoke out of the window. That makes it one cow,’ protested the red-haired Yulya as she passed to the washroom with her pointing finger drawn vertically along her freckled nose, a yellow towel in her other hand.

As Yulya stepped out of the steaming washroom with her pink face, a yellow towel on her head sponging her hair, she heard Tanya thoughtfully pronouncing, ‘Wait, wait, let me read it all over again,’ and she began monotonously,

‘Phil the fucker fucked the fluffy fannies of funny females

If Phil the fucker fucked the funny females with fluffy fannies,

Where’s the fuck-’

‘Has all the fluffiness from fucking gone?’ finished Blondie triumphantly as she placed the last plate on the table, ‘have a seat, ladies, breakfast is ready!’