My next mistress was a gypsy. No, she was not one of those who roamed with the tabor, begging or fortune-telling at the market, dancing to the guitar and tambourine in front of the audience. She was sedentary, and her profession was quite mundane: a teacher at a boarding school. The woman often told me about her charges: sixth-graders, boys and girls. According to her, they looked more mature and independent than their home peers, and only two factors caused some distress: the vast majority of the boarding school pupils were already familiar with drugs, some to such an extent that they could not live without them, and among the girls there was not a single virgin.

I met her at the home of an elderly relative of mine, to whom she was helping to keep the farmhouse in order. I was divorced at the time, and I considered extramarital sex with women as a natural need, like eating or using the toilet.

***

My new girlfriend was pretty, had a beautiful, slender figure, could hold a conversation, and was not lost in communication. I got along with her quickly and easily. She was unique in sex; she did not resist, but sobbed so that the tears streamed down her cheeks. This turned me on. One day I couldn’t help asking her how she did it. She opened her huge eyes in surprise and said that everything happens by itself. I might even have married her, but in addition to her two almost-grown sons, the same age as my son, she had a third child who had just recently emerged from infancy. My relative, who had invited me to live with her permanently, later on, in the winter after the new year, changed her mind and demanded that I vacate her house. I promised her I would leave as soon as my son started his vacation, and I started to look in the direction of Moscow. I could not rip off a woman with three children without a guarantee of feeding them.

***

The scandal with a relative was still far away, and I sometimes allowed myself the pleasures of love. We dated without any obligation to each other, and that suited us both. The only difficulty in dating was finding a place to meet. I could not visit her because the older children went to bed at the same time as their mother and having a strange man in the house at that time would make them question who this uncle was and what he was doing here. She did not want to come and visit me, and I did not want to invite her either, because my relative would start asking ridiculous questions. My aunt had the unique ability to make an instant mess even after the most thorough cleaning. She would fall asleep while cooking, causing food to boil over or burn out. At night, the woman would not go to the toilet, but would use the night pot next to her bed, and by morning, her room and hallway would be filled with an intolerable ambiance. I did not have the conscience to invite my friend to a love meeting in a house where the smells of burnt food and human feces were wafting.

But our lust drew us to each other, and we found a way to get away. At the time, I owned a Volga GAZ-31029 and came to the conclusion that this unit could be used for dates. On the nearest nice summer evening, I offered my lady of the heart a ride with a drive on the beach of one of the remote ponds. She agreed, and after an hour’s ride, we found ourselves among the bushes on a deserted beach. What happened was what happens in a situation like this between a man and a woman longing for intimacy.

But our trips to the pond did not always end well. Sometimes we’d run into another person’s car parked there with a couple just like us, and sometimes the shore was occupied by evening and morning fishermen, as a result of which we had to drive on in search of a hidden place.

As a result, we came to a tacit agreement that neither the beach, nor beautiful scenery, by and large, did we need, and were content with hollows in the forest belt, which stretches along the railroad and separated from it by dirt road. There were a lot of such hollows. If we saw a car stopped in one, we drove on leisurely, finding a vacant spot after a few hundred meters. Life in a city with a population far exceeding one million had its own peculiarities.

***

Summer was over and autumn was upon us. The dirt track got soaked in the rain, and once we almost got stuck in a rut, skidding on the muddy slush. Then frost hit, and the ground was covered with snow and ice. It became difficult to find a place to stay, and once we almost ended up in a scuffle when a Zhiga stopped next to us at the site of an abandoned bus stop, and a good-looking guy came out of it and started to badmouth us with his breath. While I was pondering what to do, he came up to my car and hit the door with his fist on the roof and his foot. I don’t like hitting people, especially drunk people, but I didn’t want to give in to the situation. So when he leaned toward my window, swearing, to say something, I opened the door sharply and hit him in the face with it. He recoiled, but then he came screaming toward me. I had already jumped out of the car, and when he got within arm’s length of me, I slapped him lightly across the eyes with the fingers of my left hand to dazzle him, and then kicked him in the solar plexus with all my might. It was a combination we’d practiced in hand-to-hand combat class, and it had stuck in my memory forever.

The guy crouched and fell to the ground. A girl jumped out of the Zhiga and started screaming. My girlfriend didn’t stay in the cabin either, and, grabbing my sleeve, began to urge me to leave the place. The mood was ruined. I kicked the rascal a few more times and took the lady of my heart home.

***

Winter was growing stronger; the new year was coming. We had the nerve to park on the main square of the neighborhood. On late winter evenings it was sparsely populated, and the tinted windows of my car were misting up so that passers-by couldn’t see the people inside or what they were doing there; the sidewalk and the square were separated by a lawn about six meters wide.

On December 30, we made the necessary purchases for the New Year’s table, took them home, and began looking for a place of solitude. Everything around us was occupied. Even at the venerable bus stop, there were three Zhigas and no one was fighting with anyone. We drove on.

The more we drove, the more my flesh craved penetration into a woman’s womb. As I watched my companion from the corner of my eye, I realized that she had the same feelings. There was practically nowhere to park. We rushed to the central square, but it turned out to be jammed with “bombs”; private cab drivers, who wanted to make extra money on the New Year’s Eve rush.

And then I remembered the dirt road leading to the local timber processing plant. In summer, it was used as a reserve road for trucks that didn’t want to circle to the main entrance. In winter, a bulldozer would occasionally scramble up it to clear the snow, but I didn’t see any trucks on it.

We drove to the lumber mill. Before going down to the dirt road, I stopped and got out of the car. Inspection of the exit showed that the road was in working order, and I even noticed the tracks of a car. While clearing the road of snow, the bulldozer was making blades that could also be used as “pockets” for oncoming cars to pass each other. I thought that some of these pockets could be used for a “bivouac,” got in the car, and we drove toward the timber processing plant.

A suitable “pocket” did not turn up. We drove more than a kilometer, and no dumps could be found. I began to look back, estimating that if I could not turn around, I would have to travel the whole distance in reverse, but suddenly another feeling seized me—I noticed that my desire to possess my companion began to diminish. The farther we climbed up the dirt road, the weaker my lust became. My companion also became quieter. Usually, she chirped while driving, telling the boarding school news, but now she was silent, staring at the windshield. I asked her how she was feeling. “You know, Seryozha, I’m not in a good mood…” she answered.

On my right, the trees of the timber farm stood dense for a long time; on my left there was the railroad embankment. I stopped and got out of the car. City quarters shimmered with the glow of lights far beyond the lumber yard. I looked back at the railroad and saw grave crosses and monuments behind it, occasionally sparkling with the glow of city lights. God, how I had forgotten! There was a cemetery there, and we all knew about it. Its center was far away, in a neighboring neighborhood, but over time, it grew and stretched along the railroad. No doubt, my mood was related to this cluster of graves. I got in the car and said:

“Behind the railroad is a cemetery…”

“Have we reached it yet?” The companion answered questioningly.

“Yes, and you know, it seems to me that this cemetery is affecting us.”

“The dead don’t welcome the love of the living…”

“Let’s go look for another place,” I suggested.

“Let’s go,” she agreed.

Before we had traveled a hundred meters, we saw a huge “pocket,” as if it had grown out of the ground. But the decision had already been made. I turned the car around and we drove back into town.

***

The closer we got to the apartment buildings, the better the mood became. I turned on some music. My companion began to share her news. The square in front of the district administration was approaching. A Christmas tree was spinning, flashing with colored lights, and children were walking around. There were not so many cab drivers, and they all crowded around the bus stop. We made our way to the far end of the square and squeezed between two Christmas trees. The trees were growing all the time, and each was fenced in with a little curb. Pedestrians were seldom seen there, and not at all at night or in the evening. Lust reached its climax, and we threw ourselves into each other’s arms.