Nocturnal Visitors: 4 2 3

I had four visitors in my apartment at 4 a.m. One was a middle-class Brit. He introduced the brunette, Julia, as his fiancé, and the other two blond women as her friends. He said that the four of them were celebrating Julia’s birthday. The other two women, Svetlana and Olga, seemed quite different from Julia, more wide-awake, and flirting with the Brit and me, while Julia just seemed tired. Svetlana took off her knee-high boots and sat down beside me on my sofa, much closer than necessary, but I raised no objection. Svetlana is a very attractive blond.

Then one of the women said she wanted to smoke, but I said I do not allow smoking inside my flat. The Brit told them they had to go outside to smoke. Svetlana put her shoes back on and all three women went out to smoke.

The Brit remained with me, drinking his vodka and coke, and said that, if I wanted a woman, Olga and Svetlana should both be very cheap, and I could easily have one or both.

While outside smoking, they found menus from a Russian restaurant lying in front of some of the flats and brought one back when they returned from smoking. Svetlana said, “Now hungry. What you like? Pilmeney?” The Brit said he loved pilmeney, and Svetlana placed an order.

Before the food arrived, Julia left. Her friends didn’t want the birthday girl leaving so early (i.e., 4:30 a.m.), and said she must stay and eat with them, because that was their birthday tradition. The Brit said that Julia had been partying since 2:00 p.m., she was tired, and she needed to get some sleep.

This led to a rather heated argument between the Brit and Svetlana. Olga wanted them to spit in their hands and shake to make up, but middle-class Brits don’t spit in their hands, so no reconciliation was forthcoming. Svetlana made some rather nasty comments to the Brit, and he picked her up. I screamed, because I could see them kicking over everything in my flat and making a total mess of the place, but the Brit immediately put Svetlana down and she selected a seat as far from the Brit as is possible in my small flat.

At this point, the Brit was sitting alone in one corner of my front hall, I was sitting alone in another corner, and the two women were sitting together in a third corner.

The Brit told me that, after he’d gotten engaged to Julia, he’d paid for her to go to secretarial school and had used his contacts to get her a job as secretary at an accountancy firm which now supplies her residence visa. Then he’d paid for her to learn to drive and bought her a car. Now he pays for her flat and gives her about €200 every month to send home. He said the other two women are jealous. He said his job pays very well but it involves a lot of travelling, so he has to leave Julia alone for two or three weeks every month. He said he trusts her completely while he’s away.

He kept Julia’s two friends from calling and waking her up. So I now had just three visitors.