Already on the flight we found out that we had booked rooms in the same hostel, so we decided to go there together upon our arrival to Prague. When we got to the hostel we were told that there had been yet another double-booking – we were booked in the same room, and this time we weren’t as lucky as we had been on the flight, because the hostel was (and still is) over-booked. We didn’t have any choice but to stay in the same single room, in the same single bed (it isn’t too small though, as a matter of fact, and this fact is worth pointing out from the very onset). For five nights now we have slept head-to-feet as is the general expression, I presume? She says she doesn’t mind it, something for which I am forced to take her word, trusting her that she’s not solely being polite, because I… actually, after all of this traveling alone I’ve been doing for the past six months or so it feels really good to not sleep alone. Nevertheless waking up with someone in the room, hearing someone’s breathing in the early morning, and then having someone to talk to the whole day. It is refreshing.
Milena’s Russian, she’s from Siberia (and to think I was in Siberia a couple of weeks ago!) and she’s a professor of foreign literature at a university in Novosibirsk, but she’s only twenty-five years old, and that’s not even the most spectacular thing about her – she’s pretty too! I can hear your voice in my head right now, saying ‘oh so that’s what’s most important about a woman, now is it?’, but that’s not the case here, let me assure you. It is simply worth mentioning, that’s all. In the context of someone being twenty-five and already a doctor of something (anything would be impressive!) there’s nothing wrong with adding how that person looks. I’m not saying beautiful girls don’t devote themselves to academic studies in the same way girls with less fortune appearance do, my point here is that when you’re beautiful, you have other choices, too. And looking at Milena I at first thought her to be one of those girls who prefer the other options, most of them belonging to an unintellectual profile, but she isn’t and I think she doesn’t really see herself as one of them. This is also refreshing.
Milena’s a Kafka scholar. That’s why she’s in Prague. This is her first time abroad. When I told her about my travels she was really impressed, because she’s been saving up for these ten days in Prague during over three years, and once she goes home she says she will not go anywhere, except to conferences within the Russian Federation, for some years to come, perhaps never again. To me that’s really odd, because traveling this way is something people like you and I, I mean, we westerners, take for granted, we view it as a part of our lives and we would find it foreign to our ideals to be able only to go somewhere for ten days once in your life. Milena told me that she always knew that she was going to spend her life on literature in some way or other, because of the way she grew up, it gave her no nourishment for other professions, she says. Her father is a librarian in a small town about two hours north of Novosibirsk, where they both still live in an apartment even though she works in the city as a teacher (professor now, though, because she just defended her doctor thesis in late May). At the time of her birth he was reading Kafka (illegally, of course, because it wasn’t legal to be reading Kafka back in those days in the Soviet Union) and that’s why he decided to name her Milena – that was the name of Kafka’s last girlfriend, you know, the one who translated his works into Czech. (This I don’t think ‘you know’ as I wrote, not even I knew it until Milena told me, but it is what is colloquially said when you want something unknown that is or should be common knowledge to be so also in reality.)
The first day we went to the Kafka museum, no surprise there, and she gave me a personal tour; and that is, I suppose, no surprise either. Her English is almost perfect, sometimes she says something wrong or odd or just unusual, but there’s practically nothing wrong with her pronunciation, which isn’t as surprising when you think of the fact that she also works as a private tutor of English. This she does, she told me, because a university teacher earns little to no money in Russia, even though she’ll be receiving a little bit more next academic year now that she’s a doctor. Her thesis was on “The Metamorphosis” and when we were at the Karl University’s bookstore yesterday she showed me some of her publications in the collections of scholarly essays they sell about Kafka there. I was very impressed, because… well, for many reasons, as you can guess and understand better than anyone else. I could never make up my mind as to what I should be when I grow up and I’ve been studying a little bit of everything for… a long time now. You know how many times I’ve changed my major; without any results as of yet. That was the main reason for why I started this journey in the first place – to find myself and find out what I’m going to do with my life, who I am and who I can become. Being with and talking to Milena has changed that in a fundamental manner, and I have begun having second thoughts concerning the correctness of my choice. When in dialogue with her my words sound childish, my views on the world resembling those of someone blind, and I do perceive her as being much older than me even though she’s actually two years younger.
She did get a head start on her studies, though, because her father put her in school when she was only five, and she began university at fifteen, such an advantage I did not obtain, I must admit, and use this piece of fact to my defense, but that’s a small defense and, if looked at closely, no real defense at all. In some ways I and Milena have a lot in common. Both our mothers died when we were too young to remember them, and we were both left growing up alone with our fathers (neither her nor mine ever remarried), but our relationships with our fathers are as different as can be, and I think that if I had the selection between them, then I would prefer hers. I never speak to my father; she shares everything with hers, and she says she’ll never leave him, that they’ll live together until he dies, and that she would never do anything against his wishes, and you know that’s exactly what I’ve always done – everything possible against the wishes of my father. Her father sounds like a great guy, though, and I wish I could say the opposite about mine, but after hearing myself talk of him in front of Milena, I must confess that my father is just as good a person as is her father.
She had never drunk alcohol in all her life, thus I took her to a restaurant on our first evening and bought her Czech beer (which is one of the main reasons for me coming here) and she thoroughly enjoyed it. Since then we’ve done almost the same things every day – walking around Prague, talking about Kafka (though she’s doing most of the talking in that regard, I generally listen), and going out to restaurants for dinner and beer in the evenings. She would never go to a club, though, this she made clear from the very beginning, and since I’ve known her I have actually felt no desire to go myself either. I have asked her many questions about her life, and she has asked an equal amount about mine. She’s the kind of person that when you meet them you wished you had been a better person so that you could tell better stories from your life. My life is impressive in some ways, foremost in the way that I am economically independent (thanks to my father, who I don’t thank enough, I think, as a matter of fact, that I’ve never thanked him for it) and that I’ve seen most of the world and that I’ve been engaged twice to very beautiful women. Or so I was accustomed to think before. I showed her pictures from my travels and from my life back home, everything that is on my computer, because she was very explicit in her wishes to ‘see everything’. She asked me why I never dated you, since I’ve known you for so long, and seem to like you more than any of the girls I’ve been with, and your character more resembles mine than any of theirs. I did not know what to answer. I could tell on her face that it is because you’re not as pretty (we’re now talking standard beauty, the boring kind, well, you know that very well, because you’ve seen and known all of my ex-girlfriends and ex-fiancées) but she didn’t say so. Instead she asked if I thought it was most important for my girlfriend to look good because I look good myself, and that if I was to be with a less attractive girl we would not make a handsome enough couple? I said yes. I said so because it is true, yet I’ve never thought of it (I’ve tried not to think of it), and when I think of the girls I’ve dated then that’s… even truer.
Milena has only had one boyfriend, they were together for three years but he left for Moscow two years ago now. What she told me about their relationship is very alien to me, but, as I’ve come to think lately, it is probably I who are alien to such a relationship and not the other way around. He only met her father a few times; he was never allowed to spend the night. They did not consummate the relationship, putting it as mildly as feasible. She says they wanted different things – he wanted to make money, a lot of money, to use this money to create a good life for himself and his future family in the capital, he was not the least interested in staying in Siberia and marrying a simple university teacher from a village. It took her very long before she understood that he had been in love with her for reasons unknown to her at the time. As she put it, ‘he wanted someone pretty, and I was pretty, but I was also more. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that it wasn’t that I wasn’t enough for him – I was too much for him’. They sometimes talk now, but she claims she wished he would stop calling, because she wants to move on, even though she still says there’s a part of her that loves him and that this part will always love him, but in a brotherly fashion.
I don’t talk to any of my exes, and never would I ever aspire to such an end.
Last night we were walking over the Karl’s bridge and she asked me if I was happy. Happy? Can you imagine such a question, Miranda? I said no, I don’t think I’m happy, and I don’t think I’ll ever be happy. I asked her if she’s happy, and she said that yes, she’s happy. In this very moment, standing next to me on the Karl’s bridge in Prague, with stars above and tourists from all over the world passing us by behind and a warm breeze in her long, blonde hair – she’s happy. How can that be? It just is, she said. I think I’m falling in love with you, I said then and after I had said it I became greatly afraid that she would not return this emotion, but as she looked at me silently this fear drifted away and I stood completely naked (emotionally) in front of her, without being the least afraid anymore. In that moment it didn’t matter what she answered, because saying it made me happy – or, perhaps, it made it possible for me to feel her happiness. When she finally spoke, she asked me why I was falling in love with her. Because you’re different, I said. It was not an answer to her (or my) satisfaction, I know this now, but at the time it seemed to do alright. I’m different from you, she said, but only because you have yet to start living.
It is true that the more you look at, the less you see, and the more you watch, the less attention do you pay to anything, not to mention something as important as details. Last night all I wanted to do was to hold Milena’s hand, but I feared she would not approve, but something came over me, something I’ve never felt nor thought before, and I asked her for permission to hold her hand. I would never have asked a girl I was in love with before for such permission, I would’ve simply taken hold of her hand and that would’ve been that, but her hand demanded such respects paid to it. She granted me the pleasure of holding her hand, and when we came back to the hostel she sat down next to me on the bed and told me that she wished to sleep next to me tonight. It needs not be mentioned that I approved of her wish. While we were lying next to each other in bed, she said that she had only been kissed by one man in her life. I refrained from explaining how many women I’ve kissed in my life, yet she guessed out loud that the number was much greater than hers. She then sat up in the bed and, looking at me, told me that she had in fact never kissed anyone, but only been kissed. She wanted to be the first for once, she explained, and I sat up too. She kissed me.
You will not believe me now, considering my past actions, yet I beg you to reconsider not only my person but my behavior as well when I tell you this – we did nothing but kiss last night. Neither do I believe we shall do anything more during the five days we have before us to spend before she returns to Russia, and I must (the choice of word is strange, but suiting still) continue my journey. In the beginning of our still brief friendship I asked her if she would like to come visit me sometime, and she asked me if I will ever go back to Siberia, but now things seem less clear than ever. Knowing her has changed my view on many things – past, present and future. Not only have I come to firmly believe love to be not a strong, but fragile feeling; I also deem finding home more important than seeing the world.
Love,
Joseph
