“GOOD-BYE,” says Liz as they pass the hockey players. “It’s great to see you having such a good time.”
One of them rises immediately. “Please to sit down,” he says, stepping aside from his chair unsteadily and gesticulating elaborately.
“Oh, no, no. We have to go,” says Liz. “Good-bye. Good-bye. Do svedanya.”
“Oh, no. Please don’t say ‘do svedanya,’ krasivaya zhenshchina.”
“Da — krasivaya,” says another. “No ona tebe v materi godit’sa.”
There is laughter from everyone at the table. Matthew’s sure that Liz is the butt of some hockey player humor. He doesn’t understand the language, but he recognizes the tone.
The standing hockey player reaches for Liz’s hand, and she gives it to him, almost involuntarily. He raises it to his lips and kisses it. “Krasivaya zhenshchina,” he says. “Nemnogo stara, no krasivaya.”
Liz leans toward him and loses her balance enough so that he has to put his arm around her to steady her. She kisses him, on the mouth, in, Matthew tells himself, a parody of passion. “Bye-bye,” she says with an air of youthful coquettishness, a twinkle in her eye. She turns and scampers up the stairs — yes, scampers — without an unsure step. “Good-bye! Do svedanya!” she says, again and again, up the stairs.
Matthew holds the door for her, and she lurches through it into the cold air. She throws her arm across Belinda’s shoulder for support. “Boy, am I drunk,” she says, and laughs.
“We’ll get a cab and take you to your hotel,” says Matthew.
“Noooo. Not yet. I’m okay. The air will bring me around. I don’t want to go back to the hotel yet. Let’s go to your place, Matthew. I’ve never seen it. Linda’s seen it. I mean Belinda. Belinda’s seen it, haven’t you Belinda?”
“Yes, I’ve seen it.”
“See? Belinda’s seen it. I want to see it, too.”
“Sure,” says Matthew. “You’re a little D-and-D, you know.”
“Well, good,” says Liz. “I haven’t been D-and-D for quite a while. That means,” she says, turning to talk into Belinda’s ear, “‘drunk and disorderly.’ That was what we used to call ourselves when we’d had just enough to drink to make us loose, you know? Kind of lighthearted, and a little outrageous. Sometimes Matthew would call home from work and say, ‘What do you say we go out tonight and get drunk and disorderly?’ Doesn’t he still say that?”
“No,” says Belinda. “Not to me, anyway.”
“Not at all,” says Matthew. Now Matthew seems to be on the edge of being drunk most of the time, but he never gets disorderly, never loose, lighthearted, outrageous.
“Well, let’s go,” says Liz. She takes Belinda’s arm and Matthew’s and marches them off. Matthew has the odd sensation of being with his mother, as if he were showing off a new girlfriend for her. He’s thrilled to be taking Liz to a place she doesn’t know, a place where he has entertained other women, made love to other women — one other woman, anyway — and how exciting to have that other woman along. What, he wonders as they walk along, has Belinda told her about us?
[to be continued]
In Topical Guide 495, Mark Dorset considers Language in Translation: Russian to English from this episode.
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