The Girl Who Promised to Come Back, Came Back, Then Disappeared

She arrived in-country
early April, the 7th or 8th,
after six months of telephone calls
from me
to her mobile phone
in Moscow.
Six months before that
we had been
tight together,
here in Japan.
“I can’t wait,”
(she said)
“to see you again!”
Ah, anticipation,
the mother of all delights!

She arrived, wholly
unexpected, so young,
so vibrant, so
scandalously beautiful!!
There at the Gaijin bar
where so often before
we had moaned and groaned
about the difficulties
of our separate
situations, and where,
for brief periods
(usually around 2 AM)
we held hands
and gazed, wonderingly,
uncomprehendingly,
into one another’s
affectionate, large, and smiling
eyes.

Now, against all the odds,
she had come back!!
Saul, who was there, tells me
that she insisted
laughingly, then pleadingly,
that I must be summoned!
Saul demurred,
pointing out the lateness of the hour
(it was, again, 2 AM)
and, with that, the possibility
passed: and in that moment,
that hushed respect for sleep,
I believe I lost her.
Yes, I would have gone,
roused from my tangled bed
I would have been at her side
(push a comb through my hair)
in twenty, say, twenty-five
minutes: how everything then
might have changed.
How everything then
might have changed!

That was three weeks ago.
Since then, she’s been
down in Nagoya, stroking
tired Japanese businessmen
in the hostess bar
she works in now,
making the kind of money
(tips are pocketed)
that university professors
can only dream of
in dear old Mother Russia.

But that was three weeks ago:
six months of
long-distance telephone calls,
six months of
“I can’t wait”
reduces down
to total silence.
Not a word.
Not a peep.
Not a dicky-bird.
She might as well
be wiped off the face of the earth
(has she? … these Russian Mafia guys?)
except I know, I know
she’s still there.



What has happened?
F**ked if I know, pal.
One moment it was
great, the grand reunion,
and the next it was a blank wall
of total, impenetrable silence.
Is she OK? Oh, yeah, sure she is,
Russians are total survivors,
especially the “unprotected” women
who are tough as nails.

But why hasn’t she got in touch?
Twenty-five different reasons,
perhaps, but I don’t know
which one it is …….
This silence, this wall of silence
is doing my head in
(I actually like her a lot)
and I don’t know
what the hell is going on.
What a bitch.
What an angel.
But which what is which?

OK, Russians,
(bear with me)
are not quite like you and me:
they have a peculiar
sense of time, so that
when we respond to messages
after the lapse of a couple of days
we apologize; but for them
ten days, two weeks
is no big deal; so that
you never really know
if they are messing around with you
or just going about their
ho-hum daily business.
And the girls …
Well, the girls add to that.

So you never
really really know
after a month, or two months,
(it’s been just 3 weeks)
whether you are still in the picture
or yesterday’s breakfast.
Things
may not be moving,
necessarily,
(to quote Hirohito, the Japanese Emperor)
in the direction
that we may have wished.
Am I slowly going
frantic? Yes.
Am I rapidly losing
hope? No.
Not at all. Pooh-pooh.
This girl is entirely charming,
so loving, so gentle, and she has
a very sharp eye for bargains;
she knows how not
to spend her money
when other people will do so instead.
She would make
an excellent, economical companion
although cynical about men
(“No, no, not you!!” she tells me)
because of her lucrative,
ameliorative,
but perhaps not chosen trade.

O where O where
is the wee “devochka”
lost now in the wilds
of Central Japan?
Smiling, yes, so dutifully,
and topping up the drinks
(the watered-down whiskey)
of golden-toothed Orientals,
she slips, perhaps, the secret tips
into her little bag,
(the bar wants to take a whacking cut!)
and smiles again. She is paid
for relentless smiling, and she
possibly, no probably,
never never thinks of me.

Yo Mavrone, O Mavrone!!
That such a thing should occur ….

O where O where
Is my blue-eyed girl?
(I sought her behind the stadium)
Ya-da-la, Ya-da-la,
Ya-da, da-laddy –AH!!
(Sing it, Van the Man).
She ain’t there.
She will never be there.
Silence crushes all sweet silent hope;
it flicks its fingers at belief.

Open, now, your books to the lesson:
I know she liked me
(she may, for a fleeting moment, have actually loved me)
but I think she began to think
with a growing sense of awareness
that a young girl has to make her way
in this lonely, dangerous world
by staying away from the impecunious young
and older men with visions
and she has to pay
close attention, carefully and politely,
to checkbook calculations.

But I know,
I just know in my heart,
somehow, I will see her again!




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