For the second time, Dasha had brought me to the edge, exposed me in my excitement to other eyes, teased me, played with me, and then calmly said enough. I was pounding as we walked out of the garden, my penis still hard, sticking up in my pants where I had tried to put it away, aware all time of the woman watching from her balcony, and wanting desperately to stroke it and to cum, for her, for Dasha, right then and there, under the trees in the golden evening sun. But I didn't.
When we were out on the street, I asked her if St. Petersburg, or Leningrad, had always been so quiet. There were few cars, and few people. She said it was because of the neighborhood we were in, that the city had become more quiet after the Soviet Union had collapsed, but that if we went to Nevsky Prospect, even now there would be lots of people, couples, families, out promenading.
She asked me where I lived, and when I told her the address she said, "Well, then we're going the wrong way."
"But I thought we were going to your apartment," I said.
"Yes, well, no, I don't think so now," she said. "You, you're very excited. It's too much perhaps in one day. You are still, I see - aroused."
I saw her glance at where my hard-on was indeed still trying to push out, and she laughed.
"I will take you home, so I know where you live," she said.
"But is it all right for you, walking alone?" I asked.
"Don't be silly, sweet boy, of course it is. This is my city."
I asked her then about her husband, I don't quite know why, but she had talked about him so much, and about me being like him. She told me he had been a professor too. They had met as students, both going to teach, and had started that way, but then things changed. He was a rising star, but then he wrote an article that was not approved of, about a poet who was not approved, and she had been arrested.
"You? Why you?" I asked.
"Simple. To stop him from making the same mistake again. I wasn't kept long, a week, but it was enough. He learned his lesson, and to make sure he remembered, I was fired from the university."
Of course I had heard about such things, but still I was shocked.
"We were lucky," she said. "So much worse happened to so many people. So much worse. If only he hadn't gotten sick, our lives - were happy."
We had reached my building, and went in to the garden inside where the entrance to the stairwell was, went up to my apartment, and went in. She looked around quickly, nodding, approving, it seemed. Then she said, "Well, I will see you tomorrow. Come again to Pushkin, and we will have dinner."
She then stepped close to me, and put her hand firmly on my shaft, her fingers finding its shape, pressing.
"I know you're excited," she said. "But if you do that- " She rubbed her hand up and down slowly, just a few times, so slowly. "If you do that - I'm sure you want to - If you do it, you must catch all of the - all of your sperm, your semen, in a glass, a jar, and - bring it. You understand me?"
"Yes, Dasha," I said.
"Good boy," she said. "I'm going to trust you to be honest with me."
Then she kissed me. It surprised me. It was the first time, she was strong, the way she took me, her arm around me, and I held her too, my hand slipping down her muscled back to her waist, her firm butt - but then she pulled away.
"Not yet," she said. And she was gone.
Of course I did as she said, both when I jerked off right after she left, and again in the morning, when I woke, thinking of her, of Dasha, with her long red hair, her wide mouth, and her laughing eyes, watching me, hearing her soft voice saying, "That's right, jerk off you silly boy."
I went out again, walked aimlessly until I was supposed to meet members of the department at the university. It was warm, the sun came and went behind clouds, and there were a couple quick storms that sent me once into a bookstore, another time not a cafe, to wait them out. It was all still strange and interesting, the faces, the clothes, the voices and language, and by the time I got to the university to meet the department head, I was feeling very full of everything.
The school itself made me excited, the dusty, pale yellow and green buildings, inside the smell of age, of old books, of bodies. There were no classes yet, so there were few people, and the stair up to the second floor looked like a run-down palace. The thought that this would be my place, my home, pushed aside any anxiety I felt about how I would be able to teach in Russian. And constantly in my head was a glow from thoughts of Dasha, the way she looked at me, teased me, led me on. I had no idea what was coming.
When I got to Dmitri Mikhailevich's office, his secretary, a soft-faced woman with large glasses that didn't hide her pale blue eyes, her blond hair done up on her head, and a body of a strange soft amplitude, introduced herself as Lyudmilla Ivanovna, told me he was expecting me.
"Akiko is already there as well," she said.
I didn't know what she meant, but followed her in to the dark, bookshelf-lined office, with its tall windows looking out on the broad river. He was a tall, thin man, like me, but with little hair on top of his head, and a full beard instead. He rose, cigarette in his lips, said, "Ah, here you are, here you are," and came to shake my hand.
I noticed a black haired woman in the chair across from him, but only saw the back of her head until he said, "And this is Yosano Akiko, who will be your teaching assistant and first advisee, one of our most promising..." He trailed off, seeing I guess the flush of red that must have bloomed in my face when I saw her, mirrored by the hot blush in the Japanese girl's face as well. Of course, of all the people in the city, it would be her.
"What?" he said. "Do you two know each other already?"
She gave quick nod of her head, her thick black hair falling and then flowing back from her sweet broad face, red as a poppy.
"I -- I noticed him in the market yesterday," she said. "Maybe he noticed me noticing him."
