Kostyantynivska Street, fairway of the Czars
No carriage can be seen on you this day
But I did espy a Ferret there one night
Huddled in the Kosher strip joint’s light
Refusing at the door to pay his way
“CG, could you get the door, my dear?”
“Yes, Mr. Soiree, right away.”
The supple young domestic servant makes her way across the spacious confines of a sumptuous flat somewhere in the center of Kyiv to receive the unexpected night caller.
“May I help you?”
The visitor removes his headwear, performs a barely perceptible bow and promptly explains the nature of his business.
Within minutes he’s seated in a comfortably furnished antechamber, his raincoat removed and folded neatly next to his person.
CG has already made her exit in search of further instructions from her employer Rico Soiree, who, overhearing the exotic accent of the evening’s company, has entered the antechamber unannounced and from a totally different direction, thereby hoping to catch his guest off guard, surprise him to some advantage or simply start things off with a little show of panache.
“Senor Soiree?”
“Indeed, and to what do I owe the pleasure of this unanticipated nocturnal sojourn?”
“Senor Gonzales De Santa Maria,” announces the man by way of introduction. He is around 40 years of age with a shiny bald head and a thick dark mustache and is standing with his coat in one arm and the other arm held upright as if he were about to salute his host.
Soiree responds with a few dignified if banal niceties and before long the two men are seated and engaged in casual but carefully chosen conversation.
CG brings in a small cocktail tray set with two highball glasses filled with double malt Scotch whisky and soda water, plus some paper napkins and two stainless steel stirring sticks. She then stokes the room’s imitation fireplace and removes herself from the now cozy scene as quietly as she’d appeared.
Soiree begins to relate a brief and none too modest narrative of his arrival, some years ago, in the ancient Slavic capital, where he was blessed to renew his calling as an educator in the most classical understanding of this word. Notwithstanding sometimes highly formidable adversity, from natives and newcomers alike, he has succeeded in laying the foundations of first-class philological training for Ukraine’s up-and-coming generation of political and business leaders, many of whom have been nothing but generous in their praise of Yours Truly as can easily be ascertained on the easily navigable website of the Silver School of English.
Gonzales, a careful listener, if judging only by his attentive, almost immobile dark eyes, the fixed posture of his stout torso, leant slightly forward from the couch, his small white hands clasped and resting on his knees, at one point perceives an opportunity in the conversation to pose a question but thinks otherwise and instead avails himself of the chilled beverage provided by his host.
“Not that one doesn’t find time to smell the roses,” continues Soiree, pretending not to notice his guest’s questionable habit of rubbing the sterling steel stirring stick between his fingers before placing it in his drink.
“Kyiv is a city of some temptation.”
Gonzales stops rubbing the stirring stick, looks down into his drink and then back up again at Soiree.
“But Rome wasn’t built by Mormon missionaries, I dare say. Indeed, civilization itself is made of the stuff that housewives don’t teach their children. They must find it out on their own, after leaving home, upon arriving in the big city to fulfill their dreams, vent their every passion, as it were.”
“And does one also vent these passions, Senor, in the company of one’s wife,” interrupts Gonzales, exploiting a natural pause in his interlocutor’s speech.
Soiree fixes his eyes on his guest with some severity and then throws his head and shoulders back in carefully choreographed reckless abandon to splash down his drink and simultaneously collect his thoughts for an appropriate response.
“One does what he DAMN well feels like,” exclaims Soiree, now almost shouting, as he rocks back into conversation position, leant forward like Gonzales.
“So if I understand you correctly, Senor – and please forgive me deeply if I do not – a civilized man in a civilized surrounding… one even of his own making… is free of will and all moral constraint to test his passions to the hilt… If one can say such a thing in English…”
“Yes, you can, Mr. Gonzales. That’s absolutely appropriate modern English.”
“Thank you, Senor. This is a great compliment from an educator such as yourself.”
“Don’t mention it… er… and you were saying?”
“I was saying, Senor Soiree,” continues the guest, who has begun to nibble at the outer reaches of his nostrils with the edge of the stirring stick in relief of an unrelenting itch or possibly as a prelude to picking his nose.
“I was saying, or perhaps better to say, ‘I was thinking’, that since civilizations are at least half inhabited by the fair sex, Las Senoras de las ciudades, as we say, are they not also free of will and all moral constraint – constraints much more strongly felt by their gender, one might assume – to do WHAT THEY DAMN WELL FEEL LIKE?”
“Well I suppose so,” answers Soiree, now staring his guest down across the small table set with drinks that separates the two men.
“And could such freedom – moral and otherwise – be interpreted to include dressing like the cheapest of whores – there can be no question of taste here, Senor, I assure you – and engaging in the most obvious of solicitation tactics in an otherwise respectable nighttime establishment to the point where customers complain and the police have to be called to escort her – your wife, Senor, I take no pleasure to inform you – by the most physical means, eventually tossing her into the very gutters of this civilized city’s streets!”
The guest then reaches into the breast pocket of his coat to produce a card that reads: Kate Mustard, Director of Enrollment, Silver School of English.
Filed by Dirk Dickerson, CTFSA, April 15, 2016