Once in the corridor I had to make a decision. It was a difficult one and was to be taken during the next thirty steps. I didn't follow Ann's advice and walked in slow motion, nevertheless the decision-making process was split-second.
I had to betray Ann. The last hour I had spent with her made every fiber of my being rebel against such a choice. She wasn't of course a noble virtuous heroine, she was a blackmailer but she was an outstanding blackmailer who had taken advantage of her opportunities, conceived a plan and carried it out courageously. Yet she wasn't a criminal mind. She only had to survive in our highly unjust world, trying to make the most of the chances life gave her. I couldn't imagine her as a professional adventurer, thrill-seeking and thinking up robbery and cheating schemes, never satisfied with anything and anybody. I had sensed in her – in those moments when we stayed together and spoken of the most ordinary things of which life is made up – a woman hungry for passionate love but who wanted also to become a tender and faithful wife and a good mother of family. And I was going to smash her dreams of good life.
My slow motion almost came to a standstill.
There was more. She saw me as the man of her life. I was perfectly aware of the role my charm had played in those wonderful decisions. It was a kind of magic that I had never been able to explain, I had always taken it for granted, it took its inexorable effect whenever I fired up my eyes and faintly smiled looking straight at a woman's face. It was, as I sometimes tried to find a justification, some ancestral instinct that made a female make an unmistakable choice based on a deep gut feeling. So it was no wonder for me that Ann's female instinct made her choice, contrary perhaps to the solid practical reason of a bourgeois that seeks first of all economic advantage even in the delicate matter of love, preferring a good origin and position of a future husband to his mythical human qualities if they are not corroborated by a good bank account. Ann could now withstand all such practical reasons. I had, on my part, all reasons to believe the sincerity of her proposal to me, and its short-term brilliance dazzled me.
Could I accept it? Surely I could. There was no iron curtain, Russia's reality was not cheering, my prospects were dim. Fabulous images of dazzling white sand and calm blue sea, high palm-trees waving slowly their peaks in a mild wind, Ann with her long loose hair, building a sand castle with a baby – our son -, a house, a hundred yards away – our house - and me, sitting in the shadow of a large veranda taking tea, - all those images came up so vividly in my mind that I nearly choked with rapture.
So?
I stayed ten meters before Patricia's room. A glance in that direction brought me back to earth. Another image powerfully pushed away all those previous, a little boy with big sparkling eyes now was looking at me sadly, he stretched his hands to me, saying "When will you come to me to wrestle? I want a revenge." With a deep sigh I ripped my leg from the floor and moved it forward. I couldn't live on with the bad conscience of having left a boy without a ransom and so dooming him to death. The kidnappers shouldn't kill him as a potential witness, he's only five, so I hoped. I had to part with the sparkling vision of Paradise on the shore of a warm ocean. Yet I was sorry. I took out my cell-phone and called Pavel. I knew he wasn't asleep, but perhaps I was mistaken. It took long ten seconds before he answered the call.
"What's new?" I said.
"Nothing," he said blankly. "What do you have?"
"In the morning I'll have it."
He didn't answer at once:
"You think you'll make it?"
"I hope so. I'll call you later. Bye."
I didn't even waited for him to say bye-bye. I don't like whimpering and driveling, even when a man tries hard to hide it. He was too shaken, I understood it, but I was utterly exhausted too and had no desire to cheer up a strong man, he had to cope with the situation for himself, at least emotionally.
By small and slow steps I arrived at the door of Patricia's room, lingered a bit and knocked.
I heard quick and light steps on the other side. The door opened, Patricia looked at me with expectation:
"Well?"
"I've got it". I said handing the file to her.
She grabbed it, began seeing through the sheets, the said:
"Yes, that's it. I thank you. Was it hard?"
I shook my head:
"Non particularly. No woman can resist me, if she's a real woman, you know it."
"You conceited womanizer."
"Can I sleep here a couple of hours? I'm half asleep."
"Sure. Meanwhile I'll take care of things."
I made a beeline for the bed, stripping off my clothes and shoes as I went and slipped, half-dead, under the blankets. The last thing I did was switch off my cell-phone.
The last thing I felt was Patricia's light kiss on my lips as she smoothed the blanket on my breast.