Three months after my move to Moscow I move in with Julia. We’ve found a cheap apartment right in the middle of the city. Now we live by the Mayakovskaya metro station. From there it’s not far for Julia to get to the Bolshoi. I pay almost all of the rent. Julia contributes a symbolic amount, because as a ballerina she earns less than 1000 euros a month, and the rent alone is 800. The apartment has three rooms but is furnished horribly. In the bedroom there are pink curtains with lace along the edges. The kitchen is spartan, and the gas cooker is still from the eighties.
None of that matters to me. The main thing is that I’m with Julia. I think I’ve found the woman of my dreams. Julia is intelligent, good-looking, and reads every wish in my eyes before I say it. She goes to training in the morning but comes home in the afternoon, before the evening performance, and we have a lot of fun.
It’s May and Julia’s birthday isn’t far off. We talk about her party one evening, and I learn that in Russia you invite your friends to a restaurant. That costs around 1000 euros. In return you get fairly expensive presents from them. Julia expects gifts worth two to three hundred euros from her girlfriends. “Oh boy,” I think. “How much am I going to have to invest, then? I’ve barely had any work these last months, and I’m slowly running out of money.”
That evening we have sex, then collapse exhausted into the feather beds and fall asleep. Before I drift off, I think: “What a woman! Jackpot. I want to marry her.”
The next day Julia gets out of bed on the wrong side, because first thing in the morning she picks a fight, even though there’s no reason for it at all. That’s the beginning of the end. From that day on it just keeps getting worse. Julia seems dissatisfied with me, with my income and with my social status. On the other hand she tells me again and again that she loves me. Two months later I still have no job, and I’m definitely running out of money. Julia has the summer off and wants to go away on holiday. When I tell her I can’t afford it at the moment, she’s disappointed.
“In Russia a man pays for his woman,” she says, rubbing salt into my open wounds. I’m at the end of my rope. Here I am in a completely foreign country, trying to find my feet and earn some money, already overwhelmed by the situation as it is, and now my only point of reference, my girlfriend, calls me a loser on top of it. I could cry. But that won’t help. I’ve never been someone who gives up. It doesn’t take long before I pull myself together and hit back verbally.
“Are you out of your mind? Do you even know why I’m here and why I’m in this mess? Because of you, Julia. Because of you. I came here for you!” I shout at her.
After that Julia is quiet. A week later we book the holiday. I’ve borrowed money from my mother, and Julia pays her own share.
