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I said to her with a smile that this had been a remarkable day indeed, 'a golden day!' I also suggested that some people would say that we had been playing with fire, me as a married man 'courting' an almost married woman, talking about love and the most intimate matters as freely as we discussed the most impersonal political games. I suggested to her that this freedom was something quite rare, reminiscent only of what I had felt on the beach in Leipzig and later with Steve and Ushi, where I felt as if centuries of mythologies had been pushed out of the way. "I hoped that there might be more occasions like this one," I added.
She nodded and smiled.
"What about some conventional dancing then?" I asked.
She shook her head. I noticed tears forming again. "Peter, I can't, not tonight. I know you mean well, and you were right in asking, but you have destroyed an image of my country that I had grown to love, that I grew up in, that I support in any way I can. You showed me without reservation what I didn't want to see. You caused quite a shock, you know. This isn't your fault of course, but it hurts nevertheless. There is no way I can go dancing now, as much as I would like to. You are a nice man, but I also have to acknowledge that you are also a brutal man in your wide-open honesty. To be dancing with you would be painful. It doesn't mean that I don't respect you. I even think that you should present some of what you said tonight at the conference, Peter. You might stir a few people to life with you brutal honesty and shake them up. I know many people that need this. Maybe I'll give you that chance."
I protested. I said that what she suggested couldn't be done. "No one can reverse a thousand years of rape in a half hour speech from a podium."
"You can present something, though, Peter, like an opening shot to get peoples' attention. Please do it for Russia. Do it for me. If Russia needs help, do it out of love for me. I'll put you onto the podium."
"Please don't, Anton. You may ask for more than I can deliver."
"Haven't you been asking the same of me all night, Peter, by asking me to dance with you, perhaps even to have sex with you?"
I began to laugh and raised my now empty glass of wine for a toast. "In this case, let's celebrate our impotence together," I said, "and let's celebrate the doom of our two countries as we both can't find the strength to come to their aid."
"Let's celebrated out empty glasses," said Anton.
With this having been said, I responded accordingly. "OK Anton, I will take the podium with an empty glass," and began to laugh.
Anton raised her empty glass, but didn't quite smile.
"We don't have to do this," I said to her and put my glass back down. "We don't have to celebrate our impotence, because we are not impotent. Inexperienced maybe, but not impotent. I have not given up on us yet, and on humanity. If you dare to put me on the spot, I'll give it my best shot. Maybe I'll shake up all of Russia and make them cry and scream at me, and howl me off the podium. I would count this as a great success."
"Right," she said. "We must do so something dramatic. As you said yourself, the Principle of Universal Love is lodged in everybody's heart to be discovered and to be brought to light. Something dramatic might be sufficient." She began to laugh.
"But what can I do if people lack the insight to go all the way in following me? I may loose them after the first minute. On the other hand, if a bunch of daring people like you and I won't carry the ball for mankind, who will? The rich financier power brokers don't give a dam about what happens to people, or to a country, or even to the world. They'll keep on robbing the world and waste its substance with pompous living. And the poor don't give a dam either from the depth of their imagined impotence."
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