Hidden Qualities

Hidden qualities 1/8 - Chapter VI

I met a girl in Paris called Irishka. She is russian and hardly speaks a word english. I felt myself transported back to a time where knowing a foreign language was an uncommon quality and there was no guarantee that you would have a language in common.
We communicated through hands, kissing, a few english words, some serbian i knew which she translated into russian. We met on Champ Elysee. I was walking on the sidewalk when she caught my eye and as we were walking towards eachother and noticed eachother looking, we walked slower and slower. As we walked slower, our smiles grew. Finally i went up to her and asked her if she wanted to have coffee with me. First there was alot of confusion because of her lack of english (and my lack of russian). She was wearing a white dress, white flip flops and white sunglasses. Shoulder long red/blonde hair, beautiful grey/blue eyes and pale skin with freckles allover. She asked how old I am, I say 23. She nods silently as if she is thinking hard about something. I return the question and she pauses and tell me to guess. I say 19. Given previous knowledge of how this game works i hope not to hear the answer I am expecting. If she is underage or embarrassed of her age she will say that I guessed right. She pauses and looks up to me, smiles and says: “correct”. An uneasy feeling goes around in my body. I suddenly feel like I am stuck with a young girl whom I can’t leave because I am afraid of hurting or damaging her. I always quickly feel responsible for the people around me.
We meet up with some friends of mine and we have a beer (I buy her a cider). We sit there and I feel more and more embarrassed, the more english i find out she doesn’t know. I can almost feel the other guys warming up to making jokes about how we can’t communicate. They ask her what her parents do. Her mum is a cop and her dad is a secret something. I look at her in disbelief. I ask “FSB?”. She smiles and says: “Da! Mmm Yes!”. Some of the guys give me a concerned look. I smile at the odds.
We decide to go to the eiffel tower. On the way there, there are loads of stoplights where we try to converse but it normally ends with a shrug and a smile. At the 3rd stop i lean in to kiss her. Her lips are soft, small and wet. I pull back and smile, she smiles back. 50 meters after I grab her hand. I love holding hands. Theres something fairy taley about it.
The legendary long lines of the Eiffel tower are visible well on distance. We decide to make a picnic instead and wait for the lines to diminish. We discuss which kind of fruit we like. She says she really likes banana. Instantly a dirty joke plays in my head. I want to say: ‘You know, I can eat a peach for hours’. I stop that part of myself even though I doubt she would understand me.
After we have picked out the different kinds of food and said the names of the fruits in thte languages we know, she tells me we should wash the fruit. I say ‘yeah but where?’. She looks at me half laughing, half shaking her head like ‘Fucking tourist’. She takes the fruit and walks into the nearest restaurant and comes out 2 mins laters with a wet back, smiling.

To Be Continued...