Red Indian Sun

– I once had a virtual lover from Thailand, – he boasted. – She was sixty years old. I will have many foreign women. From the previous, I will go to the next – and not empty-handed. And then I will marry an Indian woman with a good dowry and with her money I’ll go abroad. I’ll live for my own pleasure.

– But will you take the Indian woman with you?

– No. We bring a wife to sit at home and care for our parents. She will stay with my mom. Abroad, I will find another woman: a rich, white, aged.

– Will you divorce her?

– No need to divorce. Simply, she will suddenly die from the poisoning – that’s all. A widower can remarry.

– Are you kidding!!!

– No. I am not kidding. Do you want me to show you the correspondence with my women? We are all serious.

– Show me.

Then I saw how he wrote to many women at the same time, how those women sincerely planned meetings, weddings, how he asked them for their money. It seems that he did not lie. In front of me on the laptop screen was a real marriage speculator, who treated me as his friend.

One day, having casually talked, I shared with him my plans to go to America or the UK to study. As soon as he heard the phrase “I am going to the UK or America” from me, amazing metamorphosis happened to him right before my eyes. From the lecherous rogue who revealed to me all his secrets about how to deceive women for money, the young man turned into a decent, wise, serious young man. He suddenly looked at me as a woman.

Since then, I have noticed that my Indian acquaintance has become a bit more persistent and intrusive in communicating with me. He became more affectionate but secretive. I have never heard from his talk about women. To myself, I noticed his efforts to gain my confidence.

The yesterday’s cunning little boy, who used to communicate with me as with a middle-aged elder friend, disappeared and today, suddenly, turned into my beau.

Despite the seeming changes for the better, my new Indian acquaintance still strongly reminded me of Tenardieu’s spouse from Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.

Let me remind the reader how the author of the novel described Tenardieu and his wife: “These were those dwarf natures that easily grow into monsters if they are warmed up by an ominous flame. In the character of his wife was bestial rudeness, in the character of her husband – innate meanness. Both were highly gifted with that disgusting ability to develop, which grows only in the direction of evil. There are souls like crayfish. Instead of going forward, they continually move back toward the darkness and use life experience only to enhance their moral deformity, becoming more and more corrupt and more and more saturated with nasty. It was such a soul that the spouses Tenardieu had”.

For the stunningly exact resemblance of the character to the character, I myself began to call the new acquaintance “Tenardieu”. Also it was surprisingly similar to the real name of him. I am ready to vouch that Sergeant Tenardieu was just like that person in his youth.

Indian Tenardieu spent all his working time in a room with the air conditioning turned on, talked to girls on social networks, leaving for lunch and dinner. It was a slacker who at first wore a protective helmet on the object, like a fancy dress, but at the same time, he dealt exclusively with the fact that he spent all day running away from a construction supervisor with a helmet on his head. The poor supervisor chased him all over the construction site to give instructions. The young man was well able to run with obstacles, so the supervisor never caught up with him.

In his deep conviction, work was something shameful, unworthy of its origin. He said that in India there is a division into southern and northern Indians.

– I’m not a fool from the south of India to work and do what my boss says, – he once told me. – I am from the north of India, and I will not work, we are ashamed to work, we are not slaves.

– So you are from the highest caste? Why ashamed to work?

– No, I’m from the carpenter caste of khati. – But I’m from northern India. This is not a slave south. In general, I think that working is unworthy of a decent person.

– I do not agree with you. Thinking like yours, people in Europe were many centuries ago. This used to be the case in ancient times: it was a shame for the lord to work, slaves worked for him. Then there was a cultural leap, and for decent people, it became a common thing to work. Thanks to this mental and physical work, the technique via which we speak with you appeared, the airplanes we fly on, beautiful clothes and cosmetics that we use. Is it all created by slaves? No! This is all created by hardworking educated people.

Tenardieu told me a lot about his country and the people in it.

According to him, only representatives of the untouchable caste are engaged in hard work and dirty work in India, officially the term “untouchables” is not used – these castes are called “registered”, in English scheduled. If a person works, then he is one of the untouchables, wealth is good, therefore any means to get wealth is honest. Even deception and murder is okay. He also boasted to me that he himself possesses the art of hypnosis, which in their society is actively used along with reading mantras – magic spells. Many of his countrymen possess the art of hypnosis from birth. If a person has become your enemy, then you can send him a bad wish. What a funny medieval rule.

Workers who sit in rooms without work are called standby people. They are paid a minimum salary, food and accommodation are provided.

This resourceful comrade, before meeting me, has been living in Saudi Arabia for eight months. He spent all his days on social networks, having at the same time twenty virtual girlfriends of different ages and backgrounds, the main of whom was a thirty-six-year-old Filipina with two children.

The young man in all seriousness was going to marry her and move to live in the Philippines, where she would make his life comfortable. She would work on two jobs, and he would sit at home and watch TV. In the rosy dreams of the youngster, there was also a joint journey across the ocean and many beautiful mistresses, but his wife would not be jealous, but, on the contrary, she would praise him and shared with him her salary.

The dream was constantly disturbed by the “wrong” life views of the Filipina, who was jealous of this Indian “gentleman” to the other girlfriends. He honestly told her about his other girlfriends, in order to immediately accustom his future wife to his freedom. In this connection, the Filipina would block that Don Juan, and then a few days later unblocked and everything repeated, again and again, jealousy, tears, plans for the future, his declarations of love.

Once a Filipina promised to send a curse on him for hurting her:

– I wish you a wife worse than you. Then you’ll cry.

And she blocked him everywhere.

The next day, being blocked by the Filipina, quite by chance Tenardieu could not log into his account. Therefore, he created a new one and, accidentally seeing my profile, sent me a message. So we met.

We began to communicate. A few days later, he confessed his love to me. We corresponded and called back with my flattering acquaintance many times a day.

Sweet speeches flowed in my address by the river on the phone, and on the video camera, I saw a sly, almost villainous face.

Sweet flattery and declarations of love alternated with questions about my salary, the amount of my income.

Once he said that he wanted to marry me because I was hard-working, and he would stay at home and watch TV. He said that he wanted me to come to his home in India first, meet his family, we would get married. And from there we would have jointly applied for a student visa in the United States as spouses. I would get a visa for studies, and he would travel with me as my spouse, on a visa for spouses.

After that conversation, I decided to stop communicating with him and asked him not to bother me, explaining that I would never voluntarily provide a man with money, and also that I would never allow a man to use me for a visa or other material goods. After that, I stopped responding to his calls and messages.

My Indian friend called me every single minute. I blocked his number, but he called me from other numbers. It seemed that he had at least a thousand numbers and accounts. A week later, I was tired of fighting him and we began to talk again.

We talked for six months. First, we talked occasionally, then more often, then every day. It was him who initiated the communication each time. The young man tried not to tell anything about himself, but mostly asked me questions, emotionally and sympathetically commenting on my answers. He seemed to be an absolute angel, who is always with me in any situation on my side. As it turned out, it was part of his psychological play.

There were months of our virtual communication with him. I kept away from my diplomat and more often refused to meet with him under various pretexts. Compared with the intelligent and predictable diplomat, the Indian acquaintance looked extremely mysterious.

Tenardieu still ran away from his supervisor when the supervisor called him to work. He would sit in a room with air conditioning, mainly engaged in correspondence with girls. He said that he had long ceased to communicate with girls for my sake alone. Now he confessed his love to me and constantly called me even during my work.

Still living in Saudi Arabia, he escaped from work, while receiving a stable minimum salary. Then the supervisor got tired of running after him. As a result, it was decided to dismiss Tenardieu.

Tenardieu was fired in about a month. During this time, he ate and slept every day with a calculator, anticipating a large last salary. He dreamed of buying one luxurious thing or another. But the vindictive supervisor counted the hours actually worked by the sloth and gave a tiny salary.

The young man was furious. The poor supervisor still does not know how much dirt has fallen on his name.

I explained to him:

– What did you want? You had to work.

My acquaintance, being sure that he was entitled to a large sum for lying in a room during months in a hot country, went with a scandal to the personnel department of his company.

He shook papers at shocked employees, threatened to go to the embassy and complain about the supervisor.

In the end, so he flew to India with nothing.

He returned to his homeland, and other stories began. I still lived in Moscow, went with friends to restaurants and exhibitions, from morning to evening I worked in my organization and in the evenings I visited the pool or met with my diplomat.

In Moscow, my closest friend was the daughter of the head of the administration of a large industrial city in South Korea. She worked as a diplomat in Moscow. One day when we were sitting in an expensive restaurant in the south-west of Moscow near our Moscow University, Tenardieu called me. At the end of our short conversation, I told him “kiss you, bye”. My friend asked me: