THE WEAKER SEX

by Mariya Alyoshina

We all know the type-the independent "business lady." Women are educators (of their children, their husbands, their bosses, etc.), women are managers (including of men), women pursue a career. Time was when a single woman could expect to be branded an "old maid" and to run a daily gauntlet of sympathetic nods. And to be a single mother was even worse. A woman just had to have a man behind her, as breadwinner, protector, head of household. And she would run his home and make sure he was comfortable.

Today's woman is not afraid of being alone. Independence carries some clout. The weaker sex? I don't think so. In fact, no way! But what about those who from time immemorial have been dubbed the stronger sex?

I began thinking about that after what I saw last summer while walking from the station down a country road that led straight to my modest little dacha. Around a respectable two-story cottage stood a crowd of husky village men who were actually armed-some with rakes, some only with sticks, while some didn't need any armaments at all to look plenty scary. They were yelling, waving their weapons, and making threatening gestures at someone inside the cottage.

A car drove up and out hopped a diminutive girl, a neighbor of mine out there in the new Russian dachaland. She headed right for the assembled mob. It was obvious that she was the one they had been waiting for. "Simmer down, guys. What's the problem?" she asked in a calm, firm voice.

The reply was a loud and resounding shower of expletives. "Hold it right there. No need for that sort of talk! We'll sort all this out right now!" the girl said, keeping her cool. She was almost hidden from sight behind the towering, impenetrable crowd. "The pitch needs leveling? OK, we'll do it. And the road's been wrecked? We'll fix it. Any more complaints? Fine! Off you go, then. It was good meeting you, guys. It's so nice to be able to talk like normal human beings."

The "enraged" crowd quickly melted away. And the girl started giving orders to the construction crew that was working on her property. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the blinds twitching, and a man appeared in the window. Thoroughly spooked, he looked to see if the crowd had gone, and only then came out to help the girl unload groceries from the car.

I was simply racked with curiosity: what had just happened here? For a long time I would not be able to get that scene-a young girl calming a crowd-out of my mind. Where were her male protectors? I wondered. Valya (that was her name) caught sight of me and kindly invited me in for coffee. It turned out that about thirty minutes previously, just as she was coming home to her Moscow apartment, the phone had rung. It was her dearly beloved-or, rather, her erstwhile dearly beloved. Out of the kindness of her heart, she had let her former husband go on living in her dacha temporarily after the divorce. She thought the place would be safer that way. At the other end of the line, a loud, sobbing voice: "Valya, come quick! They're killing me! There are toughs with pitchforks. A cement truck's gotten stuck!"

She had no idea what was going on. He was so scared, he was making no sense at all. The only thing she knew was that she would have to go and bail the poor schmuck out, because he couldn't do it for himself. And what was it all about? He was being terrorized by the locals, who were not pleased that the huge tires of a KamAZ truck, there to pull a cement mixer out of a ditch, had also churned up the soccer pitch [field], which happened to be where the male population of the village liked to spend its off-hours. They blamed Valya, because the cement truck had been on its way to her place, to pour a bath-house foundation.

The ex-husband was scared stiff (he hadn't even gone out to talk to the crowd) and all he could think of was to call his former wife, a fragile young woman. So what are we to make of what we have been reading in books since we were children-all about the man being the hero, the protector, a tower of strength? About the woman standing in back of the solid stone wall that is her man, etc., etc.? Well, it turns out that there are guys and then there are guys. And the stronger sex is not always stronger in real life.

P.S. It's a beautiful thing, the way it begins:

"Where are we going?"

"To the movies, maybe, or an ice-cream parlor?"

"I'M SICK OF THAT!" the woman declares, quite out of the blue, and the puzzled man snaps her a crisp salute.