LITMIR.BIZ

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yard but an old woman living there though being lucky to have a good room had a bad character, eavesdropped on conversations, gossiped and grumbled all the time about other neighbours’ kids making noise in the hall or about the family on duty that did not make weekly cleaning satisfactory.

      The flat was crowded with so many people. Natasha’s daughter and neighbours’ kids always ran and cried in the hall. Bicycles and wash-basins hung on the walls, sometimes there was a queue to the bathroom or to the cooker to cook. The young couple with two kids felt overcrowded most of all in their single room, Natasha knew these young people hoped only that when sooner or later the grumpy old woman or the old man from another room left for a mercy house or even further their rooms would become free and it would be possible to occupy them as there was the appropriate right according to the law.

      The old man was a former sea captain. That neighbour was Natasha’s good friend – he was always glad to see both Natasha and her daughter in his room. They liked to visit him for tea in the evenings. There were pictures of ships and boats on the walls of his room, big tropical shells and overseas souvenirs on the shelves of his old furniture. Natasha’s daughter liked to play with the sea shells, and had already broken some of them accidentally but the old captain did not curse, he used to say that it was for good luck and let the girl continue examining the shells and put them to her ear, listening to the noise of the sea.

      The old captain survived a stroke. His legs worked poorly, he moved slowly just about the flat, the noisy avenue below was all that remained from his so broad in former times world. When the sun started to appear in his room in the spring he used to open the window and put his face under the sun rays, closed his eyes and imagined that he was at sea again and the roar of trucks and trams below was the roar of the sea waves. His wife died long ago, he had no children, his niece came once a week, brought him some food. Natasha also helped, bought him bread and milk, washed, cleaned his room. The old man’s niece always convinced him to enter the mercy house but Natasha, being aware what mercy houses in Russia really were, told his niece every time that the old man was quite alright on his own and she was there each moment if something was necessary for him.

      Natasha was a biologist, she loved nature, plants, animals, insects – everything that lived its own life in the world. In former times she worked in the Botanical Academy, but after perestroyka the wages there became smaller and smaller till she was working only for bus fare. Natasha started to work as a trade agent of a cosmetic company: visiting offices and different institutions she sold cremes and lipsticks, it was not easy having a child, the old man helped her, watching her girl when she slept, feeding and playing with her after she woke up, giving Natasha the possibility to run about the city with a heavy bag full of products from which she tried to sell as much as she could.

      Natasha’s parents lived far away, nobody except the old captain could help her. Looking after her daughter, selling cosmetics for a living she had no time for any personal life outside the flat, all her personal contacts besides casual customers were made of the flat’s inhabitants. The young couple, though close to her by their age, were not close by spirit. They were too economical, bought only wholesale, talked how to spend money for useful things, not in a silly way just for pleasure.

      Natasha’s conversations with the old captain were different. The old man often told her about his sea voyages, about exotic archipelagos that his ship used to visit, where it was warm all the time, and there were tropical sunsets, blue birds and beautiful silver fish. Natasha told the captain about her unhappy marriage when her husband left her just before the childbirth; later he neither saw his daughter, nor helped. Natasha guessed for the future and did not expect anything good as there was nothing good in the past. The old captain smiled, clapped her shoulder and used to say that one could never know what would be around the corner, that her young age was happiness itself. As to him, he was already happy just with the walls of his room, with his pictures, with the sun rays from the window, with their quiet conversations, with her daughter’s sleep that he guarded, even with the neighbours’ quarrel in the kitchen. Any trifle belonging to life could be appreciated in his age.

      Once, distributing her cosmetics, Natasha found herself in a marriage agency office and while the lady manager was examining Natasha’s lipsticks and perfumes, she, in turn, gave Natasha application forms of Americans wishing to get acquainted with Russian girls. Looking through biographies and pictures Natasha suddenly came across the name of the archipelago the old captain told her about. She saw the picture of a smiling man, it was written there that he was an American engineer working on the island, living there with his little daughter and looking for a loving wife and a kind mother for his child.

      Wondering why she was doing it, Natasha copied his address. In the evening she told the captain about it: it was not easy for her to explain to the old man what the marriage agency really meant as having no possibility of going out he missed many features of new post-Soviet life. Nevertheless, smiling and joking in his own inoffensive manner, the old man encouraged Natasha to write. He remembered that once his ship was really being unloaded in that archipelago, Soviet sailors were not allowed to enter the shore, still they all had time to notice how beautiful those islands were and how kind and careless the local people were there.

      And Natasha wrote her letter and started to wait for the reply. She wrote that maybe the wish to make their children happy could draw the American and her together. And it really seemed to her that something should change in her life finally, and while she waited for the American’s reply her conversations with the old captain were rolling around that island.

      She did not seriously admit the possibility of moving there, but she just imagined palms and exotic birds she somehow touched by her letter and thought how many wonderful things were there in the world she had no possibility to know. And the old captain thought, looking at her dreamy face, that if she really moved to the island he should certainly leave his room for the mercy house where his own life area would be narrowed to a bed in a crowded ward. He knew that both old men in deep sclerosis and those like him were kept together there. And the old captain already started to consider what two or three books and what pictures he would take with him and wondered if it would be allowed to open windows there, if he would be able to feel yet the warmth of the sun rays.

      But the American did not reply. Natasha could not know that the mother of his daughter, who betrayed and left him, came back and he forgave her and stopped his search which he really started in order to prove to his disloyal wife that he did not suffer at all and did not need her either.

      After two months of expectations Natasha stopped waiting for his reply. The young couple who also knew everything from the gossiping old woman were disappointed as they very much looked forward both for Natasha’s and the old man’s departure to occupy their rooms.

      Since that time Natasha was usually silent while she had their evening tea, she sat thinking about all the hardships and problems awaiting ahead. Looking at his pictures the old man thought that he would really give up everything to see a smile on her serious face. And he comforted her saying that something good would surely happen in her life very soon and the only thing one should do was to hope for better.

      Story about Masha

      When you read this story you will maybe ask me: What for did you told it? It will not be a sweet story about a happy marriage of a Russian girl and western guy. It will be something just on the contrary though it has a happy end. I would like to tell it maybe to add some realistic details about things that happen around our introduction service.

      She came to my agency as many girls come for the first time, very interested, not very brave. Some girls are restrained and tell not much, some of them tell their life story at once. She was from such. In fifteen minutes I already knew that she was twenty eight, never married, that she had some men in her life and all these men were married. All they told her that they were very unhappy in their family-lives, all asked her to feel sorry for them and every time she swallowed this bait, their exhausted souls relaxed warmed by her faithful attitude, then they remembered about their sense of duty, asked her to forgive them and returned to their

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