“You can repay me when you get the chance to.”
“Thank you, we will repay the loan for sure.” Saying this, I sincerely believed in my promise, and the granny pretended to believe in it too, though she knew she was looking at us for the last time.
The next day she handed us the bag loaded with food, and our old blanket.
The way to the nearest settlement with a railway station lay through the wood, and the granny volunteered to help us through. On the way she mentioned the difficulties we would have to face and advised us to close our eyes if ever we were scared. It sounded a little childish; and in my mind I dismissed the idea, not understanding how valuable her advice would turn out to be. Reaching the middle of the wood, Rosa Ivanovna stopped abruptly as if coming to an invisible wall.
“From here on you go by yourselves. Alone, forever alone.” She spoke loudly, then turned around and walked away back towards her home. I wanted to call to her, to ask her to stop, to give her a last goodbye-hug, but for some reason I didn’t have the courage. We stood still for a while, watching her gray silhouette passing out of sight, and then, facing the direction in which we had to go, we trudged on in silence.
7. WIFE BEATER_
The fall was already coming to an end, gifting us with another cloudy day and a gray, smoky sky tightly lined with clouds. Trees had shed their leaves long ago, and now that fallen foliage was mixing up with dirt to make putrid, slippery slush. A little old waypoint station represented a colorless picture, reminding us somewhat of our foster home, and whispering into our ears that we would never escape its “house of desolation”.
Not a single living soul was near that shabby, dingy box-office. We bought tickets to the nearest town and took the change, which I hid at once in the inside pocket of my quilted jacket while you kept the remaining money. We went out onto the platform. We had some time left before the arrival of a commuter train and, wrapping ourselves tighter in our blanket, we took a seat on the only bench there was. The time hung heavy; cold wind tickled our eyelashes and blew our hair. Soon there were four of us. A young couple appeared round the corner, came up and settled next to us.
“How long have you been waiting for a train?” the lady asked, slightly shrinking from the cold.
“Not so long,” you answered.
“It should arrive soon,” I added confidently, taking a look at the station clock. The train was due to arrive in less than half an hour.
“Do you smoke?” said the young lady. “Please, have a treat.”
“Can we have two?” you took courage.
She looked at us for a while, then smiled tenderly and handed us over the whole pack.
A sudden freedom had liberated us. We weren’t viewers any more but became fully legitimate life- participants. The lady behaved amiably, making jokes from time to time, and seemed to have forgotten her silent companion. I felt inexplicable bliss. Our usual awkwardness and constraint disappeared and was replaced by a feeling of general well-being; I was pleasantly dizzy from the tobacco smoke and let the great world spin by. Finally, the train approached. The young lady didn’t even move but, on the contrary, took out another cigarette and lit it. We said goodbye politely and got into one of the steel wombs of this commuter train. After swallowing us up, it obediently moved out of the station, carrying away the fragments of hundreds of our old memories. Hundreds of eyes – tired, bored, lost or simply curious – gave us a stare in the carriage; they did it so harmoniously and coordinatedly that it was possible to think they belonged together and were acting as a unified organism skillfully pretending to be people. An elderly man sitting next to us thumbed through a newspaper, yawning and falling into a troubled sleep every now and then.
The commuter train was slowing down; the man was sleeping; I was reading the news in his paper out of the corner of my eye; you were staring out of the window. Everybody was busy with something or other, occupied or unoccupied at the same time. But once we approached our destination, people got anxious and started fussing and spilling out of the carriage, instantly dispersing, breaking off the threads that had connected all of us together. I watched them and thought that if you and I had not been so well tied together, who knows, maybe, we would have gone our separate ways as well. I snuggled closer to you, and we, full of determination, went into the station building where we were faced with yet another trouble. After standing in a long line and approaching the box office, all of a sudden, we found out that we had lost all our money! Not willing to draw unnecessary attention to ourselves, we quietly stepped aside and started searching. I rummaged through our food bag several times and you looked in your pockets. Nothing! Nothing but trouble. Our money had disappeared. There was nothing but the change we had received after buying the tickets, and, of course, our trampled-on hope.
Hope, tell me how it is possible that grief and happiness are scattered all over the world so unevenly? Why do some people get all the troubles and misfortunes while others are intoxicated with an abundance of material belongings, fat bellies and money? Why is there such injustice? Or are we mistaken that it’s unfair?
The rest of day we spent wandering around the town, not having the strength to speak or to cry or even for that matter to feel sad. Deep in my soul I hoped for a miracle and thought that nobody could treat us so meanly and take from us our only real help; I humbly believed that somebody would surely come up and ask us: “Excuse me, did you drop this money?” But nobody did.
It was getting dark. Snow was falling in thick, heavy flakes and melting right under our feet, turning into slippery gruel. Patches of our dreams looking like these snowflakes waltzed in the light of lonely lanterns. We were wearily staring at the boring black-and-white scenery and, in a lousy mood, we strolled along the road into the gloomy emptiness, when a light in the distance from headlights struck our backs. We didn’t look at where it came from, believing that no one in this world wanted to help us or care for us. But after driving past us a few extra meters, the truck stopped, the door opened, and a huge man with a moustache leaned out.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“To the capital,” I uttered inertly.
“Home!” you grumbled to yourself.
“Me too,” the man brightened up. “Get in; I’m bored of driving all by myself. I’ll give you a lift.”
Without thinking twice, we got into the truck.
“I’m dying to talk to somebody. What a goal I’ve scored to rustle you up like this,” the man continued, getting excited about his own words. “I’m a lucky fellow.”
The truck moved off. He called himself a “champion of the highway” and promised to deliver us to our destination “still canned goods”. Despite an evening chill, he was wearing a wife-beater shirt of uncertain color, which probably had never been washed from the date of its purchase but had served him as a subject for boasting. Our entire conversation was essentially about it.
“What do you know! My whole life is daubed here,” he said hoarsely and drawlingly and, pointing at some greasy spot, explained: “This one is from the borsch that Zinka, my mistress, cooked; a good bitch she was, but drunk herself to death. This one I got when Petrovich and I were pulling the truck out of a ditch, and he stuck his finger into the oil. And that one I had at my sis’s wedding when I thumped my brother-in-law’s mug. We made it up afterwards, though.”