He made a pause, but when Nina’s father opened his mouth to say something, Konstantin spoke again: “I nearly forgot. ‘Last but not least,’ as the British say. We’re not robbers, and we have intention to pocket your company for free. This is how much we are prepared to pay today.”
With these words, Konstantin took out a note-book and opened it at a page on which a sum had been written in advance. He showed the page to Nina’s father without letting the note-book out of his hand – not that Yevgeniy Borisovich was trying to get hold of it. Then Konstantin turned to Nina and showed the figure to her. Nina realized suddenly that the young manager was not at all ignoring her presence. What he was telling her father was meant for her ears as well. Apparently, Konstantin did not rely on the ability of the dumbfounded Yevgeniy Borisovich to take in his arguments and it suited him that there was somebody on the side of his former chief who was able to hear and memorize everything correctly.
Indignant and red in the face, Nina’s father finally got a chance to speak.
“All that is very nice,” he said, rising from the table. “But what does it have to do with me? Did I offer you to buy my business? I made no such offer – either to you or to anyone else. My company is not for sale. Do I make myself clear? And be so kind as not to bother me with this nonsense again!”
Those last words were completely unnecessary and came out badly – hysterically rather than wrathfully.
He moved out, and Nina followed. The young managers of Gradstroiinvest rose politely from their seats. Konstantin kept silent, not trying to argue with Yevgeniy Borisovich or keep him from leaving. He had a calm, content look of a man who had fulfilled his plan.
As her father, Nina was dumbfounded. But while he was shocked by the impertinent offer, she was amazed by something else. The sum. It was about one and a half times larger than the company was worth by her estimate.
Yevgeniy Borisovich drove her back from the fair in his car. It was already dark, a short winter day was over. Sparse snow-flakes were hitting against the wind-screen.
Nina’s father was furious. “How dare they! Impudent pups! And that fellow Konstantin – how could he? He’d worked with me, he should have known better. He should have known that I’m not that kind of man!”
“What kind of man? What are you raging about?” Nina replied in her mind as she was watching the street lights float by behind the gauze of snow. “If you want my opinion, I think Konstantin behaved in a correct, even noble way. He offered excellent terms, and certainly not because he is a dupe. It’s you, my dear papa, who behaved like a greenhorn,” she concluded and was frightened by her own thoughts – she had never, not even in her mind, talked to her father like that. For the first time in her life, her love for her father was mingled with irritation at his impracticality and absurd ambitions.
“Why don’t you say anything?” her father asked. “I hope you don’t think that I should sell the company just like that, off the cuff?”
“Yes, I think you should sell, it’s a great chance,” Nina wanted to say. “But not off the cuff. You should start negotiations and bargain with them. Since they offered such terms right away, they certainly can make some other concessions such as giving additional guarantees of your independence as director.”
Aloud, she uttered, “No, I was thinking of something else. Sorry.”
Her father said, “Wait till we’ve delivered our main project. Mind you, it’ll set us back on our feet. We shall see then!”
Yevgeniy Borisovich was referring to the project of reconstructing the heating main in a large built-up area. It was his favorite baby. As usual, once that project was mentioned, he went into explaining its technical details which Nina had heard more than once before.
“In just a couple of months we’ll get it officially accepted. Do you know what it means? It means – bingo! – we snatch the pot. Then we’ll see who buys whom!” Nina’s father thundered boastfully.
Nina could not listen to that any longer.
“Pull over,” she asked her father and told him some lie about having to drop in on a girl friend who lived close by.
“Give my best to Lydia Grigorievna,” she said, slamming the door.
During the next few weeks, she did not speak to her father or have any news from him, but she could not put the meeting at the fair out of her mind. Going over the details of the conversation with the managers of Gradstroiinvest, she concluded that the story had not ended at that – it was going to have a continuation.
A continuation soon followed in the form of a call from Lydia Grigorievna. The woman was calling Nina only very rarely – both of them were happy with the scarce contacts they had when Nina came to her father’s home to dinner or joined him and his wife for a night out in the theater. A call meant that something had happened.
Having barely said ‘hello’, Lydia Grigorievna cried out, “Nina, tell me, do you know anything?”
“About what?” inquired Nina.
“About your father. Did something happen to him again? He’s not himself – jumpy like hell all the time, working it off on me, explaining nothing. I’m at my wit’s end. I’m begging you: tell me – is he being threatened by some bandits again?”
Nina answered that she had not heard of any bandits – probably, there was nothing to it. Without mentioning the meeting at the fair, she promised Lydia Grigorievna to find out something, although she had no idea how she was going to do that.
She was aided by an accident, or rather, the calendar. A quarterly report arrived from her father’s company to the bank. Nina checked it carefully against the preceding one and found, to her surprise, that the company had given up a supplier with which it had done profitable business for a number of years. Also, the list of subcontractors no longer contained the name of a designer firm which Yevgeniy Borisovich had spoken highly of and relied on. That was odd, since, as Nina remembered clearly, her father had mentioned both the supplier and the designer firm quite recently.
Nina pondered over it and concluded that there was only one possible explanation. The ‘pups’ from Gradstroiinvest were not going to back off – they started putting pressure on her father by cutting him off from his partners. Nothing terrible had happened yet, neither was her father in any danger personally – after all, the managers of Gradstroiinvest were no gangsters – but somehow Nina felt sick at heart and depressed even worse than in the time of Misha Permyak.
Something had to be done, but what could she do? She had no one to talk it over with – not even Ignatiy Savelievich, her sole advisor, who was in hospital again.
Nina approached Kirill and suggested visiting the old specialist. It was all the more appropriate because the man was a widower. “Yes, right, you go visit him,” Kirill agreed eagerly. “I would go, too, but how can I? You can see for yourself what’s going on here.” There was nothing out of the ordinary going on in the bank – just the usual kind of absurdity and chaos.
In the hospital, Nina found her colleague bent over a chess-board – in his dressing-gown, sitting by a window that looked out on a park, Ignatiy Savelievich was doing a chess problem. It was a ward for two, but he was alone in it.
He was genuinely glad to see Nina. “My dear, what a pleasant surprise! Come here, let me give you a kiss.”
Ignatiy Savelievich pecked her on the cheek. He smelled of old age and drugs.
He waved away her inquiries about his health. “Everything’s all right with me. Everything is as it should be. Not a hair will fall from a man’s head without the will of the Almighty… Are you a believer, Ninochka?”