She had been born and had grown up in a small town somewhere on the Volga. Her mother, a schoolteacher, raised her without a husband. As soon as she finished school, the girl Lyda set off to conquer the capital. Like thousands of other naïve, provincial girls, she dreamed of entering one of the top drama academies; instead, she wound up as a yard-cleaner for a municipal maintenance unit. It was there that she was picked up by her future man. He was a local official of some kind. As he was visiting the neighborhood with an inspection, he noticed a young yard-cleaner girl and asked who she was. As a result, Lyda became a secretary in his office. And – his mistress.
He was her first man – and the only one for many years to come. He was not a bad man, and he loved her, but he made a mess of her life all right. There was a huge difference in years between them, and of course, he was married. When more liberal times set in, he got divorced and married Lyda, but he would not let her have a baby. Lyda who was used to obeying him complied with that, too. When she finally decided to have her own way, it was too late – she was unable to become a mother.
She was no longer a secretary; having received a college degree through attending some night classes, she had made a small-time career in municipal organizations. When a major political overturn occurred, her husband was pensioned off while she kept her position and even got a promotion which she had never sought. She took no interest in work – she had long realized that she only wanted to be a wife. In her yard-cleaner’s youth, all she had was a cot in a workers’ hostel. That was followed by many years in a rented one-room apartment where she led the miserable life of a kept woman. All she wanted now was to have a real home and be really married. She was married – to an old, sick pensioner who could not give her anything as a husband but demanded more and more attention to himself, and tormented her with his bad temper and jealousy. Lydia’s feelings towards him were a mixture of pity and hatred.
That existence dragged on for another ten years, but finally the man died. Lydia promised herself to start a new life – look after herself, go to the theater, make new acquaintances. One of those new acquaintances was Nina’s father who came to her office to get some paper signed. After she got married to him, Lydia Grigorievna resigned at once from her position of authority and took on the easy job of a part-time consultant for the municipal administration – in order only not to sit at home all the time, but to communicate with people and keep up-to-date with things without burdening herself with hard work or responsibility.
As she was listening to the woman, Nina realized for the first time that for Lydia Grigorievna, her father was a dream come true. After spending her whole life with a man who was nearly twenty five years her older, she was now married to a young – almost her age – and handsome man. She was happy.
It was midday, then one o’clock, then two o’clock. Lydia Grigorievna threw together a little meal for the two of them. In the meantime, she started casting concerned glances at the clock – it was time for her to get down to serious cooking for the dinner party.
Nina ate with pleasure. She felt comfortable in the neat, nice kitchen where she was being taken care of – something that had not happened to her for a very long time. Her hostility towards Lydia Grigorievna was a thing of the past – she had accepted the woman and even the memory of her mother no longer stood between them. In fact, Nina did not remember her mother often – only when she was particularly lonely and sad.
This time her mother came to Nina herself. As Nina was chatting with Lydia Grigorievna – telling her some professional, ‘accountant’ joke – her mama’s voice sounded suddenly in her head. Nina had no doubt that it was her mama’s voice and no one else’s – she would recognize it among thousands of others. The voice said, “Ninusya…” Then, after a second, “Poor papa…”
“Is something wrong, Nina?” asked Lydia Grigorievna who saw Nina turn pale.
“N-no, it’s nothing,” Nina muttered. “It just seems a bit stuffy in here.”
“Yes, sorry, it’s the oven. I need to do some ventilating here.” Lydia Grigorievna started bustling about and suggested, “You go out onto the balcony and get some fresh air. It’s all fitted out there, and there are some chairs to sit in.”
Nina went out onto a closed, wood-paneled balcony, pulled a transom window slightly ajar and sat into a wicker chair. It was a sunny day outside, and although the air was frosty, a turn for spring could be felt in it. But the beauties of Nature were lost upon Nina. Her head swooned, and her heart pounded furiously. Gripping the arms of the chair, she was coming to herself slowly, unable to understand what was going on with her.
Finally, having breathed in a lot of frosty air and getting quite chilled, she decided to go back. As she was closing the transom, she heard Lydia Grigorievna call out to her from the kitchen.
“What is it, Lydia Grigorievna? I didn’t get what you said,” she said as she entered the kitchen, and stopped short.
Lydia Grigorievna was sitting with a phone receiver clasped in her hand. Her cheeks were ash grey.
“Zhenya…” she muttered.
Nina took some time to realize that the woman referred to her father.
“Ninochka, papa is not well,” Lydia Grigorievna managed to say finally.
She had had a call from the committee. Yevgeniy Borisovich had had a stroke and had been taken to hospital.
For Nina, that day and the day after passed as if in a fog – her memory only captured separate episodes and pictures. She remembered how she and Lydia Grigorievna caught a taxi and sped off to the hospital whose address they had jotted down on a slip of paper. Once arrived, they rushed into the reception ward, where they had an agitated explanation with a dumb, indifferent and rude receptionist, then took the stairs (the elevator being out of order) to the fourth floor where the critical care unit was located.
To get to the unit, they had to walk all through the cardiology department. Everything here shocked Nina who was not familiar with the realities of public general hospitals. The crudely painted walls were dark and peeling with time and neglect, the ragged linoleum bore some horrible-looking spots. The wards, designed for six, were packed, and out in the corridor stood more beds with sick people, some of them on a drip. From one of the wards, a strong smell of urine was coming in combination with some other nasty stench; in another ward, someone was groaning loudly. At the nurses’ desk, two young nurses were chatting gaily, apparently not in the least concerned about the patients and their problems. Nina was appalled by the thought that her papa was lying, helpless and possibly dying, in such surroundings.
In the critical care unit, a fat middle-aged nurse blocked their way. When they explained who they were, she said irritably that there was no one to tell them anything about their patient yet and snapped, “Wait.” They settled down on hard corridor benches to wait.
Lydia Grigorievna said, “Did you notice…? I think I saw an ATM on the ground floor.”
“What? What ATM?”
“We’re going to need money,” explained Lydia Grigorievna.
“But I didn’t take my card along!” Nina exclaimed worriedly.
“I did.”
Lydia Grigorievna set off to search for an ATM and after some time came back carrying a sum of money. For another hour though, there was no one to hand it to.
Finally, the doctor came out. He was rather young, but unkempt and bald, with the face of a drinker.
The women rushed to him.
“It’s a stroke,” he said. “Rather a bad one.”
“But… He is going to live, isn’t he? Tell us he is,” Lydia Grigorievna uttered in an altered voice.
Without looking at them, the doctor shook his head.
“There’s no telling yet. There is hope, though.”