Читать книгу The Smart Girl - Александр Капьяр - Страница 2

That night Nina had a celebration, all by herself in her one-room apartment. For the celebration, she had two causes. First, she had every reason to congratulate herself on a major breakthrough in her subversive plans against Gradbank. The other cause was not a worthy one in her eyes – the day happened to be her twenty-seventh birthday.

She was sitting, with her legs tucked under her, in her favorite armchair. A standard lamp was casting around a soft, cozy light. On a small table by the armchair was a one-third empty bottle of Merlot and a plate with some cheese and cookies. What else does a single businesswoman need to celebrate her special occasions? In addition, there was the twinkling of the TV set in the corner – from an old habit Nina kept it turned on, but with sound off. The flashing of silent pictures helped her relax by keeping her eyes thoughtlessly occupied.

Her father had called to wish her a happy birthday. His voice on the phone struck her as tense and coarse. Could it be that he was drinking again? Her heart ached at the thought.

Also, her two girl friends had called – the only two she had left from her university years. Both were steadily married, with children. They updated Nina on their family life and chided her for living like an oyster. “It’s a crime we’re not seeing each other more often. Let’s get together!” Nina agreed but no real gathering was ever arranged. In recent years, her girl friends had been trying hard to fix her up – so that Nina had even reduced her visits to them in the fear of having to maintain an agonizing conversation with yet another ‘colleague of my husband’ or ‘friend of ours who chanced to drop by’. Quite possibly, those eligible bachelors were not all that bad, but the problem was that Nina was horrified by the mere thought of having any relationship with them.

On the screen, the president of the country was delivering a mute speech, gesticulating vigorously. “That’s who I’d like to meet,” Nina said aloud to the TV set. “I’m sure he’s not anything like those characters I’ve known. That’s me – give me the president, I’m not going for less.” She refilled her glass and clinked it against the bottle. “All right, first lady, happy birthday to you once again!”

The wine took effect – the TV picture became fuzzy, and her mind wandered. As always in such cases, she remembered her mother and her school days.

Nina was born into a good, city family. Her father, Yevgeniy Borisovich, was a builder, chief engineer in a construction syndicate, her mother a French teacher in a college. They lived in a spacious three-room apartment which was considered enviable at the time.

An able girl, Nina was breezing through her school studies. Mathematics was her favorite. “That’s my genes working,” her father would say complacently. He taught Nina how to play chess and for some time, the two of them had a game every evening. However, her father soon ceased to enjoy their chess sessions as Nina began winning, and he had a hard time even making a draw. Her father planned to sign her up for serious chess lessons but her mother vetoed the idea. “What kind of occupation is that for a girl? I won’t let Nina become a bluestocking!” Instead, Nina was offered to choose between figure skating and tennis. Nina picked out tennis.

The choice was a fortunate one – the game came easily to Nina, and she was running to her tennis classes eagerly. Very thin, with a figure like a grasshopper’s, she was darting around the court almost always getting in the right place at the right moment. The coach took notice of her, and she was entered into the regional junior tournament. It soon became apparent what made her different from the others – she played a calculated game, figuring it out two strokes ahead and often baffling those obviously stronger than her.

Nina’s tennis career came to an end abruptly. Accidentally, she overheard a conversation between two girls one of whom she had just smashed up on the court. They were talking about her, Nina. “That’s what I call crazy, breaking her neck so!” said the defeated one. “Who wants that stupid cup, anyway? … Me, I didn’t come to tennis for any cups.” They giggled. Nina guessed vaguely why the other girls played tennis. On the court, there were always boys around, and tennis provided lots of opportunities for ‘gluing’, as boys called it, and some girls did, too. The one whom Nina had overheard was pretty, her neat legs under a short white skirt acted like a magnet, and she was a constant object of ‘gluing’ – not only by boys of her age but older guys, too. Yet nobody had tried to ‘glue’ Nina. Ever. “Well, what do you expect of a freak like that?” heard Nina. “Winning cups, that’s all she has. Who will ever look at her? Did you see her knees? Horrible!”

They left, and Nina was still sitting, dumbfounded, trying to take in what she had just heard. That was true, she was a freak. She went up to a mirror and inspected her knees. On her disproportionately long, skin-and-bone legs, her knees looked huge, alien. Horrible, indeed. On her way home, she hurled her tennis racket into the nearest garbage can. At home, she told her parents, without giving any reasons, that she was not going to play tennis ever again.

And she did not, not for over ten years. Then, after her graduation from the university, she once found herself near a stadium and heard familiar noises – the thumping of tennis balls and players’ voices – coming to her through the green hedge. On impulse, she went in, hired a racket and practiced some strokes at the wall. Since then, she came regularly to the court where she played with accidental partners. Surprisingly, her hand and body had not forgotten the tennis lessons she had received in her school years. Her figure had improved since her early teens – it was no longer scraggy or angular, and nobody would think of laughing at her knees. From time to time, men approached her trying to strike up an acquaintance but, faced with blunt indifference on her part, they retreated. However, she had no problems getting taken into a game as she played well – in a committed, concentrated, and powerful way. Rather like a man.

When Nina finished school, the country was being swept by the reforms. Her father said, “Honestly, Ninok, I don’t know what advice to give you. In the former times, I would say, ‘Go into science, you’re totally cut out for that,’ but who wants science now?” Nina applied to the financial university which boasted a huge competition for entry and got admitted without pulling any strings or bribing.

Her university studies were a child’s play to her. Her concerns lay in a totally different area. The problem was, she had never had anyone. No specimen of the male race had ever asked her out for a walk, let alone anything bigger. Meanwhile, girls of her age were dating like crazy and actually getting married. The most advanced ones had even got divorced already. Her mother, who was aware of Nina’s problem, was reassuring her, “Don’t you worry, Ninusya, you’re not missing anything, believe me. Just wait, your time will come.” Nina waited, but her time did not show any signs of coming.

She was no longer the plain little thing that she had been at school, but deep inside, she was still a grasshopper with ugly knees. The boys felt it and kept clear of her. Besides, she was smart – much smarter than all those immature males – and whoever fancied that in a girl?

Everything changed in her life when she was in her fourth year. Her mother died. It was cancer – long neglected, inoperable. It all ended in a few months. Trying to protect her, Nina’s parents were hiding the truth from her, and her mother would not let Nina visit her in the hospital until the time came for a final parting. When she approached the hospital bed and saw an emaciated woman with a grey, wasted face, Nina did not recognize her at first. Only the eyes were not changed – they were her mama’s.

Her mother took Nina’s hand in her own, waxen, transparent one, and smiled. Her smile was not changed either. “Well, how are you, sweetheart?”

Nina cried.

“Don’t cry, sweetheart,” her mother said. “Be a clever girl, don’t cry.” But her own cheek was wet with silent tears running onto the pillow.

“You see how stupid your mother is, leaving you when you’re still so young. There will be no one to help you or give you advice, you’ll have nobody but yourself to rely on. Forgive me, sweetheart.”

Nina burst out sobbing, clinging to her mother’s breast.

“Don’t cry.” With her weak hands, her mother detached Nina from herself. “Stop it, please… Listen to me. Sweetheart, you must promise me two things. Promise you won’t leave papa. He needs you. Promise?” Nina nodded through her tears. “And one more thing…” Mother stroked Nina’s cheek. “Ninusya, please, bear me a granddaughter. A grandson is great, too, but I’d rather have a granddaughter. You will try, right?”

Her mother had never complained of poor health and after she was gone, it took Nina a long time to accept the fact. As she came home from her classes, she would involuntarily prick her ears for mama’s voice, expecting any instant to hear her croon some lines from her beloved Joe Dassin while checking her students’ papers. Et si tu n'existais pas, Dis-moi pourquoi j'existerais… What Nina heard instead was her father coughing in the kitchen where he was sitting for days on end smoking and drinking alone. He was jobless at that time. He and Nina did not talk about mama – what was there to say? – but each felt the other’s pain and suffered for both.

About half a year passed that way. Then she got married to Dima. Dima was the least impressive of the five boys in her group – rather short, pimpled, quiet. The only good thing about him was his surname, Shuvalov. When she first heard it, Nina, who was into Russian history at the time, thought, “I wish I had a count’s surname like that!” Her own surname, far from being count-like, sounded right ridiculous: Kisel. Nina was embarrassed by it. When she asked her father where their surname had come from he said that his great-great-grandfather had been a German immigrant of the name of Kessel, but the clerk that had issued the papers had altered that to his liking. Whether that was true or not, Nina could never understand. Her father appreciated a joke and could have invented it all.

For the first three years, she paid no attention to Dima. Then he started taking a neighboring desk in the library. At the time, they were doing their end-of-course projects and had to spend long hours rummaging in the literature. Finally, Nina took notice of his reddish head, and her memory hinted that he had sat next to her on the last five occasions at least. “My God, can he be…?” she thought. The idea that Dima might be taking interest in her was so stunning to her that she stared at him without blinking. Dima remained motionless, buried in his books, but a deep blush spread all over his cheeks and ears, even neck. Nina was still in shock mentally, but the woman inside her woke up and took the situation under control.

“Dima,” the woman said amiably. “What’s your topic?”

Dima started and came to life. He blurted out the title of his project and asked, “What’s yours?”

Their topics turned out to be very close. She learned afterwards that the coincidence had been arranged by Dima himself who had swopped topics with another student at the cost of an almost new player.

When the proximity of their topics had been established, Dima’s red face expressed a happy amazement after which he fell silent again. The woman in Nina was a little upset by his timidity but she was not about to give up. “Tell me what you’ve done so far,” she suggested.

Provided with such a safe life buoy, Dima clutched at it and never let go. He began recounting eagerly, in every detail, his plan for the project. As she was listening to him with half an ear, Nina scrutinized him feeling a rising excitement in her breast. She had a boyfriend!

Since then, they spent a lot of time together every day sitting in the library and then going home by the underground – luckily, they lived in the same part of the city. After a month, Dima asked her out to the movies. In the theater, when the lights were out, he took her hand in his. Nina did not remove her hand, and that way, hand in hand, they sat through the show. Afterwards, Nina could not remember what the movie had been about.

The next day Dima had the courage to invite her to his place under the pretext of a final discussion of their projects which supposedly was impossible to have in the library. “Mother will be out all night, so we won’t be disturbed.” Nina realized what was going to happen and did not resist the idea although Dima did not at all resemble a man to whom she would lose her virginity in her girlie dreams.

Dima and his mother lived in a small, two-room apartment in a drab, municipal housing unit. Poverty and ideal order reigned there, nothing like the somewhat disorderly home life once created by Nina’s warm-hearted, easy mama, let alone the state of neglect into which Nina and her father’s household had slid after her death.

Dima offered her tea. “Or, maybe, you want some wine? I have a bottle of…” – he ventured but bit his tongue, scared of his own boldness. Nina agreed to tea. Dima seated her on a cheap, threadbare sofa and, after some fussing around, brought a tray with a teapot, two cups and a small bowl of chocolates. Apparently, he had made his preparations for the date.

However, he clearly did not know how to get down to business. When the tea was finished, he started discussing hotly some mutual acquaintances, then told a long, stale joke and laughed at it nervously himself. Then there was a long, painful silence. At last, unable to bear it any longer, Dima reached into his backpack. With a dejected look on his face, he fished out his project paper and embarked on reading some chapter of it to Nina.

Nina was sitting silently, with her eyes cast down. She was all like a taut string.

“Dima, come here.” Nina touched the sofa with her fingers inviting him to move closer. Dima sat by her side without letting go of his project paper. His hands were trembling noticeably. Nina took his paper away from him and put it aside. “Embrace me,” she said softly. Dima put his hands awkwardly round her and kissed her – on the cheek. Nina turned her head and held up her lips to him. It was the first kiss in her life.

It turned out that she was Dima’s first woman, too. He fumbled with her clothes, not knowing the right way to unfasten them and take them off. At last, with some help from her, he got her undressed. Hectically, he laid some bedclothes on the sofa and undressed himself. At the last moment, he darted aside and turned on some music. Apparently, music was an important item on his plan. “Light,” Nina asked. Dima turned off the light. They were immersed in a shadow dissipated only by a bulb in the hall that was left on…

It hardly lasted more than a minute. Nina felt pain and issued a cry. Almost immediately after that, Dima leaned back and, breathing heavily, sank onto the sofa beside her.

Nina was lying on her back, staring at the dark ceiling in bewilderment. “Is that all?” she wondered.

As if in response to her mute question, Dima came to life and resumed his activity – with a little more confidence and less fever this time.

The tape recorder was blaring. God knows how all that would end if it were not for that fatal music. It was because of it that they failed to hear the entrance door open and stirred only when the light went on. In the room, just a couple of steps from the sofa, stood a coated woman with a bag in her hand. Dima’s mother.

With her mouth wide open, the woman was staring at their naked bodies on the sofa. Nina pulled a sheet over herself and uttered, “Good evening.”

The woman gulped and responded, “Good evening.”

Then Dima blurted out, “Mother, this is my fiancée. Her name is Nina. Nina, please meet my mother, Tatyana Yurievna.”

The woman regained her senses. Without a word, she walked to the anteroom to take off her coat, then shifted to the kitchen and from there, she cried to them, “Come down here, let’s have tea!”

They slipped into their clothes and spent half an hour with Tatyana Yurievna in the kitchen. Half dead with shame, Nina kept silent, sitting with her eyes fixed on her cup. Tatyana Yurievna, quite unperturbed outwardly, questioned her son about his university affairs as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Nina traveled back alone, having rejected flatly Dima’s offer to see her home. Luckily, the underground car was almost empty at that late hour and nobody paid attention to a strange girl who laughed and frowned alternately for no apparent reason. In fact, she had a reason – she had become a woman. Moreover, she had become a fiancée.

They got married two months later. It so happened that nobody had really asked Nina whether she wanted to marry Dima. Actually, she was not sure herself. It was not that she had some doubts or was weighing rationally pros and cons – she just yielded numbly to the flow of events. The woman inside her which previously had taken a big step towards Dima’s timid advances was keeping silent now.

When he met Dima, her father was clearly disappointed, but he forced himself to be amiable – told jokes, patted Dima on the back, and poured him vodka. Dima was not at all his idea of a guy for Nina, but there was nothing to be done, it was her decision. Uneasily, her father asked whether they were expecting a baby. Nina answered truthfully that they were not but she could see in his face that he was still doubtful. In his view, it was the only reason that could make his brilliant daughter tie herself down to such a colorless little fellow.

In the meantime, the colorless little fellow was bustling about in great excitement, making arrangements for the registration and wedding. He was happy – as happy as his timid soul could be. The wedding took place in a students’ café where their whole year managed to cram in. Everything was very loud and incoherent.

Nina’s married life began. It was Tatyana Yurievna’s will that the couple live with her. They were afforded the larger of the two rooms – the one with the sofa. Dima and Nina were inseparable round the clock now – traveling to the university in the morning, sitting through the lectures, going back home, having dinner, doing homework.

Tatyana Yurievna was even and civil with her daughter-in-law, but Nina felt an arctic cold emanating constantly from the woman. Obviously, Nina was not the kind of bride Tatyana Yurievna had wished for her only son. Tatyana Yurievna never mentioned that dreadful episode when she had caught them in flagranti but apparently she considered Nina some kind of adventuress and profligate who had lured the innocent Dimochka into her net. As she pondered over that, Nina admitted to herself that such a view was not completely groundless. Also, Tatyana Yurievna’s attitude showed some doubt – as if she did not believe in that marriage and expected every day that Nina would disappear into thin air. As it turned out later, she had been right about that, too.

Nina got used to Dima as people get used to their coat or handbag. He did not rouse any feelings in her – he just always was around. Willy-nilly, they had everything in common – friends, university-related cares, even textbooks and notebooks. Nina helped the not-very-capable Dima to prepare for the exams, and then write his graduation thesis. They were already making plans for their life after university.

Tatyana Yurievna worked in the planning department of some manufacturing company where she was only employed half-time because of the recession. She spent the rest of her day looking after her small household. She did not force her daughter-in-law to do house chores but she did not push Nina away either. At last it was settled between them that for an hour and a half every day, Nina was busy tidying, dusting, washing and scrubbing. Nina’s own loving and over-lenient mother had not prepared her for that, and Nina had some hard time at first, but eventually she got used to doing housework and even got to liking it.

Possibly, her marriage to Dima could cement and take root with time, so that they became a family like any other, but there was a disaster zone in Nina’s married life. It was the conjugal bed – or rather, sofa. Dima performed his duties of a husband with enthusiasm, but for Nina, it was a nightly ordeal. The moment Dima turned off the light and touched her, Nina’s mind conjured up Tatyana Yurievna – with a coat on and a bag in her hand. In addition, the corporeal, not ghostly, Tatyana Yurievna was close by, separated by a thin wall. The sound insulation was almost non-existent in the building, and Nina could hear her mother-in-law tossing and turning in her bed, then getting up, fumbling for her slippers, and walking past their door to the kitchen to take her gastric pills. That happened almost every time Nina and Dima had their intimacy, causing Nina to clench up inwardly.

Once or twice, Nina had heard some girls whisper about the “delightful sex” they had had with their boyfriends. For Nina, there was no delight in sex. There were some unpleasant, even hurtful sensations, a growing bewilderment and disappointment.

One of Dima’s few good qualities was his cleanliness fostered in him by his mother. He took a shower and changed his underwear every day, and his thin, almost transparent skin always smelled of strawberry soap – Tatyana Yurievna’s favorite, which she used on all occasions. Nina grew to hate that smell.

At last, it became unbearable. Nina wanted more than once to have it out with Dima but she never had the heart to. Meanwhile, Dima looked perfectly happy. He clearly thought highly of himself as a husband – undertones of male complacency could be heard in his voice.

Once, as she was buying a pen in a kiosk, Nina saw a brochure on sex techniques. “I’ll take that, too” burning with shame, she pointed at the eloquent cover. In snatches, locking herself up in the toilet, she read the brochure. About one half of it remained enigma to her, but she was staggered by the other half. A whole new world opened to her.

She did not dare to show the brochure to Dima until one day he stayed at home with a cold. As she was leaving for university, Nina tucked the brochure under the pillow in the hope that Dima would find it and read it himself. But it was Tatyana Yurievna who found the colorful booklet. When Nina came back, her mother-in-law met her in the doorway. “I was changing the bedclothes and found this. Apparently, it’s yours.” The woman held out the brochure carefully wrapped up in a newspaper.

It was the end, but Nina made another attempt to save the situation. She asked her father if it was all right if she and Dima came to live with him. Her father was all enthusiastic about the idea and offered to move their stuff the same day. However, when she broached the subject to Dima, she knew at once from the lost look on his face that it was no good. Still, Dima promised to raise the question with Tatyana Yurievna. The two of them had a talk in which Nina was not included. The outcome was that, hiding his eyes, Dima declared to Nina that he could not leave his mother. That night, for the first time since their wedding, they did not have sex.

There was no point in staying with Dima any longer, but through inertia, Nina lived with him for another month – until they defended their graduation theses. The defense went off perfectly for both of them. When she received her red-cover degree certificate, Nina felt liberated – a whole page in her life had been turned, and a new one began. Without even saying goodbye to Dima, she went off to her father’s with a firm intention never to set eyes again on the room with the fateful shabby sofa.

Dima brought down her stuff which fitted in a single bag. He was crushed. The castle in the air that he had built and lived happily in was collapsed now. Made eloquent by his despair, Dima entreated Nina not to leave him. However, he did not even mention the possibility of his moving in with Nina at her father’s. His mother’s control over him was absolute – he could not challenge her will even if his happiness was at stake. “But why? Why?” Dima kept asking. Nina only shook her head silently. She was not going to discuss her sexual problems with Dima – she realized by then that she would have left him anyway. “Sorry, Dima, it’s not going to work,” she said softly but resolutely. How could she explain it all to him? How could she explain why she had married him in the first place? “Sorry, Dima. Don’t take it to heart too much. Everything will be all right with you,” she said as she was turning him out of doors.

They got divorced. As a souvenir from Dima, she now bore his noble surname which she had never changed back. As a souvenir from Tatyana Yurievna, she now had a taste for tidiness and order which she tried to maintain wherever she found herself ever since.