Читать книгу The Smart Girl - Александр Капьяр - Страница 3

Nina lived with her father again, and it was not a joyful life. Her father had changed noticeably over the time of her absence. Not at all old – not yet forty five – he could not find a permanent employment and was getting by doing odd jobs. Worst of all, he had really taken to drink. He sank into self-neglect, was forgetting even to shave, and looked unhealthy, spent. When she saw those changes close up, Nina was appalled. In former times, her father had invariably been a genial person, the soul of every company. Her mother had told Nina once that he had first won her by his amateur ‘hiking’ songs – both of them had practiced some serious hiking in their younger days. Nina was sure that her mother would not have let him sag. With her around, he would have remained the same man – a hard worker, optimist and epicurean philosopher.

This responsibility – to give her father moral support – was Nina’s now, and she felt keenly her ineptitude. She pleaded with her father to stop drinking, had rows with him over it, tried to get him to see some doctors, but all in vain.

Once, in a sober spell, he said to her, “Ninok, stop it, don’t try to save me. Do you think I don’t realize that I am killing myself by drink? I’m doing it consciously. Tell me – what else do I have? I don’t have anything to live for.” “What about me?” Nina cried out, hurt by his words. She knew that she was the apple of her father’s eye, but apparently his love for her was not enough to fill his existence.

Nina got a job in a large, reputable investment firm and soon was absorbed in her work completely. She dreamed of making a rapid career and then… She had a very vague idea of what was to happen then, but she knew one thing for certain – she would find a way to help her father. Above all, he must not remain idle. Nina dreamed that she would study the ways of business from A to Z, accumulate the necessary contacts and then help her father open his own construction company. He was such a fine specialist, a bright mind! He was totally up to it, he only needed a start. Sometimes in her dreams, her father and she started a business together and made a huge success of it. Nina realized how naïve it all was and would be surprised to hear that quite soon her father was actually going to run a business of his own, and she was going to give him a hand in his affairs and then rescue his company.

The encounter that changed her father’s life occurred by accident, in the street. Luckily, he was not drunk. He was just on his way to the nearby wine store when a car pulled over beside him. The horn honked, and as he turned round, he saw somebody wave at him from the window of a posh foreign-made automobile. Yevgeniy Borisovich approached and recognized Simonyan, his former assistant in the construction syndicate. At one time, the two men had worked closely together, had got mutually adjusted, and now they were glad to see each other. Simonyan said that he was as busy as a bee at the moment but promised to find time for a proper get-together shortly. Promises like that are almost never kept, but after a few days Simonyan actually called and invited Nina’s father to his place to crack a bottle and have a chat about old times.

Simonyan lived in a new building of elite design. In his huge apartment, expensive decoration works had been started but not completed, and there was almost no furniture. “Got no time for that. And what’s the point, anyway?” Simonyan chuckled. One of these days I’ll bring home a new missus, and you can trust a woman to change everything to her liking.” He had just been through a divorce. According to him, his ex-wife was amply provided for, and his children were studying abroad.

His entire manner and every word he spoke oozed the satisfaction of a man who had achieved success. In the old times already, the two men had been on a first-name basis, and now Simonyan, who had sized up at once the deplorable state Nina’s father was in, sounded condescending. Still, he was really friendly and plunged willingly into reminiscences together with Yevgeniy Borisovich.

The main thing was said when they had recalled one by one all their mutual acquaintances and, having finished a bottle of superb Armenian cognac, started another one. Simonyan offered Yevgeniy Borisovich a job. Unlike Nina’s father, the man had not got lost after the collapse of their syndicate. In line with the new realities, Simonyan ventured several enterprises, one after another. To start with, he transformed one of the fragments of the syndicate into a small company aimed at doing engineering projects under contract with the city administration. He hustled about in the municipal lobbies day and night, courted the right people and finally managed to get his company written into the city investment program, thus giving his business a good start. His company took off and began to make profit. From that springboard, Simonyan rose and expanded his operations. Now he was edging his way into business of a totally different scale – export of precious metals and other stuff of the kind, all very shady and fabulously profitable. Simonyan needed a reliable man to dump his first company on, and most opportunely, Yevgeniy Borisovich turned up.

Nina’s father was to become a hired employee of his former assistant, but Simonyan assured him that virtually they were going to be partners, and besides, he was planning to go out of that business in the future so that Nina’s father could buy it out and be his own boss. That incredible promise was finally kept, too – apparently, it was not Simonyan’s destiny to deceive Yevgeniy Borisovich.

Long starved for something real to do, Nina’s father plunged headlong into his new job. Simonyan’s company was about ten times smaller than his former syndicate, and feeling confined in it, Yevgeniy Borisovich was digging into every detail with passion. There were many things that could be improved, optimized, both in terms of engineering and in terms of management. Simonyan really gave Nina’s father a free hand. Soaring in his new spheres, he only visited his company on rare occasions. When that happened, he listened with half an ear to the numerous suggestions that Nina’s father had to make and said ‘yes’ to all of them, knowing full well that Yevgeniy Borisovich stood much higher than himself as a specialist. It was only in financial matters that Simonyan had his way.

His new work transformed Yevgeniy Borisovich – he looked younger, straightened out now. Besides, Simonyan was not mean – he paid his manager a decent salary. For the first time in his life, Nina’s father became the owner of a foreign-made car, an assortment of good suits and various trinkets such as a Swiss watch and a golden lighter. He was a man again – even a classy man, one that women would give a lingering look. Nina felt jealous on her mother’s behalf, vexed that the new rise of Yevgeniy Borisovich was not hers to reap. Soon, a real reason for that jealousy cropped up.

The reason was named Lydia Grigorievna. Not a young woman, she was well-groomed and stylish. She worked in some municipal organization, where Nina’s father made her acquaintance as he was getting approval for one of his projects. Nina had not suspected that her father was seeing a woman until the very day when he introduced them to each other in some café. “Listen, Ninok, you see… The thing is, Lydia Grigorievna and I are planning to move in together. What do you think? …”

Nina was seething with rage. She was about to splash the champagne poured out by her father into the well-groomed face of that bitch. How dared she! To take mama’s place! … However, it was not for nothing that Nina’s parents took pride in her precise mind. Her mind reasoned that her father could not live alone. If not that woman, there would be another, so what’s the difference? Lydia Grigorievna was smiling at her ingratiatingly. The woman realized already that Nina meant the world to Yevgeniy Borisovich and could easily wreck her plans. “All I want is for you to be happy,” said Nina to her father raising her glass of champagne. He squeezed Nina’s hand gratefully and kissed her on the cheek.

Lydia Grigorievna settled down in their apartment. A childless widow, alone after her husband’s death, she could devote herself entirely to her new marriage. She had the sense not to make any radical changes to the apartment immediately, but she occupied every free minute in the life of Nina’s father. Yevgeniy Borisovich, who had always been skeptical about theater, turned into a theatergoer: every weekend he and his wife went to see some première. They made some new acquaintances and exchanged visits with them. Lydia Grigorievna was fond of cooking and almost daily, Nina’s father had to taste and praise a new dish of her making.

On the whole, she was not a bad woman and Nina had to admit that she was a good match for her father, but for Nina, it was right impossible to live under the same roof with her. Everything annoyed Nina – the woman’s voice, the odors of her creams in the countless jars with which she crammed the bathroom shelves, her culinary masterpieces… The fact alone that a stranger slept in mama’s bedroom and managed mama’s kitchen infuriated Nina. She made no attempt to break the ice in spite of the eagerness on the part of her father’s new wife. It soon became clear that they had to move apart. By common consent, they sold their apartment and bought two others instead. Nina wound up in a one-roomer in a new, remote built-up area.

It was hard for Nina to say goodbye to the familiar walls that had witnessed almost all her life. She had the feeling that in their old apartment, in spite of the arrival of a new woman, her mother was still present somehow, but now that they had robbed her of her home she had really left them, remaining only in their memories and photos.

They still had their dacha – another important locale in their lives. The dacha was a small plank cottage sitting on a few hundred square meters of sandy land some fifty kilometers from the city. The plot had been allotted to Nina’s father when he had been no boss yet, and everything there had been made by his and mama’s hands. Nina was taken there by her parents every summer all through her school years.

Lydia Grigorievna had no taste for dacha life, so she stayed behind when, one September day, Nina and her father went to visit their plank cottage ostensibly to do some small repair jobs and sort out some old stuff which was kept there, but actually, to have some together time. On the neighboring plots, bonfires of old leaves were being burnt spreading bitter-sweet smoke, and everything was like old times – except that mama was not there. On their way back, Nina’s father suggested uneasily that it made sense to sell the dacha. Nina gave no response to that, and he dropped the matter.

For a couple of years, things got more or less settled down. Nina’s father worked a lot, and the company expanded. When Nina visited him at his place, he would have a couple of drinks and talk enthusiastically about his plans. He looked young and happy. Lydia Grigorievna did not stop them from seeing each other but she was always present at their meetings and took every opportunity to show – by some word or gesture – that it was her home and her man. Nina detested her as before, but deep inside, she accepted the woman and reconciled herself to the fact that her only family – her dear papa – had to be shared with someone else.

At work, she was doing fine. Within a short period of time, she distinguished herself from a group of young business school graduates who had been recruited as the company had expanded. At first, they all were attached as trainees to experienced analysts and loaded with routine, technical operations. Nina’s mates complained about the work load, resentful at not getting a chance to show their true worth. They all were ambitious and fancied themselves financial geniuses. Nina was ambitious, too, but she never complained. Instead, she kept grinding through heaps of standard computations, polishing her skills to perfection and mastering computer software. In the evenings, she ploughed through specialized financial literature focusing on the construction industry finances. Soon Nina was marked out by her superiors who started charging her with independent tasks.

For a long time after her divorce from Dima, Nina did not have anyone. She did not feel any need for sex – Dima had not wakened her to that. The idea of going to bed with a man was neither repugnant nor exciting to her. In her narrow world, there was no room for anything but work. She did not consider herself deprived in any way, neither was she interested in the opinion of her friends whom she was seeing two or three times a year at somebody’s birthday. And yet… One evening, as she was walking through a park to her house, she saw a kissing couple. It was an incident of no importance, of course, but a hot wave spread suddenly in her breast. Nina quickened her pace, went up to her apartment, took a shower, had some supper and got down to her financial surveys. However, her mind refused to take in the numbers and graphs; instead, it kept picturing two intertwined bodies in the evening dusk. It was at least half an hour before she could get to the meaning of what she was reading. Ever since, she would turn away painstakingly from any couple that she saw in the street or in the underground, be it a couple which were quite innocently holding hands.

One night, somebody called her by mistake. It was a late hour, and Nina was in bed preparing for sleep – relaxing her body and brain by a special technique that she had picked up from some book. The idea was to talk to each of her organs in turn – to thank them for the day’s work and bid them good night. It was her heart that she was talking to when the phone rang. Bewildered, Nina answered. A deep male baritone said, “Ninochka, baby, is that you? … At last! How are you, pet?” Somehow, Nina was slow to realize that it was a mistake, and then it took her some time to make the man realize it. He kept saying, “Hey, baby, stop kidding me. You’re mad at me, eh? … Don’t be mad, sweetie. I love my pet.” On hanging up, Nina snorted. ’Baby’, ‘pet’… How vulgar! What kind of woman allowed a man to call her that? Nina resumed her going-to-sleep routine but it did not work as it should – she lay awake for a long time afterwards although she had talked to each of her organs for three times. When it was well after midnight, she admitted to herself that she did not mind being called ‘pet’ – even by someone who did not possess such a velvety baritone.

Then Igor happened in her life. About ten years older than she, he was a section manager in the same company. Nina had never dealt with him work-wise and hardly knew him. The two of them hooked up all of a sudden at a celebration of the company’s tenth anniversary. Nina found herself next to Igor at the table. He was attentive to her, entertained her with incessant jokes, and drank a lot. Nina also drank – too much by her measure. They danced, took part in some contests and games. Then they drank again. Eventually, Igor wound up in Nina’s apartment. Both of them were very drunk, hardly able to move, so sex was out of the question. Nina bedded Igor down on a cot she had put up in the kitchen and collapsed right away onto her bed without even changing into her nightie.

The next morning, she was woken up by a rattling sound coming from the kitchen – somebody was using the kettle there. Nina’s head was splitting. She remembered that she had a man in her home – that she had brought the man herself – but she had absolutely no idea as to why she had done that. Suffering from a terrible headache and suspecting herself of insanity, Nina dragged herself to the kitchen. Igor was in a wretched state, too – he had drunk about three times as much as she had and was having a severe hangover. The two of them made some super-strong coffee and drank it while chewing aspirin pills.

Nina asked Igor if he wanted to make a call home to tell them not to worry about him but the man waved the suggestion aside. He was married and had a son, but for a few months already he had been separated from his family. “What the hell does she want from me? Stupid skirt,” Igor said meaning his wife. “And there’s her dear mother, too… You see, they’ve totally driven me to the edge with their nagging.” Igor was staying in the apartment of some friend who had gone abroad. “So nobody’s going to miss me,” he summed up with a wry grin.

Nina took a close look at him. He was rather well-built, though with a noticeable belly. Not very good-looking at his best, he looked a real fright now that he was having a bad hangover. However, Nina realized why she had brought him to her place – as at the party the night before, she felt at ease and relaxed with that man as if they had known each other for a long time.

When they had finished their coffee, Nina saw him out. They did not as much as kiss goodbye, but on Saturday that same week he came to her place again and they became lovers.

Nina asked herself afterwards whether her relationship with Igor could be called love. In fact, she had nothing to compare it with – her marriage to Dima did not count, and she did not believe in love as depicted in movies and novels. Every weekend, Igor came over and stayed overnight. Nina got used to his visits and anticipated them. While normally managing with ready meals from the microwave, she did real cooking for Igor. She would serve him and then watch him eat with her head rested on her knuckles. Having made some tea the way he liked it, she filled a large cup which she had bought specially for him. As he was drinking his tea, she listened to his stories. Igor was great at telling stories – he remembered lots of funny episodes, and showed admirably their colleagues, the company’s bosses, and the clients. Often there was more to his stories than just empty fun – Nina learned from them the backstage ways of business, something that one did not read about in books or articles.

In the company, they were hiding their relationship – Igor wanted it to be that way, and she did, too. As a rule, things like that get out soon, but it is usually because the woman who is having an affair with a colleague babbles it out to some friend herself. Nina did not share her personal life with anyone – neither had she any friends in the company – so her intimacy with Igor remained secret.

Igor was an experienced man – there was no need to slip him brochures on sex. In bed, he employed a wide range of techniques, and Nina allowed him to do anything, although what she really liked was the prelude – their first hugs and caresses, as they were dressed yet and he was her good friend Igor rather than an expert male. Also, she liked going to sleep by his side when, having accomplished all his feats, he became human again. “Sleep well, kid,” he would say, kissing her. “Well, I guess, ‘kid’ is better than ‘pet’,” she smiled to herself, breathing in his agreeable and already so familiar smell.

Nina and her father once arranged to have a meeting after work – Yevgeniy Borisovich started to take his daughter seriously as a specialist and meant to ask her advice on some bank loan matter. Having arrived at the office building where she worked, he waited for her in the street. When Nina came out to meet him, Igor happened to be around, too. Embarrassed, Nina introduced the two men to each other, and as they were shaking hands, was struck by their semblance – close in height and hair color, they had the same voice quality, the same type of starting baldness and the same manner of smiling.

An educated girl, Nina had read about Freud’s teaching. She shuddered at the thought: could it be that, being unconsciously attracted to her father, she had found a substitute for him in Igor? She rejected the thought with indignation but was never able to put it out of her head. One evening, after a hard working day, they were sitting at table in her kitchen, drinking tea. The TV set in the corner was on, in mute mode. It showed a beatnik-looking guy who was singing to his own guitar accompaniment. “Turn the sound on, please. I want to listen,” Igor asked. “You know, in my younger days I did some singing in an amateur way, even wrote songs of my own. If you like, I’ll bring a guitar next time and sing a couple for you.” “No!” Nina cried out frightened by the discovery that Igor was like her father in that, too. Igor was surprised and clearly hurt.

Those freudist fears made it more difficult for her to make love to Igor. The inward clenching that had possessed her in her marriage to Dima was back again – as she got in bed with Igor, she involuntarily thought of her father, and her trying to drive those thoughts away only made it worse. Apparently feeling something, Igor reduced his male program – gave up his attempts to inflame her with his skill. They would sit in the kitchen chatting until late at night and then, after a brief sex, go to sleep. Nina liked it that way.