Читать книгу Lonely Place America. Novel-in-Stories - Ирина Борисова - Страница 6

Members of families take an active part arranging their close people’s good fortune. They often come to my marriage agency or send letters.

Once I have received a letter from a mother of a seventeen year old school-girl. «Dear Madam,» was written in the letter. «My daughter graduates from school this year. She is a very good girl and has only good marks for all ten years of her studying. I tried my best raising her, put a lot into her education, and now I think it’s time to find her a husband abroad. I have a favour to ask you. I would prefer to view all the candidates myself and to have the possibility to decide to what extent this or that one is suitable for my daughter.» A picture of her daughter was enclosed, and there was also an amplification that men should send their letters firstly to the mother for her preliminary decision. Nobody took the risk of such a way of acquaintance. The girl did not receive any letters and the mother called me afterwards and blamed my bad work.

Another mother rushed into my office and looking at her watch told very fast that she had to visit two more agencies that day. She added that her daughter herself was in Italy that time but the man she visited was boring and greedy, worked much, did not entertain the girl enough and did not buy her enough presents and that’s why her daughter did not wish to accept his proposal. «What for?» the mother agreed, «We ourselves have a grey life here, what for to change for the same?» When I asked if she really thought that men in the West could care only of entertainments and presents the mother said that there was no reason then to leave for abroad, it was too boring for girls to live there without even presents as a compensation.

The third mother came to me and told a sad story about her thirty year old, very shy and lonely daughter to whom she could not even hint at such a place as a marriage agency. The girl would be astonished and would certainly refuse and her mother came in secret promising to settle it somehow if there was somebody interested. She brought a picture of her daughter in a national Caucasian suit taken ten years ago where only a third of the girl’s face was seen out of an extremely high cap. When I asked to bring another picture the mother promised to take it somehow secretly also as if for another purpose. She thanked me, wished my agency good luck and never came back.

Once a little girl with a school bag appeared from behind my door. I asked her if she confused my office with something else but she shaked her head negatively and said she knew where she had come. The girl came in, sat at the couch as an adult and told that her Mom had cut my advert from a newspaper, that Mom would dream to get acquainted with somebody but was shy to come herself, that she was always such, I should know. The girl took a picture out of her bag and showed to me saying: «This is all our family.» A lot of people were presented at a group photograph. Three looking-very-similar ladies, as the girl explained, her Mom, Granny and Great grandmother, the girl herself, and two wonderful baby twins being held each by Granny and Great grandmother. The girl’s Mom was in the very center looking into the camera as the group leader. «Our family is very amicable,» said the girl confidently. «We need only Dad. And please write there that we can go abroad only all together.» I nodded, wrote everything she wished and the girl left very satisfied finally asking me just to delay a little displaying of the picture as she had to finish the school term before their departure.

I remember also two ladies in large fur-coats, the mother and the aunt, furiously blaming their daughter’s and niece’s ex-husband, enumerating his crimes from which I understood only unsuccessful selling of a good apartment somewhere in the North. And an old man looking for a ready-made husband for his pregnant great granddaughter just to her childbirth.

They were all very different but similar in their sincere wish to arrange their close people’s happiness. And leaving me after filling in the forms they all seemed quite sure that indeed only a few steps separated their relatives that moment from their happy future.