Imprint of Heart. Illumination with love

2. New Meetings

Two years of study passed unnoticed. But after the first course there were complications. Lucy was sick. The sudden death of a blind mother was unsettled. The whole household was on her. It was necessary to cook, to wash, and to clean the apartment. To do this, it took time, but it was almost not there.

Lucy and during her mother’s life helped her, but she did not suspect that everything would not be so easy when the native person died. The blind father was a weak support and continued to teach Braille in a school for blind children.

Her nerves shook, she began to smoke and because of this often hurt. She had to skip classes. It so happened that they did not allow Lucy to pass the winter session, and they offered to take an academic leave at the dean’s office, otherwise she would be expelled on poor grades. Academic leave was issued without unnecessary ceremony. It was necessary to work a year, not forgetting about studying, to read that did not have time. Uvarova went to work to the post as the postal operator. There was no special preparation, although she had to learn the speed. The work was replaceable. Sometimes, about once a week, she had to go out into the night.

At the post Lucy was not tired; she even liked to be a conductor of thoughts and feelings. When she picked up a bunch of letters, it seemed that she was holding all of Russia in her hands. Joys, sorrows, grieves, victories, failures – all these fit on ordinary sheets of paper, despite the fact that the Internet has conquered the whole world, the letters did not decrease.

There was more work for the holidays, so they did not indulge in the days off, but the vacations were paid doubly, and the money to Lucy was very useful. She wanted to dress nicely, buy model shoes, and generally look no worse than others. The collective was purely female, even the chief of the shop was a woman, however, several men of retirement age worked at the delivery.

Lucy befriended one girl. Her new girlfriend was Marina. She came to the city from an area where she had elderly parents. She lived here with her aunt. Aunt helped Marina get a job and wanted her to go to college, because she said “now you can not break through with school education”. But Marina did not think about any studies, she met Alik, and devoted all her free time to him. Alik was an Azerbaijani and, apparently, was going to marry. Lucy knew all the details of their relationship, up to what he was wearing, and how much each of his things cost.

Lucy also wanted to get acquainted with some nice male representative, but to ask Marina about this Lucy was shy, and there was practically no time for walks. She did not want to leave the university before the time, especially since Marina was younger than Lucy, and Lucy was too proud to drop herself in the eyes of a friend younger than herself for two years. Therefore, Lucy kept mum, and when the conversation came about her personal life, she tried to translate into another topic, which she successfully managed.

Soon Lucy got acquainted with Natasha and Larissa. Communicate with them was interesting. Natasha was older than all of them. She was twenty-five years old, serious, but her appearance caused a smile: small and very plump, like a donut. She traveled twice to the Czech Republic and told many interesting things about her trips, about the sights of the Czech Republic, about the castles, the palaces of Emperor Charles IV, the church of St. Vitas, the picture gallery of the Prague Castle.

She came to the post office by accident; she was a photographer by profession. But for some unknown reasons she left the photo studio, where she worked before. Larissa was her constant companion. They were fond of movies and often went to the cinema together. They were interested team wise. Familiar guys they probably did not have. Larissa was younger than her friend and prettier. Soon Lucy got acquainted with another woman, who was called Katya. During the break, she smoked cheap Magna cigarettes and boasted that she was buying a cigarette from her daughter Natasha, who worked with them. During the work Lucy met almost all the team. There were employees who worked at the post office for ten, or even fifteen years. To them, the chief of the workshop, Aleksandra Petrovna, treated with special respect.

The year passed by unnoticed. She worked on shifts, studying, reading fiction and wanted to learn, see, and do as much as possible. Walking in the air was minimized, so if the second shift ended a little earlier, she was walking home. At work, too, often walked on foot, so as not to deprive her of the pleasure of breathing fresh air. Lucy dressed modestly.

Once while she was working at the post office there was a strange case. The operator Natasha, who received communal payments, did not come out on her shift. They forgot about her forever, but along with her, a large sum of money disappeared from the cash register. On that ill-fated day, strangely enough, the encashment was delayed. All the day’s earnings, left on the table in a gray-green tarpaulin, disappeared completely together with the package when Larissa went out to meet the detachment of guards with automatic weapons, which was called in order to clean up the premises for visitors.

Nobody wanted to go out, and everyone was indignant that the working day set by the administration was too short. Natasha calmed down the customers and made order with her eyes on the routine. Once she came out when Larissa asked that the neighboring car repair shop not “stare” at the windows. The scandal dragged on. Encashment left with nothing, Natasha wrote an explanatory note and went home in a terribly bad mood. The next day she did not appear at all at work. All suspicions of missing money fell on her.

The investigation interrogated all employees, except for Natasha, who simply blatantly robbed this post. The case was conducted by a woman in a Renault-Megane car from the criminality’s department, which was embedded in their team as an operator, so that all employees were happy to put over her all responsibility for the mail. It turned out that the private detective and investigator in one person – Tatiana Ivanova – took the side of the missing Natasha.

When the next day after the disappearance of three hundred thousand rubles Ivanova began to search all the safes, she accidentally found an empty bag of collectors in the dust under the safe, and near, wrapped in an old newspaper, the missing amount. Larissa and Lucy were assigned to recalculate the money. The whole operation took away an hour or so from them. Then Tanya called the administration and happily reported:

“The case of the loss of encashment can be closed. Some dwarf threw it. Do you have such specialists in the database?”

At the other end, someone was looking for something for a long time, and finally the detective loudly proclaimed: “I’ll come, we’ll play solitaire.”

In her report to the authorities there was one miscalculation, she did not take into account neighboring private enterprises, and justified her evidence solely on the speculation of postmen and operators.

Lucy’s jaw squeaked with tension when she heard the whole story, because she knew all the details of the case. Alexandra Petrovna alternated her disagreement with obscene language, but continued to work and even delivered a bottle of Bosco Italian champagne with a peach taste to settle relations with postmen and Lucy, who simply had a desperate situation. The investigation in search of the vanished Natasha has reached a dead end.

She disappeared suddenly. No one was hoping that she would appear. Several times they were called from the police and even the prosecutor’s office for a month, but the girl seemed to have dissolved. They were told that it turned out that she was married to a university lecturer – the son of a professor. Her husband had an older brother, a Ph. D. student. Lucy remembered that she had heard about this family of physicists, where they all devoted themselves to science. Soon they with Larissa visited a low house without a garden and a courtyard where the newlyweds lived. Acquainted with the youngest of the Skripals, who was very friendly, he invited the girls to the table.

“No, no,” Lucy hurried, and Larissa added modestly: “Natasha loved children very much; maybe she went to work in a nursery or a kindergarten?”

“Who told you about this?” answered Eugene, smiling sweetly. “She had health problems. I sent her to be treated abroad, to Germany, where the Russian tsars were vacationing, to Baden-Baden, and she would be back soon. Then she will go to work. Imagine having paid for this pleasure a thousand dollars plus road and various documents. It turned out almost one and a half bucks.

“Where did you get that kind of money?” Larissa said imperiously, crouching on the edge of the stool at the front door.

They did not meet a more miserable home in life. A cobwebbed ceiling, gray walls, a dirty veil on an old sofa. On the table, eaten by a scrub, there were cans of canned food and bread crumbs. In the corner was a stove used to store things. In the passage between the room and the hallway there was a gas cooker for two hot plates, where there was an empty pan.

“The millionaire was killed,” the host replied glumly. “Try it yourself. I do not have anything to pay for the house and electricity. My parents have died long ago; she and I have no other relatives.”

“Did your father teach at Physics department of the University? I met such a name in the list of teachers,” Lucy became interested in surprise. “He read us lectures on physics at the first course.”

“No, this is a mistake. It is either a namesake, or a distant relative. I have no one and the point.”

Lucy did not like his familiar tone at once, and a scrawny smile resembling a wolfish grin.

The girls went off upset that they did not know the details of the life of their employee. Most likely, she cohabited with this Zheka, as he presented himself to his wife’s friends. Neither the one nor the other from Natasha heard of any husband. So, the boyfriend has appeared recently and at once has entered the rights of the husband and the lover simultaneously.

Soon the police stopped the inquiry. And one day Larissa accidentally informed Lucy that she had met with Skripal, and they were about to sign marriage contract.

“How is Natasha?” Lucy was surprised, worrying when they came back after the shift.

“And she stayed there, in this state forever,” Lara explained. “They have the opportunity to get a job as migrants. And we have already arranged our accommodation and will register soon.”

“Fast!” Lucya rejoiced. “Will not it be disgusting for you to live with this scumbag?”

“Why? He promised me a local residence permit and treated me to wine. It is difficult to imagine that such a person will be my husband.”

“What a man he is. A real beast! And the house is about to collapse.”

“Are you envious of my happiness?”

Larissa laughed and shook the snow off the collar of her sheepskin coat.

“Do whatever you want!”

They broke up. A few days later, Larissa called and told them that their house was on fire, and all her husband’s documents and belongings were burnt. She will spend the night with relatives in the hostel.

Suddenly, Zheka appeared on the post with his girlfriend, and they stayed overnight, where there were no surveillance cameras, that is, in the office of the postmaster, where Larissa had an access, since she managed to become a deputy in a short time.

Tears will not help for sorrow. Everyone sympathized with the young people. The house was going to restore and allocated from the trade union committee money for repairs, like fire victims.

Larissa began an affair with Zheka. They bought a second-hand foreign car, somehow repaired the house for money, allocated by the team. All employees – operators and postmen – accurately handed over two thousand, which amounted to thirty thousand rubles. Zheka did not work and lived well at the expense of the concubine: he got drunk and threatened with reprisal “to all the neighbors who planned to come to visit them.” This story was presented by Lara when investigators came to her home.

On her return from the academic vacation, Lucy got into another social environment.

She became friends with her former fellow students, so she did not feel comfortable in the new group. They seemed like children to her. After a year of work, Lucy understood much, became more serious. Life no longer seemed so cheerful and bright as it was before.

It was not very difficult to pass the “tails” exams over. The girl did a lot and worked hard throughout the year. At the last courses the studies went smoothly. Lucy spent all her scholarship on herself.

Her father bought food, and she cooked. Lucy was able to cook quickly and deliciously. She liked occasionally to pamper her father with some delicacy. He was not cranky and ate everything that Lucy had given him.

After the third year, the study went much easier, since the main foundation of knowledge was already laid. Lucy knew almost all teachers; she was used to the requirements.

The group, with whom Uvarova studied after the forced leave, consisted of ten girls and six boys.

Gradually, she was recognized as “their own mutual like-minded girlfriend” and she was elected the monitor. Discos were rare, it was very difficult to get there, but, as an elder, she could at any time get a ticket.

Several times she and her group mates visited the café “Student”, where dancing took place. She liked the music of modern, fashionable authors, rhythm, and tempo.