Lonely Place America. Novel-in-Stories

A lady-neighbour from the next apartment stopped beside the window and started a conversation about the good weather. The girl spoke Finnish not very well and understood not much. Still she understood when lowering her voice the lady started to speak about the man she visited. The lady whispered something about the man’s ex-wife and the girl understanding not very well asked the lady to come in and to repeat.

And having quickly moved to the door and let the lady come in, the girl learned that the man once had an evil wife to whom he left the house of his parents and all his property while leaving, and he himself rented that miserable apartment and had taken with himself only his red old cat.

When the lady mentioned the cat the girl immediately remembered that the window in the room remained opened. She ran back into the room but, alas, the window had flown open by the draught and the cat was absent. The girl looked under the sofa and the bed, ran out into the street and called the cat there but it did not help – the cat disappeared.

She did not know how to tell the man about it. When, blaming herself, she told him as soon as he came in, he did not say anything bad but told the girl that though the cat was never let outside, he hoped that his pet should return. All the evening both the man and the girl walked under the slight rain about the streets around the house and also far away, they called the cat, everything was vain.

Late in the evening when it started already raining heavily the girl stood at the window looking into the darkness and the man sat on the couch in front of an unswitched TV. The girl thought that she brought there only the misfortune, she thought about the red old cat hiding she had no idea where under that heavy rain; she remembered her own cat in Russia, imagined that the same happened with her cat too, thought that very soon she would leave for her cat which quite safely was with her mother but the man would stay alone without even a cat he could take care of and having thought about it she started crying. The man did not move and said nothing, she wished to stop but she could not, and he stood up, came up to her, stood beside for a while and hugged her indecisively.

They both spent that night in her bedroom. He firstly comforted her saying that the cat would return. Later, hugging her tightly, he whispered into her ear that the woman they saw in the market was his ex-wife, that he understood she never loved him but could not understand why she hated him so severely. All their family life she repeated that he was good for nothing and he himself already started to believe in it. After the divorce he preferred to leave her the house and everything only not to communicate any more. But when she somehow found out that he decided to invite a Russian girl, she laughed and she told everybody that Russian girls could be interested in nothing else but his money until they know how little that money is.

He did not wish to believe in all that but still believed, he wished to find good in life but already did not hope, he wished to become happy and could not even try as that evil woman poisoned everything. And the girl also hugged him tightly as if trying to defend, sobbed yet but already smiled and whispered that since that time everything would be okay and there would be no more reason to worry.

The Romantic Interview

I wished to include a romantic interview of one of the ladies into our Finnish marriage catalog, to wake up more romantic feelings in men and to increase the quantity of customers. I asked for this interview one of the girls, a secretary, she refused, said that she was not capable of expressing herself well verbally. Then I asked another girl, a hair-dresser at a famous salon, she also refused, said that too many people knew her here and there, that she preferred to keep silence. Then I asked the third girl, a surgeon. She immediately agreed and came to me just that evening.

She looked a little bit strict but brought a very beautiful picture of herself for the catalog. We sat together on the couch, having coffee, she asked if it was really possible to marry that way, I replied that the percent of marriages was not high, but nobody knew who would be lucky and a romantic interview could help. So we started.

I asked her if there was romance in her previous marriage (she was divorced). She laughed, responded that her ex-husband never understood her and helped not much, he was from people sure in one-two things all their life, she had to study in the university, to look after her little daughter, to work and to cook and to wash his clothes simultaneously, she finally asked her husband to leave.

I asked if there was any romance in her current life. She laughed again, said that that time she was the manager of a department of the hospital, that work took a great place in her life, that she was already capable of doing all the operations being done in the hospital, that she had to work so much with these miserable wages that she had no time for anything else, even for her daughter, and that’s why she started to think about marriage to the west – if she had new children she would devote herself to them having the possibility to live a normal family life at last.

I asked if she really had nobody in her life at least to dream about after the divorce and what was her attitude towards men on the whole that time. She replied that she had a lot of male friends, that she was not able to make friends with women and to chat with them about different rubbish but it was possible to discuss interesting medical cases with her male colleagues or, for example, to discuss works of German psychologist Eric Bern whom she admired. She added that if she regarded men from the point of view of possible future marriage she did not think any more she could be happy in Russia. She said Russian men lost themselves in that disorder, drank much, could not provide the family that’s why she decided to move to the West.

I asked if she thought it could be romantic to have a husband from another country with another language or if she supposed any problems could happen connected with it. She said she did not ever think there could be any problems as the Russians themselves always were the mixture of nationalities, she met her Finnish colleagues and they seemed very sensible and polite.

I asked if she thought she could fall deeply in love with one of her Finnish colleagues for example and maybe it could change all her world-outlook. She said she did not think it was anyhow possible at her age (she was thirty two), the main thing she wished to find was mutual respect and understanding, understanding of the necessity of raising children, mutual help and support.

I wondered if she really did not believe in love in the sense that it was something one could not imagine and predict in advance and she replied that she really did not understand what that concept meant, that what really existed in the world from her point of view was common sense and expediency and it was of course much more reasonable to live not all alone, but with a family, to be supported by someone and to support them to make life easier for both.

I asked what she thought about the deepest grief which a person having lost his beloved spouse could feel till the end. She replied that if people lose each other in a younger age they could comfort themselves very fast having found somebody else. As for old people they really could not be on their own yet, that’s why they grieved so deeply, that was a reasonable medical explanation.

I asked then if she really hoped that such an interview could help her to find some romantic partner. She smiled, stood up, said that I might write what I wished, thanked, parted and left and I stayed in my office alone.

Just that moment my Finnish partner called and I told him about the romantic interview still being absent and being in a hurry to complete the catalog my partner offered to place there more pretty faces instead of the interview then.

And we did so. And a very beautiful picture of this young lady-surgeon that she brought for the interview was placed just on the cover. She did not at all look strict in the picture, on the contrary, there was something very romantic in the expression of her eyes and maybe it awoke lot of romantic aspirations in the men and the quantity of our customers was really increased.

The Island

Natasha lived with her little daughter in a St. Petersburg communal flat together with many other neighbours. The block was situated in one of St. Petersburg’s noisy avenues. Windows of three rooms faced the avenue where trucks and trams rolled day and night. The fourth room faced a green quiet yard but an old woman living there though being lucky to have a good room had a bad character, eavesdropped on conversations, gossiped and grumbled all the time about other neighbours’ kids making noise in the hall or about the family on duty that did not make weekly cleaning satisfactory.

The flat was crowded with so many people. Natasha’s daughter and neighbours’ kids always ran and cried in the hall. Bicycles and wash-basins hung on the walls, sometimes there was a queue to the bathroom or to the cooker to cook. The young couple with two kids felt overcrowded most of all in their single room, Natasha knew these young people hoped only that when sooner or later the grumpy old woman or the old man from another room left for a mercy house or even further their rooms would become free and it would be possible to occupy them as there was the appropriate right according to the law.

The old man was a former sea captain. That neighbour was Natasha’s good friend – he was always glad to see both Natasha and her daughter in his room. They liked to visit him for tea in the evenings. There were pictures of ships and boats on the walls of his room, big tropical shells and overseas souvenirs on the shelves of his old furniture. Natasha’s daughter liked to play with the sea shells, and had already broken some of them accidentally but the old captain did not curse, he used to say that it was for good luck and let the girl continue examining the shells and put them to her ear, listening to the noise of the sea.

The old captain survived a stroke. His legs worked poorly, he moved slowly just about the flat, the noisy avenue below was all that remained from his so broad in former times world. When the sun started to appear in his room in the spring he used to open the window and put his face under the sun rays, closed his eyes and imagined that he was at sea again and the roar of trucks and trams below was the roar of the sea waves. His wife died long ago, he had no children, his niece came once a week, brought him some food. Natasha also helped, bought him bread and milk, washed, cleaned his room. The old man’s niece always convinced him to enter the mercy house but Natasha, being aware what mercy houses in Russia really were, told his niece every time that the old man was quite alright on his own and she was there each moment if something was necessary for him.

Natasha was a biologist, she loved nature, plants, animals, insects – everything that lived its own life in the world. In former times she worked in the Botanical Academy, but after perestroyka the wages there became smaller and smaller till she was working only for bus fare. Natasha started to work as a trade agent of a cosmetic company: visiting offices and different institutions she sold cremes and lipsticks, it was not easy having a child, the old man helped her, watching her girl when she slept, feeding and playing with her after she woke up, giving Natasha the possibility to run about the city with a heavy bag full of products from which she tried to sell as much as she could.

Natasha’s parents lived far away, nobody except the old captain could help her. Looking after her daughter, selling cosmetics for a living she had no time for any personal life outside the flat, all her personal contacts besides casual customers were made of the flat’s inhabitants. The young couple, though close to her by their age, were not close by spirit. They were too economical, bought only wholesale, talked how to spend money for useful things, not in a silly way just for pleasure.

Natasha’s conversations with the old captain were different. The old man often told her about his sea voyages, about exotic archipelagos that his ship used to visit, where it was warm all the time, and there were tropical sunsets, blue birds and beautiful silver fish. Natasha told the captain about her unhappy marriage when her husband left her just before the childbirth; later he neither saw his daughter, nor helped. Natasha guessed for the future and did not expect anything good as there was nothing good in the past. The old captain smiled, clapped her shoulder and used to say that one could never know what would be around the corner, that her young age was happiness itself. As to him, he was already happy just with the walls of his room, with his pictures, with the sun rays from the window, with their quiet conversations, with her daughter’s sleep that he guarded, even with the neighbours’ quarrel in the kitchen. Any trifle belonging to life could be appreciated in his age.

Once, distributing her cosmetics, Natasha found herself in a marriage agency office and while the lady manager was examining Natasha’s lipsticks and perfumes, she, in turn, gave Natasha application forms of Americans wishing to get acquainted with Russian girls. Looking through biographies and pictures Natasha suddenly came across the name of the archipelago the old captain told her about. She saw the picture of a smiling man, it was written there that he was an American engineer working on the island, living there with his little daughter and looking for a loving wife and a kind mother for his child.

Wondering why she was doing it, Natasha copied his address. In the evening she told the captain about it: it was not easy for her to explain to the old man what the marriage agency really meant as having no possibility of going out he missed many features of new post-Soviet life. Nevertheless, smiling and joking in his own inoffensive manner, the old man encouraged Natasha to write. He remembered that once his ship was really being unloaded in that archipelago, Soviet sailors were not allowed to enter the shore, still they all had time to notice how beautiful those islands were and how kind and careless the local people were there.

And Natasha wrote her letter and started to wait for the reply. She wrote that maybe the wish to make their children happy could draw the American and her together. And it really seemed to her that something should change in her life finally, and while she waited for the American’s reply her conversations with the old captain were rolling around that island.

She did not seriously admit the possibility of moving there, but she just imagined palms and exotic birds she somehow touched by her letter and thought how many wonderful things were there in the world she had no possibility to know. And the old captain thought, looking at her dreamy face, that if she really moved to the island he should certainly leave his room for the mercy house where his own life area would be narrowed to a bed in a crowded ward. He knew that both old men in deep sclerosis and those like him were kept together there. And the old captain already started to consider what two or three books and what pictures he would take with him and wondered if it would be allowed to open windows there, if he would be able to feel yet the warmth of the sun rays.

But the American did not reply. Natasha could not know that the mother of his daughter, who betrayed and left him, came back and he forgave her and stopped his search which he really started in order to prove to his disloyal wife that he did not suffer at all and did not need her either.

After two months of expectations Natasha stopped waiting for his reply. The young couple who also knew everything from the gossiping old woman were disappointed as they very much looked forward both for Natasha’s and the old man’s departure to occupy their rooms.

Since that time Natasha was usually silent while she had their evening tea, she sat thinking about all the hardships and problems awaiting ahead. Looking at his pictures the old man thought that he would really give up everything to see a smile on her serious face. And he comforted her saying that something good would surely happen in her life very soon and the only thing one should do was to hope for better.

Story about Masha

When you read this story you will maybe ask me: What for did you told it? It will not be a sweet story about a happy marriage of a Russian girl and western guy. It will be something just on the contrary though it has a happy end. I would like to tell it maybe to add some realistic details about things that happen around our introduction service.

She came to my agency as many girls come for the first time, very interested, not very brave. Some girls are restrained and tell not much, some of them tell their life story at once. She was from such. In fifteen minutes I already knew that she was twenty eight, never married, that she had some men in her life and all these men were married. All they told her that they were very unhappy in their family-lives, all asked her to feel sorry for them and every time she swallowed this bait, their exhausted souls relaxed warmed by her faithful attitude, then they remembered about their sense of duty, asked her to forgive them and returned to their evil wives and, of course, to children. Maybe it was so with her because her parents divorced, her father left them when she was eight and both she and her brother thought they were «bad children», that’s why their father left them as good children always keep their parents beside. This idea being in her subconscious maybe made her thinking she did not deserve the best but had to be grateful even for such a trifle as the temporary attention of a married person. So at twenty eight, which is considered too old for a girl in Russia (girls usually marry around twenty here) she had no husband, no children, and she was eager to have a child and decided to look for a husband in the West and came to my agency.

«I would have a child without a husband if I could afford it,» she assured me. Yes, of course I knew that she having a very good education and a very intelligent creative profession now had to work as a cleaner. I also knew that she spent a lot of time to get her university diploma while working simultaneously and when she graduated it turned out that her profession was not needed by anybody in Russia during the time of the crisis.

I remembered this girl, picked her out from many others. Her smile was shy, her eyes were so honest and I wished to help her if possible.

And such a possibility happened very soon. My Finnish acquaintance, whom I have known through business, asked me to introduce some good girl to him. He told me a very sad story how unhappy he was having no opportunity to see his daughter, whose mother did not allow them to meet, how eager he was to create a new family, to have new children and of course the first whom I remembered about was this girl, let’s call her Masha.

They got acquainted, liked each other, very soon their acquaintance became more close and he, let’s call him Hannu, left for Finland and invited Masha to visit him there.

While she was waiting for the visa he called her every day, asked how she was, told a lot of trifles about his life, dreamed how happy their future common life would be and how many children they would have. Masha was happy. She told me later that walking about the city on different affairs that time she looked at St. Petersburg beautiful palaces and did not believe that such a happiness was now hers. Previously she was sure it would not be possible, but now she was sure it still was.

She left, they called me from Finland, she sounded happy, then – a bit less excited.

Her first visa was valid for three weeks. She returned and came to me. She looked thoughtful. On one hand everything was good: they did not quarrel, she did all homework, cleaned the house, cooked, helped Hannu in his business. On the other hand he spoke very little to her, met friends in the evenings or read a newspaper, she could not understand if he really needed her.

However he invited her to come for the second time. They agreed to marry as soon as they have a child. But there was no child that time either and the marriage was delayed till the time of her third visit. And when she visited Finland for the third time, once, cleaning the house again she found a lot of pictures through which she understood that she was not the only female visitor of that house. When she was absent some other girls came and no one knew about each other but it was very convenient for the host – the house was always clean and there was always a woman there.

«But I do wish to marry!» cried Hannu when I told him what I thought about all this. «I am just choosing. Masha unfortunately is not beautiful enough but I will marry a beautiful woman soon and will quit the game!»

And he has really chosen at last: a twenty year old model (extremely attractive indeed!) who left him after three months of marriage for a boy of her age (Hannu was forty five). Now Hannu calls me cursing his destiny.

You cannot choose your destiny, can you? Youth and beauty are attractive, but maybe one should also think?

As for Masha, we have become friends not just with her, but also with her Russian husband. Yes, we found a good Russian man for her! When she recalls her stay in Finland, she shuts her eyes wishing to forget things which she would like have not happened.