Read Online Happiness is Possible by Oleg Zaionchkovsky - Free Book Online Page B

warm, sunny day. Because of the fine weather, so many people were out strolling in the yard that there were no free benches left beside the fountain in the avenue.
    â€˜Do you mind?’ I heard a gentle voice say and glanced up. Her frock was transparent against the light.
    â€˜Of course not!’ I exclaimed, half-jumping to my feet.
    In the buggy that she was pushing, I made out the tiny, dusky patch of an infant’s face.
    â€˜What a delightful child!’
    â€˜Yes, that’s what everyone tells me,’ she said, smiling so that the dimples in her cheeks twinkled.
    If not for that grateful smile of hers, perhaps I wouldn’t have had the nerve to start talking to her at all. I would have sat there, examining her with surreptitious sideways glances and making up various stories in which she might have played the leading role. But the beautiful young woman smiled, I beamed brightly at her and we slipped into conversation as if we were old acquaintances. And so I didn’t have to invent anything, because she told me everything about herself. For a single compliment to her little baby (to whom I offer my separate thanks) she made me a gift of her own story and, although I don’t dare to hope for compliments, I feel obliged to share it with you.
    So, once upon a time there was a girl called Nastya, or Nastenka, who lived, not in Moscow, or in some distant part of the country, as you might have thought, but more or less halfway between. The city of N-burg, where she grew up and blossomed, was large but provincial. And owing to this provinciality, many of the boons of civilisation, such as nightclubs with dance floors, for instance, had until recently remained something of a novelty to the N-burgers. Although many of Nastya’s girlfriends had already visited establishments of this kind, she herself had never been to one. Not simply out of financial considerations, but mainly because they were places where so-called ‘heavy types’ hung about. In N-burg at that time the wild excesses of the period of transition had not yet completely retreated into the past. Big, beefy men with grim faces could be seen everywhere, especially in the night clubs, and they had such bad manners that any place where they appeared immediately deteriorated into a seedy joint. These heavies seemed very unpleasant and dangerous individuals to Nastenka. And that, essentially, was exactly what they were, although in a certain sense they were to be pitied, for their time was already coming to an end, even in the city of N-burg. They were like the remnants of a routed army, soldiers who had missed the end of the war and been left hanging about at a loose end, jangling their rusty weapons and pulling ferocious faces at everyone to conceal their bewilderment. But then, this is about Nastenka, not them.
    I’ve already said that she didn’t go to nightclubs, and that’s true. She didn’t go even once, until her roommate in the student hostel – I think it was Katya, she still writes to Nastenka even now – until this roommate persuaded her to break her vow. So one fine evening the two girlfriends linked arms and set off to a nightclub, one where Katya had already been twice, but Nastya had never been. The evening actually brought Nastenka nothing but grief. Firstly, the one long drink that she permitted herself cost half of her grant and, secondly, she was terribly disappointed by what one could call the male contingent. No, don’t get the idea that Nastya went to the club with the intention of picking someone up. It was just that . . . well, as you might expect, all the students at the medical college were girls. The club was swarming with individuals of the male sex, but what kind of men were they? Apart from the heavies (Nastya was afraid even to meet their eyes), there were odd, sweat-soaked youths staggering around the hall in a state of unnatural excitement. As a professional medic,