Chapter 2

That night Nina had a celebration, all by herself in her one-room apartment. For the celebration, she had two causes. First, she had every reason to congratulate herself on a major breakthrough in her subversive plans against Gradbank. The other cause was not a worthy one in her eyes – the day happened to be her twenty-seventh birthday.

She was sitting, with her legs tucked under her, in her favorite armchair. A standard lamp was casting around a soft, cozy light. On a small table by the armchair was a one-third empty bottle of Merlot and a plate with some cheese and cookies. What else does a single businesswoman need to celebrate her special occasions? In addition, there was the twinkling of the TV set in the corner – from an old habit Nina kept it turned on, but with sound off. The flashing of silent pictures helped her relax by keeping her eyes thoughtlessly occupied.

Her father had called to wish her a happy birthday. His voice on the phone struck her as tense and coarse. Could it be that he was drinking again? Her heart ached at the thought.

Also, her two girl friends had called – the only two she had left from her university years. Both were steadily married, with children. They updated Nina on their family life and chided her for living like an oyster. “It’s a crime we’re not seeing each other more often. Let’s get together!” Nina agreed but no real gathering was ever arranged. In recent years, her girl friends had been trying hard to fix her up – so that Nina had even reduced her visits to them in the fear of having to maintain an agonizing conversation with yet another ‘colleague of my husband’ or ‘friend of ours who chanced to drop by’. Quite possibly, those eligible bachelors were not all that bad, but the problem was that Nina was horrified by the mere thought of having any relationship with them.

On the screen, the president of the country was delivering a mute speech, gesticulating vigorously. “That’s who I’d like to meet,” Nina said aloud to the TV set. “I’m sure he’s not anything like those characters I’ve known. That’s me – give me the president, I’m not going for less.” She refilled her glass and clinked it against the bottle. “All right, first lady, happy birthday to you once again!”

The wine took effect – the TV picture became fuzzy, and her mind wandered. As always in such cases, she remembered her mother and her school days.

Nina was born into a good, city family. Her father, Yevgeniy Borisovich, was a builder, chief engineer in a construction syndicate, her mother a French teacher in a college. They lived in a spacious three-room apartment which was considered enviable at the time.

An able girl, Nina was breezing through her school studies. Mathematics was her favorite. “That’s my genes working,” her father would say complacently. He taught Nina how to play chess and for some time, the two of them had a game every evening. However, her father soon ceased to enjoy their chess sessions as Nina began winning, and he had a hard time even making a draw. Her father planned to sign her up for serious chess lessons but her mother vetoed the idea. “What kind of occupation is that for a girl? I won’t let Nina become a bluestocking!” Instead, Nina was offered to choose between figure skating and tennis. Nina picked out tennis.

The choice was a fortunate one – the game came easily to Nina, and she was running to her tennis classes eagerly. Very thin, with a figure like a grasshopper’s, she was darting around the court almost always getting in the right place at the right moment. The coach took notice of her, and she was entered into the regional junior tournament. It soon became apparent what made her different from the others – she played a calculated game, figuring it out two strokes ahead and often baffling those obviously stronger than her.

Nina’s tennis career came to an end abruptly. Accidentally, she overheard a conversation between two girls one of whom she had just smashed up on the court. They were talking about her, Nina. “That’s what I call crazy, breaking her neck so!” said the defeated one. “Who wants that stupid cup, anyway? … Me, I didn’t come to tennis for any cups.” They giggled. Nina guessed vaguely why the other girls played tennis. On the court, there were always boys around, and tennis provided lots of opportunities for ‘gluing’, as boys called it, and some girls did, too. The one whom Nina had overheard was pretty, her neat legs under a short white skirt acted like a magnet, and she was a constant object of ‘gluing’ – not only by boys of her age but older guys, too. Yet nobody had tried to ‘glue’ Nina. Ever. “Well, what do you expect of a freak like that?” heard Nina. “Winning cups, that’s all she has. Who will ever look at her? Did you see her knees? Horrible!”

They left, and Nina was still sitting, dumbfounded, trying to take in what she had just heard. That was true, she was a freak. She went up to a mirror and inspected her knees. On her disproportionately long, skin-and-bone legs, her knees looked huge, alien. Horrible, indeed. On her way home, she hurled her tennis racket into the nearest garbage can. At home, she told her parents, without giving any reasons, that she was not going to play tennis ever again.

And she did not, not for over ten years. Then, after her graduation from the university, she once found herself near a stadium and heard familiar noises – the thumping of tennis balls and players’ voices – coming to her through the green hedge. On impulse, she went in, hired a racket and practiced some strokes at the wall. Since then, she came regularly to the court where she played with accidental partners. Surprisingly, her hand and body had not forgotten the tennis lessons she had received in her school years. Her figure had improved since her early teens – it was no longer scraggy or angular, and nobody would think of laughing at her knees. From time to time, men approached her trying to strike up an acquaintance but, faced with blunt indifference on her part, they retreated. However, she had no problems getting taken into a game as she played well – in a committed, concentrated, and powerful way. Rather like a man.

When Nina finished school, the country was being swept by the reforms. Her father said, “Honestly, Ninok, I don’t know what advice to give you. In the former times, I would say, ‘Go into science, you’re totally cut out for that,’ but who wants science now?” Nina applied to the financial university which boasted a huge competition for entry and got admitted without pulling any strings or bribing.

Her university studies were a child’s play to her. Her concerns lay in a totally different area. The problem was, she had never had anyone. No specimen of the male race had ever asked her out for a walk, let alone anything bigger. Meanwhile, girls of her age were dating like crazy and actually getting married. The most advanced ones had even got divorced already. Her mother, who was aware of Nina’s problem, was reassuring her, “Don’t you worry, Ninusya, you’re not missing anything, believe me. Just wait, your time will come.” Nina waited, but her time did not show any signs of coming.

She was no longer the plain little thing that she had been at school, but deep inside, she was still a grasshopper with ugly knees. The boys felt it and kept clear of her. Besides, she was smart – much smarter than all those immature males – and whoever fancied that in a girl?

Everything changed in her life when she was in her fourth year. Her mother died. It was cancer – long neglected, inoperable. It all ended in a few months. Trying to protect her, Nina’s parents were hiding the truth from her, and her mother would not let Nina visit her in the hospital until the time came for a final parting. When she approached the hospital bed and saw an emaciated woman with a grey, wasted face, Nina did not recognize her at first. Only the eyes were not changed – they were her mama’s.

Her mother took Nina’s hand in her own, waxen, transparent one, and smiled. Her smile was not changed either. “Well, how are you, sweetheart?”

Nina cried.

“Don’t cry, sweetheart,” her mother said. “Be a clever girl, don’t cry.” But her own cheek was wet with silent tears running onto the pillow.

“You see how stupid your mother is, leaving you when you’re still so young. There will be no one to help you or give you advice, you’ll have nobody but yourself to rely on. Forgive me, sweetheart.”

Nina burst out sobbing, clinging to her mother’s breast.

“Don’t cry.” With her weak hands, her mother detached Nina from herself. “Stop it, please… Listen to me. Sweetheart, you must promise me two things. Promise you won’t leave papa. He needs you. Promise?” Nina nodded through her tears. “And one more thing…” Mother stroked Nina’s cheek. “Ninusya, please, bear me a granddaughter. A grandson is great, too, but I’d rather have a granddaughter. You will try, right?”

Her mother had never complained of poor health and after she was gone, it took Nina a long time to accept the fact. As she came home from her classes, she would involuntarily prick her ears for mama’s voice, expecting any instant to hear her croon some lines from her beloved Joe Dassin while checking her students’ papers. Et si tu n'existais pas, Dis-moi pourquoi j'existerais… What Nina heard instead was her father coughing in the kitchen where he was sitting for days on end smoking and drinking alone. He was jobless at that time. He and Nina did not talk about mama – what was there to say? – but each felt the other’s pain and suffered for both.

About half a year passed that way. Then she got married to Dima. Dima was the least impressive of the five boys in her group – rather short, pimpled, quiet. The only good thing about him was his surname, Shuvalov. When she first heard it, Nina, who was into Russian history at the time, thought, “I wish I had a count’s surname like that!” Her own surname, far from being count-like, sounded right ridiculous: Kisel. Nina was embarrassed by it. When she asked her father where their surname had come from he said that his great-great-grandfather had been a German immigrant of the name of Kessel, but the clerk that had issued the papers had altered that to his liking. Whether that was true or not, Nina could never understand. Her father appreciated a joke and could have invented it all.

For the first three years, she paid no attention to Dima. Then he started taking a neighboring desk in the library. At the time, they were doing their end-of-course projects and had to spend long hours rummaging in the literature. Finally, Nina took notice of his reddish head, and her memory hinted that he had sat next to her on the last five occasions at least. “My God, can he be…?” she thought. The idea that Dima might be taking interest in her was so stunning to her that she stared at him without blinking. Dima remained motionless, buried in his books, but a deep blush spread all over his cheeks and ears, even neck. Nina was still in shock mentally, but the woman inside her woke up and took the situation under control.

“Dima,” the woman said amiably. “What’s your topic?”

Dima started and came to life. He blurted out the title of his project and asked, “What’s yours?”

Their topics turned out to be very close. She learned afterwards that the coincidence had been arranged by Dima himself who had swopped topics with another student at the cost of an almost new player.

When the proximity of their topics had been established, Dima’s red face expressed a happy amazement after which he fell silent again. The woman in Nina was a little upset by his timidity but she was not about to give up. “Tell me what you’ve done so far,” she suggested.

Provided with such a safe life buoy, Dima clutched at it and never let go. He began recounting eagerly, in every detail, his plan for the project. As she was listening to him with half an ear, Nina scrutinized him feeling a rising excitement in her breast. She had a boyfriend!

Since then, they spent a lot of time together every day sitting in the library and then going home by the underground – luckily, they lived in the same part of the city. After a month, Dima asked her out to the movies. In the theater, when the lights were out, he took her hand in his. Nina did not remove her hand, and that way, hand in hand, they sat through the show. Afterwards, Nina could not remember what the movie had been about.