Chapter Thirteen

The number forty, in my opinion, has some mysterious meaning. In the Bible, forty days and forty nights of rain removed life from earth. Moses was on Mount Sinai for forty days and forty nights. In fairy tales this number is mentioned a considerable number of times, as in the story “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.”

Commemoration for the dead is performed on the fortieth day. A woman carries a child for forty weeks. And what about the phrase “forty times forty,” which is so much of something that it can’t be counted?

Did you think that that number, my age of forty, had no particular significance? Well, I disagree. My second life began at forty. And it was truly one rough, potholed road of a beginning. And it only got worse after I was finally discharged from the hospital and sent home.

From the first, I noticed that I could not turn on a gas stove and cook anything. There I was, hungry, standing in front of a stove, looking at it, but I couldn’t light it.

Before I was burnt, I thought I knew what fear was, but I was wrong. Never before had I felt such a horror as standing in front of that stove, the horror growing inside of me until I fainted.

I began to black out each time I was frightened. And I was scared of everything: a phone call, loud voices, fire, but also terrified even of water. And every time: boom! I would collapse. I would lose consciousness five and six times a day, beaten black and blue by the floor at the end of each day. The doctors called this dystonia, as in vegetative-vascular dystonia and migraine, all a result of the thermal injuries.

Next, I found out that I had no job anymore. Redundant. Of course, I was paid some severance money, due to the staff reduction, but, first of all, the sum was so ridiculously small that one could burst her sides with laughing at it, and secondly, I was still jobless. There was nothing to help me feed my family. At least what was left of it.

However, I had no strength to do anything. And no husband to support me. Only my son was happy that I was still alive and back home, and Natasha continued to come and help me out.

The next surprise was that it was impossible to find a job. Turned out that in our country no one needed you if you were forty. All the interviews ended after the question, “How old are you?” It was difficult to actually understand why retirement was popularly considered to be the most productive time of a person’s life, but those, like me who had never taken so much as maternity leave, had gained experience and life wisdom, suddenly became not needed. But, unfortunately, that’s how everything was.

My son entered military college. He wanted to follow in the footsteps of his great-grandfather, Vasily, who did military service during World War II. He had been quite unlucky. After being a part of the army that had helped the Soviet Union to hang out its flag of victory in Berlin, he was sent to Japan to fight some more.

However, he returned home alive and more or less healthy, and able to live the rest of his life with honor and dignity. Vasily Pavlovich lived for eighty-three years, enjoying the world he had won at the cost of his own blood, spending time with his great-grandson Vovochka, whom he loved more than his children and grandchildren. And he even wrote his memoirs.

After my son left for college I was all alone. On the one hand, it was great to finally have a chance to take care of no one but myself. On the other hand, I felt so lonely, abandoned, and forgotten by everyone.

But even that was not enough. Aleksei demanded that I sell the house and pay him part of the money from the common property settlement. In addition, he tried to persuade our son to give him his share.

But he didn’t want Vova to go live with him or even visit him at Marina’s apartment. Aleksei just wanted to see his own son once in a while, when it was convenient.

It was almost impossible to sell the house, with so many people out of work. I had no income to pay for gas and electricity. An incredible amount of debt had accumulated since my ex-husband stopped getting paid. But Aleksei didn’t care. He was not going to pay for anything.

“Well, I have no money! Where should I find it?” he shouted at me.

In short, these became everyday squabbles. Everyday agonies that proved how abandoned I was.

My neighbors on either side realized that I was alone and there was no one to protect me. Vulnerable. They kept trying to cut off a piece of land on each side. At night they moved the border on my vegetable garden inward each from their own borders, in order to claim three more feet of my yard. I fought for my land as a warrior, but the corrupt land surveyor was not in a hurry to stand up for justice and help me. The court system was also not the best in the world, so the neighbors stole part of my land, despite all the documentation available. Another misfortune in my life at that time, my age of forty. My life was hell.