Chapter One

Today was my fortieth birthday. The beginning of my Indian summer. We were celebrating it together with Natalia. It was still the same village and the same problem of selling the house and paying half the money to my ex-husband.

No words could describe my bad mood. Yesterday was my son’s birthday. He was having his spring. He was eighteen. Eighteen! Once I gave myself the best present in the world—my son. Since then we always celebrated our birthdays together. But this year, the first time in his life, I was alone. He was having his military-student life, and I was so far away from him, and had nothing to please him with. No gift to charm him.

I’d had not much work. Even less money. Of course he received a small gift with a card and some money from me, and I was hoping that it would improve his mood. But it was unbearably sad to think that he had to grow up so soon. That his eighteenth birthday he was celebrating far from his family, surrounded by responsible, serious officers and dedicated fellow students. But there was nothing I could do, so I kept struggling, telling myself it was meant to be like this, everything will be okay.

I had no idea what was on the birthday table of my son, or even if he’d celebrated. On my table there was a bowl of boiled new potatoes, sprinkled with fresh dill. Pickled cucumbers, sliced and beautifully plated sausages, cheese, and a half-empty bottle of bathtub gin. Good bathtub gin. It was quite a modest birthday table.

Everything, except the vegetables and one gift, a book of recipes, were brought by my friend. One of those who were there in response to my need. She knew that I had neither money nor energy or desire to celebrate my birthday. In addition, the week before, I broke up with a boyfriend I was relying on to some extent. No, I didn’t want to get married. To anyone. At all. Never! I’d had my piece-of-being-married-pie. But I desperately wanted to find a man with whom I would feel like a real woman.

My previous marriage, though it had seemed happy, in the end collapsed and nearly cost me my life. I had been married for seventeen years. Seventeen years of my life flushed into the toilet! On the other hand, there had been a lot of good moments. The best of them was my son.

Nevertheless I was sure I didn’t want any marriage stuff anymore.

Anyway, I tried not to lose heart. Having got out of depression after the injury and its consequences, I learned to look at life philosophically.

But not one of my friends called or congratulated me. Well. Busy people. Or maybe they were just not real friends. Simply acquaintances. But Natalia came! My friend. And we needed nobody else. Not a very elaborate birthday table? Perfect for us. How much did we need, the two of us? We had bathtub gin. And not from a bad batch. This was made by Natalia’s mom, with love and the best ingredients.

What a great mom you have, Natalia, I thought.

Broke up with a boyfriend? That means he never loved me. I would find a better one. That creepy man in Uman had told me I would be loved, happy, and rich. Could I have been happy with that guy, my former boyfriend? Too haughty he was. Puffed up all the time with his importance, vain as a peacock. One thing was good with him—he knew how to court a woman. Oh, and in bed, of course. So what if I had liked him? I would get over him. How could anyone like such a peacock?

In my opinion men were born to bring trouble.

Natalia’s life was also not cloudless; she had rain on her parade. Though not a Hollywood beauty, she was a charming woman with a good body. Her wavy, medium length hair flowed over her shoulders, with a few gray hairs already, which didn’t spoil her, on the contrary, even added some distinctive flavor. Big blue eyes made her look very beautiful. They say eyes are the mirrors of the soul. I thought that was not always true, but Natalia’s eyes spoke sympathy and kindness. And that’s how she was. Kind and sympathetic.

Her husband, Boris, with whom Natasha now lived in a common law marriage, liked to wet his whistle from time to time. They had been married for nine years and raised two sons. Then he found another woman. So they divorced. His new marriage failed, because he could never give his new wife what she asked for. Not to mention his drinking problems. So in the end, he came back to my friend. And she, without pausing to think, took him back. After all, he was the father of her boys. And boys needed a father. Any man was better than no man in the house.

He did not earn a lot of money, and even that was spent easily and quickly for booze. She was working as a nurse in oncological hospital, so her life could be called anything but easy.

The 1990s. A hellacious page in our history books.

People wrote it into the history of the countries of the former Soviet Union as the years of ‘epidemic’ trade and re-sell of things from Turkey or Odessa. Natasha went to bye things for re-selling to Odessa. She doesn’t have enough of money to go to Turkey.

Then all things they bought there people re-sell on the local market. Due to have place in the market people have to pay for the place. Then they mast pay to “protectors”, people who had nothing to do with “protection”. It was clear racketeering.

So in the end almost nothing was left. But even with almost nothing she managed to save, and her husband immediately found what to spend it on. And she, good soul, gave away all her savings to him. The boys grew up and didn’t want to continue with their education, so both were looking for jobs. Of course, none of the good positions required them, young boys without higher education. So my Natalia supported all of them. But she never lost heart, and even with all her problems, managed to help me. All this flashed through my mind as we were slicing cheese and sausage.

My poor thing. Such a kind and wonderful friend. I am so grateful you are with me, that you haven’t forgotten me. You’ve come.

And me, exhausted with forced unemployment and the lack of money, health problems, and the constant squabbles with neighbors who still strove to chop off pieces of my land, I still felt happy. My angel had returned to me. My friend was nearby. My son was studying.

Though it was hard for him there, he was constantly supervised and directed. He was safe. So everything was going to be fine. I even had a real birthday party. With guests and toasts. Well, only one guest, but the most welcome one.

“So, Polina! Down the hatch. To your birthday. For your Indian summer!” Natalia raised her glass.

“Thank you, my friend. Down the hatch!”

“And now, one more to your health!”

“The third one for love.”

We kept toasting and drinking. Then we danced, and then drank again. Then again. More dancing, only this time on the table. We were playing around heartily.

When we switched to tea, Natalia became sad. Her eyes were glistening.

“Why are you sad, Natalia?”

“I feel so sorry for you.” Suddenly she burst into tears. “Are we in the middle of a desert? You’ve helped so many people. Where are they all now? And your recent peacock? He could at least have called!” Now she was sobbing.

“Oh, my dear Natalia, don’t be sad. Imagine us, things will be so beautiful. Five years from now, you will earn a lot of money... “ I started dreaming, and raised my eyes to the sky.

“And your hair-cutting business will grow,” Natalia said. She also rolled her enormous blue eyes in dreamy ecstasy.

“You will get a promotion.” I continued to dream. “You’ll be the senior nurse in your department. No, in the entire hospital!”

“Wow, that’s too much, Polina. Head nurse of the whole hospital! To become the senior nurse in the hospital, I’ll need some cosmic pull.” My girlfriend laughed.

“Even just while dreaming? You should always ask for more, so at least some of the things will come true,” I said.

“Well, in that case, you will sell the house, and buy a fashionable three-bedroom apartment. Even better would be a house. A huge, two-storied manor.”

“Boris will quit drinking and will pull up his socks like a man and get a job,” I said.

“You’ll get married to a rich and good man.”

“Again, this marriage nonsense!” I chided her.

A thought rushed into my head. “Oh, Natalia, where have you seen a wealthy, yet a good man here?” Despite my cynicism about marriage, I laughed.

“Well, then, maybe it will be not a local. A Frenchman or an American,” my friend interjected.

I burst out laughing. “French? American? Come on! Why would they come here? Have you seen any around lately? They are in France and America. And even if by some miracle they come here, such an old trout, as I am, is the last thing they want. They are looking for young and beautiful fish. Anyway, when you become rich, you can buy a car. Do you want a car?”

“You bet I do. Don’t want to carry those heavy bags from the market by myself all the time.” Natalia sighed.

“What kind of car do you want?”

“A Lada. That would be cheaper to repair if it breaks down.”

“I would like a Honda,” I continued my dreaming. “Or a Mazda.”

“My goodness, Polina, you want your bread buttered on both sides!”

“That’s what dreams are for. They’re all for free.” I went on having fun with my wild, impossible desires.

“Let’s have a toast to that. For dreams to come true!”

“Yes, yes. And dreams always come true, of course.”

But still we drank a toast to that.

“Can you imagine, we could take our boys on vacations to Yalta, to the seaside? Or even to Sochi.”

In the life situation we were in, Yalta and Sochi were the same as Venus or Mars. So remote, almost unimaginable. Just like all the things we dreamed of.

“We will buy beautiful dresses,” Natalia prompted me. “And we’ll walk along the tree-shaded avenues in big summer hats. Then we’ll swim in the sea and sunbathe on pristine exotic beaches.”

“And they will serve us fancy cocktails in beautiful crystal goblets from a silver tray.”

“And then an American will approach with a polite ‘How do you do?’ and just over his shoulder we will see his gorgeous Cadillac.”

“Yep. All shiny white. Oh, Natasha, you are a wild sort of dreamer.” I laughed heartily. “Come back to earth. Come on, one more drink, the last, and then it’s bedtime for us.”

Then we were singing Russian folk songs, drunk from alcohol, sadness, and despair.

Surprisingly, we ended up enjoying every second of that evening. Natasha left the next morning for work, and I began to think how we could possibly realize all our plans. Well, if not all, then at least the first and the most important: to sell the house, pay my ex his part of it, and with the rest of the money, to buy a flat for myself.