Dad’s friend Nicholas.

 By Lidiana Martinian

We, students-philologists, always thought that we were important and looked down on all other people who were not involved in philology, love of the word and books. We were a big group of people that reminded something of a selected circle, those who were able to understand great writers, creators, artists. In the evenings, we gathered in some nice and unusual place in the most inhuman and invisible block with the most unpopular shops and restaurants and discussed the new books and issues that we had to read. Everyone looked at us as the representatives of the creative elite, the upper caste, the very intellectuals, isolated from the rest of the people. We saw ourselves as some inhabitants of that very Olympus, hiding behind the distant clouds, gods watching mere mortals, who could never learn all the great secrets of the world that were accessible only to us.

As we grew older, each of us had the opportunity to be in situations that require an awareness of reality, entering a sober life, making decisions not related to books and with literary analyzes. One of these serious situations, which long ago people called “love”, we began to learn in turn, one after the other. As if the exam, which requires the most thorough and long preparation, love appeared before us as a very important task, the most difficult book that can be understood and realized with the help of mature analysis, which we had always been taught at the university. We really were sure that we would cope with it, because we read so much about it. “Romeo and Juliet”, “Love in the Time of Cholera”, “Lolita”, “The Collector”, “The French Lieutenant` Woman”, “Enduring Love”, “The Great Gatsby”, “Daniel Martin” are among the few books which we discussed all the time. Each of us, one way or another, analyzed the concept of the things of the heart in their term papers and dissertations. Our academic advisors applauded us, admiring the pseudo-studies that we conducted - young students without any experience of love; we were one of the most successful groups, we all graduated with honors degree. Our scientific articles and papers were printed and sent to various competitions, God, what a childish nonsense it all seems now.

As soon as we started falling in love and making our first attempts in a relationship, we first gathered in a lovely quiet place and discussed our first experience for hours. The guys gave a patchwork of various tips, gave examples from their favorite books, talked about it so confidently, as if they had gone through this dozens of times. At such moments I couldn`t believe how wonderful we were, so clever, so brave, who had known (even without real experience) these deep and mysterious feelings. No one could cope with this except for us - reading smart people who were able to subtly feel everything that happened in this world and identify true love from a scatter of passing interest, flirting and flings. I felt a little sorry for ordinary people without higher education, who were able to only see superficial things and didn`t try to go deeper, to comprehend reality, as great thinkers did. I was watching some drunks who got caught up in dirty passion or children from disadvantaged families which made a big scene right on the street, their fights, curse words. That all was in between tears mixed with alcohol flowing down their cheeks, and I felt so good for myself, for the fact that I was so well-behaved, intelligent, that I didn`t fall victim to such non-human, but rather animal behavior.

Giving advice to someone from our company, who had fallen in love with someone, I felt so experienced, so adult despite my young age, and it made me feel so good that sometimes, looking at myself in the mirror, I couldn`t help admiring the amount of knowledge and abilities that I possessed. Most of all I was pleased and crazy about the idea that I, with no single case, a real case from my life, guessed, and then, as if going through a great life experience, came to understand simple life values without making silly young mistakes like others.

Almost all the guys from my company left their partners first. It took them a very long time to explain to us why they did this, they described their feelings and the feelings of their soul mates in such understandable and at the same time complicated words that the visitors sitting around us seemed to eavesdrop on our philological love stories and analyzes. While we were listening to our friends we got worried about them, supported their decisions and advised them to take care of themselves, so that not to think about unhappy love affairs, but to get distracted and relax.

Misha dumped his girl Alina because she couldn`t understand his stories about the books and didn`t want to listen to the lectures of his favorite literary critics with him. Misha tried to make us understand how difficult it was for him having her, her who talked only about the household, the loans, the mortgage, his parents, her parents. One day we met Alina, we didn’t like her either, there was not an ounce of education and erudition. There was only emptiness in her head, sheer emptiness.

Nastya left her boyfriend Tolya because she just gave up one day when she realized that that guy wouldn`t get involved in anything other than football. Nastya tried to get onto other subjects with him, but he honestly and openly admitted to her that the words she used while speaking sounded pretty much like music to him.

Valya, who read all of Nabokov`s masterpieces, was crying at night into a pillow, because her boyfriend Anton had called her favorite “Lolita” a filth about a forty-year-old pedophile and a twelve-year slutty girl. She left him after two weeks and talked about his vulgar life monologues, sitting with a glass of wine in one of the restaurant. We listened to her and laughed loudly, then praised her for such a smart, but late act (she had to leave him right on the next day).

A close friend of my parents was a certain Volodya, who was my father`s fellow-student. They graduated from medical university. My father worked as a dentist, Volodya was the first surgeon in the city. He attended all family holidays and important events, including my birth more than twenty years ago. I never took him seriously; he always seemed to me a very boring and down-to-earth man, unable to comprehend the beauty and wonders of this world. When I noticed the way he was talking, arguing on various topics, I, at a tender but conscious age, already realized that Volodya was from that category of people who didn`t need much; they wouldn`t be awake at night, reflecting on philosophical topics, wouldn`t bother themselves with painful soul-searching, they would simply complete their schooling, then graduate from university, get a job, any kind of job which they could simply do and for which they could get an average salary, after that they would get an average apartment, a car, in short, they would live their lives as they should, as it is considered to be right. When I used to go into detailed explanations, raised subjects that were absolutely not related to table conversation, Volodya rolled his eyes and looked at me with an exhausted look of an adult, sometimes smiling slightly, as if everything I said was a silly childish prattle. I hated him at such moments, it seemed to me that he should be ashamed of himself. Yes, he possessed material things and wealth, but spiritually he was completely empty. How could such an adult live so calmly, knowing that he had never experienced anything significant with anyone; he didn`t have an emotional tsunami, a real tragedy, a grandiose life problem, after which a long-awaited decision was about to be welcomed, and then there would finally be deserved happiness.Volodya was so vapid, so normal that I often wanted to come up to him and thoroughly shake him to see at least any emotions on his eternally calm face.

I asked my mother about him, she told me as much as she knew. He had never been married, he had no children, he lived separately, but he often visited his family – his mother, father, two brothers and two sisters, who had several children each. He was an exception to the rule, a man who devoted his whole life only to work. Work for almost twenty hours a day, seven days a week, with occasional vacations. Everything that was best was for his patients, no friends, no interests, no hobbies. There was only my father as a close friend with whom he always stayed in touch.

At first, I thought that Volodya was so mysterious that such a small and young creature like me was not destined to comprehend his old and difficult secrets. Then, when I grew up, I just realized that he wasn`t deep at all, that he got nothing, that he was just simple-minded. So I left him alone; I had only a slight contempt as if I was a man who was mature for his age and Volodya was a typical philistine.

I was the last one in our friends` group to fall in love with. Her name was Dasha. I met her at the exhibition of contemporary art, which was first held in our city. I was stunned with the way she looked. I had rarely seen such beautiful girls. But I decided not to think about her, I assured myself that if she was so beautiful, then her mind was too poorly endowed. I decided not to come up to her. She herself came up to me, started a conversation, and I stood and couldn`t understand what she was talking about, I was so excited when this beautiful face, beckoning me from afar, was so close now. Her huge eyes reacted vividly to every stupid word of mine, a beautiful straight nose gleaming under the light of spotlights, full beautiful lips were smeared with a sparkling gloss that drove me crazy. How beautiful she was… For a moment I hated her, coming to me so accidentally, but making such a precise hit into me who was completely uninterested in experiencing everything that I had read in books. I was frightened, I suddenly realized how painful and how sweet everything would probably turn out if I continued the conversation with her, if I let her be with me that evening, if I allowed all this to continue. She didn`t let me think for long; she decided everything for me. After the exhibition, we had dinner at her favorite restaurant. I don`t quite remember what we were talking about, because I was deeply thrilled all evening, I couldn`t believe that such a beautiful and royal creature paid attention to me and continued to do it at the restaurant.

Everything started quickly, even too quickly, we fell head over heels in love with each other. I didn`t walk - I flew, I spoke about her with the widest smile on my face, my friends listened to me with their mouths open. They were surprised and touched, they wouldn`t believe that this could really happen. So, what was written in the books didn`t exist only in a parallel reality, it was in our world too. And I was so proud that I had the opportunity to experience it, to have my own story connecting what people had always read and always thought to be something incredible.

My first open quarrel with Volodya was on that very Tuesday, which I will remember for a long time, it was the tenth day of my loneliness. Dasha left me, she said that we couldn`t go on that way, I didn`t see the world as she saw, I thought differently, we were too different, even our dreams didn`t match. I never felt so smashed and exhausted. I couldn`t understand it. Everything was going fine. We and our lives were so compatible - our universities, the books we read, our system of values, the level of knowledge. Everything was perfect, smooth, like the polished surface of a diamond. But I naively believed that the perfection could last forever. I was broken, I suffered as a creative person should - with all the depth of my soul, with my entire being. I was sure that none of my favorite characters suffered as much as I did - neither Ferdinand, nor Humbert Humbert, Florentino, Aureliano, Romeo. Once I got up and realized that summer morning, that I had aged hundred years, that I had experienced exactly as much as one person was able to throughout his entire life.

The argument with Volodya happened after my breaking up with Dasha. My parents decided to comfort me out loud in front of the guests. I got furious. First I quietly asked them to leave the subject, they wouldn`t do it. I then began to ask emotionally, with all the insult, gnawing me from within. They were silent, all the guests were also silent, all except Volodya, who coolly uttered that he didn`t believe in these children's tragedies and depressions. I got seized with fury. I forgot about our difference in age, about the fact that he was my father's good friend, I didn't give a damn about it and started such a bold and frank dialogue with him that my mother gasped loudly and covered her mouth, while dad pounded the table in a fit of anger and roared some menacing phrases. I didn`t listen to anyone, the rage blinded me, I was shaking, my jaw, hands, even my legs were trembling with hatred for Dasha, the hatred which I threw out at this man who had nothing to do with us and with our love. I argued, letting him interrupt me so that to have time to swallow and choke back tears as I didn`t want to ruin everything. I couldn`t lose simply because I had always wanted to put him in place, I wanted to tell him everything I thought of him. It was my finest hour, my chance to show him how unimportant and ordinary he was, a man who had never loved. I started the most grandiose philosophical reflections about high feelings, argued vehemently that he was like a child, that he would never become an adult, because he could never love, he was simply afraid of it as he wanted to be in the comfort zone, to avoid suffering, but, unlike him, I went through all this, and he had no right to say such things to me. Volodya listened to me with that half-smile of his, he spoke little, much less than me and just kept pouring vodka and eating my mother's cooked pickles.

I don`t remember how we were calmed down and dragged apart. What happened next made me cry into the pillow that night. Volodya came up to me when I smoked on the balcony (I was still secretly smoking, lying to my parents that I didn`t smoke, but on that day I didn’t care what they would think about it). He was standing next to me, then he took a cigarette, lit it and blew out the smoke.

“Styopa, you shouldn`t overreact to the things people tell you. I`m saying this as a doctor, if you keep doing that, you won`t survive.”

For a moment I wanted to spit in his face and get out, but he continued.

“You are stupid only because you talk with such confidence about people you don`t know, draw conclusions, not knowing anything about them. I see that you`ve read thousands of books and had to go through your first great love failure at this age, but when you grow up, you will describe all this using exactly the same words, my words, if you remember them.

- Why should I listen to a man who decided not to start a family?

- I never made such a decision, Styopa. I never wanted to. I can honestly say, I have always dreamed of a family and was going to start it. I was then the same age as you, maybe a little older. I worked as an assistant of our chief surgeon, I helped him and constantly spent time in the hospital. I wanted to marry the daughter of my mother`s friend, her name was Kseniya. We`d been dating for a long time, we didn`t allow ourselves anything indecent, no kisses or carnal delights. Everything was different in those days. Back then I thought that I loved her, I thought so because we went out, because we started something common and had to logically bring it to the end, that is, to go to the registry office. I didn`t want to go into all of this, to know how she felt, to know what was going on inside her, what was behind her –a woman so calm and gentle. I didn`t think like you. If we got married, I would simply love her because I would get used to her and feel comfortable with her. I can understand it now; you see, many years have passed, and I am no longer connected with this, but then I thought that I loved her and that this beautiful thing happened to me too.

This girl was rushed to our hospital after a car accident, she got hit by a huge car. Her legs were completely crushed, her left arm was driven over, only her chest, belly, neck and face remained intact. It was my night shift and I almost fell asleep when I was awakened and hurried to Georgiy Leonidovich- our chief surgeon I was working for. I realized that something serious had happened. I quickly got ready, put on my uniform and came into the operating room, the door slammed shut, the light was very bright, probably because I had been sleeping for a long time and had not yet fully awakened from sleep. “How am I going to work now?” I thought. But my drowsiness had quickly passed, as soon as I saw red straight hair hanging down and reaching almost to the floor, I was stunned by this rare and unusual color and hair length. Then I noticed a thin and white arm, dangling lifelessly like a white stick. I even noticed how perfect her fingers were, the same beautiful fingers were painted by one famous artist, whose masterpiece I had seen in one gallery as a young boy, back then I remembered only that picture and nothing else. These two details made me tense and agitated. I had thought that Kseniya was beautiful, but I had never admired her appearance, I had never been in awe of her. This girl…I was drawn to her, I hadn’t seen her face yet, I was staring at her hair and that arm for about fifteen seconds, not more, and I got caught. Finally they called me, and I came up to her. I saw the most beautiful face with its eyes closed. I was stunned by the accuracy of the lines, the beautiful white complexion, the soft red eyebrows. Her full lips were shaped like a heart, they were parted, and I could see perfect teeth shining like pearls. Her childlike chin was trembling, I swallowed a lump that immediately appeared in my throat. Georgiy Leonidovich called me, I shuddered and began to help him. After a minute I started crying, I often blinked so that tears wouldn`t blanket her dear face. I was so much afraid that we couldn`t save this girl. I thought about her age, about who she was, where she came from, how she managed to get hit by a car, why she walked down the street that night, why she didn`t sleep at home and let the fate bring her to me in a different way, not in a fatal one. While I was thinking about all these things, the doctor had already done almost everything, I suddenly realized that I was working during that hour, feverishly memorizing every line on her face and at the same time dreaming how I would love her if she wasn`t run over by a car. When we were done, Georgiy Leonidovich told me that I could go home, but I stayed. I couldn`t leave, I wanted to sit with her, to guard her so that no one would steal her from me, neither a human nor the death. I had never believed in God, but that night I prayed to a supreme being which I made up in my head and begged to save my girl, the girl whose eye color I didn`t even know. I swallowed and tried to pull myself together, it was certainly not normal, at least for me. I wanted to explain everything to myself, I just had been working for a long time, and probably I got tired. Maybe I had the flu, maybe I had a fever (I was really shaking). As soon as I wanted to find a reasonable solution to this sudden problem, as soon as I almost had a wise answer to the stupid childish questions in my head, everything immediately eluded me, and the horror, the fear for her precious life paralyzed my whole body.

Anna Nikiforova, nineteen years old, a student of an Engineering College, she had two moles on her right cheek and three on her left one. Her big toes were round, the others were semi-square. I also remember scars on both knees, her earrings were in the shape of beads of bright green color, then there was her skirt, also green, a black T-shirt, white summer sandals. That's all I knew about her.

She died the next morning, at five o'clock and fifteen minutes. I was with her, I saw how she died. She breathed quietly and measuredly, sometimes she was semi-conscious and moved her fingers. At five o'clock ten minutes I leaned over and decided to kiss her hand while she was conscious. I wanted to do it because this kiss would be real for us while she was alive, because she was still breathing, she could feel it. At five o'clock fourteen minutes she suddenly shuddered, then opened her eyes and looked at me. She had hazel eyes, I had never seen such color. I stood and looked at her, holding her hand, I just wanted her to see me, to remember me. What if she would survive? What if everything would be fine? After a minute, she stopped breathing and moving. She got frozen with open eyes, looking at me. Five fifteen, July, Monday, 1985 - I recorded all this in my notebook when I had to leave the hospital and go home.

The following days I drank, I never got so drunk. I thought that everything would go fine, that with it would all disappear with the help of alcohol, that I would sober up and forget all that. My first attempt to quit drinking wasn`t crowned with success, I spent my first sober morning feeling just astonishment, not knowing what to do next, how to live. I started drinking again. I remembered that there was Kseniya only when she entered my apartment and asked me to explain everything. I told her that we would no longer be together, that I had never loved her and I couldn’t love her. She attacked me with questions. All I said was that I met another woman, and I want to be with her. I drank for another year, went to a psychologist, took pills, tried to get back on my feet. I finally stopped drinking only after five years, but I couldn`t start a family, I didn`t have my eyes on girls anymore, I tried, but I couldn`t. I`m not making excuses for myself, Styopa, I don’t even know what happened that night when I met that girl, I don`t know why it happened to me, and what it meant, I’m not as smart as you are. It`s just that after her death, I realized that I couldn`t be with another woman, it wouldn`t be real. You will meet another girl, you will have so many Dashas, believe me, you just have to understand that she is alive. Yes, you broke up, but none of you died, and you can live without each other. Understand that you didn`t perish, you have the strength to go on, I had no strength to do that.

That night I silently sobbed into the pillow and fell asleep only in the morning. The next day I went to Volodya and asked him for forgiveness. Almost without realizing, we got closer and closer as if we were destined to become true friends. I often thought about us, about Volodya, it was so ironic and natural at the same time that a grown man with his heart full of cynicism got along with a young student who had no life experience. I remember that Volodya made a terrible first impression on me. First, I got truly scared and thought him to be a godless creature, after some time I started hating him for reasons which were obvious for me and only me: he was the shallowest person in the whole wide world, he worked in the field of medicine which automatically made him cruel towards not only people`s bodies but souls as well, he made a lot of money and that meant that he cared about that and only that. I was sure that Volodya`s character was exactly the opposite of mine, in other words, he was far from me – an embodiment of the depth of a human`s soul, generosity, pureness and mystery. His profession sentenced his already stone heart to death, I thought. He was working not with people but with their bodies only, slicing and carving them like meat. Volodya explored everything about the anatomy of a human body, but he was definitely not able to explore the anatomy of poets` souls, us, people who were far from material world. How wrong I was.

I had never been close with my father, I don`t know why. I just happened to be the son who couldn`t understand him, who had different views on everything, who represented everything that was against his life and world view. We always fought, I can`t even remember a day when we just spoke to each other, every conversation which we had ended in a terrible fight. My father`s disagreement with everything I did, everything I was hurt me so much, it was like putting a hot iron to my heart. I was cold out, but inside I was devoured by thousands anxieties. I had already said goodbye to a true friendship with my father – a luxury which many of my friends had and which I could never afford to have. Because Volodya was his friend, I had started hating him before I met him. All the things and people who were related to my father were my potential enemies. Indeed, my father and Volodya were very much alike: they were both realists, down-to-earth and sensible men –the exact opposites of me. However, my life-changing conversation with Volodya that night helped me to take a fresh look at him. Yes, he was like my father, but he had cordiality and warmth, the qualities I found in him a bit later, when we became friends. Though he didn`t always understand my effusions, he never used any of my words to insult me – dirty fighting which my father had always had while attacking me. That is why I despised my own father and tremendously respected Volodya. I could be my true self with him and for that I was extremely grateful. I often thought about him and that girl Anna. What a strange and tragic story it was, I had never heard or read anything like that, and I could never imagine that such a practical man as Volodya could be able to feel anything so deep. So many years passed since that young girl had died in front of Volodya, but he still shuddered at the mere mention of her name and blushed like a school boy. Once he took me to her grave, he didn`t plan to do it, I just happened to pay him a little visit that day. I caught him getting ready to go out. He was all dressed up, perfumed and shining as if he was about to have his first date. I didn`t remember myself preparing so carefully to have my first date with Dasha, though I was nervous too. When he was ready to go, he took the biggest bouquet of red roses that I had ever seen, looked at himself in the mirror and left the house.

Her little and colorless grave was not far from the small hill on the edge of town, it stood alone as if turning its back on all the other graves. For a moment I thought that she probably had been not so friendly and had always been behind the crowd. Maybe she had been an introvert like me, not willing to share the mysteries of her inner world with anybody. Maybe she preferred silence to words or had bold ideas which she could never voice.

Volodya started cleaning the grave. Watching him doing that, I realized that it was definitely not his first time there. His movements were too confident, he knew every carving on the stone slab and gently touched it while cleaning as if she were alive and could feel it. I was standing nearby and looking at them, not knowing what to do, how to react. I didn`t dare ask Volodya about it, so I asked my mother about him and Anna the next day. It turned out that he visited her grave every Sunday. My mother knew not so much because Volodya was not in the habit of telling people about that girl, it was only my father whom he told about her. So, my father had told my mom that Volodya started visiting Anna`s grave from the very first day after she had been buried. He confessed that he couldn`t find the strength to go to her funeral because he thought it`d be awkward for him to stand there in front of her family. However, that day he got seriously drunk in a pub so that my father didn`t have much choice and carried him home on his hands. When he put him to bed, Volodya didn`t let him go and was silently sobbing on his shoulder. After some time, he realized he could no longer stop himself and called Anna`s mother to ask her for a meeting. To his astonishment she agreed to meet somewhere private and talk about her daughter. She raised her girl alone, Anna`s father left her when she got pregnant and was gone forever. She never saw him again, and never really wanted to. She confessed that she had always known he`d leave her, it was predictable as he was an impossibly handsome man. Too handsome for her who was plain and ordinary. She immediately fell in love with him and was certain she had made the most ridiculous mistake in her life. It was Anna`s birth that brought her back to life and made her forget about that man. She said she had always remembered his face because she could see it when looking at Anna. She was her father`s exact copy inside and out. She spoke, gestured and laughed the same way as him, when she was a child she kept her head down while listening to her mother`s fairy tales just like her father. Her permanent isolation and self-absorption were the qualities she inherited from him, but unlike her father she suffered and was lonely, so lonely she had no place of her own. Anna was so lost in her own thoughts she hadn`t even cared to think about her father. No questions about him, no attempts to find him, her complete indifference towards him pleased her mother and grieved her at the same time. She had always wanted to see him again, to show him Anna to get him back to his family. At the same time, however, she was afraid Anna could meet him and love him more than her. The most terrifying thing that could happen to her was losing Anna, and she couldn`t let that happen. Anna never misbehaved and never gave rise to sufficient doubts about herself. She had always been a quiet and homegrown girl, who had, by nature, nothing heroic about her and preferred books to boys and parties. Then Anna got hit by a car. Volodya saw her mother only once, after that he never met her again. He died two years later because of a heart attack. Every Sunday I buy red roses and visit his grave which is next to Anna`s.