That was all history, water under the bridge, and Granny Olya, herself left with nothing after the professor's departure — no work experience, no prospect of a pension, not a ruble to call her own and, what's more, with just a thoroughfare to live in (the photographer and geographer had quickly taken over the separate room, the so-called study, after Dad had left; previously they and the children had lived just in the back room, but now they could spread themselves out — a great help where family life's concerned — while Granny Olya slept on the couch in the living room, and now she was stuck there.)
Nowadays, in her new profession, Granny Olya did plenty of tramping and trekking about among the puddles: as a newly-hatched insurance agent she went knocking on strangers' doors, got herself invited in, wrote out insurance policies on kitchen tables, forever with her stout briefcase, a kindly lady with a sweaty nose and a flabby neck like a mother goose's.
Unattractive, garrulous, devoted, arousing in others total trust and goodwill (though not in her daughter, who didn't give a pin for her mother and sided completely with the departed Dad) — such was Granny Olya, who lived not at all for herself, stuffing her head with other people's affairs and in passing relating to new acquaintances her own life-story as a brilliant singer, a graduate of the music academy, who'd married and followed her husband to his job in a wildlife reserve at the back of beyond, where he wrote his dissertation and she raised children, etcetera etcetera, in proof of which Granny Olya would even sing a snatch from the romance «My song for you, so languorous and gentle…», laughing together with her astonished listeners, who were quite taken aback by the effect, with the glasses all ringing in the sideboard, and the pigeons taking flight from the windowsill.
It goes without saying that the daughter, and indeed the grandchildren, couldn't stand the old bat's singing, especially since the academy had trained Granny Olya for operatic rather than home singing, with the rare timbre, moreover, of a dramatic soprano.
But even old dames can make fools of themselves, and in this instance the burden and bother of making fruitless calls at strangers' doorsteps apparently got too much for Granny Olya, who all of a sudden fluttered off to the cinema just to please herself: there it would be warm, there was a cafe, a foreign film, and — this was interesting — lots of her contemporaries were crowding the entrance, old dears like herself with shopping bags.
There was a veritable witches' sabbath going on round the doors of the little theatre, and Granny Olya, persuading herself, against her better judgement, that she could do with a little treat, and drawn on irresistibly by strange sensations, made her way towards the box office, bought herself a ticket, and entered the unfamiliar warmth of the cinema.
The cafe was teeming with people, young couples among them, and Granny Olya too bought herself a sandwich, a pastry and some dubious sweet drink — all costing a ridiculous sum, but an outing's an outing — then, wiping her nose with her husband's checked hankie, and seized by an inexplicable excitement, she entered the cinema along with the crowd, seated herself, took off her fur hat with its elastic band, removed her scarf, unbuttoned her threadbare winter coat, a once-elegant gabardine with fox-fur collar that didn't bear close scrutiny in the mirror — and at this point the lights went out and paradise arose.
Granny Olya saw upon the screen all her dreams come true: herself when young in the wildlife reserve, with a pure lovely face, slender as a reed; and her husband, too, as he should have been, in that other life which for some reason she had never had.
Life was full of love, the heroine was dying, as all of us will die, in illness and distress, but on the way there there had been a waltz by candlelight.
By the end Granny Olya was weeping, and others around her were blowing their noses. Then, dragging her feet, Granny Olya set off once more like a worker bee to collect her dues, once again kissed two locked doors and, defeated on the professional front, crept home.
A bus with steaming windows, the steaming metro, one block on foot, third floor, rich smells of home, children's piping voices in the kitchen, one's own, dear, familiar — stop.
And suddenly Granny Olya, as if in day-dream, saw before her — so full of tenderness and concern — the face of Robert Taylor.
The following day she rushed off again, early in the morning, to her assigned district, found her clients at home, collected their money, made several new acquaintances in the communal kitchens, persuaded them to take out an advantageous life insurance policy and en route — this was the greatest temptation of all — to collect, by way of a bonus, compensation for all their injuries, fractures and operations; and people listened to her eagerly and pondered their fate, business was going well, and then Granny Olya dashed headlong for the familiar cinema in time for the matinee.
But another film, a film for kids, turned out to be on that day.
At the box-office, however, Granny Olya ran into a half-familiar face, one of yesterday's old ladies — not quite so old yet — in an astrakhan hat; she too had rushed in early to the cinema and, much put out, was now enquiring where the film programme could be found, obviously intending to go off to another cinema where her favourite movie was showing.
Granny Olya pricked up her ears, made the same enquiry, got to the root of the matter and the following day — only the following day — minced her way in solitude to a rendezvous with her beloved, and once more returned to that enchanted world of her other life.
On this occasion she felt less self-conscious with the other old ladies, and indeed with herself; and at the exit she saw the happy, tear-stained faces and wiped her own eyes with the big man's hankie that had been left her as a souvenir, along with woolen men's underwear — soldier's underwear, they called it; she put it on in frosty weather, and wore the long johns at night, and her daughter wore her dad's checked shirts to school under her pinafore: life has to go on!
«Oh Lord», thought Granny Olya, honest and pure as a crystal, «What's happening to me, I've been bewitched. And the worst of it is, these old ladies run round from show to show — quite dreadful…»
She didn't consider herself an old lady — there was so much to look forward to stilclass="underline" Granny Olya was valued at work, her clients respected her, she was the mainstay of the family now — she'd even bought an aquarium for her grandchildren, had gone with them to the Pet Market to purchase the fish, hoping to forget THAT, the main thing (Granny Olya was able to control her passions, able to sacrifice herself — take, for instance, her life at the wildlife reserve.)
But there was no getting round it, Granny Olya said to herself after a routine visit to her clients: again and again, no matter what the subject of conversation, she'd find herself uttering the beloved name — Robert — and the title of the film — «Waterloo Bridge» — and all the details of the actors' lives.
People would attempt to talk to her about their own affairs, and once again Granny Olya would mention, let's say, the show she'd been to the day before yesterday, and where the film would be showing next.
She herself was already aware that she was sliding downhill, especially in the eyes of her clients — aware that she no longer attended so assiduously to their tales, no longer discussed with such eager attention all their intrigues with neighbours, their lawsuits, betrayals, strategies; these days, she realised, she listened to all this rather mechanically, nodding and snuffling as she searched for her hankie, but amid all this dross, this flotsam and jetsam of life, the main thing — HIS torments — shone through. And, incidentally, HER torments too.