Father asked Nina to comb through the documents pertaining to the project review and acceptance procedure. Essentially, everything had long been prepared, but he wanted her to take a fresh look at all the papers and iron out any inaccuracies and inconsistencies.
Nina set about the task, but she could not take her mind off those smaller projects that had been given up by the customers. Her practical nature and professional habits of an accountant revolted at the thought that considerable sums of money had to be written off just like that, without rhyme or reason.
With her father’s permission, she contacted the defectors and found out for herself that no compromise was possible – they simply refused to talk to her. Then Nina asked her father if there was someone else who could be interested in those projects. The work on each of them had not yet gone beyond an initial stage, and Nina reasoned that some other companies could adjust those projects to their needs. Although he did not believe in that idea, her father gave her the names of a few organizations of a suitable profile and location.
Nina contacted precipitously each of them and arranged meetings with the management. In two cases, it nearly worked out – her proposal for them to buy out the projects caused surprise, but then she was told that it was possible. In fact, one of the two directors was interested in herself rather than the project – he stared openly at her legs and then suggested discussing the matter over dinner. Nina was not so much angered as amused. For all that, she did not reject the invitation as she hoped to squeeze something useful out of that contact, too. Of course, she was going to pay for her own dinner and had no intention of sleeping with that erotomaniac specimen. However, she counted more on the other director – an elderly man who knew Yevgeniy Borisovich from some old business association and spoke highly of him.
But it all collapsed as quickly. Two days later the elderly director called her and refused apologetically – he said that he had weighed it all up again and found that the game was not worth the candle. He was one of those decent people who are very bad at lying. Every word he said gave away how awkward he felt. Obviously, it was only his sense of decency that had forced him to call Nina and expose himself to that shame.
Nina called the connoisseur of women’s legs herself. Her call took the man unawares. He started babbling something about feeling unwell and then said suddenly that he was going away on business. Probably, it was the first time in his life that he refused to go out to dinner with a young woman.
Nina’s first reaction to those absurd dialogues was that of indignation, but then real fear crept into her heart. It was clear that those two directors had been advised against dealing with her father’s company, or possibly, they had decided themselves not to stick out their necks when they had learned that Gradbank was behind that business. Nina was depressed. What was that force from which there was no escape? She pictured Gradbank and its henchmen as some kind of giant octopus that had gripped her father and herself in its arms and would not let go.
Another thought suggested itself, one that she hated to let into her mind. After all, they could not be so mean and ruthless! But the thought knocked at her temple again and again. Her father’s main project. Were they capable of such villainy? Could the Gradbank people go as far as to aim a blow at her father’s most important and cherished work? Nina tried to convince herself that it was impossible but her reason spoke to the contrary. Her father had not yielded to the pressure that had been exerted on him, so harsher measures were in order. It was nothing personal, it was just business.
When Nina had looked through the project papers, she was appalled. Not even being a lawyer, she found a lot of oversights, ambiguous formulations, and minor inconsistencies. Those papers were written by good, naïve people for other good people, while to bad people, the whole project would appear like Swiss cheese for the number of holes that could be used to attack it. And there was absolutely no way to fix anything.
There was nothing to do but hope that the iron boys from Gradstroiinvest would not dare to attack such a large project, or else, would not be able to reach it. After all, they were not all-powerful. Or were they?
Trying not to show her apprehension, Nina started asking her father about the review and acceptance procedure – what it was like in practice, and what kind of people were on the committee.
“Just the normal kind,” her father answered. “I know them all. They are all right. Well, except for one…”
It turned out that he had an antagonist on the committee in the person of the head of the local technical inspection. There had been incidents in the past when the inspector had pestered Yevgeniy Borisovich with some groundless cavils. What was worse, Nina’s father was convinced that the man was a bribe-taker. “Things would be different if I greased his palm… But I don’t do such things, you know that.”
Now the head of the technical inspection could be used by Gradstroiinvest to damage the project, Nina thought and realized that her father had it on his mind, too.
“Don’t you worry!” her father said with feigned optimism. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
For the hundredth time, he started explaining at length what a wonderful project his company had carried through.
“And mind you, I’m kind of pals with the chairman of the committee, too,” he added and told Nina that in the past, he had sorted out some business matters with the man and the two of them had even drunk vodka on one occasion.
“He’s a decent guy,” Nina’s father assured her. “By the way, he called me the other day. If there’d been any problems, he would’ve let me know…”
That conversation took place at the end of a long day, as Nina and her father were having tea in the empty office. As she listened to his loud assurances, Nina noticed that he avoided looking her in the eye and that the cup was trembling in his hand. She scolded herself for being stupid. It was only now that she realized how scared her father was. He was perfectly aware that his company was being raided in a big way, and he was in mortal fear for his main project. That was why he had swallowed his pride and asked her to help him. Only she could not do anything to help.
He was not at all as blind and conceited as Nina had started to view him in her irritation. But no matter how powerful Gradbank was or what profitable offer they made him, he could not give in. His whole personality, his whole life was behind it, and considerations of profit or common sense were irrelevant.
They never resumed that conversation – there was nothing to discuss. Also, her father hardly ever showed up in the office during those last weeks before the project delivery date as he was spending all his days and nights on the site.
At last, the big day arrived. Nina’s father did not take her along to the actual session of the review and acceptance committee, and Nina did not insist, for which she scolded herself bitterly afterwards. Her bank was experiencing a slump in activity, so she was able to take a day off and in the morning already, she went over to her father’s place in order to wait for the news together with Lydia Grigorievna.
As soon as she got there, the phone rang. Lydia Grigorievna rushed to it. It was Nina’s father. His voice could barely be discerned – he was calling from some crowded spot – but he managed to put through a few words. The news was good: the head of the technical inspection, the only real opponent of Yevgeniy Borisovich on the committee, had fallen ill and sent in an assistant to act for him. The assistant, an obscure young employee, had no authority with the committee and would hardly be listened to even if he came out with some objections.
Nina was sitting in the kitchen with Lydia Grigorievna. The woman treated her to some coffee and cake of her own making. For the evening, a celebration of the project acceptance was planned to which the key employees of Yevgeniy Borisovich were invited. On such occasions, it was normal to throw a banquet in a restaurant, but Yevgeniy Borisovich wanted to celebrate at home first in order to show his true men that he considered them as friends, and, incidentally, boast of the culinary talent of Lydia Grigorievna. From superstition, Lydia Grigorievna would not start cooking for the grand dinner, but Nina knew that her fridge was bursting with supplies.
It was the first time that Nina saw her father’s wife alone, in domestic surroundings. Lydia Grigorievna looked differently and behaved differently from her usual image. In the light of day, with no make-up, her face betrayed her age – Nina saw a woman whose best years were long past. With Nina, she did not go into her habitual enthusiastic accounts of theater premiers. Instead, little by little, she told Nina her life story.
She had been born and had grown up in a small town somewhere on the Volga. Her mother, a schoolteacher, raised her without a husband. As soon as she finished school, the girl Lyda set off to conquer the capital. Like thousands of other naïve, provincial girls, she dreamed of entering one of the top drama academies; instead, she wound up as a yard-cleaner for a municipal maintenance unit. It was there that she was picked up by her future man. He was a local official of some kind. As he was visiting the neighborhood with an inspection, he noticed a young yard-cleaner girl and asked who she was. As a result, Lyda became a secretary in his office. And – his mistress.
He was her first man – and the only one for many years to come. He was not a bad man, and he loved her, but he made a mess of her life all right. There was a huge difference in years between them, and of course, he was married. When more liberal times set in, he got divorced and married Lyda, but he would not let her have a baby. Lyda who was used to obeying him complied with that, too. When she finally decided to have her own way, it was too late – she was unable to become a mother.
She was no longer a secretary; having received a college degree through attending some night classes, she had made a small-time career in municipal organizations. When a major political overturn occurred, her husband was pensioned off while she kept her position and even got a promotion which she had never sought. She took no interest in work – she had long realized that she only wanted to be a wife. In her yard-cleaner’s youth, all she had was a cot in a workers’ hostel. That was followed by many years in a rented one-room apartment where she led the miserable life of a kept woman. All she wanted now was to have a real home and be really married. She was married – to an old, sick pensioner who could not give her anything as a husband but demanded more and more attention to himself, and tormented her with his bad temper and jealousy. Lydia’s feelings towards him were a mixture of pity and hatred.
That existence dragged on for another ten years, but finally the man died. Lydia promised herself to start a new life – look after herself, go to the theater, make new acquaintances. One of those new acquaintances was Nina’s father who came to her office to get some paper signed. After she got married to him, Lydia Grigorievna resigned at once from her position of authority and took on the easy job of a part-time consultant for the municipal administration – in order only not to sit at home all the time, but to communicate with people and keep up-to-date with things without burdening herself with hard work or responsibility.
As she was listening to the woman, Nina realized for the first time that for Lydia Grigorievna, her father was a dream come true. After spending her whole life with a man who was nearly twenty five years her older, she was now married to a young – almost her age – and handsome man. She was happy.
It was midday, then one o’clock, then two o’clock. Lydia Grigorievna threw together a little meal for the two of them. In the meantime, she started casting concerned glances at the clock – it was time for her to get down to serious cooking for the dinner party.
Nina ate with pleasure. She felt comfortable in the neat, nice kitchen where she was being taken care of – something that had not happened to her for a very long time. Her hostility towards Lydia Grigorievna was a thing of the past – she had accepted the woman and even the memory of her mother no longer stood between them. In fact, Nina did not remember her mother often – only when she was particularly lonely and sad.
This time her mother came to Nina herself. As Nina was chatting with Lydia Grigorievna – telling her some professional, ‘accountant’ joke – her mama’s voice sounded suddenly in her head. Nina had no doubt that it was her mama’s voice and no one else’s – she would recognize it among thousands of others. The voice said, “Ninusya…” Then, after a second, “Poor papa…”
“Is something wrong, Nina?” asked Lydia Grigorievna who saw Nina turn pale.
“N-no, it’s nothing,” Nina muttered. “It just seems a bit stuffy in here.”
“Yes, sorry, it’s the oven. I need to do some ventilating here.” Lydia Grigorievna started bustling about and suggested, “You go out onto the balcony and get some fresh air. It’s all fitted out there, and there are some chairs to sit in.”
Nina went out onto a closed, wood-paneled balcony, pulled a transom window slightly ajar and sat into a wicker chair. It was a sunny day outside, and although the air was frosty, a turn for spring could be felt in it. But the beauties of Nature were lost upon Nina. Her head swooned, and her heart pounded furiously. Gripping the arms of the chair, she was coming to herself slowly, unable to understand what was going on with her.
Finally, having breathed in a lot of frosty air and getting quite chilled, she decided to go back. As she was closing the transom, she heard Lydia Grigorievna call out to her from the kitchen.
“What is it, Lydia Grigorievna? I didn’t get what you said,” she said as she entered the kitchen, and stopped short.
Lydia Grigorievna was sitting with a phone receiver clasped in her hand. Her cheeks were ash grey.
“Zhenya…” she muttered.
Nina took some time to realize that the woman referred to her father.
“Ninochka, papa is not well,” Lydia Grigorievna managed to say finally.
She had had a call from the committee. Yevgeniy Borisovich had had a stroke and had been taken to hospital.
For Nina, that day and the day after passed as if in a fog – her memory only captured separate episodes and pictures. She remembered how she and Lydia Grigorievna caught a taxi and sped off to the hospital whose address they had jotted down on a slip of paper. Once arrived, they rushed into the reception ward, where they had an agitated explanation with a dumb, indifferent and rude receptionist, then took the stairs (the elevator being out of order) to the fourth floor where the critical care unit was located.
To get to the unit, they had to walk all through the cardiology department. Everything here shocked Nina who was not familiar with the realities of public general hospitals. The crudely painted walls were dark and peeling with time and neglect, the ragged linoleum bore some horrible-looking spots. The wards, designed for six, were packed, and out in the corridor stood more beds with sick people, some of them on a drip. From one of the wards, a strong smell of urine was coming in combination with some other nasty stench; in another ward, someone was groaning loudly. At the nurses’ desk, two young nurses were chatting gaily, apparently not in the least concerned about the patients and their problems. Nina was appalled by the thought that her papa was lying, helpless and possibly dying, in such surroundings.
In the critical care unit, a fat middle-aged nurse blocked their way. When they explained who they were, she said irritably that there was no one to tell them anything about their patient yet and snapped, “Wait.” They settled down on hard corridor benches to wait.
Lydia Grigorievna said, “Did you notice…? I think I saw an ATM on the ground floor.”
“What? What ATM?”
“We’re going to need money,” explained Lydia Grigorievna.
“But I didn’t take my card along!” Nina exclaimed worriedly.
“I did.”
Lydia Grigorievna set off to search for an ATM and after some time came back carrying a sum of money. For another hour though, there was no one to hand it to.
Finally, the doctor came out. He was rather young, but unkempt and bald, with the face of a drinker.
The women rushed to him.
“It’s a stroke,” he said. “Rather a bad one.”
“But… He is going to live, isn’t he? Tell us he is,” Lydia Grigorievna uttered in an altered voice.
Without looking at them, the doctor shook his head.
“There’s no telling yet. There is hope, though.”
Nina plucked up her spirit and said, “Look, the conditions are awful here! Can we transfer him to another hospital?”
The doctor glanced at her in surprise. “You can if you mean to kill him.”
Lydia Grigorievna pushed Nina aside.
“We’re begging you, doctor, – please, do everything possible,” she said lowering her voice. “We will be very grateful. For now, please, accept this.”
She stepped right up to the doctor and slipped some banknotes wrapped up in paper into the pocket of his surgical coat.
“Well, with my salary, I have to accept whatever I am offered,” the man said without much enthusiasm. “But to be honest, it’s not me but your patient’s system that calls the tune now.”
He left, and they settled down to wait.
The nurse was displeased. “What’s the use of your sitting it out here? Go home and come back in the morning.” But going home was out of the question for them.
A clock on the wall counted time silently – five o’clock, six o’clock, seven o’clock in the evening. Nina and Lydia Grigorievna were fidgeting uneasily on the uncomfortable benches. Immersed each in their own thoughts, they hardly talked. Nina was trying to take in what was happening. Papa has had a stroke? He can die? But it’s impossible! As once her mind had been unable to accept her mother’s death, it was now unable to accept the danger that her father faced. Blocking the unthinkable, her brain brought up all sorts of rubbish – that the quarterly reports were soon due in her bank, and without Ignatiy Savelievich around, she was in for a rough spell; that she was hardly going to attend the driving classes which she had subscribed to; and that she needed different shoes for that dress.
When midnight was close, the nurse asked them again, “You are what – going to stick out here the whole night?” They assured her that they were. The nurse shook her head and sighed, “All right, then, come along.” She led them to the nurses’ room where she offered them some tea and biscuits. Then she pointed at two empty cots, “You can lie down here,” and gave them some pillows and blankets. “The roster says three nurses in each shift, see?” she said with vexation. “But one is off sick while another is having a baby. And I’m here, sweating my guts out for the whole bunch!”
Nina thought that she would not be able to have a wink of sleep, but the moment she laid her head down on the pillow she flaked out.
She was woken up by Lydia Grigorievna, “Ninochka, the doctor is coming any minute now.”
Nina jumped up. It was six in the morning. She had barely freshened up at a sink when the doctor came in. At the end of his shift, he looked even less attractive.
“Everything’s all right,” he said without any emotion. “The worst part is over. He is going to live, and there is hope that the main functions will be restored. It’s going to take time, of course.”
Nina and Lydia Grigorievna listened to that, clasping each other’s hands. Nina felt weak in the knees. Only now she realized how strong her fear for her father had been.
Afterwards, when Yevgeniy Borisovich was taken to expensive clinics and shown to luminaries of medicine, it became clear that the shabby doctor from the public hospital had done his job well, and it was due to him that Nina’s father retained speech and control of his body.
It was not until several days later that Nina and Lydia Grigorievna learned what had happened at the ill-fated session of the project acceptance committee. On the day after the stroke Yevgeniy Borisovich came around, and they were allowed short visits, but the doctor ordered that they avoid any topics that might agitate the patient. Finally, Nina’s father told them everything himself.
The review procedure started auspiciously. It had been the fear of Nina’s father that the head of the technical inspection would not let him present his project in full brilliance by finding faults and interfering with his presentation. But the chief technical inspector was absent, and his proxy was as silent as a fish. The other members of the committee seemed to be in a benevolent mood.
Yevgeniy Borisovich got carried away and gave them a whole lecture. He was especially glad that he was able to draw the committee’s attention to some ingenious technical solutions which were his brainchildren. Thanks to those solutions, the object was built to higher standards of safety and at the same time, some economy was obtained.
After the presentation, a field review of the object was scheduled. On the site, though, the members of the committee behaved in an indolent and disinterested way – viewed everything quite formally, without prying, clearly impatient to wind up and go to lunch.
The meal took place in a modest café in the municipal administrative building. In former times, it had been a canteen where the staff of the district Soviet administration had had their lunches, and the establishment had not changed much since. Grey-haired female cooks served the same cabbage salads, borsch and meat rissoles as twenty five years before. Nina’s father was glad to see the members of the committee eat with appetite. He could not eat anything himself, the food sticking in his throat. He was watching the others closely trying to figure out whether everything was going well or whether somebody was bearing some kind of grudge against the project or himself personally.
In that same café, he had once drunk vodka with the chairman of the committee – they had ‘washed down’ a closed contract. Now, emboldened, Nina’s father mentioned that episode to the man, “Do you remember you and me landing here for a…” He checked himself and bit his tongue realizing suddenly that it was indiscrete of him to bring up memories like that, and the chairman might not like it. However, the chairman did not seem to mind – he smiled and said, “Yeah, that was a nice little session we had here.”
A bomb went off after the lunch. The committee gathered in the conference room.
“Well, my dear colleagues, go ahead, have your say,” said the chairman.
The technical inspection man took the floor and asked some questions. The questions were not of a dangerous kind – Yevgeniy Borisovich had anticipated them, and answered each with confidence.
A pause followed.
The chairman prompted, “So? … No more questions?”
Everyone kept silent. Then the chairman took the floor himself.
“Well… Isn’t it sad, my dear colleagues? It’s really sad. None of you seems to see that the project is almost completely failed.”
Nina’s father who had already prepared to hear a favorable conclusion which was the chairman’s business to make took some time to grasp what the man was saying. And the chairman was saying that the company of Yevgeniy Borisovich had messed up all the works and failed to deliver on the contract it had made with the city.
The members of the committee were motionless and speechless. The chairman took out a note-book and opened a file containing the documents on the project. While leafing through one and the other, he started pouring down charges. It appeared that the company had violated certain regulations that were in force in the construction industry, and failed to observe the environmental law. The technological solutions which Nina’s father was so proud of had not gone through proper certification, and thus, implementing them could be classified as arbitrary practice in breach of the law. And so on, and so forth – over two dozen points.
All that was total rubbish. The regulations, adopted forty years ago, had nothing to do with the modern realities. They were universally violated, as it was impossible to build anything otherwise. In contrast, the environmental law was brand new, but it was also universally violated because of its being totally unrealistic. In fact, the object built by Nina’s father was more environment-friendly than most objects of the same category. It was true that his inventions had not been formally certified, but their merits were obvious to any specialist, and the necessary certificates could be tagged on post factum, as was common practice.
The chairman of the committee, himself an engineer, knew all that perfectly well. And yet, as if playing some evil game, he went on slashing the project, distorting shamelessly the true facts.
Summarizing, he said, turning to Nina’s father, “You let us down, Yevgeniy Borisovich – you did, in a big way. I didn’t expect that of you. Now I really don’t know how all this mess can be sorted out. Honestly, if it were someone else but you, I would just kick them out and throw the book at them. But out of my good feelings for you…” His face and tone expressed his righteous indignation, and at the same time, his wise humaneness. He turned to the members of the committee, “I believe, we should grant our contractor a deferral so he can fix the said faults. Two months must be sufficient. In any case, we cannot afford a longer delay. So, I move a two-month deferral. Will the members of the committee vote, please.”
The ‘faults’ that the chairman had listed could not be fixed in two years, let alone two months. That was sheer mockery. Trying to protest, Nina’s father opened his mouth, but no words issued from it.
In total silence, the members of the committee raised their hands one by one. That was the end of the project and the end of the company of Yevgeniy Borisovich Kisel.
Even if there had been some speaking going on around, Nina’s father would not have heard it because of a furious, deafening pulse that was pounding in his ears. Then a voice in his head said loudly, “Gradbank.”
That word struck him like a sledge hammer. He saw the chairman and all the members of the committee slide most weirdly backwards and upwards. The briefcase which he had been clasping dropped out of his hand, and the papers got scattered about. Then Yevgeniy Borisovich saw a table leg just before his nose and realized that he was lying on the floor. Then everything went dark.