The Happiness of an Old Shared Apartment
While waiting for her husband to come home from work, Sofya sat at the kitchen table and drank thyme tea, slowly sipping it mouthful by mouthful. Hearing the sound of a key turning in the lock, she stood up and stopped in the doorway. Her husband Igor came in, serious and silent.
“Hi,” she said first. “You’re late again. I had dinner long ago, and I’ve been waiting for you…”
“Hi,” Igor replied. “You didn’t have to wait. I’m not hungry. And anyway, I won’t be here long. I’ll pack my things and leave.”
Without even taking off his shoes, he walked into the room, opened the wardrobe, and took out a suitcase.
Sofya stood frozen. Not understanding anything, she watched as he threw the first things he grabbed into the suitcase.
“Igor, explain what’s going on.”
“Don’t you understand? I’m leaving you,” he said clearly, without looking her in the eyes.
“Where?”
“To another woman…”
“Ohhh, probably to some young girl, though you’re still young yourself. Forty is no age,” Sofya said with slight sarcasm, slowly coming to her senses and understanding the moment. “I will not cry, not for anything. He won’t see my tears,” she told herself. Then aloud she said, “And how long has this been going on with her?”
“Almost a year,” Igor said calmly. Seeing her surprise, he added, “That’s your problem if you didn’t notice anything or suspect anything. It means I hid it very well.”
“You’re leaving for good… or…” she suddenly asked.
“Sofya, are you completely unable to think? Listen to me carefully. I’m leaving you for another woman. She and I are going to have a child soon. You and I couldn’t have one, but Katya will give me a son. I’m giving you one month to move out of my apartment. Where you go and how you manage it is your problem. Katya and I will live here with our son, while she’s currently renting a place.”
Igor left. Sofya remained alone. The walls seemed to press down on her, and the apartment was silent. She turned on the television, just so someone would be speaking. She and Igor had lived together for twelve years. It took her about a week to come back to herself, but she managed.
From her parents, who had passed away early, she had inherited a house in the village. But she did not want to live alone in the countryside.
“I won’t be able to live there,” Sofya thought. “It’s far from civilization, there are no conveniences, and there is absolutely no work. At thirty-five, I don’t want to live in a village. So I’ll sell the house. And with the money I get, I’ll have to buy a room in a shared apartment or a dormitory for now. After that, life will show me what to do.”
That was what Sofya decided. She sold the house as soon as she arrived in the village. Her neighbor Varvara had even been waiting for her.
“Sonechka, it’s good that you came. We were already planning to go to the city to look for you.”
“What happened?” Sofya asked.
“Well, you see… my relatives want to buy your house. They came from the North, and they need exactly this kind of little house, one that they won’t feel sorry to tear down and build a new one in its place. They want to live near us, my sister and her husband…”
“My goodness, Varvara, that’s exactly why I came here. How wonderful. Let them take it right now, as long as we agree on the price. Here is my phone number…”
Everything worked out well. In just ten days, she had the money in her hands. Of course, it was not a large sum. What could one get for a half-ruined old house? Still, she managed to buy a small room in an apartment-style dormitory. The kitchen was shared, neighbors lived in two of the rooms, and she bought the third. That was why she considered it a shared apartment.
The neighbors seemed quiet and quite decent. Sofya rarely crossed paths with them. From morning until late evening, she was at work, and it was there that she began an affair with her colleague Timur. Everything seemed to be going well between them, at least that was how it seemed to Sofya.
Shortly before Women’s Day, March eighth, Timur told her:
“I need to think about a lot of things. I’m not sure about my feelings. Let’s take a pause in our relationship.”
“Fine, let’s take a pause… Actually, go far away into the woods,” she snapped angrily.
That evening, she returned home furious. She was already in her thirty-sixth year, and she had no time for pauses. She decided to eat away her stress. She opened the refrigerator. She had a small piece of ham there, but she could not find it. She even began to tremble.
“Who took my ham?” she shouted threateningly across the whole kitchen.
“Sonechka, I threw it away two days ago… It had turned green, and there was a smell in the refrigerator… I decided that you wouldn’t eat it anyway. Why risk your health?” her neighbor Vera Ivanovna said calmly and somewhat gently.
“Don’t you know that you must not touch other people’s things?” Sofya raged. “It is not for you to decide what I should eat.”
Sofya lost control completely and poured all her anger onto her neighbor. As if it were not enough that she had separated from her husband, lost her normal home, and then that colleague had decided to take a pause, practically taking away her hope for happiness — now the neighbors were going to take away her food too.
“Vera Ivanovna, don’t be upset,” said Ivan Ilyich, the neighbor who lived in the other room.
He was about sixty, a gray-haired man, intelligent, wearing glasses, very calm. He always sat in the corner of the kitchen in an old armchair with a newspaper or a book. Vera Ivanovna was upset; it was visible.
“Anger is speaking in Sofya right now. She is taking it out on you because someone else has hurt her. Don’t take it personally,” Ivan Ilyich said in an instructive tone, without looking up from his newspaper.
“And what do you know?” Sofya turned to him. “Nobody asked you anything,” she said sharply.
“Believe me, I know a little.”
“Well, if you’re so smart, then why are you living here in this miserable shared apartment?” Sofya could no longer stop herself.
Vera Ivanovna exchanged a meaningful look with her neighbor and went to her room, away from trouble. Sofya loudly slammed her own door and sat down on the sofa.
“Look at him, sitting there like some kitchen philosopher, giving instructions and trying to teach me how to live,” she thought, furious and hungry.
About an hour passed. Sofya slowly calmed down. Looking at her laptop, she remembered that she had bought that ham a very long time ago. One could only imagine what it had turned into. She felt ashamed.
“I went and hurt Vera Ivanovna for no reason, and she is old enough to be my mother. My nerves are completely frayed. At this rate, I’ll turn into a scandalous woman or a hysteric. They probably thought exactly that about me. I need to apologize,” she decided.
She found Vera Ivanovna in the kitchen.
“Forgive me, Vera Ivanovna. I don’t know what came over me. It’s just that so much has fallen on me at once… And Ivan Ilyich was right.”
The neighbor smiled and put an arm around Sofya.
“It happens, Sonechka. I understood. Sit down at the table. We’ll drink tea with pie and sweets. But you should ask Ivan Ilyich for forgiveness too. He really got it undeservedly. He truly is a professor. He taught at a university. And he had an apartment in the city center, a large one, and a job he loved. But…”
Vera Ivanovna paused and was silent for a moment.
“But everything changed when his wife became ill. They found cancer in her brain. Our doctors refused to operate and said it was too late. Then he found a clinic in Israel. They agreed to take the case, but a lot of money was needed. Ivan Ilyich grabbed at that chance, borrowed a huge amount of money, and flew there with his wife. The operation was successful, but it brought no improvement. His wife lived a little longer, but then she still got worse and passed away. Ivan Ilyich quit his job right away and took care of his wife himself. And after her death, he sold his apartment and paid off his debts. That is how he ended up here.”
When Sofya heard this story, she almost burst into tears.
“Thank you for telling me,” she said. “Tomorrow I will definitely ask his forgiveness.”
The next day after work, Sofya timidly knocked on Ivan Ilyich’s door with a gift in her hand. He opened it.
“Good evening, Ivan Ilyich,” she said, holding out the gift to him. “Please accept this from me and forgive me, for God’s sake, forgive me. I offended you undeservedly yesterday. You were right.”
She showered him with apologies. He listened without interrupting, and when she finished, he said:
“What a pleasant surprise. But I will agree to accept the gift and your apologies only if you celebrate the holiday with me. Today is my birthday.”
“Oh, congratulations! And the gift turns out to be just in time,” Sofya said. “Of course, I would be happy to. How can I help you?”
Together with Vera Ivanovna, they set the table. While they were preparing everything, Sofya opened up to her neighbor and told her all about herself. She told her how, as a naive institute student, she had once believed a married man and became pregnant, but he forced her to “solve the problem.” He took her to the hospital himself and paid for everything himself. After that, they separated. Later, she could not have children, and perhaps that was why her ex-husband had left her.
The table was already set when the doorbell rang. Sofya hurried to open it. On the threshold stood a man of about forty, tall and smiling.
“Hello, I’m Vera Ivanovna’s son, Roman,” he introduced himself.
“Hello, I’m Sofya. I live here. Come in.”
The conversation at the table was lively. They congratulated Ivan Ilyich and wished him health and all the best. But they also laughed wholeheartedly. Roman turned out to be an interesting conversationalist and knew a great many stories. He had once been a geologist, and now he was a long-distance truck driver, so he had no shortage of stories.
Everything felt unusual to Sofya. Just yesterday, she had known almost nothing about these people, and today they were sitting together and talking as if they were family.
After a couple of hours, Ivan Ilyich and Vera Ivanovna went to their rooms. Roman said:
“Let’s go for a walk. You can tell me about yourself. I myself am not a frequent guest here, and I’m seeing you for the first time. I have an apartment in the city, and I’m often away, but my mother absolutely refuses to move from here. I’ll tell you a secret: she is a little in love with Ivan Ilyich, and he is too, I think,” Roman laughed. “And I’m away from home for long stretches of time. How am I supposed to get married like that?” he said with a smile. “I had a wife back when I was a geologist, but while I was away, another man took my place.”
Winter had only just arrived in the city. Everything around was white, and snow was falling in large flakes. It was quiet, with no wind. Sofya and Roman walked in circles for several hours, and it was not cold at all. Then they parted.
Three days later, Roman was leaving on a trip, and he told her about it.
“For long?” Sofya asked.
“No, just for a week, that’s all. I’ll come back. Will you wait for me?”
“Of course. I’ll be waiting very much.”
That was how their romance began, and later it grew into a real, strong feeling. They got married. Sofya moved in with him, and a year later little Arsyushka was born. When Roman leaves on a long trip, Sofya and her son return for a while to her shared apartment.
That way, the days of waiting pass more quickly. And Vera Ivanovna and Ivan Ilyich help a great deal and love their grandson. Better nannies for Arsyushka could not be found.