My mother’s stories
chapter 15
The only man she ever loved
Devotion – it was the basic feature of my aunt’s character and this quality determined all her future life. She was, as it turned out, a one-man woman and he ruined her life as most of them usually do.
I
remember how startled my parents were when I told them that my future husband’s
name was Peter. It was the very name of the only man my aunt Zina had ever
loved. Maybe he loved her too – at least he kept his intention to marry
another woman a secret from her. They even had a date on the day before the wedding. For a long
time I considered this as a top of treachery, but now when I am much older and
wiser, as I’d like to believe, I think it was rather a sign of passion.
Anyway,
some time later after his wedding they resumed their relationship and through
all my teens my mother used to tell me how wrong it was to love a man like
that. After my aunt reached her thirties she felt, as she once told me, a
strong desire to have some little creature trotting beside her, holding her
hand. So she began to save money till she had a sum big enough to allow her to
look after her baby for a year without having to go to work.
At
that time society greatly disapproved of single mothers and deprecating whispers
could often be heard behind their backs. My aunt, however, was a strong
personality: she decided to have a baby without a husband and she gave birth to
her daughter when she was 35. Yet nobody knew who the father of her baby was –
she took this secret into her untimely grave. In her daughter’s birth certificate she wrote a different name – not Peter. Had she split up with him by that
time or had she promised him not to reveal his paternity? Or, probably, it was
some kind of protest against his treatment of her. There was a time when I
really wished to know the truth but now I think it’s better like that. I have
had my own reasons since then to have a grudge against the name of Peter
without knowing the details of my poor aunt’s sufferings.
So
that was the only relative our family kept in touch with. I was very fond of my
aunt, especially in my early childhood, and was very proud that she allowed me
to call her just by her name Zina as if we were sisters. Her presents always
made me happy. She didn’t give them to
me very often but this only increased their value in my eyes. What a pretty set
of toy china tableware she gave me once! Or my sledges - they were so light,
with good slippery runners. Or my first tights. It was not so easy to find them
in our shops – just as it had always been with things which were new and
fashionable. All the girls dreamt about them! That was the difference between
my aunt and my parents: she usually bought me those things that I really longed
to have.
Another
good thing about my aunt was her readiness to share her knowledge with me. My
mother had never been consistent in this question. On one hand she often blamed
me for my laziness and on the other hand was often reluctant to teach me.
Sometimes she confused me with her completely incomprehensible to me hostility when
I tried to clean or to put things in order in our messy dwelling. She used to
grumble she couldn’t find anything after that. As I understand now she
perceived our house and yard as her realm, created with her own hands, and no
one could infringe on her supreme power there. Besides, deeply inside she had
never wanted me to become a day older than five and a half. Most of my
wrongdoings were usually followed by her stories about me being kind and
responsible at this age.
My
aunt, on the contrary, was glad to help me to grow up. I regret I was not
interested in cooking at that time, because she was an excellent cook. But she
taught me to swim, for example. Not being a very good swimmer herself, she
helped me to overcome my fear of water. I remember how soothingly she tried to
persuade me, telling me that every girl had to learn how to dance, cycle and
swim. She regretted she couldn’t cycle herself. And I really took her
directives close to heart. I didn’t manage to learn properly the art of dancing
but swimming and cycling have become my favourite leisure activities.
I
was 13 when my aunt’s daughter was born and, of course, it changed our
relationship. She couldn’t support me as she used to and, I have to admit, I
was not too eager to help her. Besides, I didn’t have a lot of opportunities
for that because suddenly and completely unexpectedly for me my father’s usual
friendliness towards my aunt turned into total coldness. My aunt became a rare
guest in our house since her pregnancy and tried not to face my father if she
could help it. I remember how shocked I was when my mother explained that my
father didn’t want to see my aunt after she disgraced herself giving birth to
an illegitimate child. Only much later she confessed that the real reason of
this dramatic change in our family life had been my aunt’s request to let her
live in our cabin, which was situated at the back of our yard. We lived there
before our big house was finished. My aunt promised to leave after she got a
room in the family dormitory. My father, however, was frightened by his
co-workers. They told him a scary story about their acquaintance, who invited
his relative to stay at his place for a short while and that person lived there
for years and in the end sued him and got half of his house. It was not,
actually, odd that my father was scared. At that time people got their
dwellings for free but they were waiting for them in a queue for years, even
decades. It was an especially slow process because there had always been people
with money, who knew whose palms to grease to get their flats out of turn.
My
aunt, for example, had been waiting for her two-room flat for thirty years. But
she got her room in the family dormitory more or less quickly: in half a year
or so. I think her room-mates’ complaints helped her in this matter. They
weren’t happy, of course, to live in one room with a baby, when they had to get
up early in the morning. Some of them had night shifts and wanted to have peace
and quiet at the day-time too. But most of all it was my poor aunt who was
suffering. Every night she was walking in the corridor with the baby in her
arms trying not to disturb the other girls in their sleep. I remember how much
older she began to look after this awful time. I am afraid I used to blame an
innocent child for that.
In
course of time we began to see each other more often and from time to time my
cousin and I tried to make friends but it was always a failure. Mutual jealousy
was the main obstacle, I think, which had always stood between us. I have
gained only a few friends during my lifetime and now I regret that my cousin
has never been among them.
To be continued…
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий