The Smart Girl

“The Gradstroiinvest boys are not the main problem though,” said Ignatiy Savelievich. “It could be possible to keep them at bay, but they are backed by Gradbank and its director Samsonov.”

“What’s so terrible about that Samsonov? What is he – a bogeyman?” asked Nina vexedly.

“For those who stand in his way, he is,” Ignatiy Savelievich replied earnestly. “He has bulldozed much larger companies without turning a hair.”

“But why my father? What did he do?” Nina cried out.

“You’re culpable already for my being hungry,” Ignatiy Savelievich cited a line from a fable by Krylov. “The only fault of your father, Nina, is that he has reared a fine civil engineering company which the big guys have noticed and decided to lay their hands on.”

According to the information obtained by Ignatiy Savelievich, the management of Gradbank had set the goal of acquiring, through its subsidiaries, twenty five percent of all the municipal services and civil engineering business in the city. Nobody knew exactly what the purpose of that was.

“Maybe that consolidated piece of the pie will then be sold at a profit or exchanged for something really big,” suggested Ignatiy Savelievich.

The plan was being put to practice rapidly, but Samsonov, still dissatisfied, was spurring on his men.

“A month ago Samsonov held a conference on that with the directors of the subsidiaries. From what I hear, he yelled at those directors so that the windowpanes jingled. By the way, your father’s company could have been mentioned there, too. Is his name Shuvalov?”

“No… His name is Kisel,” Nina said after some hesitation.

“Yes, right!” exclaimed Ignatiy Savelievich. “Forgive me, Nina, you’re not going to like it, but you need to hear that.”

From an account by one of his informers, he told Nina about an incident that occurred at the meeting. In the middle of his roaring at his subordinates, Samsonov’s eye was caught by the file of the company owned by Nina’s father.

“Kisel… What kisel?” asked Samsonov.

They told him that it was the name of the owner.

“Great! I like it,” said Samsonov. “Very symbolic. All these petty businesses are kisel that we need to eat up. And quick.” He banged his hand on a pile of like files. “If we don’t get a move on, we’ll become kisel for other eaters. Is that clear?”

The directors kept silent. It was clear to them that if they failed to speed up the acquisitions, it was them who Samsonov would turn into kisel.

“So, Nina, you see that there is no way out for your father – he’s not going to be left alone. He has to sell, and the sooner, the better,” concluded Ignatiy Savelievich.

“He’ll never do that,” Nina muttered dejectedly.

“Tough luck… You’re in a tight spot, really,” said Ignatiy Savelievich sympathetically. “Maybe, you want me to talk to him? If you arrange for us to have a meeting, I’ll try to persuade him.”

Nina waved the suggestion away, “Thank you, Ignatiy Savelievich, but it’s no use. There’s no persuading him – he’ll only freak out and say rude things to you, that’s all.”

“Tough luck,” repeated Ignatiy Savelievich. “Well, I can only wish that everything sort itself out for you somehow. If I can be of any help, don’t you hesitate to call me. Keep me in the picture, anyway. And now, dear, please walk me to my house for I’m a bit chilled.”

Nina accompanied him to the door and started saying her farewells.

“Not at all,” Ignatiy Savelievich cut short her thanks, and after a pause, he said suddenly, “When I look at you, Ninochka, I see my late wife. We got married as we were both finishing university. The next thing, we had our job placement and there I was, placed in some hole in Kazakhstan. I can’t tell you how my young wife assailed the administration to get them to review the decision so I could stay in the city – and she had her way finally! A stubborn one she was, just like you… I remember everything as if it happened yesterday – can you believe it? A whole life has run by without my knowing it…”

He waved his hand and disappeared into the doorway.

It was not until later that it occurred to Nina that the old man might have had some needs such as going to the supermarket to stock up on food or paying rent for his apartment. Immersed in her own concerns, Nina did not offer him help.

She never saw Ignatiy Savelievich again and had no more contacts with him except for one brief phone talk. Ignatiy Savelievich never returned to work and after a few months he died. Nina had changed jobs by that time, and nobody let her know of her former colleague’s death, so she missed his funeral.

She got a chance to talk to her father on New Year’s Eve which they celebrated at his place. The table was crammed with special dishes made by the skillful hands of Lydia Grigorievna, but Nina and her father feasted half-heartedly. The conversation was also mainly maintained by Lydia Grigorievna – fortunately, the woman could go on endlessly about the news of the world of theater.

After the celebration, Nina’s father walked her to the underground station. The New Year was already in. In the yards, fireworks were being set off in plenty, and the night sky was ablaze with lights. Deafened by the din that they were making, Nina was slow to understand what her father was talking about.

He was talking about his business partners breaking away from his company one after another. Three clients already – luckily, not very large ones – had cancelled their orders. The reasons given for the cancellations were unsubstantial and clearly made up. Yevgeniy Borisovich had argued and quarreled with them, even threatened them with lawsuit. The defectors had said something meaningless in response and then had stopped responding altogether – evaded seeing him and blocked his phone calls. He had actually tried to take the matter to court claiming compensation on the lost contracts only to find out that, being in the wrong essentially, his opponents were in the right formally. In each case, there was a legal loophole for them to bail out. From the way those loopholes were worded, it was clear that the clients had been counseled by some good lawyers, or, most likely, by one and the same good lawyer.

They halted by the entrance to the underground. There were no cars in the streets. Occasional groups of intoxicated citizens were wandering about, belting out songs and throwing snow-balls.

“What is it? Tell me, what’s going on? Why is everything falling apart? Am I really such a bad businessman?” Nina’s father cried out.

Ignoring the last question, Nina replied to the rest of them, “It is Gradstroiinvest, or rather, Gradbank. You know that yourself, papa.”

Her father gave her an angry look. Of course, he knew, but was unwilling to admit that.

“I have found out something,” Nina added. ‘Gradbank is buying up dozens of companies such as yours now. Gradbank’s director, somebody named Samsonov, is pushing his way through, sticking at nothing.

“I could kill him,” muttered Nina’s father.

“Me too,” Nina concurred, recalling what she had heard from Ignatiy Savelievich about Gradbank’s director making fun of their name. “But what are we to him?”

For a while, her father stood motionless with his head hung.

“Nina, how are you doing, anyway? How’s work? Are you very busy these days?”

Nina was not at all busy. She lacked many things, but time was not one of them.

“How about you come over to my office some day?” her father asked in a tone of feigned casualness. “You could look through the papers and maybe give me some advice.”

“Sure,” replied Nina.

“I… I can’t lose the company, you know that,” – uttered her father. He had probably meant it to sound firm but it came out plaintive.

Nina kissed him on the cheek and left in a hurry. She was torn between conflicting feelings. Her great concern about her father mixed with her irritation with him for hiding his head in the sand – refusing to admit the obvious and do what was suggested by common sense.

Nina started spending her evenings and Saturdays in her father’s firm again. As she dug into the affairs of the business, she discovered that on the whole, it was doing quite well. Or rather, it had been doing well before the customers had started to desert. Two more canceled their orders already while Nina was about. Nina’s father who had admitted finally that it was organized persecution did not even try to get the deserters back. The cancellations burdened the company with serious, though not yet fatal losses.

Nina’s father was throwing all his energy into completing his big project which was in for official review and acceptance in a few weeks, and which was to decide everything. It was a complex project of reconstructing the heating mains in an entire city area where residential neighborhoods were interspersed with industrial objects and additional ‘pinpoint’ housing units were to be inserted. The works had been contracted by the city. Technologically, it was a real puzzle. Nina’s father was proud of the project which embodied all his mature engineering talent and experience as manager. Completing the project meant a new life for the whole area and a new life for the company: profit, solid status, new prestigious orders – in a word, success.

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.