Life Begins At Forty Page 2
goodnight." As he closed the door, he heard Oleg cursing in the darkness.
The flat was bright, warm, steamy and stuffy. Nikolai stood in the hall and removed his brown shoes and grey jacket. He could hear the sound of the television coming from the living room. Nina and Ivan were watching Dobrei Vyecher. The unctuous voice of Igor Ugolnikov was punctuated by bursts of laughter from the studio audience and from Nikolai's wife and son.
"I'm home," he called.
"There's some soup and some fish in the kitchen," Nina called back.
Nikolai Nikolayevich passed the bathroom and Ivan's room, noting with some dismay that the boy had left his light on again. He groped around the door-frame to turn it off. The room was untidy, clothes scattered on the floor and chair, cassettes and empty plastic cases strewn over the desk. The wardrobe door swung open, a drawer intruded, the grey blankets on the sofa bed were crumpled in a heap. Nikolai Nikolayevich shook his head in despair.
Vanya and Nina sat side by side on the brown-and-beige living room sofa. Nina wore jeans and a sweater. Her greying brown hair hung loosely over her neck and ears. She looked tired. Her eyes were a little puffy. Ivan had his feet drawn up on the sofa. He was hugging his knees against his chest. He was wearing green Reebok tracksuit trousers, a brown shirt and brown socks and was fingering the silver chain Nina had given him for his last birthday. It had belonged to her mother. Ivan rarely took it off, even for a bath.
Nikolai Nikolayevich glanced around the room. He glanced at the brown, red and green carpet in the centre of the polished wooden floor. He glanced at the heavy brown and gold rug hanging on the wall. He glanced at their three paintings, the first depicting a rain-soaked fog-smothered Volgograd street, the second presenting the sun-baked golden glow of a cornfield, the third a silver birch forest at night, the ghostly pale stems of the trees almost drowning in the darkness. He glanced at the teacups and the empty dishes smeared with ice cream piled on the low, wooden coffee-table. He glanced at the pages of Komsomolskaya Pravda spread over the armchair, over his armchair. He glanced at the huge, shiny green leaves of the cheese-plant, the yucca tree and the rubber plant in the corner. He glanced at the tall, wooden standard-lam and its dust-caked, fringed, brown shade masking the bright glare of the bulb. He glanced at the television screen and the bespectacled, hamster features of Igor Ugolnikov.
"How can you watch such rubbish?" he asked. "The man is insufferably smug."
"He's also very clever," Nina remarked as Ugolnikov introduced his first guest, a second-rate popular singer with long, dark hair.
Nikolai Nikolayevich shook his head again and went into the kitchen. The soup was in a battered tin saucepan on top of the old gas cooker. Nikolai Nikolayevich noted the dents in the grey tin and the black spots where the enamel had flaked away. He scooped a ladleful of Nina's thick, grey-brown mushroom soup from the dented pan to a chipped, brown bowl, took the grey fish from the fridge and sat at the laminated kitchen table. He glanced at the window. The fog was pressing greyly against the glass. Nikolai noted that the blue paint on the window-frame was beginning to peel.
"Did my mother 'phone?" he called.
"What's that?"
"My mother. Did she 'phone?"
"Yes," shouted Ivan. "I told her you'd call her back."
Forty years old. A grey knitted scarf from Nina and a pair of gloves from Ivan. Nikolai shuffled his low wooden stool closer to the edge of the table. The grey surface was pitted with burn-marks, knife-scores and chips missing from the laminate. Beyond the window, the fog was prowling around the skeletal trees.
Away in the living room, Dobrei Vyechyer went into a commercial break. Five minutes of chewing gum, toothpaste and detergent advertisements. Suddenly, the kitchen light failed and everything was plunged into greyness. Nikolai cursed. The bulb must have gone. He scraped back his stool. Then, over the sound of an advert for Tide washing-powder, he heard Ivan and Nina singing "Happy birthday to you." The glow of a candle suffused the greyness as wife and son carried a cake through the door towards the table in a solemn, almost funereal ceremony.
Happy birthday dear Kolya/Papa
Happy birthday to you.
Ivan placed the cake in front of his father. One white candle stood defiantly in the centre of the white glaze which had been drizzled over the cake. The flame illuminated Ivan's face, colouring his cheeks with a reddish glow.
"Couldn't afford forty little candles," he explained, "So I got one big one instead."
"It's a honey cake," Nina said. "Vanushka made it himself." Nina's skin glowed like burnished gold in the candle light.
"Blow out the candle, Papa," said Ivan, "And make a wish."
What wish? wondered Nikolai Nikolayevich. More money? Better job? More modern apartment? Car? Washing machine? A holiday? I wish ..... he paused .... that Ivan's operation is a success. He blew out the candle. The flame flickered into a curl of grey smoke.
Ivan Nikolayevich laid a hand on his father's shoulder. "Happy birthday, Dad," he said.
The wisp of smoke vanished into the greyness.
Stories from Russia
As the Russian economy, society and everything they have ever known disintegrate around them, the Ribakov Family and their friends struggle to retain their dignity and integrity whilst coming to terms with the new reality of post-Communist 1990s Russia. These stories deal with the corrosiveness of bribery, corruption, disillusionment and despair, and the hope that comes from love and family that motivates the characters to carry on.
Coming Soon in ‘Stories from Russia’ –
Two men from very different backgrounds, one a cop with a military past, the other a media mogul in a loveless marriage. Two men with secrets. Two men whose chance meeting in the dead of night will ultimately destroy them both....
About the author
David Brining comes from Leeds in England and now lives near York. In between he lived in Russia, Sweden, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Jordan, Syria and Egypt. He enjoys most sports, especially cricket and football, most music, especially classical and opera, and sampling local foods. His writing is fairly eclectic and he is interested in exploring the possibilities afforded by digital publishing (including serialisation, weblink incorporation, embedded audio files etc). He has an aversion to books about vampires, zombies etc. etc. children's books which reduce history to gossip about fat blokes and jokes about bodily functions, chick-lit about shopping, shoes and big pants... in other words, EVERYTHING currently being published in print! He will be publishing a wide range of fiction over the next few months...watch out for a new perspective, and see below for some examples.
Other titles by David Brining
Norwich 1272. Nicolas de Bromholm lives with his parents and baby sister in 'The Mischief Tavern'. He spends the summer playing with his dog, learning to cook and trying to catch the eye of the mayor's beautiful daughter but, when his father's best friend is murdered by a monk, Nicolas' life is turned upside down. Under siege, their world in flames, Nick and his friends must choose which side they are on, that of the rulers, or that of the people.
Kindle Ref BOO7VONF0U, ISBN 9781476443034
Join Adam and Lucy, Rick and Kim, Ninja and Animal, Handy Mandy the Missing Part Tart, Billy the Rent Boy, 'Birch'em' Bircham the high court judge, Cheatles, Leech and Swindells the bankers, Flint the landlord, Cruikshank the Preacher, on an epic end of Millennium journey through London as Adam searches for his runaway father and comes face to face with Broken Britain. - STILL NO VAMPIRES, STILL NO ZOMBIES, STILL JUST LIFE....
For extracts, trails, sneak-peeks and further info, visit https://davidbrining.blogspot.co.uk