Life Begins At Forty
A short story by David Brining
Copyright David Brining 2012
Life Begins at Forty
NIKOLAI Nikolayevich peered through the tiny, pitted window of his kiosk into the late-autumn fog which shrouded the railway bridge in heavy, grey layers a few metres away. He could just make out the concrete pillars that struggled under its weight. The window was a six inch square of clear Perspex so scratched by customers’ rings and frosts gone by that nearly everything on the other side seemed disfigured. The kiosk crouched beside a solitary neighbour on the corner of 7th Gvardeyskaya and Parkhomenko in the shadow of a towering, grey apartment block. Behind its fading red and white facade, beneath the grimy, flaking Marlboro sign, within its cramped, crowding walls, the usual range of products huddled together on the shelves, black packs of Pyotr I cigarettes, green bottles of Volzshki beer, dust-caked wine bottles, tins of cat-food and baked beans, jars of pickled cucumbers, pickled mushrooms, fruit juices, chocolate and crisps. Business had been slow. People rarely ventured into the creeping, seeping fog. The accounts for the evening would show that just three packets of cigarettes, a bar of chocolate and a carton of apple juice had been shifted.
Nikolai Nikolayevich had wondered frequently during his six month tenure about the wisdom of choosing this somewhat isolated location. It was close to home, but so was the market at the other end of 7th Gvardeyskaya. There the kiosks were strung out in a row at each end of the market's three aisles, sentry-box fashion. Business there was always fairly brisk. At the Prospect Lenin tram station the kiosks huddled together like a small family sheltering from the weather, but he had chosen this site because there was competition only from Alexey Mikhailovich next door. Sadly, there was also business only from the residents of the apartment or the occasional car coming down from the vast Rokossovskogo Road.
Nikolai Nikolayevich was growing a beard for the winter. His wiry hair was beginning to grey. Whenever he looked at himself in the mirror, he noticed the deepening, lengthening lines spreading from his slate grey eyes across his greying face in a criss-cross tram-track network, or the erosion patterns caused by the weather. The two-week growth had begun as black stubble. Now it resembled grey lichen. Nikolai Nikolayevich remained uncertain about this decision. He feared the beard would make him look and feel older and tireder. Nikolai Nikolayevich was already forty years old. Today.
He stubbed out his cigarette and brushed ash from his dusty, black trousers. This was no way to celebrate a birthday. Nineteen years ago, on his twenty-first birthday, he had been completing his studies at Volgograd Technical Institute, a qualified engineer preparing for military service marooned in some Godforsaken outpost of the Soviet Empire on the grey plains near the Mongolian border. Two years of vehicle maintenance and road fortification later he had returned home to a job as a quality control engineer at Volgograd Tractor Factory. Over time, he had risen to the rank of Safety Inspector. Three years ago, life had been good: a position of responsibility, a wife, a son, a flat. Sure, the Union had collapsed, the Government changed, but the Tractor Factory employed hundreds of thousands of people. Jobs were safe, until the chill wind of free-market capitalism blew in from the West and Nikolai Nikolayevich and the hundreds of thousands of State employees found themselves redundant. He had packed crates in warehouses, sold cameras in a shop, driven cars, now he managed this kiosk.
He worked hard. He had always worked hard. He had always tried to provide for his family but it had become, in the past two years, a tremendous struggle. He had had to borrow money from his father and, although his wife worked in a bank, they had been unable to secure a loan. Lack of security, lack of capital, lack of guarantors - all these reasons were given but the simple truth was that the banks were unwilling to gamble on people's initiative in a country where initiative had been actively discouraged for hundreds of years. Unless you were already wealthy. Then you could have anything you liked, from an oil company to a football team.
Nikolai and Nina had been married for eighteen years. At the time, she had been a Mathematics teacher. She had stuck it out for ten years but, with increasing debts and decreasing salaries, infrequently paid, and few opportunities for career development, she had quit and joined the Central Savings Bank, a decision that had disappointed her father, but a decision that meant a regular income. Nikolai smiled as he recalled that day in late June, the baking heat, Sveta, the Maid of Honour, tossing roses onto the murky surface of the slow-flowing Volga, laying the traditional wreath at the Eternal Flame, his father's car decked out in red and white ribbons. He didn't need the wedding photos, although he liked to look at them from time to time, to see once again his beautiful young bride with her mousy brown ringlets and pink triangular face, and himself, his black hair thick and bushy, his eyes and smile sparkling, the medals on his khaki uniform gleaming. Ivan had been born two years later. A much thumbed, much treasured photograph showing the baby at three months, his face fat, his soft, brown hair thin, his mouth set in a puckered grimace, rested on the dusty sideboard in the living room as it had rested there for the past fifteen years.
Nikolai Nikolayevich was worried about his son. He had complained about stomach pains and an examination at Polyclinic 3 had revealed a problem in his legs, something to do with the blood vessels being constricted. Nikolai had not really understood. Nina had been quietly frantic. Ivan was frustrated because he wouldn't be able to play football, but he was also very anxious about the operation and, despite Nikolai's reassurances, anxiety dominated the household. Nikolai's reassurances were half-hearted, because he too feared for the worst. The anxiety reached its peak when Ivan had asked to be cremated if he died on the operating table.
Dr Arkhipovich had laughed and said it was perfectly straightforward, that he'd done the operation hundreds of times before, but father and son both knew that even the most straightforward operations sometimes have complications.
Nikolai squinted through the cracked, fog-smeared window at the fog-blanketed bridge. Few people would be out tonight. He worried about Ivan's future. His school grades fluctuated between good and unsatisfactory. That inconsistency might damage his chances of securing a place at the University. He was bright and quick-witted but he was also lazy, and the price of his laziness might be conscription into the army. Nikolai and Ivan shared this anxiety too. Young conscripts faced bullying, brutality and harsh conditions. Recently the news programmes had carried a story about a sergeant who had driven a group of conscripts across a frozen river. Protests and voiced anxieties about the safety of the ice had met with punches and blows from rifle butts so the conscripts, all teenagers, had set out across the river only for the ice to splinter and crack. Several had drowned, several more had developed frostbite, gangrene and hypothermia. The sergeant received a lecture from his captain, because of the Press coverage, but remained in his job. Nikolai Nikolayevich, like thousands of parents, desperately wanted his son to avoid military service but, like thousands of parents, lacked the cash to bribe the doctors or the officer-in-charge.
The kiosk was crowded and cluttered. The low ceiling and the wide shelves invaded Nikolai's space. He decided to close up and go home. Outside, as he locked the door and drew down the shutters, Nikolai Nikolayevich felt himself dissolving into the fog that smothered the box. Everything melted into choking greyness.
The walk home took slightly longer than usual. Nikolai groped blindly inside the grey blanket, guided by instinct, peering through the occasional rifts and rents, following the outlines of bare, skeletal trees and the solid bulk of the Dental Hospital until the low grey buildings of Kommunalnaya loomed up. These grey blocks of apartments, built in the Khrushchev era, lay like discarded boxes all over the city.
The
gloomy lobby of Building Six was very dark. Nikolai had to feel blindly along the walls. The light-bulb on the first landing had expired several days ago and yet to be replaced, so Nikolai stumbled on the stairs once or twice. He could not remember how many steps there were to the third floor. The number had dissolved in the fog of memory. Eventually he reached the scuffed, concrete landing and paused outside the brown metal security door marked 47, fumbling for his key. The neighbour, Oleg Yavlinsky, emerged from 48, a grey, plastic, rubbish pail hanging from his fingers.
"You won't find the bins," said Nikolai Nikolayevich. "The fog is awfully thick." Oleg grunted, shifting the weight of the pail to his other hand. "How's the baby?"
"Teething," said Oleg. "Lena's worn out." Oleg gripped the handle of his pail very tightly.
Nikolai Nikolayevich noticed the knuckles standing out whitely against the grey plastic. He expressed his sympathy, and good wishes. "I wish they'd change that light-bulb downstairs," he said. "It's still out. A man could break his neck in that lobby. Ah." He found his key and fitted it into the lock. "Well,