The story I want to tell is typical, like any love story, so I immediately warn the reader that the names of my characters are fictitious, and they live, as usual in such cases, in a certain city, in which, as a rule, there is a factory large or small, working well or poorly in our conditions post-Soviet democracy and a market economy, a gag in her mouth.
And since people work at the factory, and not just appendages of machines, then events happen or may well happen to them, which will be discussed further.
So, he is already an elderly man, burdened with children, an old grumpy mother-in-law, whom he took out of his kindness from an old village that is living out its age, which are scattered by thousands across the wild and vast expanses of Russia, and from which gradually only pipes remain, slowly growing into an orphaned and unkempt land.
In the evenings, he tosses and turns on his old creaky sofa, as old as he is, and already regrets his noble deed.
The mother-in-law’s voice, despite her old age, turned out to be strong and rude, and despite her eighth decade, she is still quite cheerfully walking around the cramped apartment of the hero, where his adult son lives with his wife. Besides, she is deaf in both ears and incredibly stubborn. To complete the picture of our hero’s unenviable existence, I will outline his wife, who works at another factory.
Once she was beautiful, but the years of dreary, heavy, monotonous, gray, unpainted existence have done their job. Her once beautiful face, which was looked at by almost the whole village, was covered with a network of fine wrinkles, and dense thick shadows lay under her eyes, the result of daily lack of sleep and constant care for a piece of bread. All that remained of her former beauty was a small, perky upturned nose, which she hastily powdered, hurrying to work, with cheap cosmetics with the inscription from AVON. Besides, she, like any woman, was jealous of our hero.
Once he decided to give his wife a gift for March 8th. To do this, he specifically stayed at work, took overtime assignments. He often quarreled with the foreman, who every now and then, contrary to all logic, sought to raise his rate, which our hero, as usual, did not particularly want. From this swearing, from the constant noise and rumbling in the workshop, he often had a headache, but he still postponed the coveted amount to his Masha by March 8th.
I postponed it just before the eighth of March, when thin spring streams suddenly and amicably flowed from the roofs, talking cheerfully to each other, and in a surprisingly clean, as if washed spring sky, the sun shone brightly and warmly in an un-springlike way, I went to buy a gift.
He hesitated for a long time near the counter, and the young saleswoman already began to look at him suspiciously. Finally, he made up his mind. Embarrassed and timid, he went to the counter, where an abundance of rings, earrings, chains and other pleasant, expensive trinkets were laid out, so dear to a woman’s heart, and with his work-hardened finger pointed to a ring with a green heart inside, which for some reason he immediately liked and the same pair of earrings. “I would like this, girl,” he said in his muffled voice and for some reason was terribly embarrassed.
After putting the gifts in a secret place, our hero went to work. “My Masha will be happy,” he thought, looking at the thin strip of metal shavings that snake out from under the machine, “she will be happy.”
But when he came home, he found his wife all in tears.
“Who did you buy it all for, Herod?” she asked, her face swollen with tears, and painfully poked her earrings right in his face.
