Island Has Ghosts

Chapter 6

"I was married," Elvira said. The orange glare from the fire danced on her face, darkening the contours and brightening the cheekbones, making her features visually look sharper, more angular, like a young girl's, while the smile with which she said these words, on the contrary, seemed soft and mysterious, as if she were a Jokonda. If Violet had been an artist, she would have painted a portrait of Elvira in the glow of the fire! But the narrator did not notice the gazes directed at her. It seemed that she was looking not in front of herself, but in herself, and saw not the interested faces of the listeners, and pictures of the past.

"He had been courting me since high school. You won't believe it, but I was thin and flat as a board, wore my hair down to my waist and dyed it bright red. And I was a flame girl. And he... Modest and quiet high school student. He spent his senior year pining for me, a teenager. We're three years apart. That's nothing now. But when you're fourteen and he's seventeen, it's like an abyss."

"You should have been flattered," Rina said knowingly.

"And I was! Though I can't say I was in love with him. I accepted his advances, but I found them too boring. He courted somehow right, seriously: to give flowers and candy, to talk politely to my mother, to help her carry a bag of groceries to the apartment, to ask about my grandmother's health and go to the pharmacy for medicine. And I wanted crazy! I wanted the moon to fall out of the sky for me. I wanted a fight with a rival. That the flowers were not bought at a kiosk, but picked from someone else's garden. My mom said I was a fool, that I was a fool, that he was the kind of guy you could find. That he was already serious about me, a teenager. That he had prospects ahead of him. He did have prospects. He got into a prestigious university, graduated with a red diploma, got a job in a good company... But he didn't forget me - sometimes he called, talked to my mother for a long time, brought some rare medicines for my grandmother, and brought me candies and the same roses."

"And you still wanted daisies from someone else's garden," laughed Violet. Elvira chose the right topic and set the right tone for a sleepless night. Somehow they managed to calm Rina and keep themselves from unnecessary hysterics. With the dawn they would come to a solution, they would find a way out even from such a hopeless situation. All they wanted to do was to pass the night! And it was not so difficult to spend it talking by the fire, in the warmth and on a full stomach. If they take their mind off what happened to them for a moment and imagine that they are on a hike, the situation does not look so stalemate. Elvira managed to enthrall them with stories: first with tales from her working life, and then the conversation somehow slipped into the personal. Vsevolod did not participate in the conversation, sat a little apart and silently looked at the fire. But it seemed to Violet that he was listening to their female conversation.

"Not that I wanted daisies..." continued Elvira, smiling mysteriously "by then I had already received my daisies. I've always had admirers. But such... Not serious! And serious remained only one. In my fifth year, I married him, just as my mother had predicted. But I quickly realized I'd made a mistake. He and I were made of different dough: I was made of doughy dough, he was made of unleavened dough. He was pedantic, with plans for the week and for the rest of his life, a lover of comfort, peace and stability. And in me there was that devilishness, which over the years turned into a zest."

Elvira laughed quietly, and together with her - Violet and Rina.

"I wanted to drink life like champagne. To be here, there and everywhere at the same time. I dreamed of hitchhiking all over Europe, racing across America from north to south or vice versa, and then flying to Australia. I dreamed of such a travel life! And he dreamed of having a baby. We ended up getting divorced. We parted peacefully, each to his own side. For some time we communicated, and then stopped even to congratulate each other on holidays. I fulfilled my dream - visited many countries, organized a network of travel agencies. And I had a private life, too. There were always admirers."