And since the birth of Lika, the water has gone so far as to create an endless sea from this leaky water that an entire epoch has sunk into the abyss; there was no longer that country, and some rabid democracy was blossoming in full bloom, and people were increasingly falling under the rink of poverty or a gangster's eye... Manya's aunt died a long time ago, having time to privatize her apartment, and bequeathed it to her wife; At the garment factory, where ghostly production was still going on, a new chief appeared, who incomprehensibly pushed the state that once owned the manufactory back into the shadows, everyone was against everyone and was burning endlessly on the outskirts of the collapsed empire and the former fraternal republics were thundering criminal, military and social explosions... life, however, not to kill, and even in this troubled time people continued to love, give birth to children, sing songs and go to the theaters. However, the theater, however, became inaccessible to Jenny long time ago, the tickets went up in price, but from time to time she went to the cinema and watched strange "cooperative" films with pleasure.
And then suddenly Ashot Gurgenovich!
He turned out to be a real artist, in the past - a dancer of the Yerevan Choreographic Ensemble, and now the artistic director of the Ethnographic Dance Group in the Moscow Philharmonic!
And he was so sensitive to Lika, so carefully and cautiously, and most importantly - he talked to her with interest that it became clear that this man did not come for a day. And Zhenya, of course, felt a growing sympathy for him, because she saw something important in it, a simple seamstress with heavy hands and a seal of longing on his face, already touched by the frost of early autumn ... ...notices and looks at it with quiet sadness and inexhaustible tenderness...
So comes a late love, but reasonable stereotypes prevented the Wife from rushing into the whirlpool of feelings, for she was an experienced lady who had experienced too much resentment in her life, saw things and went through such roads, which God forbid to go through otherwise ... but they are these roads, and allow us to feel a special aroma of being, when we don't have tea to find our ghostly happiness, and fate suddenly gives us a wonderful, sometimes magical, unexplained chance... we stop running, holding our breath and, not believing our eyes, try to look at the vague outlines according to the sounding soul, surprisingly coinciding with... what? What are our notions about harmony or parameters of happiness... and whether it is possible to whisper, breathe shyly or even, as they said in a gallant epoch, to believe the nightingale with the equations of reason? In short, Zhenya was in complete confusion; anxiously feeling the growing in love, but also trying to calculate something at the same time: First of all, it is too simple for the honored artist of the former Armenian SSR, secondly - the child, yes the sick child, in the third - age... in fact she was also not elderly, and Ashot Gurgenovich has recently celebrated the sixtieth anniversary... More than twenty years of difference... here is an attempt to do without exact sciences! But the tenderness and blissful longing filled it with the thought of this person, and now it was impossible to keep one's reasoning in rational limits, trying to calculate or calculate something...
And then Ashot Gurgenovich invites Zhenya to a concert of his ensemble, and she sees for the first time the dances, staged by them. And then he walks her home, comes in ... the girl doesn't sleep, waiting for her mother, and in half an hour all three of them drink tea in a family way and talk about it at ease. Ashot Gurgenovich looks at Lika from time to time looking for some clear meaning in the cornflower eyes of a teenager, reading everything in this secret book and trying to decipher its mysterious signs; in the end, by the end of the tea party it becomes clear from his face that he knows the solution to the riddle sitting against him and, moreover, he can and is ready to present this solution to the whole world, at least without being in a row.
You will dance," he says to Like, and then turns to his wife and repeats, "your daughter will dance!
- How?" the girl exhales, not believing what she has heard, "how can I dance?
- You will dance! - Ashot Gurgenovich confidently repeats, quickly gathers and kisses Zhenya at the door and goes home.
In a couple of days, it becomes known that the maestro is planning to put on a new dance, in which Lika will be directly involved. The dance will be a group dance, and Like will be given a solo exit. Zhenya only drove with her hands, listening to a passionate story by Ashot Gurgenovich, who, after another evening of tea and multicolored explanations of the dancing couples in person, hardly spinning around in a cramped apartment, showed how couples would move and what figures our girl would make.
The legs were weak, she could hardly walk, relying on the walkers, and Ashot Gurgenovich came up with a personal part for her: she would dance in a wheelchair.
To be continued on the next part