A wondrous moment. Dating story no. 19

Dima was on his way to Moscow for yet another course — he worked for a firm offering solutions for risk management and corporate security: sometimes he ran the analysis, and sometimes the training, as he was about to do now. He travelled in style, on the Sapsan, sipping coffee from a branded cup with great pleasure. That was how he rewarded himself for a job well done, even if the job in question was still ahead of him. The German ICE, repainted in line with the ideas of Russian Railways, sped carefree towards the south, the trees outside the window merged into a single green background, and Dima was trying not to think about everything he was leaving behind, at least for this one week.

That is always how it goes: the thing you do not want to think about fills your head and flatly refuses to leave, leaving behind that familiar sad sense of hopelessness with a certain aftertaste of masochism. He had recently divorced, leaving his wife with their ten-year-old son. Or was it his wife and son who had left him... Dasha used to complain that he was sort of there and sort of not, that he left home at 6 in the morning and got back at 10 at night, that he saw his son only at weekends, that she carried everything on her own shoulders. He did not argue. Yes, they lived 60 kilometres from Petersburg while he worked in the city; yes, he earned an order of magnitude more than he handed over to his wife for the household — in fact he spent it on himself; and yes, even if he would never have admitted it to anyone else, this state of affairs suited him more than well. Well, he trusted neither the world nor people. He did not even trust himself.

All the same, his heart felt foul. In that state it is hard even to give lectures, there is no inspiration. Everything comes out mechanically somehow, like a robot, with no fire in it. The only hope is to "catch light" along the way. Because if he spends the whole week looking that miserable, it will be... regrettable. Then again, most of them are there only because that is what management wants. So it will be one of those rare combinations where everybody present is present under duress.

To take his mind off the sad thoughts, Dima set about watching the passengers. The chap in glasses is clearly travelling on business — clutching his case convulsively and checking the inside jacket pocket with his travel allowance in it (when will accounts departments stop handing everything out in cash?). That businesslike woman over there is off to see her lover, no question — she gives a delighted start at the mere sound of WhatsApp and at the same time keeps a wary eye on the other passengers; an affair with her would be entertaining and undemanding. And that pensioner clearly had not expected the Sapsan to be so posh — either his children bought him the ticket or somebody else did, but he is plainly uncomfortable here: sandwiches for the journey wrapped in a bundle, he is hungry already but too shy — what will people say. Oh! Now, a pickpocket on the Sapsan, that is extremely interesting. He is not short of nerve — there are no intermediate stops, and there may well be a check at the exit. There, he has appropriated one phone, and now that girl's purse... What a girl!!!!!

Dima usually preferred not to get involved in such things, watching it all as if through a television screen, but there was something about this girl that touched the strings of his soul, long since gathering dust from disuse and seemingly ready to crumble into powder. He stood up as if obeying some impulse, some obsessive desire. And only one phrase rang and hummed in his ears: "like a fleeting vision, like a genius of pure beauty".

- "Young man, I am prepared to put up with those three iPhones in your trouser pockets that do not belong to you, but the Gucci purse belonging to that girl in the beige raincoat with the scarlet silk scarf — kindly hand it over", Dima said in a quiet, bored voice. It is exactly that sort of voice that raises goosebumps and the urge to obey.

The pickpocket jerked, but it was too late. Dima knew how to hold a man so that he could not get away. He knew how to be convincing, too.

- "Quiet, quiet, do not make a noise, it will only be worse for you. You have been rumbled, so take the deal while a good one is on offer".

The pickpocket darted frightened glances in every direction, sized up the situation and relaxed, gloomily pulling the purse out of his jacket pocket.

- "I will return it myself, now scram out of this carriage", Dima said in the same quiet, bored voice, stopped the lad's free hand as it reached for his own, Dima's, pocket, and made sure that the boy left "his" carriage, glancing round convulsively and pulling his head into his shoulders. After that he brushed down his jacket, ruffled his hair, sighed and walked over to the girl. Pushkin was no longer merely "ringing" in his head; the passage was thundering and bursting to get out, threatening to blow Dima's head apart from the inside.

- "I remember a wondrous moment: before me you appeared, like a fleeting vision, like a genius of pure beauty", he quoted the lines that flatly refused to leave his head.

- "Is that your original way of getting acquainted?" the girl smiled.

- "No, that is my way of returning lost purses. You dropped this".

The girl looked at Dima in surprise, then glanced quickly into the purse to make sure everything was there, and only then allowed herself to relax and smile.

- "And what am I to call my rescuer?"

- "Dmitry".

- "And I am Evelina".

The rest of the journey flew by unnoticed. Dima made witty remarks, showed off his mind and entertained Evelina in every possible way, and she was so charmingly delighted, looked at him with such adoration and listened so beautifully that he wanted to talk and talk. Oh, wondrous moment, that scattered the clouds and the gloom. Oh, wondrous moment, that gave him strength, made him young again and gave him direction. You straightened a back bent under the weight of cares, you set moving the blood that melancholy had thickened in his veins, you brought the shine back to tired eyes. Oh, wondrous moment, do not vanish — linger a while, thou art so fair!

They exchanged phone numbers, and with a shudder Dima saw a Moscow code.

- "You are a Muscovite?" His voice trembled treacherously.

- "Well, you come to us often enough!" she smiled.

- "Looks like I will have to move", he joked.

When they finally parted, having agreed to have dinner together the next day, Dima could not feel his feet. Alexander Sergeyevich, or rather his immortal poem, played like a full orchestra in Dima's head, weaving in with assorted tunes of his favourite songs. Wherever he looked he saw beauty; everything inspired and delighted him. It seemed that Evelina had given him real wings. The first introductory lecture at the new firm went down a storm. There was drive and there was fire, the audience were spellbound both by the idea and by the way it was presented, and he could not wait for their next meeting.

The week flew by wonderfully. They met in cafés and in restaurants, chatted rapturously, joked and laughed. Evelina was amazed by his mind, his wide reading, his conclusions and inferences. She wondered why he did not start his own firm, why he did not move to Moscow, how it could be that nobody appreciated his remarkable mind and potential. And he melted as he looked into her eyes. And he felt an unprecedented surge of strength simply from being near her.

His ex-wife had never done that. She had silently taken on the whole burden of the household duties, silently put herself in harness and pulled everything along like an ox, and in the evenings she looked at him with equally sad, ox-like eyes. And then she complained that he was never around, while she did so much for him and for his sake. It weighed on him and oppressed him. If only she had looked at him just once the way Evelina did... Although, what of it — Evelina was looking at him in person, and he felt that for the sake of that look he could move mountains and, if need be, turn rivers backwards.

The fairy tale was brought to an end by another Sapsan, marking not only the return to Petersburg but also the most terrible hangover. A hangover from that feeling of omnipotence, from the sense of flying with no limits at all. A hangover from creative ideas, brilliant solutions and the seething of life. The Sapsan mercilessly picked up speed and carried Dima back into grey weekdays, into problems, into domestic chores and routine, into the swamp of his old dreary life. Oh, wondrous moment, come back...

Their contact moved to WhatsApp. Dima read her messages with delight, wrote to her, shared with her what mattered to him. She was glad of his news, and both of them waited impatiently for his next visit, and then another and another. If at first Moscow had seemed to Dima like some incredible but pleasant dream, gradually he began to feel that it was only in Moscow that he truly lived. He started coming not only for work but sometimes just like that, to see her, ignoring all his friends' jokes about Moscow and Muscovites — nobody has cancelled the rivalry between the two million-strong cities. When she came to Petersburg he tried to show her all its corners, the cosy, authentic little cafés, the courtyards, the raising of the bridges and the unusual, bohemian places he had never visited himself but which delighted her. Every meeting filled him with new strength; afterwards he seethed with ideas and achieved the incredible, breakthroughs at work and at home. Evelina was his muse and his inspiration, his resource. And she urged him with all her might to change something in his life: to get out of his village, to leave the failures of the past in the past, to dare.

He hesitated for a long time, took a long time to get going. Twenty times over he weighed up all the pros and cons, all the possible and impossible outcomes. Endlessly he compared potential employers, markets, salaries, prospects. Every meeting with Evelina gave him strength and motivation, and he would set about his searches and enquiries anew, but in time the strength ebbed away and he felt himself stuck once more in that same bottomless swamp.

On one of his visits to Moscow Evelina arranged a meeting for him with some very serious people. Dima was against it, but she would brook no objections: if he did not value her, he could clear off back to his village right away, as if she had nothing better to do than run after him for nothing. Dima agreed, but apparently he did not want that meeting so badly that the universe rose to his defence and piled up so many problems on the way to the restaurant that Dima was late. An hour after the appointed time there were neither serious people nor Evelina at the restaurant.

And after that things got really bad. No, life went on, rolling along its usual track towards the precipice — and who does not have that precipice? But it brought no joy at all. He remembered both Dasha's sad eyes over his never being there and Evelina's upset voice on the phone, saying that she had done it all for him and he had gone and let her down, that she had nothing better to do than drag self-obsessed idiots up in the world. Somehow he had managed to ruin every relationship and to end up guilty in everybody's eyes. The realisation that he had been so afraid of getting close, so afraid of being set up, that he had set everybody up himself, was the most painful thing of all. And the world without Evelina was so bleak that he finally made up his mind.

Having resigned from his job, he found himself a small flat in the north of Moscow, and after he had pulled every old connection he had, some no less serious people offered him a job fine-tuning the systems and protocols of security at a very serious firm. He could never have had such an offer in Petersburg.

He waited until the changes had settled down, until everything was back to normal, and then he went to Evelina's favourite café. He waited for the right moment, when she had ordered herself a cappuccino with honey and buried herself in yet another book, and leaned back slightly on his chair so that his lips were closer to her ear. He wanted to tell her that he was in Moscow now, that he had done everything the way she wanted and had done it for her sake. But against his own will, the first thing that burst out was:

- "I remember a wondrous moment: before me you appeared..."