The business trip. Dating story

Auditors were usually sent to Siberia in single-sex teams; there was an unwritten recommendation to that effect at the firm. Two months of sorting through invoices and snow that lies until May or June otherwise led to entirely predictable, if unplanned, consequences in the form of office dramas and departures on maternity leave. But that year a most improbable combination of large projects and sick leave meant that the only people who could go were Nina and Kolya. There was simply nobody else. And so, with a heavy heart, the two of them were put on the job.

— “Maybe we will get away with it. Our Kolya is a modest, lethargic sort...” sighed Marina, one of the managers.

— “And Nina is a bird of a different feather,” agreed Ilya, the head of department.

Kolya really did strike many people as “lethargic”. Tall enough, a pleasant lad, always ready to help and knowing without a word who needed what. Kind, clever, with a completely childlike, naive smile. And at the same time incredibly quiet, capable of poring over papers for hours. He was right there, and yet nobody seemed to notice him — except that his work was flawless every single time. Quite unlike the sociable Nina, who had an opinion on absolutely everything! And who was no less brilliant at spotting both the mistakes and the systems by which clients tried to deceive even their own auditors.

Of course, that opinion of hers sometimes came into conflict with everybody else’s, and Nina herself was fond of being late, of taking her time, of needing a long run-up, and she could say without beating about the bush that a project was simply hopeless... But here the managers hoped that Kolya’s very pedantry and eye for detail would make up for all of it.

Both of them reacted lethargically to the news of the joint trip. They both waved away the barrage of jokes about an imminent wedding with complete sincerity: Kolya replied gloomily that work is work and the main thing is to get it done, while Nina did not see Kolya as a man at all. Not everything with an appendage between its legs, she said, deserves to be called a man. No, she thought very well of Kolya, respected him, worked with him willingly, gossiped with him... He simply did not turn her on in the slightest.

After six hours on a rattling “Tushka”, as Russians call a Tupolev airliner — the sort that, once flights abroad were banned, survived only on routes like this one — and a night in a more or less tolerable hotel in the capital of the republic, they flew on to their destination in a bus with propellers, courtesy of Antonov, which rattled, clattered and vibrated even harder, to the envy of the most ancient washing machines. Everyone in the cabin sat in fur coats and sheepskins, and the density of the air inside corresponded miraculously to their flight level. For a while Nina contemplated everybody’s luggage, piled up on the first two rows and covered with a net, and then the snowy infinity outside the porthole.

— “I wonder whether this rattletrap will actually get there?” Nina shouted straight into Kolya’s ear, mostly to keep the conversation going.

— “This thing cannot crash. Even without the propellers it will glide down into the tundra,” Kolya shouted back.

— “That is reassuring.”

— “Do not be too glad. Better to be smashed to a pulp straight away than eaten by hungry wolves.”

Nina shivered. Her knowledge of the winter tundra was limited to London’s “White Fang”, read in her early school years, and it did not leave much hope of survival.

— “Why frighten me like that! Say something nice instead!” she sulked.

— “Your perfume smells lovely and it suits you,” Kolya said at once, blowing Nina’s mind even further.

Rationally she understood that this was certainly not a pass. You had to know Kolya. In his usual manner he had simply stated a fact plainly and honestly. But that did not make it any easier. The fact dragged him too far into the camp of “real men”, and Nina was not ready to see him there — they still had two months of Siberia to sit out together!

It got merrier after that. It turned out that one of the firm’s two “auditors’ flats” had been flooded. The firm had reasoned that two girls could perfectly well share, so had not bothered itself further, and was extremely surprised that instead of two girls a girl and a boy had arrived. The search for somewhere to live came to nothing: the town’s only hotel had been under repair for going on ten years, and the hostel was as full as the private lettings.

— “We will share, it will not kill us!” Nina waved a hand. “What of it, there are more important things to worry about...”

And so they began to live together. Work went on as usual, but at home Nina never stopped being amazed. Kolya cooked wonderful breakfasts and was sincerely pleased when Nina liked them. Why did he cook? Just because — if he was making something for himself, why not make some for her too. Kolya fixed the television, and now it picked up four whole channels. With some animal instinct Kolya sensed what Nina wanted, and although Nina was a lazy person who could deliberately take her time about getting hold of the thing she wanted, those things were now practically delivered to the sofa. Why did he do it? Just because. And every time Nina thanked him he smiled with such childlike, sincere joy, as if helping Nina were the one thing that gave his life meaning.

Working with him, though, was just as pleasant. He did not interfere in Nina’s business in the slightest, listened willingly to her chatter, clearly respected her opinion and knew how to be firm when firmness was called for. In the evenings they walked along the two-metre banks of trodden snow by the river (in summer a very beautiful embankment emerged there), watched the river ice hold whole convoys of lorries, or sat at home watching old Soviet comedies.

The two months flew by unnoticed and so cosily that Nina thought with horror that she would not survive without Kolya any more — that was how used she had become to his presence and his support.

— “Right, when we get back to Moscow I am moving in with you!” she announced as a joke shortly before the end of the trip.

— “All right,” Kolya answered in complete earnest.

If the flight out to Siberia stole what was left of the day, the flight back made a present of it: they landed, local time, at exactly the hour they had taken off. By a tradition honed over years and dozens of auditors, the return was always on a Friday, so that the weekend could be used to get used to the other time zone. Curiously, no such luxury was provided on the way out — presumably to save on the travel allowance.

— “Shall I come round tomorrow and help you with your suitcases?” Kolya asked while they were still at Vnukovo.

— “What suitcases?” Nina said, taken aback.

— “You said you were moving in with me...”

— “Ah...” At first Nina did not know what to say, and then she suddenly began to laugh, so hard that the tears came. Kolya waited patiently for her to calm down.

— “Listen, I cannot do it that fast... Yes, I did say it, but as a joke... It was just so good living in one flat with you... But I cannot do it just like that... Do not take offence, please!”

— “It is all right. Shall we watch a film together today or tomorrow, then?”

— “Now that, yes!” Nina brightened up — so much so that she went home with him there and then.

Their return was marked by a fresh wave of gossip and whispering among their colleagues: had anything happened, and how, and when was the wedding... The colleagues tried to spot whether Nina and Kolya had changed irrevocably, whether they now looked at each other differently, whether they had secret signs or other indications that the trip had changed their lives for ever. Alas, both were impenetrable and kept things perfectly professional.

Nobody knew how Nina was really torn, realising how used she had become to Kolya’s dependable presence; with what longing she poured revoltingly cold milk over her dried-out muesli in the mornings, with what disgust she drank coffee from the machine, remembering the coffee that had been made for her in Siberia; how she turned over the seditious question: “maybe I should say to hell with it all and move in with him?” But to say to hell with it all would mean admitting that she had been wrong and that it was all hopeless. Directly it could not be done; how it could be done needed some hard thinking. So for the time being she kept dropping in on Kolya, and he fed her supper, and they watched all sorts of films on pirate sites and chatted about life.

It infuriated her that Kolya would not take the first step for her. It infuriated her and it delighted her, because she understood that he was simply doing what she had asked for herself. But it probably infuriated her more: here she was, propose to me if you dare, and there he was with his damned respect...

Somehow, imperceptibly, first his bathroom and then his flat filled up with her things. Before long Nina caught herself thinking that she spent far more time with Kolya than at home. And Kolya did not mind; he knew how to wait patiently. And his waiting paid off.

By the time Nina took a new passport with a new surname to the HR department, the second year since their business trip was already under way. Everybody had long forgotten both the trip and the jokes about business-trip romances. And it was Nina herself who announced that mixed business trips really should be avoided at all costs.