Love at first sight. Dating story no. 36

It was love at first sight. They only had to see each other and the world took on entirely different shades, gained colour and meaning... And it all happened in a canteen.

You know those classic eating houses that have survived from Soviet times and somehow contrived to go commercial? They have even contrived to keep every attribute of a canteen: greying lace curtains, low prices, that distinctive smell and, as we are supposed to say nowadays, a body-positive cook wielding an enormous ladle. Canteens like that have survived in the outer districts, where the firms huddle that cannot afford to pay huge sums for smart premises like Moscow City. People from the widest range of professions come here to enjoy, quickly and cheaply, a delicious plate of pasta boiled to death in the sauce off the unimaginably huge rissoles lying beside it, or buckwheat with beef liver just like at school in childhood, and other delicacies you could not find for love nor money in the capital’s central restaurants.

Seryozha had been coming here for a long time, ever since he took the job at his office. It was a place where he could escape from everybody, and above all from an accounts department that understood absolutely nothing about computers and pestered him every hour with problems that were solved in two clicks or, at worst, by a restart. Rumour had it they wanted to marry him off. Not a chance! He was clearly not ready for that kind of responsibility, neither morally nor philosophically, and to follow the chief accountant’s lead and blight the existence of one of her “girls”, and his own into the bargain... Spare me! Marriage is a serious business, not to be decided on a whim, and there is no point starting it any old how.

He saw Lilya the moment he walked into the canteen. Somehow she stood out remarkably from everybody else. Perhaps it was the stylish, unshowy clothes, perhaps the childishly dreamy look about her. She was reading some enormous book with great concentration, absent-mindedly nibbling a pencil. Nibbling it very sexily. He was so lost in admiration that he “hung” there on the spot until the customers behind him nudged him forward. And at that very moment she raised her eyes.

They say everybody can feel a gaze directed at them. Lilya was very good at it, so she noticed the odd but incredibly sweet and shy young man at once. Thin, slightly gawky and somewhat scruffy — in short, the classic sysadmin who holds down a job only for the money and still manages, right there at his desk, to fashion some brilliant project of his own. Suddenly somebody bumped into him from behind. He gasped, barely kept his feet and wandered off distractedly to fetch a tray. He looked incredibly fragile and harmless; Lilya even wanted to protect him. Only when he reached the queue did he risk another look in her direction. Their eyes met, and their world changed for ever: it took on entirely different shades, gained colour and meaning.

Now they both went to lunch with pleasure. The daily ritual of looking at each other and smiling faintly gave them a shared secret, the subtlest of experiences, a kind of mystical romance. And nobody knew about it. After a while Lilya caught herself choosing her wardrobe with a view to pleasing that young man. Sergey, for his part, never noticed how he had started picking the T-shirts with slogans that would make that girl smile a little wider, and he was almost jealous when she was not alone in the canteen. Even then, though, she managed to find time for their wordless dialogue. When he glimpsed the book she was reading, he bought himself the same one at once, and now they read together. Each at their own table, exchanging only shy, stolen glances, but together. The next book was “suggested” by him. It would have gone on gathering dust in the bottom drawer of his desk, but for some reason he was certain that this was the very book she would like. And indeed, a couple of days later she too was sitting with the same book, and then she was so taken with it that she devoured it in two days. And now it was she who “suggested” the next book to read.

And nothing more happened at all — they did not even know each other’s names — until one day a crew of visitors from some minor conference piled into the canteen. That day Lilya had been kept late at work, and when she arrived there were no free seats. She could of course wait for somebody to give up a table, or she could join that very shy charmer. It would break their status quo and the invisible bond Lilya prized so highly, but on the other hand the uncertainty was beginning to weigh on her.

— “What a nuisance, there is nowhere else to sit...” she said, without the slightest note of regret, setting her tray down opposite him.

— “Yes, dreadful,” he said, delighted.

— “A good way to save money: send everybody to the canteen for lunch.”

— “O tempora...”

— “Lilya.”

— “Seryozha.”

The conversation flowed easily and lightly, all by itself. They managed to understand each other from half a word, to finish each other’s sentences, and from the very first minute each seemed to the other the closest person in the world. Everything else seemed to lose its importance, and time itself seemed to stop. Why on earth had they not done this sooner? A call on Lilya’s phone brought them back down to earth.

— “Where are you? The briefing is starting!”

— “Oh!”

As it turned out, they had completely forgotten about the time and, with it, about the end of the lunch break. Oddly enough, even that did not make Seryozha hurry — let other people run; Lilya, though, threw her coat on like a whirlwind and dashed off to work. And the next day they were sitting side by side over lunch again. Now it was precisely this sitting together and these heart-to-heart talks that were normal, but again nothing went any further. Month after month, and soon it would be New Year. They were wonderful conversations that made them look forward to every lunch break, but that was where it all ended. And once again Lilya was baffled. She was ready, for a change, to take the initiative in the relationship, but the thought that Seryozha might not want it stopped her. After all, when you want something you open your mouth and say so. And if you say nothing, it means you are happy as you are. Which means there is a chance that if Lilya took the initiative she would destroy the one precious thing for whose sake she still came to this wretched job. She was not ready to take that risk. Meanwhile the only “step forward” was that they now not only ate together but also walked around the neighbourhood during the break.

Lilya had no idea what passions were raging at Seryozha’s work. Meanwhile the vigilant Accounts Department there had noticed that the lunch break had suddenly become the holy of holies for their favourite bachelor. He ran off to it come what may. And he came back at the very last moment, always in a marvellous mood; on top of that he was reading strange new books and voicing ideas that were clearly not his own... Wonders never cease. Accounts discussed the sysadmin’s strange behaviour with Marketing and, not content with theories, followed him to see where he went. Now there were far more grounds for talk, especially when it emerged that all this time it had been limited to talk alone. At which point Nina Semyonovna, the chief accountant, a woman of considerable experience — matchmaking included — could stand it no longer.

— “Seryozhenka, the other day I quite by chance and entirely unexpectedly saw you with a very nice young lady...”

— “Yes, Nin-Semyonovna...”

— “And who is that young lady?”

— “An ordinary young lady...”

— “Seryozha, tell me, is it serious? May I be glad for you?”

— “People are always better off being glad...”

And so it went with every question. Nina Semyonovna could fume as much as she liked, but prising anything useful out of Seryozha was hopeless. These computer people! Did Seryozha himself know the answers? He had an inkling, rather, of how he would like events to unfold, but he sincerely believed that everything ought to come together and settle itself at exactly the right moment and in the way the universe considered best. He did not even want to start thinking about what Lilya might think, or what she wanted, or what he ought to say. The universe knows better, and whenever one of us small, weak little people started to think too much of himself and to try to control his own life, sooner or later he inevitably got a knock “on the noggin” and realised his place. And if that is so, why start at all? One should enjoy what there is and be glad of what will be.

Lilya and Seryozha did not particularly celebrate these “anniversaries”, but Lilya felt as if she were stuck fast. Olesya was joyfully getting ready for her wedding to the “man of her dreams”, Sveta was already on maternity leave in her mind, forever stroking her huge rounded belly, and Lilya was still chatting about life in a canteen with a strange sysadmin called Seryozha who showed no initiative whatsoever. And there was no telling how many more years they would go on chatting. She tried to find herself a “normal bloke”, started posting profiles on various sites and running off to dates after work, but not one of them came anywhere near Seryozha. They were all somehow suspicious and cagey; Lilya could not even relax at the same table with them, whereas Seryozha was already so familiar, so dear. Decidedly, as long as Seryozha was around, any other relationship was out of the question. But could there be one with Seryozha, if he could not even open his mouth to say what it was he actually wanted?

— “Come and collect me after work today, please,” she said to him over lunch. He agreed.

And after work she somehow told him that nobody but him gave her such a sense of safety and trust. Somehow, because conversations like that cannot possibly be planned in advance — what to say and how. At the right moment the words somehow choose themselves and pour out, the right ones and the apt ones. And Seryozha suddenly understood her before she had even finished.

— “I don’t want to stop talking to you,” he forced out.

— “But what happens then? Seryozh, I can’t go on like this... I honestly can’t...”

Suddenly Lilya burst into the most shameful tears. All the distress she had been holding in, all the questions, all the fears and emotions poured out at once, and she could not speak at all any more. She was shaken by sobs that were completely beyond her control, and through the tears she could not see where she was going. Seryozha put his arms round her shoulders in fright and led her to the first bench they came to; he talked all sorts of nonsense to calm her, tried to make jokes and stroked her head and her back. She wanted to stop, but this was the whole weight of emotion and of things left unsaid, everything she would have liked to put into words and could not. And Seryozha was the only one able to understand her.

And then somehow, of its own accord, they ended up at her flat, had supper and watched some films half the night, lying fully dressed on the bed and chatting about nothing. And then they travelled to work together. Lilya had a moment of alarm that at this rate they would spend another two years watching films at night like brother and sister, but she had no strength left for alarm. Nor was it needed. Everything somehow happened of its own accord, even if Seryozha never did manage to say out loud that he wanted it. And soon they both felt that it had, in fact, always been this way: they had always lived together, always fallen asleep side by side and always had breakfast together. It was hard even to imagine how it could have been otherwise.