As her relatives returned home one by one, the apartment became noisy and crowded. Martha didn't like it. She called Galina Ignatievna, but came to know the guests had not yet left.
Then she decided to rent an apartment or a room for a month, and she succeeded.
Some man named Ivan called, they met. The apartment was located in the Moskovsky district, just opposite the Goloseevsky Park. This was good luck! And it cost her only sixty rubles. Ivan explained that his wife and two children were visiting relatives in the village, and he himself lived in a hostel near Kiev, where they build something. They looked at the apartment. Ivan handed over the keys, said that he might come on the weekend to pick up some things. Martha paid him a month's money and they parted.
Yes, a two-room apartment with everything one needs situated very close to Kidan - she could only dream of this!
"That's so lucky!" She thought. And she was wrong.
The first troubles from curious neighbors began on the same day: walking up the stairs with a portable typewriter in hand, Martha saw a curious old woman through the crack of the open door on the third floor, who hissed after her: “She says: a student! I'm a student! Look, shameless!" Martha went on to the fifth floor, but her soul felt somehow lousy.
It was very cold in the apartment in the evenings and nights. Putting on all the warm clothes at once, Martha crawled under the covers and excitedly read the books she has fond on the shelves. In the afternoon she went to the park. Here, in this park, during the few days that Kidan was in Moscow, she wrote her "Letters to the Homeland of Humanity", where she tried to explain everything to him. To him and herself.
Pretty soon Martha settled down in a new apartment. Her typewriter was on the desk in the small bedroom, and there was a pile of textbooks from the university library. Classes began on the seventeenth of September, Martha was already given a student card and a record book. She was pleased. If only Kidan came as soon as possible.
Curious neighbors were still peeping out of the door and whispering something after her, but Martha soon got used to that too.
Goloseevo...
I always want to start from the beginning, but memories flare up and go out, clinging to one another, come and go out of order, and it’s impossible to understand what happened first.
I like to wander along deserted paths in the very depths of the forest, alone with my subdued thoughts and, accidentally going out to the pond, mingle with the idle crowd and go back into silence.
At such moments, people do not bother me - they are the same as trees or clouds: I pass them, they pass me without touching. I am immersed in myself and at the same time dissolve in the world around me, my soul spreads out like a huge veil, touching the tops of the lush crowns of trees, among which I love to wander and dance, and further, to the slightly blurred and mysterious shores that can be seen in the distance, and higher almost touching the clouds.
There are so much of me, I am everywhere.
My impetuosity disappears, I subside like sails left by the wind. How relaxing. I'm feeling good. Peace.
The water is barely audible whispering about something at the very edge of the grass, the trees are slowly, quietly talking among themselves; the voices of people are like the cries of birds in the sky - distant, incomprehensible...
Goloseevo... Something makes me akin to this place. Something calls here, and then does not let go.
My favorite fountain and Ferris wheel, from where one can see the whole park, the ponds and the bridge connecting them, and your academy on the mountain, and the botanical garden, and the paths along which the old camel sometimes walk, and the small yellow bus number one, delivering students - all this is somehow incomprehensibly intertwined in me, with me. This cannot be explained, only felt for a moment, and this moment will be significant and complete. And how many things - it happened, happens, and will happen here.
The Measure of Fragility
from the novel "WANDERER"