What a glorious spring day! Everything is turning green. True,
there was frost at night, but now the thin pieces of ice on the puddles are
already melting. Daria Ivanovna couldn’t be happier that she finally decided to
crawl out of her “hole” and go visit dear friends Sanka and Raechka. Daria
Ivanovna called her comfortable, bright apartment “the hole,” because lately
she really didn’t want to get out, she had gained weight, her health was
rapidly deteriorating, and it was quite difficult for her to walk. But going to
the grocery store brought her joy. In the store, everyone rushed to help her -
get something from the shelf or even carry her purchases to her home. She
usually didn’t ask anyone for help; it all happened somehow by itself. When she
needed to go into the city, someone usually gave her a seat on buses and trams.
“The world is not without good people,” Daria Ivanovna liked to repeat.
Now she was going to Sanka and Rayechka. She had not been with
them since the death of her husband and missed them much. Daria Ivanovna, then
still Dashenka, knew Raechka since kindergarten. They went to school together
and went to college together. There they met their future husbands and all four
of them were friends. They spent all their free time at Sanka and Raechka’s
dacha, together they fished in the lake, picked mushrooms, played cards, drank
vodka, and later switched to wine.
Daria Ivanovna did not call her friends, she decided to
surprise them. She bought 3 bottles of their favorite wine and baked different
pies. The bag with these gifts turned out to be quite heavy, but Daria Ivanovna
hoped that everything would work out somehow. First she had to go by train,
then by bus and then walk another 2 kilometers. She got off the train and bore her
bag to the bus parking lot. There was already a bus there, but it was empty;
the driver had gone somewhere and left the door open. Two middle-aged men stood
near the bus - one tall, and the second even taller. “Look at the big bag this
little booger is dragging, she’s all bent over and changing hands all the
time,” the tall one said, grinning, “She’s going to our bus, let’s see how she
fits into it.”
Daria Ivanovna
walked to the door of the bus and began to draw up a plan. The first step was
quite high, but Daria Ivanovna managed to put her bag on it. Then she decided
to grab the handle to climb onto the first step, move the bag to the second,
and so on all 3 steps. She grabbed the handle and tried to climb the first
step, but her hand slipped...
Daria Ivanovna
opened her eyes and for a second did not understand what was happening.
Rayechka and her husband were sitting near her bed, and Rayechka was holding
her hand. Daria Ivanovna guessed that she was in a hospital room.
— Well, it’s wonderful, Dashenka, that
everything turned out okay,” Raechka chirped, — in a few days you will be
discharged and we will take you home forever and will not let you go again. It
was our mistake that we left you alone for so long, almost 3 months.
“The world is not without...” Daria Ivanovna began and
faltered, remembering two tall men smiling sarcastically.
She thought for a moment and then said:
- The world is not without good friends.
Note:
Dashenka, Raechka and Sanka are diminutives for
Daria, Raisa and Alexander
