Happiness is Possible Read Online Free PDF Page A

small double bed I share with Phil has been made up. Phil himself has been brushed more or less clean. Even the sky above Vaskovo somehow looks especially clean and well-scrubbed today – but that’s not due to my efforts.
    The blue of the sky, the green of the gardens – a delightful rural district scene. I smoke on the porch, enlivening the composition with a patch of bright red: I’m wearing a scarlet Finnish t-shirt that Tamara once bought for me. In years of wearing, it hasn’t faded – when I’ve got it on, insects come flying up to investigate whether there’s any nectar on me: even little beetles are suckers for something foreign. But what do they need nectar for, when the air here is so pure and delicious? ‘It’s really great to have a
dacha
in Vaskovo,’ I think complacently between drags. ‘I wouldn’t swap it for anything.’ But in reality, I did that already a long time ago: swapped Vaskovo for Moscow. Because – I’ll tell you a secret – the
dacha
isn’t really a
dacha
at all, it’s my very first home. Yes, dear people, I was born here, but I later abandoned my native parts. I used to play on this porch as a child. My father and mother lived out their lives in this little house. And it was Tamara who taught me to call this place a
dacha
.
    Something stirs on the nearby church bell tower – the human clock is about to chime the hour. . . Should I shout and ask if they can see an approaching Geländewagen from up there?
    â€˜Bong-ng-ng!’
    It’s coming. I can feel it in my heart. And there it is, bowling slowly along my street, crunching the stone chips and feeling out the potholes with its broad tyres. Show more spunk, automobile, you’re an off-roader! The encounter is now assured: Misty, Philip’s friend who doubles as the local town crier, runs out in front of the Geländewagen like a paparazzo in front of some movie diva, choking on his ecstatic barking as he bites at its wheel. And now my neighbours have stuck their heads out from behind their fences, like puppets peering round screens. Only this time they’re not giving the performance, but gaping at the car. All right, let them decide if the sight was worth abandoning their vegetable gardens for.
    The Geländewagen is still moving, but conflict has already arisen in the welcoming committee: in their excitement Philip and Misty have got into a scuffle. I settle the incident with a few well-aimed kicks, but the general air of tension persists. And now ready, get set – the automobile has stopped outside my gate. The doors on both sides of it swing open and two quite different feet appear below them; on the left, a woman’s foot in a light shoe; on the right, a man’s foot in a long-nosed ankle boot. They both step down onto the soil of Vaskovo rather uncertainly . . . and basically that’s it: the arrival has taken place. After that come the hugs, the tickling of dogs behind the ears and the unloading of the boot. Three or four minutes later, the stage is already deserted, apart from Misty and the Geländewagen. The Geländewagen, however, has played its part for today; its heart stopped beating even before the gate closed behind its master, it barely even had time to whistle in farewell. To Misty it is now no more than a cooling heap of metal. Quite indifferently, purely for form’s sake, the little dog sprinkles a motionless tyre and trots off about his business. The performance is over.
    But is it really over? If we move backstage, we’ll see the show is still going on, out of sight of prying eyes.
    â€˜A great place you’ve got here!’ Dmitry Pavlovich booms in his deep voice, drawing the air in noisily through his nose. ‘You know, kind of cosy . . .’
    He says that to be magnanimous, and I disagree to be modest.
    â€˜What’s so very cosy . . . ? The