The Gardener from Ochakov

Начало книги

‘MA, YOUR FRIEND’S at the gate, and she’s got another dodgy man with her!’ Igor shouted cheerfully.

‘Keep your voice down, will you?’ said his mother, coming out into the hallway. ‘She’ll hear you!’

Elena Andreevna shook her head as she looked reproachfully at her thirty-year-old son, who had never learned to lower his voice when necessary.

It was true that their next-door neighbour, Olga, did seem to be taking rather too much of an interest in her personal life. As soon as Elena Andreevna and her son had moved from Kiev to Irpen, Olga – who was also fifty-five years old and single – had taken her under her wing. Elena Andreevna had divorced her husband before she’d retired, largely because he had started to remind her of a piece of furniture, being inert, silent, perpetually morose and apparently incapable of helping out around the house. Olga had been smart enough not to get married in the first place, but she spoke about it casually, without regret. ‘I don’t need to keep a husband on a leash,’ she had once said. ‘Put them on a leash and they start to behave like dogs, always barking and biting!’

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