58
TALES FROMTHE FUTURE
ing and crying simultaneously and chattering nonstop, running up to every-
one she met.
“We arrived. . . . And right away, they fell in love. . . . And right away, I
blessed them. . . . But first I thought it was a joke. But right away, they fell in
love. And I told them. . . . And they said to me, A wedding, Mama, today.
Good people, how can this be? We have to prepare, it has to be official. We
can’t do things this way.”
When her husband, an entrepreneur, Edik’s father, came out and heard
approximately the same incoherent story from her, he looked at the young
people and said, “Oh, you’re always rattling on, Zinaida. What does that
mean? Why can’t we have a wedding today? Just look at these young people.
We don’t need to have a wedding today, we need to right now.”
Edik walked up to his father and embraced him.
“Thank you. Papa.”
“Come now. . . . Thank you. Come now, embrace! We need to shout ‘It’s
bitter!’ so your kiss can make it sweet.”
“It’s bitter!Bitter!” shouted the people who had gathered around.
In front of the settlement’s inhabitants, Edik and Sonya kissed for the
first time. All the settlement residents who were at home at that moment
gathered for the wedding. They all set an improvised table in the open air
together. The wedding wasn’t rowdy, as can happen at Russian drinking
parties, but they sang late into the night.
Despite the parents’ attempts at persuasion, the newlyweds settled not in
their palace of a house but in Sonya’s small home.
“You have to understand, father,” Edik said. “We built a palace here with
different outbuildings on half the hectare. But it doesn’t have the beauty
Sonya’s homestead does, and we don’t have the air. We should take down
half of it.”
The entrepreneur went off to drink for a week. But to everyone’s
amazement, he began taking down the outbuildings, while repeating over
and over, “We were fools to build this here, and now our grandchildren
won’t want to move into catacombs like this.
