nouveaux riches. She remembered everyone with whom she had to communicate and the topic of negotiations. Business cards were not only from her immense homeland, but also from many parts of the world. Matilda did not attach much importance to these acquaintances. Now she did not like being an employee. She wanted and could start her own business. Early next year, Matilda moved to Tver in one of her apartments. This, perhaps, was one of her best apartments. She was on the embankment of Stepan Razin. From the windows there was a view of the Volga River, and Tvertsa River, flowing into it, a view of the river station, to which large multi decked ships and pleasure boats with hydrofoils were approaching. The berth for private yachts was also located near the river station, but already at the mouth of river Tvertsa. Years of work in the company “Business Center Lingua’ did not pass for Matilda in vain. These were hard working days. In the New Year, Matilda began a new life.
New life
One of the old two-story buildings on the embankment of the river Volga and was the new home of Matilda. The whole second floor was occupied by her apartment. The cabinet was in the back of the apartment. There was a table, near the wall, on the table was a large monitor with a flat screen, the size of an average TV set, a writing set, a keyboard and a small table lamp. The computer was next on the dresser. There was a printer and a scanner. Above the chest of drawers on the wall, the old grandmother’s photographs in the Italian baguette had found their shelter. There were not many of them. With St. Petersburg Matilda did not have already anything connections, only memories of childhood and school. The house where her childhood passed was not the same as before. The stolen apartment of her childhood was now a stranger, the neighbors too, almost all were others. It was 1994, and today Matilda celebrated her birthday in her posh apartment with a view of the Volga River. Matilda was sitting in a comfortable beech chair, wrapped in a blanket. Outside the window blow a cold wind and broke rare snowflakes on the window. On a low table in front of Matilda was a bottle of dry wine, an empty glass and a pot of cactus. Cactus replaced flowers for Matilda, buy them at this time in Tver was problematic. Also on the table was a saucer with young cheese, green olives with seeds in a green cup and a saucer with onions cut into large pieces.
“The older the wine, the younger the cheese,” thought Matilda, sipped a little wine from the goblet, then broke off a piece of cheese with a fork and sent it into her mouth. She was alone, and she was not bored alone with her thoughts. “It would be nice to have a cat or a dog, or even better, a real man,” she thought, but then deflected those thoughts.
“I cannot take this responsibility now,” decided Matilda, “I need to think about my education and go to college. Probably, it is better for me to choose an economic faculty.” She reasoned, “It would be very interesting to work as a financier in an international company or in a bank. It is necessary to enter the institute in absentia, and try yourself as an entrepreneur. Starting tomorrow, I will register my activities. The realtor agency is what I need.” Matilda thought, “Especially since I have several apartments for sale and one office space, I will use it for my company office.”
Outside the window, on the thin ice of the river Volga the fishermen were already winding fishing rods. Matilda took the olive with her fingers and bit into it. After the olives, a slice of onions and a slice of black bread were sent on the taste buds and absorption.
“What a poor little soul I am! I’m drinking an expired wine,” thought Matilda with a smile, and added to the goblet a dry wine from the cellars of the 1982 Ijevan Wine Plant. Getting out from under the blanket, Matilda went to the cabinet and brought a fresh issue of the magazine “Around the World’. Then she also settled comfortably into an armchair and wrapped up in a blanket. The articles were interesting. Matilda read it slowly, enjoying the reading and illustrations.
Tver goats
It was 1999 year. There were few visitors. To attract visitors, at the entrance to the building Matilda placed a glowing in the evening billboard with huge letters “Real Estate Agency’. It was a small room of one hundred square meters on the first floor. The windows faced the courtyard of the building and the main square of the city – the Lenin square. Matilda did not seek proposals for the sale of apartments in newspapers and did not offer other people’s apartments for resale. This was distinguished by her real estate agency from everyone else in this city. For five years, she managed to sell only seven of their apartments and she had two more small apartments for sale. The office was also in her property. Simultaneously with the rise in prices and the dollar, Matilda was forced to raise the price of her apartments for sale. It would be more correct to say that there was a rapid devaluation of the ruble and a fall in its rate to the rest of the world’s currencies, but the media chose more appropriate expressions. At the beginning of its activity, Matilda assumed that with money from the sold apartments she would look for ads about cheap apartments in good areas of the city, and then resell them is already more expensive. But from the very first attempt to buy such an apartment, Matilda refused this idea. To deceive the poor tenants and say that their apartment is worthless, Matilda could not. The clients were an unemployed young man of 27 years and his pregnant wife. They expected to sell the apartment, which they inherited and then to rent some dwelling. This young head of the family was unemployed, and he had a rare profession – a refrigeration engineer. Matilda told them about the true value of their property and advised the young man to look for a job in Moscow. She handed a hundred dollar bill to the pair with the words, “you do not have to return it, but you have to call me and tell me when you find a job in Moscow. I want to be sure that I helped you.” Matilda was born in the USSR and capitalist ideology was alien to her. In her heart she was a Komsomol member. But people in her saw only an athlete, a young lady and just a beauty.
Once, she exchanged a small apartment from her fund with an additional payment for a larger one. Subsequently, Matilda hardly sold this large four-room apartment, but eventually returned the money spent on it. Since then, she began to store her money on a foreign currency account in one of the Moscow banks. She also decided to finish with the business, finish the institute successfully and find a good job in Moscow. Her teachers could give good advices.
“Perhaps I will work in the government and can to change the economic situation in the country,” suggested Matilda.
In one of the days, one might say, by the will of the case, a deputy of the municipal duma with her assistant came to her real estate office. Most likely, the location of her office played. She, as usual, sat in her working chair and studied one of her textbooks on economics, which she took in the library of All-Union Correspondence Financial Economic Institute. Black Bentley drove up to the office door. First the passenger of the front seat come out and opened the door to the passenger of the rear seat. “An important person,” thought Matilda. She got up, left the table and greeted the guest.
“Dobronravov Arnold Veniaminovich, a deputy of the City Duma,” introduced the guest. He had a large size and shapeless body. Rather, the body had the shape of a whirlwind expanding to the center of the body.
“Very pleased,” Matilda answered, and she introduced herself too, “I heard that you are the owner Company ‘Volga-Stroy Invest’. So how can I help you?”
“Evil tongues say so, I’m only a deputy and servant of the people,” Dobronravov said, and began to look for a place where he could drop his heavy body.
“Sit on the couch, please,” suggested Matilda.
“Thank you,” said Dobronravov, and, sitting down, continued, “I’m interested in office real estate.”
“Unfortunately, I do not
