Always when a young one comes on board, she looks over Naģe in disbelief. Client taste is incomprehensible, the young one concludes. But their desires are like law. It’s better for all of them that Naģe is here. She, like a foxhound, sniffs out footprints, smells evil clients a mile away; she pities and comforts, lends money, brings home-made delicacies and rescues the girls who have got in trouble. She has self-respect. Silently she endures the sneers of the young johns, their repulsive curses, when they stop to pick up a girl. Her takers are a special breed. Decent men. Driving by, they reverently greet her.

With each successive client Nadezhda Mihailovna grew more certain that there were no more unhappy and misunderstood people than men. She fell in love with all of them – like she loved the berry mounds, the tiny fists of mushrooms in the wooded valleys eroded by ancient seas, like the veil of white cobwebs between the fir trunks. Perhaps God stood by her – not once was she beaten or humiliated. There was one man, who to begin with wanted to talk to her tenderly but, when he finally got down to business, he spanked her bottom quite painfully and screamed at her:

“Whore, boor, boor, whore.”

But as soon as he was done, he patted her back and quietly apologized. And paid her more.

Many of them wanted to talk to her. And she listened. They unburdened their ridiculed, careworn, betrayed and broken hearts in Naģe’s low, thickset lap. They cursed and cried, cried and cursed. Sometimes together they would eat whatever Naģe had brought along, taking a slug from her mickey.

Today on this warm autumn day, Nadezhda is the first to arrive. That’s how she prefers it. Then she looks over the goods stored in the erstwhile high-voltage electricity hut, and cleans out any rubbish. Afterward she sits down on the bus stop bench, lights up a cigarette and gazes at the sky on the other side of the highway.

After all, she had almost gone into the marsh and remained there. She was seconds away from it! And if life had not changed, then it would have been only right to do so, to remain there. Silently awaiting death, deliverance …