Chocolate Candy

This story was told to me by a Scandinavian engineer with whom I was a translator. He came to Russia for some international project. For two weeks we wandered with him through the cities and weights of my vast homeland and, I must admit, we were decently tired. During the whole trip, Lars never expressed the slightest dissatisfaction with anything, although the transportation was broken, and the schedules were flying to the hell, and there was no time and nothing to eat, and we slept with a bite plus a lot of all the bureaucratic charm that our officials so kindly provide us.
Lars endured it all. He brought the matter to the end, destroyed the most complicated conflict between the participants of the project, without saying a single rude word and even reconciled almost everyone. His resignation was canceled. He acted with me like a true gentleman and for no moment forgot that the translator was also a living man, not a machine with screws. Looking at him, I unwittingly recalled the words of the classic “an intelligent man is intelligent in everything.”
The last night before his departure we sat in the hotel bar, he relaxed a little and accidentally spoke that he is very sorry that he did not get to Siberia. In my blurred eyes with a silent question, “What about Siberia?” he told this story.
“It was a long time ago, in the early 1990s. I came to Russia for the first time. In one project too. Everyone was driving, who was not lazy. The country is rich, there is a lot of confusion, there are many opportunities, but my bosses sent me. Especially because in their understanding I “speak Russian.” That is, I knew,, the words of thirty and a few sentences from the category "How much is it worth?"
A translator was assigned to me. A girl at all, only after school, such a puppy with a puppy. I went to work to help my family to feed. But interpretative, he knew the language as his native and translated as a professional. We also had to wander in different places, and took us somehow to Siberia. I preferred to decide on the spot, so I got there.
I feed from morning to night, I see my girl silenced. He tells me, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go faster, nothing for me. I know Pasha. I think women’s caprices. He was a fool, a young man, a fool. He went to work and translated it all. And after the work day, I went to the hotel to rest, and she went to look for supplies. The food was stressful, and I naturally didn’t hit my head with it. It is under the terms of the contract, so it is, and there is nothing here. I say, he was a fool.
That is how we lived. She could cook it, and I was even crawling my nose. Remembering is disgusting. When the ham was with one piece of pasta, she gave this piece to me. And I took. The last cookie from the pack she always left me for tea. And I ate. I took it all as an honor. I am a foreigner and I have a contract.
And then I grabbed the affairs and told her that we would come together to see one promising woodplate and go back. I took her from where I took her, and myself on the plane and home. At my home office, everyone was waiting for me. So we went. We arrived, things were decided, and I had to go back without a driver. He was drunk with a local acquaintance, while he would have trembled, not less than a day would have passed away, but simple, not good. We went together, I knew the road. I thought I knew. She didn’t want to go, but looked at me, breathed quietly and went into the car. She said she would not leave me. That I am in a foreign country, and she is responsible for me. Do you understand this? She’s almost twenty years younger than me and she’s responsible for me!”
There was silence. Lars was crying. “What happened next?” I asked in five minutes.
“We are lost. I was a self-assured idiot and I went the shortest road to save time. have saved. The car is in the swamp, on all sides only forest, snow and darkness. No idea where we are. and cold. Do you know what winter is in Siberia? You cannot imagine. It is horror. There were no mobile phones at the time, very few people knew about our trip. We would not walk much, we would freeze in the forest. Not the most pleasant thing, I agree. We decided to stay in the car and stay as long as we could. We had no food with us. There was nothing. She grabbed the snow in her palm with a hammer, it melted slowly in the heat, and she gave me a drink. Once again, having wrapped all the corners and pockets, she, glowing, gave me the chocolate candy, which she was once served somewhere, a terrible shortage at that time. I said I won’t take it. We agreed to divide it in half. She broke off a small piece and gave the rest to me. We were so upset by the situation that she fell asleep a few hours later, putting her hand into mine. I started building various rescue plans in my head, but I also fell asleep at the end.
I woke up in the hospital. It didn’t freeze too much, because they found us quite quickly, because they were looking very carefully. You won’t believe it was because of the car. The car was a stranger to us, here the owners of the frog and drowned, found the car, well, and us together. That iron saved my life.
My daughter was left somewhere in a local hospital and I was sent to the city. Since then I have never seen it and cannot find it. I don’t even know if she is alive. How I was looking for her! You don’t know how I was looking for her. I crossed half Siberia and the whole European part of Russia. She was not in the hospital, her bags were taken from our hotel. The firm in which she worked was already closed by that time, no one knew anything about the girl. I did not know where she lived, did not know the date of birth, her surname was the most common in the entire territory of the former USSR. I did not find her. Only the chocolate candy remains in her memory. It was in the pocket of my jacket, which I got back when I got out of the hospital. This is the story.”
Lars was silent. He drank a glass of wine and said, “I couldn’t calm down for a long time. I had the feeling that it would take a little time and it would come. She knew my name, my place of work, and my phone. Most importantly, she said she would not leave me alone. But she didn’t appear, and I don’t know why.
Over time, of course, I calmed down, got a promotion, got married, had a son and daughter, everything was fine. The daughter, by the way, called her by name, the wife does not know about it. We live more than wealth, we have everything, we travel a lot. By general standards, I am a happy person.
Only sometimes there is such a damaging feeling that it seems ready to give all of yourself and all of your well-being, only to see her again. I’m almost sixty, I’ve seen a lot in this life, I’ve thought about a lot. In my field I am a great authority, my word has weight, but in reality I am poorer than the last poor man. And you can’t fix anything, life is about to sunset. So if something happens and I have to take only the most valuable and go to the end of the world, it will be very easy to do. I only have two jewels. A small bronze box, with a small size, the daughter for the first earned money bought and gave on Papa's day, and in it a small dark stone.
The chocolate candy.”