"Mistake of Youth" by Maria Metlitskaya, summary

A collection of social and everyday prose, "Mistake of Youth," by renowned Russian writer Maria Metlitskaya was published in 2013. This book is a collection of short stories about the intertwining of ordinary human destinies, where the façade of everyday life conceals profound dramas, difficult compromises, and attempts to correct fatal mistakes. The work is part of the author’s series "Behind Other People’s Windows. Prose by M. Metlitskaya," which includes several collections of psychological stories, such as "Our Little Life" and "That Which Is Stronger."

Mistake of youth

The central story centers on the fate of Pyotr Nikolaev. As a student, he married a meek girl, Lyuba. The birth of a premature son, Seryozha, with a severe form of cerebral palsy, destroyed the young family. Pyotr’s mother, a domineering woman, convinced her son to abandon the sick infant, citing her unwillingness to waste her life on a "freak." Pyotr succumbed to her influence and filed for divorce. He believed he could start his life anew.

Nikolaev married the calculating Svetlana for a second time. They had a healthy son, Alexander. However, this union proved unhappy. Svetlana soon divorced Pyotr, leaving the child with her mother-in-law, and emigrated. Alexander grew up a violent street criminal and disappeared without a trace amid the gangland wars of the 1990s. Pyotr’s mother died in poverty. Nikolaev himself became a destitute alcoholic, working as a garage guard.

Abandoned, Lyuba showed incredible courage. She received help from a compassionate doctor, Inna Ivanovna, who allowed Lyuba and her son into her small apartment. The boy, Seryozha, grew up gifted, playing chess and drawing. Later, Lyuba met an officer, Yevgeny, who fell deeply in love with her and accepted the child as his own. Seryozha graduated from art school, became a sought-after theater designer, and married violinist Lida.

Many years later, an aged Pyotr Nikolaev secretly visits his ex-wife’s house. He sees a happy family seeing Seryozha and his fiancée off to their wedding. Pyotr realizes he’s done something irreparable. Betrayal is irreparable, and erasing the damaged pages from the book of life is impossible.

Ours and others

The story is told from the perspective of a summer resident, observing the intelligent Elena Stepanovna and her young grandson Vanya. Every Friday, they encountered the gray-haired Valentin Ilyich at the station. The child’s mother, Olga, never showed up at the dacha, which gave rise to much neighborly gossip. A chance encounter and the boy’s illness helped the narrator uncover the truth.

Elena Stepanovna’s son, Grigory, married Olga. The family lived happily, but five years of childlessness strained their relationship. Grigory began an affair. Olga soon became pregnant, but carrying the child to term proved difficult due to serious health issues. Elena Stepanovna insisted on a Caesarean section, but Olga died an hour after giving birth. Her mother died shortly afterward of a heart attack.

Suddenly, Olga’s late colleague, Valentin Ilyich, showed up at the house. He confessed that during a family rift, he and Olga had had a brief affair. Vanya turned out to be his son. Shocked by this news, Grigory hastily married another woman and left for Australia. Elena Stepanovna was left to raise Vanya alone, and Valentin Ilyich became their close friend and loyal assistant.

Three nymphs against the backdrop of the sea

The narrator and her husband are vacationing at an inexpensive Mediterranean hotel. She is drawn to the boisterous company of three middle-aged friends from Nadym — Galina, Zhenya, and Natalia. They seem carefree and cheerful, constantly laughing, singing songs by the pool, and buying cheap souvenirs. The author envies their vitality and ability to appreciate the little things.

During a storm, Natalya heroically saves a drowning Bulgarian girl. That evening, celebrating the rescue, Zhenya reveals to the narrator the harsh truth about her friends’ lives. It turns out that Zhenya is caring for her paralyzed mother and shares an apartment with her abusive ex-husband. Galina has a severely disabled son, and her business is in massive debt. Natalya survived the murder of her beloved Chechen husband, Aslan, and her first son became a hardened criminal and went missing.

Despite the difficult daily routine, the women save up all year for the trip. These three weeks at the seaside are their only chance to feel happy. The narrator understands that her own measured life is a blessing to be cherished.

Poor, poor Leva

At a Baltic sanatorium, the friends meet the imposing literary critic Lev Kaminsky. Lev talks incessantly and enthusiastically about his wife, Rimmula. However, Rimma, who arrives, turns out to be a domineering, unattractive, and much older woman with a mustache. She constantly quarrels with the staff, demands a refund for the trip, and treats her husband like a powerless servant.

Four years later, at a creative party in Moscow, the author meets Lev again. He’s accompanied by a young, attractive woman who literally adores him. But Lev is cold and unhappy. It turns out that Rimma left him for a wealthy geneticist. Lev attempted suicide, underwent extensive treatment for depression, and is now acting out his old grievances on his devoted new companion.

Girlfriends

The story of two neighbor girls — the stunningly beautiful Zoya and the plain Tamara. Zoya is the kind, modest, but academically challenged daughter of a single mother, Raisa. She works as a waitress in a restaurant and meekly endures the attacks of the envious Toma. At a New Year’s party, a wealthy Lebanese student, Samir, falls in love with Zoya. Out of envy, Toma forces Zoya to break off contact, threatening to harass her with the security services.

During a trip to the south, Toma befriends a local bully, who beats her. Zoya is proposed to by an honest construction worker, Vartan, but she declines, continuing to yearn for Samir. In Moscow, Samir finds Zoya, they marry, and leave for his homeland. There, Zoya finds true wealth and family happiness in a luxurious home, although she deeply misses her mother.

Tamara’s life takes a tragic turn. Her father leaves the family, and her mother is imprisoned for theft. Toma becomes the mistress of an elderly and dangerous watchmaker, Leopold. After his mysterious murder, she flees to the provinces, sells the stolen gold, and returns to her father’s devastated apartment. She works at the housing office and becomes involved with an ungrateful young electrician, Vova, who soon robs her.

Zoya returns to Moscow to take her gravely ill mother abroad. She meets the impoverished Toma and gives her her expensive mink coat and gold jewelry out of pity. Tamara weeps from helplessness and anger as she sees her departing friends off.

Eternal love

This section brings together three short stories about male fidelity and loss. The first tells the story of Lyusya and Viktor Ivankov. Lyusya endured the beatings of her alcoholic husband and defended him. After her sudden death from cancer, Viktor realized the scale of his loss. He drank himself to death out of grief, visited his wife’s grave daily, and eventually hanged himself in his apartment.

The second story is about Professor Vladimir Silkovsky and his ideal surgeon wife, Darina. After Darina’s tragic death in a car accident, Vladimir howled with grief and was treated in a clinic. However, just three months later, he met a young graduate student, showered her with the same care, and became a father, completely forgetting the previous tragedy.

The third couple, Dusya and Vasily Kasatkin, lived exclusively for each other. After Dusya drowned during a trip to the countryside, Vasily fell gravely ill and spent a long time standing vigil at her grave. However, six months later, he brought Dusya’s rough, rustic sister, Tonya, to their Moscow apartment. She moved into the deceased woman’s apartment, began wearing her things, and Vasily found happiness again.

For the rest of my life…

The narrator dreams of trading the spacious three-room apartment of her neighbor, a sullen forty-year-old bachelor named Vasily Biryukov. He refuses all offers, starts renovations, and brings in an elderly, gravely ill, but majestic woman — Amalia Stanislavovna.

It turns out that in his youth, the withdrawn Vasya fell in love with the voice of the famous opera singer Amalia Klubovskaya, which he often heard on the radio. After finding out her address, he discovered that the singer had gone through a difficult divorce from a general, lost her voice due to a botched back-alley abortion, and lived in poverty on the outskirts of Kalinin.

Left alone after the death of his parents, Vasily found Amalia in her dilapidated house. He became her faithful assistant, fixing plumbing, obtaining scarce food products, and purchasing French perfume. Vasily moved her into his Moscow apartment, feeling infinitely happy to be able to care for this woman.

Nice people

The narrator’s neighbors, childless intellectuals Isabella Nikolaevna and Vladimir Petrovich, seem like the perfect couple. They invite the author and her husband to drive to Jurmala. In the midst of their vacation, Isabella receives news of her sister’s death, leaving her eight-year-old son an orphan.

Isabella flies off to the funeral alone, so as not to "spoil" her husband’s vacation. Vladimir continues to relax, sunbathing, and eating a hearty lunch. Later, Isabella decides to give her nephew to an orphanage, citing the child’s loud nature and their apartment’s only two rooms. The narrator and her husband, outraged by such selfishness, leave by train.

Years later, Vladimir leaves her for a younger woman and moves to Canada. Isabella breaks her leg, is left penniless, and is forced to sell her belongings. The narrator helps her out of pity, realizing that her selfishness has robbed her neighbor of her only chance for salvation.

Illogical life

The author discusses the unfairness of fate: kind, hardworking women are often unhappy in marriage, while lazy and plain women find devoted husbands. As an example, she cites the story of three generations of unattractive and idle women — Annette, Isolde, and Sophia.

Each of them was frighteningly unattractive and inept at housekeeping. However, Annette married a loving Moscow engineer. Her daughter, Izolda, saved the handsome schoolboy Fomin, who carried her in his arms, from alcoholism. Her granddaughter, Sofia, married the handsome, stately Ilyin, who became the ideal father.

Their daughter, Masha, was born an incredible beauty and an excellent student. The best men fell in love with her, but Masha fell madly in love with a poor, homely, and cruel classmate, Eduard Scarecrow. She endured his infidelities, drunkenness, and beatings, raised their homely son, Kostya, and felt completely happy, once again confirming the irrationality of human existence.