Yakov turns
to Valentin to say something, but his thoughts are still there… somewhere in the area of Alla's lower back. He turns again in the direction of the departed Alla, looking for something there, carefully watching her silhouette that has long disappeared from the stage.
YAKOV (openly envious): Dddaaaa…
VALENTIN (complacently, turning his friend's head in his direction with his hand): Uh-huh …
YAKOV (openly envious): Listen… how? How do you manage to find such beauties? How did you persuade her to marry you? In the sense.. you, of course, are a prominent man, but she… she…
VALENTIN (optimistically): You're right, my friend, I'm not an oligarch. And I don't have anything special… well, except maybe a couple of tens of millions in accounts, a decent house and three Mercedes cars.
YAKOV (openly envious, indignant): Hah! Well, there! And you say there is nothing like that…
VALENTIN (seriously): But listen, all this came to me only after I met Alla. It was she who made me what I have become. Before that, I was a loser and a sucker… Well, like those … (stops himself, does not seek to offend a friend, tries to steer the situation) like those men who are always dissatisfied with everything, always fussing about something, and there is not much use in this. Something like that.
YAKOV (resigned): Come on… Of course, I'm no different from those men. I have never done anything so grandiose in my life. I worked like everyone else…, I always dreamed of something, I tried to succeed in my swamp, but… I realized too late that the only way to succeed in the swamp is to get stuck in it more strongly. And so it turned out. My years raced by a high-speed car along the highway of life. Leaving somewhere there all the brightest, most interesting and expensive.
VALENTIN (seriously): Yes, wait a minute to bury yourself. Yashka, what are you doing? I remember you as an interesting, intelligent guy with a sparkle in his eyes!
YAKOV (doomed): My eyes sparkled, Valentine, a long time ago.
VALENTIN (seriously): But wait, because the coolest girl in the course jumped out for you! Not for me, mind you, even though I was the ringleader, but for you! Isn't that saying something?
YAKOV (doomed): This suggests that I probably still represented something at that time, but now I don't even remember what it was. I am already a lost person in every sense of the word. In a couple of months, it will be fifteen years since Susanna and I are married.