Natalya Danilova - a renovacy

Natalya Danilova – a renovacy There was no getting away from it. My great grandmother was dying. She was fighting death with the same courage and gaiety she had shown all her life, but little by little, Death was winning this battle. When I first met my great grandmother, she was seventy-five, but looked sixty. I was newly orphaned, and she was newly widowed – no coincidence this, as my parents, my great grandfather and I had all been on the same train. By some fluke I survived the crash. This conservatory was the first room I saw when I came to the house, a sad and confused five year old. My great grandmother had gained custody of me simply by declaring she was my grandmother – luckily her son had married another Natalya – and blithely knocking twenty years off her age. We were perfect for each other. Like all Russians, even exiled ones, she understood grieving, and knew how to help my five year old self. And I gave her a reason to go on living. But that was ten years ago. At seventy-five, she had seemed youthful – at eighty-five she was old. The house she had lived in for so long was getting older too. And the money was dwindling. Marta – who was cook, housemaid, personal maid and everything else – was worried and told me so.
“My little Natalya, your baboushka doesn’t understand. And we mustn’t worry her: she needs her strength. But there’s not much left to live on now. This wicked inflation – but she doesn’t understand that.” I went upstairs to look at my great-grandmother. She was sleeping peacefully for the moment, in the big bed my great-grandfather had brought back from India.
“Your great-grandfather – he was an amazing man, my little Natalya. How I wish you could have known him. And so clever – he could make anything work, mend anything. When we came to this house, it was so sad, but he brought it alive again. Such clever hands he had – and a clever mind too. I think you are a little like him, maybe.”
Downstairs, there was the door to his workshop – but my great grandmother had locked it up after the funeral, and no-one had ever set foot in it again. I decided I’d got enough time to go and make a meal for us both and get changed too. In the house, I dress to please my great-grandmother. I could find it in me to wish that she didn’t think girls should wear corsets once they’re past a certain age, but at least I’m free from them on school days. Even great-grandmother accepts that I have to wear uniform. Marta would be back in time to help her dress for dinner – she’s dressed for dinner all her life, and dying isn’t going to stop her. Marta and I share the work between us, though my great-grandmother doesn’t know that. She thinks the wages she pays Marta are enough. Marta has another job at weekends – we tell my great-grandmother that it’s her time off – but she comes back late afternoon. While I’m at school, Marta’s here, but three evenings a week she works as well. “Your great-grandmother, she was so good to me. When I was pregnant, she stood by me, and made the father pay. It’s not easy, being a pretty little servant girl with no parents, but Natalya, she helped me so much. She arranged the adoption and everything, made sure that my little boy would have a happy life. For her I would give everything.” We eat in my great-grandmother’s bedroom now – the stairs are just too much for her. It’s just as well in a way – Marta and I have had to sell some of the furniture from downstairs to pay the bills. At least the roof is now sound again. Up here, even if everywhere is much shabbier now, it still looks much as it always did when my great grandfather was alive. Her sleep must have done her good, because my great grandmother sat and talked for a while.
“You look so lovely, Natalya. You look like I did at your age – at my first ball. That was when I met your great grandfather. I was just sixteen, and I fell in love with him that night and he with me. Our parents, they did not approve. Mine said he was not well-born enough, and his said I would just be an extravagant wife and no help to him. But we ran away together to my aunt’s house and were married from there. I was just seventeen. Fifty-eight years we had together, and never did we stop loving each other.” It was mostly about the past that she talked now, but I didn’t mind. I loved her stories – and she was always coming out with new ones. She had met my great grandfather when the family were in Vienna, in those heady Edwardian days before the First World War broke out. When Europe erupted into chaos, her family went back to Russia, but she and my great-grandfather came here, to America.
“Your great grandfather – he was such a clever engineer. And in wartime there is always work for engineers. An inventor too – he had good ideas like other people have hot meals. And his family were wrong – I was not extravagant, no. I managed our money well, and made our home bright. Always, we entertained, even with very little. I made everyone laugh, and be happy and forget their worries for a little. And we had our son, and little by little, we made money.” A few weeks later, I was doing my homework in what used to be the old school room when Marta came upstairs to tell me that my great grandmother wanted to see me.
“And you cannot go to her dressed like that! I will help you change your dress: we must make haste. She is too excited about something.” Marta pulled up a chair for me and then left us, but not until my great grandmother had said, “And you too, Marta. For you I have important news also.”
When Marta had left the room, my great grandmother turned and looked at me. I was shocked by the change in her. Her eyes glittered and her skin looked feverish. But she was as concise and clear as she had ever been.
“My little Natalya, I have a gift for you. It is the key to your great grandfather’s workshop. You, I think, will be the one to use it again. And Natalya – I don’t have long to live now. I want you to promise me something.” I looked at my great grandmother and realised that this was true. She didn’t have long left. All her kindnesses to me, all the love she had shown me, swept over me in a wave, and I would have promised her anything. “Bury me here, in the garden of this house where I have been so happy with your great grandfather. And Natalya, promise me that you will not sell this house. Keep it, live in it yourself. You can sell my jewellery if you need to. But we have been so happy here, your great grandfather and I. We bought this house when we arrived – no-one wanted it! It was beginning to fall down! There was all to do on it, but your great grandfather, he did it all. To begin with, we lived in the kitchen – slept, ate, everything. It was the only warm room! But little by little, we made this house the beautiful happy place it is today. It is still full of our love, and I want you to live in that. Now, send Marta in to me.” I took the key she gave me, and went downstairs, unlocked the door in the narrow corridor behind the kitchen, and went down into the cellar.
I turned on the light (“Your great grandfather, he put electricity in to the house when it was so new, and so daring! Always, he was ahead of his time. People would come to my parties to see the electric lights.”) and looked around, amazed.
His workshop was so well fitted out. My great grandmother is right about me – I am fascinated by engineering, electricity, woodwork, metalwork, and the mathematics and physics that go with them. It makes me a bit of an odd one out at school, but I’m not too bothered by that. I looked at the workshop, and my fingers itched to make something. That evening, I was standing in the garden, trying to make sense of what Marta had just told me. There had been a letter for my great grandmother that morning – an unusual occurrence now.
When Marta had had her baby, all those years ago, she had given him up for adoption of course. There had been no choice back then. But my great grandmother had arranged it all, made sure the family was a good and a kind one, and then left her name and address with the agency in case Marta’s son had ever wanted to trace his mother. It was totally irregular, and I think she must have charmed them into doing it for her. And now he did want to contact her: had just discovered that he could.
“I will go and see him,” Marta said, “But not just yet. There is only a little while left – I cannot leave her now. But afterwards, I will go for a little visit, and then I will come back and take care of you, as I took care of her.” Marta was right – there hadn’t been much time left. Great grandmother died only a week later. We cleared a patch in the garden, and she was buried there, in the grounds of the house where she had been so happy for so long.
Marta went to meet her son a week later. She was worried about leaving me, but I told her I’d be fine for a few days on my own.
“And when I come back, we will make plans, you and I. Your great grandmother’s jewellery – there is not much left of it now, but enough to see us through until you are eighteen. I will organize the selling: I know someone who will give me a fair price.”
I was more worried about her – Natalya’s death had hit her hard, and she looked dreadful. Each evening, I went outside to say goodnight to my great grandmother. Marta had found an old black dress and let it out for me. It was a bit short, but never mind.
“Your great grandmother, she would expect you to wear mourning for a while. But not too long. Natalya, she always said that to laugh is important as well.
Marta had been gone two nights now – she’d telephoned me to say she’d arrived safely, though she was very tired. Her son had grown up into such a fine man. She’d met his wife, and his children.
“There was much tenderness – and much grief. He had not known that he was adopted, but when his parents died, and he went through the papers, he found it all out. And so he decided to see if he could find me. And Natalya – she made it all possible for him to do that. My heart is overwhelmed.” Her heart was indeed overwhelmed. Two days later the letter reached me. That very night she had telephoned me, Marta had died in her sleep of a heart attack. Her son wrote with much feeling, and said that he would like to bury her there, so that he could visit her grave. “We had so little time together, but it was so precious to us all. I would want you to keep all her possessions as she had been part of your life for so much longer. And I will send you some copies of the photographs we took of her with us all, and with her grandchildren.” I sat there in the drawing room and wondered what to do next. How could I keep my promise to my great grandmother now? By the next day, though, I had made up my mind. I was going to try at least. If I couldn’t hold onto the house, then I couldn’t, but I must at least try to keep my promise to her. She would understand if it turned out to be impossible.
And I was going to take a leaf out of her book. They had lived in the kitchen when they arrived: well, I would do the same. I furnished it with oddments from round the house – Marta’s bed, which was the smallest and easiest to move, the table and bookcase from the school room, and my great grandmother’s bedside table, which had come from India, along with the bed.
Then I locked up all the other rooms, apart from the bathroom and the workshop. I was going to do my best to keep Natalya’s dream for me alive: I was going to try and hold on to her home.

This is a renovacy.
See above for the rules.
Special rules for this one: Natalya is allowed to get a part-time job.
Download the house and Natalya here:
http://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=6387385