The story with his wife left a deep, ugly mark on Valery Stepanovich’s soul. He decided that he could never love a woman again. Even sudden blindness did not change his attitude towards the opposite sex - deceitful and empty. And only after meeting Lyuda, Valera suddenly felt his soul tremble, as if after a deep faint, and was filled with something unknown, enchanting, tender. It was the first time he hugged a woman and did not despise her; on the contrary, he wanted to hide her inside himself in order to protect her from the evil and stupid world. Lyudmila's happiness was also sudden. She had not expected anything from life for a long time. She was almost thirty-five, and in all these years not a single man had looked at her with anything other than regret. And now Luda was simply afraid to die from the happiness that had washed over her. Someone else’s happiness, as a rule, becomes someone else’s grief... In the story “The Blind Massage Therapist,” as in other works included in this book, Era Ershova addresses the theme of the fragility of human life .