==RUSSIA==

This story happened to my mother when she was young, and I was very little. It was the middle of winter. Winter here in Russia can be snowy and bitter cold. And if the sky is clear, with no clouds, it becomes very, very cold, so your face, cheeks and especially the tip of your nose are just itching from the cold; you just run home, not walk. You run and keep silence -- you want to conserve your warmth. And when at home, back in warmth, after a cup of tea, you just become soft, drowsy and feel like sleeping.
That is how it was that evening. It was a holiday, and my mom and dad were returning home late from their friends'. And on the street near our apartment building they saw a man lying in the snowbank. My dad passed by, my mom stopped. "Wait a sec, Kostya (that's my father's name). Maybe he's ill and he fell down here... he just easily can freeze here!" She began to shake that man gently by the shoulder, scared that he had died. He was a decently dressed young man. And he was drunk. And he could not say anything coherently. "Let him be. He got himself drunk, so let him get over it by himself!" my dad said angrily and hurried on home. My mom stayed and for awhile she was trying to bringthis man to his senses. From his weak mumbling she understood that he'd been going to see some friends of his. Mom made him get up and almost dragged him to our home. In our flat we laid him downin the hallway, and he almost immediately "passed out" on the floor without any senses or signs of life. And there was nothing that could be done with him. Finally my dad got very angry. "For how much longer is this alcoholic going to be resting in our flat?! It is not a free hostel here, is it!"
After several attempts my mom brought the man to a "communicative" state, asked him about all and he told her his home phone number. My mom called there. The wife of the drunk man was unpleasantly surprised to know that here husband was at an unknown woman's place so late at night. "I and my husband have found him drunk and lying in a snowbank", my mom explained. The woman got worried and asked about our address; then she came to us. When picking up her husband, she told my mom with tears in her eyes, "You see, tonight we had an argument. We quarreled with each other, and he slammed the door and left. I had absolutely no idea where he went. But I couldn't imagine that he would get drunk from his sorrow. He doesn't really drink. And you... This was just a pure chance that YOU saw him there, in the snowbank..."
And then they left into the frosty winter night. And perhaps never quarreled with each other again.