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eyes and begin banging the floor in staccato fashion with his tail: “Your waiting is over.”
Father will question him in detail and at length about his training. And I, catching an eager and gentle glance, will run to the kitchen—has the teapot boiled yet?—and, closing my eyes for a minute, press my hands to my chest in an attempt to hold back the exultation racing to the surface.
Mother does not let us go anywhere alone—go with others, she says—and we honestly fulfill the condition: four of us go to the yellowing Kiev parks. My bosom friend Tamara is always with us, the only one initiated into the secret of our love and its silent worshipper. But four is still two plus two. Tamara, laughing and chattering, inevitably drags her companion further away, and we wander over poorly lit paths, becoming intoxicated with the tart smell of wilting grass, of our own closeness. We approach the parapet which separates the pathway from the steep slopes of the old park. For a long, long time we stand silently looking at the lights of Podol and my hand is warmly covered by a youthful, strong hand.
The leaves have fallen, the roads have become slippery and dirty by day, but silvery from hoarfrost in the mornings. We can only meet at our house, but how am I to bear not seeing each other until the free day—Kolia is at the institute during the day and I have classes in the evening. Leaving the lectures, I impatiently look for his broad- shouldered figure. The road from school to the tramline is so disgracefully, unfairly short that our legs, on their own, carry us to the next stop. Later, trying to avoid mother’s inquisitive gaze, I mumble that the tram derailed once more and I missed three cars. Luckily, the trams were always having problems—actually derailing on the steep hills of Kiev or suffering a power outage. Obviously, mother doesn’t believe me—it is not just from the light autumn frost that my cheeks burn, it is not just from tiredness that I lower my guilty and shining eyes.
But winter is coming and with it the unavoidable resolution draws near. With the routine “stream” of students Kolia will graduate from the institute. I know that he must work three years on the construction of the Turksib [railway line], that he is “contracted,” just as all the others in his graduating class. He cannot avoid this—instead of a diploma he would get a card indicating political unreliability.
“I will not leave you for three years, that’s impossible, do you remember Chatskii’s words? You must become my wife now,” he repeats over and over every time we meet. And I, confused and worried, cannot fall asleep for a long time and think, think . . . It’s easy to say, “be my wife” when his kinfolk smilingly ask about “the bride.” But father, more frequently than usual, questions me about my studies. Patting my hair with a contained kindness, he says, looking inquisitively into my face:
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“I am sure, dear girl, that you will not fail us—you know that your mother and I are willing to do anything, just so you can get an education.”
Oh, God, I know this, and herein lies the difficulty of my decision. But I do not hesitate solely because of them. So many times in my mind I have run up the broad steps of the red, colonnaded building [Kiev University], so many times I repeated the lovely word “student.” If I go to the Turksib, I will have none of this and all the years of my parents’ sacrifices will turn out to be unjustified deprivation.
“I will wait for you, I give you my word. I will occupy myself only with lectures and books, believe me, three years will pass by quickly, we are still very young. You will visit on vacation. I will write you of everything in my life. I will think of you only, I love you.”
“You are still a child, you don’t know how to love. I’m leaving in a week, after all, I am suffering, I must know—‘yes’ or ‘no.’You will go to university later, I promise; answer me, answer me,”—and he earnestly looks me in the face.
“No . . . I mean, yes . . . But only not now,” I murmur. He lets go of my hands, his face is tired, suddenly mature.
“You are frozen, poor thing,” he realizes. “Look, we are all covered with snow, it’s hard even to open the gate.”
“Will you come tomorrow?” I whisper, almost crying.
“Yes, yes,” he nods. “Sleep peacefully, my dear.”
But I do not sleep for a long time and outside the window snowflakes fall slowly to the earth, covering the narrow path to my first, short-lived happiness.
Kolia did not come the next day, nor any other day. Maybe everything would have turned out differently if average Soviet citizens had telephones in their apartments. But there was no telephone and only the tear-stained pillow heard my sobs. Mother came, and asking nothing, stroked my hand for a long time, saying softly and wisely:
“My dear girl, the everlasting beauty of first love is often in the fact that it does not end in marriage.”
After a year and a half, I received a letter bearing a postmark from Alma-Ata. One of Kolia’s fellow graduates, who had often been in our home, wrote me. The end of the letter read:
“Do you still remember Kolia S.? During commencement and departure from Kiev something strange was happening to him—he was not himself. We arrived here—and it became worse: the fellow totally fell apart. Later, we suddenly found out that he married a fellow student. It was a bad and mean marriage, but then a son was born and now they both rejoice. Recently at a Komsomol meeting, a fellow classmate was being berated. It turns out that he
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was a priest’s son. Nikolai listened and listened, then got up, put his Komsomol card on the table for the chairman and left. Of course, there was a huge outcry, and he was expelled from the Komsomol. So far, nothing else was tagged on—and he does his job very well.”
Three years later still, Kolia and I walked down a familiar path in our favorite park. Ahead of us ran a little boy who could have been my son. There was lightness and sorrow, but no pain. At that time, a pair of gray eyes had already became more dear to me than the blue.
My last name is typed in the upper right hand column of the long list of those accepted to the university. Strictly speaking, only the building itself is called the university, but the educational institution goes by the name of INO [Institute of People’s Education]. It is said that we too will be an independent institute—the Ukrainian Institute of Linguistics—and that we will even have a separate building.
For the present, we have gathered in a large physics auditorium and we scrutinize each other with interest.
I do not feel myself alone among my newly fledged colleagues. Besides me sits a slight, fair-haired girl in a red knit hat with a button on top. We had already become friends during the entrance examinations. During the next four years, Lena and I are always to be together, separated only in gym class when we are obligated to take the end spots according to height on the right and left flank of the women’s row.
Our students are very different both in terms of height and appearance. The son of a short-haired and graying woman in glasses who looks like an owl, is already in year two of the technical college—and the lad is just slightly
