The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

“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

202

Chapter Twenty-One

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 older than Lena and me. Animatedly he tells us:

When they came to the plant to recruit us for students, the foreman said: “Go to study, Shurka, you’re a clever one anyway. I’m not sure I can exactly tell you what linguistics is, but I think you’ll be a female doctor, it doesn’t matter—it’s useful.” Well, I came, but now I’m doubtful—these bourgeois speak foreign languages well, but will I make it?

Entering the conversation, a middle-aged village teacher in a tall Astrakhan hat says: “Don’t be so doubtful, boy. My nephew told me of an incident when he was entering the institute last year. A fellow was submitting papers at the same time as he, and the secretary asked him: ‘Your initials, comrade?’ He became confused, started to rummage through his pockets, and then said: ‘Here is a reference from the factory committee, here’s a recommendation from the Komsomol, but I have no initials . . .’ Well what do you think, he is now number one in the studies.”

Tat’iana Fesenko, Internal Dissenter

203