The Lovers

“If I were you, I would find Rimma and say sorry.”

“Did you know about Rimma’s abortion, too?”

Dina nearly choked on her sandwich but pretended that the news had not shocked her. She waited a moment and said slowly, between sips of hot tea, “Whether I know… or not… is not important… But you know… and you’re using it against her.”

“It’s her own fault. What an idiot, falling for that one…”

The door opened, and Valya and Rimma entered. Vera, defiantly slurping her tea and eating the chocolate, stared out the window.

* * *

In the evening, Dina took a mirror out of her bedside drawer, carefully inspected her face and wiped it over with a cotton ball soaked in almond milk, whose smell she had loved since childhood. Her mother had the same one, in the same glass bottle. She used a pencil to fix her eyebrows and drew a line over her upper eyelids. She then opened a round cardboard box with powder and dabbed the white puff over her face. She barely touched her lips with a pink lipstick and started to paint her well-tended nails with a pearly pink nail polish.

Vera and Valya, who were still poring over their books and notes, looked at Dina’s actions with envy.

Vera, who could not keep quiet for very long, found a reason. “Lucky Dina! Now you can paint your nails and do nothing.”

Rimma, who was reading a book in bed, glanced up at Dina but did not say anything.

Dina was quiet too. She approached her cupboard.

“Where are you off to?” Vera kept pestering her.

There was nobody to control the arrogant Vera in this room. Valya did not dare to speak up against Vera, being in a sort of subservient position. Rimma simply avoided her, like a puddle, to avoid being accidentally splattered with mud by a passing car or bicycle. Only Dina sometimes told Vera what she thought of her most flagrant violations of polite manners. But in truth, it was like water off a duck’s back, as only a more rude and vulgar person could have shut up Vera.

Without waiting for an answer, Vera stipulated. “Off on a date, I bet. With Kokon, I bet. You’ve got to pay off that semi-automatic mark!”

It must be said, Vera sometimes understood perfectly well when she had said too much. But the realization came too late, together with the knowledge that a word spoken is like a bird that’s already flown.

Vera bit her tongue and threw a nervous glance towards Rimma.

The other girl slowly put down her book and looked at Dina questioningly.

Dina, as if she had not noticed either Vera’s words or Rimma’s stare, continued to comb her hair in front of the mirror.

Rimma waited a few long moments, and asked, “Is this true, Dina?”

“Yes,” Dina replied calmly.

Vera and Valya stared at Dina with their mouths open. Rimma’s beautiful lips slowly twisted into a smile that looked more like a grimace.

“Well, well, well…” she said.

Dina stopped what she was doing, approached Rimma, and asked, staring at her openly, “Rimma, did I steal him from you?”

Rimma looked down and did not say anything. Her face was a frozen mask.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” Dina gave Rimma a long look. “If I don’t go on this date, will you feel better?” Rimma was silent. “Will you? Tell me!”

Vera and Valya watched this scene with disbelief.

Rimma spoke slowly. “Whatever, I don’t care anymore… It’s just that… you could have at least lied about it…”

“Oh! Lie to you! No way!” Dina snapped. She turned to Vera and Valya, who were sitting at the table, and said, trying to keep her overwhelming emotions under control: “You are the ones, who are used to living surrounded by lies and envy. I believe that we should live honestly, love openly and dislike openly… You’ve pulled so many masks over your faces, this one and that one… Then you go hissing like geese behind each other’s backs.”

“What has got you so worked up? Off you go, then.” Vera was stung but did not plan to back down.

“Oh, I’m going,” Dina said. “But the rest of you, and especially you, Vera, you ought to think about how to live from now on.”

“Yeah, we’ll think about it, and why don’t you slap some more makeup on, to show how pretty you are,” Vera kept up.

“Thanks for the advice,” Dina said calmly. “You’re right.” She took the pencil and drew the lines slightly thicker. “By the way, you would do well to look after yourself. With your old, worn bathrobes and unwashed hair, you’ll keep sitting here until you get married to the first man that looks at you twice.”

“Oh, and you’re so special that you won’t marry the first one, of course!” Vera responded.

“If I fall in love with him, I will,” said Dina, putting on her coat and tying a gauzy kerchief around her neck. “But I’m not going to open my legs before I know that it’s love.”

Rimma said suddenly, “Kokon won’t ask you, he’ll just open them.”

Dina turned to Rimma. “Like hell! I’m not going to let anyone do something to me against my will!” She forced herself to calm down, then added, “Girls, let’s not fight! I’m not doing anything bad to anyone right now, not interfering with anyone’s business or stealing anyone… And I don’t wish anyone any harm.”

With that she stepped out of the door.

Vera, always wanting to have the last word, muttered, “Yeesh, she’s so righteous that it makes me sick.”

While Valya said slowly and thoughtfully, “Well, yes… she is righteous… and she lives the right way. And does everything right. Maybe that’s the way to do it?”

Rimma grimaced bitterly. “Righteous! Let’s just see how Kokon fixes her up.”

The First Date

Dina perched by a mezzanine window inside a house standing beside the cinema. It was an unconscious urge. She had been walking from the tram stop and had glanced at her small gold watch, which was a gift from Aunt Ira and Uncle Sasha when Dina had started university. The watch showed twenty-five minutes to seven, so she had ten minutes left before the appointed time. Dina did not want to stand around and wait for Konstantin Konstantinovich to arrive, since she did not know if he was already there or not. So she had stepped into the first entrance she had seen, in a large pre-war building with a spacious and echoing vestibule, and a wide staircase with cast-iron railing.

Somebody had left the day’s newspaper on the windowsill. It had clearly been used as a tablecloth recently as it showed dried pink circles and drops of wine, crumbs, and scraps of foil from processed cheese. And all this right over the “Speech of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Comrade L. I. Brezhnev at the XVI Congress of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League on May 26, 1970.” Next year, she would have to take this newspaper to the reading room and write some sort of paper about the Congress…

Dina stood and watched the evening city, the people walking along the street, the traffic lights switching over briskly and cheerfully, and seemed to be thinking of nothing at all. That is, she was not thinking of anything in particular, her thoughts appearing out of nowhere and disappearing amongst the waves of emotion that came forth from the depths of her being… It was hard to describe the feeling exactly.

Dina had felt something similar when she saw her name on the list of people, who were accepted into university.

She was happy, of course. All that stressful preparation, all those sleepless nights, and the worry before each exam – what kind of question will she get? – and afterwards – what score did the Committee give her, will it be enough to pass?

But together with the satisfaction and excitement, she also felt lost before this independent new life, waiting for her in a strange big city. She would no longer have her mother beside her, to wake Dina up on time, to make food, to remind Dina about lessons and clothes… Plus her doubts about whether she had chosen the right future profession, since all that she knew about it was just the cover of a book, speaking nothing of its content, or only mentioning it superficially. It was the understanding that she had made a very important step, and that to cancel it would require not less but maybe even more effort.

She felt happiness, doubt, bewilderment…

Same as now… Of course, many girls would have given anything to be in her place. But is this what Dina wanted? And then what?

She felt happiness, doubt, bewilderment…