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Konstantin Konstantinovich lifted his glass. “To you, Dina… Aleksandrovna. Congratulations on completing fourth year.”
“Thank you, Konstantin Konstantinovich.” Dina took a sip of the sparkling wine and placed the glass back on the table.
Konstantin Konstantinovich continued to devour his salad and very soon finished it all, even picking up the crumbs. Dina ate a little lazily, as if she was not hungry at all.
“Do you smoke?” asked Konstantin Konstantinovich, taking out a cigarette.
“Sometimes,” said Dina.
He extended a packet of Capital cigarettes towards her. “Please.”
Without replying, Dina took a flat brown packet of imported ladies’ cigarettes from her handbag, took one out, and brought it to her lips.
Konstantin Konstantinovich, expressing admiration by kinking his eyebrow, lit a match for her.
Dina smoked by barely inhaling and releasing the smoke as an impressive thin trickle that drifted upwards.
Music started playing as the musicians returned to the stage after a break. They were all quite young, with slightly longer hair than what was allowed by the unwritten rules for Komsomol youth – and there was no other kind of youth in the country – but musicians were probably permitted these liberties, in order to create a stage image. Two of them had handlebar mustaches, with a pair of tinted Diplomat glasses perched on the nose of one, while one of the clean-shaven guys was wearing skin-tight, white, completely white, pants. Jeans were only starting to become fashionable and were a rarity, accessible only to the “golden youth,” who found money who knows where for foreign clothes and expensive restaurants. White jeans were exceedingly exotic.
“We hadn’t finished our conversation,” said Konstantin Konstantinovich when Dina looked away from the stage and began to extinguish her cigarette in the ashtray.
She glanced in surprise at her companion.
“Have you said everything that you wanted to say about my person?”
“Yes, everything,” Dina replied.
“Let me summarize. I am an idiot.”
“Stop, that’s not what I wanted to say.” Dina tried to interrupt Konstantin Konstantinovich.
“Wait, wait, wait!” he waved at her. “I am an idiot, but, luckily, not a complete idiot. I’m a womanizer. An incurable womanizer, it seems. On the other hand, I appear to have some rudiments of intellect and a good sense of humor. This is what surprised you the most.” He looked at Dina with a smile.
Dina lowered her eyes to her plate and inspected the green pea stuck on her fork: when and why did she do that?
“Why are you silent now? That’s exactly what you said to me.”
She looked at Konstantin Konstantinovich and said firmly, “All right. That’s exactly what I said.”
“Well, then,” he laughed. “Does that mean that I have grown a little in your eyes?”
“I suppose.”
“Excellent! From this moment on, I will do everything in my power to if not score more points, at least avoid losing the ones I’ve gained.” He picked up his glass. “Hmmm?”
Dina raised her glass in silence.
“Well, then,” repeated her teacher. “Now it is my turn to express my surprise. May I?”
“Please,” replied Dina.
“Can I be honest?”
“As much as is possible for you.”
Konstantin Konstantinovich chuckled at these words and continued, “I understood that you were clever over the three years that I have been teaching your group. I only began to realize that you are beautiful, today, at the exam.”
“You’re joking,” Dina interrupted.
Konstantin Konstantinovich shook his head in disagreement. “And I am further persuaded with every passing minute.” His voice changed and started to vibrate slightly with emotion.
“Don’t,” Dina spoke up in the short pause. “I’m far from Rimma Yakovleva and those other beauties.”
Konstantin Konstantinovich got himself under control and continued, “You have correctly pointed out about the beauties. A ‘beauty’ and a beautiful woman are two different things. Didn’t you know?”
Dina started examining her nails again, now trying to get her flustered emotions under control.
“Indeed, you weren’t one of those beauties, at least, according to my classification. I saw in you a bookworm, a bluestocking, and a future career woman.”
Dina looked up at him with interest.
“Today, as you might have noticed, I realized that you have very attractive legs.” He smiled. “But when you put me in my place with just a look, it made me study your more closely.” Now Konstantin Konstantinovich’s emotions were reflected in how much his eyes shone. He took a drag of his cigarette. “And now,” he exhaled. “I can’t stop being surprised.”
“And what surprises you?”
“Your extraordinary life position. It’s the first time I’ve heard that it is easier to live by being sincere and natural than being contrived… sneaky… Or by flirting.”
“What’s so complicated about that?”
“Well… A person always wants something from others. So they have to adjust… play along… sometimes change themselves, or in better cases, bend to the rules.”
“Not everyone wants something from other people,” Dina said with her usual confidence.
“Do you think so? You don’t need anything from anyone else?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Hmmm,” Konstantin Konstantinovich said thoughtfully. “Well, perhaps at your current age and position, you need less than what will soon become the absolute necessity.”
“What do you mean?” she asked incredulously.
“Right now, you are a student. A smart one. You earn your position as a top student and your family’s pride using your brains, persistence and drive. But time will pass, and you will fall in love…” He stopped suddenly. “Love will come to you…” He stopped again. “Or are you in love already?”
Dina dropped her gaze to the candle flame and said, “Please continue with your thought.”
Konstantin Konstantinovich continued. “A person falls in love with another person and starts to demand reciprocal feelings from them. This becomes a performance… a game. Sometimes mediocre, and sometimes simply vile. I suppose you cannot even imagine what love or infatuation can turn into.”
He spoke in agitation, and Dina suddenly remembered the scene between her mom and Uncle Tolya, although she didn’t know what this had to do with what her teacher was telling her.
“Then comes your career. It is an even dirtier beast. If you stay yourself, ‘natural and direct’ as you call it, you won’t get anywhere. At best, you will stay in the lowest position until you retire. If your directness will get in the way, they will fire you in a flash.” He took a long drag of his cigarette, then breathed out the smoke and continued much more calmly, with a slight smirk, “So, young lady, perhaps you should reconsider your principles before it is too late.”
Dina took a deep breath and said, keeping her voice even. “I’m already in love,” she added after a short pause, “with you.” She was silent for a second, but before her companion could say anything, she added, “But I don’t intend to demand anything from you. Do you understand?” She looked directly at Konstantin Konstantinovich.
“Is that so?” The clearly embarrassed Konstantin Konstantinovich tried to maintain a playful tone.
But he was taken aback, discouraged, and didn’t know what to do with this confession.
The hot food arrived very conveniently at this moment, and Konstantin Konstantinovich started to eagerly help the waiter, who was surprised by such keenness.
Dina was also glad for the reprieve, so she turned to the stage and looked at the musicians and then at the area in front of the stage, where a few couples were dancing the still popular twist to the beloved tune of The Black Cat2. She really did not want to tear her gaze away from Konstantin Konstantinovich, but she could not look at him without feeling emotional – maybe it was the effect of the champagne?
Her favorite teacher looked quite different tonight from his usual image as a strict and unapproachable teacher, the way he was at university. Tonight, he was stylishly dressed: narrow trousers, a light brown tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows and leather buttons, and a turtleneck cream sweater, and his whole appearance spoke of lightness, holidays, a game.
“He is so handsome!” trilled Dina’s soul. “And tonight he is with me.” Her feminine vanity timidly piped up, without any expectations for the future, and not thinking about the past.
“Do you dance?” asked Konstantin Konstantinovich when the waiter had finished his job and left, and the ensemble started to play The Moonstone3.
“Yes,” replied Dina.
“May I ask you to dance?” Her companion stood up and reached for her hand.
Dina thought that she could not possibly get any more flustered, that she had reached all possible limits that were compatible with life, so she barely touched her teacher’s palm with her fingers. Her heart was ready to stop altogether – it had deviated from its normal rhythm so suddenly that it simply couldn’t remember it, and was thus in complete disarray.
Konstantin Konstantinovich led Dina to the center of the dance area and held her right hand in his, while his other hand rested ever so gently on her back.
Dina’s breathing had become almost even and her heart had calmed down somewhat and continued its work, albeit in very unusual, hitherto unknown rhythm… No, it recalled that something similar had happened when Arthur Davlatyan had invited Dina to slow dances at student parties – his touch had been just as pleasing. And yet everything was different this time and even more intense.
One of Dina’s hands lay against Konstantin Konstantinovich’s chest, feeling the soft woolen fluffiness of his tweed jacket. The other hand absorbed the heat of the man’s palm, sensing the slightest movement of his muscles as he squeezed and released Dina’s fingers. It seemed as if streams of energy were flowing from his hand… entering her, filling her up. His breath touched her cheek… Dina could hear it, loud and uneven… and it stirred something up inside her.
“You’re so light,” Konstantin Konstantinovich said in her ear.
His voice had become low and slightly husky. She glanced up and her whole being was enveloped in the light radiating from his eyes.
“Really?” She asked, bewildered, not meaning to say that at all.
“Really.” He laughed and pressed her close to him.
He released her at once, but that quick embrace, the passing touch of cheek to cheek, and his low laughter, almost made Dina swoon.
“Bring me the moonstone… bring me the moonstone…” the lead singer uttered, then the music subsided, the saxophone player and guitarists put down their instruments, and the musicians went off for a break.
Spring Rain
Dina and Konstantin Konstantinovich walked slowly across the bridge towards the tram stop.
They had spoken so much and so eagerly at the café, amid the noise and music, that it seemed strange that both were silent now, when they were alone in the silence.
The silence felt awkward as each one evaluated what they had said before and tried to decide if they had been too open or said too much.
Dina noticed a crouching kitten between the bridge pylon and the railing. She came closer and squatted down to stroke the ruffled back, covered in speckles of moisture. But the kitten fled unexpectedly, slipping out from under her fingers. Dina watched him go and stood up again. She put her hands on the bridge railing and looked over the black dense surface of the slow-moving river, which played lazily with the city lights.
“Do you love all animals? Or just cats?” asked Konstantin Konstantinovich, using it as an excuse to break the silence.
He approached the railing and stood next to Dina.
“Just cats,” said Dina.
“You exhibit an incredible combination of female and male traits,” he said and smiled at Dina. “Today has been an endless revelation for me.”
Dina turned to Konstantin Konstantinovich and stared at his face. She suddenly felt that it was not her looking, that she did not exist, and that this man, a completely unknown man, was standing next to an unfamiliar girl, and Dina suddenly wanted to burst into tears for some reason.
But the feeling lasted only a second. In the next moment, she was back in her body, and her hands could feel the cold of the iron railing. Beside her stood her teacher, who had assessed her at the exam this morning, then sat next to her in the movie theater, and, while following the trials and tribulations of the characters, played by Nakhapetov and Vetinskaya, she could nevertheless constantly feel his presence… and then… and then she danced with him at the cafe, and he was so close, and he hugged her…
“You continue to mystify me. You’re acting so odd for a woman… for a girl your age.” His voice betrayed his agitation again. “You admitted how you feel about me, after all. Which is no joke, as I understand… Aren’t you interested to know what I think about it?”
She turned away again and looked down at the wave rising at the base of the bridge – just as slow and sleepy as the river itself. When she felt that she could speak calmly, she turned back to Konstantin Konstantinovich and spoke, looking into his eyes. “Of course, I would like to know what you think… But I don’t want any lies. I don’t want you to reciprocate my words for any other reason but one – if you feel the same way. Which is impossible.” She dropped her gaze but then stared at her teacher again. “Since your relationship with Rimma Yakovleva has just finished with her having an abortion.” Konstantin Konstantinovich tried to say something but Dina ignored his reaction. “You haven’t had time to figure out your feelings for me, because my knees, which you had noticed this morning, is not the sum of me… and people don’t fall in love with knees. So it’s better if you say nothing. If you say right now that you’re in love with me, it’ll be the end. It will mean that you really are just a womanizer, and that you’re willing to pay any price to acquire another… another mistress.”
She turned away again, watching the black water speckled with gold, with only one thought in her head: don’t cry.
Konstantin Konstantinovich very carefully took Dina’s hand – it was cold and wet from the night’s dew. Seeing no resistance, he took her other hand and held them between his palms to warm them up. Dina didn’t fight him but neither did she look at him as she was still afraid of bursting into tears. She didn’t know and couldn’t understand why.
“All right,” said Konstantin Konstantinovich, “I will not say anything for now… except one thing: You seem to be cold.”
“No, I’m not cold,” said Dina, “It’s just my hands.”
Konstantin Konstantinovich breathed into his hands, where Dina’s fingers lay.
“Thank you.” Dina smiled.
They passed the bridge and stopped at the tram stop.
“You’re going home already?” asked Konstantin Konstantinovich.
“I don’t want any trouble at the dorms.” She looked at her watch.
“Yes, of course,” Konstantin Konstantinovich looked nervous. “But I… I don’t want to leave you… You don’t have any relatives here?”
“I do, but I don’t want to intrude on them. Especially this late at night.”
“Do you at least stay over there occasionally?”
“Very rarely, when my mom comes to visit.”
“Hmmm… You could tell them at the dorms that…” He suddenly laughed. “My God! Who am I advising to lie! Forgive me. But I truly do not want to part from you. I hope that you trust the sincerity of this?”
“Yes,” Dina said simply. “I believe you. No matter what you say.”
Slightly puzzled, Konstantin Konstantinovich asked, “What do you mean? I don’t understand…”
“What’s not to understand? I believe you,” Dina repeated forcefully.
“You believe me? After everything that you’ve found out about me?”
“Especially after everything that I’ve found out about you.” Dina explained, “You’re a sincere person. You’re a sincere womanizer. You sincerely love women… They throw themselves at you… It’s a perfect match. At least, you don’t lie to them that you’re going to marry them.” She stared at him. “Right?”
Konstantin Konstantinovich hung his head in embarrassment and laughed.
“Well… very rarely,” he continued, as if needing to justify his answer. “You’re all so different! You want the truth, the others want a lie! And the fancier, the better!” He looked at Dina again with the expression of curiosity, astonishment, and confusion, that had followed him all evening. “But this a first for me. I’ve said all sorts of things to women!”
The tram thundered as it approached the tram stop. Konstantin Konstantinovich looked questioningly at Dina.
“I’ll take the next one,” she replied to his unspoken question.
“Will we see each other again? Tomorrow?” he asked as the tram shut its doors and was swallowed by the damp darkness.
“I’m going home tomorrow for a week.”
“And then?”
“Then I have a placement until the end of July.”
“Where?” Again Konstantin Konstantinovich became nervous and made no attempt to hide this.
“Here.”
“Great!” He grinned in relief. “How wonderful that you are a perfect student! Otherwise, they would have sent you to the back of beyond for a month and a half.”
A few single drops suddenly fell from the blackness and immediately turned into a total downpour. Konstantin Konstantinovich opened his jacket and covered Dina with one half, just like a mother hen covers her chick.
“Stop it… I’m in a cloak. There!” Dina nodded towards a shop on the other side of the street.
They ran under the store’s overhang.
Dina began to wipe her face with a white batiste handkerchief, which immediately became soaked. Konstantin Konstantinovich also took out a handkerchief, which was large, checkered, and had unusual colors not seen at the shops, and wiped his wet cheeks and forehead. He suddenly took Dina’s chin in his hand and said, “Shhh, don’t move. You have a drop of water on your earlobe, like a diamond earring.”
Dina froze, staring at Konstantin Konstantinovich. He moved his gaze from the sparkling drop to Dina’s eyes and also froze. Then he carefully wiped away the drop, let Dina go and began folding up his handkerchief in fierce concentration.
Dina leaned against the dark glass window and watched the rain as it flashed in the light of the streetlamp.
Konstantin Konstantinovich, continuing to carefully fold up his handkerchief, spoke quietly. “I really wanted to kiss you.”
Dina didn’t reply at once. “So what stopped you?”
“For the first time, I was stopped by something that I’ve never experienced before.”
“What was it?”
“Well…” He kept turning the piece of fabric over and over in his hands. “Fear? No. Concern.”
“What were you concerned about?”
“I was afraid to offend you… to incur your displeasure.”
“Funny.”
“Indeed. Before today, I was sure that I knew female nature as well as I know my own five fingers. I was certain that I knew when and what women want. I always knew how I should act.” He smiled wryly. “I would never think to question whether I should kiss a woman or not. I knew that a woman must be kissed at every convenient… and even inconvenient opportunity.” He suddenly became serious and asked worriedly: “What if I had done it? Would you have…”
“I wouldn’t have run away,” said Dina. “And I wouldn’t have slapped you.”
Konstantin Konstantinovich chuckled and shook his head. After a brief pause, he asked, and she could hear the nervousness in his voice, “Can I try again?” He turned to Dina.
“Not anymore,” she replied calmly. “I don’t like men that I have to manage: You can do this, you can’t do that… Here comes my tram!” She turned up her collar and got ready to dash to the stop.
Konstantin Konstantinovich took her elbow and turned her to face him. “But we haven’t said goodbye or planned our next date.”
Dina said, a little sternly, “I’ll be late.”
“I’ll take you back in a taxi!” he suggested.
“The last thing I need is to appear at the dorms in a taxi, together with you!” Dina grinned.
“True,” Konstantin Konstantinovich laughed. “So when will we see each other again?”
“When I come back in a week. If you don’t change your mind by then.”
“Where and when?” He chose to ignore Dina’s last remark. “Can I call you? Tell me your number.” Konstantin Konstantinovich fumbled around in his breast pockets in search of a pen.
“We don’t have a telephone at home.”
“Good grief!” He looked at Dina in bafflement. “Does that still happen? Could you…”
“Don’t fret. I’ll come back and we can meet up again.”
“What date will that be?”
“The third.”
“The third!” Konstantin Konstantinovich exclaimed ruefully. “And what if it is the second? Or the fourth? Is it really possible? No telephone! Well, can you call me when you come back?” He started searching for a pen again.
Dina took a notebook and pen from her handbag and Konstantin Konstantinovich wrote his number on the open page.
A tram rumbled in the distance.
“Goodbye, Konstantin Konstantinovich,” said Dina and held out her hand.
He shook it and said, looking deep into her eyes, “Until next time, Dina. I will be waiting for your call.”
* * *The room was dimly lit as the ceiling light was off, and only the table lamp stood on the table, with a newspaper covering the lampshade. Rimma was asleep, facing the wall and with the blanket pulled up over her head. Vera and Valya sat at the table with the books and notebooks spread out in front of them.
Both turned to Dina as one when she entered the room.
“Hi,” whispered Dina.
“Hi,” they answered in unison.
Dina changed clothes, took her toothbrush and toothpaste out of the bedside table drawer, and stepped out.
Vera pointedly tapped the glass of the alarm clock with her nail. The clock was showing five minutes past midnight.
Dina came back. She changed into a short silk robe, sat down on the bed and took from the bedside table a pharmacy jar containing a thick white cream, which she spread thickly over the face and hands. She leaned back onto her pillow and closed her eyes.
Vera’s loud whisper broke the silence. “How was the evening?” She asked.
“It was good,” Dina replied softly.
“Where did you go?”
“Have a care!” Rimma’s tense voice rang out. “It’s night already!”
“We’re not yelling so why are you?” Vera snapped back.
Dina said softly, “Sorry, Rimma, we’ll keep quiet.”
Rimma threw back the blanket, put on her robe, and grabbing her cigarettes from the dresser, left the room, slamming the door.
Vera decided that now they could talk openly, and turned to Dina. “Well, tell us, then!”
Dina said calmly, without moving, “I am not going to tell you anything. All you do is gossip and annoy other people. Don’t you feel sorry for Rimma?”
Vera turned away and pulled a face, but so that Dina could not see it.
The more simple Valya did not know how to react to Vera’s tricks, so she simply looked down at her notebook, although she kept glancing at the other two.
Vera couldn’t keep quiet and pounced on Dina again. “You’re such a good girl but you still paint your nails and bleach your face.”
Dina didn’t reply.
Vera kept going. “Good girls don’t doll themselves up.”
Dina replied coolly, without opening her eyes, “Chekhov said ‘Everything should be first-rate in a person, their face, clothes, soul and thoughts.’ Have you heard that before?”
Vera pulled a face again. “Gee, you know everything, Turbina.”
“Every person knows what they want to know… what they need to know.”
“Why don’t you go off and be an actress then, Turbina?”
“Why’s that?” Dina smiled.
“So that we would have a second Dina Durbin,” Vera pointed out. “Turbina! You were named after her, weren’t you?”
“Yes, after her, but I am no good at acting.”
“Oh! That’s right! You’re incapable of lying. In the movies, if you can’t lie, you can’t act.”
“You’re wrong. Playing a role does not mean lying,” said Dina and began removing the cream from her face using cotton wool.
Rimma came back in. “I don’t know what you’ve been saying behind my back…” She started.
Dina interrupted her gently. “Rimma, we know about everything that’s happened, but it doesn’t mean that you’ve stopped being our friend.”
Valya, who had glanced up in surprise at Dina, immediately looked down at her books again, while Vera sat frozen in shock.