With a smile, containing a mixture of surprise, admiration, and the recognition of being beaten by a worthy opponent, the man took Dina’s ticket and put it in a pile with the other used ones, without checking what was on it. Then he moved aside Dina’s draft answer sheet in the same manner. Konstantin Konstantinovich quickly wrote something down on a clean sheet of paper, and pushed it towards Dina, saying loudly, so that the whole auditorium could hear him:
“I do not doubt your knowledge, Dina Aleksandrovna Turbina. I therefore don’t intend to waste your precious time. Your record book, please.”
Dina opened her record book on the required page, with all the subjects there showing only “Excellent,” and read the message on the sheet of paper, written in large, fast handwriting: Today, at 18:45 in front of the Peace Cinema.
The teacher signed Dina’s record book. “Congratulations on an excellent finish of the semester, Dina Aleksandrovna.”
“Thank you, Konstantin Konstantinovich,” replied Dina and reached for her student ID.
Konstantin Konstantinovich held down the corner of the record book with his index finger. Once Dina lifted her eyes to look at him, he released the book and said in the same playful tone, “See you in the next academic year, Dina Aleksandrovna. Have a good internship and enjoy your holidays!”
“Goodbye, Konstantin Konstantinovich.” Dina stood up and walked stately out of the auditorium.
Click… click… click… her heels counted the distance from the table to the door, from this year’s last exam and until next year, the final year of university.
Dina could physically feel Konstantin Konstantinovich’s eyes on her calves. As she was closing the door behind her, Dina turned around and could verify that she was right.
* * *
That was what would not let Dina go from the cloudy late spring of the present into the sunny summer future. The note, inviting her on a date with the most gorgeous but also the most fickle – so her not-overly-experienced heart told her – the most fickle man in the world. And this man’s undisguised interest in her appearance, or to be more exact, her legs.
All this thrilled Dina and made her waver between sweet anticipation and vague fears that sent chills down her spine. And to feel sorry that the next academic year was so far away…
Why, why would he want her? Hasn’t he got anyone else to go to the movies with? It is not like there was a lack of beauties at their university or even the whole big city.
“Don’t think about it!” she heard suddenly. It was her Inner Voice. “Do you want to go on this date?”
“Yes… I do.”
“Then go. Don’t worry about the other beauties for the moment.”
On Beauty
Dina did not even consider herself cute.
Not because of an inferiority complex, so often present in young ladies, who were not fortunate to become the center of universal male attention. Not at all. The reason was that Dina’s ideas of beauty were based on such unattainable ideals that even the girls others considered beautiful and attractive did not deserve such labels in her opinion. Perhaps only Rimma Yakovleva, the second-year girl that Dina shared a room with, could be called cute… Therefore, there was no point in getting upset if you weren’t born looking like Anna Magnani! You had to be satisfied with what you had.
It was Anna Magnani who was the benchmark of female beauty for Dina, and not Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren, whom all the girls her age were obsessed with.
“She is hideous like Baba Yaga!” laughed her classmates at first, and then the girls at university, looking at the portrait of the little-known actress.
“You just don’t know anything about beauty!” replied Dina with a quiet dignity and the unwavering certainty in her right to have an opinion that differed from the majority.
She did not become offended. What did she have to be offended about? The fact that they lacked the emotional subtlety to sense – sense rather than see – what true beauty was? She should not be offended by them but pity them.
Dina did not yet have a benchmark for male beauty. Nevertheless, the sickly-sweet blue-eyed Frenchman that everyone swooned over conjured up in her a feeling of dislike, almost disgust. Muslim Magomaev, on the other hand, whom Dina had only seen in magazine photographs, but knew and loved his voice, thrilled Dina. And Jean Marais… Although Dina would not have been able to say with certainty whether it was the character of d’Artagnan, the valiant musketeer, that she loved, or the actor playing him. One way or another, in both d’Artagnan and Jean Marais, Dina sensed the important thing that every woman subconsciously seeks in a man: nobility and virtue, and the ability to protect the lady from all troubles. Dina did not yet know if nobility and inner strength went hand-in-hand with external beauty.
Dina was a slender girl, slightly taller than average, with great posture and the unhurried walk of someone who is sure of themselves. Her mom had taught her from childhood to watch her posture. She had also taught Dina everything else that made her extraordinarily unique: good manners, how to take care of herself, careful wardrobe selection, and later, make-up.
“Even if you’re no great beauty,” her mom always said, “your face, hair and nails should be always well looked after.”
“Even if you don’t have a lot of clothes,” she continued, “the ones you have should be of good quality.”
“Never,” her mom also said, “Never chase after the latest fashion. It’s better to find your own style and stick to it. You can make references to the current fashion trends perfectly well using accessories.”
How this provincial woman, who had never finished high school, could know these very un-Soviet things, Dina had no idea. And why, despite all this, her mother did not follow her own principles, was a mystery too.
Dina dressed with her mom’s help. Her mother sewed or re-sewed from her own clothes the items she thought a metropolitan student needed.
This included a formal suit, a few blouses, a few skirts, and an evening dress, of course. Only the outerwear and shoes were bought in the stores. Well, and the underwear, of course. For those things, Dina’s mom selflessly saved money from her modest salary, often denying herself some nice trifle.
“Sweetie,” her mom would say when Dina would try and dissuade her from a new purchase, “Dinochka, I’ve already proven myself, but you need to make a statement: a fine dress helps to impress!” And she would laugh a bright, child-like laugh.
Nevertheless, even with such a low assessment of her appearance, Dina did not think that she was any worse than the people around her.
“I’m just different from the rest.” She comforted herself this way until she got used to this self-identification, which worked like a filter, capturing and rejecting unwanted thoughts and feelings about her appearance, which were nothing but a distraction from life itself, so beautiful and amazing in all its aspects.
“Even girls worse-looking than me get married.” She would tell herself when she noticed an engagement ring on the finger of a really homely woman.
Until one day, her Inner Voice said in response, “All sorts of people get married… but is that what you want?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Do you really need someone to put a ring on your finger? Is that the extent of your dreams?”
Dina thought about it and replied, “No. I don’t think so.”
“So what is your dream?”
Dina thought about it again. “I want to love and be loved.”
“There you have it,” said the Inner Voice. “Being married does not necessarily mean loving and being loved. The reverse is also true: mutual love does not always imply marriage.”
“Really?” Dina was surprised.
On Family and Love
Like all girls, Dina of course thought about love and happiness, and about a family that she would someday have. She mentally tried on some guys as potential husbands, only the ones that she liked, of course.
Take Sergey, for example, who was the son of her mom’s friend Albina. He was four years older than Dina and they had known each other since early childhood.
* * *
When she was five years old, Dina realized that she loved Sergey.
She understood this by the indescribable happiness that she felt whenever her mom mentioned Albina, and any discussions of plans to do with Albina, which meant that Dina would see Sergey, and that her joy meant love. For what is love without joy?
Sergey was kind and sweet, and looked after her from the position of his age and life experience, after all, he was already going to school and knew a great deal.
Sergey took Dina to the movies, holding her hand. In the cinema bar, he bought her a soda with a bright yellow, thick syrup, a flaky pastry, always the most golden one, sprinkled with large granules of sugar, and then wiped her lips with a handkerchief and brushed the crumbs off the collar of her dress.
Sometimes Sergey would read Dina his favorite books, and those were the happiest hours of their time together. Dina watched Sergey’s lips and often did not even understand what the book was about, but this was not important. It was not for someone’s adventures, even if they were fascinating, that she was sitting here next to her precious Sergey!
But then Albina remarried and moved far away to Kamchatka, taking Sergey with her. Dina mourned him for a long time and wrote him long missives using printed letters. Albina had sent one of the letters back to Dina’s mom a few years ago, as a keepsake.
Dina read it and laughed through her tears. “Helo Sergy. Today I went to the movees at 4 oclok. The movee was reely good. I reely liked it. Hau r yu? What movee did yu cee? I mis yu alot. Big kises. Yor Dina.”
Every word was written in a pencil of a different color, and the letter was a kaleidoscope of uneven letters and rainbow colors.
They next met at the seaside in Anapa, and Dina knew that Sergey was the love of her life.
Nevertheless, in fourth grade, Dina unexpectedly found herself in love with a boy with black curls, called Vova Gladstein, who appeared in their class in the middle of the year, and then disappeared just as suddenly in the middle of the following year.
“The father was transferred” was the reason for such comings and goings of several schoolchildren in Dina’s class, her school, and her town.
Vova went away and a gaping emptiness was left in her soul. Then Dina remembered Sergey and her heart went back to him once more. But not for long…
She fell in love again in eighth grade.
With Valera Revyakin, who was repeating the year, the biggest troublemaker at the school and a headache for all the teachers.
Why did he treat Dina in the same way that Sergey did all those years ago? He cared, and protected her – even though there was not much need for it – and Dina liked his touching solicitude.
It was interesting to hang out with him, as he told her different stories from his life, which made her blood run cold, and half of which, Dina later decided, were either made up or not Valera’s stories at all.
Then he moved away after completing ninth grade.
Dina remembered their farewell: her tears, which she could not hold back, his kiss on the lips, which she treasured for a long time.
“We’re moving really far away, to another country,” said Valera to Dina, making her swear an oath to keep this a secret, “so I won’t be able to write to you.”
Dina started writing to Sergey again.
The correspondence with Sergey somehow faded away on its own, and resumed only when Dina received a wedding invitation from him when she was already at university. She did not come, of course, for it was too far away and too expensive. She did not have the time either, not with all the lectures and exams. Nevertheless, she wrote him a warm letter and they continued to occasionally exchange news and photos.
Since then, Sergey had already gotten divorced and was not planning to marry again – or so he wrote in his letters to Dina. Dina sometimes imagined them meeting somewhere, and their old tender friendship blossoming into love, and then…
So she knew that a family started with love. This meant that someone she loved needed to be at her side. Love was forever. She did not take her mom’s experiences into account. Her mom was just unlucky for some reason.
* * *
When Dina was very young, she once asked her mother, “Mom, why don’t we have a dad?”
Her mother answered very calmly. “Our dad died. Never ask me about him again because it upsets me very much.”
Dina did not want to upset her mother so she did not ask any more questions about her dad. If any friends living nearby or at the kindergarten asked her, “Where is your dad?” she told them what her mother had said.
One day, her mom came home with a new man and said to Dina,
“This is Uncle Tolya. He’ll live with us now.”
Dina was very excited and asked, “Can I call him Daddy?”
Uncle Tolya was delighted by this and said, “Of course, Dinochka, call me Dad.”
Everything was wonderful at the start, they went to the movies together, to the zoo, and skiing.
Dina was proud of her dad and happy for her mom, who laughed a lot and dressed up.
Then Uncle Tolya started disappearing somewhere for a few days at a time, while Mom went around with red eyes and her hair uncombed, and told Dina that she was sick and that Uncle Tolya had gone away on a business trip.
“Dad, not Uncle Tolya,” Dina corrected her mother.
Dina’s mom would give her a strange look, not say anything back, and disappear into the kitchen or bedroom for long periods of time.
One day, Dina came back from school and found Mom in tears, and Da– Uncle Tolya yelling at her mother, also with tears in his eyes. He was holding the kitchen towel and kept wiping his eyes with it.
“Opening your legs for other men, that doesn’t count either?!” he was shouting.
He repeated those words two or three times so Dina remembered them for the rest of her life. But she did not know what they meant.
She also remembered how a strange oppressive tension settled over the apartment after that. As if Uncle Tolya’s yelling could suddenly appear from any corner, or from behind any curtain.
When she was left home alone, Dina tried to air the apartment, she opened all the windows and even sprayed the air with her mom’s perfume or Uncle Tolya’s cologne, but nothing helped. The feeling of hurt, the tears and the destroyed happiness, were stuck in the apartment like an unbearable load. Her mother laughed less and less, and Uncle Tolya took them to the cinema or the zoo less and less often. Then he did not come home for a very long time, and Dina’s mom said that he had gone away.
“Forever?” asked Dina.
“Forever,” said her mom. “Never ask me about him again, it upsets me very much.”
So Dina did not. She never had a Dad after that.
The Student Dorms
Dina stopped to think about where she should go. The girls at the dorms were preparing for the exam that she has just passed. Aunt Ira was at work, Anya and Kolya were at university. It was cloudy outside and the rain could start at any second, and she did not want to get wet. It was rather boring to eat ice-cream alone in a cafe…