“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.”

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?