father appreciated a joke and could have invented it all.
For the first three years, she paid no attention to Dima. Then he started taking a neighboring desk in the library. At the time, they were doing their end-of-course projects and had to spend long hours rummaging in the literature. Finally, Nina took notice of his reddish head, and her memory hinted that he had sat next to her on the last five occasions at least. “My God, can he be…?” she thought. The idea that Dima might be taking interest in her was so stunning to her that she stared at him without blinking. Dima remained motionless, buried in his books, but a deep blush spread all over his cheeks and ears, even neck. Nina was still in shock mentally, but the woman inside her woke up and took the situation under control.
“Dima,” the woman said amiably. “What’s your topic?”
Dima started and came to life. He blurted out the title of his project and asked, “What’s yours?”
Their topics turned out to be very close. She learned afterwards that the coincidence had been arranged by Dima himself who had swopped topics with another student at the cost of an almost new player.
When the proximity of their topics had been established, Dima’s red face expressed a happy amazement after which he fell silent again. The woman in Nina was a little upset by his timidity but she was not about to give up. “Tell me what you’ve done so far,” she suggested.
Provided with such a safe life buoy, Dima clutched at it and never let go. He began recounting eagerly, in every detail, his plan for the project. As she was listening to him with half an ear, Nina scrutinized him feeling a rising excitement in her breast. She had a boyfriend!
Since then, they spent a lot of time together every day sitting in the library and then going home by the underground – luckily, they lived in the same part of the city. After a month, Dima asked her out to the movies. In the theater, when the lights were out, he took her hand in his. Nina did not remove her hand, and that way, hand in hand, they sat through the show. Afterwards, Nina could not remember what the movie had been about.
The next day Dima had the courage to invite her to his place under the pretext of a final discussion of their projects which supposedly was impossible to have in the library. “Mother will be out all night, so we won’t be disturbed.” Nina realized what was going to happen and did not resist the idea although Dima did not at all resemble a man to whom she would lose her virginity in her girlie dreams.
Dima and his mother lived in a small, two-room apartment in a drab, municipal housing unit. Poverty and ideal order reigned there, nothing like the somewhat disorderly home life once created by Nina’s warm-hearted, easy mama, let alone the state of neglect into which Nina and her father’s household had slid after her death.
Dima offered her tea. “Or, maybe, you want some wine? I have a bottle of…” – he ventured but bit his tongue, scared of his own boldness. Nina agreed to tea. Dima seated her on a cheap, threadbare sofa and, after some fussing around, brought a tray with a teapot, two cups and a small bowl of chocolates. Apparently, he had made his preparations for the date.
However, he clearly did not know how to get down to business. When the tea was finished, he started discussing hotly some mutual acquaintances, then told a long, stale joke and laughed at it nervously himself. Then there was a long, painful silence. At last, unable to bear it any longer, Dima reached into his backpack. With a dejected look on his face, he fished out his project paper and embarked on reading some chapter of it to Nina.
Nina was sitting silently, with her eyes cast down. She was all like a taut string.
“Dima, come here.” Nina touched the sofa with her fingers inviting him to move closer. Dima sat by her side without letting go of his project paper. His hands were trembling noticeably. Nina took his paper away from him and put it aside. “Embrace me,” she said softly. Dima put his hands awkwardly round her and kissed her – on the cheek. Nina turned her head and held up her lips to him. It was the first kiss in her life.
It turned out that she was Dima’s first woman, too. He fumbled with her clothes, not knowing the right way to unfasten them and take them off. At last, with some help from her, he got her undressed. Hectically, he laid some bedclothes on the sofa and undressed himself. At the last moment, he darted aside and turned on some music. Apparently, music was an important item on his plan. “Light,” Nina asked. Dima turned off the light. They were immersed in a shadow dissipated only by a bulb in the hall that was left on…
It hardly lasted more than a minute. Nina felt pain and issued a cry. Almost immediately after that, Dima leaned back and, breathing heavily, sank onto the sofa beside her.
Nina was lying on her back, staring at the dark ceiling in bewilderment. “Is that all?” she wondered.
As if in response to her mute question, Dima came to life and resumed his activity – with a little more confidence and less fever this time.
The tape recorder was blaring. God knows how all that would end if it were not for that fatal music. It was because of it that they failed to hear the entrance door open and stirred only when the light went on. In the room, just a couple of steps from the sofa, stood a coated woman with a bag in her hand. Dima’s mother.
With her mouth wide open, the woman was staring at their naked bodies on the sofa. Nina pulled a sheet over herself and uttered, “Good evening.”
The woman gulped and responded, “Good evening.”
Then Dima blurted out, “Mother, this is my fiancée. Her name is Nina. Nina, please meet my mother, Tatyana Yurievna.”
The woman regained her senses. Without a word, she walked to the anteroom to take off her coat, then shifted to the kitchen and from there, she cried to them, “Come down here, let’s have tea!”
They slipped into their clothes and spent half an hour with Tatyana Yurievna in the kitchen. Half dead with shame, Nina kept silent, sitting with her eyes fixed on her cup. Tatyana Yurievna, quite unperturbed outwardly, questioned her son about his university affairs as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
Nina traveled back alone, having rejected flatly Dima’s offer to see her home. Luckily, the underground car was almost empty at that late hour and nobody paid attention to a strange girl who laughed and frowned alternately for no apparent reason. In fact, she had a reason – she had become a woman. Moreover, she had become a fiancée.
They got married two months later. It so happened that nobody had really asked Nina whether she wanted to marry Dima. Actually, she was not sure herself. It was not that she had some doubts or was weighing rationally pros and cons – she just yielded numbly to the flow of events. The woman inside her which previously had taken a big step towards Dima’s timid advances was keeping silent now.
When he met Dima, her father was clearly disappointed, but he forced himself to be amiable – told jokes, patted Dima on the back, and poured him vodka. Dima was not at all his idea of a guy for Nina, but there was nothing to be done, it was her decision. Uneasily, her father asked whether they were expecting a baby. Nina answered truthfully that they were not but she could see in his face that he was still doubtful. In his view, it was the only reason that could make his brilliant daughter tie herself down to such a colorless little fellow.
In the meantime, the colorless little fellow was bustling about in great excitement, making arrangements for the registration and wedding. He was happy – as happy as his timid soul could be. The wedding took place in a students’ café where their whole year managed to cram in. Everything was very loud and incoherent.
Nina’s married life began. It was Tatyana Yurievna’s will that the couple live with her. They were afforded the larger of the two rooms – the one with the sofa. Dima and Nina were inseparable round the clock now – traveling to the university in the morning, sitting through the lectures, going back home, having dinner, doing homework.
Tatyana Yurievna was even and civil with her daughter-in-law, but Nina felt an arctic cold emanating constantly from the woman. Obviously, Nina was not the kind of bride Tatyana Yurievna had wished for her only son. Tatyana Yurievna never mentioned that dreadful episode when she had caught them in flagranti but apparently