June 2004

There are happy days when from the very morning everything is like clockwork. And it happens - on the contrary. You even jump out of your skin - nothing happens.

The day began like a holiday. And I didn’t expect, I couldn’t even imagine what a nightmare it would end in…

After all, I naively believed that everything bad that could happen had already happened to me two years ago. * It seems like she drank to the bottom all the pain and sorrow that are usually measured out to a person for a lifetime. I thought, silly, that after the horror experienced then, now I was not afraid of anything. How wrong was I...

***

We are fantastically lucky. Rosa Markovna was in a wonderful mood today, and this happens as often as a parade of planets or Bailey's rosary. No, even less so.

Probably, each university has its own monster teachers, and so here we have Roza Markovna, head of the department of pedagogy, among the people - Wild Rose. They are afraid of her even more than Tikhanovich, our dean, and he is still a blood-drinking lover.

All the groups that had passed her pedagogy before us were mercilessly torn to pieces and sent for a retake.

We, in fact, mentally prepared for the same outcome, but Roza Markovna stunned us from the threshold.

“Good morning, girls,” she smiled broadly, and we all froze like pillars of salt.

Rosa Markovna smiled! It is easier to imagine the smiling Medusa of Caravaggio.

I blinked away, afraid that I was hallucinating from sleepless nights. But no, she really smiled at us, and at the portrait of Sukhomlinsky on the wall, and at the delicate greenery outside the window, and at herself.

“And my granddaughter was born today,” she suddenly announced with pride. - Hour ago. Three seven hundred...

We, having recovered from the shock, began to vie with each other to congratulate her. God, we were so happy about the birth of her granddaughter, as Rosa Markovna herself was not happy.

She was obviously in a hurry to see her daughter in the hospital, because she let us all into the auditorium at the same time, although she usually received four at a time. At the same time, I did not follow at all whether someone was writing off or not. And then she listened with half an ear, she didn’t even ask additional questions.

We, all fourteen people, shot back in about an hour and a half and happily went in a crowd to the Nautilus, a student cafe next to the institute.

It would be a sin not to note such phenomenal luck. Even Lyuba Timofeeva, our strict headman, obsessed with her studies, did not fight back from the team this time. As well as Stasya Karpinskaya, who for the first time in three years expressed a desire to go somewhere with a group. From student cafes, she usually turned up her nose, and she considered us, her classmates, to be rogue.

My former best friend Natasha Tarasova, who has been avoiding people for the past two years, also went. And especially me.

We were friends with her almost from the first grade, lived in the neighborhood and together we left our shabby town here. Here they entered the ped at the philological faculty and rented a room for two. For a whole year they lived in perfect harmony, passed the exam, and were going to visit their parents for the summer. Well, then I, not a frightened idiot, brought that damned announcement. Stumbled upon it by accident and showed it to her.

If only I knew what monstrous consequences this would lead to, I would burn that piece of paper as the most terrible infection. But at eighteen I was stupid, careless and inexperienced ... However, the worst thing is that I dragged her, Natashka, into this trouble.

Yes, it was with her that we then, two years ago, experienced a nightmare, after which I got depressed for a couple of months and ... no, I didn’t forget - it’s never possible to forget this. I just got together somehow, stepped over and now I live on without looking back. And I certainly didn’t acquire unnecessary phobias, well, except perhaps the fear that someday what happened then will surface.

But Natasha was broken by what happened. Her mother told me that she almost killed herself that summer. She frightened everyone to horror, but did not admit that it was with her. I didn’t confess either, although Natashka’s parents, and mine, and Vanka, her school love, interrogated me all together. He pulled her, poor, and barely out of the most severe depression.

She and I, without agreeing, decided that not a single living soul should find out anything. Because then our personal misfortune would turn into a disaster.

I thought Natasha would take an academy in her second year in order to recover, to come to her senses. But no, she returned and took up her studies with even greater zeal. It's just that she stopped talking to me. At all.

And Natasha barely greeted the rest of the girls from the group. But me ... she simply did not notice me since then. She silently left our room. At the institute, she settled away. When I myself tried to contact her, it was as if she had not heard or seen me. Well, to be with me in the same company - yes, for nothing! Two years of deaf impenetrable boycott.

However, Rosa Markovna's granddaughter has united us all today. No, Natasha was still silent, sitting on the very edge, but the fact that she got out here at all with all of ours, including me, is already a great progress.

We, having moved the tables, drank beer with crackers and laughed out loud to the whole hall.

They looked at us, especially the guys at the next table. There were four of them. Most likely, they are also students and, most likely, from the physics and mathematics department. It’s just that in the Nautilus, either our teachers-philologists, or smart people from physics and mathematics usually gathered. There were no other educational institutions nearby.

After two servings of Admiral, the girls also began to look at them playfully in response and laugh even louder. I hardly drink at all, so I can see all these metamorphoses perfectly.

- You know who that blonde is? - Leaning towards the center of the table, Stasya Karpinskaya said. - This is Tikhanovich. Igor likes it. Our dean's son.

The blond immediately became interesting to everyone. Except me.

I don't really care about anyone anymore. Not blondes, not brunettes, not bald. I have my Romka. We have been dating for almost a year, and recently we got together. We took off one piece, well, we're rubbing ourselves for now.

My parents are not yet aware of our serious relationship, they are old-fashioned for me. It is believed that without a stamp in the passport, living with a guy is a mortal sin, debauchery and horror. And they believe that I am just like them, sublime and pure. I want to get out of it sometimes. If only they knew the truth about me...

No, God forbid. They will never know it. Nobody will know. Even Roman. Because otherwise I'll probably die...

I drove away the heavy thoughts, telling myself not to think, not to think about anything!

Not even an hour passed, and the guys grew bolder. At first, platitudes were shouted out to us from the spot:

Girls, are you bored?

Well, yes, we miss you so much that our cheeks already hurt from laughter.

Then one of them took the liberty of coming up to us with his chair, followed by the second sat down, the third ... Tikhanovich did not shout out and did not come up, he watched everyone in proud loneliness a little lazily and haughtily.

No, a little later he still came up and settled down next to me.

“Your profile is an artist’s dream,” he said in an intimate whisper, leaning close to his ear.

“Yes, I am a dream in general, and not only an artist,” I did not appreciate his compliment.

He chuckled.

- Why don't you drink? he noticed my untouched beer.

- I keep my health from a young age.

Instead of honor? he raised an eyebrow.

“Together with honor,” I snapped.

Then she looked at the huge clock in the form of a steering wheel, hanging on the wall next to the bar. Time crept up to seven, so it was time to rush home.

Romka worked for me from eight to eight. I came home from work tired and brutally hungry. And somehow it went without saying that I and dinner were waiting for him at home.

No catastrophe, of course, will occur if I violate our mode of vivendi just once. But somehow I feel good about it. Still, Romka alone “pulls” us. He bends his back in his car service, rents an apartment, feeds, contains.

My parents do not help me, like most of my other classmates. Who would help them themselves, they barely make ends meet there. My mother is a school librarian. Her chic salary is only enough to keep her from starving. My father even receives three kopecks for unemployment, because in our Zarechensk the only factory where he worked hard from his youth died out and collapsed five years ago. Well, that's all, the father and another one and a half hundred of the same hard workers remained out of work.

I myself honestly tried to earn extra money, but I couldn’t combine it with my studies without harming my studies. And with our dean Tikhanovich, who is almost wrong - he will expel and will not justify himself, it is better not to risk it.

“And I’m Igor,” the dean’s son told me.

“But I know,” and nodding at Karpinskaya, she handed her over without a twinge of conscience. - Stasia told us everything about you.