Юлия Добровольская - The Lovers

Every section in this shop had its own sound.

The glass sounds lived to the right of the doors: it was the bottles knocking dully against each other in their wooden pallets, while the glasses jingled merrily on their enameled trays. There was also the babbling turning fountain, which the saleswoman Valya used to wash the dirty dishes. One could drink some juice here, tomato, for example, which poured thickly from a large glass container with a lid into a faceted glass, and foamed in its own special way, not like the grape or apple juice. Or soda water, for example, cream soda, which flowed with a hiss from the long-necked green bottle, and one had to quickly bring the glass up to one’s lips so that the nose and lips were sprayed with tiny bursting bubbles and their wonderful sweetly-sour smell of cream soda.

The grocery section resounded with the crunching of newspaper sheets, which were used to make bags for pasta, flour or chocolates, and the rustling of round aluminum scoops, scooping up pasta or sugar from the sliding plywood boxes or directly from the large shaggy gray bags, standing on the floor.

A whole symphony was taking place in the dairy department… First, the people waiting in line for the milk heard a dull grinding of metal against the pitted cement floor – that was the heavy full milk churns being dragged towards the counter using hooks. Then came a jingling and a sucking noise – two churns were opened and immediately came the sound of clanging of the liter or half-liter long-handled aluminum ladles against the customers’ containers, accompanied by the delicious, thick bubbling and then the equally delicious burbling of the milk, as it first filled the ladles and then the customers’ cans. Then jingled the lids of the empty large churns and the full small cans. The empty churns were noisily rolled back to the storeroom, and then the dull grinding of the full churns being dragged to the counter could be heard again…

And above it all came the chiming of coins being thrown into the cash register drawers, or onto the metal money dish, which was screwed to the stand, the lively clicking of buttons with numbers and the juicy chirring of handles, which looked like meat grinder handles, but which produced a blue-gray receipt instead of mince…

The door opened, and Dina’s mom came into the store. Mom always came into the store after work.

Dina did not tell her about what had happened so that she would not get worried.

In the evening, as she was falling asleep, it struck Dina that what happened today only happened because she hadn’t listened to someone’s wise and sensible advice. She decided not to do this in the future, no matter what.

“Turbina, I can see that you’re ready to answer,” came the soft baritone of the teacher.

“Yes, I am ready, Konstantin Konstantinovich.”

“Please.” He moved the chair beside him slightly, gesturing for Dina to sit down.

Walking towards the teacher’s table, Dina noticed that Konstantin Konstantinovich was watching her legs, as if afraid that she would trip over the scuffed linoleum or slip on it.

Yes, that was how Dina first interpreted her teacher’s intent attention to her clicking heels and her ankles, in no way special from her point of view, and her knees, peeking out from a not-so-short skirt.

In the next second, Dina smiled, almost audibly, at her own naivety.

She stopped abruptly.

Konstantin Konstantinovich, a raven-headed, eye-catching thirty-year-old man, always dressed in a sharp dark suit, white shirt, and fashionable tie, looked up into Dina’s eyes. His face was somewhat puzzled, as if asking, “What is the matter, young lady?”

Dina continued her journey, holding her teacher’s gaze with her own.

She approached the table, pulled out the chair and sat down. Then she crossed one leg over the other. She did it all in her usual leisurely manner, with a dignity that nobody here at the university had any idea about.

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.”

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.”