Голубые ступени / Stepping into the blue - стр. 7
As the time for graduation approached, it had dawned on her that the worst part of all was now at hand – work assignments. She couldn’t imagine that soon they would be forced to see each other only rarely. They had studied together for so many years – a rare stroke of luck indeed that it had lasted that long.
Now there would come graduation, and then it would be off to work – he to one place, she to another. No, this she could not even imagine. She just couldn’t and that was it. Her lovely face with just a hint of a heavy chin became very tense – she herself noticed it in the mirror. She also caught a glimpse of how the masculine look that had been cast upon her would first flare up and then slip off to one side. She felt it wasn’t so much the result of her ’deformity’ (as she thought of it) as of the tension written all over her face and dwelling in her eyes. No, she would accept anything – anything but being apart from him. Everything within her cried out with this desperate plea!
But why? She protested to herself: «We can’t spend our whole life together!»
Why? And once more she countered: Why not? And the answer that came to her of its own accord stunned her: «Because I love him!» Oh Lord, how did this happen? Oh Lord! Who else could possibly give her an answer?
He for his part had noticed nothing. Where had he been when she herself was only guessing at it?! He didn’t seem to need any other female companionship – he was happy being with her.
Everybody was fond of him, as they are fond of any cheerful fellow they have got accustomed to who never refuses to help, and if an extra rouble comes his way (an extremely rare occurrence), is always ready to give it to someone else. «Well, he might need it,» he would reply to her pragmatic warning that «he’ll only just fritter it away in any case».
«But he’ll still need it!» He couldn’t see how he could refuse.
She protested against the approaching separation with her whole being, tense and super-sensitive as it was. She had no idea how she would live or what she would do. The main thing was not to make a spectacle of her feelings, and not to impose herself, so that he would not suffer on her account. That would never do! But without him? Without him – what would she ever do without him? Such a thought was unreal! For her there simply could never be a ’without him’.
But nobody could possibly have predicted the way it actually turned out.
All the members of the graduating class (and there weren’t that many of them) were handed their assignments – she was detailed to work on the Conservatory’s own academic journal. Everyone received an assignment, except for him.
«You are so talented, you have a such a special profile, that we can’t assign you a place just yet!» an official at the ministry told him with a supercilious smile. He was crushed. No matter what he did now, no matter where he looked for work, he would still not have his degree, since the degrees were awarded only after the work assignments. A vicious circle!
She gave an involuntary shiver at the memory of it. Still, it meant they could continue to see each other every evening. But then along came the «Doctors’ plot».4 They had spoken earlier about his Jewish background (she herself knew what it was like to be an outcast after her own father was taken) – there had been insults and fears in great supply, but now it became even physically frightening, perhaps because they were beginning to understand more as they advanced in years, or perhaps it was true that nothing quite so frightening had happened before. The word