My own gift for compilation, which had previously manifested itself in the writing of reports, came in handy in my new position. It was easy for me to design programmes for all the amateur concerts and celebrations devoted to the institute’s anniversaries, and I became an indispensable assistant to our club manager.
A half-hour film about the institute was shot under my supervision. We timed the presentation just right, combining two round dates: the president’s sixtieth birthday and the institute’s sixtieth anniversary, and we said it was a modest gift from the student club.
The film was called Our Beloved Polytech: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, and it was pompously eulogistic. For several years the flattering video was always shown to high-placed guests from the ministry.
The president was very touched by his present and money started being allocated to the club. Following these subsidies Galoganov, who bought himself a new television, a video player and a music centre, really doted on me.
The institute’s petty bureaucracy invited me to its parties as one of its own. Sensing imminent promotion, Galoganov, in his drunken generosity, started predicting more and more frequently that I would be his successor in the post of club manager and was genuinely offended because I wasn’t ecstatic at the prospect.
At the time I couldn’t understand that life had handed me a perfectly tolerable little pattern for a career—a calm, swampy haven. I indignantly rejected these gifts of fate. Instead of consolidating my friendship with Galoganov and the vice-president for cultural affairs, time after time I informed my benefactors with a condescending smile that I intended to take up art seriously and couldn’t give a damn for a future as a petty functionary in a college.
My parents, of course, tried to change my mind, but I replied harshly that I had promised them a “solid profession” and not a life obliterated by boredom.
Vovka kept quiet, because she had been morally compromised. She was a second-year student then, and I can’t remember which came first—the melon-shaped bulge of her stomach or the words about getting married soon. And so Vovka didn’t butt in with any clever advice, but devoted assiduous efforts to cajoling passing marks for her exams out of her lecturers, in order not to lose a year of study. For our part, we tried to like Vovka’s fiancé Slavik, a member of her study group. This didn’t prove too hard; at the very first viewing the defiler of virtue won us all over with his meek and obliging manner. He seemed really to love Vovka. They soon married and moved into our old folks’ empty apartment. In June Vovka gave birth to a boy, whom they called Ivan.
In two years pride had blinded me. I associated freely with the vice-president of the institute and had my own desk in the office of the club manager. I wasn’t writing any diploma thesis at all. At Galoganov’s request an old diploma work entitled ‘Casting from Lost-Wax Models’ was extracted from the archives and the title page was changed.
What else was there? In summer, at the end of the fourth year, I got married. At that time student marriages had assumed the proportions of an epidemic. My wife was called Marina. She had a rather pleasant appearance, with features so generically regular that she looked like a statistically average model of an attractive girl. That was the way the propaganda posters used to depict the striding ranks of Young Communist League girls, all with that same collective prettiness. After the first day we met, I wouldn’t have recognized her in the street. The only distinctive thing about Marina was her laugh. It was very melodic and resonant, and she mostly laughed when I flaunted my wit. Eventually I noticed her.
Throughout my polytechnic years I was never short of girlfriends. I was a rather well-known celebrity. Even so, this Marina saw off her rivals pretty quickly, but I didn’t take that seriously at alclass="underline" I was genuinely amused by the girl’s hunt for a husband.
Marina wasted no time and cranked up the relationship so smartly that six months later I was surprised to learn that people were already talking about us as a soon-to-be family, and the strangest thing of all was that I didn’t feel the slightest desire to correct this evident misunderstanding. Even the vice-president, running along the corridor, congratulated me on my imminent wedding.
My parents were also wholeheartedly in favour. They thought that marriage would make me settle down, forget my stupid dreams and opt for a happy family life instead.
The part of my soul that was infected by the universal wedding fever falsely reassured me that a wife would not be any obstacle to the career of a future stage director. Everything was decided by a phrase uttered by my boss Galoganov: “What are you afraid of? If you don’t like it, you can get divorced.”
Somehow it was that possibility of a future divorce that reassured me, and I proposed to Marina. The wedding was attended by a narrow family circle—Vovka was in her eighth month and charmed everyone at the feast with her impressive stomach. As a wedding gift my father-in-law and mother-in-law gave us an apartment, which, however, they registered in Marina’s name.
Our marriage lasted just over a year. In that relatively short period of time I had learned that my spouse’s weeping, unlike her laughter, was incredibly unpleasant
After receiving my diploma as an engineer, I started assiduously preparing to join a faculty of stage direction. I set out to reconnoitre Moscow. The Russian capital struck me a sly blow with the rouble. It had never even occurred to me that now I was a citizen of a different country and my education would have to be paid for.
This woeful fact immediately put an end to any idea of attending a college in Russia. When I got back, I was able to look my acquaintances in the eye with no shame and say that the only reason Moscow was off the agenda was money. I reproached my parents: you see, I ought to have gone then, five years ago, when the Soviet Union still existed.
What my home city had to offer for the realization of my dream was an institute of culture, a cauldron in which the flayed flesh of all the Muses seethed and bubbled. In among the faculties of music and those offering drilling in leftist decorative and applied arts, the custodians of academic and folk choirs, guardians of orchestras consisting of dombras and balalaikas and mentors of choreographic ensembles, there was a theatre faculty with departments for the art of acting, directing drama and directing theatricalized performances and festivals.
More mature now, I took a more sober view of my abilities. My self-confidence had evaporated together with my youth. A week before the exams I found out that the competition for drama was rather high, eight applicants for each place, which was rather strange for our back of beyond.
The competition for the acting department was a bit lower, but I suddenly felt ashamed of my age; at the age of twenty-two I felt like that late developer Lomonosov, smelling of coastal fish, among the crowd of young seventeen-year-old school-leavers.
That left the direction of theatricalized performances and festivals, which had a tolerable level of competition at three applicants per place. They also required a document demonstrating experience of working with a collective. Galoganov’s secretary banged out one of those for me in five minutes flat, and the vice-president appended a positive reference to the note.
I consulted my family. My parents and Vovka said unanimously: “Don’t take any risks—the important thing is to get in. You can change departments afterwards if you like.”
Yet again I let myself be guided by cowardice. The documents were submitted for “performances and festivals”.
But even so I was indescribably happy that summer. The girls applying for the acting faculty were so alluring, perched on long high heels and just barely covered by transparent chiffon that fluttered in draughts, baring their youthful charms to the July heat and the male glances of the entrance committee.