The Massachusetts Review, Inc. The Massachusetts Review

The Massachusetts Review, Inc.
A Week like Any Other Week

Author(s): Natalya Baranskaya and Emily Lehrman
Source: The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 657-703
Published by: The Massachusetts Review, Inc.
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Natalya Baranskaya
A Week Like Any Other Week

Translated by Emily Eehrman
The following name variants appear

for characters in this story
Olga Niklayevna Vorok6va 61ya, 61ka, 61enka
Valentina Vasilyevna Valya, Valechka
Lusya Vartanovna Markoryan Dark Ltisya
Ludmila Lychk6va Ludmilka, Luska, Lusya,
Blonde Liisya, Blondie
Marya Matveyevna M.M.
Shura Shurochka
Dima Dimka, Dim
K6stya K6tya, K6tka
Gulya Gulka, Gulenka
Monday
I'm running, running up the stairs, and on the third floor landing
I run into Yakov Petrovich. He asks me into his office and inquires
about my work. He doesn't say a word about my being late: fifteen
minutes. Last Monday it was twelve minutes; he talked to me then,
too, only it was later in the day: he wanted to know what journals
and catalogs?American and English?I had examined. The labora
tory sign-in book was lying on his desk, and he kept looking at it;
but he didn't say anything.
Today he reminds me: the testing of the new fiberglass plastic
must be completed in January. I answer that I do remember.
"The report is due in the first quarter," he says.
I know; I couldn't possibly forget.
Yakov Petrovich's small dark eyes are swimming around in the
pink flesh of his face, and, catching my eye, he asks: "Olga Niko
layevna, you won't be late with the testing, will you?"
? Copyright Emily Lehrman 1974. This story originally appeared in

Novy Mir, No. 11, 1969.
657
The Massachusetts Review
I flush and keep silent, uncomfortably. Of course, I could say:

"No, of course not. What are you saying?" It'd be better if I said
that. But I keep silent?how can I be sure?
In a quiet, even voice Yakov Petrovich says: "Considering your
interest in your work and . . . er . . . your aptitude, we have trans
ferred you to the vacant position of a junior scientist; we have as
signed you to a group which is working on an interesting problem.
I will not conceal from you that we are somewhat worried . . . er
. . . surprised, that you do not, so to speak, seem to be approaching
your work with sufficient care. . . ."
I keep silent. I love my work. I appreciate the chance to work
independentiy. I work eagerly. I don't believe that I've been treat
ing my work with insufficient care. But I'm often late, especially
on Mondays. What can I say? I only hope this is just a dressing
down, nothing more. A dressing down for lateness. I mutter some
thing about the icy paths and snow banks in our new district, the
bus which comes to our stop overfilled, the terrible crowd at the
Sokol metro station . . . and with a miserable feeling of nausea I
remember that I have said all this before.
"You must get yourself better organized, Olga Nikolayevna," con
cludes Yakov Petrovich. "Forgive me for, so to speak, preaching to
you, but you are only beginning your career. . . . We have the right
to hope that you will value the trust which we have placed in you
as a young specialist. . . ."
He stretches out his lips so they make a smile. This ready-made
smile makes me slightly sick. In a hoarse voice that doesn't sound
like my own I tell him that I am sorry, promise to get myself better
organized, and dash out into the hall. I run, but at the doors of the
laboratory I remember I haven't combed my hair this morning; I
turn and run along the long narrow corridors of the old building,
formerly a hotel, into the lavatory. I comb my hair, putting my hair
pins on the sink; I look at myself in the mirror and I hate myself.
I hate my messed-up curly hair, my sleepy-looking eyes, my boyish
face with a big mouth and a nose like Pinocchio's. With a face like
this, why wasn't I born a man?
Having combed my hair?more or less?I fix my sweater and stride
back along the corridors. I must be calm. But the conversation with
the chief is spinning around inside my head like a reel of tape.
Individual words, phrases, intonations?everything appears to me
to be alarmingly significant. Why did he keep saying "we"?"we
entrusted," "we are worried"? So he has talked about me?with
whom? With the director? What was it he said?"worried" or "sur
658
prised"? "Surprised"?that's worse. And this reminder about the
vacant position. . . . Lydia Chistyakova wanted it. She had seniority,
but they picked me?my specialty was closer. And, of course, my
English helped. The laboratory makes good use of it.
Taking me into his group and giving me the job of testing new
materials six months ago, Yakov Petrovich was, of course, taking a
risk. I realize this. With Lydia he would have been surer about
meeting deadlines. . . . And what if he wants to give my work over
to her now? That would be terrible?I've already done almost all
of the experiments.
But maybe I am exaggerating everything? Maybe it's just my
constant anxiety, eternal rushing, fear?I won't make it on time, I'll
be late. . . . No, he only wanted to reprimand me; he's annoyed by
my lateness. He's right. And, ultimately, it is his responsibility. We
know our chief?he is a real worker, a perfectionist. Well, that's all,
enough of this!
I switch my thoughts: I will now make up the summary of the
results of tests for resistance to heat and to temperature change
which we finished on Friday. I'm not worried about tests in the
physico-chemical laboratory?they're nearly finished. But the phys
ico-mechanical tests?they're our bottleneck. In the mechanical
laboratory there is a shortage of equipment, there are not enough
hands. Hands, well, that's all right?we have our own two pairs; we
do much of the work ourselves. But some of the equipment. . . . You
have to sign up for it and wait. You have to "keep watching," as
Yakov Petrovich puts it, or, in simple terms, to "keep pushing." I
push for the fiberglass plastic; another group pushes for something
of theirs. We all keep running to the first floor, fawning over the
chief laboratory technician who arranges the test schedule and sees
that we stick to it; we call her Valechka or Valentina Vasilyevna,
and try in every possible way to squeeze through some chink, should
one but open somewhere.
Yes, I must run over to Valya's. I run downstairs, push open the
heavy door; a wave of sound rushes at me, but I pass through it
and step behind the glass partition. This is Valya's "small office";
it's usually crowded with people, but right now she's here alone.
I ask her to "squeeze us in" this week. Valya shakes her head, "No,"
but I continue to beg her. "Maybe in the second half of the week;
stop in then."
Now to my own place, the polymer laboratory. In our "quiet"
room, where we analyze the results and make our calculations, there
are nine people, and room for only seven desks. But there is always
someone at the testing laboratory, or at the library, or away on a
659
professional trip. Today one of the desks is mine. And it has already
been wasted for forty minutes.
I enter. I am met by six pairs of eyes. I nod and say, "I stopped
off at the mechanical lab."
The blue eyes of Blonde Lusya are worried: "Something hap
pened?"
The huge fiery eyes of Dark Lusya are sympathetically reproach
ful: "Again?"
Marya Matveyevna's look, over her glasses, warns: "Only, please,
no talking!"
Half covered by her painted eyelids, Alia Sergeyevna's gaze is
absent-minded: "Who's there? What's there?"
Shura's wide eyes, always somewhat frightened, open still wider.
Zinaida Gustavovna's sharp pupils pierce and immediately ex
pose: "We know your mechanical lab. You were late and were
called down. Your cheeks are binning and your eyes look upset."
Our group consists of the two Lusyas and me.
Our chief is Yakov Petrovich. But it is Lusya Markoryan who is
mostly in charge. When I came to work in polymers, the new fiber
glass plastic was still in the planning stage. Only Lusya was con
juring with the analytical scales, the flasks, the thermostat. She was
working on the new compound. Everyone believed the idea of the
new fiberglass plastic belonged to Markoryan, but then it turned
out to be Yakov's. I once asked her: "Lusya Vartanovna, why do
they say that it was you who invented the new fiberglass plastic?"
She looked at me: "Do they say that? Is that so? Well, let them
say it." And no more. Then, another time, she promised to tell me
this "silliest story." So far, she is keeping quiet, and I don't ask
any more.
I am responsible for the tests. Some I do myself, some together
with the technicians of the different laboratories. Then I analyze
and evaluate all the results.
Blonde Lusya presses and molds samples for the tests?strictly
according to set standards?and generally helps around.
We also have Zinaida Gustavovna, in part. She's responsible for
the planning and the paper work for all the groups, and for negotia
tions with our clients.
There is work enough for everybody.
Now I am at my desk. I open the drawer to get the tests journal
and suddenly notice a questionnaire lying on my desk. On the top
in bold type: "A Questionnaire for Women," and in pencil in the
corner: "O. N. Voronkova." That's interesting! I look around. Blonde
Lusya shows me she has one like it. The questionnaire is long. I
start reading it.
660
Point 3: "Composition of your family: husband . . . children under
7 years of age . . . children from 7 to 17 . . . other relatives living
with you." Husband, one; children, two; grandmothers and grand
fathers, alas, none; other relatives live elsewhere.
Then this question: "What do your children attend?creche,1
nursery school, extended day school." My children, of course, attend
the creche and the nursery school.
The authors of the questionnaire want to know what kind of
quarters I live in: "Is it a separate apartment. . . amount of space:
number of square meters . . . number of rooms, conveniences. . . ."
My living quarters are excellent?a new apartment, thirty-four
square meters, three rooms. . . .
Oh, yes! They want to know absolutely everything about me.
They are interested in my lif e hour by hour . . . "in the given period
of time." Aha, the "period" is a week. How many hours do I spend
on "a) housework, b) child care, c) leisure." Leisure is explained
as cultural activity: "radio and television, movies, theatre, etc.,
reading, sports, tourism, etc."
Oh, leisure, leisure. . . . What a clumsy word, "lei-sure." "Women
fight for leisure!" What nonsense. Lei-sure. Personally, my sport is
running. Running here, running there. A shopping bag in each hand
and . . . up, down: trolleybus, autobus; into the metro, out of the
metro. Our district has no stores; we've been living there for over a
year, and they haven't been finished yet.
I'm commenting on the questionnaire in this manner to myself,
but with the next question all desire to wisecrack disappears: "Days
excused from work on account of illness: yours, your children's
(the number of work days for the past year; we ask you to give the
information based on the time-sheet)." The finger right into the
sore spot! Goes with this morning's conversation with the chief.
The adniinistration knows, of course, that I have two children. But
nobody has ever added up the number of days I stay home on their
account. They will learn this statistic and suddenly they'll get
frightened. Maybe I'll get frightened myself?I've never added
them up either. I know that there are many. . . . But how many?
It is now December. In October both had the flu?it started with
Gulka, then Kotka got sick?I think, two weeks. In November, colds
?the remnants of the flu flared up in bad weather?around eight
days. In September there was the chicken pox?Kotka brought it
from nursery school. Including the quarantine it lasted, I think,
1 Many Russian children attend all-day pre-school institutions. The

creche accepts children from approximately the age of three months to
three years.
661
three weeks. ... I don't even remember. And that's the way it
always is?when one of them is over it, the other one is right in the
middle of the illness.
And what else can there be, I wonder, afraid for the children,
afraid for my work. Measles, mumps, German measles . . . and,
most of all, the flu and colds, colds: from a hat that wasn't well
tied, from crying outdoors, from wet pants, from the cold floor,
from drafts. . . . The doctor's note says: ARI?"acute respiratory
infection." The doctors are in a hurry. I am also in a hurry, so we
take the children out though they are still coughing; and their noses
don't stop running till summer.
Who thought up this questionnaire? What is it for? Where did
it come from? I turn it every which way but I don't find any infor
mation about its compilers. I look at Dark Lusya and motion with
my eyes: "Let's step out." But Blonde Lusya gets up immediately
too, and so there are three of us out in the hall. Which is unfortu
nate. I wanted so much to talk with Lusya Markoryan about the
morning conversation, about my work, about the questionnaire?
about everything all at once. Luska is a good soul, but I am not
going to talk in front of her. She is a chatterbox; as soon as she has
any information, she is ready to burst.
Markoryan immediately lights a cigarette, and, blowing a puff
of smoke at us, challenges:
"Well?"
This means, "What do you think of the questionnaire?" I under
stand. But Blonde Lusya is indignant. "What do you mean, 'well'?
She doesn't know anything. She was late."
"Yes, late," Dark Lusya says with mocking sympathy. She puts
her hand, thin as a bird's claw, on my shoulder: "Can't you be on
time, Olenka, eh?"
"These, well . . . demographers came to see us," Luska hurries to
spill out the news, "and said that they will use the questionnaire
as an experiment in several other female institutes and enter
prises. . . ."
"Strictly speaking, ours is a male institute, but with a female
laboratory," interjects Dark Lusya.
"Lay off!" Luska brushes her away. "And then, if the experiment
proves successful, they will use this questionnaire all over Moscow."
"What do they mean by 'successful'?" I ask Dark Lusya. "And,
in general, what is it that they want?"
"The devil knows," she answers, jerking up her sharp chin. "Ques
tionnaires are in style today. Actually, they want to find the answer
to an important question: why don't women want to have babies?"
"Lusya, they didn't say that!" Blonde Lusya is indignant.
662
"Yes, they did. Only they called it: Insufficient rate of population
growth.' You and I aren't even reproducing the population. Each
couple should have two children, or maybe even three, and we
each have only one. . . ." (Here Lusya remembers that Blonde
Lusya is a "single mother.") "You're all right?they won't dare de
mand anything of you. Olya's all right too?she fulfilled her plan.
But what about me? They'll hand me a plan and then?good-bye
my dissertation."
They're talking and I'm looking at them, thinking: Lusya Mar
koryan looks like a charred log, Ludmilka looks like a fluffy white
sheep; but if they're to be judged according to the questionnaire,
then the former is the best off and the latter is the most unfortunate
of the four "mamas" in our laboratory.
We all know about each other. Dark Lusya's husband has a doc
toral degree in the sciences. They have recently moved into a large
cooperative apartment; they have plenty of money; five-year old
Markusha has a nanny. What more could you ask for? But, actually,
it's like this: for the last five years the scientist has been plaguing
Lusya: she is an egotist, she's ruining the child, entrusting his up
bringing to old women strangers (he does not allow her to enroll
the child in nursery school). Lusya is constantly looking for an
other pensioner to "baby-sit." The scientist insists that Lusya leave
her job. He wants a second child, and, in general, "a normal family."
Blonde Lusya has no husband. Vova's father, a captain, having
come from out of town to study at a military academy, concealed
from Luska the fact that he already had a family. She found out
about it a little too late. When Luska told the captain that she was
in her fourth month, he disappeared, vanished. Luska's mother,
arriving from the country, almost killed her daughter at first, then
went to complain about the captain "to the very most important
chief," then cried together with Luska, swore at and cursed all
men, and ended by staying in Moscow; now she takes care of her
grandson and keeps house. She requires of her daughter only that
she do the shopping and the heavy laundry, and that she come
home to sleep every night, without fail.
We know the least about Shura. Her little boy is in the fifth
grade. After school, before his mother comes, he is home alone.
He categorically refuses to attend the extended-day school; he takes
care of himself. In the course of the day Shura calls home several
times: "Did you eat well? You didn't forget to turn off the gas?
Don't forget to lock the door when you go out to play! . . ." (His
key is on a string, sewn onto his jacket.) "Are you doing your home
work? Don't get carried away by your reading." A serious boy!
663
Shura's husband drinks. She hides it, but we guessed it a long time
ago. We don't ask her about her husband.
I guess of all of us I am the most fortunate.
Bi?mming with curiosity, Blonde Lusya takes Lusya Markoryan's
wisecrack about "the baby plan" seriously.
"What do you mean, 'a plan?" she gasps, and her narrow eye
brows fly up to her very curls. "It can't be?! Oh, you are joking?!"
There is disappointment in her voice. "Well, of course, you are
joking. . . . But, girls, I think that the questionnaire?it's not just for
nothing. They'll give us, mothers, some benefits. Eh? Maybe they'll
shorten the work day. Maybe they'll start giving us more paid sick
leave for the children, not just three days. . . . You'll see. If they're
investigating, they'll do something."
Blonde Lusya is agitated, she shakes her curls, her round face
is flushed.
"Oh, you! 'White sheep, white sheep, have you any wool?'" says
Dark Lusya, paraphrasing the nursery rhyme. "We don't have
enough builders?there aren't enough hands for everything. That's
the problem. Do you understand? There's already a shortage of
builders. And what's going to happen in the future? In the future,
who'll build?"
"Build what?" Luska asks with warm interest.
"Everything: houses, factories, machines, bridges, roads, rockets,
Communism. . . . Everything. And who will defend all this? And
who will populate our land?!"
I am listening and not listening. The morning conversation be
gins to spin around in my head again. "I advise you to get yourself
better organized," Yakov said. Maybe everything's already decided
and my work is being turned over to Lydia? I'm late; I'm lax. That's
bad! And now my sick leave "data" will get to him.
It's too bad I didn't get to talk to Lusya Markoryan. But she can
see that I'm not myself. Putting her arm around my shoulders and
pulling me slightly toward her, she says in a sing-song voice, rock
ing together with me:
"Don't worry, Olya, they won't fire you. . . ."
"They wouldn't dare fire her," Blonde Luska boils up suddenly,
like milk on the stove, "with two children? And besides, first they'd
have to write out a reprimand and you've only had one rebuke."
That was for lateness also.
I feel ashamed?Luska is so kind, so responsive, and I didn't want
to discuss my problems in front of her.
"You see, girls, I'm afraid, I'm always afraid, that I won't get the
tests done on time. The deadline is a month from now. . . ."
"Oh, please don't be so neurotic," Lusya Markoryan cuts me off.
664
"What do you mean, 'don't be so neurotic,'" Luska pounces on
her. "You see a person suffering. . . . You should say to her, 'Calm
down, don't be upset.' You really are suffering for nothing, Olya.
Honest to God! You'll see?everything!! turn out all right. . . ."
These simple words suddenly put a lump in my throat. That's
all I need now?to burst out crying. Dark Lusya comes to the rescue.
"Listen, beauties," she says, energetically slapping us on the
shoulders. "How about our making a triple exchange? Lusya takes
my apartment, I move to Olga's, Olga to Lusya's."
"Well, and then?" we don't understand.
"No, that's wrong. . . ." Lusya Markoryan moves her finger
through the air. "No, like this: Olya moves to my place, I move to
Luska's, and Lusya to Olya's. Then it'll work out right."
"You want to exchange your three-room apartment for my room
in a communal flat?" Blonde Lusya says with a bitter smile.
"No, I don't want to, but ... I must. I lose space and conveni
ences. . . . You have no bath? You do? But then I gain something
else, more important. You, Blondie, won't lose out either?Olya's
Dima is wonderful. My Suren will be happy?Olya is younger, and
I think, fatter than I. . . . And I need a grandmother, oh, how I
need her! Well, what do you say? Save the poor graduate student!"
"Oh, you," Blonde Lusya shouts, flaring up angrily. "You can't
talk seriously about anything!" And she turns sharply in order to
leave, but just then the door flings open and she almost crashes
into Marya Matveyevna.
"Comrades, you are making so much noise," says Marya Matve
yevna in a bass voice, "that you are interfering with work. Has
something happened?"
I grab Blonde Lusya's hand, and just in time; she is already suck
ing in enough air to spill out in one breath our whole conversation
to M.M. (That's what we call Marya Matveyevna among ourselves.)
We all respect Marya Matveyevna. We like her spiritual purity.
But it's impossible to discuss serious subjects with her. We know
in advance everything she is going to say. We consider her an old
time "idealist": we feel she's become somewhat . . . well, abstract.
She simply knows nothing about everyday life. She soars high above
it, like a bird. Her biography is exceptional: a work commune at the
beginning of the thirties; in the forties?political work at the front.
She lives alone, her daughters were raised in a children's home,
they've long since had children of their own. Marya Matveyevna
is occupied only with work?professional work, Party work. She is
past seventy.
We respect M.M. for her long public service; how could we do
otherwise?
665
"So what's going on here?" asks Marya Matveyevna sternly.

"Oh, we're giving it to Olenka," Dark Lusya smiles.
"For what cause?"
"For lateness. . . ." Luska adds hurriedly; she shouldn't have.
Marya Matveyevna shakes her head reproachfully: "You expect
me to believe that. ..." I become uncomfortable and I see that
both Lusyas do also. You don't act that way with M.M.
"You see, Marya Matveyevna," I say, quite sincerely, although
I'm not answering her question. "It's so strange: I have two chil
dren and I . . . well, I feel embarrassed. . . . For some reason I'm
uncomfortable?twenty-six years old and two children?as though
it's. . . ."
"A pre-revolutionary left-over. . . ." prompts Dark Lusya.
"What are you saying, Lusya!" says Marya Matveyevna, indig
nant. "Olya, stop imagining things. You should be proud that you
are a good mother and at the same time a good worker. You are a
real Soviet woman!"
M.M. speaks, and I ask, silently, of course, why should I be
proud? Am I really such a good mother, is it right to praise me as
a worker, and what exactly does the concept "a real Soviet woman"
entail?! It is useless to ask Marya Matveyevna this. She won't
answer.
We reassure M.M. by saying that I'm simply in that kind

mood, and it will, of course, pass.
Everyone comes back into the room. I didn't even get pro
information about the questionnaire?when and where is it t
returned? But immediately I get a note: "The questionnaires
be collected next Monday from us in person. They want to
our opinion. They might have questions. And what abou
Lusya M."
Thanks, and that's enough about the questionnaire.
I find Friday in the journal and write out on a sheet of paper the
latest experiments?for Lusya Markoryan. Then I find a large sheet
of paper, the size of a newspaper, and rule it up according to speci
fications. This will be the summary chart of all the tests we've done.
It's compiled from the data in our journal.
The first fiberglass plastic compound exhibited a high degree of
brittleness. We worked out a new binder formula. Then we began
a second series of tests. Again everything from the beginning: water
absorption, moisture resistance, resistance to heat and to tempera
ture change, fire resistance. I never imagined that such thorough
ness, care, and attention could be lavished on . . . sewer pipes and
roofs.
666
Long ago Dark Lusya and I had a talk along these lines. I con
fessed that I had dreamed of getting into a different kind of labora
tory. Lusya laughed. "Young people are sharp, they all want to work
on space, and who will take care of our life here on earth?" And
then suddenly she asked, "Have you never lived in a house where
dirty water leaked out of old rusty pipes onto people's heads and
where ceilings collapsed?" It turned out that we had both lived in
just such houses. But I guess I had never given it much thought.
The more I worked with the new fiberglass plastic, the more fas
cinated I became with it. Now I can't wait to finish the testing of
the completed compound. How will it stand stresses? How strong
will it prove to be? And just at this time there is a bottleneck in
the mechanical lab. A bottleneck and a jam.
Everything else is going normally. I begin to fill the chart with
the data of the physico-chemical tests?they are almost finished.
Slowly I line up the columns of figures, turning the pages of the
journal. "Moisture resistance. Sample No. 1. . . . Sample No. 2. . . .
Sample No. 3. . . . weight in milligrams. . . . time of immersion
3:20 p.m., time of removal 3:20 p.m. = 24 hours. . . . weight after
removal. . . ." The fingers of my left hand are holding down the
ruler on the proper page; my right hand is writing the figures?the
average computed from the results of the three experiments?into
the table.
I must concentrate; I must not make any errors.
"Olya, Olya," a quiet voice calls me. "It's ten to two, I'm leaving,
tell me what you need."
Today it's Shura's turn to shop for the "mamas." We made up
this rule?to buy food for everybody at the same time. And we
begged the lunch hour from 2:00 to 3:00, when the stores are less
crowded. I order butter, milk, a kilo of bologna, and also a loaf of
bread?to eat here. I won't go out to lunch, I'll work?I lost so much
time today.
Dark Lusya has disappeared somewhere; probably also making
up for lost time. Right! She reappears ten minutes before the end
of the lunch hour. Her dress and her hair smell as though of lac
quer, the familiar smell of our compound. She's hungry as a beast
and we eat half of my bologna, dividing the loaf of bread between
us; we wash down our dinner with water from the laboratory sink.
I become engrossed in the chart again. The second half of the
day passes so quickly and imperceptibly that I do not immediately
understand why the "quiet" room has suddenly become so noisy.
It turns out everybody's already preparing to go home.
Again the bus, and again it's overcrowded, then the metro, the
jumble at Belorussia Station, where I change trains. And again I
667
must hurry, hurry, I mustn't be late: my family are home by seven.

I'm riding the metro in comfort?standing in the corner by a
closed door. Standing and yawning. I'm yawning so much that a
young man next to me is compelled to ask:
"Miss, I'm curious, what were you doing last night?"
"Rocking my children to sleep," I answer to get rid of him.
As I yawn, I recall what happened this morning. A Monday
morning. At a quarter to six the telephone rings. It rings for a long
time?must be long distance. No one answers. I don't want to get
up either. No, it's the doorbell. A telegram? Maybe it's from Aunt
Vera?maybe she's coming to visit us unexpectedly? I dash into the
front hall. The telegram is lying on the floor, already unsealed, but
it contains not one word, only perforations, as on a computer card.
I float smoothly over the mute telegram and turn around in order
to get back into bed. ... It is only now that I realize that what is
ringing is the alarm clock, and I say to it, "Shoot yourself." It
immediately becomes silent. It becomes very, very quiet in the
room. It is dark. Dark and quiet. A quiet darkness. A dark quiet
ness. . . .
But I jump up, dress quickly, all the hooks on my belt f

their eyes, and, oh, a miracle!?even the one that had come
there. I run into the kitchen to put up the tea kettle and the
for the macaroni. And again a miracle: the gas burners are af
the water in the pot is boiling, the kettle is already singin
whistling like a bird, tweet, tweet, tweet. . . . And sudde
realize: it is not the kettle whistling, it is my nose. But I
wake up. Now Dima begins to shake me; I feel the palm o
hand on my back. He is rocking me and saying:
"Olka, Olka, Olya, wake up, already! You will be running
madwoman again."
Now I really get up: I dress slowly, the belt hooks get in
wrong eyes, and one is missing.
I go to the kitchen, I trip on the rubber mat in the front ha
I almost fall. There is no gas in the burner, the match go
burning my fingers. Oh! I forgot to turn on the switch. Fina
in the bathroom. After washing my face I bury it in a warm
towel, sort of doze off for just a half a second, and awake wi
words: "Damn it all!"
But that's nonsense. There's nothing to damn?everything's f
eveiything's wonderful. We were given an apartment in
house, Kotka and Gulenka are marvelous children, Dima an
each other, I have an interesting job. There is absolutely n
to damn anywhere for any reason. Nonsense!
668
Tuesday
Today I get up normally?at ten past six I am all ready, only my
hair is not combed. I peel potatoes?in preparation for dinner?stir
the cereal, put up the coffee, warm up the milk, awaken Dima, and
go to wake up the children. I turn on the light in the nursery, and
say loudly, "Good morning, my pets!" but they go on sleeping. I
tap Kotka, shake Gulka, then pull off their covers: "UP!" Kotya
gets on his knees and buries his face in his pillow. I pick up Gulka;
she tries to fight me off with her feet, and begins to yell. I call
Dima?to help?but he is shaving. I leave Kotka. I slip an under
shirt, tights, and a dress on Gulka, who has gone Hmp and is
sliding off my lap onto the floor. Something is hissing in the kitchen
?oh, I forgot to turn off the gas under the milk! I put Gulka down
on the floor and run into the kitchen.
Dima comes out of the bathroom, looking handsome and freshly
shaved. "Oh, you," he says to me reproachfully.
I have no time, so I keep still. Abandoned Gulka starts up with
fresh strength. Finally, her yells wake up Kotya. I give Gulka her
shoes, she calms down, and begins to fuss with them around her
chubby feet, groaning and puffing. Kotya dresses himself, but so
slowly that I can't wait. I help him and comb my hair at the same
time. Dima sets the table for breakfast. He can't find the bologna in
the refrigerator and calls me. While I run to Dima, Gulka steals my
comb and hides it. I have no time to look for it. I pin up my half
combed hair, wash the children more or less, and we sit down to
breakfast. The children have milk and bread, Dima eats, but I can't,
I only have coffee.
It is already ten minutes to seven and Dima is still eating. It is
time to dress the children?quickly, both at the same time, so they
won't get perspired.
"Let me finish my coffee," grumbles Dima.
I put the children on the couch, drag over the whole pile of
clothes, and work for two: socks and socks; a pair of snowpants,
and another; a sweater and a sweater, a kerchief and a kerchief,
mittens and . . .
"Dima, where are Kotka's mittens?"
Dima answers, "How should I know?" but dashes to look for them
and finds them in an unlikely place?the bathroom. He tossed them
in there himself last night. I shove two pairs of feet into felt boots
and pull two hats on two bobbing little heads. I am rushing and
yelling at the children as one yells harnessing horses: "Stay still,
stay still, I tell you!" Now Dima joins us, puts on their coats, ties
669
their scarves and belts. I get dressed, One boot doesn't fit; aha,
here is my comb!
Finally we go out. Our last words to each other: "Did you lock
the door?" "Do you have money?" "Don't run like a madwoman."
"All right, don't be late for the children" (this I yell from the bot
tom of the stairs)?and we part.
It is five past seven, and I am running, of course. From a dis
tance, from the top of my little hill, I can see how quickly the bus
line is growing, and I fly, waving my arms so as not to fall on the
slippery path. The buses arrive full; about five people get on from
the head of the line, then a few brave ones dash over from the tail
end; the lucky one grabs the handrail, the bus puffs, roars, and
moves, and long after it leaves, a foot, a coattail, or a briefcase
sticks out the closed doors.
Today I am among the brave ones. I recall my student years
when I was a runner and a jumper, Olya-alley-oop. I slide along
the ice, jump, and grab the handrail, and I pray that someone
strong will grab the handrail from behind me, and push me inside.
And that's just what happens. When we shake down a bit, I manage
to pull out of my bag a copy of Yunost.2 I read a grotesque story
by Aksenov,3 long since read by everybody, about a shopworn
crate of barrels. I don't understand everything in it, but it makes
me laugh and puts me in a good mood. I read even on the escalator,
and finish the last page at the bus stop at the Donskoy. I get to
the institute on time. First of all, of course, I run to Valya's, at the
mechanical lab. She is angry:
"Why do you keep running here? I told you, in the second half
of the week."
"That's tomorrow?"
"No, the day after tomorrow."
She is right. Of course, it would be better not to keep running
there. But the others keep ranning, and it is frightening to think
that you might miss some "opening."
1 go up to my lab. I ask Blonde Lusya to prepare for tomorrow
the samples for testing in the electrical lab. I sit down to work on
the summary chart again. At half past twelve I go to the library to
exchange journals and catalogs.
Systematically, I go through the new American and English pub
lications on construction materials?at our library always, and at
other libraries?the Lenin, the scientific-technical, and the patent
whenever I can get there. I am glad that I studied English serious
2 Yunost (Youth)?a literary magazine.

3 Vasily Aksenov (or Aksyonov)? a contemporary Russian writer.
670
ly as far back as high school. To leaf through the journals for about
twenty minutes after two or three hours' work?is a rest and a plea
sure. I show Lusya Markoryan and Yakov Petrovich everything of
interest to our laboratory. Yakov is "English" also, but he's not so
good as I.
Today in the library I have time to look through "Construction
Materials?'68," to familiarize myself with the new issues of the
abstracts, and to leaf through the catalog of an American company.
I look at the clock?it is five minutes to two. I forgot to leave my
"food order"!
I run to my lab. On the way I remember that I never did comb
my hair and I burst out laughing. Out of breath, with my hair a
mess, I fly into our room, and I find myself in the center of a gather
ing?the room is full of people. A conference? A meeting? I forgot?
"Here, now, ask Olya Voronkova, by what interests she was
guided," says Alia Sergeyevna to Zinaida Gustavovna.
I see by their faces that a heated discussion is going on. About
me? Perhaps I did something wrong?
"We are having an argument about this questionnaire," Marya
Matveyevna explains to me. "Zinaida Gustavovna has raised an
interesting question: would a woman, a Soviet woman, of course,
be guided by the interests of society in such a matter as having
children?"
"And you want to ask me and thus settle the argument," I an
swer, calming down. (And I thought it had something to do with
my work.)
Of course, I am the chief authority on questions of childbearing,
but I am tired of that. Besides, Zinaida's "interesting question" is
simply stupid, even if one could believe that it was asked in good
faith. But, knowing Zinaida, with her constant insinuations and
insidious remarks, one must conclude that her question is malevo
lent, and that Zinaida means to spite somebody. She herself is at
that happy age when one no longer bears children.
Shura explains to me in an undertone that the argument sprang
up around the fifth question in the questionnaire: "If you have no
children, then for what reason: medical reasons, living conditions,
family situation, personal considerations, etc. (Underline your
reason)."
I don't understand why there should be any arguing when each
person can avoid the question by underlining "personal considera
tions." I would even underline "etc." But everyone found the fifth
question interesting, and those who had no children were even
offended.
Alia Sergeyevna called it "monstrously tactless."
671
Shura disagreed: "No more so than all the rest of the question
naire."
Blonde Lusya, having retained from yesterday's conversation the
most alarming point ("who will populate our land"), threw herself
to the defense of the questionnaire:
"But we have to find the way out of our serious and even danger
ous situation?the demographic crisis."
Lydia, my competitor for the position of junior scientist, who has
two suitors, said:
"Let those who are married liquidate the crisis."
Varvara Petrovna, calm and benevolent, corrects Lydia: "If the
problem is of significance to society as a whole, then it concerns
everyone ... up to a certain age."
Dark Lusya shrugs her shoulders:
"Is it worth arguing over such a useless thing as this question
naire?"
Several voices are heard at once:
"Why useless?"
Lusya argues that since the authors suggest essentially personal
motives as reasons for childlessness, they recognize that each fam
ily's decision to have a child is guided by personal considerations;
therefore, "no demographic investigation will succeed in affecting
this matter."
"But you are forgetting 'the living conditions'?look," I protest.
Marya Matveyevna, displeased with Lusya's skeptical remark,
says:
"A tremendous amount has been done in our country towards the
emancipation of woman, and there is no reason to doubt further
aspirations to do even more."
"Perhaps the best results would be achieved by a narrow-practi
cal approach to the problem," says Dark Lusya. "In France the
government pays the mother for each child. . . . Perhaps that is
more effective than all the questionnaires."
"Pays? Like on a pig farm?!" Alia Sergeyevna twists her mouth
squeamishly.
"Watch your words," M.M.'s masculine voice is heard simultane
ously with Luska's squeaky one:
"For you pigs and people are the same?!"
"But that's in France; they have capitalism there," Lydia shrugs
her shoulders.
I am tired of all this noise. It's late. I'm terribly hungry. It's time
for one of the "mamas" to go food shopping. And, finally, I really
do have to go and comb my hair! Anyway, I've had enough of this
questionnaire. I raise my hand?"your attention, please "?and strike
a pose.
672
"Comrades! Give the floor to the mother of many children! I as
sure you that I have had my two children with national considera
tions in mind exclusively. I challenge all of you to competition and
hope that you will beat me in the quantity as well as the quality
of production! And now?I beg you!?somebody give me some
bread. . . ."
I thought I would make them laugh and thus end all arguments.
But someone was offended, and a real squabble began. Poisonous
remarks flew from all sides. Voices were raised, drowning out one
another. Only scraps of phrases could be heard: ". . . to turn an
important matter into a circus," "... if the animal instinct prevails
over reason . . . ," "childless people are all egotists," ". . . they ruin
their own lives," "it's an open question, whose life is ruined," ". . .
you chose to increase the population voluntarily ...,""... and
who'll pay you your pension if there's a shortage in the younger
generation," ". . . the only real woman is the one who can have
children . . . ," and even "... he who climbed into a noose should
keep still . . ."!
And in all this chaos two sober voices?the angry one of Marya
Matveyevna: "This is not an argument; it is bedlam," and the calm
one of Varvara Petrovna, "Comrades, what are you all so excited
about; after all, each one of you chose her own lot. . . ."
It becomes quieter and then Zinaida's petty little soul reveals it
self in a shriek:
"Maybe they chose their own, but when you have to take their
shift, or take their turn traveling to factories all over, or kill whole
evenings sitting at meetings, then it's our business too."
With this ended our woman talk about the questionnaire and
childbearing. And suddenly I felt sorry: we could have had a seri
ous talk; yes, it would have been very interesting to have a real
talk.
On the way home I am still thinking about this conversation. . . .

"Each one chose her own lot. . . ." Do we really make free choices?
I remember how Gulka came about.
Of course, we did not want a second child. Kotka was still very
little then. He wasn't even a year and a half when I realized that
I was pregnant again. I was horrified. I cried. I applied for an abor
tion. But I felt different?not the same as when I was pregnant with
Kotka?better, and just different. I told this to an older woman who
was waiting in line next to me at the clinic. And suddenly she said:
"That's not because it's your second. It's because this one is a girl."
I left immediately. I came home and I said to Dima: "I am going
673
to have a girl. I don't want an abortion." He was outraged: "Why

do you listen to old wives' tales?" and tried to persuade me not
to be a fool and to go make an appointment.
But I believed it and began to imagine a little girl, blonde and
blue-eyed like Dima (Kotya is chestnut-haired and brown-eyed like
me). I saw the little girl running around in a short skirt, shaking
her funny-looking braids, and rocking a doll. Dima would get angry
when I told him what I was imagining, and we would quarrel.
The last possible moment came. We had a final discussion. I said:
"I cannot kill my daughter just because it would be easier for us
to five," and began to cry. "Don't howl, you Utile fool, go ahead,
have the baby if you are so insane, but you'll see, you'll have an
other boy!" Here Dima stopped short, looked at me for a long time
in silence, and then, striking the palm of his hand on the table, put
forth a resolution: "And so, it is decided?we are having the baby;
enough howling and quarreling." Then he put his arms around me.
"And, say, Olka, another boy?that wouldn't be so bad either?keep
Kostya company." But Gulka came, and she was so pretty, right
from the start?blonde, fair, looking so much like Dima it was
funny.
I had to leave my job at the factory where I had been only half
a year. (I had stayed home for a year with Kotka. I almost forfeited
my diploma.4) Dima got a second job?teaching evenings at a tech
nician. Again we were counting pennies, eating dried codfish, mil
let, and bologna. I nagged Dima for buying expensive cigarettes.
Dima blamed me for his not getting enough sleep. We sent Kotya
to the creche again (I couldn't manage alone with the two of
them), but he was ill constantly, and, mostly, stayed home.
Did I choose this? No, of course I didn't. Do I regret it? No,
never. It's not even a question that can be asked. I love them so
much, our silly little fools.
And so I rush?hurry, hurry?to them. I run, the shopping bags
filled with groceries swing back and forth and bump against my
knees. I'm in the bus, and it is already seven o'clock by my watch.
They're home already. ... If only Dima doesn't let them stuff them
selves with bread; if only he doesn't forget to put the potatoes on
the stove.
I run along the paths, cut across the empty lots, fly up the
stairs. . . . Just as I thought?the children are munching bread.
Dima forgot everything?he's deep in technical journals. I turn on
4 In the Soviet professional world the graduate of a higher educational

institution must work for three years in his or her specialty; otherwise,
the diploma may be forfeited.
674
all the burners: I put up the potatoes, the tea, the milk; I throw the
hamburger patties on the frying pan. Twenty minutes later we're
eating.
We eat a great deal. I am having my first real meal of the day.
Dima's lunch at the cafeteria wasn't that filling. The children?who
knows what they had to eat?
The children are drowsy from all this warm food, they're already
holding up their heads with their fists, their eyes clouded with
sleep. They have to be pulled quickly into the tub under the warm
spray, and put into their beds. By nine they're asleep.
Dima returns to the table. He likes to have his tea in peace, look
over the newspaper, read a little. And I do the dishes, then wash
the children's clothes?the extra pants Gulka takes to the creche,
dirty aprons, handkerchiefs. I mend Kotka's tights?he's always go
ing through the knees. I prepare all the clothes for the morning, put
Gulka's extra things into a small bag. And now Dima is dragging
in his coat?a button got torn off in the metro again. The kitchen
still has to be swept, the garbage taken out. This last is Dima's job.
At last everything is done and I go to take a shower. I do this
every night, even if I am so tired I'm ready to drop. I get into bed
after eleven. Dima has already made up our bed on the couch.
Now he goes into the bathroom. My eyes are already closed when
I remember that I still didn't sew the hook on my belt. But no
power on earth could drag me out from under the covers.
Two minutes later I am asleep. In my sleep I can still hear Dima
getting into bed, but I cannot open my eyes, I cannot answer some
question he is asking, I cannot kiss him back when he kisses me. . . .
Dima winds the alarm clock. In six hours the infernal machine will
explode. I don't want to hear the grinding of the clock spring and
I sink through the couch into a deep, dark, and warm sleep.
Wednesday
After yesterday's "bedlam" everyone is a little uncomfortable and
exaggeratedly polite; everyone is working with great concentration.
I take the tests journal and go to meet Luska at the electrical lab.
She's already there. She's flirting with the new laboratory techni
cian, oohing and ahing as she looks at the fearful signs: "Danger!
High tension!" as though she sees them for the first time.
This is not our "home"?we are only visitors here. Our samples,
lying since yesterday in a constant temperature-humidity chamber,
are now placed into an apparatus to measure electrical resistance.
Six slabs, one after the other for resistance along the surface; and
six others for resistance through the slab.
675
Luska, pretending that she is afraid?"it might kill you"?backs

up to the door and quietly slips away, unnoticed. She amazes me:
she works well with her hands; show her something once?she re
members it. But she will not get involved. I tried to explain the
calculations to her, to show her the formulas. She says, "I know it
all already: heat resistance so the pipes won't melt; spark resistance
so lightning won't make a hole in the roof." She is sorry that she
went to our technicum.5 She loves to sew, she wanted to study to
be a cutter, but she's afraid: "Who'd marry a seamstress nowa
days?"
Today it's my turn to shop for food during lunch hour. Buying
food for everybody is not an easy job. Not only because it's heavy
to carry. But also because you will definitely be yelled at by people
on line, even if it's a very short line. You buy some bologna, and
then some more, and some more. . . . Then the remarks begin:
"Are you buying for a luncheonette?" "She's taking care of her
whole building, while we're waiting here. . . ." Here in Moscow
everyone is always in a hurry. Even those who aren't going any
where. The "hurry-up" current charges up everyone in turn. In the
stores it is best to keep still.
In the delicatessen department, looking gloomy and sullen, I buy
three half-kilos of butter, six bottles of milk, three bottles of butter
milk, ten pieces of processed cheese, two kilos of bologna, and two
300-gram packages of cottage cheese. The line bears this patiently,
but towards the end someone feigns a sigh:
"And they all complain they're short of money."
In the semi-prepared foods department I load up some more with
four dozen hamburger patties and six rib steaks. Some size shop
ping bags!
And, loaded with these bags, I suddenly turn off the road back to
the lab, wind in and out among the buildings, and come out to the
glass box of a hairdresser shop. I still have twenty minutes. I'll get
my hair cut short! That used to be very becoming to me.
There is no fine. To the sound of the cloakroom attendant's fierce
grumbling, I leave my bags on the floor next to the coat racks, walk
upstairs, and immediately sit down in the chair of a youngish
woman with shaved eyebrows.
"What are we having done?" she asks, and hearing that I only
want a haircut she purses her lips. "Well, now, she is going to chop
it off. . . ." That's just what she does. I look in the mirror: stubby
hair bristles at the cheeks; the head looks like an isosceles triangle.
I am close to tears, but for some reason I give her thirty kopecks
5 A trade school for para-professional training.

676
above the fee, and go down to the coat room.
The attendant says, "Hmm," and, pushing aside my hand with the
coat-check, calls out:
"Lyonka, come here a minute!"
A young man appears in a white coat.
"Here, Lyonya," the attendant says with compassion. "They gave
this girl a haircut upstairs. Could you fix her?"
Lyonya looks me over with a frown and nods towards the empty
chairs in the barber shop. I don't resist?it can't get worse.
"For your face I suggest a boy cut?you don't object?" Lyonya
asks.
"Go ahead," I whisper, and close my eyes.
Lyonya clicks with the scissors, muttering something to himself,
raising and lowering my head with a light touch of his fingers, then
chirps with the clippers, fluffs the hair with the comb, and finally,
taking off my sheet, says:
"You can open your eyes."
I open my eyes and I suddenly see a cute young girl. I smile at
her and she smiles back at me. Lyonya smiles too. I look at him
and see that he is admiring his work.
"Well, how is it?" he asks.
"Marvelous, you are simply a magician!"
"I am simply a master," he answers.
Thrusting a ruble into Lyonya's pocket I look at the time and I
gasp?it is already three-twenty.
"Are you late?" Lyonya asks sympathetically. "Next time come
earlier."
"Definitely!" I exclaim. "Thank you!"
All out of breath I run into the laboratory?of course, the chief
has been looking for me. He is in the library, has asked that I drop
by. Everyone oohs and ahs, seeing my head, but I have no time;
grabbing a notebook and a pencil I fly out of the room. I run
through the corridors and try to think of a lie to tell the chief if he
asks where I was. Then I realize?it's useless; as soon as he looks
at me he'll see everything.
I enter the reading room; he is sitting over a book and writing.
"Yakov Petrovich, you were looking for me."
"Yes, Olga Nikolayevna, sit down." One look at me?the chief
smiles. "You are looking very much younger, if one can say this of
a woman your age. ... I wanted to ask you, if it isn't too much
trouble, to translate one page for me here," he hands me a book,
"and I will take notes."
I begin to read the article aloud in Russian, but he asks that I
read the English text as well. Now and then he asks me to repeat.
677
Suddenly I see Luska outside the glass door. She is making unin
telligible signs to me: motioning as though turning a key in a door,
then raising two fingers spread apart, and rolling her eyes. I wave
her away. It's embarrassing, after all. Luska disappears. But I am
beginning to worry?something must have happened there. We are
crawling along toward the end of the excerpt (and it wasn't just
one page, but more like three), but the chief asks that I repeat
everything from the beginning quickly in Russian. And I am sitting
on pins and needles. I have to get to Valya's in the mechanical lab,
I have to find out what Luska was trying to tell me. Finally we
finish; the chief thanks me; relieved, "Thank you," I reply and run
into the old building.
Luska is waiting for me in the old building on the first floor
landing. She has bad news: from "the most dependable sources"
she has learned that next week the mechanical lab will be working
on a special order.
"How do you know?"
"I know, I know, don't ask me how." Luska makes a mysterious
face. "I know firsthand."
"Firsthand!" Oh, Luska!
Anyway, it doesn't matter?I have to hurry to Valya's.
"Don't say anything to her!" Luska shouts after me.
I have to push Valya harder, otherwise we'll get stuck altogether.
And if you get stuck in December?you're finished. It's the end of
the year, fulfillment of the plan, reports, and all that. And in order
for the work to proceed, we have to know how the second com
pound performed?did the durability of the fiberglass plastic in
crease?
In the mechanical laboratory there is a cheerful din. In the small
office, instead of Valya, little Gorfunkel from the wood slab labora
tory is sitting and working. No, it turns out he is not working but
looking for his glasses, his balding head almost touching the top
of the table and his short hands poking about in a pile of papers
like a turtle in the hay. I find his glasses and hand them to him.
He does not know where Valya is. She is out.
"Has she been out long?"
"Yes!"
I go back to my lab; on the way I look into all the labs. There
is no Valya anywhere. Can she be hiding?
A quarter of an hour before the end of the workday people crowd
into our room. Zinaida is distributing theatre tickets. Our group is
going to see Bulgakov's "Flight" at the Yermolova Theatre.
"Going out to the theatre"?that's not for me, not for the two of
us. I begin to feel sad. We haven't been to the theatre in ... I try
678
to recall the last time we went anywhere, and I can't. I was a fool
not to have ordered a ticket. At least Dima could have gone alone;
we can never go together, anyway.
Dima's mother takes care of her daughter's children and lives at
the other end of Moscow; my mother is dead; Aunt Vera, with whom
I lived after my father remarried, has remained in Leningrad; and
my Moscow aunt, Sonya, is terribly afraid of children.
There's nobody to sit for us, what can you do? . . .
I come out of the institute. It just stopped snowing. The snow

is still lying on the sidewalks. Everything looks white. Evening. The
orange rectangles of the windows hang suspended over the blue
shrubbery. The air is pure and fresh. I decide to walk part of the
way. In the little park along the walls of the Donskoy Monastery
the streetlights illuminate the down-covered branches of trees, the
snow-covered benches. Where there are no lights, a thin sliver of
the new moon can be seen through the treetops.
Suddenly I am overwhelmed by the longing to walk unencum
bered, without a load, without a goal. Simply to walk?not rushing,
quietly, very slowly. To walk along Moscow's winter boulevards
and streets, to stop at the store windows, to look at the photographs,
books, shoes, to read the announcements unhurriedly, thinking of
where I would like to go, to lick an ice cream bar slowly, and on
some square, under a clock, peering into the crowd, to wait for
Dima.
This all did happen, but so long ago, so terribly long ago, that
it seems to me that it was not I but some other she.
It was like this: she saw him, he saw her, and they fell in love
with each other.
There was a big party at the construction institute?a get-together
for alumni and upperclassmen. It was a noisy, fun-filled evening,
with quiz games, jokes, charades, masks, jazz, noisemakers, and
dancing in the hot, crowded hall.
She performed gymnastics?she twirled around a hoop, leaped,
twisted, whirled. They clapped for a long time. The boys yelled:
"O-lya, O-lya!" and then, one after another, they asked her to dance.
He did not dance, but stood there?big, broad-shouldered?leaning
against a wall, following her with his eyes. She noticed him: "What
a nice lunk.'" Then, passing him once more: "What does he look
like? A polar bear? A seal?" And the third time: "A white seal; a
white seal out of a fairy-tale." But he just kept looking at her, and
did not invite her to dance. With her every movement she answered
his look; she was happy, gay, she whirled about without stopping,
and never got tired.
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When they announced "the white dance" she ran up to him, con
fetti spilling from her short hair. "He probably doesn't dance." But
he danced well and was light on his feet. Her friends tried to sepa
rate them, they called: "O-lya, O-lya, come-to-us!" They tried to
lasso her with streamers, but succeeded only in weaving and tan
gling and tying them together with paper ribbons.
He walked her home, he wanted to see her the next day, but she
was leaving for Leningrad.
After vacation, for all of February, he appeared every evening in
the vestibule, waited for her next to the wall mirror, and walked
her to Pushkin Street, where she lived with her aunt.
One evening he did not come. He was not there the next day
either. Not seeing him at the usual place on the third day, she was
sad, hurt. But she could no longer not tliink of him.
A few days later he appeared?at the mirror, as always. She
flushed, and, starting a conversation with the girls, quickly walked
to the exit. He caught up with her in the street, grabbed her tight
by the shoulders, turned her towards him, and, ignoring the passers
by, pressed his face to her fur hat. "I had to go out of town sud
denly. I don't have your phone number or your address. ... I missed
you terribly. I beg you, come to my place, to your place, any place
you like."
They saw a green light flash on a taxi on the corner; they got in
and rode silently, holding hands.
He lived in a large communal apartment. Inside the entrance,
under the telephone, stood an easy chair with torn upholstery. The
nearest door immediately opened. An old woman's kerchiefed head
popped out, aimed with its eye, and disappeared. Something rustled
in the depth of the corridor where the light of the dim and dusty
bulb did not reach. She felt sick, she was almost sorry that she
went to his place, but she remembered the decorous orderliness of
her aunt's house, tea under the old chandelier, and family conver
sation around the table. . . .
At the end of April they were married. Into his half-empty room
with an ottoman and a drawing board used for a table they moved
her things: a suitcase, a bundle with bedding, a bunch of books.
Before, in her dreams, she had imagined everything quite differ
endy: the marble staircase of the wedding palace, Mendelssohn's
wedding march, a white dress, a veil, roses, a richly set table with
cries of "bitter!"6
6 At wedding parties guests exclaim the words: "Bitter, bitter!" The

couple are expected to kiss (to make it sweet).
680
There was none of this. "A wedding? What do you want that for?"
he asked, surprised. "Let's fly instead to far-off lands. . . ."
Early in the morning they registered?she came to the marriage
bureau with her friend, he with his. He brought her lacy white car
nations with long stems. A breakfast prepared by her aunt awaited
them. The guests raised their goblets to toast the newlyweds, wished
them happiness. Friends went along with them to the bus for the
Vnukovo Airport. And six hours later they were in Alupka.7
They stayed in a little old house perched on a mountainside. It
was reached by a little path, with steps cut in at the turns. A nar
row, paved yard overhung the flat roof of the hut below. A low
fence built of native rocks was criss-crossed by tendrils of grapevine
climbing up the mountainside. In the yard there was a single tree?
an old walnut, half dried out. Some of its branches?bare and grey
evoked thoughts of winter, of cold regions; others were thickly
covered by dark green toothed leaves. Purple bunches of wisteria
winding around the hut hung down over the slits of the narrow
windows and filled the yard with an intoxicatingly sweet smell.
Inside the hut, it was dark and cool. A small stove, full of cracks,
had evidently not been used in a long time. In the evening the land
lady, an old Ukrainian woman, brought them from her shack a
round three-legged brazier, full of live coals "so as you won't freeze
to death in the night." A light blue flame hovered over the coals.
They opened the door wide and went out into the yard.
It was dark and still. The light from the street lamps did not
reach here. The moon had not yet risen.
They stood and listened to the sea breathing and the waves crash
ing on the large rocks. In the far-off distance a faint light was blink
ing?perhaps a lantern on a fisherman's launch, perhaps a campfire
on the shore. The breeze blew from the mountains, bringing smells
of the forest, of grasses warmed through the day by the sun, of
earth.
The coals in the brazier were turning dark, getting covered with
ash. They put the brazier out in the yard.
A black sky penetrated by stars spread over the hut. The dark
branches of the walnut tree threw a shadow on the clay roof with
the half-fallen chimney. A broken down hearth, a stranger's house?
their home for now. And they were alone together, and there was
no one else?the night, the sea, the stillness.
In the morning they ran down the path, had breakfast at a coffee
house, then wandered along the shore. They climbed the steep
7 Alupka-a small town near Yalta, in the Crimea, on the Black Sea.
681
rocks, warmed themselves in the sun like salamanders, watched the
swirling of the water below?the icy spray, bursting, flew up to
them. It was quiet, clean, deserted. . . . Stripping down to her bath
ing suit, she did gymnastics. He watched how skilfully she did
handstands, back bends, how high she jumped; and he kept calling:
"Do it again!" Later, when the sea was still, they jumped into the
water. The cold stung them, took away their breath. After swimming
a little, they jumped onto the shore, and then lay in the sun for a
long time.
Baked through by the hot sun, they walked to the trees of Voron
tsov Park; they wandered along the paths under the shady canopy,
filled with birds' whisdes and chirps; they told each other about
their childhood, parents, school, friends, the institute. . . .
Occasionally they went up into the mountains. Here it was com
pletely deserted. The pines stood quiedy, lazily swaying their
branches; the tree trunks, warmed by the sun, exuded resin; it
smelled of pine needles. From here, from above, the sea looked
purple; it rose vertically, like a wall.
They lay on the slope, covered with warm dry pine needles; they
watched the downy clouds, fluffed by the wind. They jumped up,
shedding pine needles, and began to chase each other, snouting and
laughing, running in circles and loops through the pine trees. They
slid down the slopes made slippery by the pine needles as though
coasting down an ice-hill, climbed over the rocks, slipped down
steep hillsides grabbing at the shrubbery, and, exhausted, hot, hun
gry, tumbled out of the sultry brushwood onto the highway. The
pavement brought them to Alupka's narrow streets, crowded in by
white walls of houses with red tile roofs, with bushes of jasmine
and eglantine under the windows.
The sixteen days, collected one by one out of three "legal" days,
three holiday days, and ten days begged by her at the institute and
by him at work, suddenly came to an end.
Early one Sunday morning, carrying a rucksack and a suitcase,
he and she got into a bus. They were leaving paradise.
This was five years ago.
I shouldn't have taken my time walking, thinking. It's late! I run

down the escalator, I bump into people with my bulging shopping
bag, but I can t stop.
I'm not very late, but all three are already walking around with
pieces of bread in their hands. Dima has a guilty look and I don't
say a thing, but dash quickly into the kitchen.
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Ten minutes later I place on the table a large frying pan with a
fluffy omelet and shout:
"Come in for supper! Hurry!"
The children run into the kitchen, Kotka quickly sits down in his
seat, grabs a fork, then looks at me, and yells:
"Papa, come here, look, our Mama is a boy!"
Dima comes in, smiles: "But you're still so young," and during
supper he keeps looking at me, instead of reading, as he usually
does. And he washes the dishes with me and even sweeps the floor.
"Olka, but you're exactly the same as five years ago!"
On account of the occasion, we forget to set the alarm. . . .
Thursday
We jumped out of bed at half-past six. Dima dashed to wake up
the children; I flew into the kitchen?just the coffee and the milk!?
then to help them. It looked as though we'd be able to get out on
time. But suddenly Kotka, after finishing his milk, announced:
"I won't go to school."
Dima and I, at the same time:
"Don't be silly!"
"Get dressed!"
"It's time to go!"
"We are leaving!"
"No," he shakes his little head; he puts on a frown; he's ready to
cry. I squat down before him:
"Kotya, tell Papa and me what happened? What's the matter?"
"Maya Mikhaylovna punished me, I won't go."
"Punished you? You must have been fooling around, you weren't
listening to her. . . ."
"No, I wasn't fooling around. And she punished me. I won't go."
We started to dress him by force, he began to push and kick, and
started to howl. I was repeating over and over:
"Kotya, get dressed; Kotya, we have to go. Kotya, Papa and I
will be late for work."
Finally Dima thought of saying:
"Come on, I'll talk to Maya Mikhaylovna, we'll find out what's
going on."
Kotka?all red, perspiring, covered with tears?tries to tell his story
through his sobs:
"Vitka pushed, not me. Got all smashed up, and she put me by
my-self. ... It wasn't me! It wasn't me!" and again tears.
"Who got all smashed up?Vitka?"
683
"No-o-o, the flowerpot. . . ."

I myself am almost in tears?I feel so sorry for my httle boy; he
is so hurt; how terrible to have to take him outside by force. And
it's scary: he's all perspired, he could catch cold. I beg Dima to find
out, without fail, what happened, to tell the teacher how upset
Kotya is.
"All right, now, both of you, don't you go all to pieces," Dima
says sternly. "There are twenty-eight of them there; one can make
a mistake."
Now suddenly Gulya, calm till the last minute, begins to cry, and
stretches her little arms out to me:
"I want Mama." I leave them all, shout to Dima from the stairs:
"Be sure to call me!" run down, and fly to the bus; I assault the first
one, the second one. ... I make it into the third.
In the bus I keep thinking about Kotka. There really are twenty
eight children in the group, and only one teacher. It's possible, of
course, that there might not be enough of her to go around to them
all in terms of attention?or even strength. But it's better not to look
into things at all, if there isn't time, than to look into them incom
pletely, to punish unfairly. . . .
I remember, when Kotka was being transferred to our new nur
sery school, how the director begged me to take the job of teacher's
aide, how she tried to persuade me: "The salary scale is at time and
a half; the teacher helps set up the cots, take the bedding down
from the shelves, dress the children for outdoor play." It must be
plenty rough for them?for both the teacher and the teacher's aide.
Just imagine?twenty-five snow pants, kerchiefs, hats; fifty socks,
boots, mittens; and then coats, scarves, belts to be tied. . . . And all
this has to be put on twice and taken off once; and after naps. . . .
Twenty-five. . . . What are these "norms," who thought them up?
Undoubtedly those who have no children or whose children don't
attend nursery school. . . .
I'm in the metro and it suddenly hits me?today is the political
education study group, the seminar, and I left my program at home,
I even forgot to look at it. ... I volunteered to prepare a ques
tion . . . and I forgot! The study group meets once in two months;
of course, one can forget. But since I volunteered I had no right to
forget. Well, all right, when I get to the laboratory, I'll get Lusya
Markoryan's program, maybe I'll think up something.
But the first thing I must take care of is the mechanical lab. If I
can't push my way in to work there today. ... I look in?Valya is
not there. I shout:
"Where is Valya?"
They don't hear me, they don't understand me, then I don't under
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stand them. . . . Finally I get it?Valya went out somewhere. Again!
I leave her a note in which everything except for one sentence is a
he: "Valechka, darling, save us! We are questioning the durability
of the finished compound. Without the tests in your lab everything
stops. Y. P. is angry with me. This is the second day I haven't been
able to find you in."
Upstairs, our lab has only kind people in it. Nobody asks me why
I am so late, but everybody wants to take a good look at my new
haircut; yesterday they didn't get a chance. I turn every which
way?the back, the profile. Then Alia Sergeyevna enters and, say
ing with a smile, "Very nice," informs me that Valya has just been
asking for me.
I fly out into the hall, but I have time to take only a few steps
when I am called to the telephone. It is Dima. He reassures me?
he told Maya about Kotka. She promised to look into things. This
doesn't console me.
"That's the way she said it?"
"Yes, just this way."
"And did you tell her what he said?"
"I didn't get to tell her very much, but I said what was most
important. . . ."
After hanging up I remember that I did not tell Dima about the
study group?I'll be home an hour and a half late. And I didn't have
time to prepare anything for dinner this morning! And it's not easy
to reach Dima by phone in his "cubicle." I'll try to do it later, but
now I must hurry to Valya's before somebody gets there ahead
of me!
Valya is displeased?I didn't come fast enough. She grumbles:
"Either they keep running or they don't come when you call
them."
Today they are having a staff conference: from four o'clock on,
all the equipment is free; if you wish to work it yourself?you are
welcome. The person for whom that time was saved, canceled.
Four o'clock? That's too late! That's only an hour and a half,
even if there were no study group. But the seminar starts at 4:45.
And I can't ask to be excused from it today since I am scheduled
to speak. That means there would be only 45 minutes. I try to ex
plain this to Valya, but she does not understand.
"You asked for time, so I am giving it to you."
"Would it be possible to start at least an hour earlier, at least on
one apparatus?"
"No, it's impossible."
"What should I do?" I am thinking aloud.
685
"Well, I don't know. You better decide. ... Or I'll give it to some
one else. There are many who want it. . . ."
"And who comes before?perhaps I can exchange?"
"No, don't go setting up any exchange bureau here?this place is
a main highway as it is. . . ."
"All right, we'll take the time?we'll be here at four."
On the way back I am racking my brain?what should I do? Per
haps Luska should get excused from the study group and carry out
a few experiments? But each sample must be measured with a
micrometer, every sample, without fail, even though they are made
according to a standard. . . . Will she do it? And will she calculate
the area of the cross-section? She does not believe in such meticu
lousness. No, leave Luska out of this. Whom else can I ask?Zinaida?
But she has most probably forgotten all this.
So I have to ask to be excused from the seminar.
I am sitting over the journal, making up the summary of yester
day's electrical tests, and thoughts are tnrning in my head of how
to run away from everybody and work at the physico-mechanical
lab till the end of the day.
"And where is Lusya Vartanovna?" I ask.
Nobody answers. Doesn't anyone know? Well, in that case, I am
lost. That means that Dark Lusya "went off to think." On these
occasions she knows how to hide in such a way that no one can
find her.
Suddenly, it's lunch hour. Blonde Lusya bends down towards
me saying:
"Are you asleep or something? Quick, tell me what you need, you
are holding me up. It's two o'clock already."
I begin to think aloud, what do I need, and Luska rushes me:
"Well, is that all?"
"That's all," I answer. "If you haven't got the time, that's all!"
"Now what are you so mad about?" Luska says, softening.
I'm not mad, I simply don't know what to do.
And just at this moment, the telephone rings: "An urgent call for
Voronkova to come to the lobby to accept a shipment from the fac
tory." I throw two three-ruble bills to Luska:
"Get some kind of meat." In the doorway I remember, "And some
thing to chew on." (I haven't yet eaten today.)
Downstairs, in the lobby, unloaded from the pick-up truck, He
three bulky packages marked, "To Polymers, for Voronkova"?the
first experimental products manufactured out of fiberglass plastic
No. 1 at our experimental factory?roof tiles, thick short pipes. Yakov
Petrovich shouldn't have rushed his order?the compound has since
been changed. . . . They'll only take up room on the shelves.
686
I ask the porter where is Yura?our handyman and errand boy.
He was just here. Wherever he's needed, he was always "just here."
I try to find him by telephone, but I don't have enough time. I take
one of the packages and drag it up the stairs to the third floor. The
old porter, feeling sorry for me, utters lamentations and swears at
Yura. To this accompaniment I quiedy drag all three packages up
to our laboratory. While I am dragging the last one, Luska, carrying
our purchases, catches up with me.
"Olya, they have 'Lotos' soap powder down at the store; I took a
place in fine. If somebody would go, she could get some for all
of us. . . ."
I need the soap powder, I need it badly, but I only wave my
hand?I can't think about it now; it's after three; if I can just get
to the mechanical lab on time and also, somehow, take a look at the
program. Lusya Markoryan isn't here yet. . . . But haven't I already
decided?I am going to the mechanical?! I'll eat what Luska brought
me and get myself off. But Blondie has disappeared somewhere?
perhaps to get the "Lotos"? I look into her bag?two rolls, two pack
ages of cream cheese. Half of these must be for me.
I get everything ready quietly, our samples are downstairs long
since, and five minutes to four I disappear.
I begin with the pendulum hammer. I measure the first bar; I
secure it. I set the starting angle. I release the weight. Impact! The
sample has withstood it. Now we will increase the load. What is
this? I'm excited; it's a game of chance. A bet on fiberglass plastic
No. 2: will he stand up or won't he? The sample does not break
under maximum impact. Hurrah! Or is it too early to shout "Hur
rah"? This is not the end of tests for durability. . . . And what about
tensile strength? And compression? And hardness?
I become engrossed in a fascinating sport in which I am the
trainer and Plastic is my trainee. He passed the first round and is
getting ready for the second. Again I measure the thickness and the
width; again I calculate the area of the cross-section. . . . Now a
new apparatus, a new load. . . .
After a while I discover a sweet roll and a package of cream
cheese on top of the sheet with the calculations. That's interesting!
I already ate a roll and a package of cream cheese upstairs. Where
did this come from?was Luska here? I hadn't noticed. It is so good
to work like this?rhythmically, silendy, alone with your work.
But suddenly a sound reaches me?my name is being called as
sertively and angrily:
"Voronkova! Voronkova!! Voronkova, for heaven's sakes!" I turn
around. Lydia is standing at the door.
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"The study group is starting. Let's go. And hurry up." After firing
this at me she slams the door.
I throw the already measured samples back into the box; I also
throw into it the micrometer, the pencil, and the sheets of paper
with the calculations; and on top I slam down the tests journal.
The whole laboratory gathers for the study group?about twenty
people; it takes place in a large room next to our lab. I run over to
my desk, dump all my belongings, grab a pencil and a notebook,
and enter the meeting room with a guilty look.
Zachuraev himself is speaking. He's our instructor, a retired
lieutenant-colonel. But as soon as I open the door, he stops talking.
I say I am sorry and try to make my way to Lusya Markoryan.
"Why do you come so late?" Zachuraev is annoyed. "Sit down,
here is an empty seat." And he points to the nearest chair. "Let us
go on." Zachuraev takes a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipes
his hands. That means he will now move on to the new topic.
. . . How terrible that I never did tell Dima about the seminar.
What will he do with the children? What will he feed them without
me? I didn't have time this morning to prepare anything for sup
per. . . . How is Kotka and his sufferings? I'm not so sure that Maya
Mikhaylovna, if she did "look into things," didn't only hurt him
unnecessarily even more.
The study group is over. I run back to our lab, grab my bag, and
run to the coatroom.
The clock in the vestibule is showing a quarter past seven. If I
could just grab a taxi, not home, of course, but at least to the metro!
But there are no taxis in sight and I run to the trolleybus and
then run down the escalator to the metro, then to the bus. . . . And,
all perspired and panting, I fly into the house at close to nine
o'clock.
The children are already asleep, Gulenka in her crib, undressed,
and Kotka, dressed, on our couch. In the kitchen, at the table cov
ered with dirty dishes, sits Dima. He is examining blueprints in a
journal and eating bread and chopped eggplant. On the stove, a tea
kettle is boiling furiously, throwing off a plume of steam.
"What does this mean?" Dima asks sternly.
I tell him briefly what kind of a day I had, but he does not accept
my explanations?I should have gotten through to him by phone
somehow. He's right; I don't argue.
"So what did you feed the children?"
It turns out he gave them black bread and chopped eggplant,
which they liked very much?"They ate a whole jar?and then he
gave them milk to drink.
"You should have given them tea," I remark.
688
"How should I know," Dima growls, and puts his nose back into
the journal.
"And what about Kotka?"
"As you see, he's asleep."
"Yes, I see. I mean the nursery school."
"Nothing, it passed. He didn't cry any more."
"Let's undress him and take him to his bed."
"Maybe we'll eat first?"
All right, I give in. It's useless to talk with a hungry man. After
kissing and covering Kotka (he looks pale and tired to me), I return
to the kitchen and make a big omelet with bologna. We eat our
supper.
The house is a total mess. Everything strewn about in the morn
ing rush is still lying around. And on the floor next to the couch is
a pile of children's clothes: coats, boots, hats. Dima didn't put them
away probably as a sign of protest: don't be late.
After the omelet and the strong hot tea Dima is in a better mood.
Together we undress our son and put him to bed, put away the
children's clothes. Then I go off to the kitchen and the bathroom?
to clean up, to wash up, to rinse out. . . .
I didn't get to bed till after twelve. And at half past two we were
awakened by Gulka's loud crying. She had a stomachache and
diarrhea. We had to wash her and change her, change her bedding,
shove medicine into her, and put a hot water bag on her belly.
"That's your chopped eggplant with milk," I grumbled.
"It's all right," Dima reassured me. "It'll go away."
Then I sat next to Gulka supporting the hot water bag with my
hand and murmuring sleepily, "Lullaby, little rabbits sleep near
by." My head was resting on my other hand, propped on the side
of the crib.
I got into bed close to four; I just closed my eyes?the alarm!
Friday
The first thing in the morning everybody in our room is needling
me for not preparing the question and dragging out the meeting
of the study group. I listen contritely to all those who are annoyed,
tell them I am sorry. But my thoughts are whirling around the
children. We took Gulka to the creche, although we should have
kept her at home. We could have kept her home for one day with
out a doctor's note, but neither Dima nor I could get off without
the note. And if you call the doctor, you have to tell just what hap
pened. The doctor would, of course, order an analysis, since it was
689
intestinal. An analysis?that would take several days. And so we took

Gulka to the creche.
I am quickly forgiven, even Lydia relents. Marya Matveyevna
announces "strictiy among us" that the first of the year we will have
a new study group instructor who has a doctorate in philosophy.
We get back to our work. Friday is the end of the work week,
everybody has plenty to think about: certain parts of the work have
to be finished, books and magazines have to be taken out of the
library, business appointments have to be made for Monday and
personal engagements for the weekend; during lunch hour a mani
cure has to be gotten or heels put on. . . . We "mamas" have a lot
of shopping to do for two days.
And the questionnaire still has to be filled out. It is as though
everyone waited for the last day, everyone had questions, and every
one wanted to go to the personnel office for information about sick
days. It was decided to do this in an organized way?Blonde Lusya
was delegated to go and to help with the calculations.
I know that no one will have as many sick days as I.
But I have no time to think about it?I have plenty to do, like
everyone else. I have to go over what I did yesterday in the me
chanical lab. All Hie stuff which I threw on my desk yesterday is
still lying there in the same position. Too bad I wasn't able to use
the entire time offered by Valya. ... I only hope Luska's informa
tion, about the extra order being given "the green light" in all the
laboratories, turns out to be wrong. Or, at least, let it happen a littie
later. According to the schedule, next week we have a whole day
in the mechanical lab. Three of us will work: I, their laboratory
technician, and Luska. Maybe we'll finish everything? Maybe we'll
make it?
I enter in the journal the results of yesterday's test, I put away,
in the box, the samples thrown down yesterday, I tear up and throw
away the scrap paper with the calculations. Luska and I unpack the
packages of the manufactured products. I put several sheets of fiber
glass plastic and a few short pipes of different sizes on a display
stand. I write out the labels. Now I will get down to the summary
chart. I have to set it up in such a way that all that is left to do is
to enter the new tests in it.
But where is it? Yesterday I didn't work on it. The day before
yesterday I put it in my drawer under the journal. It's not there. I
take everything out of the drawer and put it on the table. The chart
is not there. I look through the papers, one by one?not there. I say
to myself: "Be calm!" I move everything from the right side of the
desk onto the left. Not there! Perhaps I took it into the mechanical
lab along with the journal? I run down to Valya's. No, she hasn't
690
seen it. Is it possible that several days' work has been lost?
A sort of numbness comes over me?I sit staring at the wall. I see
nothing, I am thinking of nothing. Then I notice the calendar. I look
at it, and it suddenly gets to me that Friday, the 13th of December,
that's today. Only yesterday I had the feeling, "it's the beginning
of December," and now, if you please, it is the middle of the month,
and in two weeks I have to submit a report. Will I be able to in
these fourteen days . . . , no, only eleven, to finish the tests in the
mechanical and electrical laboratories, evaluate the results, make
up a new summary chart, and write the report? . . .
I am sitting with my hands in my lap, instead of looking for the
chart, and thinking that I can't make it. . . .
Suddenly I feel a hand on my shoulder, and Dark Lusya, bending
down, asks me:
"Where are you, Olenka? Are you lost? Or did you lose some
thing?"
Lusya? Oh, that's so good! I lightly press my cheek to her hand.
She understands everything. I am indeed lost. Lost in a heap of work
and of cares?the institute's, my home's.
"I lost the summary chart of the results of all the tests, a sheet
like this," I show its size with my hands. "I shook out everything,
I can't understand. . . ."
"Could this be it?" asks Lusya, touching a white sheet of paper
in the middle of the table.
I take the sheet, it opens and materializes into?my chart. I burst
out laughing, I simply shake with laughter, I cover my mouth with
my hands so that no one will hear and I laugh until tears begin to
roll. I laugh and I can't stop. Lusya grabs me by the hand, drags
me into the hall, shakes me, and says:
"Stop it, stop it at once!"
I stand leaning with my back against the wall, the tears flow
down my cheeks, and I moan quietly from laughter.
"Olya, you are a neurotic," says Lusya. "Congratulations, you're
having hysterics!"
"You're a neurotic yourself," I answer her tenderly, gasping for
breath. "Hysterics?thafs not in style now." I dry my wet face. "I'm
just laughing. I have such a funny life. One thing after another,
there isn't time to stay with anything. Some kind of a mix of thoughts
and feelings. No, I'm not neurotic. . . . And you?look at those circles
under your eyes. You're not sleeping again? You're the real neurotic."
"I'm a neurotic from 'way back. But I'm six years older than you,
and at my house, you know, there're always . . . nerves. But you
hold on: you're young, you're healthy, you have a wonderful hus
band." She presses my hands with her thin fingers; her long nails
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dig into me, but I can bear the pain. She stares directiy into my
pupils, as though hypnotizing me. "You're smart, you're able, you're
very strong. . . . All right," Lusya releases my hands. "Let's have
a smoke. Oh, you don't. . . ." She squeezes a cigarette between her
teeth, clicks her lighter, and inhales. "That's too bad?it helps.
Though it is better not to get hooked. I'll tell you what: at lunch
time you and I'll go food shopping. On the way you'll tell me every
thing."
We walk along the street, I tell her about the difficulties with the
mechanical lab and with Valya, about my conversation with the
chief, about Gulka's stomach, about the deadline for finishing the
tests?that I'm worried about not making it.
Lusya listens, nods her head, now narrows her eyes, now opens
them wide, and says, "Yes, yes, yes. . . ." or throws out a sing-song
"Ye-e-es?" This makes me feel bettter already. For a few minutes
we don't say anything.
"Olenka, do you remember, you wanted to know who invented
our fiberglass plastic? I promised to tell you."
"Yes, to tell me that 'silliest story.'"
"Exactly. It's not even a story but just an anecdote. A short one.
The idea was mine, I gave it to Yakov. Not because I'm so rich, but
because I was pregnant. And I was all set to have the child. . . .
Don't think that I was giving in to Suren. I myself decided that it
would be better for Markusha. I wouldn't be able to stay at work
much longer, I knew that. Let them make it without me, I thought.
And so I gave it to him."
"Well, and . . ."
"And what?"
"The baby? So what happened?"
"Nothing. I got scared at the last minute. Had an abortion. As
usual, secredy from Suren."
"What do you mean 'secretiy'?"
"Like this: 'I am going on a professional trip,' for five or six
days. . . ."
I find Lusya's hand and I don't let go of it. We walk this way,
side by side. We walk silentiy.
In the stores, where the hurry and the crush are greater than usual
today, we fill up four shopping bags, and at three o'clock we start
out on our way back. I carry my two bags fairly easily but Lusya
is simply bent double by her burden.
Suddenly we see Shurochka coming towards us:
"I decided to come out to help."
I tell her to take a bag from Lusya and Lusya tells her to take
one from me. Finally we put Shura between us and the three of us
692
carry the four bags together. We have to get off the sidewalk into
the street. Every minute we stop to let a car go by.
Two fellows we meet shout to us: "May we join you, girls?"
"We have our own boys," I answer. I'm in a good mood because
it's a sunny day, because we're blocking everyone's way, because
there are three of us. . . .
Because I am not alone.
We come in and Blonde Lusya appears at once with the list of
totals of "sick days." I am first, of course, just as I thought. The
notes from the clinic and from the doctors got me off for seventy
eight days, almost a third of all working days. All of them because
of the children. Everyone copies her figures off the list, so everyone
sees who has what. I cannot understand why I feel so embarrassed.
Even ashamed. I sort of shrink into myself. I avoid looking at any
body. Why? I am not guilty of anything.
"Have you filled out your questionnaires?" asks Luska. "Let me
see."
But we also don't know how to compute the time?how much of
it goes for what. The "mamas" confer. We decide that we absolutely
must indicate the time spent in commuting?we all live in new dis
tricts, we spend almost three hours a day traveling. No one is able
to compute "time spent with children." We "spend time" with them
in between doing other things. As Shura says: "Seryozhka and I are
together in the kitchen the whole evening; he misses me so much
during the day, he won't go away from me."
"So how should we write about the children?" wonders Blonde
Lusya.
"Which week's time should we be computing?any week in gen
eral or this one in particular?" asks Shura.
"Any week," answers Dark Lusya. "Aren't they all the same?"
"But I don't go to the movies every week," Luska has a new
problem.
"Why rack your brain over it?" I say. "I'm taking this week. A
week like any other week."
It's a stupid question, we conclude. Would it be possible to cal
culate the time spent on housework even if one were to walk around
all week with a stop-watch in one's hand? Lusya Markoryan sug
gests that we indicate the total time that is left after the workday
and commuting, and then enumerate what that time is spent on.
We are amazed?it turns out that we have from 48 to 53 hours a
week for the home. Then why aren't there enough hours? Why does
so much unfinished work trail after us from week to week? Who
can tell?
693
Indeed, who can tell how much time is demanded by what is

called "family life?" And what exacdy is it?
I decide to take my questionnaire home. Dark Lusya does too.
We still have to finish up a few things before the end of the day.
The trip home is not easy today. There are two heavy bags in my
hands weighing me down?everything is bought except for vege
tables. In the metro I have to stand?one bag is in my hands die
other at my feet. There is a crush. It is impossible to read. I am
standing and figuring how much I spent. It always seems to me that
I must have lost some money. I had two tens, and now all I have
is some silver. I am missing three rubles. I figure again, I try to
remember what is in the bags. The second time I figure that I lost
four rubles. I stop figuring and begin to look around at those who
are sitting. Many are reading: young women?books and magazines;
sedate-looking men?newspapers. And over there a fat man in a fur
hat is sitting with a gloomy face and looking at KrokodiL8 Young
men shift their eyes sideways, lower their eyelids sleepily, just so
as not to have to give up their seats.
At last Sokol Station. Everyone jumps out and dashes to the nar
row stairways. And I can't?I am carrying bags with milk and eggs.
I trail at the tail end. When I reach the bus stop there is a fine six
busloads long. Should I try to get into a full bus? But what about
my bags? Nevertheless, I try getting into the third bus. But the
bags in both my hands prevent me from grabbing hold, my foot
slips off the high step, I bang my knee painfully, and at that mo
ment the bus starts to move. Everyone shouts, I scream. The bus
stops; some man, standing near the doors, grabs me and pulls me
in; I fall on top of my bags. My knee hurts, and there is probably
an omelet in the bag. But, at least, someone offers me a seat. While
I am sitting, I can look at my knee, at the hole in my stocking
covered with blood and dirt, I can open the bags and see that only
a few eggs are crushed and only one carton of milk is crumpled. I
feel so bad about the stockings?they cost four rubles!
As soon as I open the house door, everyone runs out into the front
hall?they've been waiting! Dima takes the bags from me and says:
"Madwoman!"
I ask: "How is Gulka's stomach?"
"It's all right, everything's fine."
Kotka jumps on me and almost knocks me off my feet. Gulka de
mands immediately "a norage" which she has already spotted. I
point to my knee and limp into the bathroom. Dima gets the iodine
and cotton, everyone feels sorry for me?I feel so good!
8 Krokodil (Crocodile)?the humor magazine.

694
I love Friday evening: I can sit at the table a little longer, spend
time with the children, put them to bed half an hour later. I can
skip the laundry, I can get into a tub. . . .
But today, following the sleepless night, we are terribly sleepy,
and, after putting the children to bed, we leave everything in the
kitchen as is.
I am already in bed; Dima is still in the bathroom. My body is
already heavy with sleep, but it suddenly occurs to me that Dima
might set the alarm clock out of habit. I shove it under the couch
with the words, "sit and be still." But the sound of its ticking comes
through the thick couch. I take it out to the kitchen and lock it up
in the dish closet.
Saturday
On Saturday we sleep late. We, the grown-ups, would sleep even
later, but the children get up a little after eight. Saturday morning
is the happiest morning: ahead are two days of rest. Kotka wakes
us, he comes running to us?he has learned to lower the side of his
little bed. Gulka is already jumping in her crib and demanding that
we take her out. While the children play with their father, doing
somersaults and squealing, I prepare an enormous breakfast. Then
I send the children off with Dima to play outside, and get to work.
First of all, I put up soup. Dima assures me that the soup at the
cafeteria is always tasteless; the children don't say anything, but
when they eat my soup they always ask for seconds.
While the soup is cooking, I clean the apartment?I dust, wash
the floors, shake the blankets out on the balcony (which is not
nice, of course, but it's faster that way), and sort the wash: put
Dima's and mine to soak in soapy water, collect the outgoing laun
dry, and put the children's things aside to be done tomorrow. I
grind the meat for hamburgers, wash and put the dry fruit compote
on the stove, peel the potatoes. At about three we have dinner. It's
a little late for the children, but they have to get their fresh air at
least on the week end. We sit at the table for a long time; we eat
without rushing. The children ought to nap, but they've overcome
their sleepiness.
Kotka asks Dima to read Aibolit,9 which he has long since come
to know by heart. They settle down on the couch, but Gulka bothers
them, whines, and tries to tear up the book. She has to be put down
for a nap after all, otherwise there would be no peace for anybody.
9 Dr. Aibolit (Ouch-it-hurts)?Russian equivalent of Dr. Doolittle.

695
I rock her (which you are not supposed to do) and she falls asleep.
Now I have to get to work in the kitchen?wash the stove and
scour the burners, clean the dish cabinets, scrub the floor. Then I
must wash my hair, wash the clothes put up to soak, iron the chil
dren's things that I've brought in from the balcony, wash myself,
mend Katka's tights, and sew the hook onto my belt, without fail.
Dima has to go to the laundry. Kotka doesn't let him go. He has
to take the boy with him (which isn't good?you have to stand in
line, it's stuffy, dirty clothes are all around?but they take the sled
on the way back they'll play outside some more and get some more
fresh air).
And I am left alone and have the whole place to myself while I
attend to the kitchen and the other things. At seven "the men" come
back and demand tea. Then I suddenly remember that Gulka is still
asleep. (I forgot about her.) I wake her and she raises a dismal
howl. I give her to Dima so that I can make supper. I want to get
through early?the children must be bathed today. Gulka carries on
at the table?she doesn't want to eat, she's not hungry yet. Kotya
eats well?he had plenty of fresh air.
"Tomorrow we'll be home the whole day," he says and looks at
his father and me.
"Of course, tomorrow is Sunday," I reassure him.
Kotka is already rubbing his eyes, he wants to sleep.
I fill the tub and wash Kotka first; Gulka howls, wants to get in
to the bathroom, and keeps opening the door.
"Dima, take your daughter," I shout.
And I hear his answer:
"Maybe that's enough for today? I want to read a little."
"And I don't want to read?"
"Well, that's your business, but I have to."
I, of course, don't have to.
I carry Kotka to bed (usually Dima does this), and I see that he
is sitting on the couch with an open technical journal, and is, in
deed, reading. While going by him I toss off:
"By the way, I happen to have a college education too, and I'm
a specialist too, like you."
"For which you are to be congratulated," answers Dima.
This sounds terribly biting and insulting to me.
I am rubbing Gulka with a sponge and suddenly tears begin to
roll down my cheeks and drop into the bathtub. Gulka looks at me,
yells, and tries to climb out. I cannot get her to sit down and I give
her a slap. Gulka is insulted and bursts into a fit of crying. Dima
appears and says angrily:
"Don't take it out on the child."
696
"Aren't you ashamed?" I shout. "I'm tired, do you understand??
tired!"
I become terribly sorry for myself. Now I am howling aloud,
yelling that I work and work and the undone work keeps growing,
that my youth is passing, that I did not sit down for a minute the
whole day. . . .
Suddenly from the nursery comes a frightful cry:
"Papa, don't beat Mama, don't beat Mama!"
Dima grabs Gulka, who is already wrapped in a towel, and we
run to the nursery. Kotka is standing in bed, all in tears, and re
peating:
"Don't beat Mama!"
I pick him up in my arms and begin to console him:
"What are you imagining, my little boy? Papa never beat me.
Our Papa is kind. Papa is good. . . ."
Dima says that Kotya must have had a frightful dream. He strokes
and kisses his son. We stand holding the children, pressed tigbdy
against each other.
"And why is she crying?" asks Kotya, passing his little hand over
my wet face.
"Mama is tired," answers Dima. "Her hands hurt, her feet hurt,
her back hurts."
This I cannot bear to hear. I shove Kotka onto Dima's other arm,
run into the bathroom, grab a towel, and, covering my face with it,
cry so hard that I shake. Now I don't know about what?about
everything at once.
Dima comes up to me; he puts his arms around me, pats me on
the back, and strokes me gentiy, muttering:
"So, that's enough ... so, calm down ... so, forgive me ... so,
stop_"
I quiet down and sob only occasionally. I am already ashamed
that I let myself go this way. What happened, exactiy? I can't
understand it myself.
Dima doesn't let me do anything more; he puts me to bed like a
child, brings me a cup of hot tea. I drink it, he tucks me in, and I
fall asleep to the sounds coining from the kitchen?the splash of
water in the dishpan, the clatter of dishes, the shuffling of feet.
I awake and don't immediately understand what it is now?morn
ing, evening, and of which day? The table lamp is on, the shade
covered with a newspaper. Dima is reading. I can see only one half
of his face: his convex forehead, light-colored hair?it is beginning
to thin?a heavy eyelid, and a thin cheek?or is it the shadow from
the lamp? He looks tired. He turns the page noiselessly and I see
his hand with sparse reddish hair and a bitten-off nail on the index
697
finger. "Poor Dimka, it's rough for him too," I think to myself. "And
I had to howl like a fool, to top it all. ... I feel sorry for you. I
love you. . . ."
He straightens up, looks at me, and asks, smiling:
"Well, how are you, Olka, alive and well?"
I silently pull a hand from under the covers and stretch it out
to him.
Sunday
We are lying in bed, just lying?my head is resting against his
chin, his arm is around my shoulders. We are lying and talking
about all sorts of things: about the New Year and the New Year
tree, that today we must go to buy vegetables, that Kotka doesn't
want to go to nursery school. . . .
"Dim, what do you think, can love between husband and wife
be eternal?"
"But we are not eternal. . . ."
"Well, of course, but can it be lasting?"
"And are you already beginning to have doubts?"
"No, tell me, what do you think love is?"
"Well, when it's good when you're together, the way it is with us."
"And when children come. . . ."
"Yes, of course, children come."
"And when they shouldn't come any more."
"Well, what of that? That's life. Love is part of life. Let's get up."
"And when there isn't time to talk."
"Well, talking's not the most important thing."
"Yes, probably our early ancestors had no need of it."
"Well, all right, let's talk. . . . What did you want to talk about?"
I am silent. I don't know what I wanted to talk about. I just
wanted to talk. Not about vegetables. About something else. About
something very important and very necessary, but I can't begin
right off. . . . Maybe about the soul?
I say: "There is only one five-ruble bill in the box."
Dima laughs: some conversation.
"Why are you laughing? It's always like this?we talk only about
money, about groceries, well, about the children, of course."
"Don't make things up, we talk about many other things."
"I don't know. I don't remember. . . ."
"All right, we'd better get up."
"No, about what 'other things'? For instance?"
It seems to me that Dima doesn't answer for a very long time.
"Aha, you don't know," I silently gloat. But Dima recalls:
698
A Week Dike Any Other Week
"Didn't we talk about the American presidency? About the cos
mos?many times? . . . About figure skaters?we discussed whether
it was a sport or an art. . . . About Vietnam, about Czechoslo
vakia. . . . We also talked about a new television set and the Fourth
Program," Dima is continuing to recall conscientiously the subjects
of our conversations. "By the way, when are we going to buy a
new television set?"
"That's what I've been saying: there is one five-ruble bill in the
box_"
"But we have a fund. . . ."
We had begun to put aside an "acquisitions fund." We kee
my old purse, and the box holds money for current expenses.
We need many things?for Dima, a raincoat; for me, shoes
definitely, a dress; for die children, summer things. We have
vision set?an old KVN-4910 discarded by Aunt Sonya.
"It's a long way to television," I say. "Our fund is growing po
"But we had decided not to spend all the money, so why
you?" Dima reproaches me.
"I don't know, everything seems to be normal, but there
enough."
Dima says that this way we'll never have anything. And I answer
him that I spend only on food.
"Then you spend too much."
"Then you eat too much."
"I eat too much?!" Dima is insulted. "That's news, let's figure out
who eats how much!"
We are no longer lying but sitting facing one another.
"I'm sorry," I say. "We, we eat too much."
"So what can I do about that?"
"And ir
"You're the housekeeper."
"Tell me what not to buy, and I won't. Let's stop buying milk."
"Let's better end this stupid conversation. If you're incapable of
managing these things, say so."
"Yes, yes, yes, I'm incapable. I'm stupid and everything I say is
stupid. ..." I jump up and go into the bathroom.
There I turn on the faucet and wash my face with cold water.
"Stop this, stop it immediately," I say to myself. Now I will get
under the shower, and return to normal. Why am I so angry? I
don't know.
Maybe because I'm always afraid of getting pregnant. Maybe
because of the pills I take. Who knows?
10 KVN-49?the first Russian-made television model.
699
Or maybe I have no more need for it altogether?this love?

This thought makes me sad, sorry for myself, sorry for Dima.
The feeling of pity and the warm water do their work: I come out
of the shower refreshed and feeling better towards the world.
The children are squealing and laughing?playing with their
father. I take out clean clothes for them. We dress them.
"Look what beautiful children we have," I say and call them into
the kitchen to set the table together, "while Papa is washing."
During breakfast there is a brief planning session. What we have
to do today: take the bus to the vegetable store, wash the children's
clothes, iron everything. . . .
"Drop everything, let's go play outside!" Dima concludes. "Look
at that sun!"
"Mama, Mommy, come with us," begs Kotka. "Let's go look at
the sun!"
I give in. I will put my work off till after dinner.
We get dressed, take the sled, and go off to the canal to go sled
ding. We all take turns going down the hill, and Gulka goes with
Dima or with me. The hill is steep, smoothed down by sleds; the
sled seems to fly; the snow spray makes a rainbow underfoot; and
all around it sparkles and dazzles. Sometimes the sled turns over,
the children squeal, we all laugh. Wonderful!
We come home covered with snow, hungry, happy. Let Dima
eat first, then go. I cook macaroni, warm up the soup and the ham
burgers. The children sit right down at the table and watch the
flames under the pots.
I'm in a very good mood after the sledding. After putting the
children to sleep and getting Dima off for the vegetables, I start
to work on everything at once?I throw the children's clothes into
a wash pan, wash the dishes, spread a blanket on the table, and
take out the iron. And suddenly I have an idea?I will shorten my
skirt. Why do I walk around like an old woman with my knees
half-covered! I quickly take down the hem, decide how much ma
terial I need to turn up, cut off the rest. Dima finds me at this work
when he comes back, carrying a full rucksack.
"You see, Olka, how good the outdoors is for you."
Of course, it's good for me. And, finishing the basting, I put on
the skirt. Dima says, "Hmm," looks me over, and laughs:
"It will be zero degrees tomorrow, you'll be sewing it back on.
But, on the whole, you have nice legs."
I turn on the iron?to press down the hem. Then I will sew it,
and it will be done!
"Press my pants while you are at it," asks Dima.
"Dim, please, press them yourself, I want to finish the skirt."
700
"But you are ironing anyway."
"Dim, it's not 'anyway'; I beg you, let me finish. I still have to
wash the children's things, to iron yesterday's wash."
"Then why are you wasting time on foolishness?"
"Dim, let's not discuss it, I beg you, press your pants yourself
today, I have to finish sewing."
"And where are you going tomorrow?" he asks suspiciously.
"Where? To a ball!"
"I see. I was just thinking maybe there's something going on at
work."
"Maybe there is 'something,'" I am distracting him deliberately.
(After all, I must somehow finish hemming the skirt in peace and
get out of pressing the pants.) "You remember, I told you about
the questionnaire. Today I have to fill it out. Tomorrow demogra
phers will come?to collect the questionnaires, to talk to us. . . ."
"Oh!" (Oh, God, he must be thinking that I decided to shorten
my skirt for this occasion!)
As I sew, I tell Dima that they calculated our "sick" days, that I
have seventy-eight days?almost a whole quarter.
"What do you think, Olka, perhaps it would be better if you
didn't work? Just think, you spend almost half the year at home."
"And you want to shut me in there for the whole year? And
could we live on your salary?"
"If I were to be freed of all this," Dima looks around the kitchen,
at the iron, the rucksack, "I could earn more. Two hundred, two
hundred and twenty I could guarantee. Actually, after subtracting
all your days off without pay, you earn about sixty rubles a month.
It's unprofitable!"
"Fiddlesticks!" I say. "Fiddlesticks! We don't agree to this! Then
all this boring stuff," I also look around the kitchen, "is for me alone,
and only interesting things for yourself. Think of it, 'it's unprofita
ble_' Capitalist!"
"Capitalist, indeed," Dima smiles ironically. "It's not just the
money. The children would benefit. Nursery school?that's not too
bad, but the creche. . . . Gulka almost never gets outdoors in winter.
And these endless colds?!"
"Dima, do you really think that I wouldn't want to do what's best
for the children? I would like to, very much! But what you are
suggesting would just . . . destroy me. And my five years of study?
My degree? My professional standing? My dissertation subject?
How easy it is for you to throw it all out?whisk! and it's finished!
And what would I be like, staying home? Angry, as the devil: I'd
growl at you all the time. And, anyway, what are we talking about?
701
We couldn't live on your salary. And, so far, nothing else, nothing

definite, has been offered to you. . . ."
"Don't be hurt, Olya, you're probably right. It's not worth talking
about it. I shouldn't have started. It's just that I fancied I saw a kind
of . . . rationally constructed life. And that if I didn't have to hurry
to get the children, I could work differently, not limiting myself. . . .
Maybe it's egotism, I don't know. Let's stop talking about it; it's
all right
He goes out of the kitchen, I look after him, and suddenly I want
to call him back and say, "Forgive me, Dima." But I don't do it.
"Hey, hully-gully,11 it's time to get up!" Dima shouts.
That's our "signal." He gets Kotya and Gulya up, the children
drink milk, we spend two minutes discussing whether to go out
again, and decide against it. If we go out, there will be nothing
left of the evening. Dima has had enough walking and I still have
many things to do.
Kotka sits himself down on the floor with his blocks. He loves to
build, and he constructs houses, bridges, streets, and some kind of
construction he calls "skyscraper-palace." But Gulka is a problem
she bothers her brother, she tries to knock down the blocks, grabs
them, carries them away, and hides them.
"Mama, speak to her! Papa, speak to her!" Kotka repeatedly calls
to us.
No words have any effect on Gulka?she looks straight out and
says bluntly:
"Gulya want knock down house."
Then I make a "daughter" for her. A "daughter" is a little play
suit, stuffed with rags. I put a small pillow wrapped in white into
the hood and draw a face on it. Gulya doesn't get along with dolls,
but she drags the "daughter" all over the house and talks to her.
Sunday evening passes peacefully and quiedy. The children play.
Dima reads. I wash clothes and make supper. "I mustn't forget to
sew the hook on my belt," I repeat several times. That's all, I think!
Oh, yes, I still have to fill out the questionnaire. Well, that's after
the children go to bed.
After eating, after carrying on awhile?they don't want to end
their Sunday activities?the children collect the scattered blocks.
We find the ones Gulya hid?under the bathtub, in the hall inside
my boots. We wash their hands and faces, brush their teeth, scold
Gulka who tries to break away and yells:
"Gulya want dirty."
11 Hully-gully?American dance, popular with young Russians in the

1960's.
702
And, finally, we put them to bed.
There is still some time left. Should I read? Or maybe watch
television? Oh, yes?the questionnaire! I sit down at the table with
it. Dima looks over my shoulder and makes critical remarks. I ask
him not to bother me, I want to hurry up and finish. It's ready.
Now I will get a book and curl up on the sofa. I am choosing from
the bookcase. Maybe I should at last start Forsyte Saga? Dima gave
me these two volumes on my next to last birthday. No, I won't be
able to get through it?how could I take such a thick book on the
bus? We'll put it off once more until vacation. I choose something
lighter?stories by Sergey Antonov.12
A quiet Sunday evening. We are sitting and reading. In about
twenty minutes Dima asks:
"And what about my pants?"
We compromise: I will press his pants and he will read aloud to
me. Dima doesn't want Antonov, and takes the latest issue of
Science. We haven't looked at it yet. He begins to read the article
by Venttsel, "Operations Research," but it is difficult for me to
grasp formulas by ear. Then Dima goes out of the kitchen and I
remain alone with his pants.
I am already in bed. Dima winds the alarm clock and turns out
the light. Now I remember the belt hook. I won't get up for any
thing, let it be damned.
In the middle of the night I wake up I don't know why. Some
thing is disturbing me. I get up quietiy, so as not to wake Dima;
I go to look at the children. They'd been tossing in bed?Kotya has
knocked off his blankets; Gulka slid off the pillow, stuck her foot
out of bed. I put them down straight, cover them, touch and pat
their heads?to see if they are warm. The children sigh, smack their
lips, and are again breathing evenly?peacefully, cozily.
Then what is disturbing me?
I don't know. I lie on my back with my eyes open. I lie and listen
to the silence. The radiator pipes are sighing. The upstairs neigh
bors' wall clock is ticking. The pendulum upstairs beats time in
measured strokes, and our alarm clock beats this same time like a
drum roll, sputtering, gasping.
And so ends one more week, the next to the last week of this year.
12 A contemporary Russian writer.
703

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A Week like Any Other Week

A Week Like Any Other Week

The following name variants appear

? Copyright Emily Lehrman 1974. This story originally appeared in

I flush and keep silent, uncomfortably. Of course, I could say:

1 Many Russian children attend all-day pre-school institutions. The

"So what's going on here?" asks Marya Matveyevna sternly.

We reassure M.M. by saying that I'm simply in that kind

must hurry, hurry, I mustn't be late: my family are home by seven.

But I jump up, dress quickly, all the hooks on my belt f

2 Yunost (Youth)?a literary magazine.

On the way home I am still thinking about this conversation. . . .

to have a girl. I don't want an abortion." He was outraged: "Why

4 In the Soviet professional world the graduate of a higher educational

Luska, pretending that she is afraid?"it might kill you"?backs

5 A trade school for para-professional training.

I come out of the institute. It just stopped snowing. The snow

6 At wedding parties guests exclaim the words: "Bitter, bitter!" The

I shouldn't have taken my time walking, thinking. It's late! I run

"No-o-o, the flowerpot. . . ."

intestinal. An analysis?that would take several days. And so we took

Indeed, who can tell how much time is demanded by what is

8 Krokodil (Crocodile)?the humor magazine.

9 Dr. Aibolit (Ouch-it-hurts)?Russian equivalent of Dr. Doolittle.

10 KVN-49?the first Russian-made television model.

Or maybe I have no more need for it altogether?this love?

We couldn't live on your salary. And, so far, nothing else, nothing

11 Hully-gully?American dance, popular with young Russians in the

12 A contemporary Russian writer.

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