“Dad, not Uncle Tolya,” Dina corrected her mother.
Dina’s mom would give her a strange look, not say anything back, and disappear into the kitchen or bedroom for long periods of time.
One day, Dina came back from school and found Mom in tears, and Da– Uncle Tolya yelling at her mother, also with tears in his eyes. He was holding the kitchen towel and kept wiping his eyes with it.
“Opening your legs for other men, that doesn’t count either?!” he was shouting.
He repeated those words two or three times so Dina remembered them for the rest of her life. But she did not know what they meant.
She also remembered how a strange oppressive tension settled over the apartment after that. As if Uncle Tolya’s yelling could suddenly appear from any corner, or from behind any curtain.
When she was left home alone, Dina tried to air the apartment, she opened all the windows and even sprayed the air with her mom’s perfume or Uncle Tolya’s cologne, but nothing helped. The feeling of hurt, the tears and the destroyed happiness, were stuck in the apartment like an unbearable load. Her mother laughed less and less, and Uncle Tolya took them to the cinema or the zoo less and less often. Then he did not come home for a very long time, and Dina’s mom said that he had gone away.
“Forever?” asked Dina.
“Forever,” said her mom. “Never ask me about him again, it upsets me very much.”
So Dina did not. She never had a Dad after that.
Dina stopped to think about where she should go. The girls at the dorms were preparing for the exam that she has just passed. Aunt Ira was at work, Anya and Kolya were at university. It was cloudy outside and the rain could start at any second, and she did not want to get wet. It was rather boring to eat ice-cream alone in a cafe…
She decided to return to the dorms.
* * *
The dorm rooms that were designed for two students usually housed three, and the rooms for three students housed four. It was the same in almost all the rooms, with very few exceptions.
On her floor, in the men’s half of the building, lived a husband and wife in a two-person room, Yuri Tolokonnikov, a long-haired gorgeous guitar player from Dina’s course, and Luda Zaytseva from the year above. They had gotten married last summer, and in September they were allowed to move into a separate room because they were from out of town, and they also said that they were going to have a baby soon. In actual fact, the academic year was nearly over and there was no sign of a baby or that one was on the way.