Neither he nor his mother had been afraid at the time, they hadn’t rejected her family, as had many of their other acquaintances,
2 but three years later his father died at the very outset of the war.
They had become friends right off, since both of them immediately found themselves at the edge of the mainstream. He didn’t know how to stand up for himself – he didn’t like noisy games or rough-housing – while she was shy about her awkwardness.
But, even more than by this physical weakness, they were united by something else. They felt themselves ’chosen’, even among their own kind – not by birth but by their ability to hear what their friends and schoolmates were saying. They were both endowed with an acute sense of hearing – maybe not an absolute pitch, but still a kind of hearing that was very rare, capable of distinguishing dozens if not hundreds of overtones. They especially liked listening to the ring of church bells, but of course that kind of opportunity didn’t come along very often.
She imagined what it would be like after the operation, and even stood on tip-toe. Three centimetres. She shut her eyes tight and just stood there. Three centimetres meant she would be able to reach his face, his lips – so sweet, so sweet! And she could not bring herself to even think that this might not happen, since «impossible» was simply out of the question! Then why should she picture it to herself, and fantasize?
She opened her eyes again. A gentleman passer-by looked at her – after all, she was pretty and she knew it. She had a perfectly formed nose – a rarity, just like the way Pushkin3 called «two pairs of slender legs» a rarity. Her hair, too, could be called luxuriant, as it did not hang down straight but fell around her face in ever-so-soft waves of lush dark brown.
The man averted his eyes and walked on. Would he look back or not? He did, and she smiled: everything would turn out all right. She had guessed he would, and he did – and that meant everything would turn out all right!
The springtimes, as indeed the years, had rolled by virtually unnoticed – perhaps because they were always together. The world for her always began with him, and everything that happened in the world was connected with him – study, leisure, mutual friends. As for girl-friends of her own – she didn’t have any.