Голубые ступени / Stepping into the blue. Михаил Садовский

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      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.

      After graduating from a special school for the musically gifted they had both gone on to post-secondary studies, even ending up in the same classes with the same professors. Once again, nothing had changed externally – they just had a whole lot of new friends.

      And the leisure-time activities available to them were by no means a source of division – quite to the contrary. They didn’t go to dances – she for obvious reasons and he because he didn’t know how to dance and was shy around girls. Besides, the thought of going to a dance simply never even entered his head – why should it? Why, indeed? Like everyone else, they would go to the movies. Television had only just made its appearance and few people had a set. They would buy rush tickets to the theater, and of course did not miss any opportunity to go to a concert, especially at the Conservatory, where they almost always could get in free of charge.

      Music indeed was a unifying factor in their lives. There they were equals, and she never felt from him even the slightest hint at her misfortune, though it was something that she, with her uniquely acute perception of the world around her and her sense of being punished by it, would have undoubtedly felt if there had been the slightest hint at it. No. Not once did he ever think of her physical handicap, either with pity or with annoyance. She, for her part, was sure that she was being punished for the sins of one of her forebears, and that now it had fallen to her to atone for that person’s guilt.

      Without letting him know (it was the only thing she ever kept secret from the closest person in the world to her) she read books on the subject, on the eternal existence of souls, on re-incarnation. There was nobody she could even dare ask about it, only learn what she could on her own. If they ever found out about this at the Conservatory, she would pay dearly. A cruel price. She could even be expelled.

      And he lived next door to her. He didn’t notice other girls, other women, as most of the fellows his age did. He didn’t even look upon her as a woman. It simply never entered his head – they were just friends. And that was it. She had been happy about that, comforting herself with the patronizing thought: «He’s still young. Boys mature later, as a rule.»

      All at once the sun went behind a little dark cloud. The sharp change in light broke her train of reflection. «Okay! Okay!» she muttered to herself. «Okay!» She looked at her watch. «Five minutes to go!»

      She shook her head, remembering the fear she had experienced in connection with their first term papers. She had written about the composer Shebalin, he about Prokofieff. They had helped each other, read their papers aloud to each other. And it had paid off! First came the praise from their professors, and then from journal readers, as both papers were recommended for publication.

      By now she had become quite busy, and she had begun running short on time – exccept where he was concerned. He was her primary advisor and critic. He was the first she shared her joys with, to whom she inscribed her pages with their scent of fresh printer’s ink. Nobody else even asked her any more. She was his and he was hers.