The Librarian by Mikhail Elizarov Page A

The only distinctive thing aboutMarina was her laugh. It was very melodic and resonant, and she mostly laughed when I flaunted my wit. Eventually I noticed her.
    Throughout my polytechnic years I was never short of girlfriends. I was a rather well-known celebrity. Even so, this Marina saw off her rivals pretty quickly, but I didn’t take that seriously at all: I was genuinely amused by the girl’s hunt for a husband.
    Marina wasted no time and cranked up the relationship so smartly that six months later I was surprised to learn that people were already talking about us as a soon-to-be family, and the strangest thing of all was that I didn’t feel the slightest desire to correct this evident misunderstanding. Even the vice-president, running along the corridor, congratulated me on my imminent wedding.
    My parents were also wholeheartedly in favour. They thought that marriage would make me settle down, forget my stupid dreams and opt for a happy family life instead.
    The part of my soul that was infected by the universal wedding fever falsely reassured me that a wife would not be any obstacle to the career of a future stage director. Everything was decided by a phrase uttered by my boss Galoganov: “What are you afraid of? If you don’t like it, you can get divorced.”
    Somehow it was that possibility of a future divorce that reassured me, and I proposed to Marina. The wedding was attended by a narrow family circle—Vovka was in her eighth month and charmed everyone at the feast with her impressive stomach. As a wedding gift my father-in-law and mother-in-law gave us an apartment, which, however, they registered in Marina’s name.
    Our marriage lasted just over a year. In that relatively short period of time I had learned that my spouse’s weeping, unlike her laughter, was incredibly unpleasant
    After receiving my diploma as an engineer, I started assiduously preparing to join a faculty of stage direction. I set out to reconnoitre Moscow. The Russian capital struck me a sly blow with the rouble. It had never even occurred to me that now I was a citizen of a different country and my education would have to be paid for.
    This woeful fact immediately put an end to any idea of attending a college in Russia. When I got back, I was able to look my acquaintances in the eye with no shame and say that the only reason Moscow was off the agenda was money. I reproached my parents: you see, I ought to have gone then, five years ago, when the Soviet Union still existed.
    What my home city had to offer for the realization of my dream was an institute of culture, a cauldron in which the flayed flesh of all the Muses seethed and bubbled. In among the faculties of music and those offering drilling in leftist decorative and applied arts, the custodians of academic and folk choirs, guardians of orchestras consisting of dombras and balalaikas and mentors of choreographic ensembles, there was a theatre faculty with departments for the art of acting, directing drama and directing theatricalized performances and festivals.
    More mature now, I took a more sober view of my abilities. My self-confidence had evaporated together with my youth. A week before the exams I found out that the competition for drama was rather high, eight applicants for each place, which was rather strange for our back of beyond.
    The competition for the acting department was a bit lower, but I suddenly felt ashamed of my age; at the age of twenty-two I felt like that late developer Lomonosov, smelling of coastal fish, among the crowd of young seventeen-year-old school-leavers.
    That left the direction of theatricalized performances and festivals, which had a tolerable level of competition at three applicants per place. They also required a document demonstrating experience of working with a collective. Galoganov’s secretary banged out one of those for me in five minutes flat, and the vice-president appended a positive reference to the note.
    I consulted my family. My