glance at the clock on my desk.
“My parents may come back any minute,” I announce with barely hidden relief.
He too checks the clock, and sighs, and, drawing me toward him, speaks into my hair. “This is hard on both of us, I know, but we just have to hold out a bit longer. In March my father will get his new posting, I’ll have the apartment all to myself. Do you understand?” His voice has become a whisper, and when I try to lift my head and look at him, he presses me back into his shoulder. “Wait. Listen. We should talk about the future. My parents approve of you, and yours approve of me. It’s not too early. I’ll be nineteen this summer. I have excellent prospects. My father—”
He continues to whisper, his breath hot and moist in my hair. I sit propped up against him, stiff with sudden horror. It occurs to me that even though my daily, superficial existence may have little to do with the deep well of my poetry, any trivial repetitive actions, just by virtue of steady accretion, may with time translate into something amounting to an actual change. If I spend days and weeks and months attending a random higher-education program for the simple reason that Olga applied her inflexible will to the task of becoming a journalist while I had little interest in puzzling over possible professions and let her make up my mind for me, one morning I will likely find myself bent over a typewriter in some newspaper cubicle; and if I spend days and weeks and months kissing a random boy for the simple reason that the acquisition of such an experience seems a prerequisite for being a proper university student, one day I may find myself married to the son of a prominent diplomat, living in a cavernous apartment on Gorky Street with a zebra skin crucified on the wall above our conjugal bed. In a moment of pure panic I see my future flash before my eyes, just as one’s past reputedly does in the moment of dying—and my future is a succession of increasingly suffocating rooms.
When I can breathe once again, I become aware of a new quality of silence, tense, bordering on hostile, as I fail to reply, and fail to reply, and fail to reply . . .
“There is something I want to show you,” I say in desperation.
I slip off the bed, run over to the desk, and jerk open its drawer. The letter is lying amidst dried-up corpses of pens and half-spent erasers, still in its jaggedly ripped envelope that bears a foreign postmark. I pull out the single sheet of paper and hand it to him. Expressionless, he reads it while I stand before him, waiting.
When he looks up at me, his eyes are narrowed.
“When did you get this?”
“Last week.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were applying?”
“I didn’t tell anyone. I—I wanted to wait until I heard back.”
That is true; nor do I have the slightest intention of going—although I do not tell him that, not yet, because I am hoping to soften my impending refusal to consider what I fear was a marriage proposal by speaking vaguely of future possibilities and broadening horizons. I climb back onto the bed and attempt to nestle into his shoulder, as before, but he shakes me off, stands up, drops into the chair across from me. The empty champagne bottle, caught by his abrupt movement, rolls over the bedspread and falls onto the rug with a dull thud.
“So why did you apply?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Just to see what’s out there, I guess.”
And that is true also; I am not entirely sure of my reasons. Perhaps I applied because—because I had taken my secret gifts for granted for so long that I had come to doubt them and wanted to set myself a test that would have some validity in the eyes ofthe outside world; or because a small part of me questioned my ability to upend my life, to move to a distant spot on the map; or because Olga, who did everything I myself considered doing, and did it better, talked of attending Harvard in the fall.
“Don’t you have everything you want here?
“My parents may come back any minute,” I announce with barely hidden relief.
He too checks the clock, and sighs, and, drawing me toward him, speaks into my hair. “This is hard on both of us, I know, but we just have to hold out a bit longer. In March my father will get his new posting, I’ll have the apartment all to myself. Do you understand?” His voice has become a whisper, and when I try to lift my head and look at him, he presses me back into his shoulder. “Wait. Listen. We should talk about the future. My parents approve of you, and yours approve of me. It’s not too early. I’ll be nineteen this summer. I have excellent prospects. My father—”
He continues to whisper, his breath hot and moist in my hair. I sit propped up against him, stiff with sudden horror. It occurs to me that even though my daily, superficial existence may have little to do with the deep well of my poetry, any trivial repetitive actions, just by virtue of steady accretion, may with time translate into something amounting to an actual change. If I spend days and weeks and months attending a random higher-education program for the simple reason that Olga applied her inflexible will to the task of becoming a journalist while I had little interest in puzzling over possible professions and let her make up my mind for me, one morning I will likely find myself bent over a typewriter in some newspaper cubicle; and if I spend days and weeks and months kissing a random boy for the simple reason that the acquisition of such an experience seems a prerequisite for being a proper university student, one day I may find myself married to the son of a prominent diplomat, living in a cavernous apartment on Gorky Street with a zebra skin crucified on the wall above our conjugal bed. In a moment of pure panic I see my future flash before my eyes, just as one’s past reputedly does in the moment of dying—and my future is a succession of increasingly suffocating rooms.
When I can breathe once again, I become aware of a new quality of silence, tense, bordering on hostile, as I fail to reply, and fail to reply, and fail to reply . . .
“There is something I want to show you,” I say in desperation.
I slip off the bed, run over to the desk, and jerk open its drawer. The letter is lying amidst dried-up corpses of pens and half-spent erasers, still in its jaggedly ripped envelope that bears a foreign postmark. I pull out the single sheet of paper and hand it to him. Expressionless, he reads it while I stand before him, waiting.
When he looks up at me, his eyes are narrowed.
“When did you get this?”
“Last week.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were applying?”
“I didn’t tell anyone. I—I wanted to wait until I heard back.”
That is true; nor do I have the slightest intention of going—although I do not tell him that, not yet, because I am hoping to soften my impending refusal to consider what I fear was a marriage proposal by speaking vaguely of future possibilities and broadening horizons. I climb back onto the bed and attempt to nestle into his shoulder, as before, but he shakes me off, stands up, drops into the chair across from me. The empty champagne bottle, caught by his abrupt movement, rolls over the bedspread and falls onto the rug with a dull thud.
“So why did you apply?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Just to see what’s out there, I guess.”
And that is true also; I am not entirely sure of my reasons. Perhaps I applied because—because I had taken my secret gifts for granted for so long that I had come to doubt them and wanted to set myself a test that would have some validity in the eyes ofthe outside world; or because a small part of me questioned my ability to upend my life, to move to a distant spot on the map; or because Olga, who did everything I myself considered doing, and did it better, talked of attending Harvard in the fall.
“Don’t you have everything you want here?
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