“No, she knows, of course, but she doesn’t say. And Sasha will write “unknown” in the form, and who knows what they might think, can you imagine?”

“What? What might they think?”

“That this father is an enemy of the people, that’s what they might think.”

“Stameskin, an enemy of the people?” Zina burst out laughing merrily. “Where have you seen enemies of the people named Stameskin?”

Here Iskra was forced to fall silent. But even having conceded this point, she still insisted that getting a job at the aircraft factory would be very hard. She was exaggerating on purpose, because she had a solution in mind: the komsomol district committee. The almighty komsomol district committee. And this solution was meant to compensate for the hit to her pride that Zina had inflicted with her suggestion.

But Zinochka thought concretely and spontaneously, relying only on her intuition. And this innate intuition immediately indicated a solution:

“What about Vika Lyuberetskaya?”

Vika Lyuberetskaya’s dad was the chief engineer at the aircraft factory, and Vika herself had been deskmates with Zinochka for eight years. Iskra, though, generally steered clear of Vika. Because Vika was also a straight-A student, and because Iskra was a bit jealous of her friendliness towards Zinochka, and, most importantly, because Vika was always a little condescending with all the girls and haughty with all the boys, in the manner of a queen dowager. Only Vika got rides in a company car; she always got out a block away from school, but everyone knew anyway. Only Vika was the proud owner of silk underclothes from Paris, the object of Zinochka’s excruciating envy and of Iskra’s contemptuous disdain. Only Vika had a coat of real Siberian squirrel fur, a Swiss watch with a luminous dial, and a fountain pen with a golden nib. And all this put together defined Vika as a creature from another world, a world Iskra had felt irony-tinged pity for since childhood. 

They were rivals even in how they did their hair. While Iskra stubbornly wore two pigtails behind her ears, and Zina cut her hair short like most of the girls in their class did, Vika had a real hairstyle done at a salon.

And also Vika was beautiful. Not adorably plump like Iskorka, not a pretty imp like Zinochka, but a mature, serene, self-confident young lady with large gray eyes. And the gaze of these eyes was unusual: it seemed to pass right through one and into a distance only Vika could see; a wonderful distance, because Vika always smiled at it.

Iskra and Zina had different opinions about beauty. Iskra acknowledged beauty that had been captured once and for all on canvas, in books, in music or in sculpture, and in life demanded only the beauty of the soul, implying that any other beauty was suspicious in and of itself. Zinochka, on the other hand, worshipped beauty, was envious to tears of it, and served it as something sacred. Beauty was for her a deity, living and almighty. For Iskra, beauty was only an outcome, the triumph of mind and talent, yet another demonstration of the victory of will and reason over the inconstancy and weakness of human nature. Which was why asking Vika for something was impossible.

“I’ll ask her myself!” Zina protested warmly. “Vika’s a marvelous girl, on my komsomol honor!”

“Everyone’s marvelous according to you.”

“Trust me just once, just the one time. Just one single time, Iskorka!”

“Fine,” Iskra agreed graciously after some hesitation. “But don’t put it off. September first is the day after tomorrow.”

“Thank you!” Zina laughed. “You’ll see how wonderfully it will all work out. Let me kiss you for it.”

“You always need your nonsense,” Iskra said with a sigh, though she did present her tight cheek to her friend. “I’ll go to Sasha’s, make sure he doesn’t do anything out of confusion.”

On the first of September, the black “emka” stopped a block away from the school. Vika hopped out of it, walked to the school gates, and, as usual noticing no one around her, headed straight for Iskra.

“Hello. I believe you wanted Stameskin to work for dad at the aircraft factory? You can tell him to come to the personnel department tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Vika,” said Iskra, doing her very best not to pay attention to her triumphant arrogance.

But her mood had been ruined, and she was far less radiant when she entered the classroom than when she had run into the schoolyard half an hour previously.