“Hey, Stameskin, that’s not comradely,” Iskra sighed. “You’re being cagey, Stameskin. You’ve become a very cagey person.”

“I’m not cagey.” Sashka sighed too. “I’m smiling because I feel good.”

“Why do you feel good?”

“I don’t know. I do and that’s that. Let’s sit down.”

They sat down on a bench in a withered deserted little park. The bench was tall, and Iskra swung her legs back and forth with pleasure.

“See, if you reason logically, then the life of a single person is only of interest to himself. But if you reason using instead of dead logic, the logic of society, then he, that is a person…”

“You know,” suddenly said Sashka in a strange tone, “will you get mad if I…”

“What?” Iskra asked, for some reason very quietly.

“No, you’ll definitely be mad.”

“No, Sasha, definitely not!” Iskra took his arm and shook it, as if she was shaking up the remnants of courage. “Well, and? Well?”

“Let’s kiss.”

A long pause ensued, during which Sashka felt exceedingly uncomfortable. At first he sat without moving, overpowered by his own desperate resolve, then he started fidgeting, huffed out a few breaths, and said dejectedly, “Well yeah. I just meant…”

“Let’s,” said Iskra, moving only her lips.

Sashka took in a big breath and stretched. Iskra leaned towards him, offering her tight, cool cheek. He pressed his lips there, pulled her head over to himself with one hand, and froze. For a long time, they sat motionless, and Iskra listened with surprise to the sound of an intensifying heartbeat.

“Let go… Come on.” She slipped out.

“Yeah so…” Sashka sighed heavily.

“It’s scary, yeah?” Iskra whispered. “Is your heart beating hard?”

“Let’s go again? One more time…”

“No,” she said decisively and moved away. “Something is happening to me and… and I need to think.”

Something really was happening to her, something new and a little frightening, and the kiss was not the reason for it, but a multiplier, a powerful push in the direction of forces that were already in motion. Iskra could guess what these forces were, but she was angry at them for awakening earlier than, in her understanding, they ought to have. Angry, and at the same time, bewildered.

The time had come for the girls to have personal lives, and they met these new lives with apprehension. They understood that this was, indeed, personal, and no one could help them here. Not the school, not the komsomol, not even their moms. They would have to face these new lives alone, eye to eye: the women that woke in them, each so similar to another and so unique, thirsted for independence, as all women have at all times.

And at this time, a time so important and so full of apprehension, Iskra was drawn not to Zinochka, whom she stubbornly considered just a girl, but to Vika Lyuberetskaya. To proud Vika, who – Iskra could tell – had already stepped across the threshold, had already felt herself to be a woman, had already adapted to this new state of being and was proud of it. Proud of it, first of all, and only then of her famous father. That was what Iskra thought, but she did not want to show up without warning, having caught the displeasure of her hostess during her first visit. So in class, she said:

“I want to return the Yesenin. Can I come by today?”

“Come, then,” answered Vika, not showing any feeling.

Iskra did not like that (she had hoped that Vika would at least be happy about it), but her determination did not waver. Finishing her homework at school – she often did that, because she had no need to study the oral subjects, and the written ones could be done along the way – she dropped by home, left a note for her mom, took the Yesenin book, and went off to the Lyuberetskys, feeling, with some annoyance, a measure of anxiety.

Vika was waiting for her and opened the door immediately. She silently hung up Iskra’s coat and, as silently, invited Iskra into her room. 

In the room was a huge armchair, which Vika gestured at, but Iskra could not dare to sit in it. She had never sat in armchairs before, and she thought she would be uncomfortable there.

“Thank you, Vika,” she said, handing over the book and sitting down on a chair.