The next day Dima had the courage to invite her to his place under the pretext of a final discussion of their projects which supposedly was impossible to have in the library. “Mother will be out all night, so we won’t be disturbed.” Nina realized what was going to happen and did not resist the idea although Dima did not at all resemble a man to whom she would lose her virginity in her girlie dreams.

Dima and his mother lived in a small, two-room apartment in a drab, municipal housing unit. Poverty and ideal order reigned there, nothing like the somewhat disorderly home life once created by Nina’s warm-hearted, easy mama, let alone the state of neglect into which Nina and her father’s household had slid after her death.

Dima offered her tea. “Or, maybe, you want some wine? I have a bottle of…” – he ventured but bit his tongue, scared of his own boldness. Nina agreed to tea. Dima seated her on a cheap, threadbare sofa and, after some fussing around, brought a tray with a teapot, two cups and a small bowl of chocolates. Apparently, he had made his preparations for the date.

However, he clearly did not know how to get down to business. When the tea was finished, he started discussing hotly some mutual acquaintances, then told a long, stale joke and laughed at it nervously himself. Then there was a long, painful silence. At last, unable to bear it any longer, Dima reached into his backpack. With a dejected look on his face, he fished out his project paper and embarked on reading some chapter of it to Nina.

Nina was sitting silently, with her eyes cast down. She was all like a taut string.

“Dima, come here.” Nina touched the sofa with her fingers inviting him to move closer. Dima sat by her side without letting go of his project paper. His hands were trembling noticeably. Nina took his paper away from him and put it aside. “Embrace me,” she said softly. Dima put his hands awkwardly round her and kissed her – on the cheek. Nina turned her head and held up her lips to him. It was the first kiss in her life.

It turned out that she was Dima’s first woman, too. He fumbled with her clothes, not knowing the right way to unfasten them and take them off. At last, with some help from her, he got her undressed. Hectically, he laid some bedclothes on the sofa and undressed himself. At the last moment, he darted aside and turned on some music. Apparently, music was an important item on his plan. “Light,” Nina asked. Dima turned off the light. They were immersed in a shadow dissipated only by a bulb in the hall that was left on…

It hardly lasted more than a minute. Nina felt pain and issued a cry. Almost immediately after that, Dima leaned back and, breathing heavily, sank onto the sofa beside her.

Nina was lying on her back, staring at the dark ceiling in bewilderment. “Is that all?” she wondered.

As if in response to her mute question, Dima came to life and resumed his activity – with a little more confidence and less fever this time.

The tape recorder was blaring. God knows how all that would end if it were not for that fatal music. It was because of it that they failed to hear the entrance door open and stirred only when the light went on. In the room, just a couple of steps from the sofa, stood a coated woman with a bag in her hand. Dima’s mother.

With her mouth wide open, the woman was staring at their naked bodies on the sofa. Nina pulled a sheet over herself and uttered, “Good evening.”

The woman gulped and responded, “Good evening.”

Then Dima blurted out, “Mother, this is my fiancée. Her name is Nina. Nina, please meet my mother, Tatyana Yurievna.”

The woman regained her senses. Without a word, she walked to the anteroom to take off her coat, then shifted to the kitchen and from there, she cried to them, “Come down here, let’s have tea!”

They slipped into their clothes and spent half an hour with Tatyana Yurievna in the kitchen. Half dead with shame, Nina kept silent, sitting with her eyes fixed on her cup. Tatyana Yurievna, quite unperturbed outwardly, questioned her son about his university affairs as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Nina traveled back alone, having rejected flatly Dima’s offer to see her home. Luckily, the underground car was almost empty at that late hour and nobody paid attention to a strange girl who laughed and frowned alternately for no apparent reason. In fact, she had a reason – she had become a woman. Moreover, she had become a fiancée.

They got married two months later. It so happened that nobody had really asked Nina whether she wanted to marry Dima. Actually, she was not sure herself. It was not that she had some doubts or was weighing rationally pros and cons – she just yielded numbly to the flow of events. The woman inside her which previously had taken a big step towards Dima’s timid advances was keeping silent now.

When he met Dima, her father was clearly disappointed, but he forced himself to be amiable – told jokes, patted Dima on the back, and poured him vodka. Dima was not at all his idea of a guy for Nina, but there was nothing to be done, it was her decision. Uneasily, her father asked whether they were expecting a baby. Nina answered truthfully that they were not but she could see in his face that he was still doubtful. In his view, it was the only reason that could make his brilliant daughter tie herself down to such a colorless little fellow.

In the meantime, the colorless little fellow was bustling about in great excitement, making arrangements for the registration and wedding. He was happy – as happy as his timid soul could be. The wedding took place in a students’ café where their whole year managed to cram in. Everything was very loud and incoherent.

Nina’s married life began. It was Tatyana Yurievna’s will that the couple live with her. They were afforded the larger of the two rooms – the one with the sofa. Dima and Nina were inseparable round the clock now – traveling to the university in the morning, sitting through the lectures, going back home, having dinner, doing homework.

Tatyana Yurievna was even and civil with her daughter-in-law, but Nina felt an arctic cold emanating constantly from the woman. Obviously, Nina was not the kind of bride Tatyana Yurievna had wished for her only son. Tatyana Yurievna never mentioned that dreadful episode when she had caught them in flagranti but apparently she considered Nina some kind of adventuress and profligate who had lured the innocent Dimochka into her net. As she pondered over that, Nina admitted to herself that such a view was not completely groundless. Also, Tatyana Yurievna’s attitude showed some doubt – as if she did not believe in that marriage and expected every day that Nina would disappear into thin air. As it turned out later, she had been right about that, too.

Nina got used to Dima as people get used to their coat or handbag. He did not rouse any feelings in her – he just always was around. Willy-nilly, they had everything in common – friends, university-related cares, even textbooks and notebooks. Nina helped the not-very-capable Dima to prepare for the exams, and then write his graduation thesis. They were already making plans for their life after university.

Tatyana Yurievna worked in the planning department of some manufacturing company where she was only employed half-time because of the recession. She spent the rest of her day looking after her small household. She did not force her daughter-in-law to do house chores but she did not push Nina away either. At last it was settled between them that for an hour and a half every day, Nina was busy tidying, dusting, washing and scrubbing. Nina’s own loving and over-lenient mother had not prepared her for that, and Nina had some hard time at first, but eventually she got used to doing housework and even got to liking it.

Possibly, her marriage to Dima could cement and take root with time, so that they became a family like any other, but there was a disaster zone in Nina’s married life. It was the conjugal bed – or rather, sofa. Dima performed his duties of a husband with enthusiasm, but for Nina, it was a nightly ordeal. The moment Dima turned off the light and touched her, Nina’s mind conjured up Tatyana Yurievna – with a coat on and a bag in her hand. In addition, the corporeal, not ghostly, Tatyana Yurievna was close by, separated by a thin wall. The sound insulation was almost non-existent in the building, and Nina could hear her mother-in-law tossing and turning in her bed, then getting up, fumbling for her slippers, and walking past their door to the kitchen to take her gastric pills. That happened almost every time Nina and Dima had their intimacy, causing Nina to clench up inwardly.

Once or twice, Nina had heard some girls whisper about the “delightful sex” they had had with their boyfriends. For Nina, there was no delight in sex. There were some unpleasant, even hurtful sensations, a growing bewilderment and disappointment.

One of Dima’s few good qualities was his cleanliness fostered in him by his mother. He took a shower and changed his underwear every day, and his thin, almost transparent skin always smelled of strawberry soap – Tatyana Yurievna’s favorite, which she used on all occasions. Nina grew to hate that smell.

At last, it became unbearable. Nina wanted more than once to have it out with Dima but she never had the heart to. Meanwhile, Dima looked perfectly happy. He clearly thought highly of himself as a husband – undertones of male complacency could be heard in his voice.

Once, as she was buying a pen in a kiosk, Nina saw a brochure on sex techniques. “I’ll take that, too” burning with shame, she pointed at the eloquent cover. In snatches, locking herself up in the toilet, she read the brochure. About one half of it remained enigma to her, but she was staggered by the other half. A whole new world opened to her.

She did not dare to show the brochure to Dima until one day he stayed at home with a cold. As she was leaving for university, Nina tucked the brochure under the pillow in the hope that Dima would find it and read it himself. But it was Tatyana Yurievna who found the colorful booklet. When Nina came back, her mother-in-law met her in the doorway. “I was changing the bedclothes and found this. Apparently, it’s yours.” The woman held out the brochure carefully wrapped up in a newspaper.

It was the end, but Nina made another attempt to save the situation. She asked her father if it was all right if she and Dima came to live with him. Her father was all enthusiastic about the idea and offered to move their stuff the same day. However, when she broached the subject to Dima, she knew at once from the lost look on his face that it was no good. Still, Dima promised to raise the question with Tatyana Yurievna. The two of them had a talk in which Nina was not included. The outcome was that, hiding his eyes, Dima declared to Nina that he could not leave his mother. That night, for the first time since their wedding, they did not have sex.

There was no point in staying with Dima any longer, but through inertia, Nina lived with him for another month – until they defended their graduation theses. The defense went off perfectly for both of them. When she received her red-cover degree certificate, Nina felt liberated – a whole page in her life had been turned, and a new one began. Without even saying goodbye to Dima, she went off to her father’s with a firm intention never to set eyes again on the room with the fateful shabby sofa.

Dima brought down her stuff which fitted in a single bag. He was crushed. The castle in the air that he had built and lived happily in was collapsed now. Made eloquent by his despair, Dima entreated Nina not to leave him. However, he did not even mention the possibility of his moving in with Nina at her father’s. His mother’s control over him was absolute – he could not challenge her will even if his happiness was at stake. “But why? Why?” Dima kept asking. Nina only shook her head silently. She was not going to discuss her sexual problems with Dima – she realized by then that she would have left him anyway. “Sorry, Dima, it’s not going to work,” she said softly but resolutely. How could she explain it all to him? How could she explain why she had married him in the first place? “Sorry, Dima. Don’t take it to heart too much. Everything will be all right with you,” she said as she was turning him out of doors.

They got divorced. As a souvenir from Dima, she now bore his noble surname which she had never changed back. As a souvenir from Tatyana Yurievna, she now had a taste for tidiness and order which she tried to maintain wherever she found herself ever since.