The Red Horse

Abstract

Having just come to university, I was anxious not to miss any lectures. And so every Tuesday and Wednesday, when they started early, I was half asleep in the Metro on my way to the faculty. As the train moved out of Lenin Hills Station, I opened my eyes, hearing voices speaking in a foreign language, and glanced across at the people opposite. There were five of them: two girls and three boys, chatting non-stop. I did not know the language, but it sounded very beautiful. They were in their early twenties. One of the girls had incredible eyes, emerald green, huge, constantly moving, playing and laughing. She noticed that I was staring at her, and became even more excited, like a good actress who is aware of her attractions for the audience. Each time, as she turned her head from side to side talking to her friends, her glance would linger on me slightly longer. I just could not take my eyes away from her. Even her friends noticed my gaze: looking at me, they exchanged a few words and laughed warmly. I hardly noticed the stations passing by, until the whole group stood up to get out at Lenin Library Station. The girl with the eyes hesitated for a moment, smiled at me, and followed the others. My stop was next, but I half-thought of running after them to see where the girl went, and perhaps even to talk with her. But then I thought of the lecture I would miss, and anyway she was probably with her boyfriends and it was not for me that she had been performing. I could not concentrate on my lectures and seminars that day. Finally I decided to confess to Golovakha. He was my closest friend, and he had recently saved me from my former roommates by telling me how idiotic they were and suggesting that we should write a letter to the faculty authorities requesting that we be allowed to share a room together. He, with his usual businesslike approach, asked me which station the girl had gotten off at. When he heard that it was Lenin Library, he immediately said that the girl was almost certainly a student at the University, since that station was in the University area, the time was the time when lectures started, and she was together with a group of young people. Now, if she was a student, according to his calculations of probability I was bound to run into her again within the next two months. I never doubted his judgment, and I felt much better. Soon all of us were sharing a room in the dormitory. That is, myself, Golovakha, Mishutka, and Yosio Sato. Trying to recruit people for our room, we selected Mishutka for his huge nose. It was his main asset, and he constantly picked it; his other attractions were that he was not entirely stupid and that he recognised straightaway the leading role of Golovakha and myself. Yosio Sato we found at the first Young Communist League meeting. Being a foreigner, he did not have to attend, as we did, but he came out of curiosity, and we noticed the ironic expression in his usually impassive Japanese eyes as he watched the proceedings around him. Golovakha's two months were coming to an end, but the girl was nowhere to be seen. I often wandered aimlessly around the University precinct and waited at the entrances of various faculties. Winter was setting in. One late November evening-it was about six o'clock, Golovakha was at his relatives; Yosio Sato in the library, and Mishutka was picking his nose even more than usual-I went to take a shower. The dormitory showers were disgusting: huge rooms with no partitions, bleak walls, cold concrete floors. Standing on a bench and rubbing myself with a towel, I tried to conceal my private parts from at least a dozen people around me. It was, I remembered, exactly two months before that day that I had seen her. I pulled on my trousers. I was shuffling in my slippers along the corridor when the front door of the building opened, letting in a blast of cold air and Vladimir Shestakov, one of my few friends in this place. With him was the girl with the green eyes and her girlfriend from the Metro. …