One Night in Winter Read Online Free PDF Page B

dreamers?’
    ‘Um, I think so.’
    ‘Name?’
    ‘Kurbsky, Andrei.’
    ‘Take a seat. Nikolasha Blagov, move up and make space.’ The red-haired boy was again sitting next to Serafima, and, with much sighing, sulkily moved his books. Serafima in turn had to move up too. Nikolasha muttered to himself as Andrei sat next to him.
    ‘Now, Kurbsky,’ said Benya Golden. ‘Where are you from?’
    Andrei hesitated. ‘Well, I was in Stalinabad but I’ve just come back to Moscow—’
    ‘Stalinabad! The Paris of Central Asia!’ Nikolasha exclaimed in a deep voice that seemed to crack at the wrong moments. A boy with long black hair sitting right behind them sneered: ‘The Athens of Turkestan!’ They all knew why someone like Andrei had ended up living in a Central Asian backwater. It was his tainted biography all over again.
    ‘Who asked you, Nikolasha?’ Benya Golden snapped. Jumping to his feet, he walked across to the boy with the long black hair: ‘Or you, Vlad? There’s nothing less attractive than Muscovite snobbery. Your presence in this class by no means a fait accompli. I hear Dr Rimm’s classes are
much
more fun than mine!’
    Nikolasha glanced back at Vlad and both seemed to shrink at Benya Golden’s threat. Andrei noted that Nikolasha was the leader and Vlad the henchman in a group of youths who seemed to take their long hair and intellectual tastes very seriously indeed.
    ‘Let’s welcome Andrei, you inhospitable bastards. If Director Medvedeva’s put him in our class, there’s a reason. This term we’re doing Pushkin’s
Eugene Onegin
.’
    Benya Golden stepped back on to the platform where his desk stood and picked up a book.
    ‘
Eugene Onegin
,’ he said. ‘Most of us know some of this text. What about you, Andrei Kurbsky?’
     
    ‘God grant that in my careless art,
    For fun, for dreaming, for the heart . . .
    You’ve found at least a crumb or two.’
     
    Andrei’s reply earned a murmur of approval from the class. Serafima looked up, surprised – or did he imagine that?
    ‘Good! I bet it feels good to be back in Moscow,’ Benya Golden said, smiling at him.
    Emboldened by Golden’s enthusiasm, Andrei continued:
     
    ‘How oft . . . forlorn and separated –
    When wayward fate has made me stray –
    I’ve dreamt of Moscow far away!’
     
    ‘Now I see why the director placed you in my class, Kurbsky.’ Golden climbed up to stand on his chair, holding his volume in one hand. ‘Nikolasha, blow your bugle!’
    Nikolasha had taken an instrument from its case beside him and, self-consciously shaking his red locks, he stood up and blew his trumpet as if he was heralding a medieval king.
    ‘Your hair’s even longer this term,’ Benya Golden said to him. ‘Is this new coiffure a romantic affectation? My colleagues won’t like it. They might even think you were cultivating the un-Bolshevik image of a young romantic. Right! Now, welcome to
Onegin
.
Prepare to be dazzled by the bard of Rus himself. There’s such richness in its pages that it never loses the capacity to surprise and delight us. Is this an “encyclopaedia of Russian life”? Is it a tragedy, comedy or romance?’
    As Golden talked, Nikolasha had sat down, replaced his trumpet and was earnestly writing notes in an exercise book with scarlet velvet covers. When he saw that Andrei was looking, he muttered, ‘Mind your own business,’ and moved the book as far from Andrei as he could.
    ‘Is Onegin himself a dreary misanthropic narcissist or a victim of love and society? Is Tatiana a dull provincial, unworthy of such passion, or a paragon of Russian womanhood? Is this a guide how to love today? Yes, Demian Dorov?’
    ‘Surely only the Party can guide our lives today?’ Andrei recognized the pointy face and red scarf of the school’s Chief Pioneer.
    ‘And Comrade Stalin!’ interjected Marlen Satinov.
    ‘Comrade Stalin what?’ Benya Golden asked, still standing on his chair on the platform.
    ‘Only Comrade