Arthur dropped his thick eyelashes over his eyes, smiled slightly, and let Dina go.

And Dina had left his room without taking the packet of dried fruit, back to the three-person room where four girls lived.

If Dina became the wife of Arthur Davlatyan, she would live with him in his very non-student-like room with carpets on the floor and the wall, the KVN television set and the Comet tape player. But she was not sure that she loved Arthur. It was one thing to like someone, but love… love was something else completely, Dina was sure of it, so she continued to live in the cramped room with one table for four people.

“Did you pass?” Vera and Valya asked almost in unison when Dina appeared in the doorway.

They sat on either side of the rectangular table, which served as both a desk and a kitchen table, with their books and notebooks spread out. Dina’s artisanal cheat sheets lay in two piles at the edge of the table.

Vera and Valya were studying in a parallel group, so their exam with Konstantin Konstantinovich Kolotozashvili was tomorrow.

“Did you have any doubts?” replied Dina, and started changing.

“About what?” asked Valya.

“Ask something more interesting!” said Vera and threw a curious glance at Dina. “You got a five, I bet.”

“Really?” asked Valya incredulously.

Dina did not reply, taking off the whispering weightless cloak and changing into her fur-trimmed home slippers, which were slightly worn out but still quite neat.

She approached the table, looked over Vera’s shoulder into her notebook, then at the book, turned a few pages and said:

“You should memorize this. Kokon always fails people on the additional questions.”

“Kokon fails everyone on everything,” Valya said quietly.

Valya came from a village in the Vologda Oblast and could not get used to the big city even after four years. She spoke quietly, either because of her strict domestic upbringing, or because she was embarrassed by her country accent and provincial appearance, or maybe because of all of the above.

Once, Valya had asked Dina to work with her on grammar and pronunciation, flushing with embarrassment. Dina had written out a long list of Valya’s mistakes, which she had successfully fixed during the academic year. It was only the characteristic okanye1 that seemed incurable.

“Yes. Everything,” said Dina. “But this is his favorite this term.”

Vera rushed over to the larger pile of cheat sheets and started rustling through it, looking for the right one.

“What did you get?” she asked.

Dina replied calmly:

“That’s what I got.” She added after a pause, “But he gave me five points automatically.”

Both girls stared at Dina in amazement. “Kokon?! Automatically?!”

Dina sat down on her bed and leaned back against the pillow. “Well, not quite, not automatically… semi-automatically.”

Vera and Valya again exclaimed almost at the same time, “Semi-automatically? What does that mean?”

“I took a question sheet, prepared my answer, approached the table and sat down, and then he said to me: ‘I don’t doubt your knowledge and won’t waste time asking you.’ He didn’t even look at my draft.”

Vera tsked. “What a beast! Why couldn’t he say so straight away?”

“That’s Kokon for you!” Added Valya.

“But do you know of any other teacher who loves his subject as much as he does?” asked Dina.

“He loves the ladies, not the subject,” interrupted Vera.

“Well, he’s not such a beast after all…” Valya interjected. “I remember how in the first lecture, he made it sound like I should just pack up and leave the university immediately, and then he ended up helping me on the exam.”

“What about his humor?” Dina suddenly wanted to discuss Konstantin Konstantinovich, for some reason. “Everyone at university quotes his jokes!”

“Oh yes!” Valya agreed. “Yet he never repeats himself… not like that man… who teaches scientific communism… when he makes a joke, you don’t know which way to look…”

Vera rolled her eyes up dreamily. “Yes, Kokon is not a man you’d forget even after university. He’s a ray of light in a dark realm!” Then she remembered where she was, and picked up a book again. “All right, enough chit-chat, I’d like to pass the final exam on first try!”

Dina stretched out on the bed and put her hands behind her head.

“Go ahead, I’ll have a rest. Let me know if you’d like some tea.”

She looked at the color portrait of Muslim Magomaev, whose songs she adored, especially the recording in Italian. She had cut out his picture from a magazine, maybe the Soviet Screen, and it hung opposite Dina on the side of the cupboard, together with a few other portraits, each one with their own story.