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Since that time, Toņa no longer dreams about owning a
salon. Or about medicine.
She doesn’t need a laboratory, a white smock and white
gloves. Nor does she need the city men who’d vie for her
attentions because of them:
– Where’re you coming from, sweetheart, the clinical
institute?
She doesn’t need the two-storey house with a garden and
flowerbeds, the kind other girls dream of; she doesn’t even
need the radio her brother wants so badly.
With the loss of her hero, Toņa became a widow. The only
thing that interests her is Pasha Angelina. The luggage
racks on long-distance trains. Armoured trains. Ocean
liners. Petrol and oil. Mittens coated with ice. Lake Baikal,
steamboats, motorboats, fishing dinghies. The Angara, the
Yenisei, the Arctic Ocean.
Toņa’s heart is frozen over like the Daugava, when it cracks
it will roar.
_____