She did let herself visit the skating rink frequently. The world she so eagerly abandoned would sooner or later sent its agents. She was sure of it. Some faces she knew very well, others were dimly familiar. And then one day as she approached the skating rink…
“O hallo! Don’t you recognize me?”
“How could I possibly not recognize you?”she thought.
“Karen,” she said aloud, “how are you? Do you train here?”
No, he didn’t train, he said in his coarse manner, fixing his sheepish, non-intelligent eyes on her. He was just coming for pleasure. Did she buy her skates? How much did they cost? Aw! So little? He had bought his own ones at a price three times higher. It was sent directly form Moscow! Those she wears are surely useless, broken things! Ha! No doubt this is why she can’t do that simple spinning! She has gone so much backwards!
He himself was showing off as hard as he could. Constantly laughing hysterically with the typical, weird, stupid laugh at those who couldn’t skate properly, Karen himself did nothing more remarkable than some teenage-fashioned tricks on the ice. Being 5 years older than she and having in his disposal only smooth gliding and a few boyish tricks to impress the crowd , he couldn’t possibly aspire for anything more than being the hero in the eyes of a first-time-on-the-ice kid. Did he pursue any profession? What interests did he have in life? Twice having been dropped from the University (as he boastingly mentioned to her), Karen didn’t seem to have any future career plans.
Now and then she would carelessly watch him. She had changed so much and he had stayed the same crude, silly, in-need-to-grow-up fellow. As she watched his beastly movement and superficial, depthless eyes, she gave herself account that this ignorant, rude, unsophisticated boy didn’t have the slightest idea of the lasting wound his coarse, crude nature had once inflicted on her delicate, yet-to-be-developed character. He couldn’t possibly know that the complexes she still had about her own appearance, the doubts about her possible attractiveness, the fear she still felt while communicating with people, all these were connected with an invisible fiber to the hysterical laughs he and his fellow friends had the habit of giving at her crooked legs, her undeveloped breast, her shyness, her helplessness, her awkwardness.
She didn’t feel pain, she didn’t feel reproach, neither fear, nor anguish, nor excitement… her mind was blank. It was a faceless, dull blankness.
On the way home she felt like she had just swallowed something the taste of which she couldn’t yet identify. Something shapeless, nameless. Such is the taste of the dead bodies of the past sorrows. No longer active and bitter, they cease from being wounds or even scars and only the corpse, the dead, the cold, the dull and the flavorless corpse remains…
Laying down in her bed that night she felt like a runner who, finally reaching the long-desired finish line, suddenly finds out that all the players had long gone. She felt like crying, but the tears stuck somewhere in her throat.