Treasury of Russian Short Stories 1900-1966 by Wassner Selig O.;

Author:Wassner, Selig O.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Frederick Fell Publishers, Incorporated
Published: 1968-09-09T16:00:00+00:00

1963

My First Feature Story

by Marina Romanina

Marina Romanina, born around 1940, studied music at the Tashkent Music Institute. She has published sketches, feature stories about youth and art. She is a graduate of the Gorki Institute in Moscow.

“My God, am I seeing green?”

This was how we were met by the literary associate editor of the district newspaper, Sashka Godh. As it turned out later he wasn’t a bad fellow, this Sashka, but in our hurt pride as aspiring journalists, Oleg and I had begun to bear him a deep grudge. And who would welcome a greeting like that? Here we come with honest-to-goodness papers certifying in boldface letters that we are no greenhorns by any means but sophomores at Moscow University down for our first journalistic practice, and what does he do? Gives it to us in no uncertain words. No, we didn’t care for that kind of reception!

We had decided to give that Sashka the cold shoulder, but he, in his passion for allegories, was too blind to see the daggers of hatred in our eyes. Tactless Sashka never stopped giving us advice.

Our boss, the editor, turned out to be a grave-looking man with a profile taken straight out of a coin-collection museum, and whose facial characteristics, as we were able to establish a few weeks later, were the typical features of an Eastern Slav. His name: Nikita Rogachev.

Nikita Rogachev was apparently well aware of the peculiarities of his face because otherwise it would be hard to explain the way his old high-backed leather chair was placed, letting us see only one rosy ear, a determined hunch of a nose, and then a quizzically raised mouth corner. Oleg and I, however, not intent on analyzing the mysteries of his physiognomy, would be sitting there looking over some notes on an exhibition opening or on the unveiling of a new meat-grinder model, occasionally daring to lift fluttering eyelids at the disdainfully proud hunch. We’d feel that cactuses in the desert behaved more gregariously than the people in our office, and yet we’d freeze them from the realization of our own dearth of ideas, quiet down in our corner, making hectic efforts to give the semblance of extreme activity. Nobody paid any attention to us, however, and when some novice stepped up to us with a question, Sashka would immediately raise his head and ask in his disgusting twang, “May I help you, Comrade?”

Thus two weeks went by. Gradually we got so used to feeling right at home behind our desks that Oleg went as far as allowing himself a smoke and drawing caricatures of many-handed, many-faced Sashka-monsters, while I was trying to write poetry on editorial paper. My poems, a little on the sad side, told of pride, of friendship, and Moscow.

That evening, as we were returning to our hotel, we felt very good, and for the first time we considered ourselves true journalists. Oleg nonchalantly threw his coat over his shoulder, bought us Eskimo pies at the street corner booth,

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