Hello, Privet! #1: Hello/Привет

Chapter 40

ANTON

When we find seats in the cafe at the counter, (she is having chocolate with a mint leaf, and I'm drinking tea), the devochka is looking around the cafe, everywhere but at me.

Many people have the same idea; they are waiting in the cafe for the rain to stop, so the only chairs available are at the counter. Her knees are very close to my knees, but she is trying not to sit so close to me, but she has no choice because my legs are too long and there is not much space. She is not happy about this.

"Tell me—" I begin, and she turns her pale green eyes to me very slowly. "Why did you get this job?"

"You sure you want to hear the whole sordid story?"

I shrug. "I have some time."

She sighs. "My mother worries about me."

"And?"

"She thinks if I have a job, I will have more discipline." She shrugs. "So I found a job."

"But you want to do something else."

"I don't know. I'm still trying to figure it out." She loosens her scarf around her neck. "Who knows the answer to this? I'm only twenty-one. It's too early to decide what I want to do with my life."

"That is true."

"You're lucky your life is so uncomplicated."

"What do you mean by this?"

"You are someone who knows exactly what you should do."

I am quiet. Then I say, "You are wrong."

"No—I did not say it's necessarily what you want to do. I guess it's just what other people think you should do, and you're doing it—well, trying to, anyway." She sips her coffee. "But to answer your question, I guess I don't really know what to do. I mean, I thought I wanted to do something in research, but I decided I didn't like it. Then I took some Latin classes for a while, because I was good at it in high school, but then, you know, my grandfather said it didn't seem very useful—so then, I took some art history because I like art, and then journalism courses, because writing for the school paper had always been my extra-curricular activity and I was a pretty okay writer—not a great one, just above average—so I thought I would like it, but in the end I dropped out." She drinks her coffee again. "I don't know if I should be telling you this. It makes me sound so—flaky."

I shake my head. "No, tell me everything."

"So anyway, now my stepfather thinks I should study political science or economics instead and become a lawyer or maybe an investment banker, and my mother just wants me to make up my mind and study anything and get a degree in something, just to have a degree, but I don't want to do it like that. I'd rather figure it out first before studying something just to have a degree. So I decided to take a break, and here we are."

It is the way my father is with me about tennis. He still wants me to go to university and go back to study economics, which is what I studied for one semester at the University of St. Petersburg.

"It's like they're always trying to be practical for me, because I'm not," she says. "You're right when you told me I'm naive and I'm a dreamer."

"I did not mean that—"

She nods. "But you're right. And they're right. Maybe I'll never be able to figure out what I'm passionate about. But when I choose something, I want it to be something so compelling that when I wake up, it's the first thing I think about, and it's also the last thing I think about before I go to sleep. I read about other people and how much they love their jobs— how they just want to do it all the time, and it doesn't feel like work because they love it so much. I want that to happen to me. Has that ever happened to you?"