Why did they send me to the kindergarten? With two unemployed grandmothers and two housekeepers - both my grandfathers were Professors. But my parents were determined: the child had to be socialized.
Kindergarten - I hated it from the first breath. The terrible mixture of the smells of a public catering establishment and a government institution made me sick.
At night, I would wake up at home, see large clusters of stars in the window, and pray to who knows Who (Who knew how miserable I was, loved me more than my mother, compassionate, and infinitely pitied me) that the night would never end and the morning would never come.
"Mama! I want it to always be night and for me to always be at home!" I would wail, but Mom would only laugh, and every morning they would take me back to Kindergarten.
It was, by the way, in the house next door. Before school, when I turned six, I suddenly realized: no big deal-this is my home, here I am (joyfully jumping over my rubber jump rope - by then I'd already learned to play alone), and they'll definitely come and take me home. How could it possibly be any other way? But at three, that was a long way off.
I was skinny ("Girl! Suck in your tummy!" they teased me on the beach in Gagra, where our family went in August. When I sucked in my stomach, it literally stuck to my back-my mother would get offended and take me away), I ate poorly, for which the teacher once rudely and unexpectedly shoved my nose into my plate while I was dreamily staring at it, my thoughts elsewhere.
The only escape from kindergarten was frequent colds and sore throats. Then I'd calm down and enjoy being sick, then spend a long time recovering and playing in the small room-my grandparents' bedroom-opening and connecting the door leading into it with the door on the adjoining wall-between the bedroom and the living room. It was a wonderful little house-my Kingdom-State, and I was in it-a Princess, a real one, not an imaginary one. I saw this princess in my dreams, too: she sat on a throne in a sparkling green dress, with long white hair and blue eyes-and it was me, though I was looking at her from the outside, from within myself, as I was-with short brown hair and brown eyes.
But that was at home. At kindergarten, everything was different. There was a princess there too. Her name was Lena. Lena Talochkina. She was the ringleader, along with her friend Nadya Kholodova. They also had their own kingdom-state-at the back of the playroom, near the toilet, but I was never allowed in. And I so longed to share my princesshood with them-in truth, not in a dream, and not alone in my little house, which was constantly ravaged by adults entering the rooms and closing the doors.
Yes, they didn't let me in. If the teacher went to sit with the cook in the kitchen, the girls would make dresses for themselves out of sheets, but the real magic, of course, wasn't in the dresses, but in the girls' princess-like bond. There were two, sometimes three, and each knew the others were princesses, too, but no one knew that I was a princess. And Lena was absolutely beautiful.
"Mom! Lena and Nadya don't accept me as princesses..."
"Princesses? And where do they pretend to be princesses?" Mom asked.
"Well, there, behind the lockers, near the toilet..."
Mom laughs:
"Darling! You're a big girl now, you have a music exam soon, and you're suffering because you're not accepted as a toilet princess."
It was true. They started teaching me music very early, before they even accepted me into music school. A teacher from Merzlyakovka came to see me, and here it is, my first exam: I'll play on par with the schoolchildren."
"And I'll spit on this whole committee," I declare the day before the exam, when Mom tries to explain the full significance of the day ahead.
Mom lowers her hands and looks at me for a long moment, making me dread. Then she says:
"How shameful. How ashamed I'll be to have a daughter like that."
"Okay," I agree, "then I'll play with mistakes and without nuances!"
The exam went brilliantly. I wasn't at all afraid, despite the intimidation of the wise adults, and I performed my etude and piece flawlessly and with nuance.
When it was my turn to go on stage, I suddenly heard a woman sitting behind me whisper to another:
"Where's that little girl who studies privately with Irina Mikhailovna?"
At that moment, my teacher was already walking down the aisle and, taking me by the hand, led me to the piano.
"There she is, the princess. With such a bow!" the other woman replied.