It Happened To Me | Danna Roche

One of My True Loves

This story is really about one day. A sentence even, which caused one of my metamorphoses. But it is necessary to start several years earlier, when I was 11.

Secondary school in Kazakhstan. Autumn term started with four classes in our year, but soon after the beginning of term one of the teachers left, and her class was split between the remaining three. We had an intake of about 10 extra pupils and, on the day they were brought in, I fell in love.

He was the handsomest and the most charming boy there ever was. His mother was an actress, a beauty with black hair and brown eyes.

Marat was very like her in features, except he had soft, wavy blond hair and grey-blue eyes. He was the only one of that colour in the family. His step-dad was a typical Kazakh with dark complexion, like his little half-brother. Marat once told me that he took his colouring after his real father, whom he never met.

He was the Popular Boy of the year. All the boys wanted to be his friends, and all the girls adored him. I loved him.

I never even thought of hiding it. I asked teachers to be sat at the desk with him, which they gladly did. During tests, I’d work on my own sheets, and then help him with his variant. If we were sat apart, I’d throw the answers inscribed on tiny bits of paper across the classroom when the teacher wasn’t looking.

Marat knew I’d try my best to help him; if he had to answer the lesson at the blackboard, he looked out for my help. He got used to relying on me. My devotion was apparent, quiet and unquestionable, to the degree that there was never even any teasing me among the classmates.

He was friendly with everyone and very entertaining. He told jokes, made funny impersonations, clowned about at every break-time, but in a cool, assured way. He was happy and adorable. He was handsome and funny. He loved acting. One enjoyed simply watching him move. He was quick-witted, always up for a laugh. He was good at sports. Not brilliant academically, simply for the lack of interest. He was interested in the audience’s attention, of which he had plenty.

It wasn’t long before he made his preferences in girls clear. I didn’t expect it to be me, and didn’t change my ways towards him. I still helped unconditionally, and was the same with the girl he liked.

In general I am and always was a quiet sort. A thinker. Which externally might have looked like I was sad, or even sulking. Perhaps I was. Until one day three years later.

It was a school outing, and at the end of it we were allowed a free run in the park. I was as usual on my own, sitting on a bench. For a minute, on the bench opposite, landed Marat with one of his friends, who might have had a soft spot for me. At least a couple of times I saw boys teasing him and pushing him towards me, when I was passing by. But I might have been mistaken. At the moment the two of them were sitting three meters away, facing me and the other boy whispered something in Marat's ear. In response there came an irritated: “To heck with her, with her ever sulky face!”

I cringed as if slapped and longed to disappear on the spot. They could only be talking about me.

A sulky face…

I didn’t want to be a sulky face. I wanted to be happy and fun. And that’s what I became. A bit of a shock for the teachers - always a good example and obedient pupil, now I was skipping lessons with the others, sometimes even initiating the escape, talking back, behaving arrogantly. But I became popular with the pupils.

That didn’t buy me his love, but at least he joined in the things I did with the other classmates, who I now usually led, and he never again said that I was boring. I became a mate.

One year later, after the summer holidays, I returned to the school completely cured. I had a new sweetheart. I had even had a kiss. Marat changed too. He wasn’t a happy lovable boy any more. He became kind of angrier, edgy. Smoked a lot, often pot. The boys, they all did, but he was the one who really meant it.

His love turned to another girl too. By the end of high school, I guess the two of them were more advanced in the practical knowledge of love-making than any of us. Their relationship, I heard, lasted after we all left the school, but he was becoming increasingly difficult.

When we were 20, all of a sudden he turned up on my doorstep with that very friend of his, the whisperer on the bench. Asked me out for a walk. I was surprised and intrigued. Somewhere along the way the other boy got lost. Marat didn’t beat around the bush, and bluntly said that he wanted to make love. After a short reflection I went along with that. I wanted to know how it would feel, upgrading that childish love I had for so long to something of the grown-up realm.

Perhaps I knew that it was going to be a disappointment. Yes, I knew. Strange though, because he still was the handsome boy I used to love. And here I had in bed with me the supple body, the blue eyes, the delicate hands… Yet something was dead. That part of the boy which used to illuminate him, I realised, had been dying for some time now. There was just a tiny bit of the real him left, which was crying out, trying to survive, to put the bits back together, but the voice was hardly audible.

We mechanically made love for a long-enough time to call it a session, our souls searching in vain for the crumbs of our past selves. We parted that day, without saying much. He came again later for the last time, was being persistent and even aggressive, but it was over for me.

Five years later, the girl who was his first school sweetheart phoned me to say that he had died of an overdose of heroin. She spoke through her nose. It was appropriate, given the circumstances, and she was always good at doing the appropriate things. I had nothing to say.

Some weeks later I met one of his close friends on the street. He was drunk and cheerful. “Maratka, huh… clogged it, didn’t he?” he said, grinning.

We were 25 that year.