The Anchor. Dating story

Anfisa was always the activist. She was the one who managed to talk our thoroughly apathetic year group into collecting the textbooks at a more convenient hour than our librarians had planned, and to drag most of our fellow students out to a cafe. She talked everyone into joining KVN, the student comedy league, despite the rumours that it was the shortest road to being expelled, and she was the first to sign up for every optional course, club and field trip going. She was a whirlwind, a chaos packed into one single person. In short, as the old advert used to say, she wanted to take everything life had to offer — and she had energy enough for that "everything".

Sergey was not like that. Quiet, calm, measured, he avoided anything too noisy, studied the basics of computer science with genuine interest and seemed to live in a world of his own that nobody could disturb from outside. Lanky and wiry, he watched carefully and carried out every task precisely. There was no chaos in his world, unless some especially gifted lecturer created it. And these two worlds, it seemed, could never cross... until the next field trip came along.

The trip was to a hospital, where yet another honoured professor was proudly presenting the brainchild of his private firm: a computer system designed specially for hospitals, thanks to which patients would only need a magnetic card and every department would immediately know who they were and what procedures they needed. The trouble was that Anfisa's mother worked in that very hospital and had spent the past fortnight cursing the system up hill and down dale. Anfisa had been a very honest girl since childhood, so at some point she could not hold back and told her friend honestly that in practice this system of theirs was "crap on a stick". As so often happens at such moments, the honoured professor had just finished another self-satisfied sentence and decided to hold a pause, expecting the students' admiring reaction. In the complete silence, absolutely everyone heard Anfisa's remark.

Sergey stared in surprise at the fellow student he had barely noticed until then. Only one thought was hammering in his head: "what kind of nutcase is that, and how on earth could she know whether this program is rubbish or not?!" The professor went pale, then red, snorted several times, got his breathing back to normal and, stammering, demanded an explanation from the student. Anfisa explained, listing quite coherently all the criticism of the program she had heard from her mother. The professor went pale again, then purple, took off his jacket and spent the rest of the tour noticeably quieter. Sergey, for his part, noted that the nutcase was perhaps not such a nutcase after all. Her point of view had at least sounded rather logical.

From then on Sergey somehow kept noticing Anfisa in class. She was forever busy with something, arranging things with someone, discussing something, waving her hands, arguing and laughing infectiously. It seemed she could not smile at all, going straight to laughter — and she managed to laugh with her whole body. The laughter began in her eyes, shook her all over and finally burst out. It was mesmerising.

Sooner or later Anfisa of course noticed that she was being watched. She did not even mind: she liked Sergey, shy though he was. Now and then they exchanged a few words during a break or in the canteen. When Sergey acquired some absolutely immovable commitment that kept him from the first class on Thursdays, it was Anfisa who started picking up the handouts for him as well and copying her notes for him.

"At least that way I knew for sure I had him!" Anfisa says many years later, sitting in my living room and telling me their love story for our project. Sergey turns his all-noticing gaze from me to her and gives a crooked grin, but says nothing.

Those were the days before mobile phones. Sergey, who walked a great deal, always called his parents from a phone box at an agreed time. And one day he thought: why not call Anfisa too? That was the beginning of the telephone chapter of their romance. During the day Sergey collected coins so that he would have enough for all his calls, and twice a week, at the very same hour, he rang her, always starting with the very same words: "Well, Sunshine, how are things with you?"

Anfisa spotted the pattern soon enough, and from then on, twice a week at the appointed hour, she hovered around the telephone by hook or by crook so as to be sure to pick up before any of her relatives and to hear that dear voice.

People today have probably begun to forget what it was like without mobile phones, without the chance to write something at any moment, to send a photo, a location and the like. And a single landline telephone for the whole family, with a race to see who picks up first, is something you now see only in old films. And that particular waiting, when you simply cannot call or write first! Oh, it probably gave the relationships of those years a special flavour, hopelessly lost in the age of messengers and pocket internet.

"You see, back then telephones had wires, one per flat..." Sergey tries to explain to me, completely forgetting that, despite my age and a childhood spent constantly on the move, I did catch telephones like that.

There was nothing Sergey and Anfisa did not talk about, on the phone and in person. When the weather improved they went for walks in various parks and along the embankment, and Anfisa was already quietly imagining what it would be like to marry him and live with him — or at least to invite him to her family's dacha. Alas, Sergey was incredibly correct, and for some reason things went no further than conversations and walks.

"In the end I could not stand it," Anfisa says. "We went out for a walk and I told him that either we move on or we stop this altogether! And he chose to move on. To this day I do not understand what was holding him back!"

"But you told me yourself that you had a boyfriend, so I did not push it!"

Anfisa hides her first flash of surprise rather quickly and bites her lip with a sly, slightly guilty look in her eyes. Yes, there was a boyfriend, and he was gone. Where to, history does not say, and whether the boy existed at all you may guess just as well as I can. The fact remains: Sergey showed miracles of patience and restraint, waiting until Anfisa officially gave him the go-ahead to court her.

"Well yes, people of his personality type really are incredibly patient," I cannot resist remarking.

"That is true, I could have waited longer," Sergey agrees calmly.

"And do you know what outraged me back then?" Anfisa almost jumps up. "We went to some event and he hugged me from behind, put his chin on the top of my head and comes out with: 'It is good that you are short, you are not blocking my view!' How can anyone even say a thing like that?!"

"Sergey can, easily!" I smile. "He takes everything practically."

At the word "practically" they both light up, eagerly agreeing with me and telling me that practicality is Sergey's everything. The episode with Anfisa's ex-boyfriend is successfully forgotten.

Some time later Anfisa told Sergey not to plan anything for 21 May of a certain year. That was exactly three years after they had officially started going out.

"Did he at least know why he was not to plan anything?" my husband cannot help asking.

"I think he did," Anfisa shrugs.

"Even if I had not guessed straight away, the preparations and all her wishes for that day were obvious," Sergey smiles.

"You know, sometimes you are such a clever clogs it is frightening!" Anfisa flares up. "You know how he taught me to drive?!"

"That was legendary..." Sergey nods.

"Tell me, do you know what protective objects and auxiliary objects are?" Anfisa cuts in swiftly.

"Er... I do not remember us learning that, but I took my driving test in Cyprus, and there the theory only required you to know the names of the road signs, not even what they do."

"Do not worry, nobody requires it here either, but this pest, this bore, reduced me to tears asking me what they were!"

"I thought it would be useful for you..."

"Yes, and so now I know that the mirror that helps you see who is hurtling round the corner is called an auxiliary object!"

And so they have lived together for many years now. Anfisa was delighted that Sergey regularly went on holiday to her beloved Italy, which she had never visited before she met him, and shocked that in all those years he never learnt the language. She immediately threw herself into learning it, and never really learnt it either. But thanks to her Sergey began to discover Italy from a completely new side. They often squabbled for show, Anfisa pretending she was about to resort to violence and Sergey pretending to be scared. And even now you could see they were simply inseparable.

"Anfisa, what do you value most in Sergey?"

"Reliability. He is my anchor, and he always has been — even when he was resting his chin on the top of my head."