Articles

Asya was an extraordinarily ethereal woman; at the sight of her, words like fragility, modesty, refinement, femininity, weakness and ideal came to mind. Her porcelain skin, framed by soft fair hair, set off pale eyes fixed on some beautiful world where everyone was a friend and there was neither pain nor hurt nor evil. The mere contact of such a creature with our sinful world seemed an unimaginable sacrilege, let alone the fact that here she had to work and to survive, and that we were supposed

Eva had never really believed in fate. She was more at home with facts, algorithms and long columns of figures, in which — to her managers' astonishment — she would pick out mistakes and inaccuracies at the very first quick glance. She knew her star sign, of course, and knew that some of her traits even matched it, but scanning the paper every morning for warnings and words of guidance addressed to her sign, the way her mother did — that was going too far.

Like all Cholerics, Lida pretty much despised weakness, and the chief weakness of all was admitting to it. The phrase "we are only human" made her seethe inwardly, because as she understood it, it meant an unconditional surrender to the circumstances of life. She demanded the same of her pupils, though in a milder form: "to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield".

Oleg was an absolutely magical man. Lanky, full of energy, vivid, with astonishingly laughing eyes. That laughter seemed to be brewing away inside him and spilling out in generous helpings the moment he opened his mouth and dropped a remark. No, it was not straightforward laughter: it disguised itself as criticism or as admiration, it put on the cloak of alarm or the veil of delight — but however Oleg waved his arms about, however he raised his eyebrows, however he rolled his eyes, Tanya always