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I fill in the application form and post it. The term ends, there’s still no reply, and everything is gradually forgotten.
But then a month later I bump into Rachmanova in the corridor. We call her Old Lady behind her back; she’s from blue blood. She was supposed to teach us Soviet music a while ago, but she just read one initial lecture, gave us a reading list and that was the last we saw of her. We would show up to her classes, wait hours for her, but she never appeared. It went on like that for six weeks, then someone snapped and went to the office of the head of studies to complain about her. Rachmanova came to the next class and caused a real old Pearl Harbour: she had taken such pains with us, cared about us so much, and what did we do, we ingratiates? Had the nerve to complain a
