I am Snowing [antikvár]

1 Me A culpa. Mea maxima culpa! But why so dignified? I'm an idiot—an idiot squared! Except, except . . . could I really have anticipated this? When I began tremulously to explain to my Gabina over her fifteenth-birthday cake that she would soon start to bleed (I, the untutored child of timid Catholics and unfortunately the most mature in my class, had been at one point despairingly sure that I had sustained severe internal injuries), she informed me almost indignantly with a stolid bullish expression that she wasn't even a virgin any more. This young guy stood over six feet tall and looked like the type who could satisfy a choosy woman. I had occasionally seen him in our company cafeteria (you couldn't overlook him) and with time I felt a pleasant flutter that meant he was well aware of me. It had certainly never occurred to me even in my dreams to get mixed up with a man a generation younger than me. When I spotted him on the riverboat (our firm had put the money allocated under the old regime for parade placards and banners toward this first-of-May excursion), out of nowhere I suddenly imagined how pleasant it would be if he embraced me. Immediately I was appalled at myself (a bit early for a first young buck!), so I turned my back to him and threw myself determinedly into a conversation with my colleagues from the classifieds. After two glasses of wine they were no less tedious, but more intrusive; my breasts again became the target of their tortured compliments. (For work I always laced them up tight, like a Prussian cavalry officer; for the boat ride I'd put on a relatively snug sweater.) I was momentarily diverted by a crack at the expense of our lead 3