The Smile of Svetlana

Tatyana's Letter to Onegin

  ``I write to you -- no more confession
  is needed, nothing's left to tell.
  I know it's now in your discretion
  with scorn to make my world a hell.

  ``But, if you've kept some faint impression
  of pity for my wretched state,
  you'll never leave me to my fate.
  At first I thought it out of season
  to speak; believe me: of my shame
  you'd not so much as know the name,
  if I'd possessed the slightest reason
  to hope that even once a week
  I might have seen you, heard you speak
  on visits to us, and in greeting
  I might have said a word, and then
  thought, day and night, and thought again
  about one thing, till our next meeting.
  But you're not sociable, they say:
  you find the country godforsaken;
  though we... don't shine in any way,
  our joy in you is warmly taken.

     Why did you visit us, but why?
    Lost in our backwoods habitation
    I'd not have known you, therefore I
    would have been spared this laceration.
    In time, who knows, the agitation
    of inexperience would have passed,
    I would have found a friend, another,
    and in the role of virtuous mother
    and faithful wife I'd have been cast.



From "Eugene Onegin" - ch XXXI -
A.S. Pushkin

Back in University, I always had that habit to arrive in the morning, smiling.

Not that I was particularly happy to see the good ole brain factory every day God blessed me with, and certainly not some of the teachers around, but I would have better cut my tongue off than admit I was as stressed, as fed up, in two words, as insecure than my fellow students.

Not that I was particularly above material things and troubles. I was just a lambda student, but with a particularity. I absolutely refused to let my life die away under sudies's trivia. There was more to life than this, and our few free times were sacred to me. It meant opening a window to let fresh air in, and welcome dreams and fantasy. And read a lot, too. And sometimes write. It meant forgetting about being desperately alone, with no boyfriend to welcome me at night, It meant forgetting about the lack of "ambitions" that suit greedy students so well.

The more I was feeling out of place, the more I put on a happy face. The more people thought I was maybe a bit strange, to take everything that easy, I sure was someone special, maybe not from Earth.

They wondered how come I could smile that way, and started to envy my smile. Or taking me for a fool, depending on their moods, or the grin I was offering them.

How wrong they were. No magic was involved I swaer, nor any funny pills or meds. I was your regular glasses girl. Nothing to do with that blonde one, going out with the cutest guy in a place (actually a jerk that greeted me only when I was wearing a tailored skirt, you get the picture). I was so plain and so average, that some teacher deliberately ignored my mother, when she came to assist to the graduation, obviously saluting mothers whose kids were in the highest ranking graduees of our promotion... Until my Russian teacher came along. She took my mother by the arm, as if she had know her since childhood telling her how pleased she was to meet her. How worried she was about me and my health sometimes, and how hard I was working (this, at least for her classes, was absolutely true..)

I think of it all, I will never forget the smile my teacher had. I can still remember her cheerful tone, and her light, oh so light accent.

Svetlana Sergueevna Vogeleer was more than a teacher to me. She was my worst enemy too. A woman of steel handling people with velvet fingers, always rightgeous, never mean. We all feared to dissapoint her, more than getting bad marks. I remember one day, she asked me to take over the whole Interpretation lesson on my own, explaining to Russian guests what was the legal system in Belgian like. I was not the best student ever, but she had chosen me. And although I was scared at a point of trembling after the class, my smile had never faltered. Instead, it had become my ultimate weapon when I stuttered on Russian words, apologising in a cheeful grin. "Proctite, Svetlana Sergueevna, Mojete li vy menya pomojet?"

Somehow she is the one who learned me how to smile that way. Even if back then, I couldn't really understand it. She is the one who learned me to never give up, and always honour a work. To face responsibilities, no matter how hard it might be. I remember my freshman year, when, knowing that I had failed all along, I had attended the Oral Russian examination nonetheless, putting all my heart and soul into the poems we were to learn. At my delight, I picked up the hardest one, the Pushkin one:

"I kvam pichu: tchevo je voljet? Chto ia magy yechyo ckazat?...."
(I write to you, no more confession's needed, nothing's left to tell....)

Those are some of the most famous lines by Pushkin on his "Evgueni Onegin", and I am certain both her and I were enjoying the double meaning in the words. I was the best, and and I could see in her eyes she was sincerely proud of me. "You really are Tatiana, aren't you?" She told me, her everlasting smile beaming at me.

I could feel that, beyond the class material a teacher has taught a student well, she could sense so many more emotions: the respect, the happiness to work together, a somewhat feeling of understanding that Russian "Dycha" (or the soul) she was talking about so well. Not forgetting the sense of humour and self derision (I actually failed the freshman year. There was, indeed, nothing more to say....^_~)

I could see it all in her only smile. I could see it all in the sparkles of her eyes.


Ten years have passed since that poem day. The smiles stays in my mind forever. And when life gets really hard on me, I wish I could remember that smile forever.