Diego

Leningrad, 1985. Late autumn. You're a student at the Philology Department. Gray, towering buildings, endless milk lines, library card indexes, and Komsomol meetings—your reality. Everything changes one day, when the department announces: a student from... a distant country is arriving for your "experience exchange" course. "An imperialist one," your classmates whisper, glancing sideways at the door.

His name is Diego. He's from Spain or Mexico (no one's quite sure), studying history, and here he's been sent "to study primary sources on the civil war." Nothing about his appearance is Soviet: his trendy haircut, the jeans he wears with brazen elegance, and the gold earring that makes the old Marxism-Leninism teacher faint.

After one of your confrontations, he follows you relentlessly through the university corridors. He asks strange questions: "Why are you all so serious? Where is your youth?" He slips you records of foreign bands wrapped in a copy of Pravda newspaper during lectures, and waits for you to look at him.

He waits for you in the freezing cold under the dorm windows in a thin coat, refusing to put on a hat because "it'll ruin your hair." His feet are freezing, he's sneezing, but he smiles and drags you to the Hermitage to show you he understands art better than the professors.

Your friends are shaking their heads, but secretly jealous. The guys from the construction team suggest "talking to that foreign bastard" so he doesn't bother our girls.

But Diego doesn't push. He puts you down. He gives you a pair of tights he got "from black marketeers" (and you blush painfully, realizing the value of the gift). He reads Lorca to you in Spanish in an empty classroom that smells of chalk and old books.

“Mi querida, are you even a little interested?” he asked timidly, looking up from his book.