Irina’s story

“My Goals in Life” was our next writing assignment, and nothing ambitious was implied. Next day we had to read the texts out loud, one by one. We didn’t have all day for that. The range of accents in this class, like in any language class in Berlin, always made it hard for me to discern the actual words and follow the train of thought of my classmates, even when this train was composed of just a couple of carriages. Besides, there was always noise: people coughing, paper rustling, an ambulance passing by in the street… Luckily for me, most classmates’ goals weren’t such a big mystery. C1 is the next-to-final level of foreign language proficiency, in demand only for those aiming for higher education. So, this was the “under-thirties” club — future bachelor’s or master’s students at some Humboldt University. Or Ludwig Maximilian University. Or Friedrich Schiller University. Consequently, their goals were predictable. Pass the exam. Get accepted. Graduate. Find a job… So things were following a familiar path — until it was the turn of the lady sitting behind me to read her text. If it weren’t for her, I would have proudly held the title of the oldest student in the class. “Dear reader,” she began to read, her Russian accent thick. “This story will be written in the third person, because it is a sad story.” And what followed was “Irina’s story,” recounted in the simplest of words, devoid of the subordinate clauses and complex introductory phrases which a C1 student was, in theory, supposed to use to pass prüfung successfully. How Irina lived in Russia before. How Irina worked as a teacher and a children’s choreographer. And how wonderful Irina’s life was. And now Irina is in Berlin, learning German. And all that is in the past: her work as a teacher, as a choreographer… her entire life, which was so wonderful. Her voice started to tremble. She stopped. I didn’t turn around but I could hear she was crying. Everyone froze. Finally, Irina pulled herself together and managed to read her text to the end. Her goals in life remained a mystery to everyone. But when she put her notebook down, the entire class started to applaud. No one else had received applause. The student next to her offered a pack of paper tissues. “It’s alright, it’s alright… everything will work out,” the teacher said. And, after a long pause, he called on the next student. The next student was a young American with long hair, dressed in rustling white clothes. His goal: to become a fashion designer. He already had his own brand, and an Instagram page where he was selling hoodies. The teacher’s eyes lit up. “How many followers?”