Sonechka

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ALMOST BEFORE she was out of the cradle, Sonechka was a bookworm. As Efrem, elder brother and family satirist, never tired of repeating, “All that reading has given Sonechka a butt like a chair and a nose like a pear.”

Unfortunately, his formulation was not too far off the mark. Her nose really was pear-shaped, and lanky broad-shouldered Sonechka, with her skinny legs and flat unmemorable rear end, had only one indisputable physical asset: large womanly breasts, which ballooned at an early age but seemed out of proportion with the rest of her thin body. She slouched round-shouldered and favored shapeless loose-fitting dresses, daunted by her uncalled-for endowment in front and dismayed by her flatness behind.

Her concerned and caring elder sister, herself safely married, remarked charitably on her lovely eyes, but they were run-of-the-mill, rather beady, if anything, and hazelnut brown. To be sure, she had eyelashes of a rare luxuriance that sprouted three rows deep and weighed down the puffy edge of her eyelids, but what was fetching about that? Indeed, they were a hindrance, since Sonechka was also shortsighted and obliged to wear spectacles from an early age.

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