Our bus arrived at the end of the afternoon, as the sun was getting weaker but hadn’t yet begun to set. The camp lay just outside a village, surrounded by low wooden fences and lined by a little river on one side. The bus stopped in front of the main building, a wide concrete bungalow with a clock on its facade and a set of flags (white and red, hammer and sickle) hanging limply from its front. A short, stout man in a uniform watched us with small, attentive eyes as we climbed out of the bus, slightly dizzy, shaken from the ride.

“I’m Comrade Leader Belka,” he boomed, commanding us to line up in front of him. There was something imperious in his voice and something both weary and angry about his manner. It was the same anger and weariness I’d observed in my schoolteachers, those who struggled to believe in the system yet punished others for doing the same. “Welcome to the work education camp,” Belka called out, walking up and down the line we’d formed. “I congratulate you for having signed on for this important service.” Our faces were impassive, but the irony of his words couldn’t have escaped anyone. The camp was obligatory—no one would be allowed to graduate without participating. He continued his speech, extolling the importance of agricultural work, the role of the working classes in our socialist struggle, and the duty, even for “intellectuals” (he grimaced at the word), to contribute to the efforts of the fatherland. Obedience was key, he said.

It was the same spiel we’d heard all our lives, with more or less conviction. I turned my head and looked along the line to find Karolina, but instead my eyes fell on you. I had never seen you before—not consciously, anyway. Yet my mind felt strangely relieved, as if it had recognized someone. You were as tall as me, broad-shouldered, and your eyes were light, contrasting with your dark hair. You were looking at Belka, concentrating, and I took a moment to take you in, unguarded, forgetting myself. As if by instinct, like an animal suddenly aware of being watched, you turned your head toward me, and before I could avert my gaze, our eyes met, locked for an infinite, interminable instant in mid-air. A flash of heat traveled from my stomach to my cheeks, my thoughts jumbled like a ball of string. I turned my head as quickly as I could. For the rest of the speech I looked straight at the comrade leader, my mind scrambling for composure, stumbling over itself.