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easily imagine was a mask concealing cruelty. It was deeply disturbing. Most of these men were not noble, only sons of merchants and engineers. I was their better, and yet defenseless and vulnerable if they decided to vent their unhappiness in my direction.
    Three other women soon joined us, and introduced themselves — Larisa, Elena, Dasha — before settling next to us. With the bright jackets of the Chinese students and the girls’ dresses standing in such contrast to the prevalent male brown and gray, I felt a part of a small isle of color, and that day my heart chose its allegiance. I turned and smiled at Chiang Tse over my shoulder, and he smiled back — warmly, as a friend would.
    The lecturer — a solid, gray-haired and gray-bearded professor — arrived a few minutes late, and he spent a while longer inspecting the front of the auditorium. “Welcome,” he finally said, “to our new students. This is a class on human biology, and we will start by examining the differences between races and genders. I expect you—” his gaze locked with mine for a moment before drifting to the next female student—“to take notes. If you feel scandalized by the material, you may excuse yourself.” He paused while some tittering laughs flitted about the audience. “I still expect you to know the material.”
    After the classes were over, I lingered behind, waiting for the auditorium to empty out. Olga and the rest of the girls went ahead, as they chatted in an overly familiar ritual of getting to know one another.
    Chiang Tse too split from his companions, and waited for me in the aisle between the empty seats, his profile dark against the golden brilliance of the autumn outside spilling through the open door and tall arched windows.
    “That wasn’t too bad,” I said as soon as I was an arm’s length away from him.
    He shrugged. “I suppose it could be worse.”
    Neither of us acknowledged it explicitly, but I was glad he waited for me — at least I assume it was me for whom he awaited. We walked outside together.
    The nasturtiums had grown transparent in the sun, each petal like a tongue of living flame rising from the flowerbeds, and without saying a word both of us stopped to look. It was strange to walk with him like that, without speaking, but moving in unison, in some magically silent accord.
    The campus had grown quiet in the few minutes between the end of classes and our delayed exit. Only a few figures moved at a distance, with an occasional staccato of hurried footsteps reverberating on the newly laid blocks of pavement. It was all just as well — without knowing why, I was already feeling our walk, innocent as it was, was somehow illicit.
    My feelings were confirmed when we turned around the corner of the lecture hall and came across a group of several young men, their clothes betraying means if not breeding — they all wore long sack jackets with upright collars and wide ascots, and formidably tall hats. The five of them crowded the pavement, and I flustered, stepping right and left, trying to find a way between them. They merely watched, dead-eyed and threatening despite their passive demeanor. Finally, I stepped onto the pavement and cringed as my shoe hit a puddle cunningly hid by a narrow strip of the curb; the water splashed all over the hem of my skirt.
    Chiang Tse ignored the snickering of the hoodlums, and joined me in the puddle, without regard for the dirty water seeping into his shoes and trousers. I shook the water out of my skirts and thought woefully that this particular arrangement was likely to become a tangible metaphor for my stay at the university.
    Chiang Tse was apparently of the same mind. His fingers touched my elbow gingerly as he said, “I enjoy standing in the puddle with you. It is refreshing, don’t you think?”
     

Chapter 3
     
    And thus my education had begun. I quickly got the impression that even if women students were not admitted solely to prove their inferiority, it