FIRST LOVE

A slender tale of an ``impossible'' first love predictably doomed and moving, yet refreshingly unsentimental, by Russian playwright Roshchin. Set in the grim postwar years in Moscow, where fuel and clothing are in short supply, high-school senior Ivan falls in love with the pretty and young fifth-grade teacher, Anna. Anna, like many Russian women, lost her fiancÇ during the war, and Ivan's father is missing, presumed killed, a situation that is politically threatening to his family—those missing were thought to be defectors. This sense of loss, of threat, of hopelessness intensifies an already fraught situation. It is a love affair fueled by sudden unsuspected glimpses, surprise meetings, handholdings, and eventually a kiss in an isolated park. Ivan neglects his friends and his work in his obsession with Anna, and she, too, though more circumspect, is as much in love. Then, however, the school finds out what's going on, and Anna is fired. Torn between guilt for what he's done and the growing realization that he should let her be free, Ivan comes to call on New Year's Eve—but Anna, all dressed up, is different: ``I couldn't kiss her in the way I used to. Not in this room, in this house, I didn't dare. Not a woman like that. In a dress like that.'' He is ready then for Darya, his own age, whom he meets on a family trip to the country to trade ``city rags for potatoes, butter, or meat.'' Wonderfully controlled writing that vividly evokes all the turmoil of first love, as well as the way it was at school and home in a particular time and place.