was in a hurry to leave for his evening rounds at the hospital and dressed
without putting on the light. He soon came yawning into the dining room.
Oska and I were so astonished we plopped down on the same chair. Mamma threw
up her hands. Papa looked at his feet and gasped. One of his trouser legs
barely reached his knee. It hung in sticky, chewed strips. So that was what
the kid had been up to! That very evening it was taken back to its previous
owner.
Father and Mother worked hard from morning till evening, while we, to
tell the honest truth, were the world's greatest loafers. We had been
provided with a classical "perfect childhood". We had a gym of our own, toy
trains, automobiles and steamboats. We had tutors to teach us languages,
drawing and music. We knew Grimm's Fairy Tales by heart, as well as Greek
mythology and the Russian epic poems. However, all this paled as far as I
was concerned after I had read an indifferent-looking book called, I
believe, The World Around Us. It described in simple language how bread was
baked, how vinegar was obtained, how bricks were made, how steel was smelted
and how leather was tanned. The book introduced me to the fascinating world
of things and to the people who made them. The salt on our table had gone
through a grainer, and the cast iron pot through a blast furnace. I
discovered that shoes, saucers, scissors, windowsills, steam engines and tea
had all been invented, extracted, produced and made by the toil of many,
many people and were the result of their knowledge and skill. The story
about a sheepskin coat was no less interesting than the tale of the golden
fleece. I suddenly had a terrible urge to start making useful things myself.
However, my old books and my teachers never provided any information about
the people who made things, though they dwelled ecstatically on the many
royal heroes. We were being brought up as helpless, useless gentlemen, or as
an arrogant caste of people whose lives were devoted to "pure brainwork".
True, we had building blocks with which we were expected to produce
something imaginative. Our pent-up energy sought an outlet. We extracted the
couch springs in order to discover the true construction of things and were
severely punished for our efforts.
We even envied a fellow named Fektistka, the pock-marked tinsmith's
apprentice, who looked down on us for still being in short pants. Though he
was illiterate, he knew how to make real pails, dustpans, tin mugs, basins
and tubs. However, when we saw him at the river one day, Fektistka showed us
the very real black-and-blue marks and bruises on his bony body, the result
of the hard lessons his master's heavy hand taught him, for the tinsmith
beat Fektistka unmercifully. He made the boy work from dawn to dusk, fed him
scraps and pummelled his bony back to teach him the principles of the
tinsmith's trade.
We stopped envying Fektistka after that. Disturbing thoughts filled our
heads.
It seemed that people who were engaged in mental work were wholly at
the mercy of ordinary things, while the skilled workers who made them had
none of their own.
Whenever the toilet would not flush properly or a lock got stuck, or
the piano had to be moved, Annushka was sent downstairs to the basement
apartment where a railroadman and his family lived, to ask "someone" to come
up and help. As soon as "someone" came upstairs the things would obey him:
the piano would roll off to whenever it was supposed to go, the toilet would
cough and begin to work properly, and the lock would let go of the key.
Mamma would say, "He can fix everything," and would then be sure to count
the silver spoons in the sideboard.
If, on the other hand, the people in the basement apartment wanted to
write to a brother who lived in a distant village, they would come to "the
gentleman" upstairs. As the railroadman watched Papa's pen fly across the
sheet of paper, taking down his letter as he dictated it, he would say in
wonder: "Ah, that's book learning for you! How can you compare it to our
trade! That's pure ignorance."
In their heart of hearts the inhabitants of each floor despised the
inhabitants of the other.
"What's so special about that?" Papa said, for his pride was hurt. "So
he fixed the toilet. I'd like to see him perform an operation."
Meanwhile, the people downstairs were saying to themselves: "I'd like
to see you crawling around on all fours under a locomotive's belly. Whisking
a pen around isn't anything to brag about."
The relationship between our two floors could only be compared to the
relationship of the blind man and his leader, a legless man, in the
well-known story. The blind man carried the legless man, who looked ahead
from his perch on the other's shoulders. It was a doubtful alliance bound by
a grudging dependence upon each other.
Still and all, the "undesirable acquaintances" knew how to make things.
Perhaps they would have taught us something, if not for the fact that we
were being brought up as "gentlemen who worked only with their brains", so
that the closest we got to work was making paper boats and model factories.
We consoled ourselves with the thought that on the Big Tooth Continent every
last inhabitant not only knew a lot of fairy tales by heart, but could also
bind them into a book if necessary.
Oska was a great one for confusing things. He had learned to read when
he was much too young and from the time he was four he could remember
anything at all, from the names on shop signs to articles in the medical
encyclopaedia. He remembered everything he read, but this produced chaos in
his head, for he would always mix up the strange new words he had
discovered. He was forever making everyone laugh. He would confuse "pomade"
and "pyramid" and said "monoclers" instead of "chroniclers".
Once he wanted to ask Mamma for a sandwich and instead said, "Mamma,
may I have a Greenwich?"
"Good gracious!" Mamma exclaimed. "I'm sure he must be a child wonder!"
A day later Oska said, "There's a new wonder in the office, too, Mamma! They
bang on it and it types."
What he meant, of course, was the Underwood typewriter. However, there
were things he was very sure about. Mamma once read him a famous story with
a moral about a boy who was too lazy to pick up a horseshoe and then had to
pick up all the plums his father had purposely dropped on the road. "Did you
understand the meaning of the story?" she asked. "Yes. It's about you
shouldn't eat dirty plums off the ground." Oska felt that everyone without
exception was an old friend of his. He would strike up a conversation with
anyone at all on the street, overwhelming the person with the strangest
questions.
I once left him alone for a while in the public gardens. He was
bouncing his ball and it landed in a flower bed. He reached over to get it,
crushed some flowers, then saw the sign that said": "Keep off the grass" and
became frightened.
He then decided to seek outside help. A tall woman dressed in black and
wearing a straw hat was sitting on a bench some distance away. She had her
bad to Oska, but he could see her shoulder-length curls.
"My ball bounced into the 'keep off the flowers'," he said to the lady'
back.
The lady turned, and Oska was terrified to see that she had a heavy
beard. H forgot all about his ball. "Why do you have a beard on, lady?"
"Do I look like a lady?" the lady said in a deep, kindly voice. "I'm a
priest, m son."
"A priest-mason?" Oska said doubtfully. "Then why do you have on a
skirt?' He knew a mason was a bricklayer and imagined it was awfully
inconvenient to slap cement on bricks while wearing a skirt that reached to
the ground.
"This is not a skirt, it's a cassock, as is only proper for a man of
the cloth."
"Wait," Oska said, trying to recall something. "I know. You're the man
which makes cloth. And there's a lady, too. It's music that comes out of the
gramophone She spins cloth of gold."
"Aren't you a joker!" the priest laughed. "But aren't you a Christian?
Who' your father? Your papa? Ah, a doctor. I see. Do you know about God?"
"Yes. God's in the kitchen. Annushka hung him in the corner. His name's
Christ Has Risen."
"God is everywhere," the priest said sternly. "At home, in the fields,
in the gardens. He is everywhere. God can hear us talking here this very
minute. He is with us every minute of the day and night."
Oska looked around, but did not see God and so he decided that the
priest was playing some new kind of game with him. "Is God for real or
make-believe?"
"I'll put it to you this way. How did all this come about?" The priest
pointed to the flowers.
"It wasn't me, honest! That's how they were," Oska said quickly,
thinking the man had noticed the crushed flowers.
"God created all this."
Oska was happy the man thought it was all God's doing.
"And God created you, too."
"No, he didn't! Mamma made me."
"And who made your mamma?"
"Her mamma. Grandma!"
"And what about the very first mamma?"
"She just happened. From out of a monkey," Oska said, for he and I had
already read My First Natural History Book.
"Ugh!" the perspiring priest exclaimed. "That's a godless, lawless
upbringing, a corruption of infants' minds!" And he stomped off, with the
skirt of his habit raising a cloud of dust.
Os ka recounted the conversation to me, word for word. "And he was so
funny looking! He had on a dress and a beard, too!"
Our family was not very religious. Papa said that God could hardly
exist, while Mamma said that God was nature, but, on the other hand, that He
could punish us. As far as we were concerned, God had originally appeared
from our nurse's bedtime stories. He later entered the house through the
kitchen door which was left slightly ajar. God, as we imagined Him,
consisted of votive light, church bells and the delicious smell of the
freshly-baked Easter cakes. At times He appeared as an angry, distant force,
thundering in the sky and keeping an eye on such things as whether it was a
sin to stick your tongue out at your mother or not. There was a picture in
My First Bible Stories of God sitting on a cloud of smoke, creating the
whole world on page 1. However, the very first book we read on natural
history dispersed the smoke. That did not leave God anything to sit on.
But it did leave something called the Kingdom of Heaven. Whenever
beggars stopped at our house and Annushka turned them away she would console
them and herself with the knowledge that all beggars, all poor people and,
apparently, all people who came under the heading of undesirable
acquaintances, would go straight to paradise after their proper funerals,
and there they would promenade in the heavenly glades.
One day Oska and I decided that we had already been transported there.
Marisha, the neighbours' maid, was getting married at Trinity Church, and
Annushka took us along.
It was as beautiful inside the church as in Schwambrania, and the
church smelled good. There were paintings all over the walls of angels and
quite a few of old men, all of whom were surrounded by puffy clouds. There
were many lighted candles, although it was bright daylight outside. As for
beggars, why, there were as many beggars there as in paradise, and all of
them were busy praying.
Then the main priest came out and pretended that he was God. As Oska
was to tell everyone later, he had on a big golden baby's vest, and then he
put on a long bib over his head, and it was all made of gold, too. Then he
stood before a stand, and a sheet was spread on the floor in front of it.
Marisha looked just like a princess, and she and her groom stood side by
side. Then they went into a huddle, like we did when we were choosing sides
for a game. They went over and stood right on the sheet. We couldn't hear
what they and the priest were talking about, but Oska swore that they had
thought of a charade and wanted the priest to guess whether it was "a
trunkful of money or a golden shore". And then the priest said, "Better or
worse?" And Marisha said, "You do?" Then the priest said to the groom:
"Your wetted wife?" and the groom said: "I, too." And Marisha looked as
if she was crying. "Wasn't that silly?" Oska said. "What was she bawling
for? It's all make-believe anyway."
After that he said they played "Who's got the ring?", and when they
were through with the game the priest told them to hold hands. Then they
played ring-around-a-rosie, and the priest led them around the stand. The
choir sang and sang, and they ended by singing: "Hal, yell Loolia! Hal, yell
Loolia!" Then Marisha chose her groom and they kissed.
After our visit to the church we decided that paradise was a sort of
Schwambrania that the grown-ups had invented for poor people.
In our own Schwambrania I decided to establish a clergy of our own (at
first Oska confused clergy with purging), to make things more pompous.
Patriarch Liverpill was the chief prelate of Schwambrania. Instead of
addressing him as "Your Grace", we used "Your Disgrace".
All fairy tales always had happy endings. Scullery maids became
princesses, sleeping beauties awoke, witches perished, and lost orphans
found their parents. There was always a wedding on the last page, with the
groom and bride living happily ever after.
In Schwambrania, a land that was half-real, a happy ending was the
glorious finishing touch of every adventure. Thus it was that we came to the
conclusion that people could certainly live much happier lives if they
followed our example and played make-believe.
Actually, we were to discover that fairy tales were the only place
where everyone lived happily ever after, for a real fairy tale which the
people around us tried to play at ended most unhappily.
Everyone knows the story about the poor maid whose name was Cinderella
and her mean old stepmother who made her work so hard. Everyone knows of the
doves that plucked all the grain from the ashes, and of the Good Fairy who
sent her to the ball, and of the glass slipper Cinderella lost in the
palace.
But I'm sure no one knows that the story of Cinderella is recorded in
the old Deportment Ledger, the dread Black Book of the Pokrovsk Boys High
School.
The school supervisor, nicknamed Seize'em, recorded a new version of
the story on the pages of the ledger. But his entry was very brief and acid.
That is why I will have to tell you the story of Cinderella from Pokrovsk
myself. Her name was Marfusha. She was temporarily our parlour maid, and she
collected stamps.
The stamps came from distant cities and lands. The envelopes they were
pasted on contained letters of greetings, news, requests, thanks, as well as
the latest remedies for alcoholism, anaemia and other illnesses. Foreign
drug firms sent Papa information about their patent medicines.
Marfusha would steam the stamps off the empty envelopes by holding them
over the samovar. There were hundreds of stamps in the brass-bound chest
under her bed, sorted into small cigarette boxes.
My brother and I delivered the envelopes to the kitchen. Philately
strengthened the bonds of friendship between Marfusha and us.
She shared all her secrets with us.
We knew that she was sweet on the driver who worked at Papa's hospital,
and that the clerk at the drugstore was a stuck-up good-for-nothing, because
he teased Marfusha and called her Marfusion.
We also discovered that if a person sneezed you had to say: "Achoo,
match in your nose, a pair of wheels and the axle end to make your nose
itch; wind take your sneeze, guts on gunny sacks, tendons on a wire, belly
on a yoke." Whew!
In the evenings Marfusha would unlock her chest and let us admire her
treasures.
There were complete issues of Peter the Great and other monarchs. The
Alexanders were kept according to their numbers: Alexander I, II, and III.
The cancellation dates covered the emperors' noses. Cancelled eagles fluffed
their feathers on the red, green and blue squares of paper with saw-toothed
edges. Weird lions hid behind the inked bars.
We admired the collection, as Marfusha ran her hands through the tsars
and eagles fondly and day-dreamed aloud:
"I'll sell 'em soon's I get two thousand of 'em. An' I'll buy myself a
fine lady's dress. There'll be ruffles down the front, and a bow behind, and
a dotted veil to go all around. We'll see who'll dare call me Marfusion
then. We'll see...."
Mitya Lamberg had been expelled from the 2nd Saratov High School for
having spoken unfavourably of the Bible class. He was then enrolled in the
Pokrovsk Boys High and came to live with us. Mitya said he was a victim of
reaction and considered it his sacred duty to annoy the authorities.
He said: "I'm avenging, I mean, taking vengeance on the authorities in
every one of its states: liquid, hard and gaseous."
Mitya regarded his parents as the authorities of the liquid, drippy
state. He had to accept the school principal and teachers as hard-state
authorities. He regarded the government, the police and the local Zemstvo
inspector as the gaseous authorities that seeped into everything. The boys
had a special score to settle with the Zemstvo inspector. The senior boys
spoke of two schoolgirls named Zoya Shvydchenko and Emma Uger. When school
was out in the afternoons the inspector' sleigh was often seen on the corner
waiting for Zoya and Emma, and the gaseous figure of the fat inspector
always accompanied one or the other girl at the skating rink. The boys
seethed. They threw snowballs at him from behind a fence. The had drawn a
large black cat on the fence and written "Tomcat" under it.
Our cousin Victor, a young artist, came to spend Christmas with us. He
was long-nosed and full of fun and ideas.
"He's nice, but his nose is way out to here," Marfusha said of him.
There was always a Christmas Eve masked ball at the Merchants'
Assembly, I invitation only. Ladies we knew were busy having their costumes
made. My parents had also received an invitation. That was when Mitya
Lambert got the bright idea of getting even with the Zemstvo inspector
during the ball. Pa] was all for it. Victor offered his services as an
artist. We began to think of the costumes.
Everyone was deep in thought that day. From time to time Mitya would
bread the silence by rushing excitedly into the dining-room, shouting.
"I've got it! It's hilarious!"
"What?" we'd all ask.
"How about dressing as a suicide? And the message on the corpse, I me
on the costume can be: 'The Zemstvo inspector has driven me to my grave'
Ha'ha."
"With the orchestra playing a Chopin march," Mamma quipped. "Indeed,
it's too funny for words."
"I've never laughed so hard in my life," Papa said sadly.
Mitya was embarrassed. He did a handstand and said as his legs swayed
in the air: "I'll stand here like this till some good ideas flow into my
head."
At last Papa had a brainstorm. It really was a wonderful idea for a
costume. Besides, his plan was magnificent in every other respect. Marfusha
was to go to the ball and flirt with the flirtatious inspector.
We trooped off to the kitchen.
"Fair Marfusha, we have come to inquire whether you'd like to go to the
ball at the Merchants' Assembly," Papa said solemnly.
"Goodness gracious! But it's by invitation only. How'111 get in?"
"You'll be the queen of the ball, Marfusha. There's only one drawback.
We'll need all of your stamps. Can you bear to part with them?"
"Just think, Marfusha!" Mitya pleaded. "You'll have the Zemstvo
inspector at your mercy. It's up to you. You'll be the queen of the ball."
"Ah, well," Marfusha said after a long pause. She sighed and bent down
to pull her chest out from under her bed.
For the next two days everyone worked on Marfusha's costume. Piles of
cut-up cardboard and paper were scattered all over "the master's kitchen",
as Marfusha called Papa's study. There were streaks and smudges of paint and
gum-arabic on us all. Tubes of rubber cement spun out sticky thin threads.
Victor strutted about with his nose in the air, and there were drops of
perspiration and india-ink on his face. Papa tried to pull an Argentinian
stamp off his jacket. Mamma was giving Marfusha lessons in deportment and
teaching her a few French phrases. Oska and I had suddenly become Siamese
twins after accidentally sitting down on a long strip of ribbon that had
been covered with rubber cement. The ribbon stuck fast to our pants, glueing
us together.
The evening of the ball Marfusha was powdered and her hair was curled.
Then she was helped into her costume. It was a huge envelope, addressed and
ready to be posted. There were stamps a foot long on the corners of the
envelope. A good hundred of Marfusha's stamps had been used to make up each
of the costume stamps. Victor had worked hard to match the colours and
shapes. There were crazy postmarks going every which way. The address on the
envelope had been done in a fine round hand and read:
THE NORTH POLE
For: His Excellency
and Northern Grace
SIR ENSTVO, INSPECTOR-ZEMSTVO
THE POLAR ZEMSTVO OFFICE
Captain Hatteras Square
You'll know it when you are there.
From: London, the City
You'll find it if you're witty.
After Marfusha was sealed into the large envelope a small envelope was
set or her head for a hat. It, too, had stamps on each of its four corners.
There was a poem on the paper envelope-hat which read:
Never -will you guess my name,
All your guesses are in vain.
No one here can hint or tell,
None will be of any help.
Every Zoya, Emma, Mae
Will be deaf and dumb today.
Marfusha's slippers had also been covered with postage stamps. She
looked very attractive in her envelope-gown.
"You're so beautiful, Marfusha!" Oska said. "You're just as beautiful
as the lady on the shampoo picture, only beautifuller."
A white silk mask with silver edging hid most of Marfusha's face.
Victor was elected to be the honourary postman.
No one in town knew him. Besides, he had stuck on a large black
moustache And donned Mamma's black hat with the ostrich feather. This and
his own Ion nose made him look both sinister and romantic at one and the
same time. H might have been a Spanish grandee, or a Rumanian organ-grinder.
Victor and his precious letter drove up to the Assembly building in
style. Um-pa-pa, um-pa-pa went the bass drum in the brightly-lit ballroom.
Victor handed Marfusha down from the cab and then helped her off with her
coat. He bowed low with reverence.
"Guten tag, comment allez-vous? Bene, bene!" he said and twirled his
frozen moustache.
The porters regarded them respectfully. Bright lights, music and the
shrieks and laughter of a party in full swing enveloped them. Once upstairs,
Marfusha was immediately surrounded and everyone began reading the message
on the envelope. For a moment a burst of laughter drowned out the music.
Then, just as suddenly, it stopped. Through the slits in her mask Marfusha
glimpsed the baffled Zemstvo inspector's face.
He read the message and turned red. However, Marfusha's dainty feet in
their stamp-covered slippers caught his roving eye. "Harrumph," he said. "My
dear Anonymous, may I have this waltz?"
"Mais oui," Anonymous replied. "Parlez-vous francaise?"
The Zemstvo inspector was taken aback, for he did not parlez a word of
French. One of the merchants, Adolph Stark, came to his aid and between them
they tried to make her understand that the inspector wished to dance with
her. The music boomed. The musicians puffed out their cheeks. It seemed that
the very walls were expanding from the booming of the drum. The music wrung
everyone's heart out like a wet hankie. The inspector treated Marfusha to
ice cream. Adolph Stark melted away as quickly as it did. The Zemstvo
inspector kissed her hand. All the other ladies were dying of envy. Guesses
as to her identity and paper streamers filled the air. Confetti showered
down. Marfusha's little plate was soon piled high with ballots, for everyone
was voting hers the best costume.
"Stop the music!" the Zemstvo inspector shouted.
The orchestra, which was blaring away, stopped playing as suddenly as a
gramophone that had run down.
"Ladies and Gentlemen!" the inspector announced. "The 'Letter' has
received the most votes and First Prize. A gold watch! Three cheers for the
lovely Anonymous! And now let us open the envelope!"
There was a babble of voices. Confetti bombs burst overhead. Someone
whispered in Marfusha's ear: "Good for you, fair Marfusha. Good for you!
Keep it up!"
Mitya was standing around with a group of his classmates. They were
laughing. Then he went over to the Zemstvo inspector and said:
"You know, I think I recognize Anonymous. It's the well-known.... Oh, I
shouldn't have said that! I promised not to tell!"
"I beg you to," the Zemstvo inspector whispered. "To hell with your
promise. Tell me who she is! Would you care for some ice cream?"
"No, don't even ask," Mitya said as he polished off a dish of ice
cream.
"Let's open the letter, everybody!" the Zemstvo inspector shouted.
At that very moment a long-nosed stranger with a huge moustache
appeared in the ballroom.
Spouting angry gibberish "Carramba peppermint oleonapht, sept accord
dominant!" he took Marfusha's arm and steered her quickly towards the
stairs.
The Zemstvo inspector rushed after them, with all the colourful
harlequins, dominoes, hussars, flower baskets, Chinese dolls, butterflies,
Gypsies and princesses in tow. However, Victor's impressive nose and
moustache kept them all at bay.
Mitya and his classmates cut the crowd off as if by accident while
Marfusha buttoned up her coat and the sleigh pulled away.
Victor jumped into the moving sleigh, which then carried them swiftly
along the sleeping streets. Marfusha's eyelids drooped. The street lamps,
like some great jellyfish, slowly moved their golden beams. Cinderella
returned to the kitchen.
That night a new gold watch ticked away softly near the empty chest.
Marfusha was sound asleep. She had had a wonderful time and was very
tired. The torn envelope, that shell of the magic evening, lay empty by the
bed. Four pairs of shoes stood guard outside her door.
They would have to be shined the next morning.
The Pokrovsk society column of the Saratov News carried the following
item:
"There was a masquerade at the Merchants' Assembly last Wednesday.
Among the many striking costumes the most popular by far was one called 'The
Anonymous Letter'.
"The costume was ingeniously made in the shape of an envelope with real
cancelled postage stamps on it and a witty address. It was quite justly
awarded the First Prize, a gold watch which was bestowed by Mr. Razudanov,
the Zemstvo inspector.
"Despite the insistence of the other guests, the mysterious damsel
refused to reveal her identity and was carried off by a person unknown to
the gathering. Rumour has it that she is a well-known actress."
Two days later, when the town was still alive with gossip as to her
identity, Papa was called in to see the Zemstvo inspector's wife, who had a
migraine headache. After he had attended to his patient. Papa had a glass of
tea with the inspector.
"My dear doctor, you should have come to the masquerade. You don't know
what you missed. There was a young lady there who, ah, I can't even begin to
describe her. It was a barb in my direction, I must admit, but you should
have seen those dainty feet! And those lovely hands! You can always tell a
lady by her hands and feet, I'm sure she is a foreigner. You know, I can't
get her out of my mind."
"Indeed? I really don't think she's that extraordinary. It was only our
parlourmaid Marfusha."
"Wha-a-at?" The inspector sat bolt upright. His face turned livid, his
jaw sagged and his eyes bulged.
Papa could contain his laughter no longer and roared so, the
inspector's wife had another migrain attack.
CINDERELLA'S SLIPPER
Here ends the story of the last Cinderella. A young page from the
palace did not open the kitchen door and hand Marfusha a glass slipper.
However, a trace of Cinderella's famous slipper appeared on a page of
the school's Deportment Ledger, for the doves that had plucked the gold dust
from the pot of ashes for Marfusha were made to pay for what they had done.
Several days later a rubber galosh of tremendous proportions was found
nailed to the Zemstvo inspector's front porch. That very same morning the
following notices were pasted on various fences:
"I hereby order the entire female population of Pokrovsk to appear
before the Zemstvo inspector in order to try on a slipper, lost by a
mysterious lady who attended the masquerade at the Merchants' Assembly. The
lady whose foot it fits will be immediately appointed Zemstvo inspectoress.
The Zemstvo inspector pledges to be forever under this slipper's heel.
(Signed) Razudanov Zemstvo Inspector"
They said that the next morning, while the galosh was still on the
porch, a peasant woman who had heard of the order tried her luck, but her
foot was too big.
"It's just a bit tight," she said sadly and spat into the galosh.
Mitya and three of his classmates were reprimanded "for unbecoming
conduct in a public place and unbridled mischief, detrimental to the school
and the school system". Their marks for behaviour for the term were lowered.
Such is the epilogue. It is quite unlike the end of the old fairy tale.
I took my school entrance examination that spring. Dmitry Alexeyevich,
my tutor, came to the house early on the fateful morning and made me go over
some rules of grammar. Before leaving for the hospital Papa put his large
hand on my head, tilted my head back and said:
"Well, how's the old bean?"
Mamma accompanied me to school. She was very nervous, and as we walked
along she glanced at me again and again with the greatest concern and kept
saying, "The one thing I want you to remember is not to be nervous! Speak
loudly and clearly, and don't rush. Think carefully before you answer a
question."
Dmitry Alexeyevich walked along on the other side. He was drilling me
in the multiplication table. We reached "9 times 9" and the school yard
simultaneously.
The day was full of grammar. At the noisy market adjectives,
interjections and numerals filled the air. An inanimate locomotive on the
spur line near the granary tried to confuse me by tooting and moving like an
animate object. When we reached the school door Dmitry Alexeyevich became
very solemn, although by looking through his pince-nez I could see his kind
and gentle eyes.
"All right. This is it," he said and then quickly added: "What part of
speech is a school?"
"An inanimate common noun!" "And a schoolboy?" "An animate...."
At that very moment a big, tall boy wearing the school uniform opened
the door. He glanced at my sailor suit with contempt and said glumly:
"You're wrong, sonny. A schoolboy's an inanimate object."
I was stunned and baffled both by the size and by the muttered words of
this great scholar.
A chill of nervous tension scooted along the school corridor. There was
a roll-call. The examiners' table was covered with a heavy green cloth. The
first part of the entrance examination was a dictation.
I thought that everyone in the classroom could hear my heart pounding.
Anxious mothers peeped through the door, searching out the bowed heads
of their sons, hoping they would get the tricky words right.
I did. But I was so nervous I left off the last letter of my own name.
Next came a written test in arithmetic and our oral examinations.
I named all the parts of speech in a test sentence in Russian grammar.
Then the priest came over to me and handed me a book written in church
Slavonic. At this the Russian teacher, a blond, curly-haired, fair-bearded
man spoke up rather hesitantly:
"I don't believe he needs to know that, Father. I mean, being of
another faith and all...." He seemed very embarrassed, as if he had said
something impolite. I, too, blushed.
"All the more reason why he should," the priest replied sternly. "Here,
read from here."
I read and translated the page he had opened. Several days later my
parents were informed that I had been accepted.
We spent the summer in the country. I felt that I had taken along my
new and very impressive title of a schoolboy to the pine and linden forests
of Khvalyn, where I proudly carried it to the top of the famed chalk hills,
the ravines of Teremshan and the maze of wild raspberry patches we
frequented on the sly.
At that time Russia, Europe and the world were just launching a war.
We returned home by boat. New recruits were being transported by the
same boat. Newsboys at the various landings shouted the headlines: "Read the
latest dispatches! Three thousand prisoners of war! Read all about our
trophies!"
Weeping, dishevelled women of all ages crowded near the boat at the
landings They were seeing off their conscripted husbands, fathers, sons and
brothers. The parting whistle drowned out their wailing, the ragged
cheerings of the men, the floundering band. The stem traced a large, foaming
arc in the water, and the whistle sounded again. The sound of it hung
suspended in the air. All was still for a moment, and then there was another
long, anxious blast.
The crystal pendants of the chandelier in the first-class saloon
tinkled in time to the engine's strokes. A piano crashed. The air was heavy
with the smells of the Volga, chowder and perfume. Ladies laughed.
Looking through the saloon window, I could see the steep bank drifting
away. A string of farm wagons lumbered forlornly up the road from the pier.
They had seen their men off.
My new leather school satchel introduced a manly, army smell to our
stateroom. The new term was to begin in two days, and my school uniform
awaited me at home. My school days were beginning. Farewell, my
neighbourhood friends! I practically felt as if I had been conscripted. When
we got home m head was shaved, as was the custom for new boys. Papa said I
looked like scarecrow.
"Just like a soldier-boy," Wirkel, the tailor, said as he adjusted my
uniform.
That was a magnificent time. My grandeur and my first long pants were
universally recognized.
Boys in the street shouted "squab!" at me, for the colour of the school
uniform was dove-grey, and pupils of the Boys School were called squabs. I
was proud to have joined the chosen.
The sun shone on my belly and was reflected in the brass buckle of my
leather belt, stamped with the black letters of the school. The raised,
shiny metal buttons of my dove-grey shirt were like silver lady bugs. On
that very solemn and frightening August day I climbed the steps of the
school in my new shoes (the left was a bit tight).
I was immediately engulfed by the subdued murmur of the corridor. Out
there in the August day, beyond the school doors, were the cottage in the
country, the chalk hills, the summer and freedom.
A little old man wearing a tunic with a medal pinned on his chest was
coming towards me. He appeared grave and angry, as everyone did to me that
day. Recalling my mother's instructions, I clicked my heels and bowed low,
having first removed my cap.
"Well, hello, hello," the old man said. "Hang your cap over there. I'll
bet you're in the first grade, aren't you? Over there, third to the left."
Once again I bowed low and respectfully.
"Go on, that's enough bowing!" he said and chuckled. Then he got a
floor brush from a corner and went off to sweep the corridor.
The boys in my class were all huge and as hairless as I, who must have
been the smallest. Some giants in worn or faded school uniforms were walking
up and down. These were boys who had been left back. One of them crooked his
finger at me.
"C'mon over and sit by me. The seat's empty. Whacher name? Mine's
Fuitin-gaich-Tpruntikovsky-Chimparchifarechesalov-Famin-Trepakovsky-Po-ko-leno-Sinemore-Perekhodyashchensky.
Say it!" I couldn't.
"Never mind. You'll learn. D'you chew oilcake? No? Got anything to
smoke? No? D'you know how the farmer sold his eggs at the market?"
I had never heard that story. The big fellow said I was a ninny. Just
then a lively, big-eared, dishevelled boy who had also been left back came
over to our double desk. First he sized me up. Then he sat down on the desk
and said:
"Are you the doctor's son? You are, aren't you? Doctor's riding on a
swine, with his sonny on behind! Whose button is this?" He had got hold of
one of the shiny buttons on my cuff.
"Mine. Can't you see?"
"Well, if it's yours, you can have it!" he cried, tore it off and
handed it t "And whose button is this?" he said, getting hold of the next
one.
I had learned my lesson and said I did not know.
"You don't know?" he shouted. "That means it's not yours, is it?" At
which he tore off the second button and threw it down. The class burst into
laughter. I would have certainly lost all my buttons if the school inspector
had not entered a moment. Everyone rose as one man. I liked this form of
greeting. The inspector's sly and lively eyes scrutinized us. His bushy
beard, combed and parted down the middle like a swallow's tail, brushed the
various decorations on his tunic. He spoke in a kind and friendly voice.
"Well now, you shiny, brand-new boys! Had your fill of running wild?
Watch your step now, you rascals. 'Tention! Stepan Gavrya! Pull in your
belly! Get it back into your satchel! You're repeating the year, but you
haven't even learn stand straight, you oaf! Want to be put down in the
Deportment Ledger? Look at the mane you've grown! Get a haircut!"
Then the inspector took out a list and called the roll. At this he
intentionally confused the names of the big boys who had been left back.
"Shoefeld!" he called instead of Kufeld. "Varekukhonko!" instead of
Kukhovarenko.
It was finally my turn.
"Here!" I shouted at the top of my voice.
The inspector raised an eyebrow. "Look how small he is, but what a
voice! I can see now why they named you Leo. How old are you?"
I wanted to get in. right with the big boys and so quipped,
"Nine-thirty!"
He replied evenly: "You know, Leo, king of the beasts, you scoundrel,
that I'll make you stay after school, and that will teach you to be witty.
Wait a minute cried, as if I were about to leave. "Wait! Why are there
buttons on your cuff? That's against regulations. There's no need to have
buttons where they're not supposed to be." He came up to me and took my
sleeve, pulled a pair of funny-looking pincers from his pocket and nipped
off the offending buttons.
Now I was dressed strictly according to regulations.
My name was soon entered in the Black Book.
I was lacking several textbooks, and so Mamma, my brother and I set out
for them to the neighboring city of Saratov.
School had started. The first page of my school ledger had been filled
in, the first pages of the textbook read, and a mass of new and important
information gleaned. I felt very learned. The Cleopatra, a small steamer
that was taking us across to Saratov, was passing the familiar shoreline of
Osokorye Island, but I no longer regarded it merely as an island. It was now
"a tract of land completely surrounded by water".
We bought the books I needed in Saratov and then stopped by a
photographer's studio to have our pictures taken. The photographer
immortalized the stiff school cap and cockade and my new shoes. Then we
walked down German Street. My cap crowned my head like a saint's halo. My
shoes creaked like an organ.
We dropped in at Jean's Cafe and Confectionary. Mamma ordered coffee
and pastries called napoleons. It was cool and dim inside, but I could see
myself in my new shoes and uniform in the large mirror. At the table
opposite was a thin, stiff-backed man. He was talking to a woman at his side
and looking over at our table. His eyes were as dead and dull as a fish's on
the kitchen table. I stared hard at him. The napoleon got stuck in my
throat, just as Napoleon had in the snows of Russia. It was our principal,
Juvenal Stomolitsky.
I jumped up. My lips were sticky from the pastry and from fear. I
bowed. I sat down. I got up again. The principal nodded and turned away.
Soon we rose to leave. At the door I bowed again. The day was ruined.
The napoleon rumbled uneasily in my stomach.
Our class supervisor entered the classroom during the long recess the
following day. He asked for my ledger. This is what he wrote on the page
devoted to "Conduct and Deportment":
Pupils of secondary schools are forbidden to patronize cafes, even when
accompanied by their parents.
Kuzmenko, another boy who had been left back, read the entry and said:
"Good for you! You've started out right. Congratulations! Keep up the good
work."
To tell the truth, I had been terrified, but his words cheered me up. I
shrugged and said: "I stuck my neck out that time. What the hell!"
From then on we called confectionaries conductionaries.
The Pokrovsk Boys High School was just like every other boys school. It
had cold tile floors that were kept clean by being swept with damp sawdust.
There was a long corridor and class-rooms leading off it. The corridor was
filled by the short incoming tides of recess and drained again by the
outgoing tides of the lessons.
There was a school bell. Its pealing had a double meaning. One, at the
end of a lesson, was exciting and carefree. It pealed: "Ring! Fun and
da-ring!"
The other sounded when recess was over. It announced the beginning of
another lesson. It was a mean old grouch: "Br-rats! I'll wr-ring your
necks!"
Lessons, lessons and lessons. There was the class ledger. The
Deportment Ledger. "Leave the classroom!" "Go stand in the corner!"
There were prayers and chapel. Royal days. Tunics. The gold-stitched
silence of the services. Standing at attention. Boys fainting from the
closeness and from the strain of standing still for two hours in a row.
The dove-grey overcoats. The dove-grey boredom. I counted the days by
the pages of my ledger. It had a column for the schedule. A column for
assignments. A column for marks. Each week ended with the signature of our
class supervisor. Sunday alone, the shortest day in the week, did not have a
space of its own in my ledger. Every other day was strictly regimented. 18.
Pupils of secondary schools are forbidden to go outdoors after 7 p.m. from
November 1st to March 1st. 20. Pupils are not allowed to attend the theatre,
cinematograph or other places of amusement without special permission from
the school inspector in each given instance. Pupils are strictly forbidden
to frequent confectionaries, cafes, restaurants, public gardens, etc.
Note: The above places of amusement in Pokrovsk include the Public
Gardens Market Square and the railroad stations.
These rules were printed on our school cards, and every breach of
conduct that flaunted the sacred rules meant a demerit. They say all roads
lead to Rome. At the Boys School all roads led to the Deportment Ledger.
Every boy's name was entered in it at one time or another. There were simple
without putting on the light. He soon came yawning into the dining room.
Oska and I were so astonished we plopped down on the same chair. Mamma threw
up her hands. Papa looked at his feet and gasped. One of his trouser legs
barely reached his knee. It hung in sticky, chewed strips. So that was what
the kid had been up to! That very evening it was taken back to its previous
owner.
Father and Mother worked hard from morning till evening, while we, to
tell the honest truth, were the world's greatest loafers. We had been
provided with a classical "perfect childhood". We had a gym of our own, toy
trains, automobiles and steamboats. We had tutors to teach us languages,
drawing and music. We knew Grimm's Fairy Tales by heart, as well as Greek
mythology and the Russian epic poems. However, all this paled as far as I
was concerned after I had read an indifferent-looking book called, I
believe, The World Around Us. It described in simple language how bread was
baked, how vinegar was obtained, how bricks were made, how steel was smelted
and how leather was tanned. The book introduced me to the fascinating world
of things and to the people who made them. The salt on our table had gone
through a grainer, and the cast iron pot through a blast furnace. I
discovered that shoes, saucers, scissors, windowsills, steam engines and tea
had all been invented, extracted, produced and made by the toil of many,
many people and were the result of their knowledge and skill. The story
about a sheepskin coat was no less interesting than the tale of the golden
fleece. I suddenly had a terrible urge to start making useful things myself.
However, my old books and my teachers never provided any information about
the people who made things, though they dwelled ecstatically on the many
royal heroes. We were being brought up as helpless, useless gentlemen, or as
an arrogant caste of people whose lives were devoted to "pure brainwork".
True, we had building blocks with which we were expected to produce
something imaginative. Our pent-up energy sought an outlet. We extracted the
couch springs in order to discover the true construction of things and were
severely punished for our efforts.
We even envied a fellow named Fektistka, the pock-marked tinsmith's
apprentice, who looked down on us for still being in short pants. Though he
was illiterate, he knew how to make real pails, dustpans, tin mugs, basins
and tubs. However, when we saw him at the river one day, Fektistka showed us
the very real black-and-blue marks and bruises on his bony body, the result
of the hard lessons his master's heavy hand taught him, for the tinsmith
beat Fektistka unmercifully. He made the boy work from dawn to dusk, fed him
scraps and pummelled his bony back to teach him the principles of the
tinsmith's trade.
We stopped envying Fektistka after that. Disturbing thoughts filled our
heads.
It seemed that people who were engaged in mental work were wholly at
the mercy of ordinary things, while the skilled workers who made them had
none of their own.
Whenever the toilet would not flush properly or a lock got stuck, or
the piano had to be moved, Annushka was sent downstairs to the basement
apartment where a railroadman and his family lived, to ask "someone" to come
up and help. As soon as "someone" came upstairs the things would obey him:
the piano would roll off to whenever it was supposed to go, the toilet would
cough and begin to work properly, and the lock would let go of the key.
Mamma would say, "He can fix everything," and would then be sure to count
the silver spoons in the sideboard.
If, on the other hand, the people in the basement apartment wanted to
write to a brother who lived in a distant village, they would come to "the
gentleman" upstairs. As the railroadman watched Papa's pen fly across the
sheet of paper, taking down his letter as he dictated it, he would say in
wonder: "Ah, that's book learning for you! How can you compare it to our
trade! That's pure ignorance."
In their heart of hearts the inhabitants of each floor despised the
inhabitants of the other.
"What's so special about that?" Papa said, for his pride was hurt. "So
he fixed the toilet. I'd like to see him perform an operation."
Meanwhile, the people downstairs were saying to themselves: "I'd like
to see you crawling around on all fours under a locomotive's belly. Whisking
a pen around isn't anything to brag about."
The relationship between our two floors could only be compared to the
relationship of the blind man and his leader, a legless man, in the
well-known story. The blind man carried the legless man, who looked ahead
from his perch on the other's shoulders. It was a doubtful alliance bound by
a grudging dependence upon each other.
Still and all, the "undesirable acquaintances" knew how to make things.
Perhaps they would have taught us something, if not for the fact that we
were being brought up as "gentlemen who worked only with their brains", so
that the closest we got to work was making paper boats and model factories.
We consoled ourselves with the thought that on the Big Tooth Continent every
last inhabitant not only knew a lot of fairy tales by heart, but could also
bind them into a book if necessary.
Oska was a great one for confusing things. He had learned to read when
he was much too young and from the time he was four he could remember
anything at all, from the names on shop signs to articles in the medical
encyclopaedia. He remembered everything he read, but this produced chaos in
his head, for he would always mix up the strange new words he had
discovered. He was forever making everyone laugh. He would confuse "pomade"
and "pyramid" and said "monoclers" instead of "chroniclers".
Once he wanted to ask Mamma for a sandwich and instead said, "Mamma,
may I have a Greenwich?"
"Good gracious!" Mamma exclaimed. "I'm sure he must be a child wonder!"
A day later Oska said, "There's a new wonder in the office, too, Mamma! They
bang on it and it types."
What he meant, of course, was the Underwood typewriter. However, there
were things he was very sure about. Mamma once read him a famous story with
a moral about a boy who was too lazy to pick up a horseshoe and then had to
pick up all the plums his father had purposely dropped on the road. "Did you
understand the meaning of the story?" she asked. "Yes. It's about you
shouldn't eat dirty plums off the ground." Oska felt that everyone without
exception was an old friend of his. He would strike up a conversation with
anyone at all on the street, overwhelming the person with the strangest
questions.
I once left him alone for a while in the public gardens. He was
bouncing his ball and it landed in a flower bed. He reached over to get it,
crushed some flowers, then saw the sign that said": "Keep off the grass" and
became frightened.
He then decided to seek outside help. A tall woman dressed in black and
wearing a straw hat was sitting on a bench some distance away. She had her
bad to Oska, but he could see her shoulder-length curls.
"My ball bounced into the 'keep off the flowers'," he said to the lady'
back.
The lady turned, and Oska was terrified to see that she had a heavy
beard. H forgot all about his ball. "Why do you have a beard on, lady?"
"Do I look like a lady?" the lady said in a deep, kindly voice. "I'm a
priest, m son."
"A priest-mason?" Oska said doubtfully. "Then why do you have on a
skirt?' He knew a mason was a bricklayer and imagined it was awfully
inconvenient to slap cement on bricks while wearing a skirt that reached to
the ground.
"This is not a skirt, it's a cassock, as is only proper for a man of
the cloth."
"Wait," Oska said, trying to recall something. "I know. You're the man
which makes cloth. And there's a lady, too. It's music that comes out of the
gramophone She spins cloth of gold."
"Aren't you a joker!" the priest laughed. "But aren't you a Christian?
Who' your father? Your papa? Ah, a doctor. I see. Do you know about God?"
"Yes. God's in the kitchen. Annushka hung him in the corner. His name's
Christ Has Risen."
"God is everywhere," the priest said sternly. "At home, in the fields,
in the gardens. He is everywhere. God can hear us talking here this very
minute. He is with us every minute of the day and night."
Oska looked around, but did not see God and so he decided that the
priest was playing some new kind of game with him. "Is God for real or
make-believe?"
"I'll put it to you this way. How did all this come about?" The priest
pointed to the flowers.
"It wasn't me, honest! That's how they were," Oska said quickly,
thinking the man had noticed the crushed flowers.
"God created all this."
Oska was happy the man thought it was all God's doing.
"And God created you, too."
"No, he didn't! Mamma made me."
"And who made your mamma?"
"Her mamma. Grandma!"
"And what about the very first mamma?"
"She just happened. From out of a monkey," Oska said, for he and I had
already read My First Natural History Book.
"Ugh!" the perspiring priest exclaimed. "That's a godless, lawless
upbringing, a corruption of infants' minds!" And he stomped off, with the
skirt of his habit raising a cloud of dust.
Os ka recounted the conversation to me, word for word. "And he was so
funny looking! He had on a dress and a beard, too!"
Our family was not very religious. Papa said that God could hardly
exist, while Mamma said that God was nature, but, on the other hand, that He
could punish us. As far as we were concerned, God had originally appeared
from our nurse's bedtime stories. He later entered the house through the
kitchen door which was left slightly ajar. God, as we imagined Him,
consisted of votive light, church bells and the delicious smell of the
freshly-baked Easter cakes. At times He appeared as an angry, distant force,
thundering in the sky and keeping an eye on such things as whether it was a
sin to stick your tongue out at your mother or not. There was a picture in
My First Bible Stories of God sitting on a cloud of smoke, creating the
whole world on page 1. However, the very first book we read on natural
history dispersed the smoke. That did not leave God anything to sit on.
But it did leave something called the Kingdom of Heaven. Whenever
beggars stopped at our house and Annushka turned them away she would console
them and herself with the knowledge that all beggars, all poor people and,
apparently, all people who came under the heading of undesirable
acquaintances, would go straight to paradise after their proper funerals,
and there they would promenade in the heavenly glades.
One day Oska and I decided that we had already been transported there.
Marisha, the neighbours' maid, was getting married at Trinity Church, and
Annushka took us along.
It was as beautiful inside the church as in Schwambrania, and the
church smelled good. There were paintings all over the walls of angels and
quite a few of old men, all of whom were surrounded by puffy clouds. There
were many lighted candles, although it was bright daylight outside. As for
beggars, why, there were as many beggars there as in paradise, and all of
them were busy praying.
Then the main priest came out and pretended that he was God. As Oska
was to tell everyone later, he had on a big golden baby's vest, and then he
put on a long bib over his head, and it was all made of gold, too. Then he
stood before a stand, and a sheet was spread on the floor in front of it.
Marisha looked just like a princess, and she and her groom stood side by
side. Then they went into a huddle, like we did when we were choosing sides
for a game. They went over and stood right on the sheet. We couldn't hear
what they and the priest were talking about, but Oska swore that they had
thought of a charade and wanted the priest to guess whether it was "a
trunkful of money or a golden shore". And then the priest said, "Better or
worse?" And Marisha said, "You do?" Then the priest said to the groom:
"Your wetted wife?" and the groom said: "I, too." And Marisha looked as
if she was crying. "Wasn't that silly?" Oska said. "What was she bawling
for? It's all make-believe anyway."
After that he said they played "Who's got the ring?", and when they
were through with the game the priest told them to hold hands. Then they
played ring-around-a-rosie, and the priest led them around the stand. The
choir sang and sang, and they ended by singing: "Hal, yell Loolia! Hal, yell
Loolia!" Then Marisha chose her groom and they kissed.
After our visit to the church we decided that paradise was a sort of
Schwambrania that the grown-ups had invented for poor people.
In our own Schwambrania I decided to establish a clergy of our own (at
first Oska confused clergy with purging), to make things more pompous.
Patriarch Liverpill was the chief prelate of Schwambrania. Instead of
addressing him as "Your Grace", we used "Your Disgrace".
All fairy tales always had happy endings. Scullery maids became
princesses, sleeping beauties awoke, witches perished, and lost orphans
found their parents. There was always a wedding on the last page, with the
groom and bride living happily ever after.
In Schwambrania, a land that was half-real, a happy ending was the
glorious finishing touch of every adventure. Thus it was that we came to the
conclusion that people could certainly live much happier lives if they
followed our example and played make-believe.
Actually, we were to discover that fairy tales were the only place
where everyone lived happily ever after, for a real fairy tale which the
people around us tried to play at ended most unhappily.
Everyone knows the story about the poor maid whose name was Cinderella
and her mean old stepmother who made her work so hard. Everyone knows of the
doves that plucked all the grain from the ashes, and of the Good Fairy who
sent her to the ball, and of the glass slipper Cinderella lost in the
palace.
But I'm sure no one knows that the story of Cinderella is recorded in
the old Deportment Ledger, the dread Black Book of the Pokrovsk Boys High
School.
The school supervisor, nicknamed Seize'em, recorded a new version of
the story on the pages of the ledger. But his entry was very brief and acid.
That is why I will have to tell you the story of Cinderella from Pokrovsk
myself. Her name was Marfusha. She was temporarily our parlour maid, and she
collected stamps.
The stamps came from distant cities and lands. The envelopes they were
pasted on contained letters of greetings, news, requests, thanks, as well as
the latest remedies for alcoholism, anaemia and other illnesses. Foreign
drug firms sent Papa information about their patent medicines.
Marfusha would steam the stamps off the empty envelopes by holding them
over the samovar. There were hundreds of stamps in the brass-bound chest
under her bed, sorted into small cigarette boxes.
My brother and I delivered the envelopes to the kitchen. Philately
strengthened the bonds of friendship between Marfusha and us.
She shared all her secrets with us.
We knew that she was sweet on the driver who worked at Papa's hospital,
and that the clerk at the drugstore was a stuck-up good-for-nothing, because
he teased Marfusha and called her Marfusion.
We also discovered that if a person sneezed you had to say: "Achoo,
match in your nose, a pair of wheels and the axle end to make your nose
itch; wind take your sneeze, guts on gunny sacks, tendons on a wire, belly
on a yoke." Whew!
In the evenings Marfusha would unlock her chest and let us admire her
treasures.
There were complete issues of Peter the Great and other monarchs. The
Alexanders were kept according to their numbers: Alexander I, II, and III.
The cancellation dates covered the emperors' noses. Cancelled eagles fluffed
their feathers on the red, green and blue squares of paper with saw-toothed
edges. Weird lions hid behind the inked bars.
We admired the collection, as Marfusha ran her hands through the tsars
and eagles fondly and day-dreamed aloud:
"I'll sell 'em soon's I get two thousand of 'em. An' I'll buy myself a
fine lady's dress. There'll be ruffles down the front, and a bow behind, and
a dotted veil to go all around. We'll see who'll dare call me Marfusion
then. We'll see...."
Mitya Lamberg had been expelled from the 2nd Saratov High School for
having spoken unfavourably of the Bible class. He was then enrolled in the
Pokrovsk Boys High and came to live with us. Mitya said he was a victim of
reaction and considered it his sacred duty to annoy the authorities.
He said: "I'm avenging, I mean, taking vengeance on the authorities in
every one of its states: liquid, hard and gaseous."
Mitya regarded his parents as the authorities of the liquid, drippy
state. He had to accept the school principal and teachers as hard-state
authorities. He regarded the government, the police and the local Zemstvo
inspector as the gaseous authorities that seeped into everything. The boys
had a special score to settle with the Zemstvo inspector. The senior boys
spoke of two schoolgirls named Zoya Shvydchenko and Emma Uger. When school
was out in the afternoons the inspector' sleigh was often seen on the corner
waiting for Zoya and Emma, and the gaseous figure of the fat inspector
always accompanied one or the other girl at the skating rink. The boys
seethed. They threw snowballs at him from behind a fence. The had drawn a
large black cat on the fence and written "Tomcat" under it.
Our cousin Victor, a young artist, came to spend Christmas with us. He
was long-nosed and full of fun and ideas.
"He's nice, but his nose is way out to here," Marfusha said of him.
There was always a Christmas Eve masked ball at the Merchants'
Assembly, I invitation only. Ladies we knew were busy having their costumes
made. My parents had also received an invitation. That was when Mitya
Lambert got the bright idea of getting even with the Zemstvo inspector
during the ball. Pa] was all for it. Victor offered his services as an
artist. We began to think of the costumes.
Everyone was deep in thought that day. From time to time Mitya would
bread the silence by rushing excitedly into the dining-room, shouting.
"I've got it! It's hilarious!"
"What?" we'd all ask.
"How about dressing as a suicide? And the message on the corpse, I me
on the costume can be: 'The Zemstvo inspector has driven me to my grave'
Ha'ha."
"With the orchestra playing a Chopin march," Mamma quipped. "Indeed,
it's too funny for words."
"I've never laughed so hard in my life," Papa said sadly.
Mitya was embarrassed. He did a handstand and said as his legs swayed
in the air: "I'll stand here like this till some good ideas flow into my
head."
At last Papa had a brainstorm. It really was a wonderful idea for a
costume. Besides, his plan was magnificent in every other respect. Marfusha
was to go to the ball and flirt with the flirtatious inspector.
We trooped off to the kitchen.
"Fair Marfusha, we have come to inquire whether you'd like to go to the
ball at the Merchants' Assembly," Papa said solemnly.
"Goodness gracious! But it's by invitation only. How'111 get in?"
"You'll be the queen of the ball, Marfusha. There's only one drawback.
We'll need all of your stamps. Can you bear to part with them?"
"Just think, Marfusha!" Mitya pleaded. "You'll have the Zemstvo
inspector at your mercy. It's up to you. You'll be the queen of the ball."
"Ah, well," Marfusha said after a long pause. She sighed and bent down
to pull her chest out from under her bed.
For the next two days everyone worked on Marfusha's costume. Piles of
cut-up cardboard and paper were scattered all over "the master's kitchen",
as Marfusha called Papa's study. There were streaks and smudges of paint and
gum-arabic on us all. Tubes of rubber cement spun out sticky thin threads.
Victor strutted about with his nose in the air, and there were drops of
perspiration and india-ink on his face. Papa tried to pull an Argentinian
stamp off his jacket. Mamma was giving Marfusha lessons in deportment and
teaching her a few French phrases. Oska and I had suddenly become Siamese
twins after accidentally sitting down on a long strip of ribbon that had
been covered with rubber cement. The ribbon stuck fast to our pants, glueing
us together.
The evening of the ball Marfusha was powdered and her hair was curled.
Then she was helped into her costume. It was a huge envelope, addressed and
ready to be posted. There were stamps a foot long on the corners of the
envelope. A good hundred of Marfusha's stamps had been used to make up each
of the costume stamps. Victor had worked hard to match the colours and
shapes. There were crazy postmarks going every which way. The address on the
envelope had been done in a fine round hand and read:
THE NORTH POLE
For: His Excellency
and Northern Grace
SIR ENSTVO, INSPECTOR-ZEMSTVO
THE POLAR ZEMSTVO OFFICE
Captain Hatteras Square
You'll know it when you are there.
From: London, the City
You'll find it if you're witty.
After Marfusha was sealed into the large envelope a small envelope was
set or her head for a hat. It, too, had stamps on each of its four corners.
There was a poem on the paper envelope-hat which read:
Never -will you guess my name,
All your guesses are in vain.
No one here can hint or tell,
None will be of any help.
Every Zoya, Emma, Mae
Will be deaf and dumb today.
Marfusha's slippers had also been covered with postage stamps. She
looked very attractive in her envelope-gown.
"You're so beautiful, Marfusha!" Oska said. "You're just as beautiful
as the lady on the shampoo picture, only beautifuller."
A white silk mask with silver edging hid most of Marfusha's face.
Victor was elected to be the honourary postman.
No one in town knew him. Besides, he had stuck on a large black
moustache And donned Mamma's black hat with the ostrich feather. This and
his own Ion nose made him look both sinister and romantic at one and the
same time. H might have been a Spanish grandee, or a Rumanian organ-grinder.
Victor and his precious letter drove up to the Assembly building in
style. Um-pa-pa, um-pa-pa went the bass drum in the brightly-lit ballroom.
Victor handed Marfusha down from the cab and then helped her off with her
coat. He bowed low with reverence.
"Guten tag, comment allez-vous? Bene, bene!" he said and twirled his
frozen moustache.
The porters regarded them respectfully. Bright lights, music and the
shrieks and laughter of a party in full swing enveloped them. Once upstairs,
Marfusha was immediately surrounded and everyone began reading the message
on the envelope. For a moment a burst of laughter drowned out the music.
Then, just as suddenly, it stopped. Through the slits in her mask Marfusha
glimpsed the baffled Zemstvo inspector's face.
He read the message and turned red. However, Marfusha's dainty feet in
their stamp-covered slippers caught his roving eye. "Harrumph," he said. "My
dear Anonymous, may I have this waltz?"
"Mais oui," Anonymous replied. "Parlez-vous francaise?"
The Zemstvo inspector was taken aback, for he did not parlez a word of
French. One of the merchants, Adolph Stark, came to his aid and between them
they tried to make her understand that the inspector wished to dance with
her. The music boomed. The musicians puffed out their cheeks. It seemed that
the very walls were expanding from the booming of the drum. The music wrung
everyone's heart out like a wet hankie. The inspector treated Marfusha to
ice cream. Adolph Stark melted away as quickly as it did. The Zemstvo
inspector kissed her hand. All the other ladies were dying of envy. Guesses
as to her identity and paper streamers filled the air. Confetti showered
down. Marfusha's little plate was soon piled high with ballots, for everyone
was voting hers the best costume.
"Stop the music!" the Zemstvo inspector shouted.
The orchestra, which was blaring away, stopped playing as suddenly as a
gramophone that had run down.
"Ladies and Gentlemen!" the inspector announced. "The 'Letter' has
received the most votes and First Prize. A gold watch! Three cheers for the
lovely Anonymous! And now let us open the envelope!"
There was a babble of voices. Confetti bombs burst overhead. Someone
whispered in Marfusha's ear: "Good for you, fair Marfusha. Good for you!
Keep it up!"
Mitya was standing around with a group of his classmates. They were
laughing. Then he went over to the Zemstvo inspector and said:
"You know, I think I recognize Anonymous. It's the well-known.... Oh, I
shouldn't have said that! I promised not to tell!"
"I beg you to," the Zemstvo inspector whispered. "To hell with your
promise. Tell me who she is! Would you care for some ice cream?"
"No, don't even ask," Mitya said as he polished off a dish of ice
cream.
"Let's open the letter, everybody!" the Zemstvo inspector shouted.
At that very moment a long-nosed stranger with a huge moustache
appeared in the ballroom.
Spouting angry gibberish "Carramba peppermint oleonapht, sept accord
dominant!" he took Marfusha's arm and steered her quickly towards the
stairs.
The Zemstvo inspector rushed after them, with all the colourful
harlequins, dominoes, hussars, flower baskets, Chinese dolls, butterflies,
Gypsies and princesses in tow. However, Victor's impressive nose and
moustache kept them all at bay.
Mitya and his classmates cut the crowd off as if by accident while
Marfusha buttoned up her coat and the sleigh pulled away.
Victor jumped into the moving sleigh, which then carried them swiftly
along the sleeping streets. Marfusha's eyelids drooped. The street lamps,
like some great jellyfish, slowly moved their golden beams. Cinderella
returned to the kitchen.
That night a new gold watch ticked away softly near the empty chest.
Marfusha was sound asleep. She had had a wonderful time and was very
tired. The torn envelope, that shell of the magic evening, lay empty by the
bed. Four pairs of shoes stood guard outside her door.
They would have to be shined the next morning.
The Pokrovsk society column of the Saratov News carried the following
item:
"There was a masquerade at the Merchants' Assembly last Wednesday.
Among the many striking costumes the most popular by far was one called 'The
Anonymous Letter'.
"The costume was ingeniously made in the shape of an envelope with real
cancelled postage stamps on it and a witty address. It was quite justly
awarded the First Prize, a gold watch which was bestowed by Mr. Razudanov,
the Zemstvo inspector.
"Despite the insistence of the other guests, the mysterious damsel
refused to reveal her identity and was carried off by a person unknown to
the gathering. Rumour has it that she is a well-known actress."
Two days later, when the town was still alive with gossip as to her
identity, Papa was called in to see the Zemstvo inspector's wife, who had a
migraine headache. After he had attended to his patient. Papa had a glass of
tea with the inspector.
"My dear doctor, you should have come to the masquerade. You don't know
what you missed. There was a young lady there who, ah, I can't even begin to
describe her. It was a barb in my direction, I must admit, but you should
have seen those dainty feet! And those lovely hands! You can always tell a
lady by her hands and feet, I'm sure she is a foreigner. You know, I can't
get her out of my mind."
"Indeed? I really don't think she's that extraordinary. It was only our
parlourmaid Marfusha."
"Wha-a-at?" The inspector sat bolt upright. His face turned livid, his
jaw sagged and his eyes bulged.
Papa could contain his laughter no longer and roared so, the
inspector's wife had another migrain attack.
CINDERELLA'S SLIPPER
Here ends the story of the last Cinderella. A young page from the
palace did not open the kitchen door and hand Marfusha a glass slipper.
However, a trace of Cinderella's famous slipper appeared on a page of
the school's Deportment Ledger, for the doves that had plucked the gold dust
from the pot of ashes for Marfusha were made to pay for what they had done.
Several days later a rubber galosh of tremendous proportions was found
nailed to the Zemstvo inspector's front porch. That very same morning the
following notices were pasted on various fences:
"I hereby order the entire female population of Pokrovsk to appear
before the Zemstvo inspector in order to try on a slipper, lost by a
mysterious lady who attended the masquerade at the Merchants' Assembly. The
lady whose foot it fits will be immediately appointed Zemstvo inspectoress.
The Zemstvo inspector pledges to be forever under this slipper's heel.
(Signed) Razudanov Zemstvo Inspector"
They said that the next morning, while the galosh was still on the
porch, a peasant woman who had heard of the order tried her luck, but her
foot was too big.
"It's just a bit tight," she said sadly and spat into the galosh.
Mitya and three of his classmates were reprimanded "for unbecoming
conduct in a public place and unbridled mischief, detrimental to the school
and the school system". Their marks for behaviour for the term were lowered.
Such is the epilogue. It is quite unlike the end of the old fairy tale.
I took my school entrance examination that spring. Dmitry Alexeyevich,
my tutor, came to the house early on the fateful morning and made me go over
some rules of grammar. Before leaving for the hospital Papa put his large
hand on my head, tilted my head back and said:
"Well, how's the old bean?"
Mamma accompanied me to school. She was very nervous, and as we walked
along she glanced at me again and again with the greatest concern and kept
saying, "The one thing I want you to remember is not to be nervous! Speak
loudly and clearly, and don't rush. Think carefully before you answer a
question."
Dmitry Alexeyevich walked along on the other side. He was drilling me
in the multiplication table. We reached "9 times 9" and the school yard
simultaneously.
The day was full of grammar. At the noisy market adjectives,
interjections and numerals filled the air. An inanimate locomotive on the
spur line near the granary tried to confuse me by tooting and moving like an
animate object. When we reached the school door Dmitry Alexeyevich became
very solemn, although by looking through his pince-nez I could see his kind
and gentle eyes.
"All right. This is it," he said and then quickly added: "What part of
speech is a school?"
"An inanimate common noun!" "And a schoolboy?" "An animate...."
At that very moment a big, tall boy wearing the school uniform opened
the door. He glanced at my sailor suit with contempt and said glumly:
"You're wrong, sonny. A schoolboy's an inanimate object."
I was stunned and baffled both by the size and by the muttered words of
this great scholar.
A chill of nervous tension scooted along the school corridor. There was
a roll-call. The examiners' table was covered with a heavy green cloth. The
first part of the entrance examination was a dictation.
I thought that everyone in the classroom could hear my heart pounding.
Anxious mothers peeped through the door, searching out the bowed heads
of their sons, hoping they would get the tricky words right.
I did. But I was so nervous I left off the last letter of my own name.
Next came a written test in arithmetic and our oral examinations.
I named all the parts of speech in a test sentence in Russian grammar.
Then the priest came over to me and handed me a book written in church
Slavonic. At this the Russian teacher, a blond, curly-haired, fair-bearded
man spoke up rather hesitantly:
"I don't believe he needs to know that, Father. I mean, being of
another faith and all...." He seemed very embarrassed, as if he had said
something impolite. I, too, blushed.
"All the more reason why he should," the priest replied sternly. "Here,
read from here."
I read and translated the page he had opened. Several days later my
parents were informed that I had been accepted.
We spent the summer in the country. I felt that I had taken along my
new and very impressive title of a schoolboy to the pine and linden forests
of Khvalyn, where I proudly carried it to the top of the famed chalk hills,
the ravines of Teremshan and the maze of wild raspberry patches we
frequented on the sly.
At that time Russia, Europe and the world were just launching a war.
We returned home by boat. New recruits were being transported by the
same boat. Newsboys at the various landings shouted the headlines: "Read the
latest dispatches! Three thousand prisoners of war! Read all about our
trophies!"
Weeping, dishevelled women of all ages crowded near the boat at the
landings They were seeing off their conscripted husbands, fathers, sons and
brothers. The parting whistle drowned out their wailing, the ragged
cheerings of the men, the floundering band. The stem traced a large, foaming
arc in the water, and the whistle sounded again. The sound of it hung
suspended in the air. All was still for a moment, and then there was another
long, anxious blast.
The crystal pendants of the chandelier in the first-class saloon
tinkled in time to the engine's strokes. A piano crashed. The air was heavy
with the smells of the Volga, chowder and perfume. Ladies laughed.
Looking through the saloon window, I could see the steep bank drifting
away. A string of farm wagons lumbered forlornly up the road from the pier.
They had seen their men off.
My new leather school satchel introduced a manly, army smell to our
stateroom. The new term was to begin in two days, and my school uniform
awaited me at home. My school days were beginning. Farewell, my
neighbourhood friends! I practically felt as if I had been conscripted. When
we got home m head was shaved, as was the custom for new boys. Papa said I
looked like scarecrow.
"Just like a soldier-boy," Wirkel, the tailor, said as he adjusted my
uniform.
That was a magnificent time. My grandeur and my first long pants were
universally recognized.
Boys in the street shouted "squab!" at me, for the colour of the school
uniform was dove-grey, and pupils of the Boys School were called squabs. I
was proud to have joined the chosen.
The sun shone on my belly and was reflected in the brass buckle of my
leather belt, stamped with the black letters of the school. The raised,
shiny metal buttons of my dove-grey shirt were like silver lady bugs. On
that very solemn and frightening August day I climbed the steps of the
school in my new shoes (the left was a bit tight).
I was immediately engulfed by the subdued murmur of the corridor. Out
there in the August day, beyond the school doors, were the cottage in the
country, the chalk hills, the summer and freedom.
A little old man wearing a tunic with a medal pinned on his chest was
coming towards me. He appeared grave and angry, as everyone did to me that
day. Recalling my mother's instructions, I clicked my heels and bowed low,
having first removed my cap.
"Well, hello, hello," the old man said. "Hang your cap over there. I'll
bet you're in the first grade, aren't you? Over there, third to the left."
Once again I bowed low and respectfully.
"Go on, that's enough bowing!" he said and chuckled. Then he got a
floor brush from a corner and went off to sweep the corridor.
The boys in my class were all huge and as hairless as I, who must have
been the smallest. Some giants in worn or faded school uniforms were walking
up and down. These were boys who had been left back. One of them crooked his
finger at me.
"C'mon over and sit by me. The seat's empty. Whacher name? Mine's
Fuitin-gaich-Tpruntikovsky-Chimparchifarechesalov-Famin-Trepakovsky-Po-ko-leno-Sinemore-Perekhodyashchensky.
Say it!" I couldn't.
"Never mind. You'll learn. D'you chew oilcake? No? Got anything to
smoke? No? D'you know how the farmer sold his eggs at the market?"
I had never heard that story. The big fellow said I was a ninny. Just
then a lively, big-eared, dishevelled boy who had also been left back came
over to our double desk. First he sized me up. Then he sat down on the desk
and said:
"Are you the doctor's son? You are, aren't you? Doctor's riding on a
swine, with his sonny on behind! Whose button is this?" He had got hold of
one of the shiny buttons on my cuff.
"Mine. Can't you see?"
"Well, if it's yours, you can have it!" he cried, tore it off and
handed it t "And whose button is this?" he said, getting hold of the next
one.
I had learned my lesson and said I did not know.
"You don't know?" he shouted. "That means it's not yours, is it?" At
which he tore off the second button and threw it down. The class burst into
laughter. I would have certainly lost all my buttons if the school inspector
had not entered a moment. Everyone rose as one man. I liked this form of
greeting. The inspector's sly and lively eyes scrutinized us. His bushy
beard, combed and parted down the middle like a swallow's tail, brushed the
various decorations on his tunic. He spoke in a kind and friendly voice.
"Well now, you shiny, brand-new boys! Had your fill of running wild?
Watch your step now, you rascals. 'Tention! Stepan Gavrya! Pull in your
belly! Get it back into your satchel! You're repeating the year, but you
haven't even learn stand straight, you oaf! Want to be put down in the
Deportment Ledger? Look at the mane you've grown! Get a haircut!"
Then the inspector took out a list and called the roll. At this he
intentionally confused the names of the big boys who had been left back.
"Shoefeld!" he called instead of Kufeld. "Varekukhonko!" instead of
Kukhovarenko.
It was finally my turn.
"Here!" I shouted at the top of my voice.
The inspector raised an eyebrow. "Look how small he is, but what a
voice! I can see now why they named you Leo. How old are you?"
I wanted to get in. right with the big boys and so quipped,
"Nine-thirty!"
He replied evenly: "You know, Leo, king of the beasts, you scoundrel,
that I'll make you stay after school, and that will teach you to be witty.
Wait a minute cried, as if I were about to leave. "Wait! Why are there
buttons on your cuff? That's against regulations. There's no need to have
buttons where they're not supposed to be." He came up to me and took my
sleeve, pulled a pair of funny-looking pincers from his pocket and nipped
off the offending buttons.
Now I was dressed strictly according to regulations.
My name was soon entered in the Black Book.
I was lacking several textbooks, and so Mamma, my brother and I set out
for them to the neighboring city of Saratov.
School had started. The first page of my school ledger had been filled
in, the first pages of the textbook read, and a mass of new and important
information gleaned. I felt very learned. The Cleopatra, a small steamer
that was taking us across to Saratov, was passing the familiar shoreline of
Osokorye Island, but I no longer regarded it merely as an island. It was now
"a tract of land completely surrounded by water".
We bought the books I needed in Saratov and then stopped by a
photographer's studio to have our pictures taken. The photographer
immortalized the stiff school cap and cockade and my new shoes. Then we
walked down German Street. My cap crowned my head like a saint's halo. My
shoes creaked like an organ.
We dropped in at Jean's Cafe and Confectionary. Mamma ordered coffee
and pastries called napoleons. It was cool and dim inside, but I could see
myself in my new shoes and uniform in the large mirror. At the table
opposite was a thin, stiff-backed man. He was talking to a woman at his side
and looking over at our table. His eyes were as dead and dull as a fish's on
the kitchen table. I stared hard at him. The napoleon got stuck in my
throat, just as Napoleon had in the snows of Russia. It was our principal,
Juvenal Stomolitsky.
I jumped up. My lips were sticky from the pastry and from fear. I
bowed. I sat down. I got up again. The principal nodded and turned away.
Soon we rose to leave. At the door I bowed again. The day was ruined.
The napoleon rumbled uneasily in my stomach.
Our class supervisor entered the classroom during the long recess the
following day. He asked for my ledger. This is what he wrote on the page
devoted to "Conduct and Deportment":
Pupils of secondary schools are forbidden to patronize cafes, even when
accompanied by their parents.
Kuzmenko, another boy who had been left back, read the entry and said:
"Good for you! You've started out right. Congratulations! Keep up the good
work."
To tell the truth, I had been terrified, but his words cheered me up. I
shrugged and said: "I stuck my neck out that time. What the hell!"
From then on we called confectionaries conductionaries.
The Pokrovsk Boys High School was just like every other boys school. It
had cold tile floors that were kept clean by being swept with damp sawdust.
There was a long corridor and class-rooms leading off it. The corridor was
filled by the short incoming tides of recess and drained again by the
outgoing tides of the lessons.
There was a school bell. Its pealing had a double meaning. One, at the
end of a lesson, was exciting and carefree. It pealed: "Ring! Fun and
da-ring!"
The other sounded when recess was over. It announced the beginning of
another lesson. It was a mean old grouch: "Br-rats! I'll wr-ring your
necks!"
Lessons, lessons and lessons. There was the class ledger. The
Deportment Ledger. "Leave the classroom!" "Go stand in the corner!"
There were prayers and chapel. Royal days. Tunics. The gold-stitched
silence of the services. Standing at attention. Boys fainting from the
closeness and from the strain of standing still for two hours in a row.
The dove-grey overcoats. The dove-grey boredom. I counted the days by
the pages of my ledger. It had a column for the schedule. A column for
assignments. A column for marks. Each week ended with the signature of our
class supervisor. Sunday alone, the shortest day in the week, did not have a
space of its own in my ledger. Every other day was strictly regimented. 18.
Pupils of secondary schools are forbidden to go outdoors after 7 p.m. from
November 1st to March 1st. 20. Pupils are not allowed to attend the theatre,
cinematograph or other places of amusement without special permission from
the school inspector in each given instance. Pupils are strictly forbidden
to frequent confectionaries, cafes, restaurants, public gardens, etc.
Note: The above places of amusement in Pokrovsk include the Public
Gardens Market Square and the railroad stations.
These rules were printed on our school cards, and every breach of
conduct that flaunted the sacred rules meant a demerit. They say all roads
lead to Rome. At the Boys School all roads led to the Deportment Ledger.
Every boy's name was entered in it at one time or another. There were simple