demerits: boys were left without lunch; there were reprimands and
expulsions. It was a terrible book! A secret book. A Dove Book.
There is a legend about a Dove Book which fell from the skies many
centuries ago and which supposedly contained all the secrets of Creation. It
was a wonderful book, something like a ledger for the planets. None of the
wise men could read it all and understand it, for its secret meanings were
too deep for them. We boy regarded the Deportment Ledger as just such a Dove
Book, for the authorities kept careful watch over its secrets. None of us
ever dreamed of reading the entries in it.
Unfledged doves are called squabs. We were called squabs, because of
our dove grey school uniforms. Our school's Deportment Ledger, its Dove Book
had the lives of three hundred squabs recorded in it. Three hundred
unfledged doves trapped in a cage.
The town of Pokrovsk was once a settlement. It was a rich settlement, a
grain-selling centre of Russia. Huge, five-storey granaries with
turret-roofs lined the bank of the Volga here. Tens of millions of bushels
of wheat were stored in this granary row. Clouds of pigeons blotted out the
sun. The grain was loaded on barges. Small tugboats guided the barges out of
the bay, just as a boy-guide leads a blind man.
Ukrainian tillers lived in Pokrovsk, as well as rich farmers, German
colonists, boatmen, stevedores, workers of the lumber mills, the bone-meal
factory and a small number of Russian peasants. In summer they became
bronzed by the steppe sun, they drove camels, gathered on the water meadow
on holidays which usually ended in endless fights along the river bank. They
raced their boats against Saratov boats. In winter they drank heavily, had
weddings and danced on Breshka Street. They ate sunflower seeds. The rich
farmers met in council. Then, if ever the question of a new school, a paved
road or some similar undertaking was raised, they would shout it down with
their usual "resolution" of: "No need for it!"
Slush and mud were ankle-deep on the streets. Such was the state of
affairs in Pokrovsk, just seven kilometres from the city of Saratov.
And then the overgrown sons of the wild and carefree steppes, these
huge, bold savages from the farms, were forcibly driven into the classrooms
of Pokrovsk Boys School, had their hair cropped close, their names entered
in the Ledger and their bodies stuffed into the school uniform.
It is difficult, it is all but impossible to describe the things that
went on in that school. There were constant fights. Boys fought singly, and
one class fought another. Bottoms of long school coats were ripped off.
Knuckles were cracked against enemy jaws. Among the weapons used were ice
skates, school satchels, lead weights. Skulls were cracked. The seniors (Oh,
those ruling classes!) would take two small boys by the legs and batter each
other with our swinging heads. True, there were some first-year boys so big
they drove the fear of God into the meanest seniors.
I was rarely hit, since I was so little they were afraid they might
kill me. Still and all, I was accidentally knocked unconscious two or three
times.
They had their own special game of soccer that was played on empty lots
with old telegraph poles or stone posts that were lying on the ground. The
object of the game was to roll a pole across the lot into the other team's
field, using their feet alone. As often as not, a pole would roll over some
fallen players, mangling and crushing them.
During classes they cribbed and prompted each other outrageously and
with great imagination, inventing the most complex and outlandish devices.
Desks, floorboards, blackboards and lecterns were all rigged. There was a
special delivery service and a telegraph. During written tests they even
managed to get the answers from the senior classes.
Some boys, to spite the teachers, would hunch over and thus be sent to
stand in a corner "to straighten up", where they persisted to cause
themselves great discomfort by standing hunchbacked, although at home these
were strong boys with excellent postures.
The boys chewed oilcakes in class, played cards, fenced with knives,
traded lea weights, and read the adventures of Nat Pinkerton. There were
some lessons during which half of the pupils were being punished and were
lined up along the walls, while another quarter was out smoking in the
washroom or else banished from the classroom. But a few heads bobbed above
the desks.
The boys ignited phosphorus in order to produce a mighty stench. That
meant the room had to be aired, which left no time for the lesson.
A squeegee would be tacked under the teacher's lectern, and when the
string was jerked the toy would squeak. The teacher would rush up and down,
but still squeaked. He would search the desks, and still it squeaked.
"Stand up, all of you! And stay there!"
Every boy would be on his feet, but still, the toy Went on squeaking.
The inspector would be summoned. Still, it went on squeaking. The
pupils would be made to sit at their desks for two hours and would miss
their lunch.
Still, it went on squeaking-
The boys stole things at the market, they fought the town boys on every
corner they beat up policemen. They poured every sort of mess into the
inkwells of those teachers whom they disliked. During lessons they would
slowly vibrate a split penpoint that had been stuck into a desk, and the
screeching sound it produce would set your teeth on edge.
Juvenal Stomolitsky, the principal, was tall, thin, unbending and
careful! pressed. His eyes were round, heavy-lidded and leaden. That was why
he had bee nicknamed Fish-Eye.
Fish-Eye was a protege of Kasso, the Minister of Education who was
loathed by all. Fish-Eye valued drilling, absolute quiet and discipline
above all else. As classes ended each day he would take up his station
outside the cloakroom. We were to pass by him in review after we had put on
our caps and coats. We had to stop as w approached, remove our caps by the
visor (and only by the visor!) and bow low.
Once, when I was in a hurry to get home, I grasped the hatband instead
of the visor when I doffed my cap.
"Stop!" the principal commanded. "Go back and return again. You must
learn to greet me properly."
He never shouted. His voice was as dull and colourless as an empty tin
can. When angry he would say: "Abominable boy!" This was his most terrible
reprimand and always meant a poor mark for deportment and other
unpleasantneses in the future.
No matter whether he appeared in a classroom or in the Teacher's Room,
conversation would immediately die down. Everyone would rise. A tense
silence followed. The atmosphere would become so stifling you felt you
wanted to open a window and shout.
Fish-Eye liked to enter a classroom unexpectedly. The pupils would jump
to their feet with a great rattling of desk tops. The teacher would become
red in the face, stumble in the middle of a word and look just like a
schoolboy who was caught smoking.
The principal would sit down by the lectern, making sure that each boy
called on would bow to him first and then to the teacher. Once the district
inspector, a little grey-haired old man with a large star on his chest,
visited the school. The principal escorted him to one of the classrooms and
motioned with his eyes to a boy who was being called upon to recite to bow
first to the district inspector, then to him and, finally, to the teacher.
The following notations, thanks to old Fish-Eye, were to be found in
the Black Book:
Andrei Glukhin was seen by the principal wearing his coat thrown over
his shoulders. He is to be left after school for four hours. Stepan Gavrya
... was seen in town by the principal wearing a shirt with an embroidered
collar. Six hours after school. Nikolai Avdotenko was absent from school
without permission on October 13th and 14th. To be left in class for twelve
hours (on two successive holidays).
(Nikolai Avdotenko's aunt died on October 13th. He had been living with
her family.)
The district inspector was pleased with the way the principal ran the
school. "I'm very pleathed, thir," he lisped. "Thith ith an exthemplary
thchool."
THE TEACHERS' ROOM
The Teachers' Room was at the end of the corridor, to the right of the
principal's office. Continents and oceans were rolled up and stuck away
behind a bookcase in a corner. The huge round eyeglasses of the earth's
hemisphere gazed down from a wall. The glass door of the bookcase reflected
His Majesty, by the Grace of God, a blue ribbon, a carefully-groomed beard,
an arrow-straight part and rows of decorations, the Tsar of all Russia. (The
actual portrait of the tsar hung opposite).' The Black Book was kept in the
bookcase. On top of the bookcase a lop-sided squirrel offered its shedding
tail as a moustache for a goddess. The goddess was old and made of plaster
of Paris. Her name was Venus. Whenever the bookcase door was opened the
goddess swayed gently and seemed about to sneeze. And the bookcase was
opened whenever someone reached for the Deportment Ledger. Caesar Karpovich,
the school supervisor, was the keeper of the key to the bookcase. We had
nicknamed him Seize'em and he was the butt of all our pranks. He had a glass
eye, something he tried very hard to conceal. However, the moment he turned
it on us, we made faces at him and thumbed our noses.
New boys who had not yet discovered he had a glass eye admired the
courage of the pranksters. Seize'em was the author of at least half of all
the entries in the Deportment Ledger, for he was responsible for the boys'
behaviour, both in school and out.
He would ambush us on Breshka Street, which was strictly off-limits.
Seize'em stalked the streets after seven p.m. in search of boys still
outdoors. He would come calling to see if an absent boy was really sick. He
would lie in wait for boys outside the Dawn Cinema. He spent his days and
nights busily tracking down culprits to provide fuel for the Ledger. Still
and all, the boys managed to trick him brazenly. Once, for instance, he
waylaid a group of sixth-grade boys inside the Dawn Cinema. They locked
themselves in one of the boxes. Seize'em went for a policeman, and together
they tried to force the door of the box. As the film flickered on the screen
the boys tore down the drapes of their box, knotted them and slide down the
drape-rope into the orchestra. First to appear on the screen were a pair of
dangling legs. Then the boys fell into the laps of the audience. There was a
general commotion, during which they escaped through an emergency exit.
Wisps of cigarette smoke drifted about in the Teachers' Room, snaking
around the globes and stuffed birds. There was a table beside the bookcase
where the class ledgers were kept, witnesses of the good, bad or indifferent
progress of every boy in the school. The school inspector usually leafed
through them during recess.
The boys almost liked Inspector Nikolai Romashov. He was a well-built,
handsome man who wore his hair in a short brush cut. His dark eyes were
often narrowed, and he had a sharp tongue that was often rude.
He, too, followed his own educational methods. If, for instance, a
given class had committed some collective crime or did not wish to hand over
an offender, Romashov would appear after lessons, entering the classroom
slowly and facing the boys, all of whom would stand stiffly at attention.
Then, raising his head high, he would survey them. It seemed that his beard
swept over the tops of our heads.
"Where's the monitor?" he would say in a chillingly calm voice. "Go
over and shut the door. So."
The monitor would shut the door tightly. The boys, hungry and tired
after five hours of study, would stand at attention. Romashov would continue
his inspection of the class through his beard. He would then take a book
from his pocket, sit down at the lectern and become engrossed in it. The
boys stood at attention. For ten minutes. For half an hour.
After about an hour's reading, the inspector would suddenly put his
book aside and begin his harangue in a soft but resounding baritone,
speaking calmly throughout:
"Well? What have you to say for yourselves, muttonheads? Addlepated
hooligans. Dimwitted pigeon fanciers! What a brainless collection of dolts!
Morons! I'll have you publicly castigated in front of the whole school, you
numskulls! Pigheaded charlatans! Nitwits! Whose stupid head is that? Ah, is
that you, Gavrya? I mean you, too, by the way. Why are you turning your mug
away? You're the top-ranking dunce here! Well? I'll bet you feel ashamed of
yourselves, you louts. Scoundrels! Idiots! I'll see you get what's coming to
you, you blackguards. Here you are, left after school. And there's dinner
waiting at home. Hot soup. Roast beef. I can smell the savoury sauce." At
this the inspector would sniff loudly and smack his lips. "Ha! Hungry,
aren't you? I'll bet you are. And you're sure to get your backsides tanned
when you get home. Your fathers will see to that. I'll send a note along,
telling your dads to let down your pants and give you a good whacking in the
rear deportment ledger. There's nothing to laugh at, you lummoxes!
Rattlebrained whelps! Left after school! For shame!"
After carrying on in this vein for about an hour, he would finally
dismiss the class, but one at a time, with long intervals in between. We all
felt faint by then.
Romashov had divided all the boys into two groups: the lambs and the
hilly goats. That, too, was how he introduced the pupils of a class to a new
teacher.
"Be seated, idlers! Here, you see, are the lambs, the crammers, the 'A'
students, the goody-goodies. And here are the 'F' and 'D' students, the
left-backs, the dinner-missers, the blabbermouths, loafers and
back-benchers. Aleferenko! Shove your belly into your satchel! Look at it
hanging over your belt!"
The inspector was in charge of seating the class. Thus, he had the
wildest, laziest and worst pupils in the front rows. The farther back and
closer to the windows, the better the marks a boy had. However, a very warm
relationship based on prompting and cribbing existed all along the diagonal
line between the far left "A" comer of the class and the front right "D"
corner.
The Black Book contained eight incomprehensible entries. These eight
mysteriously similar notations all bore the same date. The following
paragraph was repeated eight times:
"(Name) of the ... grade has been severely reprimanded for the last and
final time for outrageous hooliganism. His deportment mark for the term is
"C" ("C-"). He is to be punished by twenty hours of compulsory schoolwork on
successive holidays. His parents have been notified. (Signed)... Class
supervisor. (Signed) Inspector...."
These eight entries refer to a scandalous and tragic event which in its
time had the entire town up in arms. However, no one knew the end of the
story or the names of the real participants in the events. There is not a
word in the Black Book about Bloodhound Kozodav, the Afon Recruit or the
Tavern, that third-rate joint run by Madame Kolenkorovna. Mokeich, the
now-departed school janitor, divulged the sector of the Black Book to me.
Here it is.
There were no electric bells in the city about eighteen years ago.
Instead, there were wire handles on the porches, somewhat like the
pull-chains of old-fashioned toilets. And you pulled the handle when you
rang. Then a new doctor arrived in Pokrovsk. They said he was very much a
man for modern technology and scientific development. Indeed, the doctor
subscribed to Niva, a literary magazine, and had battery-run electric bells
installed in his apartment. A little white bell-button appeared on the
outside door beneath the doctor's card. The patients would press the button,
at which a loud-voiced bell would suddenly come to life in the foyer.
Everybody agreed this was wonderful. The doctor soon had a flourishing
practice, and it became the height of fashion in Pokrovsk to have an
electric bell on one's front porch. Five years later there was hardly a
house with a porch that did not have a bell-button. The bells had
variously-pitched voices. Some buzzed, others tinkled, still others rasped,
and there were those that simply rang. Some bells had instruction notices
tacked up beside the buttons, such as: "Please don't bang on the door. Put
your finger on the pip for to ring the bell."
The people of Pokrovsk were proud of their cultured ringing. They spoke
of their doorbells with love and interest. When meeting in the street, they
would inquire after the health of a doorbell.
"Hello, Pyotr! How are you? And how's the new arrival? Did the man
install it yet?"
"Yes, thanks. What a beauty! Come on over and hear it ring. It's got a
voice like a canary."
When matchmakers praised a girl's dowry they would say: "She'll have
her own wing of a house with a 'lectric bell on the porch."
Mlynar, the richest man in town, had seven different bells installed,
one for each day of the week. The bell with the liveliest sound was for
Sundays. The gloomiest-ever bells jangled on fast-days.
The Afon Recruit would be sent for whenever a bell went out of order.
The Recruit doctored old bells, installed new ones and was reputed to be the
best "bell man" in town. His fame was widespread, and his place in the
annals of Pokrovsk was as honourable as that of Lake Sapsayevo, still the
best swamp in the area, or Lazar, the best of the cabbies, who is still hale
and hearty, or the granary fire, surely the best of all fires.
The Afon Recruit lived at the market place, by the meat rows that
smelled of fresh blood. He lived in the Tavern, as its inhabitants called
their filthy, comfortless hovel. A large pit near the Tavern was forever
filled with foul-smelling puddles, and stray dogs would scrounge around
there, dragging out long ropes of intestines or messes of entrails, all of
which swarmed with blue-bottle flies. The market's hardware section,
resounding with hammering and clanging, was a short way off.
The Afon Recruit lived in the Tavern. No one knew where he was from,
how he had got his nickname or of what nationality he was. But everyone knew
him. He was strong, as swarthy as a roasted nut, thin, wiry, and as agile as
a pennant in the wind. He had a huge round earring in his left ear, and a
long black moustache sprang from under his hooked nose. The left tip of his
moustache pointed skyward, while the right pointed down, which fact made it
resemble a washbasin faucet. His pearly teeth were forever flashing in a
smile. His hands were forever busy, doing some piece of work or other. And
his hands were of a kind called "golden hands" in Russian. He could do
anything. He was a mechanic, a barber, a magician, a watchmaker-you simply
had to name it.
He was the most respected man in the Tavern. Everyone followed his lead
and liked him. No one could remember ever having seen him angry. Even when a
heated argument led to ugly knives, the Afon Recruit's smile flashed more
brightly than the blades. He would materialize between the fighters as if
from thin air to shove them apart. Then, flying onto one of the bunks like a
dervish, he would shout:
"Attenshun, pu-leeze! Presenting the ver-ry latest hocus-pocus magic:
black, white, striped and polka-dotted! Ladies, gents and esquires! Entendez
a sec! Voulez vous have a look! Stupendous! A-mazing! Alley-oop!"
Tiny boxes and balls would come pouring out of his pocket to be juggled
over his head. His hat spun on a cane which he balanced on the tip of his
nose as he lit cigarettes inside his coat sleeves. A woman's voice issured
from his innards, and it was singing. Meanwhile, his torn sole gaped and
said "Merci". The quarrel was forgotten instantly.
Dunka Kolenkorovna, a half-wit, was the mistress of the Tavern. Kostya
Gonchar, the town fool, was her favorite lodger. He was absolutely harmless,
for his great joy in life was adorning his person with anything bright or
shiny. He went about town in his rags hung with pictures cut out of Niva,
the tops of tea tins, ads for various brands of cigarettes, empty lozenge
tins, beads, paper flowers, playing cards, bits of harness and broken
teaspoons. The townsfolk were indulgent and gave him whatever bright and
useless odds and ends they had. To this very day whenever anyone in Pokrovsk
is dressed too gaudily someone will say:
"Look at him! He's dolled up like Kostya Gonchar!"
Bloodhound Kozodav, the policeman whose beat was the market place,
liked to drop in at the Tavern. Kozodav possessed everything an exemplary
policeman needed: a pair of fierce moustaches, a badge, a whistle, a sword,
a deep, gruff voice, a blue-red lump of a nose, a medal, and braided red
shoulder straps, the envy of Kostya Gonchar. Bloodhound Kozodav would drop
in at the Tavern to have a drink on the house, play a game of cards, and
have a heart-to-heart talk with Joseph Pikus, the sage travelling salesman.
The other inhabitants of the Tavern were Levonti Abramkin, a nightman,
Hersta, a German organ-grinder, his parrot that had been trained to pick out
"lucky" fortune cards, Chi Sun-cha, a tubercular Chinaman, and Shebarsha and
Krivopatrya, two bosom friends and petty thieves.
In the evenings boys from our school would sneak into the Tavern. Here
they could enjoy oilcakes, relax in pleasant company, forget for an hour or
two the strictly regulated life of the school and play cards without
worrying about Seize'em pouncing on them. Here no one ever asked you what
your term mark for Russian grammar was or whether you had done your
homework. We were always welcome. The inhabitants of the Tavern joined us in
berating the school rules and regulations, and many were quite prepared to
beat up the Latin teacher for giving a boy an undeserved "F". Chi Sun-cha,
who was always so reserved, would get all worked up.
"Why so bad Latin teacher?" he would say as he cut out coloured paper
festoons. "Boy good. Why he get 'F'?"
We would bring the men books we thought were good, the latest news, our
school lunches and junk for Kostya Gonchar. In exchange we received
invaluable information in such varied fields as the art of jimmying locks,
forging signatures, and the Odessa version of ju-jitsu.
The Afon Recruit was a great one for discussing a book he had read and
always drew us into these discussions. In the beginning, the other men made
fun of him, saying that the devil had taken on a bunch of babes, but soon
nearly every other inhabitant of the Tavern was taking part in our heated
debates. To top it all, Vasya Gorbyl, one of the "babes", gave Shebarsha
such a beating that we were all treated with special respect from that day
on. At first, our reading was limited to adventure stories. Thus, we sailed
80,000 Leagues Under the Sea, found Captain Grant's Children and nearly lost
our own heads over the Headless Horseman. Then Stepan Gavrya, alias
Atlantis, brought some banned political books to the Tavern. The Tavern
inhabitants listened to the story of the Paris Commune with bated breath.
We schoolboys were pledged to secrecy about these visits to the Tavern.
Many of our fellow classmates had no idea where the so-called Hefty
Gang hung out after school. Whenever Bloodhound Kozodav put in an unexpected
appearance at the Tavern the banned books were whisked out of sight and
Bloodhound was offered a drink. He would soon be in a benevolent mood and
would whisper confidentially:
"Lissen, boys, don't poke your noses out for 'nother half-hour. That
Seize'em's sniffing around Breshka Street. I'll give you a sign soon's all's
clear."
'TWAS IN THE GARDEN....
In September the leaves began to fall and the grass turned yellow in
the Public Gardens, which somehow resembled the worn fur collar of an old
winter coat.
In September the boys of our school picked a fight with the town boys.
Vanya Makhas, a fifth-grade boy, was out walking with a girl from the
Girls School. Some boys from Berezhnaya Street who were sitting on one of
the park benches began baiting him.
"Hey, sonny! Don't you pick your girls from our street."
Makhas escorted the girl to the fountain and said: "Pardon me. I'll
only be a minute. I'll be back in a sec." Then he returned to the bench,
went up to the fellow and struck him, knocking him against the wire fence.
The next moment the fight had turned into a free-for-all. The boys fought in
silence, for there were teachers sitting on the benches of the next walk.
The town boys knew this, too, and felt it unfair to shout and thus put their
enemies at a disadvantage.
Some park watchmen who were passing broke up the fight, and the
appearance of Seize'em on the scene put a stop to the slaughter.
That was when the town fathers asked the principal to include the
Public Gardens in the list of off-limits places for schoolboys. The
principal was only too pleased to comply. Thus, the boys of our school were
deprived of their last recreation spot. They tried to protest, but the
Parents' Committee upheld the principal's ruling.
WE'RE CHALLENGING YOU
That very day a secret emergency meeting was held at the Tavern. Hefty
and Atlantis were the only two boys present.
Atlantis was boiling mad. "It's against the law! There's no place we
can go anyway, and now this! I don't give a damn for this whole town any
more."
"You know what I'd suggest?" Joseph said. "Why don't you send the
district supervisor a telegram with a paid reply? You shouldn't be silent.
Why, it's a regular ghetto for schoolboys. You can't go here, you can't go
there. So where can you go?"
"Alley-oop! To hell with the telegram!" the Recruit interrupted. "No.
This calls for some hard thinking. La!"
"Bash their heads in and be done with it!" Krivopatrya shouted
cheerfully from his upper bunk. He was lying with his head and shoulders
over the side, spitting intently, trying to send the spittle through a ring
he had made of his fingers.
"That's no good. We've got to make them all suffer. Tar and feather
them. They're all to blame. The Town Council and the Parents' Committee. A
bunch of rotten pigs. And we have to be sure we don't get caught. Otherwise
they'll expel us. It'll take a lot of brains to think of something,"
Atlantis said.
"The boys'll all stick together. Once we get started they won't know
what hit them," Hefty added.
A silence fell. The plotters were lost in thought. Water dripped from
the roof.
Suddenly Joseph jumped to his feet, smacked himself on the forehead and
exclaimed: "Eureka! Eureka, which, in Greek, means 'I have the answer'! This
head has come up with an amazing idea. What?"
"For God's sake! What is it?"
"What's all this noise and commotion? Where do you think you are, at
school or in a respectable tavern?"
"Are you going to tell us or not? What're you waiting for?"
"Shh! Quiet, please! My idea is a fix of an idea. It has nothing but
good sides for all of us, and not a single bad side. Now listen, everybody.
What is the exception of my conception? I mean, what is the conception of my
exceptional idea? Now, this is what you do...." At this Joseph began cutting
the air, using his thin fingers like a pair of scissors. He went on cutting
the air for several minutes, then looked around at each of us in turn. His
eyes shone as he spoke in a momentous whisper:
"The doorbells...."
Hefty chose eight fine boys from different grades for the bell-cutting
campaign. First, the following manifesto was drawn up:
"Boys! The Public Gardens are now off-limits. (Be sure nobody's
watching you read this!) Our enemies are Fish-Eye, the Town Council and the
Parents. Which means the whole town's against us. And that means we've got
to get even, and make sure they never forget it. This town will never forget
what we're going to do to them. In this place everybody's proud as peacocks
of their doorbells. Fellows! We of the Committee of War and Vengeance have
decided to cut off all the doorbells in Pokrovsk. Each of us, on The Day,
will cut off the doorbell outside his house. Our parents are on Fish-Eye's
side.
"The Committee of War and Vengeance will appoint local boys to do the
job in the houses where there aren't any Boys School fellows. It'll be
another St. Bartholomew's Night for doorbells! Boys! Don't spare a single
bell! We've been driven to this. We've been deprived of our last
recreational vestige.
"The Committee of War and Vengeance has appointed the following boys to
be in charge of their class. Obey their orders! In view of the danger of
expulsion, we're using their nicknames.
"1st grade-Marusya
"2nd grade-Honeycomb
"3rd grade-Atlantis
"4th grade-Donder-Bong
"5th grade-Meatball
"6th grade-Satrap (The Ghost of Hamlet's Father)
"7th grade-Fishnet (I inhabit)
"8th grade-King of the Jews
"The man in charge-Hefty
"The doorbells will be handed over to the monitors. They will pass them
on to the Committee that will hand them over of a cripple, who will trade
them for gunpowder, bullets, pop-guns, etc. The day of St. Bartholomew's
Night will be announced by the monitors. The signal to begin is a white
triangle, pasted to the windowpane.
"Don't break the big bell in the Teachers' Room or they might guess who
did it. If anybody rats, he'll get a bell stuffed down his throat! Down with
the doorbells!
"One for all!
"All for one!
"Long live War and Vengeance!
"Sign this and pass it on, but not to Lizarsky or Dimwit.
"Cmte. for W. & V. 1915"
Copies of the manifesto began circulating throughout the school, read
to the whispering of prompting during classes, amidst the jostling commotion
of recess and the stale cigarette smoke of the washrooms. There were two
hundred and sixty-eight coats hanging on pegs in the cloakroom. Two hundred
and sixty-six signatures appeared under the manifestoes. The two boys who
were kept out of it were Lizarsky, the police officer's son, and his best
friend. Dimwit.
War had been declared.
Five days later the ringleaders met at the Tavern. Although it was late
in the afternoon, each one came carrying his heavily-packed school satchel.
However, instead of the usual dull grammar books and figure-laden math
books, they now contained severed bell-buttons. The white, black, grey,
mother-of-pearl, enamel, yellow, stiff and worn buttons (the latter would
stay depressed and keep on ringing the bell) stared out of their wooden or
metal circles, squares, ovals and rosettes that were lacquered, or-rusty, of
fumed or stained oak, or walnut. The wires protruded like torn ligaments.
Every family was now waiting for the Afon Recruit to call. He spent the
next two weeks installing new bells, bringing the stilled voices back to
life, as he was wont to say. Then, when the last button had been screwed
into place, he said to Hefty: "Your turn! You start a week from today."
The following Saturday was a muddy day. More than one rubber drowned in
the puddles, more than one galosh sank on the main street of Pokrovsk that
day. However, when the townspeople finally trudged home from church that
evening, losing their rubbers, their way and their strength, they fumbled
about outside their front doors in the darkness in vain and struck matches,
cupping their hands to shield the flames from the wind. There were no
bell-buttons in sight. That night everyone discovered that the new bells had
been cut off.
"What's going on?" was the worried refrain the following day at Mass,
on the street corners, at the front gates and on the benches outside the
houses. "Good Lord! In bright daylight, too! It's highway robbery. Maybe
they've got a whole gang at it."
"Imagine! I mixed the dough and set it out to rise. Then I went outside
for a breath of air and to have a chat with my neighbour. Grinya was doing
his homework. Well, we talked for a bit, and I went back. I wanted to close
the front door and, gracious! There was no doorbell. And not a soul in
sight, mind you."
The poor woman could never imagine that her dear son Grinya, a
snub-nosed fifth-grade boy, had cut off the button.
The town was in the dumps. No one attempted to have a new button
installed. The schoolboys were jubilant. Outside every front door a bright
circle or square with holes where the nails had been gaped forlornly.
The Zemstvo inspector was the only one to summon the Afon Recruit. "Go
on, put in a new one!" he said. "Go on, you scoundrel. And make sure it's
screwed on tight this time! I know your kind." And he shook his finger.
The Recruit cast a guarded look at him.
"Don't play the innocent. I know you. You barely stick it to the wall,
so's the brats can pry it off quicker. I know you bums. They get them off,
and a black thief like you shovels in the profits. But you won't get away
with it this time! I'll post policeman here. I'll have a man on duty round
the clock."
The Recruit installed a new button and hurried back to the Tavern,
where the boys were waiting for him.
"I just put in a new pip for the Zemstvo Inspector. Don't touch it.
He'll have bloodhound there day and night."
"To hell with all coppers!" Venya Razudanov, alias Satrap, and the
Zemstvo inspector's own son, shouted belligerently. He was stocky and
stubborn, a true copy of his father, and that was how he had got his other
nickname, the Ghost of Hamlet's Father.
"Wait a minute, my militant boy," Joseph Pukis said. "What kind of an
aplombic tone of voice is that? Stop and think. You may have to part with
your school cap instead of another doorbell. Why spit in the wind? Caution
above all.'
"That's right, Satrap. You got to be careful. If you get caught, I'll
take care of you good." At this Hefty held his monstrous, mallet-like fist
up to Satrap's face.
As always, his fist was admired and discussed at length. Everyone
tested it an exclaimed:
"Boy, that's some fist! Look at the size of it!"
"In these days a good-sized fist is better than a so-so head," Joseph
philoscophized.
"Big, good fist," Chi Sun-cha exclaimed. "Boswain fist like so. Ah! Lot
of h teeth."
"I'll cut off the button anyway!" the Zemstvo Inspector's son muttered.
TOP AND HEADS BELOW, MIGHT SHOUT: "WATCH THE FRAME!"
It was as black as pitch.
Then, as our eyes became accustomed to the dark, we made out a door
with plaque on it. It read: "G. V. Razudanov, Zemstvo Inspector." Beside it
was new bell-button. We were on the second floor landing and could see a
stretch of staircase. Down below under the stairs was a head with a lumpy
nose and long moustaches, topped by a cap with a cockade. It was Bloodhound
Kozodav. I-was cold. He shivered. He raised his collar. He kept blinking.
His eyelids dropped. Kozodav was dying to sleep.
The clock in the dining-room of the Zemstvo Inspector's house struck
two. On the table were a sandwich on a plate and a glass of milk, left out
for someone.
There were steps on the stairs. It was the sound of muddy rubbers. One
foot stumbled on a tread. "Dammit! It's as dark as hell."
A match flared. A hand in a kid glove held the match to the
bell-button. Another match was struck and went out, and then another.
"The Recruit really did his damnedest!"
Kozodav's head was somewheres down below. Above it were a pair of feet
shod in shoes and rubbers.
Kozodav, who had dozed off for a minute, came to his senses and clumped
up the stairs hurriedly. "Got you this time!" he bellowed. He was heaving
mightily, and his moustache bristled as he raised a whistle to his lips. He
grabbed the intruder by the collar with his free hand and whistled. "Help!
Murder! I got'im!"
The intruder turned calmly and brushed the policeman's hand from his
collar with a regal gesture. It was Venya Razudanov, the Zemstvo Inspector's
son. He was more than indignant. "What's the matter with you, you fool?
Can't you see who I am?"
"I'm s-s-sorry! I d-didn't recognize you in the dark. I'm awfully
sorry. I thought it was someone creeping up here after the bell."
The door opened. The Zemstvo Inspector, wearing his wife's dressing
gown and carrying a double-barrelled shotgun, emerged onto the landing. The
sleepy-eyed, frightened faces of his wife, sister-in-law and maid peeped out
from behind him.
"What's going on here?"
Kozodav snapped to attention, his hand frozen in a salute. Venya was
the one to explain.
"This idiot was sound asleep on his feet and decided I was a burglar,
Papa. And he missed whoever it was that got the bell."
All eyes were now on the door jamb. There were torn wires and nail
holes where the bell button had so recently been. Then everyone turned to
Kozodav. He went up to the door, unable to believe his eyes. He ran his hand
over the spot and shrugged. The Zemstvo inspector shook him by the collar
and yelled: "Get out, you idiot! You let him get away!"
Venya, meanwhile, was playing the part of a hurt, insulted boy. "I'm so
tired, Mamma. I spent half the night studying. And this is what I came home
to...."
The next scene concerned the family alone. There was a kiss for the
poor boy. Fade-out. In other words, the end of the chapter.
The brightly-polished bell button made a bulge in the pocket of Venya's
overcoat.
"I want those bell-snatchers caught! Hear me?" the police officer said
to Kozodav. "You've become the laughing-stock of this whole town! If you
catch them, you'll get a fifty-rouble bonus. If you don't, I'll make things
so hot for you, you'll cook to a frizzle!"
Bloodhound threw himself into the job.
He was walking through the market. No, he was not walking, he was
sailing. The red braiding of the shoulder straps which adorned his powerful
shoulders rose and fell like oars in the human stream of the market. There
Kozodav came upon Kostya Gonchar, the Tavern simpleton. He was wandering
about the market, looking as festive as a Christmas tree. Two new
acquisitions gleamed on his belly: a shiny ad for Triangle Galoshes and ...
a large red rosette with a bell-button in the centre. At the sight of the
bell-button Kozodav made a beeline for Kostya. He promised to give him his
fine red shoulder straps, gold tassels and anything else he wanted if Kostya
would tell him where he had gotten the bell. And Kostya beaming brightly,
told him all he knew.... He said he had stolen the bell from under the
Recruit's bunk.
"The Recruit hid it, but I felt around and found it. There's lots more
there! One an' twenty times more, an'...."
At which Kozodav promised him a thousand other glittering treasures.
Kostya brought him a torn copy of the Manifesto issued by the War and
Vengeance Committee. The ringleaders were as good as caught. In order to get
all the other Bloodhound decided to tempt Joseph, too. He dropped in at the
Tavern, sat down on Joseph's bunk, and cleared his throat politely.
"Ah, sir honourable policeman," Pukis said. "So you want to see me?
What a I do for you?"
Bloodhound moved closer, looked around and nudged Joseph. "You sure are
tricky one, Joseph! Why don't you just tell me how you and the Recruit cut
off t] bell? I won't tell a soul. I just want to hear how you did it. Come
on, quit pretending."
"I don't understand you one bit." Joseph's face, which had been placid,
took' a surprised look. "Though I'm Joseph and you're a policeman, I don't
know h< you dreamed this up."
Kozodav pulled out his wallet and rustled the crisp notes inside.
Joseph cor nued unperturbed:
"And besides, and I hope you won't take offence, I think, sir
honourable policeman, that you're a great honourable scoundrel!"
Kozodav shook his fist at him, slammed the door and was off. He soon
came to a halt and took the Manifesto from his pocket. The top and the
bottom had been torn off, but the list of monitors was intact. He pondered
over it a while, then tore Satrap's name out of it and said to himself: "The
Zemstvo Inspector'11 give me a fiver for this scrap of paper, or his
sonny-boy'll be expelled, too." He set his cap on straight and headed
towards the precinct and from there to the Boys School, to see the
principal.
The monotonous wind cooled the puddles like tea poured into a saucer.
The telephone wires hummed. At ten a.m. the switchboard operator connected
the precinct station with the green-papered office beyond the Teachers' Room
by way of these windblown, humming wires. The principal, as sallow-faced as
the green wallpaper of his office, and as slow-moving and joyless as
dictation, cranked his telephone, sat back in his armchair, removed the
receiver and raised it to his ear.
"Hello," he said.
Lessons were in progress. Half an hour later every classroom heard two
men walking down the corridor. Their steps were loud and alien. The one
whose gait was slow and heavy wore boots that squeaked. The other tinkled
and jungled at every step. The boys listened intently. They raised their
heads from their notebooks, ponies, cracks in their desks, banned books and
trump cards. Anxious eyes were fixed on the doors.
The third grade was having a math test. Once again all became still in
the corridor outside. Pens scratched. Hefty had made a mistake in a problem
and couldn't get the answer right. The steps in the corridor had made him
nervous. Stepan Atlantis, whose heart had also skipped a beat, saw that his
chum was having trouble and sent him the following note: "Relax. Fish-Eye
isn't a man-eater."
But he was, as far as they were concerned. The classroom door opened.
There was a rattle of desk tops as the boys rose. Seize'em entered, beaming
foully and twirling his key chain. The key on it was the key to the bookcase
where the Black Book was kept.
"Stepan Gavrya! Go to the principal's office!" he commanded.
Atlantis towered over his desk. He looked dazed.
"Hurry up!" Seize'em said. "And take your books."
An anxious hum filled the classroom. He was to take his books! That
meant was leaving for good. He wouldn't be coming back.
Hefty waited. He had lowered his head, as if to ward off a blow, but
Seized said nothing to him. Bloodhound Kozodav, being vary of Hefty's fists,
had torn his name off the list, too.
Atlantis' hands shook as he got his books together, put them in his
satchel a then headed towards the door. On the way out he slipped Hefty a
rolled-up scrap of paper. Atlantis stopped in the doorway. He was about to
say something, but Seize'em shoved him out. The boys waited in tense
silence. The math teacher wiped the foggy lenses of his spectacles
nervously.
Hefty unrolled the scrap of paper. It contained the solution to the
problem, done step-by-step. Even in this last moment Stepan had come to his
friend's aid. Hi sat there motionlessly for a minute with his head lowered
and his eyes on his desk. Then he rose quickly, swayed, filled his broad
barrel chest with air, glowered said in a voice that was a statement, not a
question:
"May I leave the room."
"There's only ten minutes left till the end of the lesson," the teacher
said.
"May I leave the room?" Hefty exhaled stubbornly and stepped into
aisle.
"Well, if you really can't wait."
The stunned boys watched Hefty stuff his books into his satchel and
lumber towards the door, satchel in hand. A terrible silence settled over
expulsions. It was a terrible book! A secret book. A Dove Book.
There is a legend about a Dove Book which fell from the skies many
centuries ago and which supposedly contained all the secrets of Creation. It
was a wonderful book, something like a ledger for the planets. None of the
wise men could read it all and understand it, for its secret meanings were
too deep for them. We boy regarded the Deportment Ledger as just such a Dove
Book, for the authorities kept careful watch over its secrets. None of us
ever dreamed of reading the entries in it.
Unfledged doves are called squabs. We were called squabs, because of
our dove grey school uniforms. Our school's Deportment Ledger, its Dove Book
had the lives of three hundred squabs recorded in it. Three hundred
unfledged doves trapped in a cage.
The town of Pokrovsk was once a settlement. It was a rich settlement, a
grain-selling centre of Russia. Huge, five-storey granaries with
turret-roofs lined the bank of the Volga here. Tens of millions of bushels
of wheat were stored in this granary row. Clouds of pigeons blotted out the
sun. The grain was loaded on barges. Small tugboats guided the barges out of
the bay, just as a boy-guide leads a blind man.
Ukrainian tillers lived in Pokrovsk, as well as rich farmers, German
colonists, boatmen, stevedores, workers of the lumber mills, the bone-meal
factory and a small number of Russian peasants. In summer they became
bronzed by the steppe sun, they drove camels, gathered on the water meadow
on holidays which usually ended in endless fights along the river bank. They
raced their boats against Saratov boats. In winter they drank heavily, had
weddings and danced on Breshka Street. They ate sunflower seeds. The rich
farmers met in council. Then, if ever the question of a new school, a paved
road or some similar undertaking was raised, they would shout it down with
their usual "resolution" of: "No need for it!"
Slush and mud were ankle-deep on the streets. Such was the state of
affairs in Pokrovsk, just seven kilometres from the city of Saratov.
And then the overgrown sons of the wild and carefree steppes, these
huge, bold savages from the farms, were forcibly driven into the classrooms
of Pokrovsk Boys School, had their hair cropped close, their names entered
in the Ledger and their bodies stuffed into the school uniform.
It is difficult, it is all but impossible to describe the things that
went on in that school. There were constant fights. Boys fought singly, and
one class fought another. Bottoms of long school coats were ripped off.
Knuckles were cracked against enemy jaws. Among the weapons used were ice
skates, school satchels, lead weights. Skulls were cracked. The seniors (Oh,
those ruling classes!) would take two small boys by the legs and batter each
other with our swinging heads. True, there were some first-year boys so big
they drove the fear of God into the meanest seniors.
I was rarely hit, since I was so little they were afraid they might
kill me. Still and all, I was accidentally knocked unconscious two or three
times.
They had their own special game of soccer that was played on empty lots
with old telegraph poles or stone posts that were lying on the ground. The
object of the game was to roll a pole across the lot into the other team's
field, using their feet alone. As often as not, a pole would roll over some
fallen players, mangling and crushing them.
During classes they cribbed and prompted each other outrageously and
with great imagination, inventing the most complex and outlandish devices.
Desks, floorboards, blackboards and lecterns were all rigged. There was a
special delivery service and a telegraph. During written tests they even
managed to get the answers from the senior classes.
Some boys, to spite the teachers, would hunch over and thus be sent to
stand in a corner "to straighten up", where they persisted to cause
themselves great discomfort by standing hunchbacked, although at home these
were strong boys with excellent postures.
The boys chewed oilcakes in class, played cards, fenced with knives,
traded lea weights, and read the adventures of Nat Pinkerton. There were
some lessons during which half of the pupils were being punished and were
lined up along the walls, while another quarter was out smoking in the
washroom or else banished from the classroom. But a few heads bobbed above
the desks.
The boys ignited phosphorus in order to produce a mighty stench. That
meant the room had to be aired, which left no time for the lesson.
A squeegee would be tacked under the teacher's lectern, and when the
string was jerked the toy would squeak. The teacher would rush up and down,
but still squeaked. He would search the desks, and still it squeaked.
"Stand up, all of you! And stay there!"
Every boy would be on his feet, but still, the toy Went on squeaking.
The inspector would be summoned. Still, it went on squeaking. The
pupils would be made to sit at their desks for two hours and would miss
their lunch.
Still, it went on squeaking-
The boys stole things at the market, they fought the town boys on every
corner they beat up policemen. They poured every sort of mess into the
inkwells of those teachers whom they disliked. During lessons they would
slowly vibrate a split penpoint that had been stuck into a desk, and the
screeching sound it produce would set your teeth on edge.
Juvenal Stomolitsky, the principal, was tall, thin, unbending and
careful! pressed. His eyes were round, heavy-lidded and leaden. That was why
he had bee nicknamed Fish-Eye.
Fish-Eye was a protege of Kasso, the Minister of Education who was
loathed by all. Fish-Eye valued drilling, absolute quiet and discipline
above all else. As classes ended each day he would take up his station
outside the cloakroom. We were to pass by him in review after we had put on
our caps and coats. We had to stop as w approached, remove our caps by the
visor (and only by the visor!) and bow low.
Once, when I was in a hurry to get home, I grasped the hatband instead
of the visor when I doffed my cap.
"Stop!" the principal commanded. "Go back and return again. You must
learn to greet me properly."
He never shouted. His voice was as dull and colourless as an empty tin
can. When angry he would say: "Abominable boy!" This was his most terrible
reprimand and always meant a poor mark for deportment and other
unpleasantneses in the future.
No matter whether he appeared in a classroom or in the Teacher's Room,
conversation would immediately die down. Everyone would rise. A tense
silence followed. The atmosphere would become so stifling you felt you
wanted to open a window and shout.
Fish-Eye liked to enter a classroom unexpectedly. The pupils would jump
to their feet with a great rattling of desk tops. The teacher would become
red in the face, stumble in the middle of a word and look just like a
schoolboy who was caught smoking.
The principal would sit down by the lectern, making sure that each boy
called on would bow to him first and then to the teacher. Once the district
inspector, a little grey-haired old man with a large star on his chest,
visited the school. The principal escorted him to one of the classrooms and
motioned with his eyes to a boy who was being called upon to recite to bow
first to the district inspector, then to him and, finally, to the teacher.
The following notations, thanks to old Fish-Eye, were to be found in
the Black Book:
Andrei Glukhin was seen by the principal wearing his coat thrown over
his shoulders. He is to be left after school for four hours. Stepan Gavrya
... was seen in town by the principal wearing a shirt with an embroidered
collar. Six hours after school. Nikolai Avdotenko was absent from school
without permission on October 13th and 14th. To be left in class for twelve
hours (on two successive holidays).
(Nikolai Avdotenko's aunt died on October 13th. He had been living with
her family.)
The district inspector was pleased with the way the principal ran the
school. "I'm very pleathed, thir," he lisped. "Thith ith an exthemplary
thchool."
THE TEACHERS' ROOM
The Teachers' Room was at the end of the corridor, to the right of the
principal's office. Continents and oceans were rolled up and stuck away
behind a bookcase in a corner. The huge round eyeglasses of the earth's
hemisphere gazed down from a wall. The glass door of the bookcase reflected
His Majesty, by the Grace of God, a blue ribbon, a carefully-groomed beard,
an arrow-straight part and rows of decorations, the Tsar of all Russia. (The
actual portrait of the tsar hung opposite).' The Black Book was kept in the
bookcase. On top of the bookcase a lop-sided squirrel offered its shedding
tail as a moustache for a goddess. The goddess was old and made of plaster
of Paris. Her name was Venus. Whenever the bookcase door was opened the
goddess swayed gently and seemed about to sneeze. And the bookcase was
opened whenever someone reached for the Deportment Ledger. Caesar Karpovich,
the school supervisor, was the keeper of the key to the bookcase. We had
nicknamed him Seize'em and he was the butt of all our pranks. He had a glass
eye, something he tried very hard to conceal. However, the moment he turned
it on us, we made faces at him and thumbed our noses.
New boys who had not yet discovered he had a glass eye admired the
courage of the pranksters. Seize'em was the author of at least half of all
the entries in the Deportment Ledger, for he was responsible for the boys'
behaviour, both in school and out.
He would ambush us on Breshka Street, which was strictly off-limits.
Seize'em stalked the streets after seven p.m. in search of boys still
outdoors. He would come calling to see if an absent boy was really sick. He
would lie in wait for boys outside the Dawn Cinema. He spent his days and
nights busily tracking down culprits to provide fuel for the Ledger. Still
and all, the boys managed to trick him brazenly. Once, for instance, he
waylaid a group of sixth-grade boys inside the Dawn Cinema. They locked
themselves in one of the boxes. Seize'em went for a policeman, and together
they tried to force the door of the box. As the film flickered on the screen
the boys tore down the drapes of their box, knotted them and slide down the
drape-rope into the orchestra. First to appear on the screen were a pair of
dangling legs. Then the boys fell into the laps of the audience. There was a
general commotion, during which they escaped through an emergency exit.
Wisps of cigarette smoke drifted about in the Teachers' Room, snaking
around the globes and stuffed birds. There was a table beside the bookcase
where the class ledgers were kept, witnesses of the good, bad or indifferent
progress of every boy in the school. The school inspector usually leafed
through them during recess.
The boys almost liked Inspector Nikolai Romashov. He was a well-built,
handsome man who wore his hair in a short brush cut. His dark eyes were
often narrowed, and he had a sharp tongue that was often rude.
He, too, followed his own educational methods. If, for instance, a
given class had committed some collective crime or did not wish to hand over
an offender, Romashov would appear after lessons, entering the classroom
slowly and facing the boys, all of whom would stand stiffly at attention.
Then, raising his head high, he would survey them. It seemed that his beard
swept over the tops of our heads.
"Where's the monitor?" he would say in a chillingly calm voice. "Go
over and shut the door. So."
The monitor would shut the door tightly. The boys, hungry and tired
after five hours of study, would stand at attention. Romashov would continue
his inspection of the class through his beard. He would then take a book
from his pocket, sit down at the lectern and become engrossed in it. The
boys stood at attention. For ten minutes. For half an hour.
After about an hour's reading, the inspector would suddenly put his
book aside and begin his harangue in a soft but resounding baritone,
speaking calmly throughout:
"Well? What have you to say for yourselves, muttonheads? Addlepated
hooligans. Dimwitted pigeon fanciers! What a brainless collection of dolts!
Morons! I'll have you publicly castigated in front of the whole school, you
numskulls! Pigheaded charlatans! Nitwits! Whose stupid head is that? Ah, is
that you, Gavrya? I mean you, too, by the way. Why are you turning your mug
away? You're the top-ranking dunce here! Well? I'll bet you feel ashamed of
yourselves, you louts. Scoundrels! Idiots! I'll see you get what's coming to
you, you blackguards. Here you are, left after school. And there's dinner
waiting at home. Hot soup. Roast beef. I can smell the savoury sauce." At
this the inspector would sniff loudly and smack his lips. "Ha! Hungry,
aren't you? I'll bet you are. And you're sure to get your backsides tanned
when you get home. Your fathers will see to that. I'll send a note along,
telling your dads to let down your pants and give you a good whacking in the
rear deportment ledger. There's nothing to laugh at, you lummoxes!
Rattlebrained whelps! Left after school! For shame!"
After carrying on in this vein for about an hour, he would finally
dismiss the class, but one at a time, with long intervals in between. We all
felt faint by then.
Romashov had divided all the boys into two groups: the lambs and the
hilly goats. That, too, was how he introduced the pupils of a class to a new
teacher.
"Be seated, idlers! Here, you see, are the lambs, the crammers, the 'A'
students, the goody-goodies. And here are the 'F' and 'D' students, the
left-backs, the dinner-missers, the blabbermouths, loafers and
back-benchers. Aleferenko! Shove your belly into your satchel! Look at it
hanging over your belt!"
The inspector was in charge of seating the class. Thus, he had the
wildest, laziest and worst pupils in the front rows. The farther back and
closer to the windows, the better the marks a boy had. However, a very warm
relationship based on prompting and cribbing existed all along the diagonal
line between the far left "A" comer of the class and the front right "D"
corner.
The Black Book contained eight incomprehensible entries. These eight
mysteriously similar notations all bore the same date. The following
paragraph was repeated eight times:
"(Name) of the ... grade has been severely reprimanded for the last and
final time for outrageous hooliganism. His deportment mark for the term is
"C" ("C-"). He is to be punished by twenty hours of compulsory schoolwork on
successive holidays. His parents have been notified. (Signed)... Class
supervisor. (Signed) Inspector...."
These eight entries refer to a scandalous and tragic event which in its
time had the entire town up in arms. However, no one knew the end of the
story or the names of the real participants in the events. There is not a
word in the Black Book about Bloodhound Kozodav, the Afon Recruit or the
Tavern, that third-rate joint run by Madame Kolenkorovna. Mokeich, the
now-departed school janitor, divulged the sector of the Black Book to me.
Here it is.
There were no electric bells in the city about eighteen years ago.
Instead, there were wire handles on the porches, somewhat like the
pull-chains of old-fashioned toilets. And you pulled the handle when you
rang. Then a new doctor arrived in Pokrovsk. They said he was very much a
man for modern technology and scientific development. Indeed, the doctor
subscribed to Niva, a literary magazine, and had battery-run electric bells
installed in his apartment. A little white bell-button appeared on the
outside door beneath the doctor's card. The patients would press the button,
at which a loud-voiced bell would suddenly come to life in the foyer.
Everybody agreed this was wonderful. The doctor soon had a flourishing
practice, and it became the height of fashion in Pokrovsk to have an
electric bell on one's front porch. Five years later there was hardly a
house with a porch that did not have a bell-button. The bells had
variously-pitched voices. Some buzzed, others tinkled, still others rasped,
and there were those that simply rang. Some bells had instruction notices
tacked up beside the buttons, such as: "Please don't bang on the door. Put
your finger on the pip for to ring the bell."
The people of Pokrovsk were proud of their cultured ringing. They spoke
of their doorbells with love and interest. When meeting in the street, they
would inquire after the health of a doorbell.
"Hello, Pyotr! How are you? And how's the new arrival? Did the man
install it yet?"
"Yes, thanks. What a beauty! Come on over and hear it ring. It's got a
voice like a canary."
When matchmakers praised a girl's dowry they would say: "She'll have
her own wing of a house with a 'lectric bell on the porch."
Mlynar, the richest man in town, had seven different bells installed,
one for each day of the week. The bell with the liveliest sound was for
Sundays. The gloomiest-ever bells jangled on fast-days.
The Afon Recruit would be sent for whenever a bell went out of order.
The Recruit doctored old bells, installed new ones and was reputed to be the
best "bell man" in town. His fame was widespread, and his place in the
annals of Pokrovsk was as honourable as that of Lake Sapsayevo, still the
best swamp in the area, or Lazar, the best of the cabbies, who is still hale
and hearty, or the granary fire, surely the best of all fires.
The Afon Recruit lived at the market place, by the meat rows that
smelled of fresh blood. He lived in the Tavern, as its inhabitants called
their filthy, comfortless hovel. A large pit near the Tavern was forever
filled with foul-smelling puddles, and stray dogs would scrounge around
there, dragging out long ropes of intestines or messes of entrails, all of
which swarmed with blue-bottle flies. The market's hardware section,
resounding with hammering and clanging, was a short way off.
The Afon Recruit lived in the Tavern. No one knew where he was from,
how he had got his nickname or of what nationality he was. But everyone knew
him. He was strong, as swarthy as a roasted nut, thin, wiry, and as agile as
a pennant in the wind. He had a huge round earring in his left ear, and a
long black moustache sprang from under his hooked nose. The left tip of his
moustache pointed skyward, while the right pointed down, which fact made it
resemble a washbasin faucet. His pearly teeth were forever flashing in a
smile. His hands were forever busy, doing some piece of work or other. And
his hands were of a kind called "golden hands" in Russian. He could do
anything. He was a mechanic, a barber, a magician, a watchmaker-you simply
had to name it.
He was the most respected man in the Tavern. Everyone followed his lead
and liked him. No one could remember ever having seen him angry. Even when a
heated argument led to ugly knives, the Afon Recruit's smile flashed more
brightly than the blades. He would materialize between the fighters as if
from thin air to shove them apart. Then, flying onto one of the bunks like a
dervish, he would shout:
"Attenshun, pu-leeze! Presenting the ver-ry latest hocus-pocus magic:
black, white, striped and polka-dotted! Ladies, gents and esquires! Entendez
a sec! Voulez vous have a look! Stupendous! A-mazing! Alley-oop!"
Tiny boxes and balls would come pouring out of his pocket to be juggled
over his head. His hat spun on a cane which he balanced on the tip of his
nose as he lit cigarettes inside his coat sleeves. A woman's voice issured
from his innards, and it was singing. Meanwhile, his torn sole gaped and
said "Merci". The quarrel was forgotten instantly.
Dunka Kolenkorovna, a half-wit, was the mistress of the Tavern. Kostya
Gonchar, the town fool, was her favorite lodger. He was absolutely harmless,
for his great joy in life was adorning his person with anything bright or
shiny. He went about town in his rags hung with pictures cut out of Niva,
the tops of tea tins, ads for various brands of cigarettes, empty lozenge
tins, beads, paper flowers, playing cards, bits of harness and broken
teaspoons. The townsfolk were indulgent and gave him whatever bright and
useless odds and ends they had. To this very day whenever anyone in Pokrovsk
is dressed too gaudily someone will say:
"Look at him! He's dolled up like Kostya Gonchar!"
Bloodhound Kozodav, the policeman whose beat was the market place,
liked to drop in at the Tavern. Kozodav possessed everything an exemplary
policeman needed: a pair of fierce moustaches, a badge, a whistle, a sword,
a deep, gruff voice, a blue-red lump of a nose, a medal, and braided red
shoulder straps, the envy of Kostya Gonchar. Bloodhound Kozodav would drop
in at the Tavern to have a drink on the house, play a game of cards, and
have a heart-to-heart talk with Joseph Pikus, the sage travelling salesman.
The other inhabitants of the Tavern were Levonti Abramkin, a nightman,
Hersta, a German organ-grinder, his parrot that had been trained to pick out
"lucky" fortune cards, Chi Sun-cha, a tubercular Chinaman, and Shebarsha and
Krivopatrya, two bosom friends and petty thieves.
In the evenings boys from our school would sneak into the Tavern. Here
they could enjoy oilcakes, relax in pleasant company, forget for an hour or
two the strictly regulated life of the school and play cards without
worrying about Seize'em pouncing on them. Here no one ever asked you what
your term mark for Russian grammar was or whether you had done your
homework. We were always welcome. The inhabitants of the Tavern joined us in
berating the school rules and regulations, and many were quite prepared to
beat up the Latin teacher for giving a boy an undeserved "F". Chi Sun-cha,
who was always so reserved, would get all worked up.
"Why so bad Latin teacher?" he would say as he cut out coloured paper
festoons. "Boy good. Why he get 'F'?"
We would bring the men books we thought were good, the latest news, our
school lunches and junk for Kostya Gonchar. In exchange we received
invaluable information in such varied fields as the art of jimmying locks,
forging signatures, and the Odessa version of ju-jitsu.
The Afon Recruit was a great one for discussing a book he had read and
always drew us into these discussions. In the beginning, the other men made
fun of him, saying that the devil had taken on a bunch of babes, but soon
nearly every other inhabitant of the Tavern was taking part in our heated
debates. To top it all, Vasya Gorbyl, one of the "babes", gave Shebarsha
such a beating that we were all treated with special respect from that day
on. At first, our reading was limited to adventure stories. Thus, we sailed
80,000 Leagues Under the Sea, found Captain Grant's Children and nearly lost
our own heads over the Headless Horseman. Then Stepan Gavrya, alias
Atlantis, brought some banned political books to the Tavern. The Tavern
inhabitants listened to the story of the Paris Commune with bated breath.
We schoolboys were pledged to secrecy about these visits to the Tavern.
Many of our fellow classmates had no idea where the so-called Hefty
Gang hung out after school. Whenever Bloodhound Kozodav put in an unexpected
appearance at the Tavern the banned books were whisked out of sight and
Bloodhound was offered a drink. He would soon be in a benevolent mood and
would whisper confidentially:
"Lissen, boys, don't poke your noses out for 'nother half-hour. That
Seize'em's sniffing around Breshka Street. I'll give you a sign soon's all's
clear."
'TWAS IN THE GARDEN....
In September the leaves began to fall and the grass turned yellow in
the Public Gardens, which somehow resembled the worn fur collar of an old
winter coat.
In September the boys of our school picked a fight with the town boys.
Vanya Makhas, a fifth-grade boy, was out walking with a girl from the
Girls School. Some boys from Berezhnaya Street who were sitting on one of
the park benches began baiting him.
"Hey, sonny! Don't you pick your girls from our street."
Makhas escorted the girl to the fountain and said: "Pardon me. I'll
only be a minute. I'll be back in a sec." Then he returned to the bench,
went up to the fellow and struck him, knocking him against the wire fence.
The next moment the fight had turned into a free-for-all. The boys fought in
silence, for there were teachers sitting on the benches of the next walk.
The town boys knew this, too, and felt it unfair to shout and thus put their
enemies at a disadvantage.
Some park watchmen who were passing broke up the fight, and the
appearance of Seize'em on the scene put a stop to the slaughter.
That was when the town fathers asked the principal to include the
Public Gardens in the list of off-limits places for schoolboys. The
principal was only too pleased to comply. Thus, the boys of our school were
deprived of their last recreation spot. They tried to protest, but the
Parents' Committee upheld the principal's ruling.
WE'RE CHALLENGING YOU
That very day a secret emergency meeting was held at the Tavern. Hefty
and Atlantis were the only two boys present.
Atlantis was boiling mad. "It's against the law! There's no place we
can go anyway, and now this! I don't give a damn for this whole town any
more."
"You know what I'd suggest?" Joseph said. "Why don't you send the
district supervisor a telegram with a paid reply? You shouldn't be silent.
Why, it's a regular ghetto for schoolboys. You can't go here, you can't go
there. So where can you go?"
"Alley-oop! To hell with the telegram!" the Recruit interrupted. "No.
This calls for some hard thinking. La!"
"Bash their heads in and be done with it!" Krivopatrya shouted
cheerfully from his upper bunk. He was lying with his head and shoulders
over the side, spitting intently, trying to send the spittle through a ring
he had made of his fingers.
"That's no good. We've got to make them all suffer. Tar and feather
them. They're all to blame. The Town Council and the Parents' Committee. A
bunch of rotten pigs. And we have to be sure we don't get caught. Otherwise
they'll expel us. It'll take a lot of brains to think of something,"
Atlantis said.
"The boys'll all stick together. Once we get started they won't know
what hit them," Hefty added.
A silence fell. The plotters were lost in thought. Water dripped from
the roof.
Suddenly Joseph jumped to his feet, smacked himself on the forehead and
exclaimed: "Eureka! Eureka, which, in Greek, means 'I have the answer'! This
head has come up with an amazing idea. What?"
"For God's sake! What is it?"
"What's all this noise and commotion? Where do you think you are, at
school or in a respectable tavern?"
"Are you going to tell us or not? What're you waiting for?"
"Shh! Quiet, please! My idea is a fix of an idea. It has nothing but
good sides for all of us, and not a single bad side. Now listen, everybody.
What is the exception of my conception? I mean, what is the conception of my
exceptional idea? Now, this is what you do...." At this Joseph began cutting
the air, using his thin fingers like a pair of scissors. He went on cutting
the air for several minutes, then looked around at each of us in turn. His
eyes shone as he spoke in a momentous whisper:
"The doorbells...."
Hefty chose eight fine boys from different grades for the bell-cutting
campaign. First, the following manifesto was drawn up:
"Boys! The Public Gardens are now off-limits. (Be sure nobody's
watching you read this!) Our enemies are Fish-Eye, the Town Council and the
Parents. Which means the whole town's against us. And that means we've got
to get even, and make sure they never forget it. This town will never forget
what we're going to do to them. In this place everybody's proud as peacocks
of their doorbells. Fellows! We of the Committee of War and Vengeance have
decided to cut off all the doorbells in Pokrovsk. Each of us, on The Day,
will cut off the doorbell outside his house. Our parents are on Fish-Eye's
side.
"The Committee of War and Vengeance will appoint local boys to do the
job in the houses where there aren't any Boys School fellows. It'll be
another St. Bartholomew's Night for doorbells! Boys! Don't spare a single
bell! We've been driven to this. We've been deprived of our last
recreational vestige.
"The Committee of War and Vengeance has appointed the following boys to
be in charge of their class. Obey their orders! In view of the danger of
expulsion, we're using their nicknames.
"1st grade-Marusya
"2nd grade-Honeycomb
"3rd grade-Atlantis
"4th grade-Donder-Bong
"5th grade-Meatball
"6th grade-Satrap (The Ghost of Hamlet's Father)
"7th grade-Fishnet (I inhabit)
"8th grade-King of the Jews
"The man in charge-Hefty
"The doorbells will be handed over to the monitors. They will pass them
on to the Committee that will hand them over of a cripple, who will trade
them for gunpowder, bullets, pop-guns, etc. The day of St. Bartholomew's
Night will be announced by the monitors. The signal to begin is a white
triangle, pasted to the windowpane.
"Don't break the big bell in the Teachers' Room or they might guess who
did it. If anybody rats, he'll get a bell stuffed down his throat! Down with
the doorbells!
"One for all!
"All for one!
"Long live War and Vengeance!
"Sign this and pass it on, but not to Lizarsky or Dimwit.
"Cmte. for W. & V. 1915"
Copies of the manifesto began circulating throughout the school, read
to the whispering of prompting during classes, amidst the jostling commotion
of recess and the stale cigarette smoke of the washrooms. There were two
hundred and sixty-eight coats hanging on pegs in the cloakroom. Two hundred
and sixty-six signatures appeared under the manifestoes. The two boys who
were kept out of it were Lizarsky, the police officer's son, and his best
friend. Dimwit.
War had been declared.
Five days later the ringleaders met at the Tavern. Although it was late
in the afternoon, each one came carrying his heavily-packed school satchel.
However, instead of the usual dull grammar books and figure-laden math
books, they now contained severed bell-buttons. The white, black, grey,
mother-of-pearl, enamel, yellow, stiff and worn buttons (the latter would
stay depressed and keep on ringing the bell) stared out of their wooden or
metal circles, squares, ovals and rosettes that were lacquered, or-rusty, of
fumed or stained oak, or walnut. The wires protruded like torn ligaments.
Every family was now waiting for the Afon Recruit to call. He spent the
next two weeks installing new bells, bringing the stilled voices back to
life, as he was wont to say. Then, when the last button had been screwed
into place, he said to Hefty: "Your turn! You start a week from today."
The following Saturday was a muddy day. More than one rubber drowned in
the puddles, more than one galosh sank on the main street of Pokrovsk that
day. However, when the townspeople finally trudged home from church that
evening, losing their rubbers, their way and their strength, they fumbled
about outside their front doors in the darkness in vain and struck matches,
cupping their hands to shield the flames from the wind. There were no
bell-buttons in sight. That night everyone discovered that the new bells had
been cut off.
"What's going on?" was the worried refrain the following day at Mass,
on the street corners, at the front gates and on the benches outside the
houses. "Good Lord! In bright daylight, too! It's highway robbery. Maybe
they've got a whole gang at it."
"Imagine! I mixed the dough and set it out to rise. Then I went outside
for a breath of air and to have a chat with my neighbour. Grinya was doing
his homework. Well, we talked for a bit, and I went back. I wanted to close
the front door and, gracious! There was no doorbell. And not a soul in
sight, mind you."
The poor woman could never imagine that her dear son Grinya, a
snub-nosed fifth-grade boy, had cut off the button.
The town was in the dumps. No one attempted to have a new button
installed. The schoolboys were jubilant. Outside every front door a bright
circle or square with holes where the nails had been gaped forlornly.
The Zemstvo inspector was the only one to summon the Afon Recruit. "Go
on, put in a new one!" he said. "Go on, you scoundrel. And make sure it's
screwed on tight this time! I know your kind." And he shook his finger.
The Recruit cast a guarded look at him.
"Don't play the innocent. I know you. You barely stick it to the wall,
so's the brats can pry it off quicker. I know you bums. They get them off,
and a black thief like you shovels in the profits. But you won't get away
with it this time! I'll post policeman here. I'll have a man on duty round
the clock."
The Recruit installed a new button and hurried back to the Tavern,
where the boys were waiting for him.
"I just put in a new pip for the Zemstvo Inspector. Don't touch it.
He'll have bloodhound there day and night."
"To hell with all coppers!" Venya Razudanov, alias Satrap, and the
Zemstvo inspector's own son, shouted belligerently. He was stocky and
stubborn, a true copy of his father, and that was how he had got his other
nickname, the Ghost of Hamlet's Father.
"Wait a minute, my militant boy," Joseph Pukis said. "What kind of an
aplombic tone of voice is that? Stop and think. You may have to part with
your school cap instead of another doorbell. Why spit in the wind? Caution
above all.'
"That's right, Satrap. You got to be careful. If you get caught, I'll
take care of you good." At this Hefty held his monstrous, mallet-like fist
up to Satrap's face.
As always, his fist was admired and discussed at length. Everyone
tested it an exclaimed:
"Boy, that's some fist! Look at the size of it!"
"In these days a good-sized fist is better than a so-so head," Joseph
philoscophized.
"Big, good fist," Chi Sun-cha exclaimed. "Boswain fist like so. Ah! Lot
of h teeth."
"I'll cut off the button anyway!" the Zemstvo Inspector's son muttered.
TOP AND HEADS BELOW, MIGHT SHOUT: "WATCH THE FRAME!"
It was as black as pitch.
Then, as our eyes became accustomed to the dark, we made out a door
with plaque on it. It read: "G. V. Razudanov, Zemstvo Inspector." Beside it
was new bell-button. We were on the second floor landing and could see a
stretch of staircase. Down below under the stairs was a head with a lumpy
nose and long moustaches, topped by a cap with a cockade. It was Bloodhound
Kozodav. I-was cold. He shivered. He raised his collar. He kept blinking.
His eyelids dropped. Kozodav was dying to sleep.
The clock in the dining-room of the Zemstvo Inspector's house struck
two. On the table were a sandwich on a plate and a glass of milk, left out
for someone.
There were steps on the stairs. It was the sound of muddy rubbers. One
foot stumbled on a tread. "Dammit! It's as dark as hell."
A match flared. A hand in a kid glove held the match to the
bell-button. Another match was struck and went out, and then another.
"The Recruit really did his damnedest!"
Kozodav's head was somewheres down below. Above it were a pair of feet
shod in shoes and rubbers.
Kozodav, who had dozed off for a minute, came to his senses and clumped
up the stairs hurriedly. "Got you this time!" he bellowed. He was heaving
mightily, and his moustache bristled as he raised a whistle to his lips. He
grabbed the intruder by the collar with his free hand and whistled. "Help!
Murder! I got'im!"
The intruder turned calmly and brushed the policeman's hand from his
collar with a regal gesture. It was Venya Razudanov, the Zemstvo Inspector's
son. He was more than indignant. "What's the matter with you, you fool?
Can't you see who I am?"
"I'm s-s-sorry! I d-didn't recognize you in the dark. I'm awfully
sorry. I thought it was someone creeping up here after the bell."
The door opened. The Zemstvo Inspector, wearing his wife's dressing
gown and carrying a double-barrelled shotgun, emerged onto the landing. The
sleepy-eyed, frightened faces of his wife, sister-in-law and maid peeped out
from behind him.
"What's going on here?"
Kozodav snapped to attention, his hand frozen in a salute. Venya was
the one to explain.
"This idiot was sound asleep on his feet and decided I was a burglar,
Papa. And he missed whoever it was that got the bell."
All eyes were now on the door jamb. There were torn wires and nail
holes where the bell button had so recently been. Then everyone turned to
Kozodav. He went up to the door, unable to believe his eyes. He ran his hand
over the spot and shrugged. The Zemstvo inspector shook him by the collar
and yelled: "Get out, you idiot! You let him get away!"
Venya, meanwhile, was playing the part of a hurt, insulted boy. "I'm so
tired, Mamma. I spent half the night studying. And this is what I came home
to...."
The next scene concerned the family alone. There was a kiss for the
poor boy. Fade-out. In other words, the end of the chapter.
The brightly-polished bell button made a bulge in the pocket of Venya's
overcoat.
"I want those bell-snatchers caught! Hear me?" the police officer said
to Kozodav. "You've become the laughing-stock of this whole town! If you
catch them, you'll get a fifty-rouble bonus. If you don't, I'll make things
so hot for you, you'll cook to a frizzle!"
Bloodhound threw himself into the job.
He was walking through the market. No, he was not walking, he was
sailing. The red braiding of the shoulder straps which adorned his powerful
shoulders rose and fell like oars in the human stream of the market. There
Kozodav came upon Kostya Gonchar, the Tavern simpleton. He was wandering
about the market, looking as festive as a Christmas tree. Two new
acquisitions gleamed on his belly: a shiny ad for Triangle Galoshes and ...
a large red rosette with a bell-button in the centre. At the sight of the
bell-button Kozodav made a beeline for Kostya. He promised to give him his
fine red shoulder straps, gold tassels and anything else he wanted if Kostya
would tell him where he had gotten the bell. And Kostya beaming brightly,
told him all he knew.... He said he had stolen the bell from under the
Recruit's bunk.
"The Recruit hid it, but I felt around and found it. There's lots more
there! One an' twenty times more, an'...."
At which Kozodav promised him a thousand other glittering treasures.
Kostya brought him a torn copy of the Manifesto issued by the War and
Vengeance Committee. The ringleaders were as good as caught. In order to get
all the other Bloodhound decided to tempt Joseph, too. He dropped in at the
Tavern, sat down on Joseph's bunk, and cleared his throat politely.
"Ah, sir honourable policeman," Pukis said. "So you want to see me?
What a I do for you?"
Bloodhound moved closer, looked around and nudged Joseph. "You sure are
tricky one, Joseph! Why don't you just tell me how you and the Recruit cut
off t] bell? I won't tell a soul. I just want to hear how you did it. Come
on, quit pretending."
"I don't understand you one bit." Joseph's face, which had been placid,
took' a surprised look. "Though I'm Joseph and you're a policeman, I don't
know h< you dreamed this up."
Kozodav pulled out his wallet and rustled the crisp notes inside.
Joseph cor nued unperturbed:
"And besides, and I hope you won't take offence, I think, sir
honourable policeman, that you're a great honourable scoundrel!"
Kozodav shook his fist at him, slammed the door and was off. He soon
came to a halt and took the Manifesto from his pocket. The top and the
bottom had been torn off, but the list of monitors was intact. He pondered
over it a while, then tore Satrap's name out of it and said to himself: "The
Zemstvo Inspector'11 give me a fiver for this scrap of paper, or his
sonny-boy'll be expelled, too." He set his cap on straight and headed
towards the precinct and from there to the Boys School, to see the
principal.
The monotonous wind cooled the puddles like tea poured into a saucer.
The telephone wires hummed. At ten a.m. the switchboard operator connected
the precinct station with the green-papered office beyond the Teachers' Room
by way of these windblown, humming wires. The principal, as sallow-faced as
the green wallpaper of his office, and as slow-moving and joyless as
dictation, cranked his telephone, sat back in his armchair, removed the
receiver and raised it to his ear.
"Hello," he said.
Lessons were in progress. Half an hour later every classroom heard two
men walking down the corridor. Their steps were loud and alien. The one
whose gait was slow and heavy wore boots that squeaked. The other tinkled
and jungled at every step. The boys listened intently. They raised their
heads from their notebooks, ponies, cracks in their desks, banned books and
trump cards. Anxious eyes were fixed on the doors.
The third grade was having a math test. Once again all became still in
the corridor outside. Pens scratched. Hefty had made a mistake in a problem
and couldn't get the answer right. The steps in the corridor had made him
nervous. Stepan Atlantis, whose heart had also skipped a beat, saw that his
chum was having trouble and sent him the following note: "Relax. Fish-Eye
isn't a man-eater."
But he was, as far as they were concerned. The classroom door opened.
There was a rattle of desk tops as the boys rose. Seize'em entered, beaming
foully and twirling his key chain. The key on it was the key to the bookcase
where the Black Book was kept.
"Stepan Gavrya! Go to the principal's office!" he commanded.
Atlantis towered over his desk. He looked dazed.
"Hurry up!" Seize'em said. "And take your books."
An anxious hum filled the classroom. He was to take his books! That
meant was leaving for good. He wouldn't be coming back.
Hefty waited. He had lowered his head, as if to ward off a blow, but
Seized said nothing to him. Bloodhound Kozodav, being vary of Hefty's fists,
had torn his name off the list, too.
Atlantis' hands shook as he got his books together, put them in his
satchel a then headed towards the door. On the way out he slipped Hefty a
rolled-up scrap of paper. Atlantis stopped in the doorway. He was about to
say something, but Seize'em shoved him out. The boys waited in tense
silence. The math teacher wiped the foggy lenses of his spectacles
nervously.
Hefty unrolled the scrap of paper. It contained the solution to the
problem, done step-by-step. Even in this last moment Stepan had come to his
friend's aid. Hi sat there motionlessly for a minute with his head lowered
and his eyes on his desk. Then he rose quickly, swayed, filled his broad
barrel chest with air, glowered said in a voice that was a statement, not a
question:
"May I leave the room."
"There's only ten minutes left till the end of the lesson," the teacher
said.
"May I leave the room?" Hefty exhaled stubbornly and stepped into
aisle.
"Well, if you really can't wait."
The stunned boys watched Hefty stuff his books into his satchel and
lumber towards the door, satchel in hand. A terrible silence settled over