the third grade.
Hefty did not look back. He went straight out, into the empty corridor,
and once there he suddenly felt very small and doomed. And he heard, coming
from be! the closed door, a shriek of laughter rise up over the desks, the
inkwells and lectern amidst the shocked silence of the boys he had left.
Then it changed into gurgling scream. It was little Petya Yachmenny in the
first row who had become hysterical from the tension. Hefty threw back his
shoulders and stalked towards the principal's office.
Kozodav was breathing heavily. He was breathing heavily and poking his
:finger at the boys lined up in front of him. "Yes, sir! This one's
Honeycomb, and this one's Atlantis. That's their nicknames."
The other man was rocking back and forth in a tilted chair. His spurs
jungled and he twirled his small black moustache. "Well, well.... Such
conspirators! Well, well, boys."
The seven of them stood stiffly before the desk. There were only seven,
since the Zemstvo Inspector's son was missing. The soot of misery and
despair was settling on their faces.
"So. Indeed," the principal said curtly, and his voice sounded as if a
twig had snapped. "I thank you. Well, you wretches, what have you to say for
yourselves? For shame! For shame! It's disgraceful! Who else was in on this
with you? Oh, so you won't tell? Miserable creatures. You're no more than a
bunch of thugs. You'll all be expelled. You're a disgrace to the school
emblem. Nothing you can say will change matters. I want to see your parents.
I'm very sorry for them. Having sons like you is enough to break a parent's
heart. You scoundrels."
The seven raised their eyes and heaved a collective sigh. Indeed, there
were their parents. They could expect their mothers' tears. And scolding.
And their fathers' chairs being pushed back in anger. Perhaps even a cuff.
Their dinners would be getting cold on the table. "You'll end up being a
stevedore!" And the empty days stretching on ahead.
Then the King of the Jews said rudely, "Let's not bring our parents
into this. It's bad enough as it is."
"Silence! Do you want to be blacklisted for good?"
Just then Hefty entered. He leaned a hand on the edge of the desk, and
the desk creaked. Moving his jaw slowly, he seemed to be chewing his words
as he said, "I'm in on it, too. I'm the ringleader."
"Well. You can consider yourself dismissed. You're also expelled."
Eight overcoats were missing from the cloakroom now.
Eight boys trudged across the muddy square, their feet dragging in the
ooze. They were bent under the weight of their school satchels and
misfortune. They looked back at the school a last time and one of them, it
was Hefty, the boys in the classroom saw it was he, shook his fist angrily
at the building. Everyone in the school who had seen them wanted to shout,
pound their fists on their desks, turn over the lecterns and catch up with
the eight boys outside. But the boys in classrooms were pupils, and pupils
were not allowed to make any noise or express comradely feelings until they
were permitted to do so by the bell, which measured out their portions of
freedom.
Penpoints scratched across paper and left many a blot.
While the fifth lesson of the day was in progress, Joseph Pukis, his
face very grave, entered the deserted corridor. The janitor was busy washing
the floor Joseph greeted him politely. He spoke beseechingly.
"Mr. Janitor! I really have to see the principal. It's a matter of life
and the contrary."
The principal saw Joseph in the Teachers' Room. He was in a hurry.
"Yes? What can I do for you? Um.... I don't have very much time."
"Mister Principal, Sir, I'm an old wandering Jew, and I can see the
happiness of a family man in your face. I'll bet anything that your children
will never go ban foot or wanton."
"Get to the point! I have no children. And I have no time to waste,
either."
"Just one little minute, Sir. You expelled eight boys today. And I ask
you, what did you expel them? But do I have a right to ask you? No! A
thousand times no. But I have a kind heart. And when you have a kind heart,
you have to speak up. I'm very sorry for those boys. And I'm still sorrier
for their parents, who nursed and upbrang them. Sir Principal, you don't
have any children. May God give y children. You don't know how oi-oi-oi
terrible it is when your boy comes home and...."
"That's enough!" The principal rose. "This conversation is senseless.
The exit is over there."
"Just one little minute more!" Joseph cried, grabbing the principal's
sleeve. "But do you know that all those bells, the devil take them, were cut
off by all your pupils? How many boys are there in the school?"
"There were two hundred and seventy-two until today," the principal
replied despite himself.
"Well, at least two hundred and sixty of them did the cutting. How do
you that? And what if I tell you that your best pupil, the son of the
honourable Zemstvo Inspector, may he live to be a hundred, also did the
cutting, and even a lot better than many of the others? The police only
showed you a piece of it." Joseph took out the complete Manifesto and handed
it to the principal. The principal paled. There on the sheet of paper were
the signatures of the boys of all eight grades. He pointed to a chair
contemptuously and said, "Sit down ... please."
Then Joseph told him of his terms. The eight boys were to be
reinstated. The police would search the Tavern and would find the bells. The
Afon Recruit would lie low for a while. He had agreed to this. The
townspeople would think that s bums from the Tavern had cut off the bells,
and in this way the boys would be exonerated. That would put an end to the
scandal. If, on the other hand, the principal did not reinstate the boys,
the very next day the entire town, the entire region and the entire school
district would discover what was going on under the roof of the Pokrovsk
Boys School and what the sons of some Zemstvo inspectors were up to.
"All right. They'll be reinstated, but their names will be entered in
the Ledger." He pulled out his wallet. "How much do I owe you for this ...
for this, and to ensure your silence?"
Joseph jumped to his feet. Joseph leaned across the desk. Joseph said,
"Sir! You don't have to pay me, Sir. But I swear by the memory of my mother,
may she rest in peace and quiet, that the time will come when you'll be
repaid by me and by us, and by those eight boys who went off like whipped
dogs, and you'll be repaid with good interest!"
Thus ends the saga of the Afon Recruit.
"FS" AND "D'S"
After the doorbell scandal life at school seemed to have resumed its
natural course. There were fewer bloody brawls, fewer rows and less
thieving. However, the rules became still stricter.
Seize'em was forever shaking the plaster foundations of Antiquity when
he unlocked the bookcase to get the Deportment Ledger and disturbed the aged
Venus.
Pupils were absolutely forbidden to be seen on or near the railroad
platform and the Public Gardens. Paralysing, grey boredom oozed over from
one day to the next, from one page of our books to the next. The Deportment
Ledger was a sword that hung over our heads. Rows of boys being punished
would be lined up along the walls during classes. The pages of the class
journals filled up with broken fences of "F's" and big fat "D's".
Veniamin Pustynin, the Latin teacher, who was nicknamed Roach Whiskers
for his long, bristling moustache (or, Roachius, to give it a Latin ending)
sowed "F's" and "D's" with a vengeance. He had another nickname as well, one
our class usually used, and that was Crookneck.
Roachius was thin and had a long nose, and really did look like a
crook. Above his stiffly starched winged collar he had an extremely long
neck that swayed from side to side just like a big question mark. And so,
wherever he went, Roachius would find a big question mark. It would be
staring at him from the blackboard, the lectern, the seat of his chair, the
back of his coat, the door to his house. The question marks would be erased
but would reappear the following day. Roachius would turn pale, lose weight
and fill our notebooks and report cards with "F's".
He had a passion for little notebooks in which we were supposed to
write down Latin words. Whenever he called on a pupil he demanded that the
boy come up to the blackboard with his little Latin notebook.
"So," he would say. "I see you've learned the lesson. Now let's have a
look at your notebook. I want to see what new words you've put down. What?
You left it at home? And you dared to come up to the blackboard without it?
Go back to your seat." And he would give the boy an "F".
No amount of pleading helped. It was an "F", and that was all there was
to it.
There were two boys in my class whose last names were similar:
Alekseyenko and Aleferenko. One day Alekseyenko left his hateful notebook at
home. Roachius entered the classroom, sat down at the lectern, put on his
pince-nez and said softly:
"Ale ... ferenko!"
Aleferenko, whose seat was behind Alekseyenko, rose and went to the
front of the class, while Alekseyenko, who in his terror had decided that
his name had been called, jumped to his feet and mumbled in a rolling bass,
"I forgot my notebook...." He stopped short, for he had suddenly noticed
Aleferenko approaching the lectern, and cursed himself for being such a
fool. Roachius calmly dipped his pen into the inkwell. "Actually, I called
on Aleferenko, but since you've confessed your guilt, you'll get what you
deserve." And he gave him an "F".
The bell rang, bringing recess to an end. The noise in the classroom
died down.
He was coming!
The boys rose in a body.
The history teacher was coming. He had fine blond hair parted down the
middle, a very young, pale, thin face and huge blue eyes. His head was
tilted slightly in a kindly manner. His collar was snow-white. Kirill Ukhov
burst into the classroom and tossed the class journal onto the lectern.
The boys stood at attention.
Ukhov looked them over, rushed over to the lectern, then into one of
the aisles and crouched down. Suddenly his blue eyes flashed. His
high-pitched voice rose to a shout: "Who! Dared! To sit! Down! I haven't
said ... 'Be seated'. Get up and stay up! And you! And you, too! And you!
Wretches! All the others, be seated. Hands on your desks. Both of them.
Where's your other hand? Stand up and stay up! And you, over to the wall!
Right there! Well? Silence! Whose desk creaked? Shalferov, was it yours? Get
up! Silence!"
Fourteen boys stood all through the lesson. The history teacher
expounded on ancient kings and famous steeds. He kept fixing his tie, his
hair, his cuffs. A gold bracelet glinted under his left cuff. It was the
gift of some legendary noblewoman.
Fourteen boys were standing. The lesson dragged on and on. Their legs
became numb. Finally, Ukhov glanced at his watch. The gold lid clicked shut.
Some of the boys by the wall cleared their throats tentatively.
"Caught cold?" Ukhov inquired with concern. "Monitor, close the window,
there's a draught."
The monitor closed the window. The lesson continued. The punished boys
continued to stand by the wall, shifting their weight from one foot to
another. Then, after having glanced at his watch several times, Ukhov would
suddenly say: "All right, team, be seated."
The bell always rang exactly a minute later.
Our French teacher's name was Matryona Martynovna Badeikina, but she
insisted we refer to her as Mathilde Martynovna. We never argued the point.
She called the first-to-third grade boys "polliwogs", the
third-to-sixth grade boys "dearies" and the senior boys "gentlemen". She was
definitely afraid of the polliwogs. Some of them had moustaches as wild as
the weeds on an empty lot, and their voices were so deep and fearful they
frightened the camels on the street. Besides, whenever a polliwog came up to
the lectern to recite a lesson, the smell of home-grown tobacco was so
strong on his breath it nearly made poor Mathilde sick.
"Don't come any closer!" she would wail. "The smell, pardon, is
overwhelming."
"It was the tomato pie I had," the polliwog would explain politely.
"The smell's because I'm burping."
"Ah, mon dieu! What has the pie to do with it? You're absolutely
drenched in nicotine."
"Oh, no, Matryona ... I mean, Mathilde Martynovna! I don't smoke. And,
uh ... please, pooeejekiteh la class?" (This should have been "Pui-je quitte
la class?")
This would melt Matryona's heart. One had only to ask for permission to
leave the room in French for her to beam happily. Actually, we thought she
was too sensitive. If anyone wrote some obscenity in French on the
blackboard, or tacked a dead rat to the lectern, or did anything else in
jest, she would always get offended. She would enter it in the class
journal, get all huffy, cover her face with her ham and just sit there
saying nothing. And we would be silent, too. Then, at a sign from Hefty, the
desks would begin to close in on the lectern slowly. We were great at
coasting around in our desks, with our knees raising them and our feet
moving along the floor. When all the boys grouped around her in a
semicircle, we would chant softly:
"Je vous aime, je vous aime, je vous aime."
Matryona Martynovna would take her hands from her face and see the des]
all around her. Then Hefty would rise and say in a deep, touching,
chivalrous voice:
"Pardon, Mathilde Martynovna! Don't be too hard on your polliwogs....
Haw Scratch out what you wrote in the journal or we won't let you out."
Matryona would beam and scratch it out.
The boys would then beat a solemn tattoo on their desk tops. The back n
would play taps. The desks would retreat.
However, we soon tired of declaring our love to the mam'-selle and so,
instead of "je vous aime" we began saying "Novouzensk", which sounded just
like it. In fact, when we chanted it, you couldn't tell the difference. And
so poor Mathilde went on imagining that the boys all loved her, while we
were chanting the name a nearby town.
However, it all ended sadly. Other objects besides our desks soon fell
prey to < wanderlust. Thus, a large bookcase once set out down the corridor,
and Seize'em's galoshes glided out of the Teachers' Room. However, when a
lectern, with He and a friend under it to provide motor power, reared up
just before a lesson a galloped around, the principal's spirit took a hand
in the table-tilting and the t culprits had their names put down in the
Black Book, while the rest of the class was made to stay after school for
two hours and miss their dinners.
HIS ROYAL MAJESTY'S BIRTHDAY
Looking through the classroom windows that morning we could see the
fluttering red, blue and white slices of the flag.
It was a red-letter day on the calendar, marked by the notation: "His
Royal Majesty's Birthday."
The cracked bell of Pokrovsk's Peter and Paul Church rang out:
"An-ton! An-ton! An-ton!
And a lit-the ring and bong-bong,
And a lit-the ring and bong-bong."
There was a special service at the school at eleven o'clock.
The boys were lined up in pairs. The stiff, silver-stitched edges of
our high collars cut into our necks.
All was still. There was a smell of incense in the air. It was very
close. The priest, the very same one who hit the boys over the head with the
Bible during Bible classes as he admonished them, saying "Stand up straight,
you dolt!" was now solemnly reading the service in a nasal voice. He was
dressed in glittering robes for the occasion. The choir sang. The small,
hairy precentor scurried up and down.
We were to stand stiffly at attention for two long hours. We could not
so much as move a muscle. My nose itched, but I dared not scratch it. Our
arms had to be in line with the seams of our trousers. All was still. It was
hot and stuffy.
"Long life to the Tsar! Glo-ory to him!"
"Bozhenov's going to be sick, Nikolai Ilyich."
"Shhh! Not a word! He would't dare!"
"Glo-oo-ry to him!"
"Honest, Nikolai Ilyich. He can't hold it in any more. He's going
to...."
"Shhh!"
All was still. And suffocating. My nose itched. This was discipline.
Hands and arms in line with your seams. The second hour was drawing to a
close.
"Go-oo-d save the Tsar!"
The principal took a step forward, and it seemed that he had fired a
child's popgun when he cried: "Hooray!"
"Hoo-ra-aa-aa-ay!"
The walls shook. The principal again cried:
"Hooray!"
"Hoora-aa-aa-ay!"
And once more. Heave-ho, all together now!
"Hooray!"
"AA.-.aghh...."
"Nukolai Ilyich! Bozhenov's throwing up all over the floor!"
"God save the Tsar...."
Bozhenov was carried out. He had fainted. The service was over. Now I
could at last scratch my nose and unbutton the top button of my stiff
collar.
We had always known, from Annushka having told us, that "science knows
many mitacs". This was the secret formula for guessing a card trick, and it
always helped you to pick the right pair. Which meant that science was
indeed all-powerful and did know many ... uh... mitacs. But no one knew what
a "mitac" was. We looked for the word in the encyclopaedia, but although we
found "Mitau" (with a notation: "see Jelgova"), we couldn't find a trace of
"mitac".
I next learned of the significance of science in school. However, the
overwhelming of science was not proved as conclusively to us there as it was
in Annushka's card trick. Science, as dry and undigestible as sawdust,
rained upon us from the lectern, powdering our heads generously in the
process. None of the teachers could tell us anything definite about the
mitacs. The second-year pupils suggested I ask the Latin teacher.
"Where did you hear that word?" he asked, playing for time, for
Roachius was a very conceited man.
The big boys fell silent, waiting to see what would come next.
"Our cook said..." I began amidst the general uproar.
"Go stand in the corner till the bell rings," he snapped, turning
beet-red. "Thank God the curriculum does not call for the study of pots and
pans. Stop up your spout, you moron!"
And I stopped up my spout. I realized that the school curriculum was
not intended to satisfy, as they then said, our spiritual requirements.
In search of the truth I once again fled to the wide open spaces of
Schwambrania. The main character of our arithmetic book, modestly known as
"A man". the very same one who had bought 25 3/4 yards of cloth at 3 roubles
a yard and had then resold it at 5 roubles a yard, was losing a lot of
money, because of Schwambrania. And two travellers, one setting out from
point A and the other from point B, could never meet, because they were
wandering about in Schwambrania. However, the population of Schwambrania,
represented by Oska, greeted my return with joy.
Having returned to the Big Tooth Continent, I immediately set out to
carry out some reforms. Firstly, Schwambrania had to be given a definite
place on the map We found a good spot for it in the Southern Hemisphere, in
the middle of the ocean. Thus, whenever it was winter in Pokrovsk, it was
summer in Schwambrania, or the only kind of game that is any fun is one that
takes you far away to another clime.
Now Schwambrania was firmly set on the map. The Big Tooth Continent was
situated in the Pacific Ocean to the east of Australia, having absorbed some
of the islands of Oceania. Its northern borders, reaching as far as the
equator, had a flourishing tropical flora, while its southern borders were
frozen wastelands, lying in close proximity to the Antarctic.
I then shook the contents of all the books I had ever read onto the
soil of Schwambrania. Oska, who was determined to keep abreast, was busy
learning new words and confusing them terribly. No sooner would I come home
from school than he would draw me aside and whisper:
"I've got news for you! Jack went to Camera, to hunt chocolates, and a
hundred wild Balkans attacked him, and started killing him! And just then
Miss Terracota started smoking. It's a good thing his faithful dog Sarah
Bemhardt saved him just in time."
And it was up to me to figure out that Oska meant the Cameroons, not
camera, cannibals, not the Balkans, and cachalots, not chocolates. It was
easy to guess that he had confused Sarah Bemhardt and a St. Bernard dog. And
the reason he called the volcano a Miss was because I had told him about
emissions of rocks.
We were growing older. The letters of my script had firmly taken hands,
and my lines were now as even as rows of soldiers. Now that we were a bit
older we became convinced that there was very little symmetry in the world,
and that there were no absolutely straight lines, completely round circles
or flat surfaces. Nature, we discovered, was contradictory, imperfect and
zig-zagged. This state of affairs had come about as a result of the constant
battles being waged by the forces of nature. The jagged contours of the
continents were a reflection of this struggle. The sea battered into the
mainland, while the continents thrust their fingers into the blue locks of
the sea.
The time had come for us to review the borders of Schwambrania. Thus, a
new map was drawn up.
That was when we noticed that all struggle was not confined to the
realm of geography. All of life was ruled by some sort of struggle, which
hummed in the hold of history and propelled it. Even our own Schwambrania
became dull and lifeless without it. Our game became as uneventful as a
stagnant pond of water. At that time we did not yet know what sort of a
struggle powered history. Living in our cosy apartment, we had no chance to
discover anything about the great, all-consuming struggle for survival, and
so decided that every war, every overthrown government, etc., was no more
than a struggle between good and evil. It was as simple as that. That was
why we had to put several scoundrels in Schwambrania to liven things up.
Bloodthirsty Count Chatelains Urodenal became the chief scoundrel of
Schwambrania.
At the time all the magazines carried ads for Chatelain's Urodenal, a
popular patent remedy for kidney and liver stones. The ads carried a picture
of a man racked by pain, with the pain depicted as pincers gripping the
unfortunate's body; or else, there was a picture of a man using a clothes
brush to brush a huge human kidney. We decided that these would be
considered the crimes committed by the bloodthirsty count.
Although the rooftops belonged to the real world, they were high above
the dull earth and were not subject to its laws. The roofs were occupied by
Schwambranians. Up and down the steep sides, over the attics and eaves, I
set off on my dizzying journeys. I could travel the length of a block by
going from roof to roof and never once touch the ground. It was wonderful to
watch the sky at twilight as I lay on the cooling iron roof, between the
chimney and the birdhouse pole. The sky was so close as it drifted by
overhead, and the roof drifted off into the clouds. The starling on duty was
whistling on the mast. The day, like a great ship, was sailing into evening,
raising the red oars of sunset and casting shadows as pointed as the tips of
an anchor into the yard.
However, no one was allowed to be out on the roofs. The janitor and his
broom guarded the heavenly approaches. He was vigilant and unbending.
People who lived in other houses and saw me thundering across their
roofs would shout: "Shame on you! A doctor's son gallivanting over the
rooftops!" Actually, I could not understand why a doctor's son was doomed to
crawl on the ground. But the confounded label of "doctor's son" was a
killjoy, a ball-and-chain that forced us to be goody-goodies.
One day the janitor tracked me down. He came crashing over the iron
roof after me. I wanted to jump into the next yard, but someone had
unleashed a vicious-looking mutt there. In another yard the owner was
standing outside in his long Johns and a vest. He said he would guarantee
"an earboxing and scolderation". Just then I noticed a ladder leaning
against an adjoining roof. I stuck my tongue out at the janitor and escaped
across the third yard.
The little yard I found myself in was full of lilac bushes in full
bloom, which made it seem as though everything in sight was covered with
lavender froth.
I heard someone approaching lightly from behind. A smiling girl with a
long golden braid came running out of the garden. She was carrying a
jump-rope. She stopped and stared at me. I backed away towards the gate.
"What made you run like that?"
"The janitor."
The girl had dancing dark eyes that looked like the black India rubber
balls we used for playing stickball. I felt that I had to bat a long one,
but I couldn't run. The rules of the game said that you'd surely be blocked
if another player stood opposite.
"Are you afraid of janitors?"
"I don't want to waste my time on them!" I said in a deep bass voice.
"Actually, I spit on them, through my teeth and over my shoulder." And I
stuck my hands into my pockets.
The girl looked at me with awe. "What do you mean by over your
shoulder?"
I showed her how it was done. We were silent for a while. Then the girl
said, "What grade are you in?"
"The first."
"So am I." She beamed.
We were silent again.
"One of the girls in my class can wiggle her ears. We all envy her,"
she said.
"That's nothing! There's a fellow in my class who can spit and hit the
ceiling. He's this big! He can lay you flat with his right hand tied behind
his back. And if he hits a desk top with his fist he can crack it. Only they
won't let him do it. Otherwise, he sure as anything would."
We were silent again. An organ-grinder began playing a mournful song. I
looked around the yard in search of a topic for conversation. The house was
sailing through the sky. A large kite with a rag tail shot over the roof,
dipped, straightened and tugged away as it soared higher still.
"My buckle will never get yellow," I said to my own surprise, "because
it's nickel-plated. If you want to, you can touch it." I unbuckled my belt
and held it out to her. The girl touched the buckle politely. I became
bolder, took off my school cap and showed her where my first and last names
had been written in indelible ink inside the hatband to make sure it would
not get lost. The girl read my name.
"My name's Taya. My full name is Taisia Opilova. What do they call you
short? Lenny?"
"No, Lelya. Glad to know you."
"Lelya? That's a girl's name!"
"It is not. Lola is."
We thus became acquainted.
From then on T, a free son of Schwambrania, climbed down the roof into
lilac valley each day. Taya Opilova was" fated to become the Eve of
Schwabrania. Oska was dead set against it. He said he wouldn't take a girl
into the game for all the pastries in the world. True enough, there had not
been a single girl Schwambrania until then. I tried to make him understand
that in any s respecting book fair maidens were always kidnapped and
rescued, and that r they could be kidnapped and rescued in Schwambrania,
too. Besides, I ha wonderful name for the first Schwambranian girl: Countess
Cascara Sagrada, daughter of Count Cascara Barbe. I had borrowed the name
from a back cove Niva and recalled that it had been described as "mild and
gentle". Oska fin had to agree, and so, little by little, I began
introducing Cascara, meaning Taya the customs and ways of Schwambrania. At
first she couldn't understand what was all about, but then gradually came to
know the history and geography of Big Tooth Continent. She was sworn to
secrecy.
I finally conquered her heart when I put on my cardboard epaulettes and
said I was going off to war with Piliguinia and would bring her back a
trophy.
I returned from my Piliguinian campaign the following day and galloped
along the roof, carrying my trophies: two cream-filled pastries. One for her
and one me. Oska had had a bite of mine.
I jumped off the wall and froze in my tracks. A strange boy dressed in
uniform of the Cadet School was walking up and down in the garden with Taya.
He was much older and taller than I. He had real shoulder straps, a real
bayonet in a holster, and was terribly stuck-up.
"Ah!" he said at the sight of me. "Is this your Schwambroman?"
Taya had told him all about it.
"Look here, you civilian boy," the cadet said in a very superior tone
of voice.
"How could you have given a young lady such a disgusting name? You know
what Cascara Sagrada is? It's, pardon the expression, constipation pills.
You filthy civvy! Anybody can tell you're a doctor's sonny-boy."
This was the last straw.
"Once a cadet always a cad!" I shouted and scrambled up the roof. I
threw half of the pastry at the cadet and then ate the other pastry and a
half.
I stretched out on the roof. I was very upset by what had happened. The
starling on duty was whistling overhead. I sailed away to Schwambrania,
proud and lonely, and the day, like a great ship, sailed into evening. The
sunset raised its red oars, and shadows as pointed as the tips of an anchor
fell upon the yard.
"To hell with everything!" I said.
But this did not apply to Schwambrania.
A battle was raging in the house. Brother was set against brother. The
disposition of warring forces was as follows: Schwambrania was in Papa's
consulting office and Piliguinia was in the dining-room. The parlour was the
battle-field. The stockade for prisoners of war was in the dark foyer.
Naturally, as the elder brother, I was a Schwambranian. I was
advancing, protected by the armchair and a clump of potted rubber plants and
rhododendrons. My brother Oska had dug in behind the Piliguinian threshold
of the dining-room. He was shouting:
"Bang! Zing! Zing! I shot you dead twice, but you keep on crawling. I
say fins!"
"No, not fins! It's called a truce! And anyway, you didn't shoot me
dead, you just grazed me through."
Klavdia, a girl from next door, was pining away in the foyer, that is
the stockade. She had been invited over especially to be a prisoner-of-war
and was, in turn, a Schwambranian or a Piliguinian Army nurse.
"Will you let me out of prisoner-of-war soon?" she said timidly, for
she had become very bored sitting around in the dark doing nothing.
"Not yet!" I shouted. "Our glorious forces have completed an orderly
retreat to pre-established positions under the overwhelming pressure of
enemy forces." I had borrowed the sentence from the newspapers. The daily
frontline dispatches were full of fine-sounding, vague expressions which
were used to conceal various military setbacks, losses, defeats and routs,
and all together they went under the grand heading of news from the "theatre
of military operations".
The glossy pictures in Niva portrayed fine, well groomed troops
ceremoniously carrying on a picturesque war. The generals' impressive
shoulders bore gilded clusters of epaulettes. Their tunics heaved with
galaxies of glittering medals. The brave Cossack hero Kuzma Kriuchkov was
shown accomplishing his great feat over and over again on pictures in
calendars, on cigarette boxes, post cards and candy boxes. He was shown
defeating a troop, a squadron, a whole regiment of Germans, and always with
a lock of hair curling out from under his rakishly tilted cap. Each school
service ended with a special prayer for the truly Christian troops. We
schoolboys wore patriotic tricoloured scarfs as we sold little Allied flags
in the streets, putting the coppers in collection boxes and proudly saluting
the trim officers.
The war eclipsed everything. "Louder the victory march! We are
victorious, and the enemy is on the run!" There were notices and manifestoes
everywhere. "The original has been signed by His Imperial Majesty." The war,
that great, beautiful, magnificent war, had captured our minds, our
conversation, our dreams, our games.
The only game we played was war.
The truce had ended. My troops were battling at the approaches to the
foyer. Annushka, who was a neutral, suddenly appeared on the battle-field,
demanding that Klavdia be released immediately, because her mother was
waiting for her in the kitchen.
We all said "fins", which meant a truce, and ran to the kitchen.
Klavdia mother, who was our neighbour's cook, always had a puffy, swollen
face. She was seated at the kitchen table. A grey envelope was lying in
front of her. She greeted us and picked it up gingerly, saying, "It's a
letter from your brother, Klavdia." He voice sounded strangely anxious. "Ask
the young man to read it to us. Dear Lon I hope he's all right."
I saw the sacred postmark: "From the Army in the Field". I accepted the
envelope solemnly. My fingertips filled with awe and excitement. It was a
letter from over there! A letter from the front lines! "March along, my
friends, to war, hussar bold and daring!"
I began reading in a bright, excited voice: "Dear Mother, I'm not going
to send this letter myself, because I was badly wounded, and my right arm
was amputate above the elbow...."
I was thunderstruck, I could not continue. Klavdia's mother screamed. H
dishevelled head fell upon the table top and she sobbed loudly. I wanted
very much to console her somehow, and myself, too, for I felt that the
reputation of t war had been badly damaged by this close scrape with gore,
and so I said hesitantly:
"He'll probably be decorated for this. Maybe he'll get a silver medal.
May he'll even get a St. George Cross."
Somehow, I felt I had not said the right thing.
A dull algebra lesson was in progress. Our math teacher was sick, and
his classes had been taken over temporarily by the dullest of all possible
excise tax clerks w was dodging the draft. His name was Gennady Alexeyevich
Samlykov, and soon nicknamed him Old Nag.
Soldiers of the 214th Regiment were drilling on the square outside the
school. Their marching songs and the shouted commands of their officers
drifted through the open windows, confusing the algebraic formulas. "Hey,
Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, Madrid and Oporto!" they sang. "Line up! Count off!"
"Curly, curly, curly ringlets, little Curlylocks, you're mine!"
"Hup-two-three-four! Left! Keep your line straight!" "Come when the bugle
calls, brave men to battle!" "Watch your feet! Where the hell d'you think
you are? Stand up straight!"
"Yes, Sir!"
"Charge!"
"Ra-aa-aaay!"
This loud, rending "hooray" burst forth from their gaping mouths and
straining throats in a hoarse, salivery roar. Their bayonets sunk into the
dummy. Twisted strands of straw burst from the torn sack of a belly.
"Who's that looking out the window? Repeat what I just said,
Martynenko."
Huge Martynenko, alias Hefty, tore his eyes from the window and
lumbered to his feet.
"Well, what did I just say?" Old Nag persisted. "So you don't know?
Well, what is the squared sum of two cathetuses?"
"It's ... uh...." Hefty mumbled and suddenly winked at us and said:
"It's right face ... count off ... plus doubled ranks."
We all burst out laughing.
"You get an T for that! Go stand by the wall!"
"Yes, Sir!" Hefty snapped and did a military turn at the wall. We all
grinned. Our penpoints screeched.
"Leave the room immediately, Martynenko!"
"Parade step ... eyes on the lectern ... down the hall... march!" Hefty
rasped.
"This is abominable!" Old Nag shouted as he jumped to his feet. "I'll
put your name down in the Ledger! You'll be left after school!"
"Curly locks, curly locks...." a snatch of song drifted in through the
window. "What the hell do you think you're doing? You're to stand at
attention with a full pack for three hours.... Curly locks, curly locks...."
Cr-rack! went something inside the wood-burning stove behind the
blackboard. Cr-rack! Bang-bang! One of the boys, knowing Old Nag's fear of
guns and shooting, had put some cartridges inside the tiled stove. The
teacher blanched as acrid fumes seeped into the room. He ran behind the
blackboard, stepping on what seemed to be a crumpled piece of paper. The
boys held their breath. Bang! The paper exploded, making Old Nag jump a yard
off the floor. No sooner had the sole of his other shoe come down again than
it caused another explosion. The boys, convulsed with silent laughter, began
sliding off their seats to disappear under their desks. The enraged teacher
turned to face the class and saw no one. Not a soul. We shook from the
laughter under our desks.
"Scoundrels!" Old Nag screamed. "I'll put you all down!" He tiptoed
cautiously towards the lectern. The soles of his shoes were smoking. He
picked up his snuff box, a true friend in hard times, but since he had
unwisely left it on the windowsill in the corridor for a moment before the
lesson had begun, we had long since added a pinch of gun-powder and pepper
to it.
Old Nag's quivering nostrils drew in the fiendish mixture. For a moment
he just stood there. His mouth was wide open and his eyes seemed to be
popping out of his head. Then a terrible, earth-shattering sneeze shook his
body.
Once again the classroom became inhabited. Our laughter made our desks
shake. Then Hefty raised his hand and said, "Second gun! Fire!"
"Ah-ah-choo!" the unfortunate Old Nag compiled.
"Third gun...."
"Pshoo! Ah!"
The door opened unexpectedly. We rose, as the principal entered. He had
been attracted by the sound of the shooting, our ribald laughter and the
teacher's hysterical sneezing.
"What's going on here?" His voice was steely as he took in Old Nag's
crimson face and the angelic countenances of the rows of boys.
"They.... Oh! Ah!" Old Nag attempted to speak. "Pshoo! Ah!"
At this point the monitor decided to intercede. "He just keeps on
sneezing, Sir!"
"I haven't asked you for an explanation!" The truth of the matter began
to dawn on him. "Insufferable wretches! Come to my office, Gennady
Alexeyevich."
Old Nag stumbled along after the principal, sneezing all the way.
He did not return to the classroom.
We had got rid of Old Nag for good.
"There's a smell of gunpowder in the air!" the grown-ups were saying
and shaking their heads.
The smell of gunpowder snaked through the classrooms, making them
inflammable. Every desk became a powder magazine, an arsenal and storeroom.
Each and every day there were new entries in the Deportment Ledger.
"The school inspector has taken from Vitaly Talianov, a fourth-grade
pupil who attempted to run off to war and was apprehended at the pier, a
Smith and Wesson revolver and bullets, and a tea kettle he stole from the
ragman, who has identified it. His parents have been notified.
Nikolai Shcherbinin, a second-grade pupil, was found to have concealed
in his desk: one officer's shoulder strap, a sword knot, a package of
gunpowder and a hollow metal tube of unknown purpose. His satchel contained:
a piece of a bayonet, a toy revolver, one spur, a soldier's tobacco pouch, a
cockade, a beanshooter and a hand grenade (discharged). He has been left
after school twice for three hours each time.
"Terenti Marshutin, a fifth-grade pupil, fired off a home-made gun
during the lesson, breaking a window and fouling the air. He insists it was
an accident. He has been expelled for a week."
The boys rattled when they walked, for the pockets of each were full of
cartridge shells. We collected them on the firing range beyond the cemetery.
The wind played tick-tack-toe among the graves. The rabbit-ears of the
windmills protruded from behind the hill. An Army camp languished on the
small plain. The 214th Infantry Regiment was displaced in wooden barracks
there. The wind carried the smell of cabbage soup, cheap tobacco, boots, and
other glorious aromas of the army's rear guard.
The pupils of the Pokrovsk Boys School and the privates of the 214th
Infantry Regiment had established firm business ties and were carrying on a
brisk trade. We passed our sandwiches, cucumbers, apples and various other
civilian dainties through the barbed-wire fence of the camp, and in return
received such coveted items of army life as empty magazines, buckles,
cockades and torn shoulder straps. Officer's shoulder straps were especially
prized. Sidor Dolbanov, an N.C.O., traded me a tar-specked lieutenant's
shoulder strap for two ham sandwiches, a piece of chocolate and five of my
father's Triumph cigarettes.
"I'm giving you this real cheap," he said during the transaction. "I'm
only doing it because you're a friend of mine. The way I see it, you
schoolboys are doing your hitch just like us. They make you wear uniforms
and drill, too. Right?"
Sidor Dolbanov was a great one for discoursing on education. "Except
that military science takes a lot of brains, so's you can't compare it to
your schooling," he philosophised as he wolfed down our sandwiches. "Yes,
sir, this isn't 'rithmetic or algebra, or any such like. You tell me this if
you're so smart: how many men are there in a regiment?"
"We didn't study that yet," I said, feeling very embarrassed and not
knowing the answer.
"That's what I mean. What about your class commander, boys? Is he a
mean old bitch?"
"He's very strict. He'll make you stand by the wall, put your name down
in the Black Book or keep you hours after school for nothing at all."
"What a louse! Which makes him just like our company commander."
"Do you have a company supervisor, too?"
"No, he's no supervisor, he's a bitch of a commander. He's hell on
wheels, that's him, Lieutenant Gennady Alexeyevich Samlykov."" "Old Nag!" I
gasped.
The older boys of. our school were strolling down Breshka Street with
some junior lieutenants. Although it was against school rules, an exception
had been made for our glorious Army officers. Soldiers saluted them. The
older schoolgirls who helped roll bandages made eyes at them. We were green
with envy.
One day the school inspector entered our classroom during a lesson. His
beard looked kindly and reverential,
"The first contingent of wounded from the front lines has just arrived.
We are going to welcome them. You there, in the back rows! I'm talking to
you! Tutin! I'll leave you after school for an hour, you dummox! Now, as I
was saying, the entire school will go out to welcome our glorious soldiers
who ... ah ... have suffered so, defending the tsar and the Christian faith.
In a word, line up in pairs! And I want you to behave properly outside, you
cutthroats, savages, jailbirds! Anyone who doesn't will be sorry he was ever
born."
The streets were crowded and ablaze with tricoloured flags. The wounded
were being transported, one man to a vehicle, in the decked-out carriages
belonging to the town's wealthy citizens, with an aristocratic lady from the
local philanthropic society dressed as an Army nurse supporting him. The
procession resembled a wedding train. Policemen saluted it.
The wounded were put up in a new dispensary housed in a former primary
school. The flustered ladies were in charge there. A gala concert was to be
held in one of the large wards. The wounded men, freshly-shaven, washed,
Hefty did not look back. He went straight out, into the empty corridor,
and once there he suddenly felt very small and doomed. And he heard, coming
from be! the closed door, a shriek of laughter rise up over the desks, the
inkwells and lectern amidst the shocked silence of the boys he had left.
Then it changed into gurgling scream. It was little Petya Yachmenny in the
first row who had become hysterical from the tension. Hefty threw back his
shoulders and stalked towards the principal's office.
Kozodav was breathing heavily. He was breathing heavily and poking his
:finger at the boys lined up in front of him. "Yes, sir! This one's
Honeycomb, and this one's Atlantis. That's their nicknames."
The other man was rocking back and forth in a tilted chair. His spurs
jungled and he twirled his small black moustache. "Well, well.... Such
conspirators! Well, well, boys."
The seven of them stood stiffly before the desk. There were only seven,
since the Zemstvo Inspector's son was missing. The soot of misery and
despair was settling on their faces.
"So. Indeed," the principal said curtly, and his voice sounded as if a
twig had snapped. "I thank you. Well, you wretches, what have you to say for
yourselves? For shame! For shame! It's disgraceful! Who else was in on this
with you? Oh, so you won't tell? Miserable creatures. You're no more than a
bunch of thugs. You'll all be expelled. You're a disgrace to the school
emblem. Nothing you can say will change matters. I want to see your parents.
I'm very sorry for them. Having sons like you is enough to break a parent's
heart. You scoundrels."
The seven raised their eyes and heaved a collective sigh. Indeed, there
were their parents. They could expect their mothers' tears. And scolding.
And their fathers' chairs being pushed back in anger. Perhaps even a cuff.
Their dinners would be getting cold on the table. "You'll end up being a
stevedore!" And the empty days stretching on ahead.
Then the King of the Jews said rudely, "Let's not bring our parents
into this. It's bad enough as it is."
"Silence! Do you want to be blacklisted for good?"
Just then Hefty entered. He leaned a hand on the edge of the desk, and
the desk creaked. Moving his jaw slowly, he seemed to be chewing his words
as he said, "I'm in on it, too. I'm the ringleader."
"Well. You can consider yourself dismissed. You're also expelled."
Eight overcoats were missing from the cloakroom now.
Eight boys trudged across the muddy square, their feet dragging in the
ooze. They were bent under the weight of their school satchels and
misfortune. They looked back at the school a last time and one of them, it
was Hefty, the boys in the classroom saw it was he, shook his fist angrily
at the building. Everyone in the school who had seen them wanted to shout,
pound their fists on their desks, turn over the lecterns and catch up with
the eight boys outside. But the boys in classrooms were pupils, and pupils
were not allowed to make any noise or express comradely feelings until they
were permitted to do so by the bell, which measured out their portions of
freedom.
Penpoints scratched across paper and left many a blot.
While the fifth lesson of the day was in progress, Joseph Pukis, his
face very grave, entered the deserted corridor. The janitor was busy washing
the floor Joseph greeted him politely. He spoke beseechingly.
"Mr. Janitor! I really have to see the principal. It's a matter of life
and the contrary."
The principal saw Joseph in the Teachers' Room. He was in a hurry.
"Yes? What can I do for you? Um.... I don't have very much time."
"Mister Principal, Sir, I'm an old wandering Jew, and I can see the
happiness of a family man in your face. I'll bet anything that your children
will never go ban foot or wanton."
"Get to the point! I have no children. And I have no time to waste,
either."
"Just one little minute, Sir. You expelled eight boys today. And I ask
you, what did you expel them? But do I have a right to ask you? No! A
thousand times no. But I have a kind heart. And when you have a kind heart,
you have to speak up. I'm very sorry for those boys. And I'm still sorrier
for their parents, who nursed and upbrang them. Sir Principal, you don't
have any children. May God give y children. You don't know how oi-oi-oi
terrible it is when your boy comes home and...."
"That's enough!" The principal rose. "This conversation is senseless.
The exit is over there."
"Just one little minute more!" Joseph cried, grabbing the principal's
sleeve. "But do you know that all those bells, the devil take them, were cut
off by all your pupils? How many boys are there in the school?"
"There were two hundred and seventy-two until today," the principal
replied despite himself.
"Well, at least two hundred and sixty of them did the cutting. How do
you that? And what if I tell you that your best pupil, the son of the
honourable Zemstvo Inspector, may he live to be a hundred, also did the
cutting, and even a lot better than many of the others? The police only
showed you a piece of it." Joseph took out the complete Manifesto and handed
it to the principal. The principal paled. There on the sheet of paper were
the signatures of the boys of all eight grades. He pointed to a chair
contemptuously and said, "Sit down ... please."
Then Joseph told him of his terms. The eight boys were to be
reinstated. The police would search the Tavern and would find the bells. The
Afon Recruit would lie low for a while. He had agreed to this. The
townspeople would think that s bums from the Tavern had cut off the bells,
and in this way the boys would be exonerated. That would put an end to the
scandal. If, on the other hand, the principal did not reinstate the boys,
the very next day the entire town, the entire region and the entire school
district would discover what was going on under the roof of the Pokrovsk
Boys School and what the sons of some Zemstvo inspectors were up to.
"All right. They'll be reinstated, but their names will be entered in
the Ledger." He pulled out his wallet. "How much do I owe you for this ...
for this, and to ensure your silence?"
Joseph jumped to his feet. Joseph leaned across the desk. Joseph said,
"Sir! You don't have to pay me, Sir. But I swear by the memory of my mother,
may she rest in peace and quiet, that the time will come when you'll be
repaid by me and by us, and by those eight boys who went off like whipped
dogs, and you'll be repaid with good interest!"
Thus ends the saga of the Afon Recruit.
"FS" AND "D'S"
After the doorbell scandal life at school seemed to have resumed its
natural course. There were fewer bloody brawls, fewer rows and less
thieving. However, the rules became still stricter.
Seize'em was forever shaking the plaster foundations of Antiquity when
he unlocked the bookcase to get the Deportment Ledger and disturbed the aged
Venus.
Pupils were absolutely forbidden to be seen on or near the railroad
platform and the Public Gardens. Paralysing, grey boredom oozed over from
one day to the next, from one page of our books to the next. The Deportment
Ledger was a sword that hung over our heads. Rows of boys being punished
would be lined up along the walls during classes. The pages of the class
journals filled up with broken fences of "F's" and big fat "D's".
Veniamin Pustynin, the Latin teacher, who was nicknamed Roach Whiskers
for his long, bristling moustache (or, Roachius, to give it a Latin ending)
sowed "F's" and "D's" with a vengeance. He had another nickname as well, one
our class usually used, and that was Crookneck.
Roachius was thin and had a long nose, and really did look like a
crook. Above his stiffly starched winged collar he had an extremely long
neck that swayed from side to side just like a big question mark. And so,
wherever he went, Roachius would find a big question mark. It would be
staring at him from the blackboard, the lectern, the seat of his chair, the
back of his coat, the door to his house. The question marks would be erased
but would reappear the following day. Roachius would turn pale, lose weight
and fill our notebooks and report cards with "F's".
He had a passion for little notebooks in which we were supposed to
write down Latin words. Whenever he called on a pupil he demanded that the
boy come up to the blackboard with his little Latin notebook.
"So," he would say. "I see you've learned the lesson. Now let's have a
look at your notebook. I want to see what new words you've put down. What?
You left it at home? And you dared to come up to the blackboard without it?
Go back to your seat." And he would give the boy an "F".
No amount of pleading helped. It was an "F", and that was all there was
to it.
There were two boys in my class whose last names were similar:
Alekseyenko and Aleferenko. One day Alekseyenko left his hateful notebook at
home. Roachius entered the classroom, sat down at the lectern, put on his
pince-nez and said softly:
"Ale ... ferenko!"
Aleferenko, whose seat was behind Alekseyenko, rose and went to the
front of the class, while Alekseyenko, who in his terror had decided that
his name had been called, jumped to his feet and mumbled in a rolling bass,
"I forgot my notebook...." He stopped short, for he had suddenly noticed
Aleferenko approaching the lectern, and cursed himself for being such a
fool. Roachius calmly dipped his pen into the inkwell. "Actually, I called
on Aleferenko, but since you've confessed your guilt, you'll get what you
deserve." And he gave him an "F".
The bell rang, bringing recess to an end. The noise in the classroom
died down.
He was coming!
The boys rose in a body.
The history teacher was coming. He had fine blond hair parted down the
middle, a very young, pale, thin face and huge blue eyes. His head was
tilted slightly in a kindly manner. His collar was snow-white. Kirill Ukhov
burst into the classroom and tossed the class journal onto the lectern.
The boys stood at attention.
Ukhov looked them over, rushed over to the lectern, then into one of
the aisles and crouched down. Suddenly his blue eyes flashed. His
high-pitched voice rose to a shout: "Who! Dared! To sit! Down! I haven't
said ... 'Be seated'. Get up and stay up! And you! And you, too! And you!
Wretches! All the others, be seated. Hands on your desks. Both of them.
Where's your other hand? Stand up and stay up! And you, over to the wall!
Right there! Well? Silence! Whose desk creaked? Shalferov, was it yours? Get
up! Silence!"
Fourteen boys stood all through the lesson. The history teacher
expounded on ancient kings and famous steeds. He kept fixing his tie, his
hair, his cuffs. A gold bracelet glinted under his left cuff. It was the
gift of some legendary noblewoman.
Fourteen boys were standing. The lesson dragged on and on. Their legs
became numb. Finally, Ukhov glanced at his watch. The gold lid clicked shut.
Some of the boys by the wall cleared their throats tentatively.
"Caught cold?" Ukhov inquired with concern. "Monitor, close the window,
there's a draught."
The monitor closed the window. The lesson continued. The punished boys
continued to stand by the wall, shifting their weight from one foot to
another. Then, after having glanced at his watch several times, Ukhov would
suddenly say: "All right, team, be seated."
The bell always rang exactly a minute later.
Our French teacher's name was Matryona Martynovna Badeikina, but she
insisted we refer to her as Mathilde Martynovna. We never argued the point.
She called the first-to-third grade boys "polliwogs", the
third-to-sixth grade boys "dearies" and the senior boys "gentlemen". She was
definitely afraid of the polliwogs. Some of them had moustaches as wild as
the weeds on an empty lot, and their voices were so deep and fearful they
frightened the camels on the street. Besides, whenever a polliwog came up to
the lectern to recite a lesson, the smell of home-grown tobacco was so
strong on his breath it nearly made poor Mathilde sick.
"Don't come any closer!" she would wail. "The smell, pardon, is
overwhelming."
"It was the tomato pie I had," the polliwog would explain politely.
"The smell's because I'm burping."
"Ah, mon dieu! What has the pie to do with it? You're absolutely
drenched in nicotine."
"Oh, no, Matryona ... I mean, Mathilde Martynovna! I don't smoke. And,
uh ... please, pooeejekiteh la class?" (This should have been "Pui-je quitte
la class?")
This would melt Matryona's heart. One had only to ask for permission to
leave the room in French for her to beam happily. Actually, we thought she
was too sensitive. If anyone wrote some obscenity in French on the
blackboard, or tacked a dead rat to the lectern, or did anything else in
jest, she would always get offended. She would enter it in the class
journal, get all huffy, cover her face with her ham and just sit there
saying nothing. And we would be silent, too. Then, at a sign from Hefty, the
desks would begin to close in on the lectern slowly. We were great at
coasting around in our desks, with our knees raising them and our feet
moving along the floor. When all the boys grouped around her in a
semicircle, we would chant softly:
"Je vous aime, je vous aime, je vous aime."
Matryona Martynovna would take her hands from her face and see the des]
all around her. Then Hefty would rise and say in a deep, touching,
chivalrous voice:
"Pardon, Mathilde Martynovna! Don't be too hard on your polliwogs....
Haw Scratch out what you wrote in the journal or we won't let you out."
Matryona would beam and scratch it out.
The boys would then beat a solemn tattoo on their desk tops. The back n
would play taps. The desks would retreat.
However, we soon tired of declaring our love to the mam'-selle and so,
instead of "je vous aime" we began saying "Novouzensk", which sounded just
like it. In fact, when we chanted it, you couldn't tell the difference. And
so poor Mathilde went on imagining that the boys all loved her, while we
were chanting the name a nearby town.
However, it all ended sadly. Other objects besides our desks soon fell
prey to < wanderlust. Thus, a large bookcase once set out down the corridor,
and Seize'em's galoshes glided out of the Teachers' Room. However, when a
lectern, with He and a friend under it to provide motor power, reared up
just before a lesson a galloped around, the principal's spirit took a hand
in the table-tilting and the t culprits had their names put down in the
Black Book, while the rest of the class was made to stay after school for
two hours and miss their dinners.
HIS ROYAL MAJESTY'S BIRTHDAY
Looking through the classroom windows that morning we could see the
fluttering red, blue and white slices of the flag.
It was a red-letter day on the calendar, marked by the notation: "His
Royal Majesty's Birthday."
The cracked bell of Pokrovsk's Peter and Paul Church rang out:
"An-ton! An-ton! An-ton!
And a lit-the ring and bong-bong,
And a lit-the ring and bong-bong."
There was a special service at the school at eleven o'clock.
The boys were lined up in pairs. The stiff, silver-stitched edges of
our high collars cut into our necks.
All was still. There was a smell of incense in the air. It was very
close. The priest, the very same one who hit the boys over the head with the
Bible during Bible classes as he admonished them, saying "Stand up straight,
you dolt!" was now solemnly reading the service in a nasal voice. He was
dressed in glittering robes for the occasion. The choir sang. The small,
hairy precentor scurried up and down.
We were to stand stiffly at attention for two long hours. We could not
so much as move a muscle. My nose itched, but I dared not scratch it. Our
arms had to be in line with the seams of our trousers. All was still. It was
hot and stuffy.
"Long life to the Tsar! Glo-ory to him!"
"Bozhenov's going to be sick, Nikolai Ilyich."
"Shhh! Not a word! He would't dare!"
"Glo-oo-ry to him!"
"Honest, Nikolai Ilyich. He can't hold it in any more. He's going
to...."
"Shhh!"
All was still. And suffocating. My nose itched. This was discipline.
Hands and arms in line with your seams. The second hour was drawing to a
close.
"Go-oo-d save the Tsar!"
The principal took a step forward, and it seemed that he had fired a
child's popgun when he cried: "Hooray!"
"Hoo-ra-aa-aa-ay!"
The walls shook. The principal again cried:
"Hooray!"
"Hoora-aa-aa-ay!"
And once more. Heave-ho, all together now!
"Hooray!"
"AA.-.aghh...."
"Nukolai Ilyich! Bozhenov's throwing up all over the floor!"
"God save the Tsar...."
Bozhenov was carried out. He had fainted. The service was over. Now I
could at last scratch my nose and unbutton the top button of my stiff
collar.
We had always known, from Annushka having told us, that "science knows
many mitacs". This was the secret formula for guessing a card trick, and it
always helped you to pick the right pair. Which meant that science was
indeed all-powerful and did know many ... uh... mitacs. But no one knew what
a "mitac" was. We looked for the word in the encyclopaedia, but although we
found "Mitau" (with a notation: "see Jelgova"), we couldn't find a trace of
"mitac".
I next learned of the significance of science in school. However, the
overwhelming of science was not proved as conclusively to us there as it was
in Annushka's card trick. Science, as dry and undigestible as sawdust,
rained upon us from the lectern, powdering our heads generously in the
process. None of the teachers could tell us anything definite about the
mitacs. The second-year pupils suggested I ask the Latin teacher.
"Where did you hear that word?" he asked, playing for time, for
Roachius was a very conceited man.
The big boys fell silent, waiting to see what would come next.
"Our cook said..." I began amidst the general uproar.
"Go stand in the corner till the bell rings," he snapped, turning
beet-red. "Thank God the curriculum does not call for the study of pots and
pans. Stop up your spout, you moron!"
And I stopped up my spout. I realized that the school curriculum was
not intended to satisfy, as they then said, our spiritual requirements.
In search of the truth I once again fled to the wide open spaces of
Schwambrania. The main character of our arithmetic book, modestly known as
"A man". the very same one who had bought 25 3/4 yards of cloth at 3 roubles
a yard and had then resold it at 5 roubles a yard, was losing a lot of
money, because of Schwambrania. And two travellers, one setting out from
point A and the other from point B, could never meet, because they were
wandering about in Schwambrania. However, the population of Schwambrania,
represented by Oska, greeted my return with joy.
Having returned to the Big Tooth Continent, I immediately set out to
carry out some reforms. Firstly, Schwambrania had to be given a definite
place on the map We found a good spot for it in the Southern Hemisphere, in
the middle of the ocean. Thus, whenever it was winter in Pokrovsk, it was
summer in Schwambrania, or the only kind of game that is any fun is one that
takes you far away to another clime.
Now Schwambrania was firmly set on the map. The Big Tooth Continent was
situated in the Pacific Ocean to the east of Australia, having absorbed some
of the islands of Oceania. Its northern borders, reaching as far as the
equator, had a flourishing tropical flora, while its southern borders were
frozen wastelands, lying in close proximity to the Antarctic.
I then shook the contents of all the books I had ever read onto the
soil of Schwambrania. Oska, who was determined to keep abreast, was busy
learning new words and confusing them terribly. No sooner would I come home
from school than he would draw me aside and whisper:
"I've got news for you! Jack went to Camera, to hunt chocolates, and a
hundred wild Balkans attacked him, and started killing him! And just then
Miss Terracota started smoking. It's a good thing his faithful dog Sarah
Bemhardt saved him just in time."
And it was up to me to figure out that Oska meant the Cameroons, not
camera, cannibals, not the Balkans, and cachalots, not chocolates. It was
easy to guess that he had confused Sarah Bemhardt and a St. Bernard dog. And
the reason he called the volcano a Miss was because I had told him about
emissions of rocks.
We were growing older. The letters of my script had firmly taken hands,
and my lines were now as even as rows of soldiers. Now that we were a bit
older we became convinced that there was very little symmetry in the world,
and that there were no absolutely straight lines, completely round circles
or flat surfaces. Nature, we discovered, was contradictory, imperfect and
zig-zagged. This state of affairs had come about as a result of the constant
battles being waged by the forces of nature. The jagged contours of the
continents were a reflection of this struggle. The sea battered into the
mainland, while the continents thrust their fingers into the blue locks of
the sea.
The time had come for us to review the borders of Schwambrania. Thus, a
new map was drawn up.
That was when we noticed that all struggle was not confined to the
realm of geography. All of life was ruled by some sort of struggle, which
hummed in the hold of history and propelled it. Even our own Schwambrania
became dull and lifeless without it. Our game became as uneventful as a
stagnant pond of water. At that time we did not yet know what sort of a
struggle powered history. Living in our cosy apartment, we had no chance to
discover anything about the great, all-consuming struggle for survival, and
so decided that every war, every overthrown government, etc., was no more
than a struggle between good and evil. It was as simple as that. That was
why we had to put several scoundrels in Schwambrania to liven things up.
Bloodthirsty Count Chatelains Urodenal became the chief scoundrel of
Schwambrania.
At the time all the magazines carried ads for Chatelain's Urodenal, a
popular patent remedy for kidney and liver stones. The ads carried a picture
of a man racked by pain, with the pain depicted as pincers gripping the
unfortunate's body; or else, there was a picture of a man using a clothes
brush to brush a huge human kidney. We decided that these would be
considered the crimes committed by the bloodthirsty count.
Although the rooftops belonged to the real world, they were high above
the dull earth and were not subject to its laws. The roofs were occupied by
Schwambranians. Up and down the steep sides, over the attics and eaves, I
set off on my dizzying journeys. I could travel the length of a block by
going from roof to roof and never once touch the ground. It was wonderful to
watch the sky at twilight as I lay on the cooling iron roof, between the
chimney and the birdhouse pole. The sky was so close as it drifted by
overhead, and the roof drifted off into the clouds. The starling on duty was
whistling on the mast. The day, like a great ship, was sailing into evening,
raising the red oars of sunset and casting shadows as pointed as the tips of
an anchor into the yard.
However, no one was allowed to be out on the roofs. The janitor and his
broom guarded the heavenly approaches. He was vigilant and unbending.
People who lived in other houses and saw me thundering across their
roofs would shout: "Shame on you! A doctor's son gallivanting over the
rooftops!" Actually, I could not understand why a doctor's son was doomed to
crawl on the ground. But the confounded label of "doctor's son" was a
killjoy, a ball-and-chain that forced us to be goody-goodies.
One day the janitor tracked me down. He came crashing over the iron
roof after me. I wanted to jump into the next yard, but someone had
unleashed a vicious-looking mutt there. In another yard the owner was
standing outside in his long Johns and a vest. He said he would guarantee
"an earboxing and scolderation". Just then I noticed a ladder leaning
against an adjoining roof. I stuck my tongue out at the janitor and escaped
across the third yard.
The little yard I found myself in was full of lilac bushes in full
bloom, which made it seem as though everything in sight was covered with
lavender froth.
I heard someone approaching lightly from behind. A smiling girl with a
long golden braid came running out of the garden. She was carrying a
jump-rope. She stopped and stared at me. I backed away towards the gate.
"What made you run like that?"
"The janitor."
The girl had dancing dark eyes that looked like the black India rubber
balls we used for playing stickball. I felt that I had to bat a long one,
but I couldn't run. The rules of the game said that you'd surely be blocked
if another player stood opposite.
"Are you afraid of janitors?"
"I don't want to waste my time on them!" I said in a deep bass voice.
"Actually, I spit on them, through my teeth and over my shoulder." And I
stuck my hands into my pockets.
The girl looked at me with awe. "What do you mean by over your
shoulder?"
I showed her how it was done. We were silent for a while. Then the girl
said, "What grade are you in?"
"The first."
"So am I." She beamed.
We were silent again.
"One of the girls in my class can wiggle her ears. We all envy her,"
she said.
"That's nothing! There's a fellow in my class who can spit and hit the
ceiling. He's this big! He can lay you flat with his right hand tied behind
his back. And if he hits a desk top with his fist he can crack it. Only they
won't let him do it. Otherwise, he sure as anything would."
We were silent again. An organ-grinder began playing a mournful song. I
looked around the yard in search of a topic for conversation. The house was
sailing through the sky. A large kite with a rag tail shot over the roof,
dipped, straightened and tugged away as it soared higher still.
"My buckle will never get yellow," I said to my own surprise, "because
it's nickel-plated. If you want to, you can touch it." I unbuckled my belt
and held it out to her. The girl touched the buckle politely. I became
bolder, took off my school cap and showed her where my first and last names
had been written in indelible ink inside the hatband to make sure it would
not get lost. The girl read my name.
"My name's Taya. My full name is Taisia Opilova. What do they call you
short? Lenny?"
"No, Lelya. Glad to know you."
"Lelya? That's a girl's name!"
"It is not. Lola is."
We thus became acquainted.
From then on T, a free son of Schwambrania, climbed down the roof into
lilac valley each day. Taya Opilova was" fated to become the Eve of
Schwabrania. Oska was dead set against it. He said he wouldn't take a girl
into the game for all the pastries in the world. True enough, there had not
been a single girl Schwambrania until then. I tried to make him understand
that in any s respecting book fair maidens were always kidnapped and
rescued, and that r they could be kidnapped and rescued in Schwambrania,
too. Besides, I ha wonderful name for the first Schwambranian girl: Countess
Cascara Sagrada, daughter of Count Cascara Barbe. I had borrowed the name
from a back cove Niva and recalled that it had been described as "mild and
gentle". Oska fin had to agree, and so, little by little, I began
introducing Cascara, meaning Taya the customs and ways of Schwambrania. At
first she couldn't understand what was all about, but then gradually came to
know the history and geography of Big Tooth Continent. She was sworn to
secrecy.
I finally conquered her heart when I put on my cardboard epaulettes and
said I was going off to war with Piliguinia and would bring her back a
trophy.
I returned from my Piliguinian campaign the following day and galloped
along the roof, carrying my trophies: two cream-filled pastries. One for her
and one me. Oska had had a bite of mine.
I jumped off the wall and froze in my tracks. A strange boy dressed in
uniform of the Cadet School was walking up and down in the garden with Taya.
He was much older and taller than I. He had real shoulder straps, a real
bayonet in a holster, and was terribly stuck-up.
"Ah!" he said at the sight of me. "Is this your Schwambroman?"
Taya had told him all about it.
"Look here, you civilian boy," the cadet said in a very superior tone
of voice.
"How could you have given a young lady such a disgusting name? You know
what Cascara Sagrada is? It's, pardon the expression, constipation pills.
You filthy civvy! Anybody can tell you're a doctor's sonny-boy."
This was the last straw.
"Once a cadet always a cad!" I shouted and scrambled up the roof. I
threw half of the pastry at the cadet and then ate the other pastry and a
half.
I stretched out on the roof. I was very upset by what had happened. The
starling on duty was whistling overhead. I sailed away to Schwambrania,
proud and lonely, and the day, like a great ship, sailed into evening. The
sunset raised its red oars, and shadows as pointed as the tips of an anchor
fell upon the yard.
"To hell with everything!" I said.
But this did not apply to Schwambrania.
A battle was raging in the house. Brother was set against brother. The
disposition of warring forces was as follows: Schwambrania was in Papa's
consulting office and Piliguinia was in the dining-room. The parlour was the
battle-field. The stockade for prisoners of war was in the dark foyer.
Naturally, as the elder brother, I was a Schwambranian. I was
advancing, protected by the armchair and a clump of potted rubber plants and
rhododendrons. My brother Oska had dug in behind the Piliguinian threshold
of the dining-room. He was shouting:
"Bang! Zing! Zing! I shot you dead twice, but you keep on crawling. I
say fins!"
"No, not fins! It's called a truce! And anyway, you didn't shoot me
dead, you just grazed me through."
Klavdia, a girl from next door, was pining away in the foyer, that is
the stockade. She had been invited over especially to be a prisoner-of-war
and was, in turn, a Schwambranian or a Piliguinian Army nurse.
"Will you let me out of prisoner-of-war soon?" she said timidly, for
she had become very bored sitting around in the dark doing nothing.
"Not yet!" I shouted. "Our glorious forces have completed an orderly
retreat to pre-established positions under the overwhelming pressure of
enemy forces." I had borrowed the sentence from the newspapers. The daily
frontline dispatches were full of fine-sounding, vague expressions which
were used to conceal various military setbacks, losses, defeats and routs,
and all together they went under the grand heading of news from the "theatre
of military operations".
The glossy pictures in Niva portrayed fine, well groomed troops
ceremoniously carrying on a picturesque war. The generals' impressive
shoulders bore gilded clusters of epaulettes. Their tunics heaved with
galaxies of glittering medals. The brave Cossack hero Kuzma Kriuchkov was
shown accomplishing his great feat over and over again on pictures in
calendars, on cigarette boxes, post cards and candy boxes. He was shown
defeating a troop, a squadron, a whole regiment of Germans, and always with
a lock of hair curling out from under his rakishly tilted cap. Each school
service ended with a special prayer for the truly Christian troops. We
schoolboys wore patriotic tricoloured scarfs as we sold little Allied flags
in the streets, putting the coppers in collection boxes and proudly saluting
the trim officers.
The war eclipsed everything. "Louder the victory march! We are
victorious, and the enemy is on the run!" There were notices and manifestoes
everywhere. "The original has been signed by His Imperial Majesty." The war,
that great, beautiful, magnificent war, had captured our minds, our
conversation, our dreams, our games.
The only game we played was war.
The truce had ended. My troops were battling at the approaches to the
foyer. Annushka, who was a neutral, suddenly appeared on the battle-field,
demanding that Klavdia be released immediately, because her mother was
waiting for her in the kitchen.
We all said "fins", which meant a truce, and ran to the kitchen.
Klavdia mother, who was our neighbour's cook, always had a puffy, swollen
face. She was seated at the kitchen table. A grey envelope was lying in
front of her. She greeted us and picked it up gingerly, saying, "It's a
letter from your brother, Klavdia." He voice sounded strangely anxious. "Ask
the young man to read it to us. Dear Lon I hope he's all right."
I saw the sacred postmark: "From the Army in the Field". I accepted the
envelope solemnly. My fingertips filled with awe and excitement. It was a
letter from over there! A letter from the front lines! "March along, my
friends, to war, hussar bold and daring!"
I began reading in a bright, excited voice: "Dear Mother, I'm not going
to send this letter myself, because I was badly wounded, and my right arm
was amputate above the elbow...."
I was thunderstruck, I could not continue. Klavdia's mother screamed. H
dishevelled head fell upon the table top and she sobbed loudly. I wanted
very much to console her somehow, and myself, too, for I felt that the
reputation of t war had been badly damaged by this close scrape with gore,
and so I said hesitantly:
"He'll probably be decorated for this. Maybe he'll get a silver medal.
May he'll even get a St. George Cross."
Somehow, I felt I had not said the right thing.
A dull algebra lesson was in progress. Our math teacher was sick, and
his classes had been taken over temporarily by the dullest of all possible
excise tax clerks w was dodging the draft. His name was Gennady Alexeyevich
Samlykov, and soon nicknamed him Old Nag.
Soldiers of the 214th Regiment were drilling on the square outside the
school. Their marching songs and the shouted commands of their officers
drifted through the open windows, confusing the algebraic formulas. "Hey,
Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, Madrid and Oporto!" they sang. "Line up! Count off!"
"Curly, curly, curly ringlets, little Curlylocks, you're mine!"
"Hup-two-three-four! Left! Keep your line straight!" "Come when the bugle
calls, brave men to battle!" "Watch your feet! Where the hell d'you think
you are? Stand up straight!"
"Yes, Sir!"
"Charge!"
"Ra-aa-aaay!"
This loud, rending "hooray" burst forth from their gaping mouths and
straining throats in a hoarse, salivery roar. Their bayonets sunk into the
dummy. Twisted strands of straw burst from the torn sack of a belly.
"Who's that looking out the window? Repeat what I just said,
Martynenko."
Huge Martynenko, alias Hefty, tore his eyes from the window and
lumbered to his feet.
"Well, what did I just say?" Old Nag persisted. "So you don't know?
Well, what is the squared sum of two cathetuses?"
"It's ... uh...." Hefty mumbled and suddenly winked at us and said:
"It's right face ... count off ... plus doubled ranks."
We all burst out laughing.
"You get an T for that! Go stand by the wall!"
"Yes, Sir!" Hefty snapped and did a military turn at the wall. We all
grinned. Our penpoints screeched.
"Leave the room immediately, Martynenko!"
"Parade step ... eyes on the lectern ... down the hall... march!" Hefty
rasped.
"This is abominable!" Old Nag shouted as he jumped to his feet. "I'll
put your name down in the Ledger! You'll be left after school!"
"Curly locks, curly locks...." a snatch of song drifted in through the
window. "What the hell do you think you're doing? You're to stand at
attention with a full pack for three hours.... Curly locks, curly locks...."
Cr-rack! went something inside the wood-burning stove behind the
blackboard. Cr-rack! Bang-bang! One of the boys, knowing Old Nag's fear of
guns and shooting, had put some cartridges inside the tiled stove. The
teacher blanched as acrid fumes seeped into the room. He ran behind the
blackboard, stepping on what seemed to be a crumpled piece of paper. The
boys held their breath. Bang! The paper exploded, making Old Nag jump a yard
off the floor. No sooner had the sole of his other shoe come down again than
it caused another explosion. The boys, convulsed with silent laughter, began
sliding off their seats to disappear under their desks. The enraged teacher
turned to face the class and saw no one. Not a soul. We shook from the
laughter under our desks.
"Scoundrels!" Old Nag screamed. "I'll put you all down!" He tiptoed
cautiously towards the lectern. The soles of his shoes were smoking. He
picked up his snuff box, a true friend in hard times, but since he had
unwisely left it on the windowsill in the corridor for a moment before the
lesson had begun, we had long since added a pinch of gun-powder and pepper
to it.
Old Nag's quivering nostrils drew in the fiendish mixture. For a moment
he just stood there. His mouth was wide open and his eyes seemed to be
popping out of his head. Then a terrible, earth-shattering sneeze shook his
body.
Once again the classroom became inhabited. Our laughter made our desks
shake. Then Hefty raised his hand and said, "Second gun! Fire!"
"Ah-ah-choo!" the unfortunate Old Nag compiled.
"Third gun...."
"Pshoo! Ah!"
The door opened unexpectedly. We rose, as the principal entered. He had
been attracted by the sound of the shooting, our ribald laughter and the
teacher's hysterical sneezing.
"What's going on here?" His voice was steely as he took in Old Nag's
crimson face and the angelic countenances of the rows of boys.
"They.... Oh! Ah!" Old Nag attempted to speak. "Pshoo! Ah!"
At this point the monitor decided to intercede. "He just keeps on
sneezing, Sir!"
"I haven't asked you for an explanation!" The truth of the matter began
to dawn on him. "Insufferable wretches! Come to my office, Gennady
Alexeyevich."
Old Nag stumbled along after the principal, sneezing all the way.
He did not return to the classroom.
We had got rid of Old Nag for good.
"There's a smell of gunpowder in the air!" the grown-ups were saying
and shaking their heads.
The smell of gunpowder snaked through the classrooms, making them
inflammable. Every desk became a powder magazine, an arsenal and storeroom.
Each and every day there were new entries in the Deportment Ledger.
"The school inspector has taken from Vitaly Talianov, a fourth-grade
pupil who attempted to run off to war and was apprehended at the pier, a
Smith and Wesson revolver and bullets, and a tea kettle he stole from the
ragman, who has identified it. His parents have been notified.
Nikolai Shcherbinin, a second-grade pupil, was found to have concealed
in his desk: one officer's shoulder strap, a sword knot, a package of
gunpowder and a hollow metal tube of unknown purpose. His satchel contained:
a piece of a bayonet, a toy revolver, one spur, a soldier's tobacco pouch, a
cockade, a beanshooter and a hand grenade (discharged). He has been left
after school twice for three hours each time.
"Terenti Marshutin, a fifth-grade pupil, fired off a home-made gun
during the lesson, breaking a window and fouling the air. He insists it was
an accident. He has been expelled for a week."
The boys rattled when they walked, for the pockets of each were full of
cartridge shells. We collected them on the firing range beyond the cemetery.
The wind played tick-tack-toe among the graves. The rabbit-ears of the
windmills protruded from behind the hill. An Army camp languished on the
small plain. The 214th Infantry Regiment was displaced in wooden barracks
there. The wind carried the smell of cabbage soup, cheap tobacco, boots, and
other glorious aromas of the army's rear guard.
The pupils of the Pokrovsk Boys School and the privates of the 214th
Infantry Regiment had established firm business ties and were carrying on a
brisk trade. We passed our sandwiches, cucumbers, apples and various other
civilian dainties through the barbed-wire fence of the camp, and in return
received such coveted items of army life as empty magazines, buckles,
cockades and torn shoulder straps. Officer's shoulder straps were especially
prized. Sidor Dolbanov, an N.C.O., traded me a tar-specked lieutenant's
shoulder strap for two ham sandwiches, a piece of chocolate and five of my
father's Triumph cigarettes.
"I'm giving you this real cheap," he said during the transaction. "I'm
only doing it because you're a friend of mine. The way I see it, you
schoolboys are doing your hitch just like us. They make you wear uniforms
and drill, too. Right?"
Sidor Dolbanov was a great one for discoursing on education. "Except
that military science takes a lot of brains, so's you can't compare it to
your schooling," he philosophised as he wolfed down our sandwiches. "Yes,
sir, this isn't 'rithmetic or algebra, or any such like. You tell me this if
you're so smart: how many men are there in a regiment?"
"We didn't study that yet," I said, feeling very embarrassed and not
knowing the answer.
"That's what I mean. What about your class commander, boys? Is he a
mean old bitch?"
"He's very strict. He'll make you stand by the wall, put your name down
in the Black Book or keep you hours after school for nothing at all."
"What a louse! Which makes him just like our company commander."
"Do you have a company supervisor, too?"
"No, he's no supervisor, he's a bitch of a commander. He's hell on
wheels, that's him, Lieutenant Gennady Alexeyevich Samlykov."" "Old Nag!" I
gasped.
The older boys of. our school were strolling down Breshka Street with
some junior lieutenants. Although it was against school rules, an exception
had been made for our glorious Army officers. Soldiers saluted them. The
older schoolgirls who helped roll bandages made eyes at them. We were green
with envy.
One day the school inspector entered our classroom during a lesson. His
beard looked kindly and reverential,
"The first contingent of wounded from the front lines has just arrived.
We are going to welcome them. You there, in the back rows! I'm talking to
you! Tutin! I'll leave you after school for an hour, you dummox! Now, as I
was saying, the entire school will go out to welcome our glorious soldiers
who ... ah ... have suffered so, defending the tsar and the Christian faith.
In a word, line up in pairs! And I want you to behave properly outside, you
cutthroats, savages, jailbirds! Anyone who doesn't will be sorry he was ever
born."
The streets were crowded and ablaze with tricoloured flags. The wounded
were being transported, one man to a vehicle, in the decked-out carriages
belonging to the town's wealthy citizens, with an aristocratic lady from the
local philanthropic society dressed as an Army nurse supporting him. The
procession resembled a wedding train. Policemen saluted it.
The wounded were put up in a new dispensary housed in a former primary
school. The flustered ladies were in charge there. A gala concert was to be
held in one of the large wards. The wounded men, freshly-shaven, washed,