Arsenic Ocean. Our valiant Brenabor was the only ship that did not surrender
to the enemy and managed to break through the fiery circle. The lone vessel,
its sails billowing, sped across the ocean blue. There was an island in that
ocean. It was a bleak granite island without a sign of life. It was named
Punishment Isle and was a part of the Liverpill Archipelago. Cape Comer was
on that island and there, in a seashell grotto, the Black Queen lived. We
dropped anchor. The Queen did not look bad, although she was a bit mouldy.
Then we passed the dangerous islands of Quinine, Biomalt, Cocoa and
Codlive-roil. As we drew alongside Cape Colt, we sighted the tops of the
Overthere Mts. and the inaccessible Peak Puzzle, so we turned westwards and
entered Seven Scholars Bay.
We were approaching Elfin Island.
The Prince and the Pauper, Max and Moritz, Bobus and Bubus, Tom Sawyer
and Huck Finn, Oliver Twist, the Little Women and the Little Men, and when
they were grown, Captain Grant's Children, Little Lord Fauntleroy, the
Twelve Huntsmen, the Three Spinners, the Seven Wise Scholars, the
Thirty-three Knights, who were the nephews of Uncle Chernomor, the Last Day
of Pompeii, and the One Thousand and One Nights all came out to welcome us.
"Long live Your Royal Brilliance!" they shouted.
There was a green oak on the island. And a gold chain on the oak. A
puss-in-boots walked round and round it, looking very wise. When he went to
the right, he would read a book out loud, and when he went to the left, he
would turn on a gramophone. Just like Durov's famous circus animals. A
sphinx sat on the top of a cliff, making up riddles and charades.
Familiar characters from many books lived here, for Elfin Island was a
forest preserve for all the famous characters we had ever read about. They
lived here out of time and place.
A large company was riding towards us, led by the Mysterious Knight
with his visor down. Next came the Headless Horseman. Don Quixote whipped
his old nag on, with his faithful sword-bearer Sancho Panza trotting along
on a donkey. Sancho was carrying some windmill slats that Don Quixote had
hacked off some place or other. Then came Ivan the Fool on the Humpbacked
Horse. He stuck out his tongue as he rode by. Then came the Three Knights,
Ilya Muromets, Alyosha Popovich and Dobrynya Nikitich on their three mighty
steeds. The horses were harnessed to the Tsar-Cannon. Nat Pinkerton, the
well-known detective, crept along in their wake. He was looking for the
Mysterious Knight and was being shadowed by the famous detective, Sherlock
Holmes.
A man with long hair and a long beard and clothed in animal skins
appeared from behind some bushes. A wise old parrot was perched on his
shoulder. The parrot was plucking fortune cards from his master's pocket.
"Rrrr-robinson Crr-rusoe!" the parrot squawked.
We recognized the great hermit. Following Robinson was a savage
carrying several parcels. He was completely naked. He didn't have on any
pants at all. All he had on was a calendar leaf for a loincloth. The word
written on the page was:
"Friday". At the sight of us Robinson begged our pardon and asked Don
Quixote to lend him his shaving basin, which Don Quixote did. Robinson went
off to shave, while Friday, having stopped to gossip with Sancho Panza and
ask his advice about something, ran off to put on some clothes in a house
with a sign outside that read:
Ladies and Men's
Valiant Little Tailor
Sews seven cloaks at a stroke
"They mean us," the Seven Wise Scholars said.
That evening our visit was marked by a gala fete and fireworks in the
Mysterious Garden. Bluebirds and Blue Herons were there. Golden Cockerels
crowed, and geese laid golden eggs, while squirrels whistled popular tunes.
We were there, too, and drank mead with the rest, but since we had no
moustaches, it did not flow down our chests.
The days of the festivities coincided with the first days of the
revolution Russia. Reality was wonderful. It turned everything about us
topsy-turvy. The following telegram was received from Schwambrania:
The people of Schwambrania are worried. Indignant over the Battle of
Charade. Brenabor partially abdicated. Chatelains Urodenal temporary ruler.
Half an hour later the Brenabor, having sealed the holds and raised the
red flag, sailed at full steam off to the Brightasday Sea. We passed
Lilliputia, Shellacputia, Port Folio and Getamoveonio. We rechristened our
ship. It was now the Carshandar and Jupiter. The crew was all for the
republic and had renounced the traitor of a tsar. After all, Brenabor No. 4
had temporarily installed the villian Chatelains Urodenal in order to
preserve his crown. Urodenal's troops were guarding the Hopscotch Plateau,
having dug in along the Nitty, Plotzky and Socko-Pocko canyons. We had no
choice but to press on towards the Candelabra Mountains. There, in the
northern foothills, the republican conspirators were hiding out in the
environs of Port Rait. We took them on board. Then, rounding Cape Clock and
bypassing Knuckle duster, we sailed for the free shores of Carshandar,
dropping anchor in Port Yippee. The Carshandarians welcomed us with open
arms. Carshandar was enveloped in a revolutionary uprising. Urodenal's
landing party was only able to take Condora. We set siege to Condora from
the Lilac Sea. Condora fell. We absconded with great riches. Then, passing
Cape Rick-Rack and Cape Billbock, we stopped off at Port Ico, and finally
dropped anchor on the Carshandar Riviera. I changed my last name and became
Ardelar de Carshandar.
In order to prepare a coup on the entire continent, I stowed away in
the sealed hold of one of the ships and made my way to New Shiyamburg. I
lived in the capital, disguised as an Indian. However, on the very eve of
the uprising, Brenabor recognized me by the scar in my left eyebrow.
Urodenal had me arrested and brought me before a court martial.
The trial of Admiral de Carshandar lasted a whole day (Sunday). This is
how the Admiral described it in his diary:
"The courtroom was full of people who were staring at me with open
curiosity. I was in the dock, so handsome and lithe. Four guards had their
rifles trained on me, to make sure I didn't escape. The former Brenabor was
the chief justice. He really hated my guts. Count Chatelains Urodenal,
black-haired and a cad, was prosecuting me personally.
"There was no brass band at all. Satanrex was my lawyer. They had sworn
they wouldn't arrest him or throw him into jail. The prosecutor lied,
telling everyone to their face that I was a crook, but my lawyer got even
and said that Urodenal was a crook if there ever was one. Then Brenabor
said: 'Mr. Prisoner at the Bar! You have five minutes to give them a peace
of mind.' Then I rose, so tall and lithe, and the courtroom died down.
'Honourable Judges!' I shouted. 'You are under arrest in the name of the
Free Continent of Big Tooth!' In a flashing eye Jack, the Sailor's
Companion, dashed into the courtroom with some revolutionaries and they
overthrew the tyrants. Everyone cheered, and there was a general ovation."
The admiral did not mention the sunset that day. Apparently, due to the
coup, there was a continuous sunrise over Schwambrania.
All sorts of meetings were being held everywhere, for the grown-ups
were quite carried away by politics. My own mother had been elected to the
Council of Deputies by the Ladies' Circle. Papa was Vice-Chairman of the new
Duma. Since the Duma and the Council were at odds. Papa and Mamma were, too.
I was burning with a desire to enter politics, since T, too, wanted to
attend meetings, make speeches and elect candidates. That was when I
received a letter from my friend Vitya Expromptov in Saratov. He described
his Boy Scout troop in such glorious terms that I decided to organize a
branch in my school.
I read whatever I could about scouting. Then one day after classes were
over and the boys were buckling their satchels, I climbed onto the lectern
and made a long speech.
"Gentlemen, we've had enough of fighting during recesses, playing cards
and being disunited. We should band together, that is, like a club.... And
we won't lie, smoke or curse. We'll drill, have our own clubroom and hold
club meetings. We'll elect a leader, and we'll be young scouts. I mean Boy
Scouts. What do you say? Who wants to be a Boy Scout?"
Practically every boy there wanted to be one. The commotion that
followed was unimaginable. Nikolai Ilyich looked in to see what was going
on. He said that if we didn't stop yelling, he'd have all our names put down
in the Ledger before we ever drew up a list of future Boy Scouts.
The following Sunday the first scout meeting was held in school. To my
surprise, there were a great many boys from other grades and even several
seniors.
We conducted our meeting just like adults: we stood up and made
speeches, and someone kept the minutes.
Two troops were formed. I was elected scout leader. Shalferov, the
horse doctor's son, was elected Treasurer, for he was considered to be the
most honest of us all.
Our Rules were based on the scout law: we would not smoke, drink, lie
or use bad language, but would be courteous, cheerful, do a good deed every
day, always smile, and salute our superiors on the street by raising three
fingers to our caps. The three fingers stood for the three commandments of
the scout oath: "...to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the
scout law." Actually, the Handbook said: "...and my monarch", but we used
the alternative "country". There was a hitch as far as God was concerned,
for Stepan Atlantis suddenly announced that he was an atheist. We had to
convince him that God was actually like your conscience and, anyway. He had
only been included to make things sound right. We finally convinced him, and
Stepan solemnly raised three fingers and repeated the scout oath. He then
promised to stop smoking within a week.
We signed up quite a few parents as sponsors. They donated money which
we used to buy a tricoloured flag and an old automobile horn that was
missing its rubber bulb. This home-made bugle called for a great amount of
wind. It would then produce a loud and horrible sound. Hefty was the only
one who had the necessary lung power, and so he was elected bugler. He was
flattered and tried his best, blowing so hard it made trucks veer and
steamships green with envy.
We were given a room in the local children's library to serve as our
clubhouse. By then so many other boys had signed up, we had formed two more
troops. I was now a troop leader. Boys saluted me on the street. I felt very
proud.
All the preparatory work was finally completed. The clubroom was
furnished, the flag displayed, the scout promise made, the patrol and troop
leaders elected, the scout law learned by heart. Every one of us knew who
Lord Baden-Powell was and what St. George had to do with scouting.
However, nobody knew what to do after all of the above had been
accomplished. We decided to stage a mock battle between the two troops on
granary row, but the watchmen chased us away.
We tried doing good deeds, deciding we would patrol the town and fix
street benches and fences, and help old ladies carry their shopping bags.
However, schoolboys had a bad reputation in Pokrovsk, and the very first old
lady whom Atlantis tried to help began screaming wildly the moment he took
hold of her heavy bag. A crowd gathered on the spot. Stepan barely managed
to escape.
I then discovered that my fellow-scouts were doing their good deeds in
the following manner: they would sneak up to a stout fence in the dark and
pry off some boards. The following morning they would appear on the scene as
benefactors and mend it with goody-goody expressions. They received ten
points at the Good Deed Contest for this.
We soon became very bored with scouting.
There was no use expecting any help from St. George, our heavenly
patron. Lord Baden-Powell, wearing a broad-brimmed Boer campaign hat, smiled
down at us from the wall portrait. He couldn't suggest anything of interest,
either.
Once again the boys began smelling strongly of tobacco.
The autumn of 1917 was the first autumn during which Russia was not
ruled by a tsar.
This autumn was just like any other, a time of melons, shoals and
second exams for the boys who had not been promoted. At this time a barge
carrying bearers of the St. George Cross for Valour docked at Saratov. There
was a Museum of War Trophies on the barge, and so the entire school was
taken to see this floating embodiment of patriotism.
A slogan painted on the side of the barge read: "War to a Victorious
End!" You could still make out the lettering underneath that had not been
completely erased. It read: "For our country, our tsar...." Every single
member of the crew had been awarded the St. George Cross. Nearly all were
missing an arm or a leg, and some were missing both. Artificial legs and
crutches creaked and tapped along the deck. However, every man had a little
St. George Cross dangling on his chest.
We roamed the barge for three hours, sticking our heads into the wide
barrels of the Austrian howitzers and fingering the silk of the Turkish
banners that had been captured in battle. We saw a tremendous German shell
called a "trunk". You could pack the death of an entire company into one of
them. Finally, the amiable curator showed us the museum's main exhibit. It
was a German helmet, taken off a dead officer. It's outstanding features
were the hair of the killed man that was stuck to the inside of the helmet
and real, dried German blood. The curator spoke of this with relish.
The curator was an officer. He stood on his own, natural legs and
gesticulated with his own undamaged, well-cared for hands.
Stepan did not say a word all the way back, but that very evening he
came over to the scout clubroom and quarrelled with the rest of us.
"Did you notice the smell there, fellows? Just like the butcher stalls
at the market. That's the smell of blood. It hits you right in the nose. But
what the hell's it all about? After all, they're all human beings."
"We have to fight to a glorious, victorious end," one of the boys
ventured.
"You're a damn fool! Just aping what somebody else said. What's there
in it for us? To hell with you and your precious St. George. Go play
soldiers, and maybe you'll get a St. George Cross, too. As for the Boy
Scouts, what the hell good are you if you're all for the war? Cross me off
your damn list. Understand? I've had enough of fooling around." He pulled
out a pack of forbidden cigarettes and lit one up insolently.
We stood around in silence, feeling somehow embarrassed. Then Hefty
grunted, slowly pulled out his own pack of cigarettes, went over to Atlantis
and said, "Give me a light. The game's over. Let's go."
Sir Robert Baden-Powell was smiling down at us from the wall. There was
nothing funny about it at all, but according to the scout law, a scout was
always supposed to be cheerful. Sir Robert grinned, just like Monokhordov.
Once, during a geography lesson in the first grade, Stepan Gavrya, who
had been left back, raised his hand from where he sat in the last row and
said, "Is it true what it says in books about Atlantis? I mean, that there
really is a place like that?"
"Perhaps. Why?" Kamyshov, our geography teacher, asked with a smile.
"Because I'm going to find it, that's what. I'll look around in the ocean,
and I know I'll find it. I'm a darn good diver, you know."
That was when Stepan got his nickname. From that day on he became known
as Atlantis. Stepan, that devoted pigeon fancier and dare-devil, really did
dream of finding the lost Atlantis.
Sitting in a hayloft, sneezing from the fragrant dust, he described his
future to his friends. "I'll pump all the water out of there and fix all the
doors in the palaces, and you've never seen the kind of life we're going to
have. It'll really be a lark! There won't be any principals there, and no
Latin, that's for sure."
He left stifled within the stone walls of the school. Stepan was
hot-headed. His head was as hot as a watermelon in a melon patch on a
blazing July day. Learning came very hard to him. He was from a very small
farm outside the town, and all of the vast, endless steppe was his back
yard. He was used to shouting at camels, and his foghorn voice shook the
official stillness of the school every time he opened his mouth.
"Gavrya," a teacher would say, calling on him. "Yah?" Stepan would
bellow in reply and then be reprimanded. He had run away to join the army,
but had been returned home from the very first railroad station. Then he had
run away again and had been caught again. He did not like to talk about it.
Stepan had strange, funny ideas about life. First, before really
getting the hang of a thing, he would see it upside-down, as it were. They
said he had even learned to read upside-down in the beginning. This is how
it had all come about. Stepan's elder brother was being prepared for school
by a teacher who came to the house to teach him to read. Stepan was still
very small and was not supposed to participate in these lessons. The teacher
would open the primer, and Stepan's brother, who sat by her side, would read
aloud. Stepan would sit across the table from them, leaning over as he
listened to every word. However, when he looked at the book he would see all
the words upside-down, and that was how he remembered them. That was how he
learned to read: from right to left and upside-down. He later had a very
hard time learning to read the correct way.
Stepan suddenly became very grown-up after the boys' visit to the barge
to see the wounded soldiers. He was forever going off someplace and reading
books we knew nothing about. He would often drop by at my house, but would
spend his time in the kitchen talking to Annushka's soldier. Another
frequent visitor there was a Czech named Kardac, a prisoner-of-war who had
been in the Austrian Army. The three of them would argue heatedly. After one
such argument Stepan said to me in a puzzled voice "What do you know? It
looks like I have everything upside-down again. Can you beat that! I was a
damn fool talking about Atlantis the way I did. We can have a pretty good
life here, too, you know. That's something I never thought about."
Hungry women standing in line for bread at the market fell upon the
mayor. Dogs howled at night, and the wooden clappers sounded feebly in the
awkward hands of the volunteer home guardsmen. The city council was in
session every single day. A cold, damp wind was blowing from the Volga,
tossing scraps of foam onto the bank. Torn shreds of proclamations:
"Citizens!... The Constituent Assembly..." waltzed along the dusty streets.
Something very heavy was dropped in Saratov beyond the Volga at four
o'clock in the afternoon. This was followed by a great gust of wind. The
windows rattled. Boom!
And then again, twice in a row:
Boom!... Boom!
It seemed as though someone was swinging a tremendous rug beater,
beating out a fantastic rug that was miles long. People would stop on the
street and look up at the sky. Crows winged back and forth. Crowds of idlers
dotted the rooftops, as they usually did when there was a fire someplace.
Those standing on the pavement shouted:
"See anything?"
"Sure. As clear as day. That was some explosion."
"Who's shooting?"
"Who knows? Probably the Cadets!"
From the top of the school building we could see tiny white puffs of
smoke rising over Saratov. They quickly expanded to become dark, ragged
clouds. Half a minute later a heavy blow would come crashing down on the
roof, deafening us slightly. By night time there was a red glow of fire over
Saratov. Nobody turned on their lights in Pokrovsk that night. The sky was a
feverish crimson.
At nine o'clock the following morning boys in long great-coats hurried
across the square as always. Their pencil boxes rattled in their satchels.
A dull grey morning crept into the classrooms. The lectern creaked as
the sleepy-eyed history teacher leaned on it. The monitor, crossing himself
automatically, rattled off the morning prayer. Then he handed the teacher
the class journal and reported on the absent pupils:
"Stepan Gavrya is absent."
The teacher had not had enough sleep. He yawned and scratched his chin.
"And so the Emperor Justinian the Great and ... aag-ah-haa ... Theodora ...
(he was overcome by yawning). And The-agh-aah-do-oh-ra...."
It was terribly dull to have to listen to an account of ancient,
long-dead emperors at a time when real, live people were making history
right there, across the Volga. There was a loud murmuring in the classroom.
Finally, Aleferenko got up and said:
"Would you please explain all about what's going on in Russia right
now?"
"Gentlemen!" The teacher was indignant. "In the first place, I'm not a
newspaper. Secondly, you are too young to discuss politics. Now, where were
we? Justi...."
"You sure are old," someone in the back row muttered.
"Old regime, that's what you are!"
"What? Get up and stand by the wall!"
"Don't listen to him, Kolya!" the boys shouted. "Who does he think he
is, Justinian the Great?"
"Get out!"
But just then a deep, mighty, all-consuming sound burst in from the
sires. carried in on the wings of the wind. It was the bone-meal factory
whistle. It was immediately caught up by the piping whistle of the railroad
depot. The lumber yards on the hill joined in various trebles. The flour
mill whistled. The cannery buzzed like some distant bumblebee. A river boat
on the Volga piped frantically, wildly.
The morning was full of their songs.
The inspector dashed into the classroom. Confusion was entangled in his
beard like a fly. No one rose to greet him.
Annushka's soldier friend, Kharkusha, was making a speech on the river
ban He was standing on the pier, gesticulating with his good hand. From afar
he seemed to be conducting the orchestra of whistles. We elbowed our way
through the crowd.
A boat was rapidly approaching the pier. It was the Tamara. Its wheels
turning smartly, slapping the water, and two ridges of white foam rose on
either side of the prow. A red flag looked as if it was about to fly off the
mast. The boat was now close enough for us to see the men and machine-guns
on its deck. The men looking weary but determined, and as set as if they had
been bolted to the deck.
This was the revolution docking at Pokrovsk. The captain on the bridge
was wearing a red armband. Standing next to him with a rifle slung over his
should and his cap tilted back was Atlantis. I recognized the man standing
next to him. They were workers from the lumber yards.
"Hey! Look! It's Stepan!" my classmates yelled. "Atlantis! How'd you
there?"
Petya Yachmenny, a very proper boy, shook his head and said, "Why'd you
play hookey? You'll get in trouble now."
"Oh, no, I won't!" Stepan said and laughed. He leaped over the railing
and on the pier as the boat was docking. "Not on your life I won't! The
Black Book's good as dead and buried now. For good!"
The tie ropes had been secured, and now the boat was hissing as it
bumped against the pier The captain was issuing commands through a
megaphone. Men with red armbands were lining up on the deck.
"These're our men," Atlantis said proudly.
"They're Bolsheviks," people murmured in the crowd.
"Ready!" the captain said.
At the end of the spring term we burned the school diaries that
contained our day-to-day marks. Such was the old school custom. This time,
however, it seemed to have acquired a new significance, one that we were all
aware of.
A huge bonfire blazed in the school yard. We pranced about it in a wild
Indian dance as the flames consumed our "D's" as our reprimands
disintegrated and the days we had attended school went up in smoke.
"Hooray!" we shouted, three hundred strong. "Hoor-rray! We're burning!
the last! diaries! of the old regime! They'll never return! An end to all
diaries! An end to no dinners! Death to the ledgers! Hooray! The last school
ledgers in the world are burning! No more cramming or demerits! There go the
ledgers of the old regime!"
Hefty and Stepan made their way to the deserted Teachers' Room.
The bookcase containing the Black Book was locked. The squirrel's tail
was tickling dusty Venus' nose. A huge papier-mache model of a human eye
stared at the boys in amazement. Then Hefty kicked in the door panel.
The Black Book was removed from the bookcase.
"Into the fire with it!" Atlantis yelled as he appeared on the porch,
carrying the thick Ledger. "We'll roast Seize'em's tattling!"
But every single boy wanted to touch the Dove Book, to read what it
said about him, to discover its secrets. All the ledgers of previous years
were then tossed into the flames. The last was read aloud by the bonfire,
and we had a grand old time listening to its loathsome pages. We decided to
preserve it for posterity, and Stepan was elected to be the Keeper of the
Ledger, since at least a quarter of all the mischief reported in it
concerned the boy who had once decided to set out in search of Atlantis.
The old ledgers were going up in flames. Their hard covers writhed in
the fire. Then Forsunov, one of the seniors, came out on the porch. He was a
member of the local Council of Deputies.
"Let's have a minute of quiet, comrades," he said. "The Council of
Deputies has decided to fire all the old regime teachers. This means that
Romashov, Roachius, Ukhov and Monokhordov will all go. We'll have new
teachers. We'll elect our own representatives to the Teachers' Council.
Everything'll be different now. This is the end of the Black Book."
Three hundred boys in grey school uniforms marched around the fire that
was now dying down. They hooted and howled, and shouted gleefully as they
carried the unmasked and helpless Black Book at the head of this unheard-of
funeral procession.
Meanwhile, a mound of charred, brittle pages was curling up amidst the
ashes.
We spent the summer of 1918 on the Carshandar Riviera in Northern
Schwambrania and in the village of Kvasnikovka, which was twelve kilometres
from Pokrovsk.
We battled all through the summer, stamping out large settlements of
toadstools and cutting down every nettle in sight with bloodthirsty glee.
Naturally, quite a few innocent mushrooms and harmless dandelions lost their
lives in the fray. It was rainy summer, and weeds and grass sprouted in
great profusion. Then one day w captured the worst villain of all,
Death-Cap-Poison-Emir. It was an amazing mushroom with a stem as large as a
tenpin and a dark-red cap dotted with white bumps that looked like a huge
chunk of sausage. There could be no doubt about it: this was the chieftain
of all toadstools.
We carried Death-Cap-Emir home with great pomp, walking along in the
shade of its umbrella-cap. Suddenly, two men appeared on the road. They had
con from the ravine and were walking towards us.
"That's some umbrella! Whaddya know!" one of them said. He had big ea
that wiggled when he spoke. The man was wearing a ragged khaki field jacket
and puttees. There was a visible stubble on his chin. In fact, there was
something definitely nettle-like about him that made me feel itchy when he
looked at us.
"He made me all itchy inside," Oska said to me afterwards.
Just then the other man came up. His grin revealed two rows of rotten
teeth. T second man was pale and puny. He had on a linen shirt with a
standing collar and a large mushroom-like hat. He reminded me of a rotten
toadstool.
"Won't you treat us to that dainty titbit, young men?" the
toadstool-man said.
"Don't be stingy, brother," the nettle-man said. "We're damn hungry.
And everything's common property now, even mushrooms, by the way. Am I
right, brothers?"
"How'd you know we're brothers?" Oska asked.
"I know everything."
"Everybody's brothers now," the toadstool-man added. Then he went on in
very solemn voice: "Young men, judging by the look of your swords, I can see
1 you are a pair of fine, upstanding knights. Help your suffering fellow-men
in t of trial, brothers, or I'll be forced by the pangs of hunger to eat
this mushroom the poison-mushroom variety, and I will die at your feet in
terrible convulsions
"That's for sure. We're more dead than alive anyway," the nettle-man
said.
We were horror-stricken when he bit off a small piece of the death-cap
began to writhe. The toadstool-man would have pulled his hair in despair had
he had any, but he was bald. We stood there in stunned silence and then hi
something knocking inside the dead man.
"His heart's still ticking," Oska said uncertainly.
"That's my spirit entering and leaving my body in turns, Brother," the
dead said sorrowfully. "Here I am, dying of hunger, poor soul, and all
because of the revolution. What did I shed my blood for? Call your dear
mamma, boys. Maybe she can save this orphan. Tell her a man is dying and is
willing to trade a watch or a clock for some bacon."
The nettle-man then began pulling pocket watches, locket-watches,
stopwatches, alarm clocks and chronometers from his pockets. We stared
spellbound in awe at this great treasure. The environs of Kvasnikovka
resounded with a mighty ticking.
Half an hour later the summer people and the local village women
crowded around the two men. The nettle-man was pulling wall clocks and
cuckoo clocks from his bag and winding them up, while the toadstool-man,
like some circus magician, was pulling a length of silk material from his
stomach and growing thinner by the second. He then came up with the
following from his knapsack:
two desk sets, a pair of bedroom slippers, a small fish bowl (no fish),
an icon, a pair of curling irons, several gramophone records, a dog collar,
a starched dickey, an enamel bedpan and a mouse-trap. His floppy hat turned
out to be a lampshade.
"Do you have a sewing machine?" one of the village woman asked.
"I did have one, but I traded it in Tambov."
As the trading was proceeding at a lively pace, the nettle-man made a
speech, just as if he were at a meeting.
"Now, my dear ladies, women and everybody else, you can see what we've
come to, and all on account of those Bolsheviks. And, mind, we shed our
working-class blood for them, down to the very last drop, my dear ladies and
women. We're both from Petrograd."
"Look! The Commissar's coming!" a boy shouted.
The nimble men quickly stuffed their wares back into their sacks.
"Let's see your papers," Commissar Chubarkov said when he had got out
of the gig. "And stop agitating!"
"How can you say such a thing? You're supposed to be one of us," the
nettle-man replied calmly.
"I'm not one of you, and don't you ever forget it," Chubarkov said
angrily and put his hand in his pocket. "Let's see your papers, you damn
profiteer!"
The toadstool-man's hands shook as he pulled out a scrap of paper. This
was what was written on it: "The bearer is an assistant bookkeeper ... and
research worker."
The nettle-man had no identification papers at all. He himself seemed
dismayed about it.
"Pack up your junk and get going, both of you, before I pull you in.
There's too many of you toadstools popping up all over!" Chubarkov said.
"You're mistaken! We're just travellers on our way. In fact, we don't
even have many personal property. You can search us if you want to," the
toadstool-man said.
"I've no time to waste on you. You're lucky I'm in a hurry, I'll bet it
o'clock by now."
"Cu-ckoo, cu-ckoo, cu-ckoo!" went the cuckoo clock in the nettle-mans
bag.
Pokrovsk had changed during our absence. The market was gone, and some
former rich men were sweeping the market square. The owner of the bone-meal
factory was one of them. We crossed off the second item on our list of
injustices. A speakers' platform had been erected in the place where the
Earth curved, and a machine-gun now protruded from the window of the big
house on Breshka Street where an overweight fox-terrier used to bark at
passers-by. A red flag hung out over the window.
We saw the nettle-man again in Pokrovsk. He was leading a gang of k mob
of deserters had gathered outside a wine shop early that morning, de that
they be given wine. The big plate-glass windows silently reflected the
crowd. Then the nettle-man picked up a metal rod and whacked the window. The
shattered glass said "zing".
An hour later Breshka Street was reeling drunk. Women carried off pails
of Port wine on yokes. There were puddles of wine on the road, and wine
flowed gutters. Men lay down on the ground and drank straight from them. Sc
had their arms around the deserters. Oranges that had been allocate orphans'
home were rolling down Breshka Street. Pigs slobbered over the oranges. A
huge fat sow was splashing in a puddle of Madeira. A spotted hog was
miserable on the corner, throwing up champagne.
Commissar Chubarkov came galloping up in his gig. He jumped down before
it had drawn to a stop.
"In the name of revolutionary order, I have to ask you all to
please..." the commissar was saying.
"Where were you before?" the schoolboys demanded.
Chubarkov coaxed them, pleaded with them, demanded and warned them.
"Everything belongs to everybody!" the drunken mob shouted, aping the
nettle-man's words. "We shed our blood, down to the very last drop...."
That was when the machine-gun in the window of the big house began to
chatter, sending a first round over the drunken heads. The cowardly mob
vanished into thin air.
Oska and I recalled playing Schwambrania on the windowsill and
making-believe we were shooting down Breshka Street, but at that time it was
invincible.
Half an hour later some Red Army men dragged a drowned man from the
cellar of the shop. He had probably fallen down and drowned in wine.
Chubarkov went over to the body, had a look and shook his head when he
recognized it. "Cuckoo," the Commissar said.
Stepan Atlantis sent me the following note while we were away in
Kvasnikovka for the summer: "Be at school on the 1st. The CWS will be
opened. That sure will be something! S. Gavrya."
It took me some time to figure out what "the CWS" stood for. Suddenly,
it dawned on me. It meant "The Code Words of Schwambrania". Someone had
discovered the secret of the seashell grotto, had let out our Black Queen
and found the note. Stepan knew all about Schwambrania now, and he was going
to tell everyone else about it, too. Oska and I were stunned. Harsh reality
had come crashing into our cosy little world.
However, when we returned home after the summer we saw that the seal on
the gate to the grotto had not been touched. The Black Queen, the keeper of
the secret, was still serving her sentence inside, deep within the cobweb
gloom. But how had Stepan learned about Schwambrania? I decided to have it
out with him. He was a great one for imagining and make-believe himself and
had even earned his nickname because of his dream of discovering Atlantis. I
decided that Schwambrania and Atlantis might become friendly nations after
all.
Stepan was very happy to see me. He had grown taller over the summer
and somehow seemed older.
"Still alive and kicking?" he said.
"As you see. How'd you find out about the CWS?" I asked hesitantly.
"What's so strange about that? All the fellows know about it."
"Thanks for blabbering it to everybody. I thought you were my friend.
That's the most important thing in my life." I wanted to explain why this
was so and told Stepan all about the volcanic land, saying I thought the
Schwambranians and the people of Atlantis should be allies.
Stepan listened intently. Then he sighed and put out the sparks that
had appeared in his eyes. "I don't think about Atlantis any more. I've no
use for that kind of make-believe now. I've no time for it. There's the
revolution. All those secrets were all right for tsarist times. But now
there's too much to be done. Still, I like what you made up about
Schwambrania. But the CWS has nothing to do with it. That's what we'll have
instead of the Boys School now. A Common Work School."
THAT'S THAT!
A red flag waved over the school building on the 1st of August. We were
all gathered in the yard outside. It was a bright, sunny day. Kamyshov, our
new principal, came out on the porch to greet us.
"Hello, doves! Congratulations on your new status. You are now pupils
of the Soviet Common Work School. Congratulations."
We thanked him and congratulated him, too.
"Now, since I've been appointed Commissar of Health, I want to
introduce your new, temporary principal, Comrade Chubarkov. He's also the
Military Commissar. I hope you'll get on."
Chubarkov was not greeted with applause. He said, "Comrades! You're all
educated boys. Now you take me, for instance. I was an uneducated stevedore.
You've all got book-learning, but I went to the school of hard knocks. I
want to say a few words about your new school, and what the name stands for.
First of all, it's school that all children can go to. That's for sure. And
why is it called a work school? Because it's for the children of all working
people, and you'll learn to work well here, both mentally and physically.
That's for sure. And it's a common school, because there won't be any
special schools for the rich and the nobility any more. All children are
equal now, and they'll all get an equal chance to study. And so's this will
all be for the good of the revolution, I ask you, in the name of
revolutionary order, to attend school regularly and to take care of things
here, and then everything will be just dandy."
"Where were you before?" Hefty and a couple of the older boys shouted.
"Down with the Commissar! We want Kamyshov!"
"In the name of revolutionary order, I'll have to ask you to accept the
Council's decision. Kamyshov has just been transferred to another job. And
that's that. Before, only rich people had the money to take care of their
health. Now everybody's going to be healthy. It's a very important job, and
all the more so since there's a lot of typhus going around now. And that's
that!"
Comrade Chubarkov, Bertelyov, one of our teachers, Forsunov, a member
of the City Council, Stepan Atlantis and two senior boys were appointed to
the School Council. Some of the seniors hissed. Then Chubarkov said that
since women were now the complete equals of men, we would have girls in our
classes. And that was that!
The Boys and Girls schools were to merge. But then the classrooms would
be too small. That was why the grades were divided into "A" and "B". We set
up a special committee to choose the girls we wanted to have in our class. I
was the chairman and Stepan was my assistant. We spent a good half-hour
grooming ourselves in front of the cloakroom mirror. Every pleat was in
place. Hefty, the class strong-man, had pulled our belts as tight as
possible, making our chests protrude mightily, though we were barely able to
breathe as a result. However, we bore the discomfort stoically. Stepan asked
someone to spit on his cowlick. There were a great many volunteers, but he
only let me do it.
"Not too thick! And don't hawk."
I did my best. Stepan smoothed down the cowlick.
"You sure look like you could take anyone on!" Hefty said as he looked
us over with fatherly concern. "Real chic! They'll all fall in love with
you. Be sure you pick the prettiest ones."
We set off for the Girls School, escorted by an honour guard of five
boys. School was in session there. The corridor was a haven of peace and
quiet. Muted rivers and lakes, petals and stems, conjugations and
declensions seeped out from under the classroom doors. Old desks were piled
up in a far corner next to a brand-new piano, which had probably been
requisitioned from some wealthy home.
"Let's take the music back, too," Stepan said.
We had already found out that the fourth grade had been left to its own
resources, since the Russian teacher was ill. In order to occupy the girls
their school marm had told them to read aloud in turn. She was seated at the
lectern, embroidering a handkerchief. A plump girl was declaiming:
"Who rides there, who gallops, engulfed by the gloom?"
"We do," came a voice from the corridor.
The classroom doors burst open and a weird procession rolled in,
accompanied by a victorious rumbling. This was better than the wildest
Schwambranian dreams.
Leading the way like tanks were two desks moving in single file. Each
had a flag stuck in the inkwell hole. Stepan and I had arrived on the desks.
The piano followed grandly in our wake with five boys pushing it.
The wheels screeched like stuck pigs. A list of the boys of our class
was balanced on the music stand, our caps were hung on the candlesticks, and
the soft pedal had on a straw slipper someone had found in the yard.
"Here we are!" Stepan said. "You're not having a lesson now anyway, are
you?"
A stunned silence greeted us.
"What is this!" the school marm shrieked. The sound was so loud it made
a sensitive string inside the piano vibrate for some time.
"It's a peaceful deputation," I said and then played a popular waltz as
I stood at the keyboard.
The school marm stormed out of the room. The girls finally awoke from
their stupor.
"Most equal girls!" I said, launching into my speech. "Most very equal
girls!" I repeated and proceeded still more heatedly: "I want to tell you
about what I want to tell you."
By now all the girls were smiling. This encouraged me. I went on
briskly to say that now we would all be going to the same school, girls and
boys together, like brothers and sisters, like bread and butter, like bacon
and eggs, like Napoleon and Bonaparte, like Rimsky and Korsakov.
"How'11 we sit, boys separately, or a boy and a girl at each desk?" a
tall, serious-looking girl asked. "I don't want to sit next to a boy."
"The boys'll pull our braids," a fat girl said in a deep voice. "They
might even try to kiss us."
Our deputation exhibited great indignation. I played "Storm on the
Volga", banging away at the keys, and Stepan spat in disgust and said,
"Kiss? Ugh! I'd rather eat a toad!"
"Can we play staring games?" the smallest girls asked all together.
They had huge bows on the tops of their heads.
"Hm." I pondered over this for a minute. "What do you say, Stepan?"
"I'd say they can," he replied condescendingly.
After several other equally important details had been discussed and
the official, polite part was over, we began, most impolitely, to pick the
girls who we wanted as classmates.
The girls, meanwhile, were busy prettying up.
The first girl whose name I put down on my list was Taya Opilova, She
had a long golden braid.
"I look terrible today. I hab a code (have a cold)," she said.
to the enemy and managed to break through the fiery circle. The lone vessel,
its sails billowing, sped across the ocean blue. There was an island in that
ocean. It was a bleak granite island without a sign of life. It was named
Punishment Isle and was a part of the Liverpill Archipelago. Cape Comer was
on that island and there, in a seashell grotto, the Black Queen lived. We
dropped anchor. The Queen did not look bad, although she was a bit mouldy.
Then we passed the dangerous islands of Quinine, Biomalt, Cocoa and
Codlive-roil. As we drew alongside Cape Colt, we sighted the tops of the
Overthere Mts. and the inaccessible Peak Puzzle, so we turned westwards and
entered Seven Scholars Bay.
We were approaching Elfin Island.
The Prince and the Pauper, Max and Moritz, Bobus and Bubus, Tom Sawyer
and Huck Finn, Oliver Twist, the Little Women and the Little Men, and when
they were grown, Captain Grant's Children, Little Lord Fauntleroy, the
Twelve Huntsmen, the Three Spinners, the Seven Wise Scholars, the
Thirty-three Knights, who were the nephews of Uncle Chernomor, the Last Day
of Pompeii, and the One Thousand and One Nights all came out to welcome us.
"Long live Your Royal Brilliance!" they shouted.
There was a green oak on the island. And a gold chain on the oak. A
puss-in-boots walked round and round it, looking very wise. When he went to
the right, he would read a book out loud, and when he went to the left, he
would turn on a gramophone. Just like Durov's famous circus animals. A
sphinx sat on the top of a cliff, making up riddles and charades.
Familiar characters from many books lived here, for Elfin Island was a
forest preserve for all the famous characters we had ever read about. They
lived here out of time and place.
A large company was riding towards us, led by the Mysterious Knight
with his visor down. Next came the Headless Horseman. Don Quixote whipped
his old nag on, with his faithful sword-bearer Sancho Panza trotting along
on a donkey. Sancho was carrying some windmill slats that Don Quixote had
hacked off some place or other. Then came Ivan the Fool on the Humpbacked
Horse. He stuck out his tongue as he rode by. Then came the Three Knights,
Ilya Muromets, Alyosha Popovich and Dobrynya Nikitich on their three mighty
steeds. The horses were harnessed to the Tsar-Cannon. Nat Pinkerton, the
well-known detective, crept along in their wake. He was looking for the
Mysterious Knight and was being shadowed by the famous detective, Sherlock
Holmes.
A man with long hair and a long beard and clothed in animal skins
appeared from behind some bushes. A wise old parrot was perched on his
shoulder. The parrot was plucking fortune cards from his master's pocket.
"Rrrr-robinson Crr-rusoe!" the parrot squawked.
We recognized the great hermit. Following Robinson was a savage
carrying several parcels. He was completely naked. He didn't have on any
pants at all. All he had on was a calendar leaf for a loincloth. The word
written on the page was:
"Friday". At the sight of us Robinson begged our pardon and asked Don
Quixote to lend him his shaving basin, which Don Quixote did. Robinson went
off to shave, while Friday, having stopped to gossip with Sancho Panza and
ask his advice about something, ran off to put on some clothes in a house
with a sign outside that read:
Ladies and Men's
Valiant Little Tailor
Sews seven cloaks at a stroke
"They mean us," the Seven Wise Scholars said.
That evening our visit was marked by a gala fete and fireworks in the
Mysterious Garden. Bluebirds and Blue Herons were there. Golden Cockerels
crowed, and geese laid golden eggs, while squirrels whistled popular tunes.
We were there, too, and drank mead with the rest, but since we had no
moustaches, it did not flow down our chests.
The days of the festivities coincided with the first days of the
revolution Russia. Reality was wonderful. It turned everything about us
topsy-turvy. The following telegram was received from Schwambrania:
The people of Schwambrania are worried. Indignant over the Battle of
Charade. Brenabor partially abdicated. Chatelains Urodenal temporary ruler.
Half an hour later the Brenabor, having sealed the holds and raised the
red flag, sailed at full steam off to the Brightasday Sea. We passed
Lilliputia, Shellacputia, Port Folio and Getamoveonio. We rechristened our
ship. It was now the Carshandar and Jupiter. The crew was all for the
republic and had renounced the traitor of a tsar. After all, Brenabor No. 4
had temporarily installed the villian Chatelains Urodenal in order to
preserve his crown. Urodenal's troops were guarding the Hopscotch Plateau,
having dug in along the Nitty, Plotzky and Socko-Pocko canyons. We had no
choice but to press on towards the Candelabra Mountains. There, in the
northern foothills, the republican conspirators were hiding out in the
environs of Port Rait. We took them on board. Then, rounding Cape Clock and
bypassing Knuckle duster, we sailed for the free shores of Carshandar,
dropping anchor in Port Yippee. The Carshandarians welcomed us with open
arms. Carshandar was enveloped in a revolutionary uprising. Urodenal's
landing party was only able to take Condora. We set siege to Condora from
the Lilac Sea. Condora fell. We absconded with great riches. Then, passing
Cape Rick-Rack and Cape Billbock, we stopped off at Port Ico, and finally
dropped anchor on the Carshandar Riviera. I changed my last name and became
Ardelar de Carshandar.
In order to prepare a coup on the entire continent, I stowed away in
the sealed hold of one of the ships and made my way to New Shiyamburg. I
lived in the capital, disguised as an Indian. However, on the very eve of
the uprising, Brenabor recognized me by the scar in my left eyebrow.
Urodenal had me arrested and brought me before a court martial.
The trial of Admiral de Carshandar lasted a whole day (Sunday). This is
how the Admiral described it in his diary:
"The courtroom was full of people who were staring at me with open
curiosity. I was in the dock, so handsome and lithe. Four guards had their
rifles trained on me, to make sure I didn't escape. The former Brenabor was
the chief justice. He really hated my guts. Count Chatelains Urodenal,
black-haired and a cad, was prosecuting me personally.
"There was no brass band at all. Satanrex was my lawyer. They had sworn
they wouldn't arrest him or throw him into jail. The prosecutor lied,
telling everyone to their face that I was a crook, but my lawyer got even
and said that Urodenal was a crook if there ever was one. Then Brenabor
said: 'Mr. Prisoner at the Bar! You have five minutes to give them a peace
of mind.' Then I rose, so tall and lithe, and the courtroom died down.
'Honourable Judges!' I shouted. 'You are under arrest in the name of the
Free Continent of Big Tooth!' In a flashing eye Jack, the Sailor's
Companion, dashed into the courtroom with some revolutionaries and they
overthrew the tyrants. Everyone cheered, and there was a general ovation."
The admiral did not mention the sunset that day. Apparently, due to the
coup, there was a continuous sunrise over Schwambrania.
All sorts of meetings were being held everywhere, for the grown-ups
were quite carried away by politics. My own mother had been elected to the
Council of Deputies by the Ladies' Circle. Papa was Vice-Chairman of the new
Duma. Since the Duma and the Council were at odds. Papa and Mamma were, too.
I was burning with a desire to enter politics, since T, too, wanted to
attend meetings, make speeches and elect candidates. That was when I
received a letter from my friend Vitya Expromptov in Saratov. He described
his Boy Scout troop in such glorious terms that I decided to organize a
branch in my school.
I read whatever I could about scouting. Then one day after classes were
over and the boys were buckling their satchels, I climbed onto the lectern
and made a long speech.
"Gentlemen, we've had enough of fighting during recesses, playing cards
and being disunited. We should band together, that is, like a club.... And
we won't lie, smoke or curse. We'll drill, have our own clubroom and hold
club meetings. We'll elect a leader, and we'll be young scouts. I mean Boy
Scouts. What do you say? Who wants to be a Boy Scout?"
Practically every boy there wanted to be one. The commotion that
followed was unimaginable. Nikolai Ilyich looked in to see what was going
on. He said that if we didn't stop yelling, he'd have all our names put down
in the Ledger before we ever drew up a list of future Boy Scouts.
The following Sunday the first scout meeting was held in school. To my
surprise, there were a great many boys from other grades and even several
seniors.
We conducted our meeting just like adults: we stood up and made
speeches, and someone kept the minutes.
Two troops were formed. I was elected scout leader. Shalferov, the
horse doctor's son, was elected Treasurer, for he was considered to be the
most honest of us all.
Our Rules were based on the scout law: we would not smoke, drink, lie
or use bad language, but would be courteous, cheerful, do a good deed every
day, always smile, and salute our superiors on the street by raising three
fingers to our caps. The three fingers stood for the three commandments of
the scout oath: "...to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the
scout law." Actually, the Handbook said: "...and my monarch", but we used
the alternative "country". There was a hitch as far as God was concerned,
for Stepan Atlantis suddenly announced that he was an atheist. We had to
convince him that God was actually like your conscience and, anyway. He had
only been included to make things sound right. We finally convinced him, and
Stepan solemnly raised three fingers and repeated the scout oath. He then
promised to stop smoking within a week.
We signed up quite a few parents as sponsors. They donated money which
we used to buy a tricoloured flag and an old automobile horn that was
missing its rubber bulb. This home-made bugle called for a great amount of
wind. It would then produce a loud and horrible sound. Hefty was the only
one who had the necessary lung power, and so he was elected bugler. He was
flattered and tried his best, blowing so hard it made trucks veer and
steamships green with envy.
We were given a room in the local children's library to serve as our
clubhouse. By then so many other boys had signed up, we had formed two more
troops. I was now a troop leader. Boys saluted me on the street. I felt very
proud.
All the preparatory work was finally completed. The clubroom was
furnished, the flag displayed, the scout promise made, the patrol and troop
leaders elected, the scout law learned by heart. Every one of us knew who
Lord Baden-Powell was and what St. George had to do with scouting.
However, nobody knew what to do after all of the above had been
accomplished. We decided to stage a mock battle between the two troops on
granary row, but the watchmen chased us away.
We tried doing good deeds, deciding we would patrol the town and fix
street benches and fences, and help old ladies carry their shopping bags.
However, schoolboys had a bad reputation in Pokrovsk, and the very first old
lady whom Atlantis tried to help began screaming wildly the moment he took
hold of her heavy bag. A crowd gathered on the spot. Stepan barely managed
to escape.
I then discovered that my fellow-scouts were doing their good deeds in
the following manner: they would sneak up to a stout fence in the dark and
pry off some boards. The following morning they would appear on the scene as
benefactors and mend it with goody-goody expressions. They received ten
points at the Good Deed Contest for this.
We soon became very bored with scouting.
There was no use expecting any help from St. George, our heavenly
patron. Lord Baden-Powell, wearing a broad-brimmed Boer campaign hat, smiled
down at us from the wall portrait. He couldn't suggest anything of interest,
either.
Once again the boys began smelling strongly of tobacco.
The autumn of 1917 was the first autumn during which Russia was not
ruled by a tsar.
This autumn was just like any other, a time of melons, shoals and
second exams for the boys who had not been promoted. At this time a barge
carrying bearers of the St. George Cross for Valour docked at Saratov. There
was a Museum of War Trophies on the barge, and so the entire school was
taken to see this floating embodiment of patriotism.
A slogan painted on the side of the barge read: "War to a Victorious
End!" You could still make out the lettering underneath that had not been
completely erased. It read: "For our country, our tsar...." Every single
member of the crew had been awarded the St. George Cross. Nearly all were
missing an arm or a leg, and some were missing both. Artificial legs and
crutches creaked and tapped along the deck. However, every man had a little
St. George Cross dangling on his chest.
We roamed the barge for three hours, sticking our heads into the wide
barrels of the Austrian howitzers and fingering the silk of the Turkish
banners that had been captured in battle. We saw a tremendous German shell
called a "trunk". You could pack the death of an entire company into one of
them. Finally, the amiable curator showed us the museum's main exhibit. It
was a German helmet, taken off a dead officer. It's outstanding features
were the hair of the killed man that was stuck to the inside of the helmet
and real, dried German blood. The curator spoke of this with relish.
The curator was an officer. He stood on his own, natural legs and
gesticulated with his own undamaged, well-cared for hands.
Stepan did not say a word all the way back, but that very evening he
came over to the scout clubroom and quarrelled with the rest of us.
"Did you notice the smell there, fellows? Just like the butcher stalls
at the market. That's the smell of blood. It hits you right in the nose. But
what the hell's it all about? After all, they're all human beings."
"We have to fight to a glorious, victorious end," one of the boys
ventured.
"You're a damn fool! Just aping what somebody else said. What's there
in it for us? To hell with you and your precious St. George. Go play
soldiers, and maybe you'll get a St. George Cross, too. As for the Boy
Scouts, what the hell good are you if you're all for the war? Cross me off
your damn list. Understand? I've had enough of fooling around." He pulled
out a pack of forbidden cigarettes and lit one up insolently.
We stood around in silence, feeling somehow embarrassed. Then Hefty
grunted, slowly pulled out his own pack of cigarettes, went over to Atlantis
and said, "Give me a light. The game's over. Let's go."
Sir Robert Baden-Powell was smiling down at us from the wall. There was
nothing funny about it at all, but according to the scout law, a scout was
always supposed to be cheerful. Sir Robert grinned, just like Monokhordov.
Once, during a geography lesson in the first grade, Stepan Gavrya, who
had been left back, raised his hand from where he sat in the last row and
said, "Is it true what it says in books about Atlantis? I mean, that there
really is a place like that?"
"Perhaps. Why?" Kamyshov, our geography teacher, asked with a smile.
"Because I'm going to find it, that's what. I'll look around in the ocean,
and I know I'll find it. I'm a darn good diver, you know."
That was when Stepan got his nickname. From that day on he became known
as Atlantis. Stepan, that devoted pigeon fancier and dare-devil, really did
dream of finding the lost Atlantis.
Sitting in a hayloft, sneezing from the fragrant dust, he described his
future to his friends. "I'll pump all the water out of there and fix all the
doors in the palaces, and you've never seen the kind of life we're going to
have. It'll really be a lark! There won't be any principals there, and no
Latin, that's for sure."
He left stifled within the stone walls of the school. Stepan was
hot-headed. His head was as hot as a watermelon in a melon patch on a
blazing July day. Learning came very hard to him. He was from a very small
farm outside the town, and all of the vast, endless steppe was his back
yard. He was used to shouting at camels, and his foghorn voice shook the
official stillness of the school every time he opened his mouth.
"Gavrya," a teacher would say, calling on him. "Yah?" Stepan would
bellow in reply and then be reprimanded. He had run away to join the army,
but had been returned home from the very first railroad station. Then he had
run away again and had been caught again. He did not like to talk about it.
Stepan had strange, funny ideas about life. First, before really
getting the hang of a thing, he would see it upside-down, as it were. They
said he had even learned to read upside-down in the beginning. This is how
it had all come about. Stepan's elder brother was being prepared for school
by a teacher who came to the house to teach him to read. Stepan was still
very small and was not supposed to participate in these lessons. The teacher
would open the primer, and Stepan's brother, who sat by her side, would read
aloud. Stepan would sit across the table from them, leaning over as he
listened to every word. However, when he looked at the book he would see all
the words upside-down, and that was how he remembered them. That was how he
learned to read: from right to left and upside-down. He later had a very
hard time learning to read the correct way.
Stepan suddenly became very grown-up after the boys' visit to the barge
to see the wounded soldiers. He was forever going off someplace and reading
books we knew nothing about. He would often drop by at my house, but would
spend his time in the kitchen talking to Annushka's soldier. Another
frequent visitor there was a Czech named Kardac, a prisoner-of-war who had
been in the Austrian Army. The three of them would argue heatedly. After one
such argument Stepan said to me in a puzzled voice "What do you know? It
looks like I have everything upside-down again. Can you beat that! I was a
damn fool talking about Atlantis the way I did. We can have a pretty good
life here, too, you know. That's something I never thought about."
Hungry women standing in line for bread at the market fell upon the
mayor. Dogs howled at night, and the wooden clappers sounded feebly in the
awkward hands of the volunteer home guardsmen. The city council was in
session every single day. A cold, damp wind was blowing from the Volga,
tossing scraps of foam onto the bank. Torn shreds of proclamations:
"Citizens!... The Constituent Assembly..." waltzed along the dusty streets.
Something very heavy was dropped in Saratov beyond the Volga at four
o'clock in the afternoon. This was followed by a great gust of wind. The
windows rattled. Boom!
And then again, twice in a row:
Boom!... Boom!
It seemed as though someone was swinging a tremendous rug beater,
beating out a fantastic rug that was miles long. People would stop on the
street and look up at the sky. Crows winged back and forth. Crowds of idlers
dotted the rooftops, as they usually did when there was a fire someplace.
Those standing on the pavement shouted:
"See anything?"
"Sure. As clear as day. That was some explosion."
"Who's shooting?"
"Who knows? Probably the Cadets!"
From the top of the school building we could see tiny white puffs of
smoke rising over Saratov. They quickly expanded to become dark, ragged
clouds. Half a minute later a heavy blow would come crashing down on the
roof, deafening us slightly. By night time there was a red glow of fire over
Saratov. Nobody turned on their lights in Pokrovsk that night. The sky was a
feverish crimson.
At nine o'clock the following morning boys in long great-coats hurried
across the square as always. Their pencil boxes rattled in their satchels.
A dull grey morning crept into the classrooms. The lectern creaked as
the sleepy-eyed history teacher leaned on it. The monitor, crossing himself
automatically, rattled off the morning prayer. Then he handed the teacher
the class journal and reported on the absent pupils:
"Stepan Gavrya is absent."
The teacher had not had enough sleep. He yawned and scratched his chin.
"And so the Emperor Justinian the Great and ... aag-ah-haa ... Theodora ...
(he was overcome by yawning). And The-agh-aah-do-oh-ra...."
It was terribly dull to have to listen to an account of ancient,
long-dead emperors at a time when real, live people were making history
right there, across the Volga. There was a loud murmuring in the classroom.
Finally, Aleferenko got up and said:
"Would you please explain all about what's going on in Russia right
now?"
"Gentlemen!" The teacher was indignant. "In the first place, I'm not a
newspaper. Secondly, you are too young to discuss politics. Now, where were
we? Justi...."
"You sure are old," someone in the back row muttered.
"Old regime, that's what you are!"
"What? Get up and stand by the wall!"
"Don't listen to him, Kolya!" the boys shouted. "Who does he think he
is, Justinian the Great?"
"Get out!"
But just then a deep, mighty, all-consuming sound burst in from the
sires. carried in on the wings of the wind. It was the bone-meal factory
whistle. It was immediately caught up by the piping whistle of the railroad
depot. The lumber yards on the hill joined in various trebles. The flour
mill whistled. The cannery buzzed like some distant bumblebee. A river boat
on the Volga piped frantically, wildly.
The morning was full of their songs.
The inspector dashed into the classroom. Confusion was entangled in his
beard like a fly. No one rose to greet him.
Annushka's soldier friend, Kharkusha, was making a speech on the river
ban He was standing on the pier, gesticulating with his good hand. From afar
he seemed to be conducting the orchestra of whistles. We elbowed our way
through the crowd.
A boat was rapidly approaching the pier. It was the Tamara. Its wheels
turning smartly, slapping the water, and two ridges of white foam rose on
either side of the prow. A red flag looked as if it was about to fly off the
mast. The boat was now close enough for us to see the men and machine-guns
on its deck. The men looking weary but determined, and as set as if they had
been bolted to the deck.
This was the revolution docking at Pokrovsk. The captain on the bridge
was wearing a red armband. Standing next to him with a rifle slung over his
should and his cap tilted back was Atlantis. I recognized the man standing
next to him. They were workers from the lumber yards.
"Hey! Look! It's Stepan!" my classmates yelled. "Atlantis! How'd you
there?"
Petya Yachmenny, a very proper boy, shook his head and said, "Why'd you
play hookey? You'll get in trouble now."
"Oh, no, I won't!" Stepan said and laughed. He leaped over the railing
and on the pier as the boat was docking. "Not on your life I won't! The
Black Book's good as dead and buried now. For good!"
The tie ropes had been secured, and now the boat was hissing as it
bumped against the pier The captain was issuing commands through a
megaphone. Men with red armbands were lining up on the deck.
"These're our men," Atlantis said proudly.
"They're Bolsheviks," people murmured in the crowd.
"Ready!" the captain said.
At the end of the spring term we burned the school diaries that
contained our day-to-day marks. Such was the old school custom. This time,
however, it seemed to have acquired a new significance, one that we were all
aware of.
A huge bonfire blazed in the school yard. We pranced about it in a wild
Indian dance as the flames consumed our "D's" as our reprimands
disintegrated and the days we had attended school went up in smoke.
"Hooray!" we shouted, three hundred strong. "Hoor-rray! We're burning!
the last! diaries! of the old regime! They'll never return! An end to all
diaries! An end to no dinners! Death to the ledgers! Hooray! The last school
ledgers in the world are burning! No more cramming or demerits! There go the
ledgers of the old regime!"
Hefty and Stepan made their way to the deserted Teachers' Room.
The bookcase containing the Black Book was locked. The squirrel's tail
was tickling dusty Venus' nose. A huge papier-mache model of a human eye
stared at the boys in amazement. Then Hefty kicked in the door panel.
The Black Book was removed from the bookcase.
"Into the fire with it!" Atlantis yelled as he appeared on the porch,
carrying the thick Ledger. "We'll roast Seize'em's tattling!"
But every single boy wanted to touch the Dove Book, to read what it
said about him, to discover its secrets. All the ledgers of previous years
were then tossed into the flames. The last was read aloud by the bonfire,
and we had a grand old time listening to its loathsome pages. We decided to
preserve it for posterity, and Stepan was elected to be the Keeper of the
Ledger, since at least a quarter of all the mischief reported in it
concerned the boy who had once decided to set out in search of Atlantis.
The old ledgers were going up in flames. Their hard covers writhed in
the fire. Then Forsunov, one of the seniors, came out on the porch. He was a
member of the local Council of Deputies.
"Let's have a minute of quiet, comrades," he said. "The Council of
Deputies has decided to fire all the old regime teachers. This means that
Romashov, Roachius, Ukhov and Monokhordov will all go. We'll have new
teachers. We'll elect our own representatives to the Teachers' Council.
Everything'll be different now. This is the end of the Black Book."
Three hundred boys in grey school uniforms marched around the fire that
was now dying down. They hooted and howled, and shouted gleefully as they
carried the unmasked and helpless Black Book at the head of this unheard-of
funeral procession.
Meanwhile, a mound of charred, brittle pages was curling up amidst the
ashes.
We spent the summer of 1918 on the Carshandar Riviera in Northern
Schwambrania and in the village of Kvasnikovka, which was twelve kilometres
from Pokrovsk.
We battled all through the summer, stamping out large settlements of
toadstools and cutting down every nettle in sight with bloodthirsty glee.
Naturally, quite a few innocent mushrooms and harmless dandelions lost their
lives in the fray. It was rainy summer, and weeds and grass sprouted in
great profusion. Then one day w captured the worst villain of all,
Death-Cap-Poison-Emir. It was an amazing mushroom with a stem as large as a
tenpin and a dark-red cap dotted with white bumps that looked like a huge
chunk of sausage. There could be no doubt about it: this was the chieftain
of all toadstools.
We carried Death-Cap-Emir home with great pomp, walking along in the
shade of its umbrella-cap. Suddenly, two men appeared on the road. They had
con from the ravine and were walking towards us.
"That's some umbrella! Whaddya know!" one of them said. He had big ea
that wiggled when he spoke. The man was wearing a ragged khaki field jacket
and puttees. There was a visible stubble on his chin. In fact, there was
something definitely nettle-like about him that made me feel itchy when he
looked at us.
"He made me all itchy inside," Oska said to me afterwards.
Just then the other man came up. His grin revealed two rows of rotten
teeth. T second man was pale and puny. He had on a linen shirt with a
standing collar and a large mushroom-like hat. He reminded me of a rotten
toadstool.
"Won't you treat us to that dainty titbit, young men?" the
toadstool-man said.
"Don't be stingy, brother," the nettle-man said. "We're damn hungry.
And everything's common property now, even mushrooms, by the way. Am I
right, brothers?"
"How'd you know we're brothers?" Oska asked.
"I know everything."
"Everybody's brothers now," the toadstool-man added. Then he went on in
very solemn voice: "Young men, judging by the look of your swords, I can see
1 you are a pair of fine, upstanding knights. Help your suffering fellow-men
in t of trial, brothers, or I'll be forced by the pangs of hunger to eat
this mushroom the poison-mushroom variety, and I will die at your feet in
terrible convulsions
"That's for sure. We're more dead than alive anyway," the nettle-man
said.
We were horror-stricken when he bit off a small piece of the death-cap
began to writhe. The toadstool-man would have pulled his hair in despair had
he had any, but he was bald. We stood there in stunned silence and then hi
something knocking inside the dead man.
"His heart's still ticking," Oska said uncertainly.
"That's my spirit entering and leaving my body in turns, Brother," the
dead said sorrowfully. "Here I am, dying of hunger, poor soul, and all
because of the revolution. What did I shed my blood for? Call your dear
mamma, boys. Maybe she can save this orphan. Tell her a man is dying and is
willing to trade a watch or a clock for some bacon."
The nettle-man then began pulling pocket watches, locket-watches,
stopwatches, alarm clocks and chronometers from his pockets. We stared
spellbound in awe at this great treasure. The environs of Kvasnikovka
resounded with a mighty ticking.
Half an hour later the summer people and the local village women
crowded around the two men. The nettle-man was pulling wall clocks and
cuckoo clocks from his bag and winding them up, while the toadstool-man,
like some circus magician, was pulling a length of silk material from his
stomach and growing thinner by the second. He then came up with the
following from his knapsack:
two desk sets, a pair of bedroom slippers, a small fish bowl (no fish),
an icon, a pair of curling irons, several gramophone records, a dog collar,
a starched dickey, an enamel bedpan and a mouse-trap. His floppy hat turned
out to be a lampshade.
"Do you have a sewing machine?" one of the village woman asked.
"I did have one, but I traded it in Tambov."
As the trading was proceeding at a lively pace, the nettle-man made a
speech, just as if he were at a meeting.
"Now, my dear ladies, women and everybody else, you can see what we've
come to, and all on account of those Bolsheviks. And, mind, we shed our
working-class blood for them, down to the very last drop, my dear ladies and
women. We're both from Petrograd."
"Look! The Commissar's coming!" a boy shouted.
The nimble men quickly stuffed their wares back into their sacks.
"Let's see your papers," Commissar Chubarkov said when he had got out
of the gig. "And stop agitating!"
"How can you say such a thing? You're supposed to be one of us," the
nettle-man replied calmly.
"I'm not one of you, and don't you ever forget it," Chubarkov said
angrily and put his hand in his pocket. "Let's see your papers, you damn
profiteer!"
The toadstool-man's hands shook as he pulled out a scrap of paper. This
was what was written on it: "The bearer is an assistant bookkeeper ... and
research worker."
The nettle-man had no identification papers at all. He himself seemed
dismayed about it.
"Pack up your junk and get going, both of you, before I pull you in.
There's too many of you toadstools popping up all over!" Chubarkov said.
"You're mistaken! We're just travellers on our way. In fact, we don't
even have many personal property. You can search us if you want to," the
toadstool-man said.
"I've no time to waste on you. You're lucky I'm in a hurry, I'll bet it
o'clock by now."
"Cu-ckoo, cu-ckoo, cu-ckoo!" went the cuckoo clock in the nettle-mans
bag.
Pokrovsk had changed during our absence. The market was gone, and some
former rich men were sweeping the market square. The owner of the bone-meal
factory was one of them. We crossed off the second item on our list of
injustices. A speakers' platform had been erected in the place where the
Earth curved, and a machine-gun now protruded from the window of the big
house on Breshka Street where an overweight fox-terrier used to bark at
passers-by. A red flag hung out over the window.
We saw the nettle-man again in Pokrovsk. He was leading a gang of k mob
of deserters had gathered outside a wine shop early that morning, de that
they be given wine. The big plate-glass windows silently reflected the
crowd. Then the nettle-man picked up a metal rod and whacked the window. The
shattered glass said "zing".
An hour later Breshka Street was reeling drunk. Women carried off pails
of Port wine on yokes. There were puddles of wine on the road, and wine
flowed gutters. Men lay down on the ground and drank straight from them. Sc
had their arms around the deserters. Oranges that had been allocate orphans'
home were rolling down Breshka Street. Pigs slobbered over the oranges. A
huge fat sow was splashing in a puddle of Madeira. A spotted hog was
miserable on the corner, throwing up champagne.
Commissar Chubarkov came galloping up in his gig. He jumped down before
it had drawn to a stop.
"In the name of revolutionary order, I have to ask you all to
please..." the commissar was saying.
"Where were you before?" the schoolboys demanded.
Chubarkov coaxed them, pleaded with them, demanded and warned them.
"Everything belongs to everybody!" the drunken mob shouted, aping the
nettle-man's words. "We shed our blood, down to the very last drop...."
That was when the machine-gun in the window of the big house began to
chatter, sending a first round over the drunken heads. The cowardly mob
vanished into thin air.
Oska and I recalled playing Schwambrania on the windowsill and
making-believe we were shooting down Breshka Street, but at that time it was
invincible.
Half an hour later some Red Army men dragged a drowned man from the
cellar of the shop. He had probably fallen down and drowned in wine.
Chubarkov went over to the body, had a look and shook his head when he
recognized it. "Cuckoo," the Commissar said.
Stepan Atlantis sent me the following note while we were away in
Kvasnikovka for the summer: "Be at school on the 1st. The CWS will be
opened. That sure will be something! S. Gavrya."
It took me some time to figure out what "the CWS" stood for. Suddenly,
it dawned on me. It meant "The Code Words of Schwambrania". Someone had
discovered the secret of the seashell grotto, had let out our Black Queen
and found the note. Stepan knew all about Schwambrania now, and he was going
to tell everyone else about it, too. Oska and I were stunned. Harsh reality
had come crashing into our cosy little world.
However, when we returned home after the summer we saw that the seal on
the gate to the grotto had not been touched. The Black Queen, the keeper of
the secret, was still serving her sentence inside, deep within the cobweb
gloom. But how had Stepan learned about Schwambrania? I decided to have it
out with him. He was a great one for imagining and make-believe himself and
had even earned his nickname because of his dream of discovering Atlantis. I
decided that Schwambrania and Atlantis might become friendly nations after
all.
Stepan was very happy to see me. He had grown taller over the summer
and somehow seemed older.
"Still alive and kicking?" he said.
"As you see. How'd you find out about the CWS?" I asked hesitantly.
"What's so strange about that? All the fellows know about it."
"Thanks for blabbering it to everybody. I thought you were my friend.
That's the most important thing in my life." I wanted to explain why this
was so and told Stepan all about the volcanic land, saying I thought the
Schwambranians and the people of Atlantis should be allies.
Stepan listened intently. Then he sighed and put out the sparks that
had appeared in his eyes. "I don't think about Atlantis any more. I've no
use for that kind of make-believe now. I've no time for it. There's the
revolution. All those secrets were all right for tsarist times. But now
there's too much to be done. Still, I like what you made up about
Schwambrania. But the CWS has nothing to do with it. That's what we'll have
instead of the Boys School now. A Common Work School."
THAT'S THAT!
A red flag waved over the school building on the 1st of August. We were
all gathered in the yard outside. It was a bright, sunny day. Kamyshov, our
new principal, came out on the porch to greet us.
"Hello, doves! Congratulations on your new status. You are now pupils
of the Soviet Common Work School. Congratulations."
We thanked him and congratulated him, too.
"Now, since I've been appointed Commissar of Health, I want to
introduce your new, temporary principal, Comrade Chubarkov. He's also the
Military Commissar. I hope you'll get on."
Chubarkov was not greeted with applause. He said, "Comrades! You're all
educated boys. Now you take me, for instance. I was an uneducated stevedore.
You've all got book-learning, but I went to the school of hard knocks. I
want to say a few words about your new school, and what the name stands for.
First of all, it's school that all children can go to. That's for sure. And
why is it called a work school? Because it's for the children of all working
people, and you'll learn to work well here, both mentally and physically.
That's for sure. And it's a common school, because there won't be any
special schools for the rich and the nobility any more. All children are
equal now, and they'll all get an equal chance to study. And so's this will
all be for the good of the revolution, I ask you, in the name of
revolutionary order, to attend school regularly and to take care of things
here, and then everything will be just dandy."
"Where were you before?" Hefty and a couple of the older boys shouted.
"Down with the Commissar! We want Kamyshov!"
"In the name of revolutionary order, I'll have to ask you to accept the
Council's decision. Kamyshov has just been transferred to another job. And
that's that. Before, only rich people had the money to take care of their
health. Now everybody's going to be healthy. It's a very important job, and
all the more so since there's a lot of typhus going around now. And that's
that!"
Comrade Chubarkov, Bertelyov, one of our teachers, Forsunov, a member
of the City Council, Stepan Atlantis and two senior boys were appointed to
the School Council. Some of the seniors hissed. Then Chubarkov said that
since women were now the complete equals of men, we would have girls in our
classes. And that was that!
The Boys and Girls schools were to merge. But then the classrooms would
be too small. That was why the grades were divided into "A" and "B". We set
up a special committee to choose the girls we wanted to have in our class. I
was the chairman and Stepan was my assistant. We spent a good half-hour
grooming ourselves in front of the cloakroom mirror. Every pleat was in
place. Hefty, the class strong-man, had pulled our belts as tight as
possible, making our chests protrude mightily, though we were barely able to
breathe as a result. However, we bore the discomfort stoically. Stepan asked
someone to spit on his cowlick. There were a great many volunteers, but he
only let me do it.
"Not too thick! And don't hawk."
I did my best. Stepan smoothed down the cowlick.
"You sure look like you could take anyone on!" Hefty said as he looked
us over with fatherly concern. "Real chic! They'll all fall in love with
you. Be sure you pick the prettiest ones."
We set off for the Girls School, escorted by an honour guard of five
boys. School was in session there. The corridor was a haven of peace and
quiet. Muted rivers and lakes, petals and stems, conjugations and
declensions seeped out from under the classroom doors. Old desks were piled
up in a far corner next to a brand-new piano, which had probably been
requisitioned from some wealthy home.
"Let's take the music back, too," Stepan said.
We had already found out that the fourth grade had been left to its own
resources, since the Russian teacher was ill. In order to occupy the girls
their school marm had told them to read aloud in turn. She was seated at the
lectern, embroidering a handkerchief. A plump girl was declaiming:
"Who rides there, who gallops, engulfed by the gloom?"
"We do," came a voice from the corridor.
The classroom doors burst open and a weird procession rolled in,
accompanied by a victorious rumbling. This was better than the wildest
Schwambranian dreams.
Leading the way like tanks were two desks moving in single file. Each
had a flag stuck in the inkwell hole. Stepan and I had arrived on the desks.
The piano followed grandly in our wake with five boys pushing it.
The wheels screeched like stuck pigs. A list of the boys of our class
was balanced on the music stand, our caps were hung on the candlesticks, and
the soft pedal had on a straw slipper someone had found in the yard.
"Here we are!" Stepan said. "You're not having a lesson now anyway, are
you?"
A stunned silence greeted us.
"What is this!" the school marm shrieked. The sound was so loud it made
a sensitive string inside the piano vibrate for some time.
"It's a peaceful deputation," I said and then played a popular waltz as
I stood at the keyboard.
The school marm stormed out of the room. The girls finally awoke from
their stupor.
"Most equal girls!" I said, launching into my speech. "Most very equal
girls!" I repeated and proceeded still more heatedly: "I want to tell you
about what I want to tell you."
By now all the girls were smiling. This encouraged me. I went on
briskly to say that now we would all be going to the same school, girls and
boys together, like brothers and sisters, like bread and butter, like bacon
and eggs, like Napoleon and Bonaparte, like Rimsky and Korsakov.
"How'11 we sit, boys separately, or a boy and a girl at each desk?" a
tall, serious-looking girl asked. "I don't want to sit next to a boy."
"The boys'll pull our braids," a fat girl said in a deep voice. "They
might even try to kiss us."
Our deputation exhibited great indignation. I played "Storm on the
Volga", banging away at the keys, and Stepan spat in disgust and said,
"Kiss? Ugh! I'd rather eat a toad!"
"Can we play staring games?" the smallest girls asked all together.
They had huge bows on the tops of their heads.
"Hm." I pondered over this for a minute. "What do you say, Stepan?"
"I'd say they can," he replied condescendingly.
After several other equally important details had been discussed and
the official, polite part was over, we began, most impolitely, to pick the
girls who we wanted as classmates.
The girls, meanwhile, were busy prettying up.
The first girl whose name I put down on my list was Taya Opilova, She
had a long golden braid.
"I look terrible today. I hab a code (have a cold)," she said.