As we compiled our list, we gave each girl a nickname, entering it
beside her real name. Thus, we wrote "Bamboo" next to a tall girl's name,
"Squirts", beside two small girls' names, and "Madame Hippo" beside a fat
girl's name. There were also Sonya-Personya, Fifi, Beanpole, Lilly-Pill,
Monkey-face and Grind.
The girls we hadn't picked said we were idiots.
Once outside, Stepan said, "We'll have to cut out the swearing now
until they get used to it."
A few moments later we came upon a deputation from our brother "B"
class. There was a heated exchange on the subject of our having got there
first, after which our appearance and mood were lightly marred.
The pigeons were dying out in granary row. The wind rustled in the
empty granaries, whispering the terrible word "ruin". "No need for a spoon
in time of ruin," the janitor said sadly as he observed the way things were
going in school.
And the way they were was enough to make horses shy. All day long
someone or other was playing "Chopsticks" on the piano with one finger.
Dum-de-dum-de.... The piano was rolled down the corridor, from one classroom
to another, depending on which teacher had not come to school. The given
room would then turn into a dance floor. Pupils would leave without
permission. Someone sang a ditty: "Karapet, my dear friend, why do you look
so bad? I look bad, my dear friend, 'cause I always feel sad."
As soon as the bell for classes rang, the teachers tried to coax the
pupils back to their rooms.
"You used to be such a good student," Alexander Karlovich, our kind
math teacher, said in despair as he caught me by the sleeve. "Come along and
I'll tell you about a most interesting thing concerning the trigonometrical
functions of an angle. You'll be surprised at how interesting it is. It's
like reading a good book."
I was too polite to refuse. We entered the empty classroom. Someone was
playing "Chopsticks" in the adjoining room. Alexander Karlovich sat down at
the lectern. I took a seat in the first row. Everything was fine, if not for
the fact that there were no other pupils present. I was the whole class.
"Go to the board, please," the teacher said.
As I went over to the blackboard I saw the schedule for the next day
tacked upon the wall. Oho! The next day was going to be a hard one. There
would be five lessons. The first was music appreciation, the second was
drawing, the third was a mid-morning snack, the fourth was shop and the
fifth was gym.
"Well, let us begin," the teacher said, addressing the empty classroom.
Someone was still playing "Chopsticks".
We had all grown and now protruded from our school great-coats like
trees above a picket fence. The buttons on our chests had retreated to the
very edge of the seams under pressure of our expanding masculinity. The belt
in back had crept all the way up from our waist to our shoulder blades, but
we staunchly continued wearing our old uniforms. There was a bluish spot
that resembled a butterfly on our faded caps, left by the cockades we had
removed.
One day Comrade Chubarkov brought seven new boys to my class. They were
variously clad, but none was wearing a school uniform, though they all had
on the same broad belts with the letters "JHS" on the buckle. They clustered
behind Chubarkov's broad back.
"Quiet, everybody!" Chubarkov said. "Now, hello! Onto the next
question. Since the school is now a common school, it means everybody is
going to study together. I want to introduce these boys. They're from the
junior high. I want you all to be friends."
"Down with the Juniors!" the boys in the back rows shouted. "We don't
want them here! They don't know half of what we do!"
Chubarkov, who had reached the door, turned back. "Anybody who doesn't
want to study with the rest can study at home with a tutor. And that's
that!" He stalked out.
The Juniors clustered by the lectern uncertainly.
"Hello, privileged classes," said Kostya Rudenko, an olive-skinned
Junior whose nickname was Beetle. We knew him from our street fights.
"Hello, boys and girls," Kostya Beetle said politely.
"Wa yo fa puh?" Hefty said.
("Want your face pushed in?" some of our boys interpreted.)
"We dyo be me?" Kostya Beetle replied calmly.
("When did you ever beat me?" the Junior explained.)
Our boys were taking off their watches to make sure they would not be
broken during the fight. The girls were entrusted with their safekeeping.
"You're just a bunch of uniformless Juniors," Hefty muttered as he
advanced on Kostya. "Look at you, shoving your way into our high school from
your lousy junior high. You don't even have silver buttons, you don't even
have school uniforms. But you're all shoving your way up, aren't you?"
"We know more than you do. What do you know about logarithms?" Kostya
said.
Hefty had never heard of them. "I don't give a damn for that! I'll push
your face in, and that'll teach you."
Still and all, he was put out. I could see some of my classmates
leafing through their geometry books. Since I knew the answer, I raised my
hand to save the honour of my class.
Stepan Atlantis slapped down my palm. "They'll manage without you," he
said softly. "It serves him right. Good for Kostya. He made Hefty eat humble
pie. Come on, sit down, boys. There are a lot of empty vacancies."
The Juniors began taking seats timidly amidst the chilling silence.
Kostya found a seat beside the Squirts, two little girls who were
inseparable.
"Don't sit next to us," they said, tossed their bows and moved away in
a huff.
Having girls in the classroom brought about many changes, the most
important of which was a new staring game. The game caught on like wildfire,
with everyone playing it. The players would sit opposite each other and
stare into each other's eyes. If one of the players' eyes began to tear from
the strain and he blinked, he would be eliminated. We had popeyed champions
among the girls and the boys. We even held a staring match. Now the hours in
school slipped happily away.
A contest organized to determine the champion "crazy-gazer" lasted for
the whole of two lessons and part of the long recess. Liza-Scandalizer was
competing against Volodya Labanda. They did not take their unseeing eyes
from each other for two and a half hours. During the physics lesson that day
the teacher was amazed at the unusual quiet in the classroom. Not knowing
what to make of it he explained the principles of a water level to the class
and then tiptoed out.
Towards the end of the long recess Volodya put his hand over his
smarting eyes. He threw in the towel. Liza, however, kept on staring at him
motionlessly from under her brows. The girls were jubilant. They squealed
and shrieked, and carried on. We stuck our fingers in our ears.
However, Liza-Scandalizer kept on staring at the same spot. Her head
was tilted strangely. The Squirts bent down to look at her and bounced away
in terror. Then we all saw that Liza's eyes had rolled way up, so that only
the whites were visible. She was in a dead faint.
The boys tried hard to be polite when the girls were present. The
really outrageous inscriptions were scraped off the desk tops and the walls.
When the boys wanted to wipe their noses with their hands they went behind
the blackboard. Polite notes and messages in tiny envelopes were passed
during classes. Thus:
"Good morning, Valya. May I see you to your corner on a matter of great
secrecy? If you show this to Serge, I'll brain him, and it'll be piggish of
you besides. Kolya. P.S. Excuse the messy writing."
Each day there was "dancing till dawn". We made sure during these
evening parties that none of the boys from the "B" class danced with our
girls. Anyone found guilty of this crime was dragged off to one of the dark
and empty classrooms. After a brief and prejudiced questioning, the culprit
was beaten. Naturally, his friends panted for revenge. Soon these daily
massacres in the deserted classrooms took on such a scope that the seniors
had to post armed monitors at the doors. Their rifles were a leftover from
the home guards. Sometimes, the monitors would fire into the darkness, just
in case. The dancing couples soon got used to the sound of shooting.
Hefty, who had taken part in the looting of the wine shop, had set up a
small wine cellar in the classroom stove. Madame Hippo was never one to
refuse a drink. She was a plump, overgrown young lady who intimidated both
the boys and the girls. She whipped a boy who had insulted her with his own
belt, right there on the lectern in front of everybody. As for me, she once
knocked me down on to the tile floor so hard it took at least five minutes
for me to feel I was still alive, although not quite at that.
Stepan Atlantis looked glum. Whenever he met any of the other boys'
parents they would say: "Well? Are you satisfied now? Are you having the
time of your life at school? It's a disgrace, that's what it is. How can you
even call it a school?"
Stepan tried to call the wild farm boys to order. He was supported by
the Juniors and some of his friends, but no one listened to us.
"When are we going to start studying again?" we said unhappily.
"There's no time for studying now. This isn't the old regime. We've had
enough!" Hefty replied.
"You're stupid. Now at last we can really learn something," Kostya
Beetle protested.
"It's fellows like you Junior Bolsheviks that need some book-learning.
We old boys'll manage as it is. We know all we need to know."
That day Count Chatelains Urodenal and Jack, the Sailor's Companion
also got into a learned argument. War was declared.
We were given lump sugar and hot tea during the long recess. We had
never known such luxuries in the old school.
Now each of us received a large mug of carrot-tea and two lumps of
sugar. There was no sugar in the stores in Pokrovsk at the time, so that I
would have my tea in school without sugar and take the two precious lumps
home. My faithful Oska would be waiting for me. He always greeted me in the
same way:
"I've got news for you!" he'd say and go on to inform me of the day's
events in Schwambrania.
I would give him the sugar, and we would admire the snow-white, porous
cubes. We put them away in a little box that contained the sugar stores of
Schwambrania. It was not to be touched. It was intended for some future gala
events. On Sundays we each had a lump at the dinner given by the President
of Schwambrania. Our sugar stores kept growing. We made great plans as we
discussed the thickness of the future layers of sugar. The sweet geometry of
those daydreams brought about a wonderful flow of saliva.
Once, however, our sugar was the cause of bloodshed.
I was chosen to be in charge of handing out the sugar in my class. This
was not only a sweet job, but an honorary one. No one ever doubted my
honesty.
"Huh, you're the commissar of food," the boys said. "Don't you think
you're a big cheese."
Hefty, who was a brash and enterprising fellow, once suggested a tricky
deal. It had to do with the left-over sugar intended for pupils who happened
to be absent. Hefty suggested that I hold back the extra portions instead of
returning them to the school office and then share them with him. Naturally,
this tempting deal held promise of a great windfall of sugar for
Schwambrania. If this had happened in our old school, I would never have
hesitated and would have considered it my sacred duty to outsmart the
authorities. Now, however, boys we had elected were on the Council. They
trusted me. They had chosen me for the job of distributing the sugar. I
couldn't betray them.
And so I refused, and my staunchness and honesty took my breath away.
Hefty got even with me that very day. As I was handing out the sugar, I
dropped several lumps. I bent under the desk to retrieve them. At that very
moment Hefty grabbed my collar and shoved my head down. I cracked my
forehead against the edge of the bench and was soon sporting a huge bump.
Besides, the cut was bleeding. Two of the lumps of sugar turned pink. The
girls stared at my forehead with pity and told me to put a wet compress on
it, but I went on handing out the sugar, trying not to get any blood on the
other lumps. I took the two pink ones for myself. Taya Opilova gave me her
handkerchief. Then, feeling bloody and exhilarated, I went down the hall to
the room next to the Teachers' Room. There was a bit of red bunting tacked
to the door. The room was full of smoke, noise and rifles.
"Comrades!" I said, addressing the smoke and the noise. "See? I'm
bleeding because of our sugar rations, and anyway, fellows, I've long since
accepted your platform. Please put me down as a sympathizer."
The noise lessened and the smoke increased. Someone said: "Your papa
will put you in the corner for sympathizing, and he'll make you take castor
oil to be sure you stop sympathizing. He's a doctor and he knows what to
prescribe."
The smoke hid my disappointment.
Nevertheless, I showed off the bump on my forehead proudly all week
long, just as if it were a decoration.
And the children in schools
wept for him.
"One Thousand and One
Nights"
The 35th night
That morning I left for school earlier than I usually did, for I had to
stop by at the Education Department and pick up the sugar for my class.
There was a large silent crowd on Breshka Street where the morning
newspapers were posted on a wall outside a shop. I could not see the middle
of the sheet over the heads of the others. All I could make out were the
margins and the pale, greenish newsprint with the name of the newspaper:
"Izvestiya".
I read the headline: "Battles Rage on All Fronts." At closer range I
read part of a usual dispatch: "...Our troops are still advancing in the
Urals and have taken several towns. Our forces have retreated to Yelabuga
Pier on the Kama. American troops have landed in Archangelsk. The workers of
Archangelsk refuse to support the rule of the Conciliators. The insurgents
continue their struggle in the Ukraine."
On the bottom of the page, below someone's elbow, I made out the small
type of yesterday's paper:
"The food section of the Moscow Council of Workers' and Soldiers'
Deputies brings the following to the attention of all inhabitants of Moscow.
Tomorrow, August 30, no bread ration cards of the general type will be
honoured. One-quarter of a pound of bread will be issued to holders of the
stub of the additional bread ration card and of children's cards for ages 2
to 12, coupon No. 13...."
The crowd was strangely silent. I could not understand what was wrong.
Then the Czech, Kardac, the Austrian prisoner-of-war, and two Red Guards
made their way through the crowd to the newspaper. Kardac was very pale. One
of his puttees had got loose and was trailing along the ground.
"Read it out loud," he said.
Someone read the following:
August 30, 1918. 10:40 p.m.
Several hours ago there was a heinous attempt to assassinate Comrade
Lenin.... We call for calm and organization. All should remain at their
posts. Close your ranks!
(Signed) Y. Sverdlov,
Chairman, All-Russia Central Executive Committee.
Kardac was stunned. He stared unbelievingly into the mouth of the man
who was reading. Then he struck his fist against his cheek and moaned.
"One bullet entering under the left shoulder blade..." the voice went
on reading and stumbled.
"So," Hefty said calmly and tore off a corner of the paper to roll
himself a cigarette. Kardac rushed at him, grabbed him by the shoulders and
began shaking him. "I'll roll you up so tight you'll shrivel!" he shouted.
The Red Guards shouldered their way over. Hefty broke free. He walked away
without once looking back.
I dashed off to school.
Lenin was wounded! Lenin! The most important man. The man who had
undertaken to destroy all the lists of world-wide injustice had been
wounded!
The school building buzzed like a beehive.
The Juniors and some of our boys were lying on the floor in our
classroom. They had borrowed an anatomical chart from the Teachers' Room and
spread it out. Stabbing at it with our pencils, we tried to decide whether
the wounds were dangerous or not. Kostya Beetle was sitting on his desk with
his chin propped on o hand and his penknife in the other. "What if he ...
dies?" Kostya said in a d voice. Then he carved the name "LENIN" on the top
of his desk. Mokeich, c janitor and the keeper of all school property, came
in just then. He looked Kostya severely and opened his mouth to scold him
for spoiling the desk, which now belonged to the people, but then sighed,
stood there silently for a while a finally left.
Heavy steps sounded on the stairs. The Seniors stopped outside the door
with 1 red bunting to stack their rifles. Forsunov and Stepan Atlantis, two
members oft Council, entered our classroom during the long recess. Stepan
was just back from Saratov with the latest news.
"Comrade Lenin's condition..." Forsunov read the dispatch aloud,
"condition ... according to the evening bulletins has improved considerably.
I temperature is 37.6, pulse-88, respiration-34."
"Listen," Atlantis said to me, "we want to ask you for a favour. Your
old ma a doctor. Call him up and ask him what he thinks about Comrade Lent
chances."
Several minutes later I was pressing the receiver to my ear. It was
still warm from someone having used the telephone before me. I was
surrounded by respectful crowd.
"Is this the hospital? May I speak to the doctor, please.... Papa? This
is me. The boys here and the Council asked me to ask you ... about Comrade
Lenin. His respiration's thirty-four. Is that dangerous?"
Papa replied in his usual doctor's voice, "It's too early to say
anything definitive yet, but it's very serious. However, there is still no
reason to fear a fatal o come."
"Thank him for us," Stepan whispered.
That day we learned a new song in our singing class. It had a
fine-sounding 1 difficult name: "The Internationale".
Back home Oska greeted me as always, "I've got news for you!"
"I know," I said, interrupting. "Everybody knows. Papa said he may
well."
That was the first evening we did not play Schwambrania.
I learned my ABCs
from signboards.
by snatches.
Wading through pages
of tin and iron.
Mayakovsky
Oska was enrolled in school. Oska was now a full-fledged schoolboy.
Kocherygin, a house painter and artist who was temporarily put in
charge of the primary grades, wrote the following on Oska's application:
"He's lacking in age, but he's accepted, on account of being bright. He can
read fine print."
When Mamma came home she sounded truly surprised as she called Oska and
said, "They've accepted you! What a shame that the boys don't wear uniforms
any more." Mamma was very proud of him.
"Just think how much sugar we'll have now!" Oska said dreamily. "I'll
be getting sugar, too."
I lectured to him in brief on "The New Boy, His Rights and Duties, or
How not to Get Beaten".
Oska wore my old school cap on his first day. The cap revolved freely
on his head.
"Why'd you put that on?" the temporary principal asked, peering down to
get a look at him under the visor.
"That's my uniform."
"I still think you're much too little to be starting in school."
"I guess you think you're big, don't you?" Oska said, having confused
the main points of my lecture as to what to say to whom.
However, he shut up just in time.
"That's no way to talk. After all, you're a doctor's son. Is that the
way they bring up their children?"
"I'm sorry. I got mixed up. I wanted to say good things come in small
packages."
"Can you really read small print?" Kocherygin inquired. There was
undisguised respect in his voice.
"Yes. And I can read big print from across the street, and all the
street signs, and I know a lot of them by heart."
"The street signs, you say?" The former sign-painter warmed to him
completely.
"You really mean it? By heart? All right, tell me what's on the signs
on the corner of Khorolsky and Breshka streets."
Oska was silent for a moment. Then he rattled off the following:
"Ararat fruit shop fruits wines P. Batrayev stovemaker chimneys swept no
loitering."
"I did the signs," the temporary principal said modestly.
"You have a very good handwriting." Oska was a very polite boy.
"What's the new sign on the Stock Exchange?"
"The 'Stock Exchange' part is crossed out and it doesn't count. It says
'Freedom House' now."
"Right. Run along, sonny. You've been enrolled."
"A new boy, a new boy!" the children chanted when Oska entered the
class
"Better than an old boy!" Oska replied hurriedly, recalling my
instructions.
The children were astounded.
He was spared a beating.
Richard Sinyagin, a wrestler known as the Steel Mask and a former
stevedore was our gym teacher. At the time an International wrestling match
was being held in the Saratov Circus. Richard Sinyagin went to Saratov to
participate in the match. The referee, one Benedetto, presented him to the
audience as "The Mystery wrestler. The Steel Mask". Soon after playbills
informed the public that there would be "a decisive bout to the end, with no
time limit, no break between rounds". The contestants were the Steel Mask
and the Mask of Death. Naturally, all this was pure hocus-pocus. The
wrestlers puffed and grunted conscientiously K the forty minutes they had
previously agreed upon, after which the Steel Mask threw himself expertly to
the mut. When the audience's palms had begun to stir from clapping and the
noise finally died down, the referee wrung his hands gingerly and announced:
"Alas! The Mask of Death has won in forty-five minutes in fair combat.
Richard Sinyagin, Champion of the World and of Pokrovsk, is the Steel Mask."
In school the next day Sinyagin tried his best to convince us that he
had be< thrown unfairly. The boys did not hide their disapproval. Then, in
order to pro his strength, Sinyagin let about eight boys climb all over him
like monkeys on tree. Then he lifted a desk, with Madame Hippo and two of
her friends seated on the attached bench. He raised the desk and its
inhabitants and set it on another desk. "There," he said.
At this, the lesson ended.
We boys always respected strong men. Now we worshipped them. The
staring game was completely forgotten, and wrestling became king. It
squashed us in "decisive, no time limit" bouts, contorted us and threw us in
standing backheels and armlocks, battering us from wall to wall in the
classrooms and down the long corridors, bruising our backs on the tile
floors, with Hefty Martynenko the one exception, for his back never touched
the floor. Hefty was the champion of champions, the unchallenged champion of
the school and the vicinity.
Naturally, all this had a definite influence on the affairs of state in
Schwambrania. We had always imagined the world to be divided in two. At
first, there were "desirable and undesirable acquaintances". Then there were
seafarers and landlubbers, the good and the bad. After my fateful
conversation with Stepan Atlantis, I came to realize that "good" and "bad"
were no longer sufficient for judging things. We now discovered a new
division among people, and this was to be yet another of our errors. The
world and the Schwambranians were now divided into strong men and weaklings.
From that day on the lives of the Schwambranians were spent in endless
championship matches and contests. One Pafnuti Synecdoche became Champion of
Schwambrania, his might eclipsing even that of Jack, the Sailor's Companion,
the man who threw Chatelains Urodenal.
Oska became obsessed with wrestling. He was the smallest child in his
class. Any boy could throw him, even with one arm tied behind his back, as
the saying goes. However, once he got home he made up for his wounded pride
by wrestling the chairs and pillows. He had table-tournaments between his
two hands, with each one squeezing and wringing the other until the right
hand finally threw the left, knocking it silly. Oska's most constant and
serious opponent was the sofa bolster. Quite often Oska would be found on
the floor of the nursery with his arms flung out and the bolster on top of
him, supposedly having thrown him.
"That's against the rules!" Oska would shout. "He tripped me and then
got me in a nelson!"
The bolster won the return match as well, but was punished by being
taken out in the yard and beaten with a rug beater.
Then Oska arranged a bout between Kolya Anfisov of the primary school
and Grisha Fyodorov, the second strongest boy in my class. The bout was held
in our yard on a Sunday, with all the preparations having been made the
previous day. The mat was drawn on the ground with a piece of chalk, and the
inside of the circle was swept and sprinkled with sand. When the fans
crowded round the next day, Oska took out a toy whistle and I said:
"We will now see, I mean witness, a wrestling match between two strong
men.
Presenting Anfisov (Primary School) and Fyodorov (Secondary School).
This is going to be a bout without breaks, an honest fight, with no time
limit or monkey-business, to the bitter end. Let's have a fanfare. Maestro!
Whistle again, Oska! We all know a foul when we see one. Jury, I mean
judges, take your seats by the barrel."
Oska, Hefty and Filipich, the janitor, went over to the bench by the
barrel. I called the first round.
The champions shook hands and danced away from each other. Anfisov was
tall and bony. Fyodorov was small and stocky, and resembled a Shetland pony.
They stalked each other for several seconds, then suddenly Anfisov grabbed
Fyodorov, pinning his arms to his body.
The audience froze. Even the wind in the yard died down.
"Leggo o'his arms!" Filipich yelled.
"Let go!" the older boys shouted.
"That's fair!" the younger boys cried.
I whistled. Oska tooted. The jury squabbled, and during all this
commotion Anfisov threw Fyodorov.
"Hooray! It's all fair and square!" the younger boys shouted.
"You can get a hand through! It doesn't count!" the big boys yelled,
but no matter how I tried, I couldn't squeeze my hand under Fyodorov's
shoulder-blades, for they were pressed hard to the ground. Shame burned us
as a brand. Fyodorov rose sheepishly and shook the dust off his clothes.
"Why don't you lie down again? Take a rest," Hefty jeered.
The future stretched ahead like a graveyard.
The runts were jubilant. Hefty finally lunged at them, slamming their
champion down first. He then proceeded to slaughter the innocents, driving
the small boys into a far corner of the yard and then stacking them like
firewood.
That was when Stepan Atlantis entered the yard. "Pardon me as a matter
of procedure, but what's the fight on the agenda today?"
I told him what had happened. Hefty shifted the pile of small boys into
a floundering pyramid and came over to us.
"A bunch of big louts like you playing at wrestling. Fooling around in
decisive times like these!"
"You're all wrong, Stepan. This does wonders for you. Here, feel my
muscle. See what 1 mean? If a fellow's strong, he don't give a damn for
anyone. You know why you and Lelya stick to the Juniors? Because you're both
yellow. You think if you can't fend for yourselves, your gang'll come
running. Ha! Well, I can do without your gang. I can stick up for myself.
See my fist?"
"All brawn and no brain," Stepan said. "What do you think you can do
all by yourself? Where'11 it get you? If our gang, as you say, or, actually,
society goes after you, you'll never know what hit you. That's how strong we
are!"
"Sure, if it's everybody against one. But that's not fair."
"Was it fair when everybody had to work for one boss? How many hired
hands did your fat old man drive like slaves?"
"What's the matter? Did you forget your family has a farm, too?"
"Don't you compare us. Our plot was the size of a hankie. You had an
orchard and a garden, and land stretching off in all directions."
"But those damn comrades of yours set up a commune there and chased us
out."
"1 know all about it. You tried to bury your grain in the cellar when
people were starving, but I made my old man give up whatever we could spare.
And don't think my mother wasn't after me! I had to stay over at Kostya
Beetle's place. And then he had to hide out at my place. We're all for one
and one for all. And we're against people like you."
"You mean you'd go against your own friends?" Hefty said very softly.
"Former friends." Stepan's voice was barely audible.
Silence slipped across the yard like a shadow. Then Hefty sighed loudly
and headed towards the gate. He was slumped over. His shoulder blades, which
had never known defeat, looked as if they had at last touched the mat.
The next day my class decided to spend the algebra lesson analysing the
scrap between Hefty and Atlantis. Hefty sullenly refused to participate. We
were expecting Alexander Karlovich, our math teacher, but instead a strange
little old man in a clean and well-pressed tunic entered the classroom. He
was puny, nearsighted and bald, with a brush of mousy hair growing up around
his bald pate, so that it resembled a lagoon in an atoll.
"Who's the bald dome?" Hefty inquired.
The class roared.
"Eh-mew-eh.... This?" the old man said, poking a finger at his lowered
pate "Why?"
"Un ... nothing special," Hefty replied. He had not expected such a
reply.
"Perhaps baldness has now been ... eh-mew-eh ... outlawed?" the old man
persisted.
Everyone gazed at him respectfully.
"Not at all. Any way you like." Hefty did not know how to get out of
the mess.
"That's very kind of you. Let's get acquainted.... Eh-mew-eh.... I'm
your new history teacher. My name is Semyon Ignatyevich Kirikov. Eh ...
mew-eh.... Good morning, troglodytes!"
This was a word we had never heard before and so we were at a loss, not
knowing whether he had meant it as praise or whether it was an insult.
Stepan Atlantis rose.
"I've a question to ask. What rock did you crawl out from under? That's
in the first place. And what did you call us? That's in the second."
The troglodytes stamped their feet and rattled their desk tops.
"Sit down, you creature. Troglodytes were ... eh ... mew-eh ... were
cavemen, cave dwellers, primitive people. Our ... eh-mew-eh ...
great-great-great-progenitors, our forefathers, while you ... eh-mew-eh ...
you are young troglodytes."
"Does that mean I'm a troglodytess?" Madame Hippo demanded.
"Not at all! You are positively a mammoths or a brontosauruses."
"He's all right!" we whispered excitedly.
The old man turned out to be a cunning conqueror. By the time the first
lesson was over he had captivated us completely. Stepan, who was never
lavish with praise, conceded that "the old man's all right". We had no
trouble giving our new teacher a nickname. We named him E-muet, the French
mute "e", and pronounced it in French, eh-mew-eh. Kirikov did not enunciate
his words. He seemed to chew on them, mumbling in between and peppering each
phrase with his constant eh-mew-ehs. E-muet did not take offence. He was
cheerful and kindly. The girls wrote notes to him.
E-muet called each of us a creature.
"Creature Aleferenko! Rise!"
And Aleferenko would rise.
"Now then, creature. Let's go back ... eh-mew-eh ... you cave dweller,
to what we spoke of at our last lesson."
"We spoke of hand picks and the Stone Age. It was all awfully boring
and prehistoric. No wars. No nothing."
"Be seated, creature. Today's lesson will be duller still."
And he would drone on dishing out the next portion of prehistoric
information. Having rattled it off, he would immediately cheer up, post a
sentry at the door and spend the other half of the lesson reading aloud to
us from a 1912 copy of Satirikon, a humorous magazine, or else he would tell
us hunting yarns. An attentive silence was one of the honours bestown upon
Kirikov. His triumphant bald pate gradually acquired an aura of glory. He
became a living legend. Despite his near-sightedness, E-muet had discovered
that the class was divided into various parties, and so he, too, divided us
into troglodytes (the old school boys) and anthropoids (the Juniors). This
completely won over the old school boys.
However, it somehow seemed to me that every now and then something so
vague you couldn't put your finger on it, but something evil and familiar
poked its ugly head out of this kindly old man. It would rise up at the end
of some of his jokes, apparent but as unpronounceable as e-muet, the mute
"e" in French.
At his fourth lesson E-muet addressed a long speech to us. He even
mumbled and hemmed and hawed less than usual that day. However, there was a
strong smell of liquor on his breath.
"Troglodytes and anthropoids! I want to light the sacred fire of truth
in your caves. I will tell you why they make me tell you about troglodytes,
but forbid me to tell you about emperors. Listen, my primitive brothers,
mammoths and brontosauruses ... eh-mew-eh.... History has ended...."
"No, it hasn't! The bell for recess didn't ring yet!" someone shouted.
"Which protozoan amoeba said that? I'm not speaking of our history
lesson. I'm speaking ... eh-mew-eh ... of the history of mankind ... of its
magnificent, martial history, so full of pomp and circumstance. History has
come full circle. The Bolsheviks have turned Russia back ... eh-mew-eh ...
to the primitive state, to the primordial darkness. There is chaos
everywhere, and ruin.... There is no kerosene.... We shall lose our fire....
We shall be naked ... for there is no cloth.... A return to bestial
primitiveness awaits us, my dear troglodytes.... The iron tracks for our
trains will become evergrown! Eh-mew-eh ... the last match will go out, and
the primordial night will be upon us."
"How can it, when there'll be electricity everywhere?" Stepan cried.
"Shut up! He's right!" Hefty said. "The commune wrecked everything on
our farm."
"Who cares about primitive times? Tell us about when there were
knights!" someone shouted.
Everyone began stamping. The troglodytes jumped over their desks.
"So let's get down on all fours, my dear troglodytes," E-muet said
cheerfully, "and let's raise a hoary cry in praise of the eternal night into
which we shall descend. Raghhhh! Ow-ww!"
"Ow-ww!" everyone hawled gleefully.
Some, throwing themselves into the act, scrambled down the aisles on
all fours, making the rest of the class double over. Then someone began to
sing:
Ah, when the night's dark,
Oh, I'm so scared then,
Troglodytess,
My own Marusya!
Oh, Marusya,
Troglodytess!
Stop your chatter,
See me home first.
At the lectern Kirikov was chanting like a witch doctor. Once again
something very familiar flitted across his contorted face, but I couldn't
seem to grasp that elusive "something". I, too, was caught up in macabre
merriment of my classmates. I felt that I, too, wanted to crawl and howl a
bit. The lack of a tail was disappointing, but did not really spoil the
general impression. I could practically feel the soil of Schwambrania
shuddering under the heavy tread of the advancing mammoths.
"Hey, fellows, stop it!" Kostya Beetle shouted, coming to his senses.
"Tell them he's pulling the wool over their eyes, Stepan. Hey, Stepan!"
But Stepan had disappeared. I hated to think that he had run off. The
mammoths raised their trunks like question marks and stopped at the
Schwambranian border, not knowing what to do.
Forsunov, President of the Student Council, and then Stepan came
running in. The troglodytes were instantly swept forward into the 20th
century. The mammoths galloped off the Big Tooth Continent. Kirikov's bald
pate lost its shine.
"You can get into a lot of trouble for filling their heads with such
nonsense," Forsunov said softly.
"You lousy bourgeois. You saboteur!" Stepan added, sticking his head
over Forsunov's shoulder.
"Eh-mew-eh, I was simply presenting the basic ideas of, eh-mew-eh,
anarchism Naked man on the naked earth, and no personal property."
"Toadstool!" I shouted joyously, taking myself by surprise.
"Toadstool," I repeated with conviction, for I had recreated the nettle-man
in my mind's eye, our summer of Kvasnikovka, the many clocks and watches,
Death-Cap-Poison-Emi and the personal property of the bald man with the
sack. And now E-muet, a mut and silent "e", had become an open "e".
Kirikov was exposed and relieved of his teaching post. The anthropoids
welcomed his removal, but the troglodytes, led by Hefty, resented it. They
began plotting their revenge, choosing the following day as the date for the
massacre of the Juniors and calling it a "universal ruckus".
"We're going to have a St. Bartholomew's Night tomorrow morning," I
whispered to Oska that night.
Oska, who was always one to confuse -words when he was wide awake, now
mumbled sleepily, "Are they going to kill the Hottentots?"
"The Huguenots, not the Hottentots, and, anyway, not the Huguenots at
all, but the Juniors, and they're not going to kill them dead, they'll just
beat them up."
"Did tryglodytors fight in the arena in Ancient Rome, too?" he suddenly
asked.
"No, gladiators. Troglodytes are...."
There were still a few lost mammoths roaming about in Schwambrania. I
told Oska they were hiding out among the huge prehistoric ferns.
"Fammoths graze in the merns," he mumbled sleepily.
The universal ruckus was invented ages ago. It was the greatest and
most terrible kind of schoolboy revolt. A universal ruckus was only resorted
to in extreme cases, when all other means of resisting the authorities
failed. I had never yet witnessed such an event, though school legends still
recalled the last one. It had taken place in 1912, after the three
ringleaders of an attack on the principal's doorman had been expelled. The
doorman had informed on the boys and had been pelted with rotten eggs.
And so, the troglodytes decided to declare a Great General Universal
Ruckus, with Hefty in command. He looked somewhat preoccupied when he came
to school the next morning, but he was calm. There was an ugly semblance of
calm in the air. No one played "Chopsticks". No one wrestled. No one played
the staring game. The corridor, always a churning stream, emptied the moment
the bell rang. The stunned teachers walked along this strangely deserted
river bed. They were greeted by a dead silence when they entered their
respective classrooms.
Our first lesson was Russian grammar. The teacher, a curly-haired,
blond-bearded man named Melkovsky, peeped in the door cautiously. The moment
he appeared the troglodytes, displaying their former training, jumped to
their feet like so many jack-in-the-boxes and stood at attention by their
desks. The anthropoids and Stepan were a few moments behind the others. The
general upward sweep lifted me, too. We stood there respectfully at
attention.
"Now, now! Be seated everyone," Melkovsky said and waved his hand, for
he had become unaccustomed to such reverence.
The pupils were settling back slowly. Melkovsky tested the lectern with
the tip of his shoe. It did not explode. Then he mounted it cautiously.
"The morning prayer, Monitor!" Hefty snapped.
"Are you crazy?" Stepan said.
An oppressive silence descended upon us.
"0, Gracious Saviour, bless us this day and..." Volodya Labanda, the
monitor that day, intoned.
Some of the boys were crossing themselves from force of habit. "Perhaps
I'd better leave," Melkovsky mumbled. He was thoroughly confused.
Just then the monitor popped up beside him, carrying the class journal,
and the puzzled teacher heard the monitor's patter, as in the "good old"
Boys School days:
"Absent today are Stepan Gavrya, Konstantin Rudenko, Nikolai
Makukhin..." and he went on to read the list of all the Juniors.
"Wait! Stop!" supposedly absent boys shouted and jumped to their feet.
"You're lying! We're here!"
"You'll soon be absent," Hefty said. There was a smirk on his face.
"The Ruckus is on, troglodytes!" He stuck two fingers in his mouth and
whistled so shrilly it hurt our ears.
The "B" class in the adjoining room whistled back. Then eight other
whistles were carried down the corridor, and a rumble echoed through the
school. Classes were disrupted. The Juniors were dragged out by the feet,
thrown out the doors and windows. Textbooks fluttered down, flapping their
pages like huge butterflies. The girls took care of the shrieking and
screaming part of it. Ink was shed in our classroom. A blackboard was being
carried down the hall like an icon. "Attention, everybody! Down with the
anthropoid Juniors! Long live S. I. Kirikov! Demand his reinstatement," the
message on the blackboard read.
Five minutes later there was not a single anthropoid left in the
building. Troglodyte patrols were guarding the exits. The desks had all been
turned over.
The Great Universal Ruckus had begun.
The Commissar tethered his horse to the door. Then he pulled up his
boots and stalked down the corridor. It was deserted. Everyone was at an
emergency meeting in a large classroom turned into an auditorium. Hefty sat
at a table on the rostrum, looking well in the role of chairman and victor.
He was flanked by Forsunov and a senior named Rothmeller, the son of a
wealthy sausage merchant. Rothmeller had just finished speaking. Forsunov
was gazing at the table.
A troglodyte patrol was guarding the entrance. The Juniors, rather the
worse for wear and hardly anthropoids any longer, were laying siege to the
door. The troglodytes moved aside to let the commissar through. Stepan
Atlantis slipped in under cover of his broad back, but the troglodytes
dragged him back into the corridor.
"The next speaker is Commissar Chubarkov," Hefty said.
"And that's that!" the boys shouted in unison.
"What's the ruckus?"
"It's universal!" came a chorus.
"Wait a minute, boys!"
"We're not minute-boys!"
"Comrades!" the Commissar said.
"We're no comrades of yours!"
"Then who are you?" Chubarkov was getting really angry.
"Tro-glo-dytes!" they chanted.
"What? Trouble-tykes? All right. That's enough! I say it's time to stop
the nonsense. And that's that."
"Where were you before?" they jeered.
"Meaning what?" Chubarkov thundered. "It's a stupid question. You
didn't dare open your mouths when Stomolitsky was the principal. And that's
for sure! I can just see him getting into a debate with you! He'd put your
names down in the Black Book in no time, or have you expelled."
"And that's that!" someone yelled from the back rows where the worst of
the die-hard troglodytes clustered. "And that's all there is to it! We want
Kirikov!"
The troglodytes were out of control. However, it was no easy job to
outshout the booming voice of the former Volga stevedore accustomed to
speaking at mass meetings.
"I really am surprised," he was saying slowly and forcefully, and the
noise began to die down. "Can't you understand what's happening? You're
getting a modern education. What's so fascinating about all those tsars?
Here in the Common Work School you'll get to know about your people, about
beside her real name. Thus, we wrote "Bamboo" next to a tall girl's name,
"Squirts", beside two small girls' names, and "Madame Hippo" beside a fat
girl's name. There were also Sonya-Personya, Fifi, Beanpole, Lilly-Pill,
Monkey-face and Grind.
The girls we hadn't picked said we were idiots.
Once outside, Stepan said, "We'll have to cut out the swearing now
until they get used to it."
A few moments later we came upon a deputation from our brother "B"
class. There was a heated exchange on the subject of our having got there
first, after which our appearance and mood were lightly marred.
The pigeons were dying out in granary row. The wind rustled in the
empty granaries, whispering the terrible word "ruin". "No need for a spoon
in time of ruin," the janitor said sadly as he observed the way things were
going in school.
And the way they were was enough to make horses shy. All day long
someone or other was playing "Chopsticks" on the piano with one finger.
Dum-de-dum-de.... The piano was rolled down the corridor, from one classroom
to another, depending on which teacher had not come to school. The given
room would then turn into a dance floor. Pupils would leave without
permission. Someone sang a ditty: "Karapet, my dear friend, why do you look
so bad? I look bad, my dear friend, 'cause I always feel sad."
As soon as the bell for classes rang, the teachers tried to coax the
pupils back to their rooms.
"You used to be such a good student," Alexander Karlovich, our kind
math teacher, said in despair as he caught me by the sleeve. "Come along and
I'll tell you about a most interesting thing concerning the trigonometrical
functions of an angle. You'll be surprised at how interesting it is. It's
like reading a good book."
I was too polite to refuse. We entered the empty classroom. Someone was
playing "Chopsticks" in the adjoining room. Alexander Karlovich sat down at
the lectern. I took a seat in the first row. Everything was fine, if not for
the fact that there were no other pupils present. I was the whole class.
"Go to the board, please," the teacher said.
As I went over to the blackboard I saw the schedule for the next day
tacked upon the wall. Oho! The next day was going to be a hard one. There
would be five lessons. The first was music appreciation, the second was
drawing, the third was a mid-morning snack, the fourth was shop and the
fifth was gym.
"Well, let us begin," the teacher said, addressing the empty classroom.
Someone was still playing "Chopsticks".
We had all grown and now protruded from our school great-coats like
trees above a picket fence. The buttons on our chests had retreated to the
very edge of the seams under pressure of our expanding masculinity. The belt
in back had crept all the way up from our waist to our shoulder blades, but
we staunchly continued wearing our old uniforms. There was a bluish spot
that resembled a butterfly on our faded caps, left by the cockades we had
removed.
One day Comrade Chubarkov brought seven new boys to my class. They were
variously clad, but none was wearing a school uniform, though they all had
on the same broad belts with the letters "JHS" on the buckle. They clustered
behind Chubarkov's broad back.
"Quiet, everybody!" Chubarkov said. "Now, hello! Onto the next
question. Since the school is now a common school, it means everybody is
going to study together. I want to introduce these boys. They're from the
junior high. I want you all to be friends."
"Down with the Juniors!" the boys in the back rows shouted. "We don't
want them here! They don't know half of what we do!"
Chubarkov, who had reached the door, turned back. "Anybody who doesn't
want to study with the rest can study at home with a tutor. And that's
that!" He stalked out.
The Juniors clustered by the lectern uncertainly.
"Hello, privileged classes," said Kostya Rudenko, an olive-skinned
Junior whose nickname was Beetle. We knew him from our street fights.
"Hello, boys and girls," Kostya Beetle said politely.
"Wa yo fa puh?" Hefty said.
("Want your face pushed in?" some of our boys interpreted.)
"We dyo be me?" Kostya Beetle replied calmly.
("When did you ever beat me?" the Junior explained.)
Our boys were taking off their watches to make sure they would not be
broken during the fight. The girls were entrusted with their safekeeping.
"You're just a bunch of uniformless Juniors," Hefty muttered as he
advanced on Kostya. "Look at you, shoving your way into our high school from
your lousy junior high. You don't even have silver buttons, you don't even
have school uniforms. But you're all shoving your way up, aren't you?"
"We know more than you do. What do you know about logarithms?" Kostya
said.
Hefty had never heard of them. "I don't give a damn for that! I'll push
your face in, and that'll teach you."
Still and all, he was put out. I could see some of my classmates
leafing through their geometry books. Since I knew the answer, I raised my
hand to save the honour of my class.
Stepan Atlantis slapped down my palm. "They'll manage without you," he
said softly. "It serves him right. Good for Kostya. He made Hefty eat humble
pie. Come on, sit down, boys. There are a lot of empty vacancies."
The Juniors began taking seats timidly amidst the chilling silence.
Kostya found a seat beside the Squirts, two little girls who were
inseparable.
"Don't sit next to us," they said, tossed their bows and moved away in
a huff.
Having girls in the classroom brought about many changes, the most
important of which was a new staring game. The game caught on like wildfire,
with everyone playing it. The players would sit opposite each other and
stare into each other's eyes. If one of the players' eyes began to tear from
the strain and he blinked, he would be eliminated. We had popeyed champions
among the girls and the boys. We even held a staring match. Now the hours in
school slipped happily away.
A contest organized to determine the champion "crazy-gazer" lasted for
the whole of two lessons and part of the long recess. Liza-Scandalizer was
competing against Volodya Labanda. They did not take their unseeing eyes
from each other for two and a half hours. During the physics lesson that day
the teacher was amazed at the unusual quiet in the classroom. Not knowing
what to make of it he explained the principles of a water level to the class
and then tiptoed out.
Towards the end of the long recess Volodya put his hand over his
smarting eyes. He threw in the towel. Liza, however, kept on staring at him
motionlessly from under her brows. The girls were jubilant. They squealed
and shrieked, and carried on. We stuck our fingers in our ears.
However, Liza-Scandalizer kept on staring at the same spot. Her head
was tilted strangely. The Squirts bent down to look at her and bounced away
in terror. Then we all saw that Liza's eyes had rolled way up, so that only
the whites were visible. She was in a dead faint.
The boys tried hard to be polite when the girls were present. The
really outrageous inscriptions were scraped off the desk tops and the walls.
When the boys wanted to wipe their noses with their hands they went behind
the blackboard. Polite notes and messages in tiny envelopes were passed
during classes. Thus:
"Good morning, Valya. May I see you to your corner on a matter of great
secrecy? If you show this to Serge, I'll brain him, and it'll be piggish of
you besides. Kolya. P.S. Excuse the messy writing."
Each day there was "dancing till dawn". We made sure during these
evening parties that none of the boys from the "B" class danced with our
girls. Anyone found guilty of this crime was dragged off to one of the dark
and empty classrooms. After a brief and prejudiced questioning, the culprit
was beaten. Naturally, his friends panted for revenge. Soon these daily
massacres in the deserted classrooms took on such a scope that the seniors
had to post armed monitors at the doors. Their rifles were a leftover from
the home guards. Sometimes, the monitors would fire into the darkness, just
in case. The dancing couples soon got used to the sound of shooting.
Hefty, who had taken part in the looting of the wine shop, had set up a
small wine cellar in the classroom stove. Madame Hippo was never one to
refuse a drink. She was a plump, overgrown young lady who intimidated both
the boys and the girls. She whipped a boy who had insulted her with his own
belt, right there on the lectern in front of everybody. As for me, she once
knocked me down on to the tile floor so hard it took at least five minutes
for me to feel I was still alive, although not quite at that.
Stepan Atlantis looked glum. Whenever he met any of the other boys'
parents they would say: "Well? Are you satisfied now? Are you having the
time of your life at school? It's a disgrace, that's what it is. How can you
even call it a school?"
Stepan tried to call the wild farm boys to order. He was supported by
the Juniors and some of his friends, but no one listened to us.
"When are we going to start studying again?" we said unhappily.
"There's no time for studying now. This isn't the old regime. We've had
enough!" Hefty replied.
"You're stupid. Now at last we can really learn something," Kostya
Beetle protested.
"It's fellows like you Junior Bolsheviks that need some book-learning.
We old boys'll manage as it is. We know all we need to know."
That day Count Chatelains Urodenal and Jack, the Sailor's Companion
also got into a learned argument. War was declared.
We were given lump sugar and hot tea during the long recess. We had
never known such luxuries in the old school.
Now each of us received a large mug of carrot-tea and two lumps of
sugar. There was no sugar in the stores in Pokrovsk at the time, so that I
would have my tea in school without sugar and take the two precious lumps
home. My faithful Oska would be waiting for me. He always greeted me in the
same way:
"I've got news for you!" he'd say and go on to inform me of the day's
events in Schwambrania.
I would give him the sugar, and we would admire the snow-white, porous
cubes. We put them away in a little box that contained the sugar stores of
Schwambrania. It was not to be touched. It was intended for some future gala
events. On Sundays we each had a lump at the dinner given by the President
of Schwambrania. Our sugar stores kept growing. We made great plans as we
discussed the thickness of the future layers of sugar. The sweet geometry of
those daydreams brought about a wonderful flow of saliva.
Once, however, our sugar was the cause of bloodshed.
I was chosen to be in charge of handing out the sugar in my class. This
was not only a sweet job, but an honorary one. No one ever doubted my
honesty.
"Huh, you're the commissar of food," the boys said. "Don't you think
you're a big cheese."
Hefty, who was a brash and enterprising fellow, once suggested a tricky
deal. It had to do with the left-over sugar intended for pupils who happened
to be absent. Hefty suggested that I hold back the extra portions instead of
returning them to the school office and then share them with him. Naturally,
this tempting deal held promise of a great windfall of sugar for
Schwambrania. If this had happened in our old school, I would never have
hesitated and would have considered it my sacred duty to outsmart the
authorities. Now, however, boys we had elected were on the Council. They
trusted me. They had chosen me for the job of distributing the sugar. I
couldn't betray them.
And so I refused, and my staunchness and honesty took my breath away.
Hefty got even with me that very day. As I was handing out the sugar, I
dropped several lumps. I bent under the desk to retrieve them. At that very
moment Hefty grabbed my collar and shoved my head down. I cracked my
forehead against the edge of the bench and was soon sporting a huge bump.
Besides, the cut was bleeding. Two of the lumps of sugar turned pink. The
girls stared at my forehead with pity and told me to put a wet compress on
it, but I went on handing out the sugar, trying not to get any blood on the
other lumps. I took the two pink ones for myself. Taya Opilova gave me her
handkerchief. Then, feeling bloody and exhilarated, I went down the hall to
the room next to the Teachers' Room. There was a bit of red bunting tacked
to the door. The room was full of smoke, noise and rifles.
"Comrades!" I said, addressing the smoke and the noise. "See? I'm
bleeding because of our sugar rations, and anyway, fellows, I've long since
accepted your platform. Please put me down as a sympathizer."
The noise lessened and the smoke increased. Someone said: "Your papa
will put you in the corner for sympathizing, and he'll make you take castor
oil to be sure you stop sympathizing. He's a doctor and he knows what to
prescribe."
The smoke hid my disappointment.
Nevertheless, I showed off the bump on my forehead proudly all week
long, just as if it were a decoration.
And the children in schools
wept for him.
"One Thousand and One
Nights"
The 35th night
That morning I left for school earlier than I usually did, for I had to
stop by at the Education Department and pick up the sugar for my class.
There was a large silent crowd on Breshka Street where the morning
newspapers were posted on a wall outside a shop. I could not see the middle
of the sheet over the heads of the others. All I could make out were the
margins and the pale, greenish newsprint with the name of the newspaper:
"Izvestiya".
I read the headline: "Battles Rage on All Fronts." At closer range I
read part of a usual dispatch: "...Our troops are still advancing in the
Urals and have taken several towns. Our forces have retreated to Yelabuga
Pier on the Kama. American troops have landed in Archangelsk. The workers of
Archangelsk refuse to support the rule of the Conciliators. The insurgents
continue their struggle in the Ukraine."
On the bottom of the page, below someone's elbow, I made out the small
type of yesterday's paper:
"The food section of the Moscow Council of Workers' and Soldiers'
Deputies brings the following to the attention of all inhabitants of Moscow.
Tomorrow, August 30, no bread ration cards of the general type will be
honoured. One-quarter of a pound of bread will be issued to holders of the
stub of the additional bread ration card and of children's cards for ages 2
to 12, coupon No. 13...."
The crowd was strangely silent. I could not understand what was wrong.
Then the Czech, Kardac, the Austrian prisoner-of-war, and two Red Guards
made their way through the crowd to the newspaper. Kardac was very pale. One
of his puttees had got loose and was trailing along the ground.
"Read it out loud," he said.
Someone read the following:
August 30, 1918. 10:40 p.m.
Several hours ago there was a heinous attempt to assassinate Comrade
Lenin.... We call for calm and organization. All should remain at their
posts. Close your ranks!
(Signed) Y. Sverdlov,
Chairman, All-Russia Central Executive Committee.
Kardac was stunned. He stared unbelievingly into the mouth of the man
who was reading. Then he struck his fist against his cheek and moaned.
"One bullet entering under the left shoulder blade..." the voice went
on reading and stumbled.
"So," Hefty said calmly and tore off a corner of the paper to roll
himself a cigarette. Kardac rushed at him, grabbed him by the shoulders and
began shaking him. "I'll roll you up so tight you'll shrivel!" he shouted.
The Red Guards shouldered their way over. Hefty broke free. He walked away
without once looking back.
I dashed off to school.
Lenin was wounded! Lenin! The most important man. The man who had
undertaken to destroy all the lists of world-wide injustice had been
wounded!
The school building buzzed like a beehive.
The Juniors and some of our boys were lying on the floor in our
classroom. They had borrowed an anatomical chart from the Teachers' Room and
spread it out. Stabbing at it with our pencils, we tried to decide whether
the wounds were dangerous or not. Kostya Beetle was sitting on his desk with
his chin propped on o hand and his penknife in the other. "What if he ...
dies?" Kostya said in a d voice. Then he carved the name "LENIN" on the top
of his desk. Mokeich, c janitor and the keeper of all school property, came
in just then. He looked Kostya severely and opened his mouth to scold him
for spoiling the desk, which now belonged to the people, but then sighed,
stood there silently for a while a finally left.
Heavy steps sounded on the stairs. The Seniors stopped outside the door
with 1 red bunting to stack their rifles. Forsunov and Stepan Atlantis, two
members oft Council, entered our classroom during the long recess. Stepan
was just back from Saratov with the latest news.
"Comrade Lenin's condition..." Forsunov read the dispatch aloud,
"condition ... according to the evening bulletins has improved considerably.
I temperature is 37.6, pulse-88, respiration-34."
"Listen," Atlantis said to me, "we want to ask you for a favour. Your
old ma a doctor. Call him up and ask him what he thinks about Comrade Lent
chances."
Several minutes later I was pressing the receiver to my ear. It was
still warm from someone having used the telephone before me. I was
surrounded by respectful crowd.
"Is this the hospital? May I speak to the doctor, please.... Papa? This
is me. The boys here and the Council asked me to ask you ... about Comrade
Lenin. His respiration's thirty-four. Is that dangerous?"
Papa replied in his usual doctor's voice, "It's too early to say
anything definitive yet, but it's very serious. However, there is still no
reason to fear a fatal o come."
"Thank him for us," Stepan whispered.
That day we learned a new song in our singing class. It had a
fine-sounding 1 difficult name: "The Internationale".
Back home Oska greeted me as always, "I've got news for you!"
"I know," I said, interrupting. "Everybody knows. Papa said he may
well."
That was the first evening we did not play Schwambrania.
I learned my ABCs
from signboards.
by snatches.
Wading through pages
of tin and iron.
Mayakovsky
Oska was enrolled in school. Oska was now a full-fledged schoolboy.
Kocherygin, a house painter and artist who was temporarily put in
charge of the primary grades, wrote the following on Oska's application:
"He's lacking in age, but he's accepted, on account of being bright. He can
read fine print."
When Mamma came home she sounded truly surprised as she called Oska and
said, "They've accepted you! What a shame that the boys don't wear uniforms
any more." Mamma was very proud of him.
"Just think how much sugar we'll have now!" Oska said dreamily. "I'll
be getting sugar, too."
I lectured to him in brief on "The New Boy, His Rights and Duties, or
How not to Get Beaten".
Oska wore my old school cap on his first day. The cap revolved freely
on his head.
"Why'd you put that on?" the temporary principal asked, peering down to
get a look at him under the visor.
"That's my uniform."
"I still think you're much too little to be starting in school."
"I guess you think you're big, don't you?" Oska said, having confused
the main points of my lecture as to what to say to whom.
However, he shut up just in time.
"That's no way to talk. After all, you're a doctor's son. Is that the
way they bring up their children?"
"I'm sorry. I got mixed up. I wanted to say good things come in small
packages."
"Can you really read small print?" Kocherygin inquired. There was
undisguised respect in his voice.
"Yes. And I can read big print from across the street, and all the
street signs, and I know a lot of them by heart."
"The street signs, you say?" The former sign-painter warmed to him
completely.
"You really mean it? By heart? All right, tell me what's on the signs
on the corner of Khorolsky and Breshka streets."
Oska was silent for a moment. Then he rattled off the following:
"Ararat fruit shop fruits wines P. Batrayev stovemaker chimneys swept no
loitering."
"I did the signs," the temporary principal said modestly.
"You have a very good handwriting." Oska was a very polite boy.
"What's the new sign on the Stock Exchange?"
"The 'Stock Exchange' part is crossed out and it doesn't count. It says
'Freedom House' now."
"Right. Run along, sonny. You've been enrolled."
"A new boy, a new boy!" the children chanted when Oska entered the
class
"Better than an old boy!" Oska replied hurriedly, recalling my
instructions.
The children were astounded.
He was spared a beating.
Richard Sinyagin, a wrestler known as the Steel Mask and a former
stevedore was our gym teacher. At the time an International wrestling match
was being held in the Saratov Circus. Richard Sinyagin went to Saratov to
participate in the match. The referee, one Benedetto, presented him to the
audience as "The Mystery wrestler. The Steel Mask". Soon after playbills
informed the public that there would be "a decisive bout to the end, with no
time limit, no break between rounds". The contestants were the Steel Mask
and the Mask of Death. Naturally, all this was pure hocus-pocus. The
wrestlers puffed and grunted conscientiously K the forty minutes they had
previously agreed upon, after which the Steel Mask threw himself expertly to
the mut. When the audience's palms had begun to stir from clapping and the
noise finally died down, the referee wrung his hands gingerly and announced:
"Alas! The Mask of Death has won in forty-five minutes in fair combat.
Richard Sinyagin, Champion of the World and of Pokrovsk, is the Steel Mask."
In school the next day Sinyagin tried his best to convince us that he
had be< thrown unfairly. The boys did not hide their disapproval. Then, in
order to pro his strength, Sinyagin let about eight boys climb all over him
like monkeys on tree. Then he lifted a desk, with Madame Hippo and two of
her friends seated on the attached bench. He raised the desk and its
inhabitants and set it on another desk. "There," he said.
At this, the lesson ended.
We boys always respected strong men. Now we worshipped them. The
staring game was completely forgotten, and wrestling became king. It
squashed us in "decisive, no time limit" bouts, contorted us and threw us in
standing backheels and armlocks, battering us from wall to wall in the
classrooms and down the long corridors, bruising our backs on the tile
floors, with Hefty Martynenko the one exception, for his back never touched
the floor. Hefty was the champion of champions, the unchallenged champion of
the school and the vicinity.
Naturally, all this had a definite influence on the affairs of state in
Schwambrania. We had always imagined the world to be divided in two. At
first, there were "desirable and undesirable acquaintances". Then there were
seafarers and landlubbers, the good and the bad. After my fateful
conversation with Stepan Atlantis, I came to realize that "good" and "bad"
were no longer sufficient for judging things. We now discovered a new
division among people, and this was to be yet another of our errors. The
world and the Schwambranians were now divided into strong men and weaklings.
From that day on the lives of the Schwambranians were spent in endless
championship matches and contests. One Pafnuti Synecdoche became Champion of
Schwambrania, his might eclipsing even that of Jack, the Sailor's Companion,
the man who threw Chatelains Urodenal.
Oska became obsessed with wrestling. He was the smallest child in his
class. Any boy could throw him, even with one arm tied behind his back, as
the saying goes. However, once he got home he made up for his wounded pride
by wrestling the chairs and pillows. He had table-tournaments between his
two hands, with each one squeezing and wringing the other until the right
hand finally threw the left, knocking it silly. Oska's most constant and
serious opponent was the sofa bolster. Quite often Oska would be found on
the floor of the nursery with his arms flung out and the bolster on top of
him, supposedly having thrown him.
"That's against the rules!" Oska would shout. "He tripped me and then
got me in a nelson!"
The bolster won the return match as well, but was punished by being
taken out in the yard and beaten with a rug beater.
Then Oska arranged a bout between Kolya Anfisov of the primary school
and Grisha Fyodorov, the second strongest boy in my class. The bout was held
in our yard on a Sunday, with all the preparations having been made the
previous day. The mat was drawn on the ground with a piece of chalk, and the
inside of the circle was swept and sprinkled with sand. When the fans
crowded round the next day, Oska took out a toy whistle and I said:
"We will now see, I mean witness, a wrestling match between two strong
men.
Presenting Anfisov (Primary School) and Fyodorov (Secondary School).
This is going to be a bout without breaks, an honest fight, with no time
limit or monkey-business, to the bitter end. Let's have a fanfare. Maestro!
Whistle again, Oska! We all know a foul when we see one. Jury, I mean
judges, take your seats by the barrel."
Oska, Hefty and Filipich, the janitor, went over to the bench by the
barrel. I called the first round.
The champions shook hands and danced away from each other. Anfisov was
tall and bony. Fyodorov was small and stocky, and resembled a Shetland pony.
They stalked each other for several seconds, then suddenly Anfisov grabbed
Fyodorov, pinning his arms to his body.
The audience froze. Even the wind in the yard died down.
"Leggo o'his arms!" Filipich yelled.
"Let go!" the older boys shouted.
"That's fair!" the younger boys cried.
I whistled. Oska tooted. The jury squabbled, and during all this
commotion Anfisov threw Fyodorov.
"Hooray! It's all fair and square!" the younger boys shouted.
"You can get a hand through! It doesn't count!" the big boys yelled,
but no matter how I tried, I couldn't squeeze my hand under Fyodorov's
shoulder-blades, for they were pressed hard to the ground. Shame burned us
as a brand. Fyodorov rose sheepishly and shook the dust off his clothes.
"Why don't you lie down again? Take a rest," Hefty jeered.
The future stretched ahead like a graveyard.
The runts were jubilant. Hefty finally lunged at them, slamming their
champion down first. He then proceeded to slaughter the innocents, driving
the small boys into a far corner of the yard and then stacking them like
firewood.
That was when Stepan Atlantis entered the yard. "Pardon me as a matter
of procedure, but what's the fight on the agenda today?"
I told him what had happened. Hefty shifted the pile of small boys into
a floundering pyramid and came over to us.
"A bunch of big louts like you playing at wrestling. Fooling around in
decisive times like these!"
"You're all wrong, Stepan. This does wonders for you. Here, feel my
muscle. See what 1 mean? If a fellow's strong, he don't give a damn for
anyone. You know why you and Lelya stick to the Juniors? Because you're both
yellow. You think if you can't fend for yourselves, your gang'll come
running. Ha! Well, I can do without your gang. I can stick up for myself.
See my fist?"
"All brawn and no brain," Stepan said. "What do you think you can do
all by yourself? Where'11 it get you? If our gang, as you say, or, actually,
society goes after you, you'll never know what hit you. That's how strong we
are!"
"Sure, if it's everybody against one. But that's not fair."
"Was it fair when everybody had to work for one boss? How many hired
hands did your fat old man drive like slaves?"
"What's the matter? Did you forget your family has a farm, too?"
"Don't you compare us. Our plot was the size of a hankie. You had an
orchard and a garden, and land stretching off in all directions."
"But those damn comrades of yours set up a commune there and chased us
out."
"1 know all about it. You tried to bury your grain in the cellar when
people were starving, but I made my old man give up whatever we could spare.
And don't think my mother wasn't after me! I had to stay over at Kostya
Beetle's place. And then he had to hide out at my place. We're all for one
and one for all. And we're against people like you."
"You mean you'd go against your own friends?" Hefty said very softly.
"Former friends." Stepan's voice was barely audible.
Silence slipped across the yard like a shadow. Then Hefty sighed loudly
and headed towards the gate. He was slumped over. His shoulder blades, which
had never known defeat, looked as if they had at last touched the mat.
The next day my class decided to spend the algebra lesson analysing the
scrap between Hefty and Atlantis. Hefty sullenly refused to participate. We
were expecting Alexander Karlovich, our math teacher, but instead a strange
little old man in a clean and well-pressed tunic entered the classroom. He
was puny, nearsighted and bald, with a brush of mousy hair growing up around
his bald pate, so that it resembled a lagoon in an atoll.
"Who's the bald dome?" Hefty inquired.
The class roared.
"Eh-mew-eh.... This?" the old man said, poking a finger at his lowered
pate "Why?"
"Un ... nothing special," Hefty replied. He had not expected such a
reply.
"Perhaps baldness has now been ... eh-mew-eh ... outlawed?" the old man
persisted.
Everyone gazed at him respectfully.
"Not at all. Any way you like." Hefty did not know how to get out of
the mess.
"That's very kind of you. Let's get acquainted.... Eh-mew-eh.... I'm
your new history teacher. My name is Semyon Ignatyevich Kirikov. Eh ...
mew-eh.... Good morning, troglodytes!"
This was a word we had never heard before and so we were at a loss, not
knowing whether he had meant it as praise or whether it was an insult.
Stepan Atlantis rose.
"I've a question to ask. What rock did you crawl out from under? That's
in the first place. And what did you call us? That's in the second."
The troglodytes stamped their feet and rattled their desk tops.
"Sit down, you creature. Troglodytes were ... eh ... mew-eh ... were
cavemen, cave dwellers, primitive people. Our ... eh-mew-eh ...
great-great-great-progenitors, our forefathers, while you ... eh-mew-eh ...
you are young troglodytes."
"Does that mean I'm a troglodytess?" Madame Hippo demanded.
"Not at all! You are positively a mammoths or a brontosauruses."
"He's all right!" we whispered excitedly.
The old man turned out to be a cunning conqueror. By the time the first
lesson was over he had captivated us completely. Stepan, who was never
lavish with praise, conceded that "the old man's all right". We had no
trouble giving our new teacher a nickname. We named him E-muet, the French
mute "e", and pronounced it in French, eh-mew-eh. Kirikov did not enunciate
his words. He seemed to chew on them, mumbling in between and peppering each
phrase with his constant eh-mew-ehs. E-muet did not take offence. He was
cheerful and kindly. The girls wrote notes to him.
E-muet called each of us a creature.
"Creature Aleferenko! Rise!"
And Aleferenko would rise.
"Now then, creature. Let's go back ... eh-mew-eh ... you cave dweller,
to what we spoke of at our last lesson."
"We spoke of hand picks and the Stone Age. It was all awfully boring
and prehistoric. No wars. No nothing."
"Be seated, creature. Today's lesson will be duller still."
And he would drone on dishing out the next portion of prehistoric
information. Having rattled it off, he would immediately cheer up, post a
sentry at the door and spend the other half of the lesson reading aloud to
us from a 1912 copy of Satirikon, a humorous magazine, or else he would tell
us hunting yarns. An attentive silence was one of the honours bestown upon
Kirikov. His triumphant bald pate gradually acquired an aura of glory. He
became a living legend. Despite his near-sightedness, E-muet had discovered
that the class was divided into various parties, and so he, too, divided us
into troglodytes (the old school boys) and anthropoids (the Juniors). This
completely won over the old school boys.
However, it somehow seemed to me that every now and then something so
vague you couldn't put your finger on it, but something evil and familiar
poked its ugly head out of this kindly old man. It would rise up at the end
of some of his jokes, apparent but as unpronounceable as e-muet, the mute
"e" in French.
At his fourth lesson E-muet addressed a long speech to us. He even
mumbled and hemmed and hawed less than usual that day. However, there was a
strong smell of liquor on his breath.
"Troglodytes and anthropoids! I want to light the sacred fire of truth
in your caves. I will tell you why they make me tell you about troglodytes,
but forbid me to tell you about emperors. Listen, my primitive brothers,
mammoths and brontosauruses ... eh-mew-eh.... History has ended...."
"No, it hasn't! The bell for recess didn't ring yet!" someone shouted.
"Which protozoan amoeba said that? I'm not speaking of our history
lesson. I'm speaking ... eh-mew-eh ... of the history of mankind ... of its
magnificent, martial history, so full of pomp and circumstance. History has
come full circle. The Bolsheviks have turned Russia back ... eh-mew-eh ...
to the primitive state, to the primordial darkness. There is chaos
everywhere, and ruin.... There is no kerosene.... We shall lose our fire....
We shall be naked ... for there is no cloth.... A return to bestial
primitiveness awaits us, my dear troglodytes.... The iron tracks for our
trains will become evergrown! Eh-mew-eh ... the last match will go out, and
the primordial night will be upon us."
"How can it, when there'll be electricity everywhere?" Stepan cried.
"Shut up! He's right!" Hefty said. "The commune wrecked everything on
our farm."
"Who cares about primitive times? Tell us about when there were
knights!" someone shouted.
Everyone began stamping. The troglodytes jumped over their desks.
"So let's get down on all fours, my dear troglodytes," E-muet said
cheerfully, "and let's raise a hoary cry in praise of the eternal night into
which we shall descend. Raghhhh! Ow-ww!"
"Ow-ww!" everyone hawled gleefully.
Some, throwing themselves into the act, scrambled down the aisles on
all fours, making the rest of the class double over. Then someone began to
sing:
Ah, when the night's dark,
Oh, I'm so scared then,
Troglodytess,
My own Marusya!
Oh, Marusya,
Troglodytess!
Stop your chatter,
See me home first.
At the lectern Kirikov was chanting like a witch doctor. Once again
something very familiar flitted across his contorted face, but I couldn't
seem to grasp that elusive "something". I, too, was caught up in macabre
merriment of my classmates. I felt that I, too, wanted to crawl and howl a
bit. The lack of a tail was disappointing, but did not really spoil the
general impression. I could practically feel the soil of Schwambrania
shuddering under the heavy tread of the advancing mammoths.
"Hey, fellows, stop it!" Kostya Beetle shouted, coming to his senses.
"Tell them he's pulling the wool over their eyes, Stepan. Hey, Stepan!"
But Stepan had disappeared. I hated to think that he had run off. The
mammoths raised their trunks like question marks and stopped at the
Schwambranian border, not knowing what to do.
Forsunov, President of the Student Council, and then Stepan came
running in. The troglodytes were instantly swept forward into the 20th
century. The mammoths galloped off the Big Tooth Continent. Kirikov's bald
pate lost its shine.
"You can get into a lot of trouble for filling their heads with such
nonsense," Forsunov said softly.
"You lousy bourgeois. You saboteur!" Stepan added, sticking his head
over Forsunov's shoulder.
"Eh-mew-eh, I was simply presenting the basic ideas of, eh-mew-eh,
anarchism Naked man on the naked earth, and no personal property."
"Toadstool!" I shouted joyously, taking myself by surprise.
"Toadstool," I repeated with conviction, for I had recreated the nettle-man
in my mind's eye, our summer of Kvasnikovka, the many clocks and watches,
Death-Cap-Poison-Emi and the personal property of the bald man with the
sack. And now E-muet, a mut and silent "e", had become an open "e".
Kirikov was exposed and relieved of his teaching post. The anthropoids
welcomed his removal, but the troglodytes, led by Hefty, resented it. They
began plotting their revenge, choosing the following day as the date for the
massacre of the Juniors and calling it a "universal ruckus".
"We're going to have a St. Bartholomew's Night tomorrow morning," I
whispered to Oska that night.
Oska, who was always one to confuse -words when he was wide awake, now
mumbled sleepily, "Are they going to kill the Hottentots?"
"The Huguenots, not the Hottentots, and, anyway, not the Huguenots at
all, but the Juniors, and they're not going to kill them dead, they'll just
beat them up."
"Did tryglodytors fight in the arena in Ancient Rome, too?" he suddenly
asked.
"No, gladiators. Troglodytes are...."
There were still a few lost mammoths roaming about in Schwambrania. I
told Oska they were hiding out among the huge prehistoric ferns.
"Fammoths graze in the merns," he mumbled sleepily.
The universal ruckus was invented ages ago. It was the greatest and
most terrible kind of schoolboy revolt. A universal ruckus was only resorted
to in extreme cases, when all other means of resisting the authorities
failed. I had never yet witnessed such an event, though school legends still
recalled the last one. It had taken place in 1912, after the three
ringleaders of an attack on the principal's doorman had been expelled. The
doorman had informed on the boys and had been pelted with rotten eggs.
And so, the troglodytes decided to declare a Great General Universal
Ruckus, with Hefty in command. He looked somewhat preoccupied when he came
to school the next morning, but he was calm. There was an ugly semblance of
calm in the air. No one played "Chopsticks". No one wrestled. No one played
the staring game. The corridor, always a churning stream, emptied the moment
the bell rang. The stunned teachers walked along this strangely deserted
river bed. They were greeted by a dead silence when they entered their
respective classrooms.
Our first lesson was Russian grammar. The teacher, a curly-haired,
blond-bearded man named Melkovsky, peeped in the door cautiously. The moment
he appeared the troglodytes, displaying their former training, jumped to
their feet like so many jack-in-the-boxes and stood at attention by their
desks. The anthropoids and Stepan were a few moments behind the others. The
general upward sweep lifted me, too. We stood there respectfully at
attention.
"Now, now! Be seated everyone," Melkovsky said and waved his hand, for
he had become unaccustomed to such reverence.
The pupils were settling back slowly. Melkovsky tested the lectern with
the tip of his shoe. It did not explode. Then he mounted it cautiously.
"The morning prayer, Monitor!" Hefty snapped.
"Are you crazy?" Stepan said.
An oppressive silence descended upon us.
"0, Gracious Saviour, bless us this day and..." Volodya Labanda, the
monitor that day, intoned.
Some of the boys were crossing themselves from force of habit. "Perhaps
I'd better leave," Melkovsky mumbled. He was thoroughly confused.
Just then the monitor popped up beside him, carrying the class journal,
and the puzzled teacher heard the monitor's patter, as in the "good old"
Boys School days:
"Absent today are Stepan Gavrya, Konstantin Rudenko, Nikolai
Makukhin..." and he went on to read the list of all the Juniors.
"Wait! Stop!" supposedly absent boys shouted and jumped to their feet.
"You're lying! We're here!"
"You'll soon be absent," Hefty said. There was a smirk on his face.
"The Ruckus is on, troglodytes!" He stuck two fingers in his mouth and
whistled so shrilly it hurt our ears.
The "B" class in the adjoining room whistled back. Then eight other
whistles were carried down the corridor, and a rumble echoed through the
school. Classes were disrupted. The Juniors were dragged out by the feet,
thrown out the doors and windows. Textbooks fluttered down, flapping their
pages like huge butterflies. The girls took care of the shrieking and
screaming part of it. Ink was shed in our classroom. A blackboard was being
carried down the hall like an icon. "Attention, everybody! Down with the
anthropoid Juniors! Long live S. I. Kirikov! Demand his reinstatement," the
message on the blackboard read.
Five minutes later there was not a single anthropoid left in the
building. Troglodyte patrols were guarding the exits. The desks had all been
turned over.
The Great Universal Ruckus had begun.
The Commissar tethered his horse to the door. Then he pulled up his
boots and stalked down the corridor. It was deserted. Everyone was at an
emergency meeting in a large classroom turned into an auditorium. Hefty sat
at a table on the rostrum, looking well in the role of chairman and victor.
He was flanked by Forsunov and a senior named Rothmeller, the son of a
wealthy sausage merchant. Rothmeller had just finished speaking. Forsunov
was gazing at the table.
A troglodyte patrol was guarding the entrance. The Juniors, rather the
worse for wear and hardly anthropoids any longer, were laying siege to the
door. The troglodytes moved aside to let the commissar through. Stepan
Atlantis slipped in under cover of his broad back, but the troglodytes
dragged him back into the corridor.
"The next speaker is Commissar Chubarkov," Hefty said.
"And that's that!" the boys shouted in unison.
"What's the ruckus?"
"It's universal!" came a chorus.
"Wait a minute, boys!"
"We're not minute-boys!"
"Comrades!" the Commissar said.
"We're no comrades of yours!"
"Then who are you?" Chubarkov was getting really angry.
"Tro-glo-dytes!" they chanted.
"What? Trouble-tykes? All right. That's enough! I say it's time to stop
the nonsense. And that's that."
"Where were you before?" they jeered.
"Meaning what?" Chubarkov thundered. "It's a stupid question. You
didn't dare open your mouths when Stomolitsky was the principal. And that's
for sure! I can just see him getting into a debate with you! He'd put your
names down in the Black Book in no time, or have you expelled."
"And that's that!" someone yelled from the back rows where the worst of
the die-hard troglodytes clustered. "And that's all there is to it! We want
Kirikov!"
The troglodytes were out of control. However, it was no easy job to
outshout the booming voice of the former Volga stevedore accustomed to
speaking at mass meetings.
"I really am surprised," he was saying slowly and forcefully, and the
noise began to die down. "Can't you understand what's happening? You're
getting a modern education. What's so fascinating about all those tsars?
Here in the Common Work School you'll get to know about your people, about