where they came from, how they got to be what they are, and about their
development. As for Kirikov, who turned out to be a black-marketeer on the
side, all he did was stuff your heads full of nonsense. What sort of
darkness was he talking about when education brings light? Enlightenment.
And don't you forget that under the old regime they kept this light from the
workers and the peasants. They wanted to keep them ignorant and backward.
Can you imagine all the people that are going to get an education now? Take
me, for instance." He suddenly became shy. "As soon as things quiet down,
I'll be going off to Petrograd to study, too. Now why, comrades, do you and
those uh, trouble-tykes, let every no-good, low-down snake-in-the-grass turn
your young eyes away from the truth and keep the other fellows from getting
out of that old primitive darkness and into the light? Why do you think
they're worse than you? You think their daddies aren't as rich as yours?"
CALIGULA'S HORSE
What followed was to become legend. A deafening clatter was heard in
the corridor, followed by Mokeich shouting: "Stop! Where d'you think you're
going?"
The troglodyte guard at the door suddenly parted, and Stepan Atlantis
galloped into the auditorium astride the Commissar's horse. The Juniors
burst in after him, sweeping away whatever remained of the guards.
"Whoa! He got loose! I barely managed to catch him, Comrade Commissar."
Indeed, Stepan was a wily fellow.
The horse whinnied softly.
"Excuse me," the Commissar said. He was apparently addressing his
horse. "I'll be through here in a minute, that's for sure. This is what I
think, boys. You've had your row, and now it's time to settle down. We'll
put it to a vote to make it legal, and that's that!"
Hefty and Rothmeller were whispering uneasily. Stepan, still astride
the Commissar's horse, looked the troglodytes over. The horse shifted its
weight delicately, as if fearful of stepping on someone's toes. Hefty rose.
His former swagger was gone. Once again Stepan had won the day.
"They've ridden roughshod over you," Hefty said.
No one replied. Our math teacher, Alexander Karlovich Bertelyov, went
over to the table on the rostrum. He was serious, as always.
"My friends!" he said and dropped his pince-nez nervously. Then, for
the next few minutes, he slapped his hand around on the table nearsightedly,
as if he were trying to catch a grasshopper. He finally located his
pince-nez and brought the world back into focus again. He continued: "My
friends, I am not interested in politics and am not used to your mass
meetings. I have only asked for the floor from a purely scientific point of
view. It so happened that, due to an oversight on our part, Kirikov, and no
offence meant, tried to teach you something that was pure, unadulterated
hogwash. A lot of obscurantist nonsense that could never stand up to
criticism, and certainly not from a purely scientific point of view. In the
end, the revolution leads to progress. It brings great new layers of the
population into contact with education. And you, my friends, want to stand
in their way. But you have no right to! How could you? Why, it's a crime
from a scientific point of view! Many comrades ... Juniors, as you call them
... are very gifted in mathematics. Take Rudenko, for instance. He's a very
fast learner. But you, my friends, have been poisoned by the die-hard spirit
of the old school and are used to thinking that attending classes is a
shameful way of spending your time. For shame! In conclusion, I would like
to tell you a historical anecdote. The Roman emperor Caligula once brought
his horse into the senate and ordered the senators to bow to it. I would
never have bowed to that arrogant creature, my friends. However, if today
the presence of Comrade Chubarkov's horse at this meeting will further the
establishment of friendly relations and order in the school, then today, on
behalf of science, I bow my head to our four-legged guest."
At this Alexander Karlovich bowed to the horse.
The horse backed away nervously at the sound of the deafening applause
that followed. The matter was then taken to a vote, which brought defeat to
Hefty and his troglodytes. Everyone pledged to start studying in earnest,
beginning the very next day. Then Stepan made a short speech from the
saddle.
"E-muet in French is a letter you write but don't ever pronounce. So I
have a suggestion. It'll make things easier for us and do them a good turn
while they're at it. Let's write a letter to the French workers, or to their
children, and tell them to do away with that e-muet."
The proposal to write such a letter to the children of France was
unanimously adopted. As we were about to disperse, a group of Red Army men
suddenly entered the auditorium.
"There! See? He wanted to shut us up by force!" Hefty shouted.
Everyone was startled.
"Quiet, everybody!" one of the men said. "Let's be a little more
disciplined here. Comrades! The close proximity of the front lines has put
the town under martial law. The 4th Army will need this building for its
headquarters. Please see that the building is cleared tomorrow, Comrade
Chubarkov."
No one spoke. Then, in the stillness, the commissar's horse breathed in
loudly and whinnied.
The horses of the 4th Army that were tethered outside whinnied in
reply.
The town became a large army camp. Countless wagon trains lumbered up
and down the streets, tying themselves into knots at the intersections.
Unshaven men in greatcoats untangled the knots. They were in charge of the
town. Orderlies rode their horses up onto the pavements, handing in and
accepting envelopes at the windows of the various offices. The camels in the
wagon trains threw their heads back and bellowed loudly. Their sticky saliva
fell upon Breshka Street. The camel drivers shouted hoarsely: "Tratr! Tratr!
Chok! Chok!" Fountains of spray rose on the river where shells hit the water
and then fell helplessly back again seconds later. Finally, a slow-motion
boom would come crashing down upon the town. Soldiers practised throwing
hand grenades on the river bank.
An elephantine-like armoured car raised its cannon-trunk on the square.
The live camels were followed by hopping iron ostriches, those dock-tailed
gigs with tall stacks, the army field kitchens. It seemed then to Oska and
me that the vehicles on the square were playing our favourite game of animal
lotto called "The Cameroons Races", where each card had a picture of a
running elephant, camel or ostrich. Near the storehouses some men were
moving a pile of barrels with black numbers painted on the bottoms. A fat
man would call out a number, another man would consult some papers and then
stamp them, as if the rubber stamp were a large lotto disc. Every now and
then a rider on a lathered horse would appear.
"What about accommodations?" they'd be asked.
"Everything's full up!"
And the players had to crawl under the trucks to sleep.
A strange sign had been put up on the school building. It read:
"Travtochok". Translated into everyday language, it was supposed to stand
for something like:
"Vehicles of the special column's automotive unit". Actually, though,
no one knew exactly what the mysterious "Travtochok" stood for.
Not more than two or three automobiles were usually parked outside of
"Travtochok", but the former school yard was always jam-packed with camels.
The people of Pokrovsk lost no time in renaming the unpronounceable
"Travtochok" into Tratrchok, which, when translated from camel-language,
meant "whoa" and "giddiyap".
Our school began moving from one place to another. In the beginning, we
were transferred to the former seminary building. A day later we were moved
to a small house with a fire-tower. Naturally, the tower drew us like a
magnet. It seemed to beg us to use it for some prank, if only to spit on the
heads of passers-by or shout "Fire!". However, we did not feel up to pranks.
There was a restlessness in the crowded classrooms, and boys talked in
whispers in the back rows. The day after the general ruckus Volodya Labanda
stopped Alexander Karlovich in the street.
Volodya stared at the ground and scuffed the dirt with the tip of his
shoe like a horse as he said: "You talked about Kostya Rudenko being so
gifted. I used to do math problems pretty good, too, didn't I? You said I
was good in math, too."
"Of course I remember. You definitely have a good head for mathematics,
but you're lazy."
"No, I'm not. We just felt like horsing around since freedom was
declared. I don't think it was fair of you to talk about the Juniors like
that and not say anything good about anybody else. They'll think they're
better than everybody now."
"Aha! So my arrow struck home!" Alexander Karlovich exclaimed. He
sounded quite pleased. "Well, why don't you try to catch up with them? I
must warn you, though, that it won't be easy. They're doing quadratic
equations now."
"We'll manage. You'll see!"
That very same day we agreed that the Juniors had become stuck-up and
that we could not tolerate such a state of affairs any longer. Which meant
we would have to catch up with them. The girls promised to keep up with us.
We retrieved our dusty schoolbooks and amazed our parents by poring over
them. We discovered that we had dropped very far behind and had to stay
after school and study till late at night at home in order to catch up.
Alexander Karlovich, who had lost weight on a teacher's skimpy food rations,
would selflessly stay on after classes. We stole bread for him from the
storeroom and placed it on the lectern. He would proudly refuse it, but
then, being carried away by a problem, would begin pinching off pieces
unthinkingly, until he had accidentally eaten it all.
"That's some freedom you've got! You used to be swell fellows, but now
you're all bookworms. Why don't you go ahead and ask them to give you marks?
Ah!" Hefty would say and spit in disgust.
He was especially hard on Stepan, who said he couldn't care less and
went on studying furiously, for he told us that revolutionaries had to climb
right onto the barricades of learning, too.
We felt we had covered so much ground in algebra in two and a half
weeks that we asked Alexander Karlovich to test one of us. He called on
Labanda. The Juniors were amazed. Never before had the pupils been so
intent. The only sound in the classroom was that of the chalk hitting
against the blackboard as it produced heavy white figures. Labanda was doing
a problem that involved a reservoir and two pipes. Everything was proceeding
nicely. Water kept pouring in through one pipe and out through the other. It
soon became clear that if both pipes were open the reservoir would fill in
six hours. But then suddenly something happened and it began draining as we
watched. Labanda had hit a shoal. He chewed on his nail.
"Think," Alexander Karlovich said.
"I'm thinking," Labanda said unhappily. "If we subtract two pipes from
four pails...."
Go back to the beginning and do all your figuring out loud."
We had spotted the mistake. Labanda had written a minus sign instead of
a plus sign at the very start. Now the minus had surfaced and stoppered up
one of the pipes. We were dying to prompt him. However, we did not want to
expose his lack of knowledge, not with the Juniors looking on. Just then we
heard someone whispering. Someone was prompting. It was Kostya
Rudenko-Beetle. And then the rest of the class, which had once been known
for its imaginative prompting and shameless cribbing, the class that had
always considered it a terrible crime to refuse to offer illegal help, this
very same class now began stamping loudly to drown out the whispering voice.
The boys shouted:
"Quit it, Rudenko! Let him do it himself!"
This bucked Labanda up. He concentrated, found the error and solved the
problem. Then, in order to inform Pokrovsk of this, we raised a flag on the
fire-tower. We had painted the following message on it: "X= 18 pails".
THE "B" GRADE'S PROGRESS
Our joy did not last long.
Two days later Labanda rushed into the room and said that the parallel
"B" grade, which we had more or less forgotten about, since it was now
located in another building, was up to equations of the highest order with
several unknown quantities. It didn't seem possible.
"You're lying!" someone shouted.
"Tell us another!" Stepan said.
"I'll drop dead if I am!" Labanda even crossed himself.
We were crushed.
At this point Kostya Beetle said he knew how to solve them and would
show the "B's" how to do it. Stepan was dead set against it. He said it
didn't count if only one person could do them, it would just be singling out
the best pupil, like before, but that what counted was if everybody could do
them. Once again we all rushed to our textbooks. We would come back to
school in the evenings and Kostya would help us. Hefty never came to these
after-school sessions. He would say that a hungry stomach was not fit for
learning, that this was no time for studying and that, anyway, he could
solve any problem we could and better. When all the unknown quantities were
brought out into the open, we challenged the "B's" to an algebra match. They
accepted the challenge. We decided it would be a joint written test in
algebra, with teams made up of the best mathematicians in each grade. Stepan
Gavrya, Volodya Labanda, Kostya Beetle, Zoya 'Beanpole, and I were on the
"A" team. Hefty joined us the day before the test. We were very reluctant
about having him on the team, but he swore he wouldn't let us down.
The evening before the test our team met at school for a last practice
session. Alexander Karlovich, looking very weary, made us review the whole
book. Then he gave us several tricky problems which we finally solved. He
was very pleased from a "purely scientific point of view", .but he gasped
when he looked at the clock, for it was midnight, and since we were under
martial law, there was an eleven o'clock curfew.
"Well, comrades, tnat means we spend the night in the kennel. That's
for sure!"
"Come on. If they stop us we'll say we're going to the drugstore for
medicine," Labanda said.
Stepan and I walked along together. A searchlight swept the low, heavy
sky. Someone was singing: "Ah, when the night's dark". A military patrol
stopped us at the corner.
"We're going to the drugstore. He's the doctor's son. We've got to get
there," Stepan said.
"You don't say? And what are you going for? Castor oil?" the Red Army
man inquired.
"How'd you guess? That's just what we need. You see...."
"Wait a bit and you'll get a big dose of it. Lapanin!" the soldier
called. "Take these two fellows in."
We were escorted to headquarters, where we met some other midnight
seekers of castor oil. A short while later Alexander Karlovich was brought
in. He was indignant from every possible point of view.
"Good evening, Alexander Karlovich!" Stepan said cheerfully.
"I'd say it was good night," the teacher muttered. "Nice to see you all
here."
Next the soldiers brought in a glum-looking black-marketeer. He was
carrying a big sack. "Who came in last?" he said matter-of-factly.
"I did. Why?" Alexander Karlovich replied.
"I'll be next after you tomorrow morning and don't forget!" The man
then stretched out on the floor. He was snoring a moment later.
Heavy clouds of cheap tobacco smoke curled up under the electric bulb.
Our guard was examining one of his boots intently, tapping the welt with his
rifle butt. This night before the test was passing sleeplessly, stupidly.
Two hours later Chubarkov phoned. We were finally released. Alexander
Karlovich stopped at the threshold, having recalled something, and turned
back. He had a hard time waking the man on the floor. "Pardon me. I'm
leaving now. So you'll have to be next after someone else."
We bumped into another military patrol on Breshka Street. They were
taking the "B" team to headquarters. They, too, had been brushing up before
the test.
"I'll bet you were going for castor oil," Stepan said.
"No. For iodine."
"All contestants will now take their seats," Forsunov, the chief
referee, said solemnly.
The sleepy-eyed mathematicians sat down. To make sure there would be no
cribbing each contestant shared a desk with a member of the opposite team.
Alexander Karlovich and the "B's" math teacher were both nervous. They
resembled managers whose boxers were in the ring for their first bout.
Alexander Karlovich went over to each of our boys and whispered: "Think
first. And don't rush. Be sure you don't mix up your signs. If there are any
problems on proportions they'll be stuck because that's their weak point. I
know it for a fact. But the main thing is to think."
Forsunov asked the teachers to take their places. Alexander Karlovich
and his colleague sat at the large table. Mokeich was already seated there
beside an empty chair left for the commissar.
Beanpole Zoya, our class champion, looked more stern than usual. The
girls who were not taking part in the match kept glancing at us anxiously.
They filled the inkwells to the top, tried out the pens, sharpened the
pencils and wished everyone good luck. Then they went out into the corridor
where the audience crowded in a doorway, promising to be very quiet.
Mokeich took out his large conductor's pocket watch. Forsunov placed
the watch on the table to mark the time each contestant spent on the
problem. If both teams solved it, the one whose separate members solved it
sooner would be the winner and get the prize, which was a double portion of
sugar. Besides, the pupil who solved it first would become the school's best
mathematician.
"I'm counting on everybody's honesty," Forsunov said. "I was the best
cribber under the old principal, and that's why I'm warning you: as long as
I'm here and watching, nobody'll ever crib anything and get away with it.
Understand?"
"Huh! What d'you think we're going to do? Cheat on our own side?"
We were cut to the quick. Indeed! This wasn't tsarist times.
"On your mark! Get ready!" Forsunov said.
"Two travellers going in the same direction set out from two different
cities, with one traveller following the other. After some days, the number
of which equals the sum of miles covered in a day, the second traveller
caught up with the first one. The second traveller had by then covered 525
miles. The distance between the two cities was 175 miles. How many miles a
day did each one cover?"
The starting time had been marked. The travellers were on the road, and
everyone was engrossed in the problem. A stillness settled on the backs of
our heads, pressing them closer to the desks. The test was under way.
However, we did not experience the familiar sense of fear and
uncertainty which had confused both thoughts and numbers during the old
school exams, when one's only desire was to grasp at the minutes that were
slipping away so feverishly, so hopelessly, and hold them back at all costs.
Ahead of us then lay the finish line and the pillory in the shape of an "F".
But now a written test was in process and we were not scared! Alexander
Karlovich winked at us encouragingly. We recalled what he had said. Indeed!
We all thought hard. Everything seemed simple enough. There were two
travellers, A and B. A was gradually catching up with B. And we had to catch
up with the "B's", too.
Chubarkov entered the classroom. His heavy tread and jingling spurs
made Alexander Karlovich hiss angrily and stare pointedly first at his boots
and then at us. The Commissar unbuckled his spurs and tiptoed to his seat.
"Who's getting the upper hand?" he whispered to Forsunov.
"They've just started."
The Commissar gazed at us fondly. Fifteen minutes passed in complete
silence. I was coming along nicely, with no accidents on the road. Beanpole
had filled two pages. Stepan's notepaper was still blank. Kostya Beetle had
half-risen from his seat to re-check what he had written. He had solved the
problem. He was the first!
Suddenly Hefty raced down the aisle. He loomed over the judges' table
and held his paper on high. He was triumphant. Forsunov accepted it
doubtfully. Hefty had the answer right.
"Well?" the Commissar asked.
"That's that!" Hefty replied. The boys waiting outside in the corridor
applauded wildly.
Once again Hefty had come out on top.
After the bell had rung the judges checked our papers and announced the
winners. Eight members of the "A" team had solved the problem, but only
seven ot the "B" team had. Our side had won. We had not only caught up with
the "B's", we had overtaken them. Besides, our classmate Hefty was now the
school's math champion. Though he was very heavy, the boys threw him up into
the air as a sign of homage to a victor. In the process something fell out
of his pocket.
Beanpole bent down to pick it up and shouted, "Look!"
"Damn fool," Hefty muttered. He tried to snatch whatever it was from
her. "Give it back! I was only doing it for your sake anyway. If that's the
way you want it, to hell with you! Go on and lose. See if I care."
Beanpole was holding a small booklet. The title page read: "Key to all
problems in Algebra II by Shaposhnikov and Valtsev."
"Traitor!" Labanda shouted and rammed his fist into Hefty's face.
The return blow sent Labanda flying.
It took Chubarkov and Mokeich to hold Hefty back. Forsunov then said
that the "A's" had not overtaken the "B's", but had caught up with them. We
shared both glory and sugar.
Our school had become a true nomad, forever moving from one building to
another.
We were forever dragging desks, bookcases, globes and blackboards
through the streets of town. The traffic coming our way was made up largely
of stretchers and hearses. The terrible camels of Tratrchok, the mobile unit
of the 4th Army, pulled the hearses. The streets smelled of carbolic acid,
for an epidemic of typhus had swept the region.
Commissar Chubarkov was on the go day and night. His unshaven cheeks
had become so hollow it seemed he must certainly bite them when he spoke. He
was in charge of moving the hospitals and doubling up the various offices.
He also helped us drag our school property from place to place. Chubarkov
was here, there and everywhere.
"And that's that!" his voice would boom on Atkarskaya Street, on
Kobzarevsky Street and on Breshka Street. "Hang on a while! It won't be long
now! And then, boys, the trees and the mountains will dance. Like the saying
goes: It's not much fun to see the ram butting Sam, but it'll soon be the
other way around, and Sam'll be butting the ram. That's a fact!"
Late one afternoon he came to another new school address. He was
hoarse, his eyes were sunken and red-rimmed, and yellow specks of crude
tobacco stuck to his lips. He smelled strongly of carbolic acid.
"Comrades! I've come to ask you to donate some of your time." He spoke
with difficulty. "They sounded me out about it at Headquarters, and I said
that my boys would surely do it, 'cause even algebra was like snapping their
fingers to them. I told them you knew how to figure out all the unknown
quantities, so's make them known. So, boys, who wants to help the
revolution?"
"I do!" we shouted.
"That depends on what it is," Hefty said and looked at his watch.
Chubarkov then said that we would have to put up big posters in the
barracks and on Breshka Street, warning everyone about typhus, and that it
was a rush job. The new shipment of posters had not arrived from Saratov,
and all the ones on hand at HQ had been put up. That meant we would have to
make the posters ourselves. There would have to be a big figure of a louse
and a caption written in large block letters.
He had brought along a roll of grey wrapping paper and water colours.
It was deathly cold in the classroom, for the school was not heated,
and it was five o'clock, time for us to have gone home long ago.
"I'd have done it myself, but I'm no good at drawing, that's for sure.
And you can't even draw .a louse if you've no talent for it. Zoya, here, and
Stepan and Lelya have. I saw them draw a picture of me on the blackboard
once. Oh, yes, I did. And it was a real good likeness, too. No mistake about
who it was."
"Let's do some drawing from life," Stepan suggested craftily. "If any
of you don't remember what they look like, Hefty here will lend us a few.
His are nice and fat."
"That'll do, Gavrya!" Alexander Karlovich snapped. "I suggest you start
working instead of wasting time."
"This is a special emergency drawing lesson, fellows!" Stepan shouted.
"It's late."
"It's too cold in here."
"It's time to go home." This voice came from Hefty's corner. "It'll be
like it used to be, being left after school with no dinner."
"You don't say?" I jumped onto my desk. "Listen, fellows! Who wants to
stay after school today as Red volunteer dinner-missers, to draw the fight
typhus posters? If anybody thinks he's back in the Boys School, and left
after school, he can get out! Well? What do you say?"
It was awfully cold. And we were awfully hungry. It was going on six
o'clock. Hefty scooped up his books and left. He was followed by some of the
others, who tried not to meet our eyes as they filed out. There were not
many of them. The best boys and girls stayed on, and Labanda, Kostya Beetle
and Beanpole Zoya were among them.
We lit the oil wick lamps. The Commissar got a fire going in the
bow-legged iron stove and took out the paints. We spread the paper out on
the floor and set to work on the project. There were no paint brushes, so we
made do with bits of paper rolled up tight and painted the fine parts with
our fingers. Most of the letters were shaky. Thus, "typhus" looked as if its
knees were buckling. The insects were much more impressive, although Stepan
and Kostya Beetle had an argument as to the exact number of legs and feelers
needed.
"Ha! Your name's Beetle, but you don't even know how many legs it has!"
Stepan said.
We put it to a vote and decided not to be stingy about the legs. Soon
we had fuzzy centipedes slithering all over our posters. We crawled about on
the cold floor. The commissar, who was dead tired after a long day, helped
us in every possible way: he laid out the paints, cut the paper and thought
up slogans for the posters. He had a terrible headache. We could hear him
moaning softly every now and then.
"Why don't you go home, Comrade Chubarkov?" we said. "Look how tired
you are. We can manage without you."
But he would not, no matter how we coaxed him. He even managed to keep
up our spirits by telling us what a wonderful job we were doing.
Stepan and I had gone off into a corner to compose a caption in verse.
We had a hard time with the unruly words, but then all of a sudden the
pieces seemed to fall into place and the caption was ready. We thought it
was excellent and felt that the Commissar would like it, too. We carried it
over to him proudly. It read:
When all is neat and clean,
No louse is ever seen.
Lice lay you flat.
And that's that!
The Commissar stared at it blindly. He mumbled something and swayed
strangely at the desk.
"Why can't they meet?" he whispered. "They should. That's for sure."
"Who?"
"Them. A and B. The travel... lers."
Alexander Karlovich bent over him anxiously. The Commissar was burning
up with the dread fever called typhus.
Chubarkov was dying. We could speak of nothing else in class.
When I came home Oska was waiting for me in the hall. "They've sent the
Commissar away to camp for three days so he'll get well quick. I heard Papa
calling headquarters. And he said camp for three days."
"What are you talking about? You've got everything mixed up again. And
you know, it's not funny any more."
"Honest! I heard him."
Papa returned from the hospital just then. His eyes were so serious
that Oska, who would usually begin to climb all over him, hung back. Papa
took off his coat. The hall was immediately filled with the smells of the
hospital.
Then Papa went off to wash up, with us trailing behind. He scrubbed his
large doctor's hands thoroughly with soap as he always did and brushed his
short nails with a nail brush. Then he gargled his throat, throwing back his
head so that the water seemed to be boiling in his throat.
We stood there watching the procedure that was so familiar to us both.
Neither of us said a word. Finally, I spoke.
"Why did Oska say you sent the commissar away to camp, Papa?"
"Which camp? Don't talk nonsense."
"But that's what you said. I heard you," Oska insisted. "You said:
'Camp for three days'."
Papa chuckled ruefully. "Silly! He's getting camphor injections.
Understand? Every six hours. Because his heart is so weak," Papa explained,
turning to speak to me as he wiped his hands. "We can't get his temperature
down, and he's terribly undernourished. The man had been killing himself at
his job. And goodness knows what he's been eating. That's what we're up
against."
"It's very bad, isn't it?"
"It's worse than bad." Papa spoke brusquely and tossed the towel over
the headboard. "Our one hope is his natural strength. We'll do our best."
"Will he be sick long?"
"It's typhus. Who knows? We're expecting the crisis soon."
The moment I entered the classroom on the following day I was
surrounded by my friends and some of the older pupils. They had all been
waiting for me.
"When's the crisis? What did your old man say?"
But the crisis had not begun, and the Commissar's fever kept rising
every day, while his strength ebbed with each passing hour.
Would it really be "that's that", as the Commissar himself would have
said in such a case?
Stepan and Kostya would rush off to the hospital after school each day
to ask about Chubarkov's condition. But what could the nurse on duty say? He
had a raging fever. He was unconscious and delirious.
Things looked bad.
I heard the phone ring in my sleep that night. I was completely
awakened by a loud pounding on the front door. Then I heard Stepan's voice
saying:
"Honest to God, Doctor. I was just there. They chased me out. His
heart's nearly stopping. He's having that, what-d'you-call-it? The nurse
said cry-sis."
"Shh! Not so loud, you'll wake everyone up! They've just called me. I'm
on my way there now. I don't want any panic. A crisis means a sharp drop in
temperature. What is it, Lelya?"
I stood there wrapped in my blanket, but my teeth were chattering from
nervousness.
"I'm going with you, Papa."
"Are you crazy?"
"Why can Stepan go?"
"If Stepan thinks he's going anywhere, I'll tell the nurses to throw
him out. I don't believe anyone asked you to take part in a consultation."
Papa dressed quickly and left, banging the front door behind him.
Stepan, feeling completely disheartened, stayed.
The long, cold hours of the night dragged on endlessly, Oska woke up.
When he saw Stepan sitting on my bed he sat up on his own, but at the sight
of two fists, mine and Stepan's, being shaken at him, he darted under the
blankets again. However, I could see his curious eye flash and knew he was
not sleeping, but listening to our every word.
"Do you think he'll pull through?" Stepan whispered.
We spoke of our Commissar at length. He really was a wonderful man. And
most of the fellows and girls at school were on his side now, because he was
fair and always stood up for justice. He took care of our troglodytes good
that time, and there was a reason why Alexander Karlovich respected him so.
"I know he wants to go off to fight. He volunteered, but they wouldn't
accept his application. They told him they needed good men to work for the
revolution on the home front, too," Stepan said.
"If he ever does go off, things'll be awful again."
"That's for sure. He's on our side, but he's a mean one for discipline.
And if he goes off...."
We suddenly fell silent, crushed by one and the same idea: how could we
be discussing whether he'd go off to fight or not when now, at this very
moment, our Commissar was fighting for his life. Perhaps.... The pendulum of
the old wall clock in the dining-room swished back and forth loudly and
menacingly: "Yes-no ... he will-he won't...." It was as if it were telling
his fortune, ticking off one second after another, as one did the petals of
a daisy.
"Yes-no ...he will-he won't."
Just then a key turned in the lock. I could hear Papa taking off his
rubbers. Stepan and I dashed into the hall.
We were afraid to ask, and it was so dark there that we could not see
the expression on my father's face.
"Why aren't you asleep, night owls?" Papa grumbled in the darkness, but
he did not sound angry. On the contrary, he sounded triumphant. "All right,
all right. I know what you're going to say. Well, I think he'll make it.
Your Commissar's sleeping like a baby. Something I hope you'll both be doing
in another minute. Off to bed with you! I'll be going on my rounds in
another two hours."
" 'Hoo-ray, hoo-ray,' they all shouted, the Schwambranians." Indeed,
this one time they had every reason in the world to.
The Commissar was getting better! But he was still very weak. The day
before he had finally been discharged from the hospital and moved to a room
in a house that had once belonged to a rich merchant. Stepan had been to see
him. Now we all crowded around Stepan to hear his report.
"He said that when he was delirious he kept thinking about those
travellers. You know, about A and B. The ones in the algebra problem.
Remember? He said he annoyed everyone to death there, asking them why those
men couldn't meet. They kept on travelling and travelling, and when they
finally did meet he started getting better right away."
"That's because he was probably thinking about us all the time, and
what with the high fever and all..." Beanpole Zoya said, sounding very
grown-up.
"Sure. They only let me visit him for ten minutes. There's a hospital
nurse on duty there. All he kept saying was: how are things in school? And
are we behaving well? And how's Alexander Karlovich making out all by
himself? And is Hefty doing any better in algebra?"
Everyone turned to look at Hefty. His face became crimson. He shrugged
his big shoulders and was about to say something nasty, but his eyes met
Stepan's and he turned away.
"So what I say is let's take things easy for a while and not fool
around too much," Stepan said. "If he starts getting upset I know it'll be
the end of him. Ask Lelya if you don't believe me. That's what the doctor
said. Didn't he? So let's not pull any pranks for a while. 'Cause anybody
who does might get a good crack on the head. I'm warning you. Am I right.
Beetle?"
"You bet. After all, we're human beings. And you'd have to be a pretty
low-down louse to make him sick again. I mean you, too, Hefty."
"You just worry about yourself." Hefty sounded hurt. "Aren't you all
such little darlings!" He shoved Labanda out of the way and left the
classroom.
"The Commissar asked me to bring him something to read," Stepan said.
"I went over to your house, but your brother wouldn't lend me anything. He
said wait till you get home. Will you give me a book? I'll take it over."
"I can take it over myself."
I wondered what kind of book the Commissar would like. While I browsed
through the shelves, Oska said, "Stepan asked for ... uh ... I forgot the
name. Kristomonto."
"What?"
"Wait. Let me think."
He knitted his brows and puckered his lips. "Oh, I know! He didn't say
Kristomonto, he said Sacramento. That's it!"
"There's no such book. The Mennonites who come here from out-of-town
sometimes curse like that. You know: 'Donnerwetter, sacramento!' It's like
saying, 'For God's sake!' Well, what was the book Stepan wanted?"
"He said it was about a count, and there's a gun like it," Oska
prompted.
Ah! Now I knew. It wasn't Kristomonto, and it wasn't Sacramento, It was
Monte Cristo! The Count of Monte Cristo. But I didn't have that book. Then,
true to my Schwambranian taste in books, I chose a volume of Greek mythology
and Robinson Crusoe.
I wrapped the two books carefully in a sheet of old newspaper and went
off to visit the Commissar.
The Commissar's room was very poor. A newspaper was spread out on the
table instead of a cloth, and the spout of a tin kettle protruded from under
a quilted jacket that had been thrown over it to keep it warm. A soldier's
mess tin was cooling forlornly on the woodstove that had gone out. There was
a small stack of books on a bamboo bookstand. The title of the one on top
was: "Political Literacy". The only item of luxury in the room was the bed.
It was so wide you could lie across it, the headboard and footboard were
scalloped and upholstered in bright carpeting. Why, this was no bed, it was
a two-horse sleigh! It had probably belonged to the merchant. Portraits of
Karl Marx and Lenin were tacked to the peeling walls. A large poster printed
in heavy type hung on the wall over the bed. It depicted a Red Army man in a
cloth helmet with a five-pointed red star on it. No matter from which angle
I looked at the poster, the soldier seemed to be staring straight at me, and
his finger seemed to be pointing straight at me as he asked in the stern,
demanding words of the caption: "Have you volunteered for the Red Army?"
I didn't feel too sure of myself to begin with. No one had met me at
the door. The hospital nurse was apparently gone, and I had to knock several
times before I heard a very faint voice that was apparently the Commissar's
say: "Come in."
The Commissar's hair was cut very short. He had lost so much weight you
could see his bony shoulder through the outsized collar of his cotton shirt.
He smiled at me weakly and somewhat shyly.
"Hello. Well... now that the doctors are through with me, I see the
doctors' sons are taking over. That means I should be getting better. That's
for sure. Well, how are you crocodiles coming along?"
He asked me all about life at school. Then I read aloud to him from the
Labours of Hercules, trying to put the right feeling into my voice, but as I
read of the nine-headed Hydra of Lernea whose heads Hercules chopped off,
one after another, I got carried away by the story. I had chosen this second
labour of Hercules, because I had often heard speakers at mass meetings
refer to the rabid, many-headed hydra of the counter-revolutionary forces.
And so I read on of the hero who defeated the fierce monster and let out'
its poisonous black blood.
The commissar was asleep. He had probably fallen asleep in the middle
of the story. His broad but bony chest rose and fell evenly. I sat there,
not knowing what to do. Should I leave? It somehow seemed impolite to do so.
Should I go on sitting there? That was silly. And then, who could tell how
long I would have to wait?
It was very still in the room, the only sounds being those of the
Commissar's breathing and a feeble crack now and then from the cooling tin
kettle on the table. The Red Army man on the poster had not for a moment
taken his burning gaze from me, and his finger pointed directly at me. But
now I, too, could not take my eyes from him. It was pretty much like our
staring game in school. However, his hard eyes bored through me so
relentlessly I felt I was going to blink and lose.
"Water," the Commissar whispered, though his pale eyelids did not even
flicker in his dark, sunken sockets.
I rushed to pour some water into a mug. The tea was still warm. I held
the mug as he drank. He opened his eyes a bit and looked at me gratefully.
"Pour yourself some tea. It's only carrot-tea, though. And there's no
sugar. They won't let me have saccharine. They say it's no good for your
kidneys, not after typhus."
I didn't want to offend him and so poured myself some of the cloudy
brew. It had a burnt taste, it was not sweet, it was tepid and tasteless. A
plan was forming in my mind. I would carry it out the very next day.
I raised my eyes over the rim of the mug as I sipped and glanced
cautiously at the wall opposite. The Red Army man was still staring at me,
but he couldn't make me feel uneasy any longer. I knew what I had to do.
I went to visit the Commissar the next day. There were four lumps of
sugar in my pocket, my school ration for that and the following day. The
Commissar looked slightly better. His eyes were brighter, and when he
smiled, the old sharp glint was back again, even though it came and went.
When it did his eyes became dull again. That meant he was still very weak.
"I hope you won't be angry about yesterday and me popping off to sleep
when you were reading. I'm not my old self yet, and my head feels fuzzy.
Besides, that was a pretty tall tale. I had a look at this other book you
brought me, the one about Robinson. I like it better, though it's not what
I'd care to read about now. I feel bad enough lying here all by myself. I
want to get back out among people again. In times like these, every man
counts, and here I am, like Robinson, wasting my time on a desert island.
It's enough to make you sick! Well, that's that. It's time for me to be
getting up and about. I put my feet down off the bed yesterday. Come on,
doctor's son, give me a hand. I'll see how things go today."
"I don't think you should yet. Papa said you have to stay in bed till
you're stronger."
"Never mind what Papa said. All those doctors and their medicines are
meant for different, more delicate people. You know our kind. We're tough!
Come on, let's not waste time talking."
He got his thin legs over the side of the bed by raising and moving
each one by the knee with both hands. Then he stuck each foot into a felt
boot that was standing by the bed.
"Now you give me some support on this side, and I'll hold on to the bed
on the other. All right, here we go. You know the old stevedore's cry:
heave-ho, heave-ho ... there she goes!"
He rose with great difficulty. I stuck my shoulder under his armpit.
The Commissar took a step and fell over heavily on me. I barely managed to
steady him and get him back into bed. He lay there panting, looking
miserable and strangely pitiful.
"That's it, fellow. Taps. That's for sure. Go on home. What are you
staring at? I said, go on home! Well? What is it? Think the Commissar's done
for? You're mistaken, my boy! I'll show you some real walking yet."
A large tear made its way slowly through the stubble of his yellow
cheek. I was really frightened. Our Commissar, our cheerful Commissar
Chubarkov, so loud-voiced and hearty, a man who could out-holler any crowd,
was sobbing softly in his bed, as the Red Army man on the poster pointed his
finger at me accusingly and his eyes bored into me. But it wasn't my fault.
I rushed over to the table, poured some of the yellow brew from the
kettle under the quilted jacket and slipped my two days' sugar ration into
the mug. The Commissar held it in his trembling hands. He had calmed down a
bit and took a slow sip. Then he licked his lips.
"I've never had anything so sweet! Seems like pure honey. How come?" He
looked at me suspiciously. Then he peered into the mug. The four lumps had
probably not dissolved completely. "So you decided to pamper me? I'll bet
you put your whole week's rations in here. You should've left yourself a
lump. Now you'll have to drink yours plain again."
I hastily poured myself a full mug of brew from the kettle, took a sip
and was dazed. A molasses-thick, sickeningly-sweet syrup stuck to my lips.
It took me a few moments to realize what had happened.
development. As for Kirikov, who turned out to be a black-marketeer on the
side, all he did was stuff your heads full of nonsense. What sort of
darkness was he talking about when education brings light? Enlightenment.
And don't you forget that under the old regime they kept this light from the
workers and the peasants. They wanted to keep them ignorant and backward.
Can you imagine all the people that are going to get an education now? Take
me, for instance." He suddenly became shy. "As soon as things quiet down,
I'll be going off to Petrograd to study, too. Now why, comrades, do you and
those uh, trouble-tykes, let every no-good, low-down snake-in-the-grass turn
your young eyes away from the truth and keep the other fellows from getting
out of that old primitive darkness and into the light? Why do you think
they're worse than you? You think their daddies aren't as rich as yours?"
CALIGULA'S HORSE
What followed was to become legend. A deafening clatter was heard in
the corridor, followed by Mokeich shouting: "Stop! Where d'you think you're
going?"
The troglodyte guard at the door suddenly parted, and Stepan Atlantis
galloped into the auditorium astride the Commissar's horse. The Juniors
burst in after him, sweeping away whatever remained of the guards.
"Whoa! He got loose! I barely managed to catch him, Comrade Commissar."
Indeed, Stepan was a wily fellow.
The horse whinnied softly.
"Excuse me," the Commissar said. He was apparently addressing his
horse. "I'll be through here in a minute, that's for sure. This is what I
think, boys. You've had your row, and now it's time to settle down. We'll
put it to a vote to make it legal, and that's that!"
Hefty and Rothmeller were whispering uneasily. Stepan, still astride
the Commissar's horse, looked the troglodytes over. The horse shifted its
weight delicately, as if fearful of stepping on someone's toes. Hefty rose.
His former swagger was gone. Once again Stepan had won the day.
"They've ridden roughshod over you," Hefty said.
No one replied. Our math teacher, Alexander Karlovich Bertelyov, went
over to the table on the rostrum. He was serious, as always.
"My friends!" he said and dropped his pince-nez nervously. Then, for
the next few minutes, he slapped his hand around on the table nearsightedly,
as if he were trying to catch a grasshopper. He finally located his
pince-nez and brought the world back into focus again. He continued: "My
friends, I am not interested in politics and am not used to your mass
meetings. I have only asked for the floor from a purely scientific point of
view. It so happened that, due to an oversight on our part, Kirikov, and no
offence meant, tried to teach you something that was pure, unadulterated
hogwash. A lot of obscurantist nonsense that could never stand up to
criticism, and certainly not from a purely scientific point of view. In the
end, the revolution leads to progress. It brings great new layers of the
population into contact with education. And you, my friends, want to stand
in their way. But you have no right to! How could you? Why, it's a crime
from a scientific point of view! Many comrades ... Juniors, as you call them
... are very gifted in mathematics. Take Rudenko, for instance. He's a very
fast learner. But you, my friends, have been poisoned by the die-hard spirit
of the old school and are used to thinking that attending classes is a
shameful way of spending your time. For shame! In conclusion, I would like
to tell you a historical anecdote. The Roman emperor Caligula once brought
his horse into the senate and ordered the senators to bow to it. I would
never have bowed to that arrogant creature, my friends. However, if today
the presence of Comrade Chubarkov's horse at this meeting will further the
establishment of friendly relations and order in the school, then today, on
behalf of science, I bow my head to our four-legged guest."
At this Alexander Karlovich bowed to the horse.
The horse backed away nervously at the sound of the deafening applause
that followed. The matter was then taken to a vote, which brought defeat to
Hefty and his troglodytes. Everyone pledged to start studying in earnest,
beginning the very next day. Then Stepan made a short speech from the
saddle.
"E-muet in French is a letter you write but don't ever pronounce. So I
have a suggestion. It'll make things easier for us and do them a good turn
while they're at it. Let's write a letter to the French workers, or to their
children, and tell them to do away with that e-muet."
The proposal to write such a letter to the children of France was
unanimously adopted. As we were about to disperse, a group of Red Army men
suddenly entered the auditorium.
"There! See? He wanted to shut us up by force!" Hefty shouted.
Everyone was startled.
"Quiet, everybody!" one of the men said. "Let's be a little more
disciplined here. Comrades! The close proximity of the front lines has put
the town under martial law. The 4th Army will need this building for its
headquarters. Please see that the building is cleared tomorrow, Comrade
Chubarkov."
No one spoke. Then, in the stillness, the commissar's horse breathed in
loudly and whinnied.
The horses of the 4th Army that were tethered outside whinnied in
reply.
The town became a large army camp. Countless wagon trains lumbered up
and down the streets, tying themselves into knots at the intersections.
Unshaven men in greatcoats untangled the knots. They were in charge of the
town. Orderlies rode their horses up onto the pavements, handing in and
accepting envelopes at the windows of the various offices. The camels in the
wagon trains threw their heads back and bellowed loudly. Their sticky saliva
fell upon Breshka Street. The camel drivers shouted hoarsely: "Tratr! Tratr!
Chok! Chok!" Fountains of spray rose on the river where shells hit the water
and then fell helplessly back again seconds later. Finally, a slow-motion
boom would come crashing down upon the town. Soldiers practised throwing
hand grenades on the river bank.
An elephantine-like armoured car raised its cannon-trunk on the square.
The live camels were followed by hopping iron ostriches, those dock-tailed
gigs with tall stacks, the army field kitchens. It seemed then to Oska and
me that the vehicles on the square were playing our favourite game of animal
lotto called "The Cameroons Races", where each card had a picture of a
running elephant, camel or ostrich. Near the storehouses some men were
moving a pile of barrels with black numbers painted on the bottoms. A fat
man would call out a number, another man would consult some papers and then
stamp them, as if the rubber stamp were a large lotto disc. Every now and
then a rider on a lathered horse would appear.
"What about accommodations?" they'd be asked.
"Everything's full up!"
And the players had to crawl under the trucks to sleep.
A strange sign had been put up on the school building. It read:
"Travtochok". Translated into everyday language, it was supposed to stand
for something like:
"Vehicles of the special column's automotive unit". Actually, though,
no one knew exactly what the mysterious "Travtochok" stood for.
Not more than two or three automobiles were usually parked outside of
"Travtochok", but the former school yard was always jam-packed with camels.
The people of Pokrovsk lost no time in renaming the unpronounceable
"Travtochok" into Tratrchok, which, when translated from camel-language,
meant "whoa" and "giddiyap".
Our school began moving from one place to another. In the beginning, we
were transferred to the former seminary building. A day later we were moved
to a small house with a fire-tower. Naturally, the tower drew us like a
magnet. It seemed to beg us to use it for some prank, if only to spit on the
heads of passers-by or shout "Fire!". However, we did not feel up to pranks.
There was a restlessness in the crowded classrooms, and boys talked in
whispers in the back rows. The day after the general ruckus Volodya Labanda
stopped Alexander Karlovich in the street.
Volodya stared at the ground and scuffed the dirt with the tip of his
shoe like a horse as he said: "You talked about Kostya Rudenko being so
gifted. I used to do math problems pretty good, too, didn't I? You said I
was good in math, too."
"Of course I remember. You definitely have a good head for mathematics,
but you're lazy."
"No, I'm not. We just felt like horsing around since freedom was
declared. I don't think it was fair of you to talk about the Juniors like
that and not say anything good about anybody else. They'll think they're
better than everybody now."
"Aha! So my arrow struck home!" Alexander Karlovich exclaimed. He
sounded quite pleased. "Well, why don't you try to catch up with them? I
must warn you, though, that it won't be easy. They're doing quadratic
equations now."
"We'll manage. You'll see!"
That very same day we agreed that the Juniors had become stuck-up and
that we could not tolerate such a state of affairs any longer. Which meant
we would have to catch up with them. The girls promised to keep up with us.
We retrieved our dusty schoolbooks and amazed our parents by poring over
them. We discovered that we had dropped very far behind and had to stay
after school and study till late at night at home in order to catch up.
Alexander Karlovich, who had lost weight on a teacher's skimpy food rations,
would selflessly stay on after classes. We stole bread for him from the
storeroom and placed it on the lectern. He would proudly refuse it, but
then, being carried away by a problem, would begin pinching off pieces
unthinkingly, until he had accidentally eaten it all.
"That's some freedom you've got! You used to be swell fellows, but now
you're all bookworms. Why don't you go ahead and ask them to give you marks?
Ah!" Hefty would say and spit in disgust.
He was especially hard on Stepan, who said he couldn't care less and
went on studying furiously, for he told us that revolutionaries had to climb
right onto the barricades of learning, too.
We felt we had covered so much ground in algebra in two and a half
weeks that we asked Alexander Karlovich to test one of us. He called on
Labanda. The Juniors were amazed. Never before had the pupils been so
intent. The only sound in the classroom was that of the chalk hitting
against the blackboard as it produced heavy white figures. Labanda was doing
a problem that involved a reservoir and two pipes. Everything was proceeding
nicely. Water kept pouring in through one pipe and out through the other. It
soon became clear that if both pipes were open the reservoir would fill in
six hours. But then suddenly something happened and it began draining as we
watched. Labanda had hit a shoal. He chewed on his nail.
"Think," Alexander Karlovich said.
"I'm thinking," Labanda said unhappily. "If we subtract two pipes from
four pails...."
Go back to the beginning and do all your figuring out loud."
We had spotted the mistake. Labanda had written a minus sign instead of
a plus sign at the very start. Now the minus had surfaced and stoppered up
one of the pipes. We were dying to prompt him. However, we did not want to
expose his lack of knowledge, not with the Juniors looking on. Just then we
heard someone whispering. Someone was prompting. It was Kostya
Rudenko-Beetle. And then the rest of the class, which had once been known
for its imaginative prompting and shameless cribbing, the class that had
always considered it a terrible crime to refuse to offer illegal help, this
very same class now began stamping loudly to drown out the whispering voice.
The boys shouted:
"Quit it, Rudenko! Let him do it himself!"
This bucked Labanda up. He concentrated, found the error and solved the
problem. Then, in order to inform Pokrovsk of this, we raised a flag on the
fire-tower. We had painted the following message on it: "X= 18 pails".
THE "B" GRADE'S PROGRESS
Our joy did not last long.
Two days later Labanda rushed into the room and said that the parallel
"B" grade, which we had more or less forgotten about, since it was now
located in another building, was up to equations of the highest order with
several unknown quantities. It didn't seem possible.
"You're lying!" someone shouted.
"Tell us another!" Stepan said.
"I'll drop dead if I am!" Labanda even crossed himself.
We were crushed.
At this point Kostya Beetle said he knew how to solve them and would
show the "B's" how to do it. Stepan was dead set against it. He said it
didn't count if only one person could do them, it would just be singling out
the best pupil, like before, but that what counted was if everybody could do
them. Once again we all rushed to our textbooks. We would come back to
school in the evenings and Kostya would help us. Hefty never came to these
after-school sessions. He would say that a hungry stomach was not fit for
learning, that this was no time for studying and that, anyway, he could
solve any problem we could and better. When all the unknown quantities were
brought out into the open, we challenged the "B's" to an algebra match. They
accepted the challenge. We decided it would be a joint written test in
algebra, with teams made up of the best mathematicians in each grade. Stepan
Gavrya, Volodya Labanda, Kostya Beetle, Zoya 'Beanpole, and I were on the
"A" team. Hefty joined us the day before the test. We were very reluctant
about having him on the team, but he swore he wouldn't let us down.
The evening before the test our team met at school for a last practice
session. Alexander Karlovich, looking very weary, made us review the whole
book. Then he gave us several tricky problems which we finally solved. He
was very pleased from a "purely scientific point of view", .but he gasped
when he looked at the clock, for it was midnight, and since we were under
martial law, there was an eleven o'clock curfew.
"Well, comrades, tnat means we spend the night in the kennel. That's
for sure!"
"Come on. If they stop us we'll say we're going to the drugstore for
medicine," Labanda said.
Stepan and I walked along together. A searchlight swept the low, heavy
sky. Someone was singing: "Ah, when the night's dark". A military patrol
stopped us at the corner.
"We're going to the drugstore. He's the doctor's son. We've got to get
there," Stepan said.
"You don't say? And what are you going for? Castor oil?" the Red Army
man inquired.
"How'd you guess? That's just what we need. You see...."
"Wait a bit and you'll get a big dose of it. Lapanin!" the soldier
called. "Take these two fellows in."
We were escorted to headquarters, where we met some other midnight
seekers of castor oil. A short while later Alexander Karlovich was brought
in. He was indignant from every possible point of view.
"Good evening, Alexander Karlovich!" Stepan said cheerfully.
"I'd say it was good night," the teacher muttered. "Nice to see you all
here."
Next the soldiers brought in a glum-looking black-marketeer. He was
carrying a big sack. "Who came in last?" he said matter-of-factly.
"I did. Why?" Alexander Karlovich replied.
"I'll be next after you tomorrow morning and don't forget!" The man
then stretched out on the floor. He was snoring a moment later.
Heavy clouds of cheap tobacco smoke curled up under the electric bulb.
Our guard was examining one of his boots intently, tapping the welt with his
rifle butt. This night before the test was passing sleeplessly, stupidly.
Two hours later Chubarkov phoned. We were finally released. Alexander
Karlovich stopped at the threshold, having recalled something, and turned
back. He had a hard time waking the man on the floor. "Pardon me. I'm
leaving now. So you'll have to be next after someone else."
We bumped into another military patrol on Breshka Street. They were
taking the "B" team to headquarters. They, too, had been brushing up before
the test.
"I'll bet you were going for castor oil," Stepan said.
"No. For iodine."
"All contestants will now take their seats," Forsunov, the chief
referee, said solemnly.
The sleepy-eyed mathematicians sat down. To make sure there would be no
cribbing each contestant shared a desk with a member of the opposite team.
Alexander Karlovich and the "B's" math teacher were both nervous. They
resembled managers whose boxers were in the ring for their first bout.
Alexander Karlovich went over to each of our boys and whispered: "Think
first. And don't rush. Be sure you don't mix up your signs. If there are any
problems on proportions they'll be stuck because that's their weak point. I
know it for a fact. But the main thing is to think."
Forsunov asked the teachers to take their places. Alexander Karlovich
and his colleague sat at the large table. Mokeich was already seated there
beside an empty chair left for the commissar.
Beanpole Zoya, our class champion, looked more stern than usual. The
girls who were not taking part in the match kept glancing at us anxiously.
They filled the inkwells to the top, tried out the pens, sharpened the
pencils and wished everyone good luck. Then they went out into the corridor
where the audience crowded in a doorway, promising to be very quiet.
Mokeich took out his large conductor's pocket watch. Forsunov placed
the watch on the table to mark the time each contestant spent on the
problem. If both teams solved it, the one whose separate members solved it
sooner would be the winner and get the prize, which was a double portion of
sugar. Besides, the pupil who solved it first would become the school's best
mathematician.
"I'm counting on everybody's honesty," Forsunov said. "I was the best
cribber under the old principal, and that's why I'm warning you: as long as
I'm here and watching, nobody'll ever crib anything and get away with it.
Understand?"
"Huh! What d'you think we're going to do? Cheat on our own side?"
We were cut to the quick. Indeed! This wasn't tsarist times.
"On your mark! Get ready!" Forsunov said.
"Two travellers going in the same direction set out from two different
cities, with one traveller following the other. After some days, the number
of which equals the sum of miles covered in a day, the second traveller
caught up with the first one. The second traveller had by then covered 525
miles. The distance between the two cities was 175 miles. How many miles a
day did each one cover?"
The starting time had been marked. The travellers were on the road, and
everyone was engrossed in the problem. A stillness settled on the backs of
our heads, pressing them closer to the desks. The test was under way.
However, we did not experience the familiar sense of fear and
uncertainty which had confused both thoughts and numbers during the old
school exams, when one's only desire was to grasp at the minutes that were
slipping away so feverishly, so hopelessly, and hold them back at all costs.
Ahead of us then lay the finish line and the pillory in the shape of an "F".
But now a written test was in process and we were not scared! Alexander
Karlovich winked at us encouragingly. We recalled what he had said. Indeed!
We all thought hard. Everything seemed simple enough. There were two
travellers, A and B. A was gradually catching up with B. And we had to catch
up with the "B's", too.
Chubarkov entered the classroom. His heavy tread and jingling spurs
made Alexander Karlovich hiss angrily and stare pointedly first at his boots
and then at us. The Commissar unbuckled his spurs and tiptoed to his seat.
"Who's getting the upper hand?" he whispered to Forsunov.
"They've just started."
The Commissar gazed at us fondly. Fifteen minutes passed in complete
silence. I was coming along nicely, with no accidents on the road. Beanpole
had filled two pages. Stepan's notepaper was still blank. Kostya Beetle had
half-risen from his seat to re-check what he had written. He had solved the
problem. He was the first!
Suddenly Hefty raced down the aisle. He loomed over the judges' table
and held his paper on high. He was triumphant. Forsunov accepted it
doubtfully. Hefty had the answer right.
"Well?" the Commissar asked.
"That's that!" Hefty replied. The boys waiting outside in the corridor
applauded wildly.
Once again Hefty had come out on top.
After the bell had rung the judges checked our papers and announced the
winners. Eight members of the "A" team had solved the problem, but only
seven ot the "B" team had. Our side had won. We had not only caught up with
the "B's", we had overtaken them. Besides, our classmate Hefty was now the
school's math champion. Though he was very heavy, the boys threw him up into
the air as a sign of homage to a victor. In the process something fell out
of his pocket.
Beanpole bent down to pick it up and shouted, "Look!"
"Damn fool," Hefty muttered. He tried to snatch whatever it was from
her. "Give it back! I was only doing it for your sake anyway. If that's the
way you want it, to hell with you! Go on and lose. See if I care."
Beanpole was holding a small booklet. The title page read: "Key to all
problems in Algebra II by Shaposhnikov and Valtsev."
"Traitor!" Labanda shouted and rammed his fist into Hefty's face.
The return blow sent Labanda flying.
It took Chubarkov and Mokeich to hold Hefty back. Forsunov then said
that the "A's" had not overtaken the "B's", but had caught up with them. We
shared both glory and sugar.
Our school had become a true nomad, forever moving from one building to
another.
We were forever dragging desks, bookcases, globes and blackboards
through the streets of town. The traffic coming our way was made up largely
of stretchers and hearses. The terrible camels of Tratrchok, the mobile unit
of the 4th Army, pulled the hearses. The streets smelled of carbolic acid,
for an epidemic of typhus had swept the region.
Commissar Chubarkov was on the go day and night. His unshaven cheeks
had become so hollow it seemed he must certainly bite them when he spoke. He
was in charge of moving the hospitals and doubling up the various offices.
He also helped us drag our school property from place to place. Chubarkov
was here, there and everywhere.
"And that's that!" his voice would boom on Atkarskaya Street, on
Kobzarevsky Street and on Breshka Street. "Hang on a while! It won't be long
now! And then, boys, the trees and the mountains will dance. Like the saying
goes: It's not much fun to see the ram butting Sam, but it'll soon be the
other way around, and Sam'll be butting the ram. That's a fact!"
Late one afternoon he came to another new school address. He was
hoarse, his eyes were sunken and red-rimmed, and yellow specks of crude
tobacco stuck to his lips. He smelled strongly of carbolic acid.
"Comrades! I've come to ask you to donate some of your time." He spoke
with difficulty. "They sounded me out about it at Headquarters, and I said
that my boys would surely do it, 'cause even algebra was like snapping their
fingers to them. I told them you knew how to figure out all the unknown
quantities, so's make them known. So, boys, who wants to help the
revolution?"
"I do!" we shouted.
"That depends on what it is," Hefty said and looked at his watch.
Chubarkov then said that we would have to put up big posters in the
barracks and on Breshka Street, warning everyone about typhus, and that it
was a rush job. The new shipment of posters had not arrived from Saratov,
and all the ones on hand at HQ had been put up. That meant we would have to
make the posters ourselves. There would have to be a big figure of a louse
and a caption written in large block letters.
He had brought along a roll of grey wrapping paper and water colours.
It was deathly cold in the classroom, for the school was not heated,
and it was five o'clock, time for us to have gone home long ago.
"I'd have done it myself, but I'm no good at drawing, that's for sure.
And you can't even draw .a louse if you've no talent for it. Zoya, here, and
Stepan and Lelya have. I saw them draw a picture of me on the blackboard
once. Oh, yes, I did. And it was a real good likeness, too. No mistake about
who it was."
"Let's do some drawing from life," Stepan suggested craftily. "If any
of you don't remember what they look like, Hefty here will lend us a few.
His are nice and fat."
"That'll do, Gavrya!" Alexander Karlovich snapped. "I suggest you start
working instead of wasting time."
"This is a special emergency drawing lesson, fellows!" Stepan shouted.
"It's late."
"It's too cold in here."
"It's time to go home." This voice came from Hefty's corner. "It'll be
like it used to be, being left after school with no dinner."
"You don't say?" I jumped onto my desk. "Listen, fellows! Who wants to
stay after school today as Red volunteer dinner-missers, to draw the fight
typhus posters? If anybody thinks he's back in the Boys School, and left
after school, he can get out! Well? What do you say?"
It was awfully cold. And we were awfully hungry. It was going on six
o'clock. Hefty scooped up his books and left. He was followed by some of the
others, who tried not to meet our eyes as they filed out. There were not
many of them. The best boys and girls stayed on, and Labanda, Kostya Beetle
and Beanpole Zoya were among them.
We lit the oil wick lamps. The Commissar got a fire going in the
bow-legged iron stove and took out the paints. We spread the paper out on
the floor and set to work on the project. There were no paint brushes, so we
made do with bits of paper rolled up tight and painted the fine parts with
our fingers. Most of the letters were shaky. Thus, "typhus" looked as if its
knees were buckling. The insects were much more impressive, although Stepan
and Kostya Beetle had an argument as to the exact number of legs and feelers
needed.
"Ha! Your name's Beetle, but you don't even know how many legs it has!"
Stepan said.
We put it to a vote and decided not to be stingy about the legs. Soon
we had fuzzy centipedes slithering all over our posters. We crawled about on
the cold floor. The commissar, who was dead tired after a long day, helped
us in every possible way: he laid out the paints, cut the paper and thought
up slogans for the posters. He had a terrible headache. We could hear him
moaning softly every now and then.
"Why don't you go home, Comrade Chubarkov?" we said. "Look how tired
you are. We can manage without you."
But he would not, no matter how we coaxed him. He even managed to keep
up our spirits by telling us what a wonderful job we were doing.
Stepan and I had gone off into a corner to compose a caption in verse.
We had a hard time with the unruly words, but then all of a sudden the
pieces seemed to fall into place and the caption was ready. We thought it
was excellent and felt that the Commissar would like it, too. We carried it
over to him proudly. It read:
When all is neat and clean,
No louse is ever seen.
Lice lay you flat.
And that's that!
The Commissar stared at it blindly. He mumbled something and swayed
strangely at the desk.
"Why can't they meet?" he whispered. "They should. That's for sure."
"Who?"
"Them. A and B. The travel... lers."
Alexander Karlovich bent over him anxiously. The Commissar was burning
up with the dread fever called typhus.
Chubarkov was dying. We could speak of nothing else in class.
When I came home Oska was waiting for me in the hall. "They've sent the
Commissar away to camp for three days so he'll get well quick. I heard Papa
calling headquarters. And he said camp for three days."
"What are you talking about? You've got everything mixed up again. And
you know, it's not funny any more."
"Honest! I heard him."
Papa returned from the hospital just then. His eyes were so serious
that Oska, who would usually begin to climb all over him, hung back. Papa
took off his coat. The hall was immediately filled with the smells of the
hospital.
Then Papa went off to wash up, with us trailing behind. He scrubbed his
large doctor's hands thoroughly with soap as he always did and brushed his
short nails with a nail brush. Then he gargled his throat, throwing back his
head so that the water seemed to be boiling in his throat.
We stood there watching the procedure that was so familiar to us both.
Neither of us said a word. Finally, I spoke.
"Why did Oska say you sent the commissar away to camp, Papa?"
"Which camp? Don't talk nonsense."
"But that's what you said. I heard you," Oska insisted. "You said:
'Camp for three days'."
Papa chuckled ruefully. "Silly! He's getting camphor injections.
Understand? Every six hours. Because his heart is so weak," Papa explained,
turning to speak to me as he wiped his hands. "We can't get his temperature
down, and he's terribly undernourished. The man had been killing himself at
his job. And goodness knows what he's been eating. That's what we're up
against."
"It's very bad, isn't it?"
"It's worse than bad." Papa spoke brusquely and tossed the towel over
the headboard. "Our one hope is his natural strength. We'll do our best."
"Will he be sick long?"
"It's typhus. Who knows? We're expecting the crisis soon."
The moment I entered the classroom on the following day I was
surrounded by my friends and some of the older pupils. They had all been
waiting for me.
"When's the crisis? What did your old man say?"
But the crisis had not begun, and the Commissar's fever kept rising
every day, while his strength ebbed with each passing hour.
Would it really be "that's that", as the Commissar himself would have
said in such a case?
Stepan and Kostya would rush off to the hospital after school each day
to ask about Chubarkov's condition. But what could the nurse on duty say? He
had a raging fever. He was unconscious and delirious.
Things looked bad.
I heard the phone ring in my sleep that night. I was completely
awakened by a loud pounding on the front door. Then I heard Stepan's voice
saying:
"Honest to God, Doctor. I was just there. They chased me out. His
heart's nearly stopping. He's having that, what-d'you-call-it? The nurse
said cry-sis."
"Shh! Not so loud, you'll wake everyone up! They've just called me. I'm
on my way there now. I don't want any panic. A crisis means a sharp drop in
temperature. What is it, Lelya?"
I stood there wrapped in my blanket, but my teeth were chattering from
nervousness.
"I'm going with you, Papa."
"Are you crazy?"
"Why can Stepan go?"
"If Stepan thinks he's going anywhere, I'll tell the nurses to throw
him out. I don't believe anyone asked you to take part in a consultation."
Papa dressed quickly and left, banging the front door behind him.
Stepan, feeling completely disheartened, stayed.
The long, cold hours of the night dragged on endlessly, Oska woke up.
When he saw Stepan sitting on my bed he sat up on his own, but at the sight
of two fists, mine and Stepan's, being shaken at him, he darted under the
blankets again. However, I could see his curious eye flash and knew he was
not sleeping, but listening to our every word.
"Do you think he'll pull through?" Stepan whispered.
We spoke of our Commissar at length. He really was a wonderful man. And
most of the fellows and girls at school were on his side now, because he was
fair and always stood up for justice. He took care of our troglodytes good
that time, and there was a reason why Alexander Karlovich respected him so.
"I know he wants to go off to fight. He volunteered, but they wouldn't
accept his application. They told him they needed good men to work for the
revolution on the home front, too," Stepan said.
"If he ever does go off, things'll be awful again."
"That's for sure. He's on our side, but he's a mean one for discipline.
And if he goes off...."
We suddenly fell silent, crushed by one and the same idea: how could we
be discussing whether he'd go off to fight or not when now, at this very
moment, our Commissar was fighting for his life. Perhaps.... The pendulum of
the old wall clock in the dining-room swished back and forth loudly and
menacingly: "Yes-no ... he will-he won't...." It was as if it were telling
his fortune, ticking off one second after another, as one did the petals of
a daisy.
"Yes-no ...he will-he won't."
Just then a key turned in the lock. I could hear Papa taking off his
rubbers. Stepan and I dashed into the hall.
We were afraid to ask, and it was so dark there that we could not see
the expression on my father's face.
"Why aren't you asleep, night owls?" Papa grumbled in the darkness, but
he did not sound angry. On the contrary, he sounded triumphant. "All right,
all right. I know what you're going to say. Well, I think he'll make it.
Your Commissar's sleeping like a baby. Something I hope you'll both be doing
in another minute. Off to bed with you! I'll be going on my rounds in
another two hours."
" 'Hoo-ray, hoo-ray,' they all shouted, the Schwambranians." Indeed,
this one time they had every reason in the world to.
The Commissar was getting better! But he was still very weak. The day
before he had finally been discharged from the hospital and moved to a room
in a house that had once belonged to a rich merchant. Stepan had been to see
him. Now we all crowded around Stepan to hear his report.
"He said that when he was delirious he kept thinking about those
travellers. You know, about A and B. The ones in the algebra problem.
Remember? He said he annoyed everyone to death there, asking them why those
men couldn't meet. They kept on travelling and travelling, and when they
finally did meet he started getting better right away."
"That's because he was probably thinking about us all the time, and
what with the high fever and all..." Beanpole Zoya said, sounding very
grown-up.
"Sure. They only let me visit him for ten minutes. There's a hospital
nurse on duty there. All he kept saying was: how are things in school? And
are we behaving well? And how's Alexander Karlovich making out all by
himself? And is Hefty doing any better in algebra?"
Everyone turned to look at Hefty. His face became crimson. He shrugged
his big shoulders and was about to say something nasty, but his eyes met
Stepan's and he turned away.
"So what I say is let's take things easy for a while and not fool
around too much," Stepan said. "If he starts getting upset I know it'll be
the end of him. Ask Lelya if you don't believe me. That's what the doctor
said. Didn't he? So let's not pull any pranks for a while. 'Cause anybody
who does might get a good crack on the head. I'm warning you. Am I right.
Beetle?"
"You bet. After all, we're human beings. And you'd have to be a pretty
low-down louse to make him sick again. I mean you, too, Hefty."
"You just worry about yourself." Hefty sounded hurt. "Aren't you all
such little darlings!" He shoved Labanda out of the way and left the
classroom.
"The Commissar asked me to bring him something to read," Stepan said.
"I went over to your house, but your brother wouldn't lend me anything. He
said wait till you get home. Will you give me a book? I'll take it over."
"I can take it over myself."
I wondered what kind of book the Commissar would like. While I browsed
through the shelves, Oska said, "Stepan asked for ... uh ... I forgot the
name. Kristomonto."
"What?"
"Wait. Let me think."
He knitted his brows and puckered his lips. "Oh, I know! He didn't say
Kristomonto, he said Sacramento. That's it!"
"There's no such book. The Mennonites who come here from out-of-town
sometimes curse like that. You know: 'Donnerwetter, sacramento!' It's like
saying, 'For God's sake!' Well, what was the book Stepan wanted?"
"He said it was about a count, and there's a gun like it," Oska
prompted.
Ah! Now I knew. It wasn't Kristomonto, and it wasn't Sacramento, It was
Monte Cristo! The Count of Monte Cristo. But I didn't have that book. Then,
true to my Schwambranian taste in books, I chose a volume of Greek mythology
and Robinson Crusoe.
I wrapped the two books carefully in a sheet of old newspaper and went
off to visit the Commissar.
The Commissar's room was very poor. A newspaper was spread out on the
table instead of a cloth, and the spout of a tin kettle protruded from under
a quilted jacket that had been thrown over it to keep it warm. A soldier's
mess tin was cooling forlornly on the woodstove that had gone out. There was
a small stack of books on a bamboo bookstand. The title of the one on top
was: "Political Literacy". The only item of luxury in the room was the bed.
It was so wide you could lie across it, the headboard and footboard were
scalloped and upholstered in bright carpeting. Why, this was no bed, it was
a two-horse sleigh! It had probably belonged to the merchant. Portraits of
Karl Marx and Lenin were tacked to the peeling walls. A large poster printed
in heavy type hung on the wall over the bed. It depicted a Red Army man in a
cloth helmet with a five-pointed red star on it. No matter from which angle
I looked at the poster, the soldier seemed to be staring straight at me, and
his finger seemed to be pointing straight at me as he asked in the stern,
demanding words of the caption: "Have you volunteered for the Red Army?"
I didn't feel too sure of myself to begin with. No one had met me at
the door. The hospital nurse was apparently gone, and I had to knock several
times before I heard a very faint voice that was apparently the Commissar's
say: "Come in."
The Commissar's hair was cut very short. He had lost so much weight you
could see his bony shoulder through the outsized collar of his cotton shirt.
He smiled at me weakly and somewhat shyly.
"Hello. Well... now that the doctors are through with me, I see the
doctors' sons are taking over. That means I should be getting better. That's
for sure. Well, how are you crocodiles coming along?"
He asked me all about life at school. Then I read aloud to him from the
Labours of Hercules, trying to put the right feeling into my voice, but as I
read of the nine-headed Hydra of Lernea whose heads Hercules chopped off,
one after another, I got carried away by the story. I had chosen this second
labour of Hercules, because I had often heard speakers at mass meetings
refer to the rabid, many-headed hydra of the counter-revolutionary forces.
And so I read on of the hero who defeated the fierce monster and let out'
its poisonous black blood.
The commissar was asleep. He had probably fallen asleep in the middle
of the story. His broad but bony chest rose and fell evenly. I sat there,
not knowing what to do. Should I leave? It somehow seemed impolite to do so.
Should I go on sitting there? That was silly. And then, who could tell how
long I would have to wait?
It was very still in the room, the only sounds being those of the
Commissar's breathing and a feeble crack now and then from the cooling tin
kettle on the table. The Red Army man on the poster had not for a moment
taken his burning gaze from me, and his finger pointed directly at me. But
now I, too, could not take my eyes from him. It was pretty much like our
staring game in school. However, his hard eyes bored through me so
relentlessly I felt I was going to blink and lose.
"Water," the Commissar whispered, though his pale eyelids did not even
flicker in his dark, sunken sockets.
I rushed to pour some water into a mug. The tea was still warm. I held
the mug as he drank. He opened his eyes a bit and looked at me gratefully.
"Pour yourself some tea. It's only carrot-tea, though. And there's no
sugar. They won't let me have saccharine. They say it's no good for your
kidneys, not after typhus."
I didn't want to offend him and so poured myself some of the cloudy
brew. It had a burnt taste, it was not sweet, it was tepid and tasteless. A
plan was forming in my mind. I would carry it out the very next day.
I raised my eyes over the rim of the mug as I sipped and glanced
cautiously at the wall opposite. The Red Army man was still staring at me,
but he couldn't make me feel uneasy any longer. I knew what I had to do.
I went to visit the Commissar the next day. There were four lumps of
sugar in my pocket, my school ration for that and the following day. The
Commissar looked slightly better. His eyes were brighter, and when he
smiled, the old sharp glint was back again, even though it came and went.
When it did his eyes became dull again. That meant he was still very weak.
"I hope you won't be angry about yesterday and me popping off to sleep
when you were reading. I'm not my old self yet, and my head feels fuzzy.
Besides, that was a pretty tall tale. I had a look at this other book you
brought me, the one about Robinson. I like it better, though it's not what
I'd care to read about now. I feel bad enough lying here all by myself. I
want to get back out among people again. In times like these, every man
counts, and here I am, like Robinson, wasting my time on a desert island.
It's enough to make you sick! Well, that's that. It's time for me to be
getting up and about. I put my feet down off the bed yesterday. Come on,
doctor's son, give me a hand. I'll see how things go today."
"I don't think you should yet. Papa said you have to stay in bed till
you're stronger."
"Never mind what Papa said. All those doctors and their medicines are
meant for different, more delicate people. You know our kind. We're tough!
Come on, let's not waste time talking."
He got his thin legs over the side of the bed by raising and moving
each one by the knee with both hands. Then he stuck each foot into a felt
boot that was standing by the bed.
"Now you give me some support on this side, and I'll hold on to the bed
on the other. All right, here we go. You know the old stevedore's cry:
heave-ho, heave-ho ... there she goes!"
He rose with great difficulty. I stuck my shoulder under his armpit.
The Commissar took a step and fell over heavily on me. I barely managed to
steady him and get him back into bed. He lay there panting, looking
miserable and strangely pitiful.
"That's it, fellow. Taps. That's for sure. Go on home. What are you
staring at? I said, go on home! Well? What is it? Think the Commissar's done
for? You're mistaken, my boy! I'll show you some real walking yet."
A large tear made its way slowly through the stubble of his yellow
cheek. I was really frightened. Our Commissar, our cheerful Commissar
Chubarkov, so loud-voiced and hearty, a man who could out-holler any crowd,
was sobbing softly in his bed, as the Red Army man on the poster pointed his
finger at me accusingly and his eyes bored into me. But it wasn't my fault.
I rushed over to the table, poured some of the yellow brew from the
kettle under the quilted jacket and slipped my two days' sugar ration into
the mug. The Commissar held it in his trembling hands. He had calmed down a
bit and took a slow sip. Then he licked his lips.
"I've never had anything so sweet! Seems like pure honey. How come?" He
looked at me suspiciously. Then he peered into the mug. The four lumps had
probably not dissolved completely. "So you decided to pamper me? I'll bet
you put your whole week's rations in here. You should've left yourself a
lump. Now you'll have to drink yours plain again."
I hastily poured myself a full mug of brew from the kettle, took a sip
and was dazed. A molasses-thick, sickeningly-sweet syrup stuck to my lips.
It took me a few moments to realize what had happened.