lled out a scrap of paper. This
was what was  written on it: "The bearer is an  assistant bookkeeper ... and
research worker."
     The nettle-man had no identification papers  at all. He  himself seemed
dismayed about it.
     "Pack  up your junk and get  going, both of you, before I  pull you in.
There's too many of you toadstools popping up all over!" Chubarkov said.
     "You're mistaken! We're just travellers  on our  way. In fact, we don't
even  have many  personal property.  You can search us  if you want to," the
toadstool-man said.
     "I've no time to waste on you. You're lucky I'm in a hurry, I'll bet it
o'clock by now."
     "Cu-ckoo,  cu-ckoo,  cu-ckoo!" went the cuckoo clock in the nettle-mans
bag.


        PUTTING THE LID ON BRESHKA STREET

     Pokrovsk had changed during our absence.  The market was gone, and some
former rich men were sweeping the  market square. The owner of the bone-meal
factory  was one  of them. We  crossed off  the  second item on our  list of
injustices. A  speakers' platform had been  erected in the  place where  the
Earth curved, and  a machine-gun  now protruded from the window of  the  big
house on  Breshka Street  where  an overweight  fox-terrier  used to bark at
passers-by. A red flag hung out over the window.
     We saw the nettle-man again in Pokrovsk. He was leading a gang of k mob
of deserters had gathered outside  a  wine shop early that morning, de  that
they  be  given  wine. The big  plate-glass  windows  silently reflected the
crowd. Then the nettle-man picked up a metal rod and whacked the window. The
shattered glass said "zing".
     An hour later Breshka Street was reeling drunk. Women carried off pails
of  Port wine on yokes. There were  puddles  of wine  on the  road, and wine
flowed gutters. Men lay down on the ground  and drank straight from them. Sc
had their arms around the deserters. Oranges that had been allocate orphans'
home  were rolling down  Breshka  Street. Pigs slobbered over the oranges. A
huge fat  sow  was splashing in a  puddle  of Madeira.  A  spotted  hog  was
miserable on the corner, throwing up champagne.
     Commissar Chubarkov came galloping up in his gig. He jumped down before
it had drawn to a stop.
     "In  the  name  of revolutionary  order,  I  have to  ask  you  all  to
please..." the commissar was saying.
     "Where were you before?" the schoolboys demanded.
     Chubarkov coaxed them, pleaded with them, demanded and warned them.
     "Everything  belongs  to everybody!" the drunken mob shouted, aping the
nettle-man's words. "We shed our blood, down to the very last drop...."
     That was when the machine-gun  in the  window of the big house began to
chatter,  sending  a  first round over  the drunken heads. The  cowardly mob
vanished into thin air.
     Oska  and  I  recalled  playing  Schwambrania  on  the  windowsill  and
making-believe we were shooting down Breshka Street, but at that time it was
invincible.
     Half an  hour  later some  Red Army men dragged a drowned man from  the
cellar of the shop. He had probably fallen down and drowned in wine.
     Chubarkov went over to the body, had a look and shook  his head when he
recognized it. "Cuckoo," the Commissar said.


        THE CODE WORDS OF SCHWAMBRANIA

     Stepan  Atlantis sent me  the  following  note while we  were  away  in
Kvasnikovka  for the  summer:  "Be at  school on  the  1st. The CWS will  be
opened. That sure will be something! S. Gavrya."
     It took  me some time to figure out what "the CWS" stood for. Suddenly,
it  dawned  on me.  It  meant "The Code Words of Schwambrania".  Someone had
discovered the secret of  the seashell grotto, had  let out  our Black Queen
and found the note. Stepan knew all about Schwambrania now, and he was going
to tell everyone else about  it, too. Oska and I were stunned. Harsh reality
had come crashing into our cosy little world.
     However, when we returned home after the summer we saw that the seal on
the gate to the grotto had not been  touched. The Black Queen, the keeper of
the  secret,  was still serving  her sentence inside, deep within the cobweb
gloom.  But how had Stepan learned about Schwambrania? I decided to have  it
out with him.  He was a great one for imagining and make-believe himself and
had even earned his nickname because of his dream of discovering Atlantis. I
decided  that Schwambrania  and Atlantis might become friendly nations after
all.
     Stepan was  very happy to see me. He  had grown taller  over the summer
and somehow seemed older.
     "Still alive and kicking?" he said.
     "As you see. How'd you find out about the CWS?" I asked hesitantly.
     "What's so strange about that? All the fellows know about it."
     "Thanks for blabbering it to everybody.  I thought  you were my friend.
That's  the  most important thing in my life."  I wanted to explain why this
was so and told Stepan all about the  volcanic  land,  saying I  thought the
Schwambranians and the people of Atlantis should be allies.
     Stepan listened  intently.  Then he sighed and put out  the sparks that
had  appeared in his  eyes.  "I don't think about Atlantis any more. I've no
use  for that  kind of make-believe  now. I've no time for  it.  There's the
revolution. All  those  secrets  were all right  for tsarist  times. But now
there's  too  much  to  be  done.  Still,  I  like what  you made  up  about
Schwambrania. But the CWS has nothing to do with it. That's  what we'll have
instead of the Boys School now. A Common Work School."


     THAT'S THAT!

     A red flag waved over the school building on the 1st of August. We were
all gathered in the yard  outside. It was a bright, sunny day. Kamyshov, our
new principal, came out on the porch to greet us.
     "Hello, doves! Congratulations on  your new status. You are  now pupils
of the Soviet Common Work School. Congratulations."
     We thanked him and congratulated him, too.
     "Now,  since  I've been  appointed  Commissar  of  Health,  I  want  to
introduce your  new, temporary principal, Comrade  Chubarkov.  He's also the
Military Commissar. I hope you'll get on."
     Chubarkov was not greeted with applause. He said, "Comrades! You're all
educated boys. Now you take me, for instance. I was an uneducated stevedore.
You've  all  got book-learning, but I  went to the school  of hard knocks. I
want to say a few words about your new school, and what the name stands for.
First of all, it's  school that all children can go to. That's for sure. And
why is it called a work school? Because it's for the children of all working
people, and you'll learn to  work well  here, both  mentally and physically.
That's  for  sure. And it's  a common school,  because  there  won't be  any
special schools  for the  rich and  the nobility  any more. All children are
equal now,  and they'll all get an equal chance to study. And so's this will
all  be  for  the good  of  the  revolution, I  ask  you,  in  the  name  of
revolutionary order, to attend school  regularly and to take  care of things
here, and then everything will be just dandy."
     "Where were you before?" Hefty and a couple  of the older boys shouted.
"Down with the Commissar! We want Kamyshov!"
     "In the name of revolutionary order, I'll have to ask you to accept the
Council's decision. Kamyshov has just been  transferred  to another job. And
that's  that. Before, only rich  people had the money to take care of  their
health. Now everybody's going to be healthy. It's a very important job,  and
all the more so since there's a lot of  typhus going  around now. And that's
that!"
     Comrade Chubarkov, Bertelyov, one of our  teachers, Forsunov, a  member
of the City Council,  Stepan Atlantis  and two senior boys were appointed to
the School  Council. Some  of the seniors hissed.  Then Chubarkov  said that
since women were now the complete equals of men, we would have girls in  our
classes. And that was that!


        A SENSITIVE MISSION

     The Boys and Girls schools were to merge. But then the classrooms would
be too  small. That was why the grades were divided into "A" and "B". We set
up a special committee to choose the girls we wanted to have in our class. I
was  the chairman and  Stepan was my  assistant. We  spent a  good half-hour
grooming ourselves in front  of  the cloakroom  mirror.  Every pleat was  in
place.  Hefty,  the  class  strong-man, had pulled  our  belts  as tight  as
possible, making our chests protrude mightily, though we were barely able to
breathe as a result. However, we bore the discomfort stoically. Stepan asked
someone to  spit on  his cowlick. There were a great many volunteers, but he
only let me do it.
     "Not too thick! And don't hawk."
     I did my best. Stepan smoothed down the cowlick.
     "You sure look like you could take anyone on!" Hefty said  as he looked
us over with  fatherly concern.  "Real chic! They'll all  fall in love  with
you. Be sure you pick the prettiest ones."
     We set  off for the  Girls School, escorted by an honour guard  of five
boys. School  was in  session there.  The  corridor was a haven of peace and
quiet.  Muted  rivers   and  lakes,  petals  and  stems,   conjugations  and
declensions seeped out from under the  classroom doors. Old desks were piled
up in a  far  corner  next to  a  brand-new piano, which  had probably  been
requisitioned from some wealthy home.
     "Let's take the music back, too," Stepan said.
     We had already found out that the fourth grade had been left to its own
resources, since the Russian teacher was ill. In order to occupy  the  girls
their school marm had told them to read aloud in turn. She was seated at the
lectern, embroidering a handkerchief. A plump girl was declaiming:

     "Who rides there, who gallops, engulfed by the gloom?"

     "We do," came a voice from the corridor.
     The classroom doors  burst open  and  a  weird  procession  rolled  in,
accompanied  by  a victorious rumbling. This  was  better  than the  wildest
Schwambranian dreams.
     Leading the way  like tanks were  two desks moving in single file. Each
had a flag stuck in the inkwell hole. Stepan and I had arrived on the desks.
The piano followed grandly in our wake with five boys pushing it.
     The  wheels screeched like stuck pigs. A list of the  boys of our class
was balanced on the music stand, our caps were hung on the candlesticks, and
the soft pedal had on a straw slipper someone had found in the yard.
     "Here we are!" Stepan said. "You're not having a lesson now anyway, are
you?"
     A stunned silence greeted us.
     "What is this!" the school marm shrieked. The sound was so loud it made
a sensitive string inside the piano vibrate for some time.
     "It's a peaceful deputation," I said and then played a popular waltz as
I stood at the keyboard.
     The  school marm stormed out of  the room. The girls finally awoke from
their stupor.
     "Most equal  girls!" I said, launching into my speech. "Most very equal
girls!" I repeated and proceeded still  more heatedly:  "I want  to tell you
about what I want to tell you."
     By now  all  the  girls were smiling. This  encouraged  me.  I  went on
briskly to say that now we would all be going to  the same school, girls and
boys  together, like brothers and sisters, like bread and butter, like bacon
and eggs, like Napoleon and Bonaparte, like Rimsky and Korsakov.
     "How'11 we sit, boys separately, or a boy and  a girl at each desk?"  a
tall, serious-looking girl asked. "I don't want to sit next to a boy."
     "The boys'll pull our braids," a fat girl said in  a deep voice.  "They
might even try to kiss us."
     Our deputation exhibited  great indignation.  I  played  "Storm on  the
Volga", banging away at the keys, and Stepan spat in disgust and said,
     "Kiss? Ugh! I'd rather eat a toad!"
     "Can  we play  staring games?"  the smallest girls  asked all together.
They had huge bows on the tops of their heads.
     "Hm." I pondered over this for a minute. "What do you say, Stepan?"
     "I'd say they can," he replied condescendingly.
     After several  other equally important details  had  been discussed and
the official, polite part was over, we  began, most impolitely, to pick  the
girls who we wanted as classmates.
     The girls, meanwhile, were busy prettying up.
     The first girl  whose name I  put down on my list was Taya Opilova, She
had a long golden braid.
     "I look terrible today. I hab a code (have a cold)," she said.
     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.


        CHOPSTICKS

     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".


        THE UNIFORMLESS JUNIORS

     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.


        THE STARING GAME

     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.


        NO TIME TO STUDY

     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.


        A SWELLHEAD

     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.


        RESPIRATION-34

     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.

        ATTENTION, CITIZENS!

     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.


        THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF A NEW BOY

     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.


        THE TEACHER IN A MASK

     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.


        THE WORLD IS A CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH

     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.


        A DECISIVE BATTLE

     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.


        E-MUET AND THE TROGLODYTES

     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.


        MAMMOTHS IN SCHWAMBRANIA

     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.


        A GREAT, UNIVERSAL RUCKUS

     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.


        "FIGHTING CONTINUES ON ALL FRONTS"

     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
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.


        OUR WANDERING SCHOOL

     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!"


        ALGEBRA ON THE FIRE-TOWER

     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 NIGHT BEFORE THE TEST

     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."


        THIS IS NOT THE OLD REGIME

     "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.


        A PROBLEM CONCERNING TRAVELLERS

     "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.


        THE RED DINNER-MISSERS

     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.


        THINGS LOOK BAD

     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.


        YES AND NO

     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.


        A DIFFERENT STARING GAME

     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.


        SUGAR AND TEA

     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 difficul