ll-trodden school yard. This we all knew from
experience.
We undressed and charged pell-mell into the sea. Only our form-master
was left on the beach. He stood there leaning on his crutches in his
immaculate white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and waited.
There had been a storm the day before and I was afraid the water would
be hazy but it was just as clear and still as before.
Reaching the spot first, I dived to the bottom and saw nothing. This
didn't worry me much because I might not have got my bearings quite right. I
plunged again, and again saw nothing. All round me the whole form was
snorting, squealing and splashing. Most of them were simply playing about,
but some must have been diving to the bottom because they brought up
handfuls of sand and threw them at each other. No one reported sighting any
stone. I swam over to the buoy to see whether it had come adrift, but it was
still firmly anchored in its place.
Soon the P.T. instructor appeared on the scene. He had been slightly
delayed by the need to put on bathing trunks.
"Well, where's the statue?" he asked, puffing as if the water was too
hot for him.
"It should be here," I said, pointing.
He took a deep breath and, executing a powerful somersault, shot into
the depths like a torpedo. He could certainly swim and dive, you had to give
him that. He stayed under for a long time and at last came up, as if
propelled by an underwater explosion.
"You've made the bottom all muddy," he said, snorting loudly and
shaking his head. "Now then, you young skeletons, off you go from here!" he
bawled and, striking the water with the flat of his hand, sent a great jet
of water at the other boys.
"You're not making this up, are you?" he asked me severely, still
puffing and blowing as if the water was too hot for him.
"Do you think I'm crazy?" I said.
"How should I know?" he replied, surveying the surface of the water as
though seeking a suitable hole to dive through. At last he found one and,
having taken a deep breath, plunged again.
This time he reappeared with a chunk of rusty iron from the pile.
"Is this it?" he asked, eyes bulging from the strain.
"Do you think I'm crazy?" I said. "I saw a stone slab with people on
it."
"How should I know?" he repeated and, tossing away the chunk of iron,
made yet another plunge.
Left to myself, I began to think it was time to make for the beach, but
anticipation of the shame I should endure in front of my form-master was
stronger than fear. After all, I had seen it here. It couldn't have floated
away!
This time the P.T. instructor came to the surface, spluttering with
fright.
"What's happened?" I asked, frightened myself, thinking he had been
stung by a sea-horse or something.
"What happened! I forgot to take a deep breath--that's what," he
snorted, mimicking me wrathfully.
"So you forgot and I'm to blame," I said, offended by his tone.
The P.T. instructor was about to retort but before he could do so a
girl's voice said, "What are you looking for?"
I glanced round. A strange girl was swimming cautiously towards us.
"Yesterday," the P.T. instructor began crossly, but he soon melted when
he turned his head. "Well, an ancient Greek statue actually... Perhaps you'd
like to dive with us?"
"I don't know how to dive," she said with a silly smile, as though
inviting him to teach her. Her hair was tied up in a red scarf. The P.T.
instructor gazed at this scarf in silent admiration, as if trying to puzzle
out where she had got it.
"And where are you from yourself?" he asked irrelevantly, having
apparently established where the headscarf had come from.
"From Moscow. Why?" the girl replied, and glanced towards the shore,
striving to make up her mind whether it was dangerous to talk to strange men
at such a depth.
"You're in luck," the P.T. instructor said. "I'll teach you how to
dive."
This time she smiled more boldly. "No, I'd rather watch you."
"Well, if I don't come up again you can consider yourself responsible,"
he said, intercepting her smile with a smile of his own that he enlarged to
positively brazen dimensions.
He did a particularly impressive somersault and plummeted into the
depths. I realised that now he had started gallivanting he wouldn't have any
more time for my stone.
"Did you really see a statue?" the girl asked and, lifting her hand out
of the water, tucked a straying lock of hair under the scarf with her little
finger, which in her foolishness she took to be less wet than the others.
"Not a statue but a stella," I corrected her, watching her shameless
attempts to pretty herself up for the P.T. instructor.
"What is that?" she asked, calmly continuing her efforts.
I decided to take action before the P.T. instructor came up again.
"Don't interfere," I said. "Isn't the sea big enough for you? Go and
swim somewhere else."
"Don't be rude, boy," she said haughtily, as though speaking to me from
an upstairs window of her own house. How quick they were to sense which way
the wind was blowing! She knew the P.T. instructor would appear sooner or
later and take her side.
He surfaced noisily, like a dancer bursting into a ring of onlookers.
He had been a very long time under water but it had been a wasted dive,
because he had done it not for us but for her.
"Well, did you see it?" she asked him, as though she had been with him
all along, and even swam a little closer to him.
"They're just a lot of day-dreamers!" he said, when he had got his
breath back. This was his pet name for anyone he considered a weakling or
good-for-nothing. "Let's have a swim instead."
"All right, but not too far," she consented, perhaps just to spite me.
"What about the stone?" I said, mournfully reminding him of duty.
"You'll get such a clump in a minute you'll be lying under that stone
of yours," he explained calmly, and they swam away, his dark head with its
broad sunburnt neck bobbing beside her red kerchief.
I looked at the beach. Many of the other boys were already lying on the
sand, warming themselves. Our form-master was still there, leaning on his
crutches, waiting for me to find the stone. Had I not seen my friend only
the day before, I would have decided the whole thing had been just a dream.
I dived another ten times or so, combing the bottom all the way from
the pile to the buoy. But the wretched stone had vanished. Meanwhile our
form-master had called me several times but as I could not hear him very
well I pretended not to have heard him at all. I felt too ashamed to come
out of the water. I didn't know what I should say to him.
I was very tired, cold and had swallowed a lot of sea-water. It was
becoming harder and harder to dive and I no longer went right to the bottom
but merely ducked below the surface to avoid being seen. Many of the other
boys had dressed by now and some had gone home, but my form-master still
stood there waiting.
The P.T. instructor and the girl had gone ashore. He had carried his
clothes over to her place and they were sitting together, talking and
throwing pebbles into the sea.
I was hoping they would all go away soon and let me get out of the
water. But my form-master was still there, so I went on diving.
The P.T. instructor had now tied the girl's scarf round his own head.
While I was wondering why he had done this, he suddenly did a hand-stand and
she started timing him with his watch. He stood on his hands for a long time
and actually talked to her in this position, which she, of course, found
very amusing.
I admired him mournfully for a moment, and just then my form-master
shouted to me very loudly and startled me into looking at him. Our eyes met
and now there was nothing I could do but swim ashore.
"You must be frozen," he shouted, when I swam nearer.
"You don't believe me, do you?" I said through chattering teeth, and
crawled out of the water.
"Why shouldn't I believe you?" he said severely, leaning forward and
gripping his crutches tightly with his gladiator's hands. "But you've been
bathing far too long. Lie down at once!"
"There was a boy with me," I said in the whining voice of the failure.
"I'll point him out to you tomorrow."
"Lie down!" he commanded and took a step towards me. But I stood my
ground because I felt it would be hard enough for me to argue with them
standing, let alone lying down.
"Perhaps that boy has pulled it out already?" one of our lads asked.
That was a tempting suggestion. I looked at my form-master and realised from
his glance that he was expecting only the truth, and that what I was going
to say would be the truth, and so I just couldn't lie. I was too proud of
the trust he had placed in me.
"No," I said, regretting, as always in such cases, that I was not
lying, "I saw him yesterday and he would have told me."
"Perhaps a fish found it and carried it away," the same lad added,
hopping about with his head on one side to get the water out of his ear.
That was the first jibe and I knew there were more to come, but our
form-master put a stop to all that with a glance, and said, "If I didn't
believe you I should never have come here in the first place." He looked
thoughtfully at the sea and added, "It must have been dragged down into the
sand or carried away by the storm."
But fifteen years later the stella was found, not very far from the
spot where I had seen it. And the person who found it, incidentally, was my
friend's brother. So I was in on that too.
The experts say it is a rare and valuable work of art--a stella with a
gentle and sorrowful bas-relief that had once marked a grave.
I remember our form-master with affection and pride, his thick curly
hair and fine aquiline features, the face of a Greek god, a god with
crippled legs.
Our seas have no tides, but the land of childhood is like a beach, wet
and mysterious after the tide has gone out, where one may find the most
unexpected things.
I was always out there searching and perhaps it made me a little
absent-minded. Later on, when I grew up, that is, when I had something to
lose, I realised that all the lucky finds of childhood are the secret loans
granted to us by fate, which afterwards, as adults, we must redeem. And
justly so.
And another thing I came to understand was that everything that is lost
may be found--even love, even youth. The one thing that can never be found
again is a lost conscience.
But even that is not so sad a thought as it may appear if one remembers
that it cannot be lost simply through absent-mindedness.
--------
The cock
As a boy I was much disliked by all farmyard cocks. I don't remember
what started it, but if a warlike cock appeared in the neighbourhood there
was bound to be bloodshed.
One summer I was staying with my relatives in one of the mountain
villages of Abkhazia. The whole family--the mother, two grown-up daughters,
two grown-up sons-- went off to work early in the morning to weed maize or
pick tobacco. I was left behind in the house alone. My duties were pleasant
and easy to perform. I had to feed the goats (one good bundle of rustling
hazelnut branches), draw fresh water from the stream for the midday break
and in general keep an eye on the house. There was nothing special to keep
an eye on, but now and then I had to give a shout to make the hawks feel
there was a man in the vicinity and refrain from attacking our chickens. In
return for this I, as a representative of the feeble urban branch of the
family, was allowed to suck a pair of fresh eggs straight from the nest,
which I did both gladly and conscientiously.
Fixed along the outside wall of the kitchen there were some baskets in
which the hens laid their eggs. How they knew they were supposed to lay them
there was always a mystery to me. I would stand on tip-toe and grope about
until I found an egg. Feeling simultaneously like a successful pearl diver
and the thief of Baghdad, I would break the top by tapping it on the wall
and suck the egg dry at once. Somewhere nearby the hens would be clucking
mournfully. Life seemed significant and full of wonder. The air was healthy,
the food was healthy, and I swelled with juice like a pumpkin on a
well-manured allotment.
In the house I found two books: Mayne Reid's The Headless Horseman and
The Tragedies and Comedies of William Shakespeare. The first book swept me
off my feet. The very names of the characters were music to my ears: Maurice
the Mustanger, Louise Pointdexter, Captain Cassius Calhoun, El Coyote, and
the magnificent Doña Isidora Covarubio de los Llanos.
"'My pistol is at your head! I have one shot left--an apology, or you
die!'...
"'It's the mirage!' the Captain exclaimed with the addition of an oath
to give vent to his chagrin."
I read that book from beginning to end, then from the end to the
beginning, and skipped through it twice.
Shakespeare's tragedies seemed to me muddled and pointless. On the
other hand, the comedies fully justified the author's efforts at
composition. I realised that it was not the jesters who depended on the
royal courts but the royal courts that depended on the jesters.
The house we lived in stood on a hill and the winds blew round it and
through it twenty-four hours a day. It was as dry and sturdy as a veteran
mountaineer.
The eaves of the small veranda were tufted with swallows' nests. The
swallows dived swiftly and accurately into the veranda and hovered with
fluttering wings at a nest, where their greedy, vociferous young waited
open-beaked, almost falling out in their eagerness. Their gluttony was
matched only by the tireless energy of their parents. Sometimes having fed
its young, the father would hang for a few moments leaning back from the
edge of the nest, its arrow-shaped body motionless and only the head turning
warily this way and that. One more instant and it would drop like a stone,
then deftly level out and soar away from the veranda.
The chickens foraged peacefully in the yard, the sparrows and chicks
twittered. But the demons of rebellion were not slumbering. Despite my
preventive shouts, a hawk came over nearly every day. In a diving or
low-level attack, it would snatch up a chicken and with mighty sweeps of its
burdened wings make off in the direction of the forest. It was a
breath-taking sight and I would sometimes let it get away on purpose and
shout later just to soothe my conscience. The captured chicken hung in an
attitude of terror and foolish submission. If I made enough noise in time,
the hawk would either miss its prey or drop it in flight. In such cases we
would find the chicken somewhere in the bushes, glassy-eyed and paralysed
with fright.
"She's a goner," one of my cousins would say, cheerfully chopping off
its head and marching away to the kitchen with the carcass.
The chief of this barnyard kingdom was a huge red-feathered cock, rich
in plumage and cunning as an Oriental despot. Within a few days of my
arrival it became obvious that he hated me and was only looking for a
pretext to come openly to blows. Perhaps he had noticed that I was eating a
lot of eggs and this offended his male vanity? Or was he infuriated by my
half-heartedness during the hawk attacks? I think both these things had
their effect on him but his chief grudge was that someone was challenging
his power over the hens. Like any other despot, this he would not tolerate.
I realised that dual power could not last long and, in preparation for
the forthcoming battle, kept him under close observation.
No one could deny the cock his share of personal bravery. During the
hawk attacks, when the hens and chickens would flutter clucking and
squawking in all directions, he alone would remain in the yard and, gobbling
fiercely, try to restore order in his timid harem. He would even take a few
resolute steps in the direction of the swooping foe, but since nothing that
runs can overtake that which flies, this made an impression of mere bravado.
Usually he would forage in the yard or the kitchen garden accompanied
by two or three of his favourite hens but without losing sight of the
others. Now and then he would crane his neck and look up at the sky in
search of danger.
As soon as the shadow of a gliding hawk passed over the yard or the
cawing of a crow was heard, he would throw up his head belligerently and
signal his charges to be on the alert. The hens would listen in a scared
fashion and sometimes scuttle away for cover. More often than not it was a
false alarm, but by keeping his numerous mistresses in a state of nervous
tension he crushed their will and achieved complete submission.
As he scratched the ground with his horny claws he would sometimes
discover a delicate morsel and summon the hens with loud cries to join in
the feast.
While the hen that got there first was pecking his find, he would
circle round her a few times, dragging his wing exuberantly and apparently
choking with delight. This operation usually ended in rape. The hen would
shake herself bemusedly, trying to recover her senses and grasp what had
happened, while he looked round in victorious satisfaction.
If the wrong hen ran up in response to his call, he would guard his
find or drive her away while continuing to summon his new beloved with loud
grunting noises. His favourite was a neat white hen, as slim as a pullet.
She would approach him cautiously, stretch out her neck, cleverly scoop up
the morsel and run away as hard as she could, showing no signs of gratitude
whatever.
He would pound after her humiliatedly, trying to keep up appearances
though well aware of the indignity of his position. Usually he failed to
catch her and would eventually come to a halt, breathing heavily and trying
to look at me as though nothing had happened and his little trot had been
entirely for his own pleasure.
Actually the invitations to a feast were quite often sheer deception.
He had nothing worth eating and the hens knew it, but they were betrayed by
their eternal feminine curiosity.
As the days went by he grew more and more insolent. If I happened to be
crossing the yard he would run after me for a short distance just to test my
courage. Despite the shivers going down my spine I would nevertheless stop
and wait to see what would follow. He would stop, too, and wait. But the
storm was bound to break and break it did.
One day, when I was eating in the kitchen, he marched in and planted
himself in the doorway. I threw him a few pieces of hominy but to no avail.
He pecked up my offering but I could see he had no intention of making
peace.
There was nothing for it. I brandished a half-burnt log at him but he
merely gave a little jump, stuck out his neck like a gander and stared at me
with hate-filled eyes. Then I threw the log. It fell beside him. He jumped
even higher and flung himself at me, belching a stream of barnyard abuse. A
flaming red ball of hate came flying towards me. I managed to shield myself
with a stool. He flew straight into it and collapsed on the floor like a
slain dragon. While he was getting up, his wings beat on the earthen floor,
raising spurts of dust and chilling my legs with the wind of battle.
I managed to change my position and retreat towards the door,
protecting myself with the stool like a Roman legionary with his shield.
As I was crossing the yard he charged several times. Whenever he came
at me I felt as if he was going to peck my eyes out. I made good use of the
stool and he bounced off it regularly on to the ground. My hands were
scratched and bleeding and the heavy stool was becoming ever harder to hold.
But it was my only means of protection.
One more attack. With a mighty sweep of his wings the cock flew up and,
instead of colliding with my shield unexpectedly perched on top of it.
I threw the stool down and in a few bounds reached the veranda, and
from there darted into the room slamming the door behind me.
My chest was humming like a telegraph pole and my hands were streaming
with blood. I stood and listened. I was sure that the wretched cock was
lurking at the door. And so he was. After a while he moved away a little and
began to march up and down the veranda, his iron claws clacking loudly on
the floor. He was calling me out to do battle but I preferred to lie low in
my stronghold. At length he grew tired of waiting and, perched on the
railing, gave vent to a victorious cock-a-doodle-doo.
When my cousins learnt of my affray with the cock, they started holding
daily tournaments. Neither of us gained any decisive advantage and we all
went about with scratches and bruises.
The fleshy, tomato-like comb of my opponent bore several marks of the
stick and his glorious fountain of a tail showed signs of drying up, but far
from losing any of his self-assurance he had become all the more insolent.
He had acquired an annoying habit of crowing from a perch on the rail
of the veranda, just under the window of the room where I slept. Evidently
he regarded the veranda as occupied territory.
Our battles were held in all kinds of places, in the yard, in the
kitchen garden, in the orchard. If I climbed a tree for figs or for apples,
he would stand and wait for me patiently beneath.
To cure him of some of his arrogance I resorted to various stratagems.
I started treating the hens to extra food. He would fly into a rage when I
called them but they treacherously deserted him all the same. Persuasion was
useless. Here, as in any other field, abstract propaganda was easily
deflated by the reality of profit. The handfuls of maize that I tossed out
of the window conquered the tribal loyalty and family traditions of the
valourous egg-layers. In the end the pasha himself would appear. He would
reproach them indignantly but they, merely pretending to be ashamed of their
weakness, went on pecking up the maize.
One day, when my aunt and her sons were working in the kitchen garden,
we had another encounter. By this time I was an experienced and cold-blooded
warrior. I found a forked stick and, using it like a trident, after a few
unsuccessful attempts pinned the cock to the ground. His powerful body
writhed frantically and its vibrations came up the stick like an electric
current.
I was inspired by the madness of the brave. Without letting go of the
stick or releasing its pressure, I bent down and, seizing my chance, pounced
on the cock like a goal-keeper on a ball and managed to seize him by the
throat. He writhed vigourously and dealt me such a blow on the head with his
wing that I went deaf in one ear. Fear reinforced my courage. I squeezed his
throat even tighter. Hard and sinewy, it jerked and twisted in my hand and I
felt as if I were holding a snake. With the other hand I grasped his legs.
His long claws worked desperately to reach my body and fasten on to some
part of it.
But the trick was done. I straightened up and the cock hung suspended
by his feet, emitting stifled squawks.
All this time my cousins and aunt had been roaring with laughter as
they watched us from behind the fence. So much the better! Great waves of
joy flowed through me. In a very short time, however, I felt rather
confused. My vanquished opponent showed no signs of giving in. He was
throbbing with a furious desire for revenge. If I let him go, he would come
at me again, and yet I couldn't go on holding him like this forever.
"Throw him over the fence," my aunt advised.
I went up to the fence and tossed him over with leaden arms.
Curse it all! He, of course, did not fly over the fence but perched on
it, spreading his massive wings. The next moment he flung himself at me.
This was too much. I made a wild dash for safety and from my breast rose the
ancient cry for help of all fleeing children:
"Mummy! "
One must be very foolish or very brave to turn one's back on an enemy.
In my case it was certainly not bravery, and I paid the price for it.
He caught me several times while I was running till at last I tripped
and fell. He sprang on top of me, he rolled on me, he gurgled with
bloodthirsty glee. He might quite easily have pecked through my spine if my
cousin had not run up and knocked him off into the bushes with his hoe. We
decided that this had killed him, but in the evening the cock came out of
the bushes, subdued and saddened.
As she bathed my wounds, my aunt said, "It doesn't look as if you two
will ever get on together. We'll roast him tomorrow."
The next day my cousin and I set about catching the cock. The poor
fellow sensed that fate had turned against him. He fled from us with the
speed of an ostrich. He flew into the kitchen garden, he hid in the bushes.
Finally he flapped into the cellar, and there we caught him. He looked
persecuted and his eyes were full of mournful reproach. He seemed to be
saying to me, "Yes, we were foes, you and I. But it was an honourable war,
between men. I never expected such treachery from you." I felt strangely
upset and turned away. A few minutes later my cousin lopped off his head.
The cock's body jerked and writhed, the wings flapped and folded as if to
cover the gushing throat. Life would be safer now but all the fun had gone
out of it
Still, he made us a fine dinner, and the spicy nut sauce that went with
it diluted the pangs of my unexpected sorrow.
Now I realise that he was really a splendid fighting cock, but born too
late. The days of cock fighting have long since passed, and fighting the
human race is a lost cause from the start.
--------
The thirteenth labour of Hercules
Nearly all the mathematicians I have ever known have been untidy, slack
and rather brilliant individuals. So the saying about the perfection of
Pythagoras's pants is probably not absolutely correct.
Pythagoras's pants may have been perfect but his disciples seem to have
forgotten the fact and pay little attention to their own appearance.
Yet, there was one teacher of mathematics at our school who differed
from all others. He was neither slack nor untidy. I don't know whether he
was brilliant or not, and that is now rather difficult to establish. I think
he probably was.
His name was Kharlampy Diogenovich. So, like Pythagoras, he was of
Greek origin. He appeared in our form at the beginning of a school year. We
had never heard of him before and had never suspected that such
mathematicians could exist.
He immediately established the rule of exemplary silence in our form.
The silence was so terrifying that our headmaster would sometimes throw open
the form-room door in alarm because he was not sure whether we were at our
desks or had all run away to the sports ground.
The sports ground bordered on the school yard and at all times,
particularly during important competitions, interfered with the pedagogical
process. Our headmaster had actually written a letter requesting that it
should be moved elsewhere. He maintained that the sports ground upset his
pupils. In fact, we were upset not by the sports ground but by the
groundsman, Uncle Vasya, who never failed to recognise us, even without our
books, and chased us out of his domain with a wrathful zeal that showed no
sign of waning with the years.
Luckily, no one listened to our headmaster and the sports ground stayed
where it was, except that the wooden fence was replaced by a brick wall. So
even those who used to watch events through the chinks in the fence now had
to climb the wall.
Nevertheless, our headmaster had no reason to be afraid of our
absenting ourselves from a mathematics lesson. This was unthinkable. It
would have been just as bad as going up to the headmaster between lessons
and silently snatching off his hat, although everyone was utterly fed up
with that hat. He went about in it all the year round, winter and summer
always the same soft felt hat, evergreen like a magnolia. And he was always
afraid of something.
To the uninitiated it might have appeared that what he feared most was
the commission of the Urban Department of Public Education, but in fact
there was no one he feared more than our director of studies, a demon of a
woman about whom I shall one day write a poem in Byronic vein. At the
moment, however, I have a different story to tell.
Of course, we could never have escaped from a mathematics lesson. If we
ever managed to miss a lesson, it was usually singing.
As soon as our Kharlampy Diogenovich entered the room, the whole form
would fall silent and remain so till the end of the lesson. True, he
sometimes made us laugh, but this was not spontaneous laughter; it was
amusement master-minded from above by the teacher himself. Far from
destroying discipline, it actually ministered to it, just as a converse
proposition assists proof in geometry.
This is how it worked. Let us suppose that a pupil was late for a
lesson and arrived, say, about half a second after the bell had rung, when
Kharlampy Diogenovich would be on the point of entering the room himself.
The wretched pupil would be wishing he could fall through the floor, and
would have done so if the teachers' common room had not been underneath.
Some teachers paid no attention to such a minor offence, others would
flare up and give you a reprimand on the spot; but not Kharlampy
Diogenovich. In such cases he would halt in the doorway, shift his register
from one hand to the other and with a gesture full of respect for his pupil
motion him towards the door.
The pupil would hesitate and his embarrassed face would express a
fervent desire to somehow creep in behind his teacher. Kharlampy
Diogenovich's face, on the other hand, would effuse a joyous hospitality
moderated only by politeness and an understanding of the peculiar demands of
the situation. He would make it felt that the mere arrival of such a pupil
was a delightful occasion for the whole form and himself personally, that
none of us had been expecting him but now that he was here no one would dare
to reproach him for being a mere fraction of a second late, least of all he,
a humble schoolmaster, who would naturally enter the form-room behind such a
splendid pupil and himself close the door after him to show that we were not
going to let our dear guest out again in a hurry.
The whole thing would last only a few seconds, at the end of which the
pupil having edged awkwardly through the door, would stumble on towards his
desk.
Kharlampy Diogenovich would watch his progress and make some splendid
comment. For example, "The Prince of Wales."
The form would roar with laughter. Though we had no idea who the Prince
of Wales was, we realised that he could not possibly appear in our form. For
one thing there would be no point in it because princes were mainly engaged
in chasing the deer. And if this particular prince had got tired of chasing
his deer and felt like visiting a school, they would be sure to take him to
School No. 1, near the power station, because it was a model school. At any
rate, if he had insisted on coming to ours, we should have been warned long
beforehand and thoroughly briefed for his arrival.
This was why we laughed, realising that our pupil could not possibly be
a prince, and certainly not any Prince of Wales.
But the moment Kharlampy Diogenovich sat down at his desk the form
would fall silent and the lesson would begin.
A shortish man with a large head, neatly dressed and carefully shaved,
he controlled his form with calm authority. Besides the form register he
kept a notebook in which he made notes after testing a boy's knowledge. I
cannot remember his ever raising his voice at anyone or urging him to work
harder or threatening to send for his parents. He had no use for such
methods.
During a test he never stalked about between the desks peering inside
or looking round vigilantly at the slightest rustle as other teachers did.
Nothing of the kind. He would sit at his own desk, reading calmly or
fingering a string of yellow beads, which looked like cat's eyes.
Cribbing during his lessons was almost useless because he never failed
to recognise something that had been copied and would hold it up to
ridicule. So we cribbed only in cases of extreme emergency, when there was
no other way out
Sometimes during a test he would relinquish his beads or book for a
moment and say:
"Sakharov, would you mind going and sitting next to Avdeyenko, please."
Sakharov would stand up and stare questioningly at Kharlampy
Diogenovich, unable to understand why he, one of the best boys in the form,
should be relegated to a place next to Avdeyenko, who was an absolute dud.
"Take pity on Avdeyenko. I'm afraid he will break his neck."
Avdeyenko would gaze stolidly at Kharlampy Diogenovich as though--or
perhaps because--he could not understand why he was in danger of breaking
his neck.
"Avdeyenko thinks he is a swan," Kharlampy Diogenovich would explain.
"A black swan," he would add a moment later, alluding perhaps to Avdeyenko's
sullen sunburnt face. "Carry on, Sakharov."
Sakharov would sit down again.
"You may carry on too," Kharlampy Diogenovich would tell Avdeyenko, but
with a perceptible change of voice which now carried a carefully measured
dose of sarcasm. "If you don't break your neck of course, Black Swan!" he
would conclude firmly, his final phrase somehow expressing the valiant hope
that Avdeyenko would acquire the ability to work on his own.
Shurik Avdeyenko would pore furiously over his exercise book,
demonstrating a great effort of mind and will directed to this end.
Kharlampy Diogenovich's chief weapon was his knack of ridicule. The
pupil who defied the school rules was not a slacker, not a dud, not a
hooligan, he was simply funny. Or rather, not simply funny--many of us would
not have minded that at all--but ridiculous. Ridiculous without realising
that he was ridiculous, or being the last to guess it.
When a teacher makes you appear ridiculous, you immediately lose the
traditional support of the rest of the form and they all laugh at you. It is
all against one. If one person laughs at you, you can usually deal with the
situation somehow. But you cannot turn the laugh against the whole form.
Once in this ridiculous position, you will go to any length to prove
yourself a little less ridiculous than you inevitably appear.
Kharlampy Diogenovich had no favourites. We were all potential victims
of his wit and I, of course, was no exception.
That day I had not solved the problem we had been set for homework. It
had been about an artillery shell flying somewhere at a certain speed for a
certain time. We had to work out how many kilometres it would have flown if
it had been travelling at a different speed and, perhaps, even in a
different direction.
As if one and the same shell could possibly fly at different speeds. It
was a muddled, stupid kind of problem and my answer just wouldn't come out
right. Incidentally, the answers given at the back of some of the textbooks
in those years--it must have been sabotage--were incorrect. This did not
happen very often, of course, because by that time nearly all the saboteurs
had been caught. But apparently there were one or two still at large.
However, I was still troubled with doubts. Saboteurs may be saboteurs,
but it's no good relying on them. So, the next day I arrived at school a
whole hour before lessons started. We were in the second shift. The keenest
footballers were in the yard already. I asked one of them about the problem
and it turned out that he had not been able to get it right either. That set
my conscience completely at rest. We split up into two teams and played till
the bell rang for school.
In we went. Almost before I had got my breath back, I asked our top boy
Sakharov,
"Well, how about that problem?"
"Not so bad," he said. "I solved it." He gave a brief, meaningful nod,
indicating that there had been certain difficulties but he had surmounted
them.
"How could you? The answer in the back is wrong."
"No, it isn't," he said, nodding again, this time with such an annoying
expression of assurance on his clever, conscientious face that I at once
began to hate him for his good fortune. I was about to express a few more
doubts but he turned away, thus depriving me of the falling man's last
consolation--grabbing at air.
Apparently, at that moment Kharlampy Diogenovich had appeared in the
doorway but I had failed to notice him and continued my gesticulations,
although he was only a few feet away from me. At length I realised what had
happened closed my textbook in frightened haste and froze to my desk.
Kharlampy Diogenovich took his place by the blackboard.
I cursed myself for at first agreeing with the footballer that the
solution in the book was wrong, and afterwards agreeing with the top boy
that it was right. Now Kharlampy Diogenovich would be sure to notice my
anxiety and call me to the board first.
Next to me sat a quiet and meek member of the form whose name was Adolf
Komarov. Nowadays he called himself Alik Komarov and even wrote Alik on his
copybooks because the war had started and he did not want to be nicknamed
Hitler. It made no difference. Everyone remembered his proper name and
reminded him of it whenever they had the chance.
I liked talking in class and he liked keeping quiet. We had been put
together to exert a good influence on each other but it hadn't worked.
Neither of us had changed.
Now I noticed that even he had solved the problem. He was sitting over
his open notebook, neat, thin and quiet, and his hands lying on the blotting
paper before him made him seem even quieter. He had this stupid habit of
keeping his hands on his blotter, of which I just could not break him.
"Hitler kaput," I whispered in his direction. He made no reply, of
course, but at least he took his hands off his blotter, which was some
relief.
Meanwhile Kharlampy Diogenovich greeted the form and sat down in his
chair. He flicked back the sleeves of his jacket, slowly wiped his nose and
mouth with a handkerchief, which he examined for some reason, then put away
in his pocket. After that he removed his watch and began to thumb through
the pages of the register. It looked as if the executioner was speeding up
his preparations.
At last, however, he finished marking those absent and looked round the
room, selecting his victim. I held my breath.
"Who's the monitor?" he asked unexpectedly. I sighed with relief,
thanking him for the respite.
There turned out to be no monitor for that day and Kharlampy
Diogenovich told our form captain to wipe the board. While he was doing so,
Kharlampy Diogenovich lectured him on the duties of a form captain when
there was no monitor. I began to hope he would tell us some story connected
with the subject, or one of Aesop's fables, or something out of Greek
mythology. But he refrained from any further illustration of his lecture
because the scrape of the dry rag on the blackboard was distracting and he
was anxious for the form captain to finish his irritating task. At last the
form captain returned to his place.
We waited in suspense. But at that moment the door opened and a woman
doctor and a