nurse appeared.
"Excuse me, is this 5A?" the doctor asked.
"No, it is not," Kharlampy Diogenovich replied with polite hostility,
seeing that some medical project was about to interfere with his lesson.
Although our form was nearly 5A, because it was 5B, he had answered as
firmly as if we had absolutely nothing in common. "Excuse me," the doctor
said again and, after lingering for a moment, withdrew and closed the door.
I knew they were going to inoculate us against typhus. Some of the
forms had been done already. Inoculations were never announced beforehand so
that no one could slip away or stay at home on the pretext of being ill.
I was not afraid of inoculations because I had had plenty, against
malaria, the nastiest of all.
And now the white-coated hope that had suddenly illuminated our form
had disappeared. I just could not let that happen.
"May I show them where 5A is?" I said, growing quite brazen in my fear.
There were two factors to justify the audacity of my proposal. My place
was near the door and I was often sent to the teachers' room for chalk and
other things of that kind. Besides, form 5A was situated in an annexe in the
school yard and the doctor might indeed get lost because she was permanently
attached to School No. 1 and rarely visited us.
"Yes, do," Kharlampy Diogenovich said, and raised his eyebrows
slightly.
Trying to conceal my joy, I shot out of the room.
I caught up the doctor and nurse while they were still in the corridor
on our floor.
"I'll show you where 5A is," I said, falling into step beside them.
The doctor smiled as if she was handing out sweets instead of
inoculations.
"Aren't you going to do us?" I asked.
"During the next lesson," the doctor said, still smiling.
"But we are going out to the museum for the next lesson," I said,
rather to my own surprise.
There had, in fact, been some talk of our making an organised visit to
the local museum to see the prehistoric remains on show there. But our
history mistress kept putting it off because the headmaster was afraid we
might not get there in an organised fashion.
Last year a boy in our form had stolen a dagger that had once belonged
to an Abkhazian feudal prince, because he wanted to run away to the front
with it. This had caused a great rumpus and the headmaster had decided that
it had all come about because the form had wandered down to the museum in a
crowd instead of marching there in double file.
In fact, that lad had worked everything out very carefully long
beforehand. Instead of taking the dagger at once, he had hidden it in the
thatch of an exhibit labelled Pre-revolutionary Poor Man's Hovel, and only
months later, when the fuss had died down, did he go there in a coat with a
slit in the lining and complete his theft.
"We won't let you," the doctor said cheerfully.
"But we're all going to assemble in the yard," I said, getting worried,
"and go on an organised visit to the museum."
"So it's an organised visit, is it?"
"Yes, it is," I said seriously, afraid that she, too, like our
headmaster, would doubt our ability to visit the museum in an organised
fashion.
"Well, Galochka, let's go back to 5B, just in case," the doctor said,
and stopped. I had always liked these nice clean women doctors in their
little white caps and white coats.
"But they told us to go to 5A first," that stubborn creature Galochka
protested, and looked at me severely. Anyone could see she was trying to
make herself out a grown-up.
I never gave her so much as a glance, just to show that nobody would
ever take her for one.
"What difference does it make," the doctor said, and clinched the
argument by turning round.
"So you can't wait to show us how brave you are?" she added.
"I'm a malaria sufferer," I said, dismissing the implication of
self-interest. "I've had thousands of injections."
"Well, lead on then, malaria sufferer," said the doctor, and we started
back.
Having made sure they were not going to change their minds, I ran on
ahead so as to cut out any connection between myself and their arrival.
When I entered the form-room, Shurik Avdeyenko was at the blackboard
and, although the solution to the problem was written out in three stages on
the blackboard in his beautiful handwriting, he could not explain it. He
stood there with an expression of sullen fury on his face, as though he had
known just how it went before but was now unable to recall the course of his
reasoning.
Don't worry, Shurik, I thought. You may not know it but I've saved you
already. Now I wanted to be kind and benevolent to everyone.
"Good work, Alik," I said as I took my place beside Komarov. "Fancy
solving such a difficult problem."
Alik was considered a good plodder. He was rarely reprimanded and even
more rarely praised. Now the tips of his ears blushed gratefully. He bent
over his exercise book once more and placed his hands neatly on the blotter.
Oh well, I suppose he just couldn't help it.
A few moments later the door opened and the doctor and that Galochka
kid entered the room. The doctor said the whole form had to be inoculated.
"If it must be done now," said Kharlampy Diogenovich, with a quick
glance in my direction, "how can I object? Go back to your place,
Avdeyenko," he added with a nod at Shurik.
Shurik put down the chalk and walked back to his desk, still pretending
to be engaged in a concentrated effort of recall.
A stir of excitement passed through the form but Kharlampy Diogenovich
raised his eyebrows and all was calm. He put his notepad away in his pocket,
closed the register, relinquished his place to the doctor and himself sat
down at one of the desks, looking sad and rather hurt.
The doctor and the girl opened their bags and started setting out on
the table bottles, jars and wickedly gleaming instruments.
"Well, who's the bravest boy in the form?" the doctor said, sucking
serum greedily into the syringe and holding it point upwards to prevent any
dripping out.
She spoke cheerfully but no one smiled. All eyes were on the needle.
"We'll have to call them out in alphabetical order," said Kharlampy
Diogenovich. "Everyone is a hero in this form."
He opened the register.
"Avdeyenko," he said, looking up.
The form laughed nervously, and even the doctor smiled, although she
had no idea what we were laughing at.
Avdeyenko went to the table, a tall, ungainly figure whose face clearly
revealed that he had not yet made up his mind whether it was better to get a
bad mark or be the first for inoculation.
He pulled up his shirt and stood with his back to the doctor, looking
even more ungainly and still uncertain which was better. When it was all
over and he had been inoculated, he looked just as unhappy, although he was
now envied by the whole form.
Alik Komarov grew more and more pale as his turn approached and,
although he kept his hands on the blotting paper in front of him, I could
see it was not helping at all.
I tried to cheer him up but it was no good. He grew paler and sterner
every minute, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on the doctor's needle.
"Turn your head away," I told him.
"I can't," he replied in an agonised whisper.
"It won't hurt much at first," I encouraged him. "The time it hurts
most is when the serum starts going in."
"I'm so thin," he whispered back, scarcely moving his white lips.
"It'll hurt me terribly."
"Don't worry," I said. "You'll be all right as long as it doesn't touch
the bone.",
"I'm nothing but bones," he whispered desperately. "It's sure to touch
one."
"Relax your muscles," I said, patting him on the shoulder. "Nothing
will touch the bone then."
"I haven't got any muscles," he replied dully, "and I'm anaemic."
"Thin people are never anaemic," I retorted strictly. "Malaria
sufferers are anaemic because malaria sucks their blood."
I suffered from chronic malaria and the doctors could do nothing about
it however much they treated me. I was rather proud of my incurable malaria.
By the time they called Alik's name, he was in a real state. He hardly
knew where he was going or what for.
He stood with his back to the doctor, white-faced and glassy-eyed and
when she made the injection he suddenly went pale as death, although it had
seemed impossible for him to get any paler. He turned so pale that his face
came out in freckles. None of us had thought he was freckled before and I
decided to keep the fact of his concealed freckles in mind. It might come in
useful one day, although I had no idea what for.
After the injection he nearly collapsed but the doctor held him up and
helped him to a chair. His eyes rolled back alarmingly and we thought he was
going to die.
"Ambulance!" I shouted. "I'll go and call the ambulance!"
Kharlampy Diogenovich looked at me wrathfully and the doctor deftly put
a bottle of smelling salts under his nose--not Kharlampy Diogenovich's, of
course, but Alik's.
At first he wouldn't open his eyes, then he suddenly jumped to his feet
and marched smartly back to his place, as though it certainly was not Alik
Komarov who had been just about to die.
"Didn't feel a thing," I said, when I had my injection, though I had
felt it quite distinctly.
"Well done, malaria sufferer," said the doctor.
Her assistant dabbed my back carelessly after the injection. I could
see she was still annoyed with me for not letting them go to 5A.
"Rub harder," I said. "The serum must be made to circulate."
She finished rubbing my back with an energy born of hatred. It was
pleasant to feel the cool cotton wool soaked in surgical spirit, and even
more pleasant to know that, even though she was angry with me, she still had
to rub my back.
At last the whole thing was over. The doctor and her Galochka packed
their bags and went on their way, leaving a pleasant smell of surgical
spirit and an unpleasant smell of serum in the room. The pupils sat at their
desks, fidgeting and cautiously feeling for the effects of the injection
with their shoulder blades and talking freely to each other as a reward for
the suffering they had just endured.
"Open the window," said Kharlampy Diogenovich, resuming his seat. He
wanted this spirit of hospital freedom to depart along with the smell of
medicine.
He took out his yellow beads and flicked them thoughtfully to and fro.
There was not much of the lesson left. He usually filled in such gaps by
telling us something instructive connected with the ancient Greeks.
"As we know from Greek mythology, Hercules had to perform twelve
labours," he said, and stopped. Click-click--as two beads slid from right to
left. "But a certain young man thought he would revise Greek mythology," he
added, and stopped again. Click-click.
That fellow had too big an idea of himself, I thought, realising that
no one was allowed to revise Greek mythology. Some other God-forsaken
mythology, perhaps, might be knocked into shape, but not Greek mythology
because it had all been revised from beginning to end already and there
couldn't possibly be any mistakes in it.
"He decided to perform the thirteenth labour of Hercules," Kharlampy
Diogenovich went on. "And to some extent he succeeded."
We realised at once by his voice what a false and futile labour this
had been, because if there had been any need for Hercules to perform
thirteen labours he would have performed them himself, but since he had
stopped at twelve it meant that twelve were enough and there was no need for
anyone to mess about making corrections.
"Hercules performed his labours like a hero. But this young man
performed his labour out of cowardice." Kharlampy Diogenovich paused
thoughtfully, then added, "In a moment we shall learn just what it was that
induced him to perform this labour."
Click. This time only one bead slid from right to left, driven by a
very sharp flip of the finger. It slid rather nastily somehow. Two beads
sliding together, as they had done before, would have been better than just
one, all by itself.
I caught the scent of danger in the air. It was the sound not of a bead
sliding but of a small trap closing in Kharlampy Diogenovich's hands.
"I have a feeling that I know already what it was," he said, and looked
at me.
Something in his glance made my heart thud heavily against my spine.
"Be so kind," he said, and beckoned me to the blackboard.
"Who? Me?" I asked, feeling as if my voice was coming from the pit of
my stomach.
"Yes, you, my fearless malaria sufferer," he said.
I shambled towards the board.
"Tell us how you solved the problem," he said calmly and--click,
click--two more beads went sliding from right to left. I was in his hands.
The form looked on and waited. They were all expecting me to come to
grief, and they wanted me to do so as slowly and interestingly as possible.
I squinted at the board from the corner of my eye, trying to trace the
thread of cause and effect between the stages of the problem that were
written there, but it was no use. Then with a great show of impatience I
began rubbing it all out, as though what Shurik had written was muddling me
and preventing me from concentrating. I was still hoping for the bell to
ring and save me from execution. But the bell did not ring and it was
impossible to go on cleaning the board forever. I put down the rag to avoid
looking ridiculous before I had to.
"We are listening," Kharlampy Diogenovich said, without looking at me.
"An artillery shell..." I said brightly amid the form's jubilant
silence, and broke off.
"Continue," Kharlampy Diogenovich said, after waiting politely for some
moments.
"An artillery shell..." I repeated stubbornly, hoping that the impetus
of these correct words would carry me on to more, similarly correct words.
But something held me on a firm tether that pulled tight as soon as the
words were out of my mouth.
I concentrated fiercely, trying to imagine the course of the problem,
and then plunged forward again to break the invisible tether.
"An artillery shell..." I repeated, quivering with horror and
revulsion.
A few restrained titters came from the form. I sensed that the crucial
moment had arrived and decided not to allow myself to become ridiculous on
any account; I would rather just get a bad mark.
"Have you swallowed this artillery shell?" Kharlampy Diogenovich asked
with good-natured curiosity.
He asked the question as naturally as if he had been inquiring whether
I had swallowed a plum stone.
"Yes," I said quickly, sensing a trap and deciding to foil his plans
with an unexpected answer.
"Then you'd better ask the military instructor to come and dispose of
it for you," said Kharlampy Diogenovich, but the form was already laughing.
Sakharov was laughing, and trying to go on looking like the top boy at
the same time. Even Shurik Avdeyenko, the gloomiest boy in our form, whom I
had saved from certain disaster at the blackboard, was laughing. And Komarov
was laughing, Komarov who now called himself Alik but was really Adolf, just
as he had always been.
As I looked at him it occurred to me that if we had not had a real
gingerhead in our form he would have passed as one because his hair was fair
and the freckles that he kept hidden, like his first name, had given
themselves away during the injection. But we did have a real gingerhead in
the form and Komarov's gingerness had passed unnoticed. And it also occurred
to me that if we had not pulled the number of our form off the form-room
door a few days ago, the doctor might never have called on us in the first
place and nothing would have happened. I began to have vague presentiments
of the connection that exists between things and events.
The bell droned funereally through the form's laughter. Kharlampy
Diogenovich put a mark against my name in the register and also made a note
about me in his notebook.
From then on I took my homework more seriously and never asked the
footballers about problems I couldn't solve. Each man to his trade.
Later in life I noticed that nearly everyone is afraid of appearing
ridiculous. Particularly women and poets. Perhaps they sometimes appear
ridiculous because they are too afraid of appearing so. On the other hand,
no one can make someone else look ridiculous as skillfully as a good poet or
a good woman.
Of course, it is not very wise to be too afraid of appearing
ridiculous, but it is much less wise not to be afraid of ridicule at all.
It seems to me that ancient Rome perished because its emperors in all
their marble magnificence failed to realise how ridiculous they were. If
they had got themselves some jesters in time (you must hear the truth, if
only from a fool), they might have lasted a little longer. But they just
went on hoping that the geese would save Rome, and then the Barbarians came
and destroyed Rome, its emperors and its geese.
Not that I have any regrets about that, of course. But I do want to
express my admiration and gratitude for Kharlampy Diogenovich's method. With
the aid of laughter he tempered our sly young hearts and taught us to regard
ourselves with a strong enough sense of humour.
--------
Forbidden fruit
In accordance with Moslem custom our family never ate pork. Our parents
ate none and strictly forbade us to eat any. Although another of Mahomet's
precepts--on the subject of alcoholic beverages--was violated, as I now
realise, quite unrestrainedly, no liberalism was allowed where pork was
concerned.
The ban engendered both an ardent desire and a frigid pride. I dreamed
of tasting pork. The smell of roast pork made me dizzy to the point of
collapse. I would stand for hours outside shop windows, staring at the
glistening sausages with their wrinkled sides and spotted ends fancied
myself tearing off the skin and plunging my teeth into the succulent, tender
meat. I imagined the taste of sausage so clearly that, when I did eventually
try it, I was quite surprised to discover how accurately fancy had informed
me.
Of course, there had been opportunities of tasting pork at nursery
school or when visiting friends but I had never broken the accepted rule.
I can still remember picking the lumps of pork out of a nursery school
plov and giving them away to my friends. The pangs of appetite were overcome
by the sweetness of self-denial. I felt a kind of ideological superiority
over my comrades. It was satisfying to be something of a mystery to the
world at large, as though I had knowledge that no one else possessed. And it
made my yearning for the sinful object of desire all the more intense.
There was a nurse who lived in one of the houses in our yard. We called
her Auntie Sonya. In those days for some reason we thought of her as a
doctor. In general, as one grows up, one notices a steady decline in the
status of one's elders.
Auntie Sonya was an elderly lady with her hair cut short and a look of
permanent sorrow on her face. She always spoke in a very quiet voice. It was
as though she had long since realised that there was nothing in life worth
raising one's voice about.
During the communal battles between neighbours that were frequent
enough in our yard she scarcely raised her voice at all, which created
additional difficulties for her opponents who, having failed to hear what
she had said, would lose the thread of the quarrel and be put off their
stroke.
Our families were on good terms. Mother told me that Auntie Sonya had
saved me from certain death. When I had been struck down by some grave
illness, she and mother had taken turns at my bedside for a whole month. For
some reason I experienced no feelings of gratitude towards Auntie Sonya for
saving me from certain death, but my sense of decorum, when they talked
about it, made me glad I was still alive.
She would often come round to sit with us of an evening and tell us her
life story, particularly the part about her first husband, who had been
killed in the civil war. I had heard this story many times before and yet I
always froze with horror at her description of how she had roamed about
among the dead, looking for the body of the man she loved. At this point she
would usually begin to cry, and my mother and elder sister would cry with
her, then begin comforting her, bring her a glass of water or persuade her
to have some tea.
It always astonished me how quickly the women would recover their
spirits and soon be able to chatter merrily and even with renewed interest
about all kinds of trivial matters. After this she would go home because her
husband would be back from work. He was called Uncle Shura.
I was very fond of Uncle Shura. I liked the wild tangle of black hair
that hung down over his forehead, his muscular arms with their neatly rolled
up sleeves, and even his stoop. It was not the stoop of an office clerk, but
the sound, sturdy kind of stance that one finds in some old workmen although
he was neither old nor a workman.
When he came home in the evening he would always set about mending
something--table lamps, electric irons radios and even clocks. All these
things were brought to him by neighbours and he repaired them, as a matter
of course free of charge.
Auntie Sonya would sit on the other side of the table, smoke and make
gentle fun of him for doing something that was not his business, wasting his
time, and so on.
'We'll see whether I'm wasting my time or not," Uncle Shura would
mutter indistinctly because he, too, had a cigarette between his teeth. He
would turn his next mending job this way and that in his deft, confident
hands blowing off the dust as he did so, and all of a sudden he would look
at it from quite a new, unexpected angle.
"Wasting your time and making a fool of yourself," Auntie Sonya would
reply and, releasing a haughty stream of smoke from her lips, gloomily wrap
her dressing-gown round her.
In the end he would manage to get the clock going, or the radio would
start giving out crackles and snatches of music and he would wink at me and
say:
"Well? Was I wasting my time or not?"
I would always rejoice in his success and smile to show that, although
it had nothing to do with me, I appreciated being included in his company.
"All right, enough of your boasting," Auntie Sonya would say. "Clear
the table and we'll have some tea."
Even in her gruff tone, however, I could detect a secret deeply hidden
note of pride, and I felt glad for Uncle Shura and decided that he was
probably just as good as that hero of the civil war whom Auntie Sonya would
never forget.
One evening, when I was sitting with them as usual, my sister dropped
in and was invited to stay for tea. Auntie Sonya laid the table, cut some
pieces of tender pink bacon fat, put some mustard on the table, and poured
out the tea. They had often eaten bacon fat before this, and offered it to
me as well, but I had always firmly refused, which for some reason rather
amused Uncle Shura. They offered me some now, not very insistently. Uncle
Shura placed a few cubes of fat on a piece of bread and held it out to my
sister. Aver a mincing refusal, she accepted this shameful offering and
began to eat it. In my indignation I felt the tea that I had begun to drink
freeze in my throat, and experienced some difficulty in swallowing it.
"That's the way!" said Uncle Shura. "She's not like you, you little
monk!"
I felt how much my sister was enjoying what she ate. I could see it
from the way she delicately licked her lips clean of the crumbs of bread
defiled by this infidel savoury, and the way she swallowed each piece,
sitting foolishly still and pausing as if to listen to what was going on in
her mouth and throat. She had started the slice on the side where the
thinner pieces of fat lay, and this was a sure sign that she was relishing
every morsel, because all normal children, when eating something they like,
leave the best piece till last. Clearly she was experiencing enormous
pleasure.
Now she was approaching the edge of the slice with the thickest piece
of fat on it, systematically intensifying her delight. At the same time,
with purely feminine guile she was relating how my brother had jumped out of
the window when his form mistress had come round to complain of his conduct.
Her story served the dual purpose of distracting attention from what she
herself was doing, while subtly flattering me, because everyone knew that my
teacher had never been round to complain about me and I certainly had no
reason to flee from her through the window.
In the course of her story my sister glanced at me from time to time,
trying to discover whether I was still watching her or whether I was so
carried away by her tale that I had forgotten what she was doing. But my
glance stated quite clearly that I was still keeping her under the most
vigilant observation. In reply she opened her eyes very wide as if
expressing surprise that I could pay so much attention to a mere trifle. I
leered back, alluding vaguely to the retribution that awaited her.
At one moment I thought the time of retribution had already arrived. My
sister choked, then cautiously began to clear her throat. I watched with
interest to see what would happen next. Uncle Shura patted her on the back.
She blushed and then stopped coughing, indicating that the cure had worked;
her embarrassment appeared to be equally short-lived. But I felt that the
piece that had stuck in her throat was still there. Pretending to have
recovered, she took another bite of bread and bacon fat.
Chew away, I thought to myself. We'll see how you manage to get it
down.
But apparently the gods had decided to postpone their vengeance. My
sister swallowed this piece safely. In fact, it must also have pushed down
the previous piece, because she breathed with relief and became quite
cheerful again. Now she ate with redoubled concentration and after each bite
licked her lips for so long that it looked almost as if she were showing her
tongue at me.
At last she reached the edge of the slice with the thickest piece of
fat on it and, before putting it in her mouth, she nibbled away the bread
round it, thus building up the pleasure to be gained from the last piece.
Eventually she swallowed this, too, and licked her lips as though
reliving the pleasure she had received, and also to show that all evidence
of her fall from grace had been destroyed.
The whole thing occupied less time than it takes to tell and could
scarcely have been noticed by a casual onlooker. Anyway I am sure neither
Uncle Shura nor Auntie Sonya noticed anything.
Having finished her slice, my sister started on her tea, still
pretending that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. As soon as she put
the cup to her lips I drank my own down very quickly, so that there should
be nothing in common between us. Before this I had refused a biscuit because
I was determined to make my martyrdom complete and deny myself every
possible joy while in her presence. Besides I was slightly offended with
Uncle Shura for pressing his food on me less persistently than on my sister.
I should not have accepted it, of course, but for her it would have been a
good lesson in principle.
In short, my mood was utterly spoiled and, as soon as I ad drunk my
tea, I got up to go. They asked me to stay but I was inexorable.
"I must do my homework," I said with the air of the lonely saint
granting everyone else complete freedom to indulge in sin.
My sister begged me to stay. She was sure I would denounce her as soon
as I got home and she was also afraid of crossing the yard at night by
herself.
At home I quickly undressed and got into bed. I was absorbed in envious
and gloating contemplation of my sister's apostasy. Strange visions passed
through my brain. Now I was a Red partisan captured by the Whites and they
were trying to make me eat pork. They tortured me but still I refused. The
officers shook their heads in amazement. What a boy! I was amazed at myself
but not a morsel passed my lips. They could kill me if they liked, but they
wouldn't make me eat.
The door creaked and my sister came in. She at once asked about me.
"He's gone to bed," my mother said. "He seemed rather glum when he came
home. Did something happen to him?"
"Oh no, nothing," my sister replied, and came over to my bed. I was
afraid she would start arguing and pleading with me and all that kind of
thing. Forgiveness was out of the question but I didn't even want her to
whittle down the condition I was in. So I pretended to be asleep. She stood
over me for a while, then stroked my head gently. But I turned over on to my
other side, showing that even while asleep I could tell the hand of a
traitor. She stood there a little longer, then withdrew. It seemed to me
that she felt some repentance but knew no way of expiating her guilt.
I pitied her a little, but apparently this was a mistake, for only a
minute later she began telling mother something in a low voice and they both
burst into little fits of laughter, carefully restrained to make it appear
that they were afraid of disturbing me. Gradually they calmed down and began
to prepare for bed.
Clearly she had enjoyed her evening. She had guzzled bacon fat and I
hadn't said anything and, to crown it all, she had made mother laugh. Never
mind, I thought, my hour will strike.
Next day the whole family was seated at table, waiting for father to
come home for dinner. He arrived late and got angry with mother for making
us wait for him. He had been having trouble at work lately and was often
gloomy and preoccupied.
It had been my intention to describe my sister's misdeed during the
meal, but now I realised this was the wrong time to speak. Nevertheless I
glanced at my sister now and then, giving the impression that I was about to
launch into an account of her crime. I would actually open my mouth, then
say something quite different. As soon as my lips parted she would drop her
eyes and lower her head in anticipation of the blow. It was even more
enjoyable to keep her on the brink of exposure than actually expose her.
One moment her face was pale, the next she would be blushing furiously.
Sometimes she would toss her head haughtily, then immediately her imploring
eyes would beg forgiveness for this rebellious gesture. She had no appetite
and pushed away the plate of soup almost untouched. Mother urged her to
finish it.
"Of course, she doesn't want it," I said. "She ate so much yesterday at
Uncle Shura's."
"So much what?" my brother asked, missing everything as usual.
Mother looked at me anxiously and shook her head without letting father
see. My sister took the plate back and began eating her soup in silence. Now
I was really enjoying myself. I transferred a boiled onion from my plate to
hers. Boiled onion was the bugbear of our childhood. We all hated it. Mother
gave me a severe glance of inquiry.
"She likes onions," I said. "You do, don't you?" I added fondly to my
sister.
Her only response was to bow her head even lower over the plate.
"If you like them, you can have mine as well," said my brother,
scooping one up in his spoon. He was just about to put it on her plate, but
my father gave him such a look that the spoon stopped in midair and beat a
cowardly retreat.
Between the first and second courses I devised a fresh amusement. I
dressed a slice of bread with little rings of cucumber from the salad and
began nibbling delicately at my vegetarian sandwich, pretending now and then
to dissolve with pleasure. This, I thought, was a very clever way of
reconstructing the scene of my sister's shameful fall. She stared at me in
astonishment, as though the pantomime meant nothing to her or, at least,
nothing shameful. Further than this, however, her protest did not go.
In other words, dinner was a tremendous success. Virtue blackmailed
ruthlessly and wickedness hung its head. After dinner we drank tea. Father
became noticeably more cheerful, and so, accordingly, did we. My sister was
particularly gay. The colour flooded into her cheeks and her eyes sparkled.
She started relating some incident that had occurred at school, constantly
appealing to me as a witness, as though nothing had happened between us. I
felt slightly disgusted by this familiarity. It struck me that a person with
her past could have behaved with a little more modesty instead of jumping
into the limelight. She could have waited until other, more worthy people
thought fit to relate that story. I was about to administer a moderate dose
of punishment, but father unwrapped a newspaper and took out a packet of new
exercise books.
In those pre-war years exercise books were as hard to come by as
textiles and certain foods. These were the best, glossy kind, with margins,
clearly marked in red, and heavy, cool pages of a bluish white colour, like
milk.
There were nine of these exercise books altogether and father gave us
three each. I at once felt my high spirits begin to wane. Such
egalitarianism seemed to me the limit of injustice.
I was doing well at school, and sometimes came top in one subject or
another. In fact, our relatives and friends were told that I was getting
excellent marks in all subjects, perhaps in order to balance the impression
created by my brother's unfortunate notoriety.
He was considered a very energetic slacker. As his teacher put it, his
ability to judge his own actions lagged far behind his temperament. I
imagined that temperament of his in the shape of a mischievous little imp
that was always running on ahead of my brother and that he could never catch
up with. Perhaps, it was to help him in this chase that ever since the age
of eleven he had dreamed of becoming a driver. On every available scrap of
paper he would scribble an application he had read somewhere:
To the Director of Transport
I request you to employ me in the organisation of which you are in
charge because I am a qualified driver, 3rd grade.
Later he succeeded in realising this fervent ambition. The organisation
of which a certain director was in charge entrusted him with a vehicle, but
it turned out that catching up with his temperament entailed exceeding the
speed limit, and in the end he had to change his profession.
And here was I, almost an outstanding pupil, being reduced to the same
level as my brother, who, starting from the back page as usual, would fill
up these beautiful exercise books with his idiotic applications.
And to the same level as my sister, who only the day before had been
guzzling bacon fat and was today receiving a present which she had done
nothing whatever to deserve.
I pushed aside the exercise books and sat scowling at the table,
painfully aware of the humiliating tears of resentment welling up in my
throat. My father tried to talk me round and promised to take me fishing in
the mountains, but it was no use. The more they tried to console me the more
strongly I felt that I had been unjustly passed over.
"Look! I've got two blotters!" my sister sang out all of a sudden, as
she opened one of the exercise books. This was the last straw. Perhaps, if
fate had not granted her that extra sheet of blotting paper, what did happen
might never have happened.
I stood up and in a trembling voice said to my father:
"Yesterday she was eating bacon fat...."
An indecent silence descended on the room. With a sense of fear I
realised that I had done something wrong. Either I had not expressed myself
quite clearly or else there was too close a connection between Mahomet's
great laws and the sneaking desire to lay hands on someone else's exercise
books.
Father stared at me gravely from under his slightly swollen lids.
Slowly his eyes filled with fury. I realised that his gaze held nothing for
me to look forward to. I made one more pitiful attempt to correct the
situation and channel his fury in the right direction.
"She ate bacon fat yesterday at Uncle Shura's," I said desperately,
feeling that my whole case was collapsing.
The next moment father seized me by the ears, shook my head and, as
though realising it would not come off, lifted me up and threw me to the
floor. In the brief seconds before I landed I felt a stab of pain and heard
the creak of my ears stretching.
"Son of a bitch!" he cried. "On top of everything else am I to have
traitors in my own house!"
He grabbed his leather jacket and swung out of the room, giving the
door such a slam that plaster fell off the walls. I remember being shaken
not so much by the pain or by what he said, but by the expression of utter
repugnance with which he had seized my ears. It was the expression of
someone about to kill a snake.
Stunned by what had happened, I remained lying on the floor for a long
time. My mother tried to lift me up while my brother, in a state of wild
excitement, ran round me in circles, pointing at my ears and roaring
delightedly,
"Our top boy!"
I was very fond of my father and this was the first time he had
punished me.
Many years have passed since then. For a long time now I have been
eating the pork that is available to all, though I don't think I am any the
happier for it. But the lesson was not wasted. It taught me for the rest of
my life that no lofty principle can justify meanness and treachery, and that
all treachery is the hairy caterpillar that grows from a small envy, no
matter under what high principles it may be concealed.
--------
Through the night
It was 1942. I was living at my uncle's house in the village of
Napskal, in the mountains. Fear of the bombing and, above all, the wartime
food shortage had driven us away from town to this peaceful and relatively
well-provided corner of Abkhazia.
Our little town had, in fact, been bombed only twice, and the bombs the
Germans had dropped there had probably been intended for other, more
important targets, which they had been prevented from reaching. My theory is
that those pilots raided us out of fear of the punishment that awaited them
if they returned to base with a full load of bombs. I have two reasons for
thinking so. First, their aircraft approached the town not from behind their
lines but from behind ours and, secondly, there had never been anything
military in our town except the militia.
After the first air-raid the town became deserted. The table orators
and amateur strategists of the seaside coffee shops wisely adjourned their
unending discussions on current affairs and quietly withdrew to the
surrounding villages to eat Abkhazian hominy, whose prestige accordingly
mounted by leaps and bounds.
Only the most essential people and those who had nowhere else to go
remained in town. We were not essential and we had somewhere to go. So we
went. Our country relatives consulted each other and shared us out among
themselves, taking into account our respective potentialities. My elder
brother, as one already polluted by urban civilisation, remained in the
village nearest town and was afterwards recruited into the army. My sister
was sent off to live with a distant relative, who, being rich, seemed much
closer r