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 <i>The Headless Horseman</i> and
<i>The Tragedies and Comedies of  William Shakespeare</i>. 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 Do&ntilde;a 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 <i>kaput</i>,"  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