“Truth be told, it’s a story that recalls the Gospels. Maiboroda hanged himself—albeit many years later.”
“Like Judas!” Mikha said, revealing his knowledge of biblical history.
Anna Alexandrovna laughed. “Good going, Mikha! You’re a man of culture.”
Mikha grew bolder with the encouragement.
“Anna Alexandrovna, which Decembrist was the…” he began, then faltered. He wanted to say “best,” but decided it would sound too childish. So he said, “Your favorite?”
Anna Alexandrovna leafed through the book. It contained several reproductions. She removed a portrait on yellowing paper that had been cut out from somewhere.
“This one. Mikhail Sergeevich Lunin.”
The boys leaned in over the picture. They had already seen the face, it was part of Ilya’s collection. But in that picture he was young, full-lipped, and mustached, and in this one he was twenty years older.
“Look, he was decorated. See? There’s the cross, and there’s something else I can’t make out,” Ilya said.
“He took part in the 1812 campaign. The only thing I know about his decorations is that they were publicly cast into a fire when he was sentenced,” Anna Alexandrovna said, smiling. “But it didn’t prevent him from remaining a hero.”
“The bastards!” Mikha exclaimed. “War decorations—throwing them into the fire!”
“Indeed. He wasn’t even in St. Petersburg during the uprising. They caught up with him in Warsaw and shipped him back home. He was one of the organizers of the Northern Society, but by that time he had already ceased to play an active role in the conspiracy. He believed that they were not acting decisively enough. Lunin was among those who believed they should kill the Tsar, but others didn’t support him in this. And Trubetskoy, chosen subsequently as their ‘dictator,’ was opposed to the murder.”
“But if Lunin had been able to win them over to his idea the October Revolution would have happened a century earlier!” Mikha said, his eyes wide with excitement. Everyone laughed.
“It wouldn’t have been called ‘October’ then, Mikha,” Anna Alexandrovna said, curbing Mikha’s enthusiasm.
“Oh, that’s true. I didn’t think about that. And what happened to Lunin afterward?”
“Mikhail Sergeevich was arrested again, after serving his sentence to hard labor, this time for his letters. He had also analyzed the reports presented to the Tsar by the Secret Commission. These were published. That was why they arrested him a second time, and why he was sent to prison again. And there he died. Rumor has it that he didn’t die of natural causes, that he was killed on orders from the Tsar.”
“How despicable!” Mikha said. It took him several days to get over Lunin’s death. He wrote a poem called “On the Death of a Hero.”
* * *
This was the most beautiful, the most heroic page of Russian history. Under the guidance of Victor Yulievich, it became the cornerstone of what inspired them, the event that honed their young minds and hearts.
Mikha Melamid wrote an essay, quoting lines from Herzen:
I was present at the mass, and there, before the altar defiled by a murderous prayer, I swore to avenge the executed, and vowed to struggle against the throne, against this altar, against these guns. I did not avenge them; the guardsmen and the throne, the altar and the guns—all remain; but now, thirty years later, I am still standing under the same banner, which I have never once forsaken.
Later in the essay, the boy wrote, now in his own words: “And they remain unavenged till this very day.”
The teacher was moved by Mikha’s essay. Here was one of his boys grasping that moment of transition, the moral crisis of another adolescent, who had lived one hundred years before.
* * *
But life, of course, is more than just heady knowledge about the Decembrists. For instance, the New Year was coming up. It was the most important holiday, the only one that wasn’t for the greater glory of the state, the only one without red flags. It was the only completely human holiday, with the rehabilitated Christmas tree, sanctioned drinking (for adults), presents, and surprises.
This year there were no epidemics, and everyone was eagerly anticipating the New Year’s Eve party. For two weeks before the school celebration, planned for December 30, everyone was mad with excitement: all their dreams of love were about to come true.
This was the first party with girls. They weren’t wearing their uniforms. Instead, they came all dressed up, as colorful as butterflies, and some of them even wore their hair loose. The teachers were also dressed up. Victor Yulievich found it touching that the holiday excitement had affected everyone without exception. Even the principal, Larisa Stepanovna, was wearing high heels and had pinned a brooch to her collar. It was a butterfly with outspread wings—a creature she in no way resembled.
The older students had begun to make preparations for the party so long before, and so carefully, determined as they were not to overlook a single detail in their arsenal of sanctioned pleasures, that plans kept changing throughout December. At first they considered a costume ball. Then they changed their minds—instead of spending time on elaborate costumes, they would have a talent show. They even thought of inviting a real band, but their money didn’t stretch that far. Maybe skits would be a good idea—or a cultural program with poetry, and Natasha Mirzoyan performing Schubert? Or even a real play?
As often happens when there is an overabundance of ideas, it ended up being an incoherent jumble of everything, with no particular rhyme or reason. Those who were in favor of a costume ball or carnival threw on something funny or ridiculous. Katya Zueva, bringing to fruition a long-held plan, appeared in the guise of a postal worker, with a ticket-taker’s bag instead of a mailbag. On her chest she wore a piece of cardboard painted with the number 5, supposed to resemble a badge; instead of the official blue cap of the uniform, she wore a tricorne hat made of folded newspaper. On her back, for those who were completely slow-witted, she had stuck a piece of blue cardboard with a white inscription reading POST. Her friend Anya Filimonova dressed up like a gypsy in a colorful skirt, with hoop earrings, a necklace she had made herself, and a large shawl that her mother had dragged out of a trunk and warned her to treat with the utmost care, since it was very old. In her hand she held a deck of cards for fortune-telling—but she was too shy to use them. She hadn’t even wanted to dress up at first, but Katya had persuaded her to—she needed the moral support.
The evening also featured a poetry montage and a human pyramid, which the whole gymnastics team had practiced to perfection. Twelve people, balancing one on top of the others, representing a Christmas tree hung with ornaments.
* * *
The shop teacher, crippled Itkin, was wearing his war decorations, and the gym teacher, Andrei Ivanovich, for once appeared not in his everyday blue zippered working vest, but in a white sweater. Both of them smelled strongly of eau de cologne—Itkin of Troynoy, and Andrei Ivanovich of Chypre. They played records with old songs that only a trained circus bear could have danced to. When “Rio Rita” came on, the girls started to shuffle their feet, but no one dared to venture out into the middle of the room until the gym teacher invited the senior Pioneer instructor to dance. They danced “Rio Rita” together, the only couple, under the stern gaze of their older colleagues. Tasya Smolkina, an enthusiastic tenth-grader who was a member of the Komsomol committee, saved the day by initiating several games: Freeze Dance and Duck Duck Goose for the younger ones, and Love Mail for those who had romantic hopes for the evening.
Katya Zueva, the mail girl, passed out numbers, and everyone began writing love letters. Katya darted around the room delivering them. Victor Yulievich stood over by the window, waiting for the moment when he could slip away to the teachers’ lounge for a smoke. Just as he got to the door, the mail girl intercepted him and thrust two letters into his hand at the same time. He tucked them away in his pocket. “I love you” was scrawled on one of them; it had no return addres
s. The other one read: “Do you like Pasternak’s prose?” That one was from number 56.
Victor Yulievich went downstairs to the teachers’ room, where two young elementary-school teachers—one pretty, the other rather plain—were whispering and giggling together like eighth-graders. They were also obviously hoping to get some romantic pleasure, their small share of happiness, from the evening.
Victor Yulievich tore up the love note and threw the pieces in the ashtray. The older girls at school fell into two groups: those who adored Victor Yulievich, and, a smaller group, those who preferred the gym teacher. The literature teacher opened the other letter—it had been written with a hard pencil in a round, girlish script, very faint. Rising to the challenge, he wrote his answer: “Except for The Childhood of Zhenya Lyuvers.” He folded it up and wrote “56” on the back, and then began to muse. He had been thinking that nothing had ever been written about the childhood of girls in Russian literature. How could he have forgotten Pasternak’s early novella? He had read it before the war, when he was just a boy, and its intricacy, its contrived unevenness, its elusive structure, and its superfluity of words had not appealed to him. But this was, it seemed, the only work about a girl’s childhood in all of Russian literature. How could he have overlooked it? It contained everything that preoccupied him now: the awakening of consciousness, a psychological catastrophe that prefigured the enormous physiological changes the girl would soon, without warning, undergo. Even her first experience of death! He wanted to reread it immediately, without delay. But his home library contained no Pasternak. He’d have to look for it at the Lenin Library.
He went back to the auditorium, and passed the note back to the mail girl, Katya. He had missed the human pyramid and Schubert. The music had died down altogether now—a waltz had just ended. People shuffled back to their places by the wall. Suddenly, a ringing slap, uncannily loud, resounded through the dusty stillness. Everyone turned to look. In the middle of the room stood a lanky couple—Anya Filimonova in her absurd gypsy attire and Yura Burkin. Anya was clutching her shawl, which she had removed, to her chest. Yura was pressing his hand to his cheek, where the trace of the sturdy volleyball-playing hand was blooming, compliments of his resolute partner.
It was a scene worthy of Gogol. But the curtain did not fall. Everyone continued to stand rooted to the spot, expecting the plot to unfold. And unfold it did: Yura removed his hand from his cheek, raised it slightly, and brushed it across his partner’s face. It made the sound of a smacking kiss.
The crowd let out a quiet gasp—Oooooooh! Katya threw herself at her friend, everything came to life, everyone was overwrought. Anya, who had turned scarlet, wept on Katya’s shoulder. Through sobs, one could make out:
“He … He … blew his nose on my shawl!”
Yura rushed out of the auditorium. Katya looked around. “Is there no one here willing to stand up for her honor?”
She was pale, trembling, filled with fury, and it was clear that she would lose no time in trying to destroy the offender herself. All year she had talked about nothing but noble men and beautiful ladies!
Mikha flew out the door, as though he had wings on his feet. He caught up to Yura in the boys’ bathroom. His hands shaking, Yura was smoking one of his father’s cigarettes, which he had pinched the night before. He didn’t even smoke, it made him queasy. He had been trying to get used to it since sixth grade, but couldn’t. But he liked the act of smoking, just to hold the cigarette in his hand, and this time, he suspected that it wasn’t even going to make him feel queasy.
Mikha grabbed the cigarette out of his hand, broke it in two, tossed it aside, and then said in a slow, calm, contemptuous voice, “A duel! I challenge you to a duel!”
“Mikha, are you nuts? A duel? What duel? She just can’t take a joke, the idiot.”
“We won’t shoot, we have no pistols. We have no weapons whatsoever. Hand-to-hand combat will have to do, but we’ll stick to all the rules.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“So you’re a coward. On top of being an insolent boor,” Mikha said.
“Okay, okay, if that’s what you want,” Yura said, reluctant but also conciliatory. “When?”
“Today.”
“But it’s already nine thirty!”
* * *
Mikha summoned up all his organizational skills and the duel took place an hour later at Milyutin Park.
The tenth-graders tried to talk Yura out of it, and the ninth-graders worked on Mikha. The rules of the duel were invented on the fly.
Yura whined the whole way, “Mikha, why are you itching to have your face punched in? I need to get home. My father is going to yell at me, my mother has probably gone to school to find out what happened to me.”
But Mikha was adamant.
“A duel! Till the first drop of blood.”
Ilya and Sanya exchanged glances, winked at each other, and even snickered a bit between themselves. Sanya said, “Our little bleeding Jesus!”
Mikha’s second was Ilya, and Yura’s was Vasya Egorochkin. The snow in the park had settled in big drifts, and the seconds had to stamp out a small area for the fight. Sanya suggested that they use leather gloves for the fight, but none of them owned such a luxury. For some reason, Sanya felt sure that fighting with bare fists was against the rules.
“The ancient Greeks wrapped leather belts around their fists.”
Where had he picked that up? But he spoke with confidence. He just knew, that’s all. And they had belts galore. The seconds took off their own belts, hooked them together to make one long one, and laid it in the snow between the duelers, as a barrier. The duelers were supposed to approach it and start to fight on the count of three.
The duelers wrapped their school-uniform belts around their fists, but with the clasps inside their palms. It was very uncomfortable.
“Maybe we can manage without the belts?” Yura suggested. Mikha didn’t even deign to answer him. Ilya suggested that Burkin convey his formal apologies. Mikha rejected this on reasonable grounds.
“The apologies are due to the lady herself.”
Yura’s spirits lifted. “By all means! I’ll apologize right away!”
In view of the absence of the lady in question, the truce was declined. Mikha took off his glasses and handed them to Sanya. They threw off their coats.
“Maybe that’s enough already?” Sanya whispered.
“Just hold it!” Mikha burst out, infuriated. Ilya started counting. On the count of three, they went at each other.
They stood face-to-face: heavyset Yura, Mikha, thinner, but also madder. Mikha jumped up and down in place, and with both fists at once, somehow, popped Yura in the face, awkwardly and painlessly.
Yura’s anger finally kicked in. He launched a single punch at Mikha’s nose. Blood gushed out instantly. Sanya groaned, as though he had taken the blow himself, and pulled out a clean hanky. The punch wasn’t exceedingly strong, but it was perfectly on the mark. From that moment on, Mikha’s nose would be a little crooked. It was sore for a long time. Most likely it had been broken.
The duel was, for all intents and purposes, over.
* * *
Meanwhile, when the students had already left for home, the two young elementary-school teachers were sitting with Andrei Ivanovich and drinking a modest nightcap. Only the cloakroom attendant and the cleaning lady, who sometimes stayed overnight in the utility room when her husband drank too much, were left behind. Katya Zueva, now without her tricorne newspaper hat, wearing her brown coat, its cuffs and hem lengthened with black wool, sat on a chair in the cloakroom waiting for Victor Yulievich.
When he came downstairs, she handed him a note.
“A letter for you.”
He looked puzzled—he had already forgotten about the game. “Oh? Thank you,” he said, stuffing it absentmindedly into his coat pocket.
He found the scrap of paper in his pocket the next morning. It said:
I can lend you his new novel. D
o you want it?
—Katya
He didn’t immediately understand what she was talking about.
On January 3, Katya called for him, and, still in postal-worker mode, delivered him a typewritten manuscript.
* * *
Pasternak’s new novel was called Doctor Zhivago. The first pages—even those before the death of Maria Nikolaevna Zhivago—affected Victor Yulievich deeply. This was the continuation of that legacy of Russian literature he had thought was over and done with, lost forever. It seemed that this tradition had sprouted anew, in the present. Every line of the new novel echoed that tradition and spoke of the same thing—of the ordeals of the human heart in this world, of the growth of the human being, of physical death and moral triumph; in short, of the “creation and wonder” of life.
For the entire school break, Victor Yulievich was completely absorbed in Pasternak’s novel. He was enchanted by the poems, though they seemed to be tacked on at the end in a clumsy and gratuitous way—they were recognizably Pasternak, but with a newly minted directness and simplicity. This was, evidently, the “unprecedented simplicity” the poet had long dreamed of.
As soon as he had finished the book, he began reading it again from the beginning. He discovered in it more and more gems of thought, feeling, and word. At the same time, he discerned its weaknesses, and the weaknesses appealed to him as well. They forced one to think, to ponder. Victor Yulievich felt no fondness for Lara, a rather thinly drawn character who kept doing things that attested to her foolishness and narcissism. But boy, how the author loved her!
The Big Green Tent Page 10
