The Story of a Life, page 32
‘May I have my manuscript back?’ I asked.
‘Your manuscript?’ the editor said and began choking with laughter. ‘Yes, of course, please, here you are. You can have it back and then toss it in the fire. It’s just that I want to publish your story. Can you imagine, I actually liked it.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise,’ I mumbled.
‘Such a hot-tempered young man! Since you’re going to be a writer, please show a little patience. Come and pick up your honorarium on Wednesday,’ he said icily, before changing his tone: ‘And do me the favour of bringing in whatever you write next.’
I dashed out of the office. Fitsovsky was standing by the front gate. He hadn’t left as I had told him to.
‘Well?’ he asked nervously. ‘Did they accept it?’
‘Yes, they did.’
‘Let’s go to my place!’ he said. ‘I’ve got a bottle of muscatel and some pickled apples. We must celebrate!’
We drank the bottle of muscatel, and I didn’t get home until very late, after the trams had stopped running. I walked along the empty streets. All the lights were out. Had I encountered a beggar I would have given him the coat off my back or done something else just as rash. But the only thing I met was a white dog. It was cold and wet, sitting by a fence. I dug around in my pockets but didn’t find anything to give it. I patted it and then walked off. The dog got up and followed me. I talked to the dog all the way home. It kept jumping up and nipping at my coat sleeve, as if to show me it understood.
‘Listen,’ I said and stopped. The dog’s ears went up. There was a rustling sound coming from the gardens along the street, as if last year’s leaves were being stirred. ‘Do you know what that means?’ I asked. ‘That’s the sound of spring. And after that it’ll soon be summer. That’s when I’ll be leaving. And maybe then I’ll meet a woman, perhaps the finest woman in the world.’
The dog jumped and snapped at my sleeve, and we walked on.
Every window was dark. The city slept. How could it? I thought to myself. No one should be sleeping on such a splendid night. Everyone ought to be up and outside to witness the dark passage of these clouds and to listen to the soft gurgle of the melting snow and the muffled dripping of water within the hollowed snowdrifts.
I don’t know how I got home. Grandmother was asleep. The dog followed me quietly into my room. Supper, long gone cold, was waiting for me on the table. I fed the dog a bit of bread and meat and made it a bed in the corner by the stove. It lay down and fell fast asleep. Now and then it wagged its tail without waking, as if in gratitude. Grandmother wasn’t angry when she saw the dog in the morning. She felt sorry for it, called it Cadeau, started feeding it, and in the end the dog stayed with her for good.
Spring grew closer with each day. Along with it came our final examinations. To pass we had to revise everything we had ever learned in school. This was difficult, especially in springtime.
Uncle Kolya arrived from Bryansk at the end of the Easter holidays to visit Grandmother for a few days. He stayed with me in my room. Aunt Vera was offended he didn’t live with her family in the big house, but he brushed the matter off with a joke. Lying in our beds in the evening, Uncle Kolya and I talked and laughed. When she overheard us, Grandmother got up out of bed, dressed and came and sat with us until late in the night.
One evening Uncle Kolya and I attended another of Aunt Vera’s stuffy command supper parties. She gathered around her what Grandmother called a collection of ‘monstres et créatures’. I felt a particular dislike for the noted Kievan oculist Dumitrashko, a small man with a squeaky voice, a wavy beard and flowing locks of golden hair that pooled over the collar of his black frock coat. As soon as he arrived, poison began to fill the air. Rubbing his puffy hands, Dumitrashko would immediately begin spouting all sorts of nasty filth about the intelligentsia. Aunt Vera’s husband, a businessman with a dark complexion and a face covered in blackheads, always egged him on. And then there was Piotukh, a retired general whose arrival no one ever seemed to notice. He came with his three daughters, all of them old maids, and talked almost exclusively about the price of firewood, which he bought and sold on the side.
Aunt Vera tried to be a witty hostess but had little success. She began nearly every sentence with her beloved words ‘Do keep in mind’. ‘Do keep in mind,’ she would say, ‘Madame Bashinskaya wears only lilac dresses’ or ‘Do keep in mind, the apples in this pie come from my own garden.’ Her attempts to start a conversation never went anywhere.
She forced her daughter Nadya to play the piano and sing as the evening’s entertainment. Terrified by the intense stares the general’s daughters gave her, Nadya would pick away hesitantly at the piano as she tried to sing in her weak, shaky voice the once fashionable romance ‘The Swan’: ‘The creek sleeps, silent is the glassy water . . .’ Her German music teacher sat quietly, her eyes anxiously watching Nadya. The woman had a large and unusually thin nose such that when she sat next to a bright lamp, the light shone through it. Above this nose rose a tall pile of hair on her head held in place by a garland of flowers.
After supper Uncle Kolya and I returned to the cottage. ‘Ugh!’ he said with a deep exhale. ‘That was just awful!’ In order to forget what we had just sat through and to try to cheer ourselves up, Uncle Kolya invited Gattenberger over to Grandmother’s room for a small concert. He sang Polish folk songs for her accompanied by Gattenberger on the cello:
O Vistula, so blue,
Like some wondrous flower.
To foreign lands you flow, such is your power,
Your path so long and so true!
Grandmother listened, her hands folded in her lap. Her head shook ever so slightly, and tears clouded her eyes. Poland was far, far away. Grandmother knew she would never again see the Niemen or the Vistula or Warsaw. Walking had become difficult for her, and she had even stopped going to church.
The day he left Uncle Kolya told me that he planned to return to Rëvny next summer and made me promise to come and join him. I was only too happy to say yes.
Once I knew I would be going back to Rëvny, everything looked different. I even began to believe that I would have no trouble passing my final examinations. The promise of happier days was a long way off, however, and so there was nothing I could do but wait. But then, sometimes it’s the mere anticipation of happy days – and not the days themselves – that is the most enjoyable part. At the time I knew nothing about this strange quality of life, but I would become convinced of it later.
37
Leaving School
Final examinations began at the end of May and lasted for an entire month. The rest of the school had already been let out for the summer holidays. Our form alone turned up every morning to the cool, empty gymnasium, which seemed to be resting after the commotion of the winter months. Our footsteps echoed from floor to floor. The windows in the Assembly Hall, where the examinations were held, had been opened. Dandelion seeds floated around the room in the sunlight like little blinking white lights.
We were required to take the examinations in our dress uniforms. The stiff silver-braided collars scratched our necks. We sat in the garden under the chestnut trees, our collars unbuttoned, waiting our turn. The examinations frightened us, and we were sad to be leaving school. We had grown used to it. The future looked unclear and troubling, mainly because we would inevitably lose touch with each other. Our loyal, happy family was being destroyed. We called a meeting in the garden before the first examination. Every pupil was invited, except for the Jews. They were not even supposed to know about the meeting. We agreed that the best Russian and Polish pupils should make certain to get a mark of four or lower in at least one subject so none of us would win a gold medal. We had decided that all the gold medals should go to the Jews because without them they would not be admitted to university. We swore to keep this a secret. To our credit, we never spoke of it, neither then, nor later once at university. I am breaking this vow only because almost none of my schoolmates are still alive. Most of them perished in the great wars that my generation had to face. Only a handful of us have survived.
There was a second meeting. This was to decide which among us ought to help some of the girls from the Mariinskaya Girls’ Gymnasium write their compositions. I don’t know why, but they took the written Russian literature examination together with us. Stanishevsky was in charge of the negotiations with the girls. He brought back a list of the girls needing help. There were six names on it.
I was told to help a girl named Bogushevich. I had never seen or even heard of her. We wrote our compositions in the Assembly Hall. Everyone sat at their own separate desk – boys to the left, girls to the right. Monitors patrolled the wide aisle between us to see that we didn’t pass back and forth any notes, cribs or other suspicious objects. Each of the six girls needing our help took a seat along the aisle. I tried to guess which one was Bogushevich. Her name suggested a plump Ukrainian. One of the girls was indeed plump, with heavy plaits. I decided this had to be her.
The director walked in. We rose. With a loud rip, he tore open a heavy sealed envelope and removed a sheet of paper with the composition theme sent from the District Department of Education. Next, he took a piece of chalk and carefully began to write on the blackboard: ‘True education combines moral and intellectual development.’ A groan of horror swept over the hall – this was a deadly theme. I had no time to waste. I immediately set to drafting a synopsis for Bogushevich on a narrow strip of paper.
We were permitted to smoke during final examinations, but only one pupil at a time could go to the smoking room at the end of the corridor. The monitor there was the decrepit old Proctor Kazimir, the same one who had taken me to my preparatory form on the very first day. On the way down the corridor, I rolled the scrap of paper into a tube and stuck it into the hollow mouthpiece of my cigarette. After smoking the cigarette, I left the stub in a pre-arranged place on the windowsill. Kazimir didn’t notice a thing. He just sat there, chewing on his sandwich.
My job was done. Next up was Littauer. He smoked his cigarette, left the stub on the sill, removed my crib, and then dropped it on Bogushevich’s desk as he walked down the aisle. After him went Stanishevsky, Régamé and two others. Their job was harder than mine, requiring both sharp eyes and quick hands.
I had already started writing my composition when Littauer returned to the hall. I kept an eye on him. I wanted to see who he gave the crib to, and how, but he did it so fast I didn’t even notice. Only after I saw one of the girls begin feverishly writing did I know the operation had been a success and Bogushevich had been saved. It wasn’t the girl with the plaits, but a different one. All I could see was her thin back, covered with a white-striped pinafore, and the reddish curls around her neck.
We had four hours to write our composition. Most of us finished early. Only the girls were still sitting there agonising over their desks. We went out into the garden. The trees were full of birds, all of them singing; it seemed as if they had come from every part of Kiev. A fight almost broke out between Littauer and Stanishevsky. Littauer said that Stanishevsky had done a poor job planning the operation. Stanishevsky was livid. Basking in its success, he had expected our praise, not criticism.
‘What was wrong with it?’ he asked Littauer in a bullying tone that promised nothing good.
‘Namely, that there was no damned reason to know the girls’ names. Six girls, six cribs. It didn’t matter who got which one. Why did I need to know whether I’m writing for Bogushevich or Yavorskaya? It’s all the same to me! It only complicated matters when it came time to slip them the cribs.’
‘Oh my God!’ Stanishevsky shook his head in disbelief. ‘You’re a true cretin! You have no imagination whatsoever. I did that intentionally.’
‘Why?’
‘I thought that would make it more in-ter-es-ting!’ he said with great authority. ‘Perhaps this might ignite the flames of love between the saved and the saviour! Did you ever think of that?’
‘No.’
‘Well, you’re an idiot,’ Stanishevsky shot back. ‘And now let’s go to François’s for some ice cream.’
After every examination we squandered what little money we had by stuffing ourselves full of ice cream – four servings or more – at François’s café. For me, trigonometry was the most difficult examination. Somehow, I passed. The examination dragged on until the evening. We waited after the examination for the inspector to announce our marks, and, overjoyed that none of us had failed, we charged loudly out into the street.
Stanishevsky f lung his bashed-up textbook high into the air as hard as he could. The pages sprang from the destroyed book, fluttering over our heads before drifting back down and covering the street. The rest of us found this marvellous, and so we each took turns to launch our textbooks skyward. Soon the street was white with paper. From behind, we heard a policeman’s whistle. We took off running into Fundukleevskaya Street, before ducking into narrow Nesterovskaya Street. Boys began breaking off to go their separate ways and after a while only five of us were left: Stanishevsky, Fitsovsky, Shmukler, Khorozhevsky and myself.
We headed for the Galitsky Market, where there were a lot of little cafés and taverns. We had decided to get drunk. The only examination left was Latin, and no one was afraid of that. We walked along joking and laughing. As the old saying goes, we were possessed by the devil. Passers-by stopped to stare. We went into a tavern at the market. The floors stank of stale beer. There were cubicles along the walls decorated with pink wallpaper that they called ‘private rooms’. We took one of these ‘rooms’ and ordered vodka and beef Stroganoff. The proprietor carefully closed the faded curtain of our cubicle, but we were making so much noise that every so often someone would come by and peep in. We treated every one of them to some vodka, and they were happy to drink with us and offer their congratulations on our finishing school.
Late that evening the proprietor came over, pulled back the curtain and, motioning with his eyes towards the door, said in a low voice: ‘There’s a snooper outside.’
‘What sort of snooper?’ Stanishevsky asked.
‘A policeman, from the Criminal Investigation Division. You need to get out of here now. Go out through the back door. You’ll find a passageway in the courtyard leading to Bulvarno-Kudryavskaya Street.’
We didn’t take the proprietor seriously, but still we left through the back door into a dark, smelly courtyard. Ducking our heads under the clothes lines, we filed past dustbins and woodsheds and reached Bulvarno-Kudryavskaya Street. No one had followed us. We ducked through a passageway into the dimly lit street. A round-shouldered man in a bowler hat was waiting for us.
‘Good evening!’ he wheezed menacingly, doffing his hat. ‘Have you boys had a nice little time?’
We said nothing and walked off down Bulvarno-Kudryavskaya Street. The man in the hat followed us. ‘Still wet behind the ears, but just look at you, already versed in making your getaway through back yards,’ he said, with malice.
Stanishevsky stopped. The man in the hat did too. Then he put a hand in the pocket of his long jacket.
‘What do you want?’ Stanishevsky asked. ‘Just bloody well leave us alone!’
‘Frequenting taverns,’ he said. ‘Pupils of the Imperial Gymnasium frequenting taverns! Don’t you know the punishment is expulsion with a wolf’s ticket?’
‘Let’s go,’ said Stanishevsky. ‘I’m not going to listen to this fool.’
We walked on. The man in the hat followed. ‘I’m not the fool. You’re the fools. I once attended the gymnasium too.’
‘That’s obvious,’ Shmukler said.
‘Why is it obvious?’ the man yelled hysterically. ‘I was kicked out of the gymnasium with a wolf’s ticket for drinking. And you think I’m going to let you get away with it? No! I’ll see you expelled with wolf’s tickets if it’s the last thing I do. Your exams won’t do you any good now – you can say goodbye to any hope of seeing the university. Were you speaking out against the government in the tavern? Yes! Were you making jokes about the imperial family? Yes! I can handle you all. And don’t try any tricks. No matter what, I’m reporting you to the Okhranka.’
We turned into a tangle of narrow streets leading to the Svyatoslavsky ravine. We thought the agent would be too afraid to follow us into this desolate, forgotten part of the city, but he stuck to our heels.
‘Couldn’t the five of us take him?’ Stanishevsky asked.
We stopped. The agent pulled a revolver out of his pocket and showed it to us with a laugh. We led him through the streets for a long time, being certain to avoid the large intersections patrolled by the police. Fitsovsky suggested that we disappear one by one. The agent would be sure to stick with the group, until only one was left. One of us would be caught, but at least not all five. We all thought this was a bad idea. We would stick together like true comrades. We mocked the agent. Each of us loudly recited a made-up biography for him, full of increasingly monstrous and insulting details. He was huffing with rage and was getting tired, but still he clung to us with the obstinacy of a madman.
It began to grow light in the east. It was time to act. We made a plan and then circled through several small alleys before coming to Stanishevsky’s house. A high stone wall, with a ledge running along its base, faced the street. On the count of three, we ran straight at the wall, jumped on the ledge, and then launched ourselves up and over. Our school gymnastics lessons had come in handy. A pile of bricks lay at our feet. Soon they were raining down on the agent on the other side of the wall. He let out a scream, retreated to the middle of the street, and fired his revolver. The bullet flew harmlessly over our heads.
