nd it with goody-goody expressions. They received ten points at the Good Deed Contest for this. We soon became very bored with scouting. There was no use expecting any help from St. George, our heavenly patron. Lord Baden-Powell, wearing a broad-brimmed Boer campaign hat, smiled down at us from the wall portrait. He couldn't suggest anything of interest, either. Once again the boys began smelling strongly of tobacco. A BARGE OF CRIPPLED HEROES The autumn of 1917 was the first autumn during which Russia was not ruled by a tsar. This autumn was just like any other, a time of melons, shoals and second exams for the boys who had not been promoted. At this time a barge carrying bearers of the St. George Cross for Valour docked at Saratov. There was a Museum of War Trophies on the barge, and so the entire school was taken to see this floating embodiment of patriotism. A slogan painted on the side of the barge read: "War to a Victorious End!" You could still make out the lettering underneath that had not been completely erased. It read: "For our country, our tsar...." Every single member of the crew had been awarded the St. George Cross. Nearly all were missing an arm or a leg, and some were missing both. Artificial legs and crutches creaked and tapped along the deck. However, every man had a little St. George Cross dangling on his chest. We roamed the barge for three hours, sticking our heads into the wide barrels of the Austrian howitzers and fingering the silk of the Turkish banners that had been captured in battle. We saw a tremendous German shell called a "trunk". You could pack the death of an entire company into one of them. Finally, the amiable curator showed us the museum's main exhibit. It was a German helmet, taken off a dead officer. It's outstanding features were the hair of the killed man that was stuck to the inside of the helmet and real, dried German blood. The curator spoke of this with relish. The curator was an officer. He stood on his own, natural legs and gesticulated with his own undamaged, well-cared for hands. THE DEFEAT OF ST. GEORGE Stepan did not say a word all the way back, but that very evening he came over to the scout clubroom and quarrelled with the rest of us. "Did you notice the smell there, fellows? Just like the butcher stalls at the market. That's the smell of blood. It hits you right in the nose. But what the hell's it all about? After all, they're all human beings." "We have to fight to a glorious, victorious end," one of the boys ventured. "You're a damn fool! Just aping what somebody else said. What's there in it for us? To hell with you and your precious St. George. Go play soldiers, and maybe you'll get a St. George Cross, too. As for the Boy Scouts, what the hell good are you if you're all for the war? Cross me off your damn list. Understand? I've had enough of fooling around." He pulled out a pack of forbidden cigarettes and lit one up insolently. We stood around in silence, feeling somehow embarrassed. Then Hefty grunted, slowly pulled out his own pack of cigarettes, went over to Atlantis and said, "Give me a light. The game's over. Let's go." Sir Robert Baden-Powell was smiling down at us from the wall. There was nothing funny about it at all, but according to the scout law, a scout was always supposed to be cheerful. Sir Robert grinned, just like Monokhordov. ATLANTIS Once, during a geography lesson in the first grade, Stepan Gavrya, who had been left back, raised his hand from where he sat in the last row and said, "Is it true what it says in books about Atlantis? I mean, that there really is a place like that?" "Perhaps. Why?" Kamyshov, our geography teacher, asked with a smile. "Because I'm going to find it, that's what. I'll look around in the ocean, and I know I'll find it. I'm a darn good diver, you know." That was when Stepan got his nickname. From that day on he became known as Atlantis. Stepan, that devoted pigeon fancier and dare-devil, really did dream of finding the lost Atlantis. Sitting in a hayloft, sneezing from the fragrant dust, he described his future to his friends. "I'll pump all the water out of there and fix all the doors in the palaces, and you've never seen the kind of life we're going to have. It'll really be a lark! There won't be any principals there, and no Latin, that's for sure." He left stifled within the stone walls of the school. Stepan was hot-headed. His head was as hot as a watermelon in a melon patch on a blazing July day. Learning came very hard to him. He was from a very small farm outside the town, and all of the vast, endless steppe was his back yard. He was used to shouting at camels, and his foghorn voice shook the official stillness of the school every time he opened his mouth. "Gavrya," a teacher would say, calling on him. "Yah?" Stepan would bellow in reply and then be reprimanded. He had run away to join the army, but had been returned home from the very first railroad station. Then he had run away again and had been caught again. He did not like to talk about it. UPSIDE-DOWN Stepan had strange, funny ideas about life. First, before really getting the hang of a thing, he would see it upside-down, as it were. They said he had even learned to read upside-down in the beginning. This is how it had all come about. Stepan's elder brother was being prepared for school by a teacher who came to the house to teach him to read. Stepan was still very small and was not supposed to participate in these lessons. The teacher would open the primer, and Stepan's brother, who sat by her side, would read aloud. Stepan would sit across the table from them, leaning over as he listened to every word. However, when he looked at the book he would see all the words upside-down, and that was how he remembered them. That was how he learned to read: from right to left and upside-down. He later had a very hard time learning to read the correct way. Stepan suddenly became very grown-up after the boys' visit to the barge to see the wounded soldiers. He was forever going off someplace and reading books we knew nothing about. He would often drop by at my house, but would spend his time in the kitchen talking to Annushka's soldier. Another frequent visitor there was a Czech named Kardac, a prisoner-of-war who had been in the Austrian Army. The three of them would argue heatedly. After one such argument Stepan said to me in a puzzled voice "What do you know? It looks like I have everything upside-down again. Can you beat that! I was a damn fool talking about Atlantis the way I did. We can have a pretty good life here, too, you know. That's something I never thought about." THE EVE Hungry women standing in line for bread at the market fell upon the mayor. Dogs howled at night, and the wooden clappers sounded feebly in the awkward hands of the volunteer home guardsmen. The city council was in session every single day. A cold, damp wind was blowing from the Volga, tossing scraps of foam onto the bank. Torn shreds of proclamations: "Citizens!... The Constituent Assembly..." waltzed along the dusty streets. Something very heavy was dropped in Saratov beyond the Volga at four o'clock in the afternoon. This was followed by a great gust of wind. The windows rattled. Boom! And then again, twice in a row: Boom!... Boom! It seemed as though someone was swinging a tremendous rug beater, beating out a fantastic rug that was miles long. People would stop on the street and look up at the sky. Crows winged back and forth. Crowds of idlers dotted the rooftops, as they usually did when there was a fire someplace. Those standing on the pavement shouted: "See anything?" "Sure. As clear as day. That was some explosion." "Who's shooting?" "Who knows? Probably the Cadets!" From the top of the school building we could see tiny white puffs of smoke rising over Saratov. They quickly expanded to become dark, ragged clouds. Half a minute later a heavy blow would come crashing down on the roof, deafening us slightly. By night time there was a red glow of fire over Saratov. Nobody turned on their lights in Pokrovsk that night. The sky was a feverish crimson. THE HISTORY LESSON At nine o'clock the following morning boys in long great-coats hurried across the square as always. Their pencil boxes rattled in their satchels. A dull grey morning crept into the classrooms. The lectern creaked as the sleepy-eyed history teacher leaned on it. The monitor, crossing himself automatically, rattled off the morning prayer. Then he handed the teacher the class journal and reported on the absent pupils: "Stepan Gavrya is absent." The teacher had not had enough sleep. He yawned and scratched his chin. "And so the Emperor Justinian the Great and ... aag-ah-haa ... Theodora ... (he was overcome by yawning). And The-agh-aah-do-oh-ra...." It was terribly dull to have to listen to an account of ancient, long-dead emperors at a time when real, live people were making history right there, across the Volga. There was a loud murmuring in the classroom. Finally, Aleferenko got up and said: "Would you please explain all about what's going on in Russia right now?" "Gentlemen!" The teacher was indignant. "In the first place, I'm not a newspaper. Secondly, you are too young to discuss politics. Now, where were we? Justi...." "You sure are old," someone in the back row muttered. "Old regime, that's what you are!" "What? Get up and stand by the wall!" "Don't listen to him, Kolya!" the boys shouted. "Who does he think he is, Justinian the Great?" "Get out!" But just then a deep, mighty, all-consuming sound burst in from the sires. carried in on the wings of the wind. It was the bone-meal factory whistle. It was immediately caught up by the piping whistle of the railroad depot. The lumber yards on the hill joined in various trebles. The flour mill whistled. The cannery buzzed like some distant bumblebee. A river boat on the Volga piped frantically, wildly. The morning was full of their songs. The inspector dashed into the classroom. Confusion was entangled in his beard like a fly. No one rose to greet him. A DAY THAT WAS NOT ENTERED IN THE LEDGER Annushka's soldier friend, Kharkusha, was making a speech on the river ban He was standing on the pier, gesticulating with his good hand. From afar he seemed to be conducting the orchestra of whistles. We elbowed our way through the crowd. A boat was rapidly approaching the pier. It was the Tamara. Its wheels turning smartly, slapping the water, and two ridges of white foam rose on either side of the prow. A red flag looked as if it was about to fly off the mast. The boat was now close enough for us to see the men and machine-guns on its deck. The men looking weary but determined, and as set as if they had been bolted to the deck. This was the revolution docking at Pokrovsk. The captain on the bridge was wearing a red armband. Standing next to him with a rifle slung over his should and his cap tilted back was Atlantis. I recognized the man standing next to him. They were workers from the lumber yards. "Hey! Look! It's Stepan!" my classmates yelled. "Atlantis! How'd you there?" Petya Yachmenny, a very proper boy, shook his head and said, "Why'd you play hookey? You'll get in trouble now." "Oh, no, I won't!" Stepan said and laughed. He leaped over the railing and on the pier as the boat was docking. "Not on your life I won't! The Black Book's good as dead and buried now. For good!" The tie ropes had been secured, and now the boat was hissing as it bumped against the pier The captain was issuing commands through a megaphone. Men with red armbands were lining up on the deck. "These're our men," Atlantis said proudly. "They're Bolsheviks," people murmured in the crowd. "Ready!" the captain said. THE END OF THE BLACK BOOK At the end of the spring term we burned the school diaries that contained our day-to-day marks. Such was the old school custom. This time, however, it seemed to have acquired a new significance, one that we were all aware of. A huge bonfire blazed in the school yard. We pranced about it in a wild Indian dance as the flames consumed our "D's" as our reprimands disintegrated and the days we had attended school went up in smoke. "Hooray!" we shouted, three hundred strong. "Hoor-rray! We're burning! the last! diaries! of the old regime! They'll never return! An end to all diaries! An end to no dinners! Death to the ledgers! Hooray! The last school ledgers in the world are burning! No more cramming or demerits! There go the ledgers of the old regime!" Hefty and Stepan made their way to the deserted Teachers' Room. The bookcase containing the Black Book was locked. The squirrel's tail was tickling dusty Venus' nose. A huge papier-mache model of a human eye stared at the boys in amazement. Then Hefty kicked in the door panel. The Black Book was removed from the bookcase. "Into the fire with it!" Atlantis yelled as he appeared on the porch, carrying the thick Ledger. "We'll roast Seize'em's tattling!" But every single boy wanted to touch the Dove Book, to read what it said about him, to discover its secrets. All the ledgers of previous years were then tossed into the flames. The last was read aloud by the bonfire, and we had a grand old time listening to its loathsome pages. We decided to preserve it for posterity, and Stepan was elected to be the Keeper of the Ledger, since at least a quarter of all the mischief reported in it concerned the boy who had once decided to set out in search of Atlantis. The old ledgers were going up in flames. Their hard covers writhed in the fire. Then Forsunov, one of the seniors, came out on the porch. He was a member of the local Council of Deputies. "Let's have a minute of quiet, comrades," he said. "The Council of Deputies has decided to fire all the old regime teachers. This means that Romashov, Roachius, Ukhov and Monokhordov will all go. We'll have new teachers. We'll elect our own representatives to the Teachers' Council. Everything'll be different now. This is the end of the Black Book." Three hundred boys in grey school uniforms marched around the fire that was now dying down. They hooted and howled, and shouted gleefully as they carried the unmasked and helpless Black Book at the head of this unheard-of funeral procession. Meanwhile, a mound of charred, brittle pages was curling up amidst the ashes. WANDERING ISLANDS NETTLES AND TOADSTOOLS We spent the summer of 1918 on the Carshandar Riviera in Northern Schwambrania and in the village of Kvasnikovka, which was twelve kilometres from Pokrovsk. We battled all through the summer, stamping out large settlements of toadstools and cutting down every nettle in sight with bloodthirsty glee. Naturally, quite a few innocent mushrooms and harmless dandelions lost their lives in the fray. It was rainy summer, and weeds and grass sprouted in great profusion. Then one day w captured the worst villain of all, Death-Cap-Poison-Emir. It was an amazing mushroom with a stem as large as a tenpin and a dark-red cap dotted with white bumps that looked like a huge chunk of sausage. There could be no doubt about it: this was the chieftain of all toadstools. We carried Death-Cap-Emir home with great pomp, walking along in the shade of its umbrella-cap. Suddenly, two men appeared on the road. They had con from the ravine and were walking towards us. "That's some umbrella! Whaddya know!" one of them said. He had big ea that wiggled when he spoke. The man was wearing a ragged khaki field jacket and puttees. There was a visible stubble on his chin. In fact, there was something definitely nettle-like about him that made me feel itchy when he looked at us. "He made me all itchy inside," Oska said to me afterwards. Just then the other man came up. His grin revealed two rows of rotten teeth. T second man was pale and puny. He had on a linen shirt with a standing collar and a large mushroom-like hat. He reminded me of a rotten toadstool. "Won't you treat us to that dainty titbit, young men?" the toadstool-man said. "Don't be stingy, brother," the nettle-man said. "We're damn hungry. And everything's common property now, even mushrooms, by the way. Am I right, brothers?" "How'd you know we're brothers?" Oska asked. "I know everything." "Everybody's brothers now," the toadstool-man added. Then he went on in very solemn voice: "Young men, judging by the look of your swords, I can see 1 you are a pair of fine, upstanding knights. Help your suffering fellow-men in t of trial, brothers, or I'll be forced by the pangs of hunger to eat this mushroom the poison-mushroom variety, and I will die at your feet in terrible convulsions "That's for sure. We're more dead than alive anyway," the nettle-man said. We were horror-stricken when he bit off a small piece of the death-cap began to writhe. The toadstool-man would have pulled his hair in despair had he had any, but he was bald. We stood there in stunned silence and then hi something knocking inside the dead man. "His heart's still ticking," Oska said uncertainly. "That's my spirit entering and leaving my body in turns, Brother," the dead said sorrowfully. "Here I am, dying of hunger, poor soul, and all because of the revolution. What did I shed my blood for? Call your dear mamma, boys. Maybe she can save this orphan. Tell her a man is dying and is willing to trade a watch or a clock for some bacon." The nettle-man then began pulling pocket watches, locket-watches, stopwatches, alarm clocks and chronometers from his pockets. We stared spellbound in awe at this great treasure. The environs of Kvasnikovka resounded with a mighty ticking. THE COMMISSAR CHECKED THE TIME Half an hour later the summer people and the local village women crowded around the two men. The nettle-man was pulling wall clocks and cuckoo clocks from his bag and winding them up, while the toadstool-man, like some circus magician, was pulling a length of silk material from his stomach and growing thinner by the second. He then came up with the following from his knapsack: two desk sets, a pair of bedroom slippers, a small fish bowl (no fish), an icon, a pair of curling irons, several gramophone records, a dog collar, a starched dickey, an enamel bedpan and a mouse-trap. His floppy hat turned out to be a lampshade. "Do you have a sewing machine?" one of the village woman asked. "I did have one, but I traded it in Tambov." As the trading was proceeding at a lively pace, the nettle-man made a speech, just as if he were at a meeting. "Now, my dear ladies, women and everybody else, you can see what we've come to, and all on account of those Bolsheviks. And, mind, we shed our working-class blood for them, down to the very last drop, my dear ladies and women. We're both from Petrograd." "Look! The Commissar's coming!" a boy shouted. The nimble men quickly stuffed their wares back into their sacks. "Let's see your papers," Commissar Chubarkov said when he had got out of the gig. "And stop agitating!" "How can you say such a thing? You're supposed to be one of us," the nettle-man replied calmly. "I'm not one of you, and don't you ever forget it," Chubarkov said angrily and put his hand in his pocket. "Let's see your papers, you damn profiteer!" The toadstool-man's hands shook as he pulled out a scrap of paper. This was what was written on it: "The bearer is an assistant bookkeeper ... and research worker." The nettle-man had no identification papers at all. He himself seemed dismayed about it. "Pack up your junk and get going, both of you, before I pull you in. There's too many of you toadstools popping up all over!" Chubarkov said. "You're mistaken! We're just travellers on our way. In fact, we don't even have many personal property. You can search us if you want to," the toadstool-man said. "I've no time to waste on you. You're lucky I'm in a hurry, I'll bet it o'clock by now." "Cu-ckoo, cu-ckoo, cu-ckoo!" went the cuckoo clock in the nettle-mans bag. PUTTING THE LID ON BRESHKA STREET Pokrovsk had changed during our absence. The market was gone, and some former rich men were sweeping the market square. The owner of the bone-meal factory was one of them. We crossed off the second item on our list of injustices. A speakers' platform had been erected in the place where the Earth curved, and a machine-gun now protruded from the window of the big house on Breshka Street where an overweight fox-terrier used to bark at passers-by. A red flag hung out over the window. We saw the nettle-man again in Pokrovsk. He was leading a gang of k mob of deserters had gathered outside a wine shop early that morning, de that they be given wine. The big plate-glass windows silently reflected the crowd. Then the nettle-man picked up a metal rod and whacked the window. The shattered glass said "zing". An hour later Breshka Street was reeling drunk. Women carried off pails of Port wine on yokes. There were puddles of wine on the road, and wine flowed gutters. Men lay down on the ground and drank straight from them. Sc had their arms around the deserters. Oranges that had been allocate orphans' home were rolling down Breshka Street. Pigs slobbered over the oranges. A huge fat sow was splashing in a puddle of Madeira. A spotted hog was miserable on the corner, throwing up champagne. Commissar Chubarkov came galloping up in his gig. He jumped down before it had drawn to a stop. "In the name of revolutionary order, I have to ask you all to please..." the commissar was saying. "Where were you before?" the schoolboys demanded. Chubarkov coaxed them, pleaded with them, demanded and warned them. "Everything belongs to everybody!" the drunken mob shouted, aping the nettle-man's words. "We shed our blood, down to the very last drop...." That was when the machine-gun in the window of the big house began to chatter, sending a first round over the drunken heads. The cowardly mob vanished into thin air. Oska and I recalled playing Schwambrania on the windowsill and making-believe we were shooting down Breshka Street, but at that time it was invincible. Half an hour later some Red Army men dragged a drowned man from the cellar of the shop. He had probably fallen down and drowned in wine. Chubarkov went over to the body, had a look and shook his head when he recognized it. "Cuckoo," the Commissar said. THE CODE WORDS OF SCHWAMBRANIA Stepan Atlantis sent me the following note while we were away in Kvasnikovka for the summer: "Be at school on the 1st. The CWS will be opened. That sure will be something! S. Gavrya." It took me some time to figure out what "the CWS" stood for. Suddenly, it dawned on me. It meant "The Code Words of Schwambrania". Someone had discovered the secret of the seashell grotto, had let out our Black Queen and found the note. Stepan knew all about Schwambrania now, and he was going to tell everyone else about it, too. Oska and I were stunned. Harsh reality had come crashing into our cosy little world. However, when we returned home after the summer we saw that the seal on the gate to the grotto had not been touched. The Black Queen, the keeper of the secret, was still serving her sentence inside, deep within the cobweb gloom. But how had Stepan learned about Schwambrania? I decided to have it out with him. He was a great one for imagining and make-believe himself and had even earned his nickname because of his dream of discovering Atlantis. I decided that Schwambrania and Atlantis might become friendly nations after all. Stepan was very happy to see me. He had grown taller over the summer and somehow seemed older. "Still alive and kicking?" he said. "As you see. How'd you find out about the CWS?" I asked hesitantly. "What's so strange about that? All the fellows know about it." "Thanks for blabbering it to everybody. I thought you were my friend. That's the most important thing in my life." I wanted to explain why this was so and told Stepan all about the volcanic land, saying I thought the Schwambranians and the people of Atlantis should be allies. Stepan listened intently. Then he sighed and put out the sparks that had appeared in his eyes. "I don't think about Atlantis any more. I've no use for that kind of make-believe now. I've no time for it. There's the revolution. All those secrets were all right for tsarist times. But now there's too much to be done. Still, I like what you made up about Schwambrania. But the CWS has nothing to do with it. That's what we'll have instead of the Boys School now. A Common Work School." THAT'S THAT! A red flag waved over the school building on the 1st of August. We were all gathered in the yard outside. It was a bright, sunny day. Kamyshov, our new principal, came out on the porch to greet us. "Hello, doves! Congratulations on your new status. You are now pupils of the Soviet Common Work School. Congratulations." We thanked him and congratulated him, too. "Now, since I've been appointed Commissar of Health, I want to introduce your new, temporary principal, Comrade Chubarkov. He's also the Military Commissar. I hope you'll get on." Chubarkov was not greeted with applause. He said, "Comrades! You're all educated boys. Now you take me, for instance. I was an uneducated stevedore. You've all got book-learning, but I went to the school of hard knocks. I want to say a few words about your new school, and what the name stands for. First of all, it's school that all children can go to. That's for sure. And why is it called a work school? Because it's for the children of all working people, and you'll learn to work well here, both mentally and physically. That's for sure. And it's a common school, because there won't be any special schools for the rich and the nobility any more. All children are equal now, and they'll all get an equal chance to study. And so's this will all be for the good of the revolution, I ask you, in the name of revolutionary order, to attend school regularly and to take care of things here, and then everything will be just dandy." "Where were you before?" Hefty and a couple of the older boys shouted. "Down with the Commissar! We want Kamyshov!" "In the name of revolutionary order, I'll have to ask you to accept the Council's decision. Kamyshov has just been transferred to another job. And that's that. Before, only rich people had the money to take care of their health. Now everybody's going to be healthy. It's a very important job, and all the more so since there's a lot of typhus going around now. And that's that!" Comrade Chubarkov, Bertelyov, one of our teachers, Forsunov, a member of the City Council, Stepan Atlantis and two senior boys were appointed to the School Council. Some of the seniors hissed. Then Chubarkov said that since women were now the complete equals of men, we would have girls in our classes. And that was that! A SENSITIVE MISSION The Boys and Girls schools were to merge. But then the classrooms would be too small. That was why the grades were divided into "A" and "B". We set up a special committee to choose the girls we wanted to have in our class. I was the chairman and Stepan was my assistant. We spent a good half-hour grooming ourselves in front of the cloakroom mirror. Every pleat was in place. Hefty, the class strong-man, had pulled our belts as tight as possible, making our chests protrude mightily, though we were barely able to breathe as a result. However, we bore the discomfort stoically. Stepan asked someone to spit on his cowlick. There were a great many volunteers, but he only let me do it. "Not too thick! And don't hawk." I did my best. Stepan smoothed down the cowlick. "You sure look like you could take anyone on!" Hefty said as he looked us over with fatherly concern. "Real chic! They'll all fall in love with you. Be sure you pick the prettiest ones." We set off for the Girls School, escorted by an honour guard of five boys. School was in session there. The corridor was a haven of peace and quiet. Muted rivers and lakes, petals and stems, conjugations and declensions seeped out from under the classroom doors. Old desks were piled up in a far corner next to a brand-new piano, which had probably been requisitioned from some wealthy home. "Let's take the music back, too," Stepan said. We had already found out that the fourth grade had been left to its own resources, since the Russian teacher was ill. In order to occupy the girls their school marm had told them to read aloud in turn. She was seated at the lectern, embroidering a handkerchief. A plump girl was declaiming: "Who rides there, who gallops, engulfed by the gloom?" "We do," came a voice from the corridor. The classroom doors burst open and a weird procession rolled in, accompanied by a victorious rumbling. This was better than the wildest Schwambranian dreams. Leading the way like tanks were two desks moving in single file. Each had a flag stuck in the inkwell hole. Stepan and I had arrived on the desks. The piano followed grandly in our wake with five boys pushing it. The wheels screeched like stuck pigs. A list of the boys of our class was balanced on the music stand, our caps were hung on the candlesticks, and the soft pedal had on a straw slipper someone had found in the yard. "Here we are!" Stepan said. "You're not having a lesson now anyway, are you?" A stunned silence greeted us. "What is this!" the school marm shrieked. The sound was so loud it made a sensitive string inside the piano vibrate for some time. "It's a peaceful deputation," I said and then played a popular waltz as I stood at the keyboard. The school marm stormed out of the room. The girls finally awoke from their stupor. "Most equal girls!" I said, launching into my speech. "Most very equal girls!" I repeated and proceeded still more heatedly: "I want to tell you about what I want to tell you." By now all the girls were smiling. This encouraged me. I went on briskly to say that now we would all be going to the same school, girls and boys together, like brothers and sisters, like bread and butter, like bacon and eggs, like Napoleon and Bonaparte, like Rimsky and Korsakov. "How'11 we sit, boys separately, or a boy and a girl at each desk?" a tall, serious-looking girl asked. "I don't want to sit next to a boy." "The boys'll pull our braids," a fat girl said in a deep voice. "They might even try to kiss us." Our deputation exhibited great indignation. I played "Storm on the Volga", banging away at the keys, and Stepan spat in disgust and said, "Kiss? Ugh! I'd rather eat a toad!" "Can we play staring games?" the smallest girls asked all together. They had huge bows on the tops of their heads. "Hm." I pondered over this for a minute. "What do you say, Stepan?" "I'd say they can," he replied condescendingly. After several other equally important details had been discussed and the official, polite part was over, we began, most impolitely, to pick the girls who we wanted as classmates. The girls, meanwhile, were busy prettying up. The first girl whose name I put down on my list was Taya Opilova, She had a long golden braid. "I look terrible today. I hab a code (have a cold)," she said. As we compiled our list, we gave each girl a nickname, entering it beside her real name. Thus, we wrote "Bamboo" next to a tall girl's name, "Squirts", beside two small girls' names, and "Madame Hippo" beside a fat girl's name. There were also Sonya-Personya, Fifi, Beanpole, Lilly-Pill, Monkey-face and Grind. The girls we hadn't picked said we were idiots. Once outside, Stepan said, "We'll have to cut out the swearing now until they get used to it." A few moments later we came upon a deputation from our brother "B" class. There was a heated exchange on the subject of our having got there first, after which our appearance and mood were lightly marred. CHOPSTICKS The pigeons were dying out in granary row. The wind rustled in the empty granaries, whispering the terrible word "ruin". "No need for a spoon in time of ruin," the janitor said sadly as he observed the way things were going in school. And the way they were was enough to make horses shy. All day long someone or other was playing "Chopsticks" on the piano with one finger. Dum-de-dum-de.... The piano was rolled down the corridor, from one classroom to another, depending on which teacher had not come to school. The given room would then turn into a dance floor. Pupils would leave without permission. Someone sang a ditty: "Karapet, my dear friend, why do you look so bad? I look bad, my dear friend, 'cause I always feel sad." As soon as the bell for classes rang, the teachers tried to coax the pupils back to their rooms. "You used to be such a good student," Alexander Karlovich, our kind math teacher, said in despair as he caught me by the sleeve. "Come along and I'll tell you about a most interesting thing concerning the trigonometrical functions of an angle. You'll be surprised at how interesting it is. It's like reading a good book." I was too polite to refuse. We entered the empty classroom. Someone was playing "Chopsticks" in the adjoining room. Alexander Karlovich sat down at the lectern. I took a seat in the first row. Everything was fine, if not for the fact that there were no other pupils present. I was the whole class. "Go to the board, please," the teacher said. As I went over to the blackboard I saw the schedule for the next day tacked upon the wall. Oho! The next day was going to be a hard one. There would be five lessons. The first was music appreciation, the second was drawing, the third was a mid-morning snack, the fourth was shop and the fifth was gym. "Well, let us begin," the teacher said, addressing the empty classroom. Someone was still playing "Chopsticks". THE UNIFORMLESS JUNIORS We had all grown and now protruded from our school great-coats like trees above a picket fence. The buttons on our chests had retreated to the very edge of the seams under pressure of our expanding masculinity. The belt in back had crept all the way up from our waist to our shoulder blades, but we staunchly continued wearing our old uniforms. There was a bluish spot that resembled a butterfly on our faded caps, left by the cockades we had removed. One day Comrade Chubarkov brought seven new boys to my class. They were variously clad, but none was wearing a school uniform, though they all had on the same broad belts with the letters "JHS" on the buckle. They clustered behind Chubarkov's broad back. "Quiet, everybody!" Chubarkov said. "Now, hello! Onto the next question. Since the school is now a common school, it means everybody is going to study together. I want to introduce these boys. They're from the junior high. I want you all to be friends." "Down with the Juniors!" the boys in the back rows shouted. "We don't want them here! They don't know half of what we do!" Chubarkov, who had reached the door, turned back. "Anybody who doesn't want to study with the rest can study at home with a tutor. And that's that!" He stalked out. The Juniors clustered by the lectern uncertainly. "Hello, privileged classes," said Kostya Rudenko, an olive-skinned Junior whose nickname was Beetle. We knew him from our street fights. "Hello, boys and girls," Kostya Beetle said politely. "Wa yo fa puh?" Hefty said. ("Want your face pushed in?" some of our boys interpreted.) "We dyo be me?" Kostya Beetle replied calmly. ("When did you ever beat me?" the Junior explained.) Our boys were taking off their watches to make sure they would not be broken during the fight. The girls were entrusted with their safekeeping. "You're just a bunch of uniformless Juniors," Hefty muttered as he advanced on Kostya. "Look at you, shoving your way into our high school from your lousy junior high. You don't even have silver buttons, you don't even have school uniforms. But you're all shoving your way up, aren't you?" "We know more than you do. What do you know about logarithms?" Kostya said. Hefty had never heard of them. "I don't give a damn for that! I'll push your face in, and that'll teach you." Still and all, he was put out. I could see some of my classmates leafing through their geometry books. Since I knew the answer, I raised my hand to save the honour of my class. Stepan Atlantis slapped down my palm. "They'll manage without you," he said softly. "It serves him right. Good for Kostya. He made Hefty eat humble pie. Come on, sit down, boys. There are a lot of empty vacancies." The Juniors began taking seats timidly amidst the chilling silence. Kostya found a seat beside the Squirts, two little girls who were inseparable. "Don't sit next to us," they said, tossed their bows and moved away in a huff. THE STARING GAME Having girls in the classroom brought about many changes, the most important of which was a new staring game. The game caught on like wildfire, with everyone playing it. The players would sit opposite each other and stare into each other's eyes. If one of the players' eyes began to tear from the strain and he blinked, he would be eliminated. We had popeyed champions among the girls and the boys. We even held a staring match. Now the hours in school slipped happily away. A contest organized to determine the champion "crazy-gazer" lasted for the whole of two lessons and part of the long recess. Liza-Scandalizer was competing against Volodya Labanda. They did not take their unseeing eyes from each other for two and a half hours. During the physics lesson that day the teacher was amazed at the unusual quiet in the classroom. Not knowing what to make of it he explained the principles of a water level to the class and then tiptoed out. Towards the end of the long recess Volodya put his hand over his smarting eyes. He threw in the towel. Liza, however, kept on staring at him motionlessly from under her brows. The girls were jubilant. They squealed and shrieked, and carried on. We stuck our fingers in our ears. However, Liza-Scandalizer kept on staring at the same spot. Her head was tilted strangely. The Squirts bent down to look at her and bounced away in terror. Then we all saw that Liza's eyes had rolled way up, so that only the whites were visible. She was in a dead faint. NO TIME TO STUDY The boys tried hard to be polite when the girls were present. The really outrageous inscriptions were scraped off the desk tops and the walls. When the boys wanted to wipe their noses with their hands they went behind the blackboard. Polite notes and messages in tiny envelopes were passed during classes. Thus: "Good morning, Valya. May I see you to your corner on a matter of great secrecy? If you show this to Serge, I'll brain hi