Apricot Jam: And Other Stories (19 page)

Only he can rise to glory,

Only he can join our rush

Who finds,
‘
neath
petty facts, the story

Of Revolution
’
s forward push.

But then they took back the textbooks they had just given out for the year: they had been found incorrect and lagging behind reality. They began publishing
“
loose
”
textbooks—ones that dealt with contemporary issues and were to be used only for the current half of the year, because by the next year they would already be outdated. A newspaper published Gorky
’
s article
“
To the Humanists,
”
in which he denounced and damned those humanists—and this was immediately included in the next loose textbook:
“
It is entirely natural that workers
’
and peasants
’
power is crushing its enemies like lice.
”

It all left you terrified, scarcely able to catch your breath, and utterly confused. How could you possibly present that to the children?
And
why?

But Gorky was a great writer, a Russian classic, and an authority respected across the globe, so how could your wretched little mind dare challenge him? And here, right alongside, he writes about those who have lost contact with reality and live lives of ease:
“
What is it that this class of degenerates wants? ...
a
well-fed, colorless, licentious, and irresponsible life.
”
And then you remember
Nekrasov
’
s
lines,
“
From the exultant, idle chatterers . . .
”
And didn
’
t Chekhov call for a little man with a hammer to trouble the sleeping conscience each day?

So she decided to organize a literary circle. A dozen of her most responsive, favorite students from Six A signed up, and after class Anastasia
Dmitrievna
would take them through the best of the nineteenth century, things that weren
’
t included in the syllabus. But there was no way she could hide her circle from the principal (a caustic woman who taught social science). From her it went up to the
Region,
and an instructor from the methodology office came and sat down like a toad at one of the meetings of the literary circle. Anastasia
Dmitrievna
cut out all of the enthusiasm, all the sense, all the inspiration, and could scarcely recognize what remained as her own. The verdict of the toad was: Enough harping on the classics! The fact is that it distracts students from life.

“
Fact
”
had become a byword in these years. The word rang out as something incontestable, deadly as a pistol shot. (And the toad-like instructor could have reached a far more brutal verdict:
“
This was
sneak attack
!
”
)

There was another possibility—outings to the theater. The five-day week had now changed to six days, and every date divisible by six was a common rest day, similar to the former Sunday. On these free days the theater put on cheap matinees for schoolchildren. Children, accompanied by their teachers, would come from all across the city. The enchantment of the lights dimming in the hall, the curtains drawing back, the actors moving under the bright spotlights, their vivid appearance in makeup, their ringing voices—how these things could capture the heart of a child, and what a shining path to literature they offered.

It was true that the plays were what you could expect, requisites of the Five-Year Plan:
Trenyov
’
s
Lyubov
Yarovaya
,
in which the wife of a White officer shoots her husband out of ideological commitment; and quite a lot of
Kirshon
—The Rails Are Humming,
about the subversive activities of engineers; and
Bread,
about the vicious resistance of the kulaks and the ardor of the poor peasantry. (After all, you couldn
’
t deny the class struggle and its role in history.) She did manage to bring her students to Schiller
’
s
Kabale
und Liebe.
And so, taking up the children
’
s enthusiasm,
Anastasia
Dmitrievna
arranged a reading in which students in group Seven A took the various roles in the play. A star student, a skinny boy with disheveled hair that would never stay in place, read in an unnatural voice dripping with tragedy and aping his favorite actor:
“
Louisa, did you love the marshal? This candle will not burn out before you die ...
”
(This same boy was the class deputy on the school pedagogical council, as was the practice.) Schiller
’
s play was considered compatible with revolutionary times and attending it would not bring a reprimand. But if they were thinking of reading anything by
Ostrovsky
they had to choose very, very carefully.

Rostov-on-the-Don was declared
“
a city of hundred-percent literacy
”
(though there were still more than plenty illiterates). In the schools, they were using the
“
brigade-laboratory method
”
: the instructor did not present the lesson and did not assign individual grades. The class was split into brigades of four or five, and the desks were rearranged accordingly; one of the students in each brigade would read aloud, in a low voice, from the
“
loose
”
textbook. Then the instructor would ask for one student to answer for the whole brigade. And if the answer was
“
satisfactory
”
or
“
very satisfactory,
”
then each member of the brigade would receive a
“
sat.
”
or a
“
v. sat.
”

Then there was a school quarter when none of the usual loose textbooks arrived and no required curriculum was assigned. Without them, even the city education authorities were lost: Did this mean some major shift in the party line? They decided that for the time being each teacher would carry on however they chose and take responsibility for what they did.

It was then that their social science teacher and principal began teaching bits from Marx
’
s
Capital
to the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades at once. Did that mean Anastasia
Dmitrievna
could now teach some of the Russian classics? But how could she make the right choice and not fall into error? Dostoevsky, of course, was ruled out, and in any case the students were not yet ready to be exposed to him. And
Leskov
—no, even he was ruled out. Nor could she take Aleksei Tolstoy
’
s
Death of Ivan the Terrible
or
Tsar Fyodor.
As for Pushkin—well, not everything.
And Lermontov—not everything.
(And if any of the young lads asked about Esenin she would change the subject and not answer—he was strictly forbidden.)

In fact, she had grown unaccustomed to such freedom. She herself could no longer even express what she had once felt. After all that Nastenka had read, discovered, and had been taught to see over these past years, even the former unshakeable integrity of Russian literature now seemed to have been shaken. Now she was frightened to talk about an author or a book without providing some class basis for them. She paged through
Kogan
and found the phrase,
“
the types of ideas with which this work falls into line.
”

Meanwhile, new issues of Soviet literary journals were coming out, and the newspapers were heaping praises on some new works. She lost heart: she could not allow these young adolescents to lag behind. They were the ones, after all, who would have to live in this world, and she must help them find their way into it.

And so she sought out these new poems and stories that had been hailed in the press and brought them to her students. Here, children, is the highest degree of selflessness for the sake of the common cause:

I
’
ll gladly give up both my name and rank

For a number, a letter, a tag!

This did not go over well. Young hearts must be set aflame with something that soars, something romantic. And then there was:

Cavalry horses

Carried us there!

The enemy forces

Advanced
‘
cross the square!

But, dripping hot blood,

We rose up once again

And our unseeing eyes

We opened again!

... So that this harsh nation

Would flow with our blood,

So a new generation

Would stand where we stood.

And her students
’
glowing, inspired little eyes were Anastasia
Dmitrievna
’
s
best reward.

A reward for a whole life that, till now, had been a failure.

1993; 1995

<
>

~ * ~

ADLIG SCHWENKITTEN

A TALE OF TWENTY-FOUR HOURS

Dedicated to the Memory of

Major Pavel
Afanasyevich
Boyev and

Major Vladimir
Kondratyevich
Baluev

1

O
n the night of January 25-26, the army artillery staff informed the
staff of our artillery brigade that our forward tank corps had broken through to the Baltic coast! East Prussia, therefore, had been cut off from Germany.

It had been cut off, but for the moment only by this long, thin wedge that was still far in advance of all its supporting troops. But the days when we retreated were over. Prussia had been cut off! Surrounded!

And so, Comrade Political Officers, a conclusive victory.
Put it down in your war diaries. Now we
’
re no more than a stone
’
s throw away from Berlin, unless they give that job to someone else.

During the five days of our advance through a Prussia of burning houses there had been no shortage of celebrations. In the eleven days after we broke out of our expanded bridgehead on Narew and the five days when we moved through Poland there had been some stubborn resistance, but once we crossed the Prussian border it was as if some miraculous curtain had been drawn aside: the German units fell back on both our flanks, revealing an undamaged land of abundance that simply fell into our hands. Clusters of stone houses with tall, steep roofs; soft beds to sleep in, sometimes even under eiderdown; stocks of food in the cellars with sweet stuff and other goodies we
’
d never laid eyes on before. There was even free drink to be had for those who could find it.

And so we advanced through Prussia in a kind of half-drunken, joyous haze, as if we had lost the precision of our movements and our thoughts. Naturally, after so many years of war casualties and deprivations, we sometimes slackened off a little.

This feeling of enjoying some well-deserved rewards took hold of everyone, right up to the higher commanders. The troops felt it even more. And they found some rewards. And they drank.

After we had cut off Prussia this feeling grew even stronger.

On the morning of January 26, seven of the brigade
’
s tractor and truck drivers died in convulsions after drinking methyl alcohol. There were also some victims from the gun crews, and others who went blind.

So began this day in the brigade. Those who had gone blind were taken to the hospital. Captain Toplev, with a plump, boyish face and only recently promoted from senior lieutenant, knocked at the door of the room where the CO of Second Battalion, Major Boyev, was sleeping, to report on the incident.