A School for Fools

by Sasha Sokolov

  He died in the spring of such-and-such year in his little house that had a weather vane. That day we were supposed to take the last exam in such-and-such class, his exam to be exact, geography. Norvegov promised to arrive before nine; we gathered in the hall and waited for the teacher until eleven, but he did not come. The principal of the school, Perillo, said the exam had been moved to tomorrow, since, apparently, Norvegov was sick. We decided to pay him a visit, but nobody knew the city address of our mentor and we went down to the teachers’ room, to the director of curriculum, Tinbergen, who secretly lives in our apartment and dances in the morning in the entrance hall, but whom neither you nor I saw even once because it’s enough to boldly open the door from the room to the hall and you find yourself—open boldly!—in the moat of the Milan fortress and observe flying on four wings. The day is extraordinarily sunny and Leonardo, wearing a wrinkled old chiton, stands by his portable easel with a drawing pen in one hand and a bottle of red india ink in the other and puts some designs on a sheet of Whatman paper, copies shoots of the sedge that grows over the entire muddy bottom of the moat (the sedge reaches Leonardo’s waist), makes one drawing after another of ballistic devices, and when he gets a little tired, he takes the white entomological net and catches black dragonflies in order to study in detail the construction of the retina of their eyes. The artist looks at you gloomily; he always seems to be annoyed by something. You want to leave the moat, to go back to the room; you’re already turning and trying to find the door, covered with fake leather, in the steep wall of the moat, but the master succeeds in grabbing your hand and, looking straight in your eyes, says: Your assignment: describe the jaw of a crocodile, the tongue of a hummingbird, the steeple of the New Maiden Convent, a shoot of bird cherry, the bend of the Lethe, the tail of any village dog, a night of love, mirages over hot asphalt, the bright midday in Berezov, the face of a flibbertigibbet, the garden of hell, compare the termite colony to the forest anthill, the sad fate of leaves to the serenade of a Venetian gondolier, and transform a cicada into a butterfly, turn rain into hail, day into night, give us today our daily bread, make a sibilant out of a vowel, prevent the crash of the train whose engineer is asleep, repeat the thirteenth labor of Hercules, give a smoke to a passerby, explain youth and old age, sing a song about a bluebird bringing water in the morn, turn your face to the north, to the Novgorodian barbicans, and then describe how the doorman knows it is snowing outside, if he sits in the foyer all day, talks to the elevator operator, and does not look out the window because there is no window; yes, tell how exactly, and in addition, plant in your orchard a white rose of the winds, show it to the teacher Pavel and, if he likes it, give the white rose to the teacher Pavel, pin the flower to his cowboy shirt or to his dacha hat, bring joy to the man who departed to nowhere, make your old pedagogue—a joker, a clown, and a wind-chaser—happy. O, Rose, the teacher will say, white Rose of the Wind, sweet girl, sepulchral flower, how I desire your untouched body! One night of the summer embarrassed by its own beauty, I’m waiting for you in a little house with a weather vane on the other side of the blue river; address: the dacha settlement, the fifth zone, find the mailman Mikheev, ask for Pavel Norvegov, ring many times with a bicycle bell, wait for the boat from the foggy shore, light a signal bonfire, and don’t despair. Lie on the top of a steep sandy precipice in a haystack, count the stars and cry from happiness, and while waiting, recall your childhood, which resembles the goose-berry bush sprinkled with fireflies or the Christmas tree decked out in all its incredible bric-a-brac, and think what will happen in the morning, when the first electric train passes by the station, when people from factories and enterprises wake up with splitting head-aches from drinking too much and, spitting and cursing the small parts of motors and machines, still intoxicated, walk past the ponds near the stations towards the green and dark-blue beer kiosks at the station. Yes, Rose, yes, the teacher Pavel will say, what will happen to us this night will resemble a flame consuming the icy desert, a shower of stars reflected in a piece of a mirror that in the darkness suddenly fell out of its frame to warn its owner about the proximity of death. It’ll resemble the shepherd’s pipe and the music that has not been written yet. Come to me, Rose of the Wind, don’t you cherish your old teacher walking along the valleys of nonexistence and the hills of suffering? Come to calm the trembling of your loins and to quench my sorrows. And if the mentor Pavel says this, Leonardo tells you, you’ll inform me about it the same night and I’ll prove to everyone in the world that in time nothing is located in the past and in the future but contains none of the present, and in nature it comes close to the impossible, therefore, as can be derived from what was said, it doesn’t exist because there, where nothing would be, we should be able to see emptiness, but regardless, continues the artist, using the windmills I’ll produce wind at any time. And here is the last assignment for you: Look at the apparatus, resembling the gigantic black dragonfly—do you see it? It is standing on the gently sloping grassy hill—you’ll test it tomorrow over the lake and instead of a belt you’ll wear a long sack so you don’t drown during the fall. And then you answer the artist: Dear Leonardo, I am afraid I won’t be able to complete your interesting assignments, with the exception of the one about the doorman’s ability to know whether it is snowing out-side. That question I can answer in front of any examining commission at any time as easily as you can produce wind. But I, unlike you, will not need even one windmill. If the doorman sits from morning to evening in the foyer and talks to the elevator operator, and in the foyer windows are yok, which in Tatar means not present, the doorman learns it’s snowing in the street, to be more precise, over the street or on the street, by the snowflakes on the hats and collars of the visitors who quickly enter the foyer from the street, hurrying to their scheduled appointments. The visitors, carrying snowflakes on their clothing, can be usually divided into two categories—well and poorly dressed, but justice triumphs: The snow is divided equally among all. I noticed this when I was working as a doorman in the Ministry of Alarms. I was making just sixty rubles a month, but I learned perfectly such fine phenomena as snowfall, leaf fall, rainfall, and even hailstorm, which no ministers or their assistants could say about themselves, although all of them were paid several times more than I was. Therefore I am making a simple deduction: If you’re a minister, you can’t properly learn and understand what’s happening in the street and in the sky because even though you have a window in your office, you have no time to look out—you have too many appointments, meetings, and telephone calls. And while the doorman can easily learn about the snowfall by the snowflakes on the hats of the visitors, you, the minister, can’t because the visitors leave their coats and hats in the cloakroom, and even if they don’t leave them, while they are waiting for the elevator and then ride in it, the snow-flakes manage to melt. That’s why you, a minister, believe it’s always summer outside, but it’s not so. For that reason, if you want to be a wise minister, ask the doorman about the weather, call him in the foyer on the phone. When I was working as a doorman in the Ministry of Alarms, I sat for many hours in the foyer and conversed with the elevator operator, and the Minister of Alarms, considering me an honest, efficient, and dependable employee, from time to time called me and asked: Is this doorman so-and-so? Yes, I used to answer, so-and-so, I’ve been with you from such-and-such year. And this is the Minister of Alarms so-and-so, he used to say, I’m working on the fifth floor, office number three, third on the right in the corridor; I have a job for you; drop in for a few minutes if you’re not busy; I really need you—we’ll talk about weather.

  By the way, not only did I work with him in the same ministry, we also were and perhaps even now happen to be dacha neighbors, that is, neighbors from the dacha settlement; the minister’s dacha is located diagonally across from ours. Being cautious, I used here two expressions: were and happen to be, which means are, since—even though the doctors claim I have gotten better long ago—up until now I still can’t precisely and definite
ly express my thoughts about anything that even to the smallest degree is connected to the concept of time. I suppose we are confused, baffled by it, by time; everything isn’t as clear as it could be. Our calendars are too arbitrary and the numbers written in them mean nothing and are backed by nothing, like counterfeit money. Why, for example, it is customary to think the first of January is followed by the second and not immediately by the twenty-eighth? Yes, and can days actually follow each other? This sequence of days is some poetic gibberish. There is no sequence at all; the days come whenever each feels like it, and occasionally several come simultaneously. And every so often a day does not come for a long time; in such a case one lives in emptiness, understands nothing, and is very sick. And others are also sick; they are, but they don’t say anything. I would like to add that all people have their own particular calendar of life, unlike anyone else’s. Dear Leonardo, if you asked me to make up a calendar of my life, I would bring you a sheet of paper with many dots: The entire sheet would be covered by dots, only dots, and each dot would represent a day. Thousands of dots—thousands of days. But don’t ask me which day corresponds to which dot: I have no idea. And don’t ask what month, year, or period of life I’ve prepared my calendar for because I don’t know what the above-mentioned words mean and even you, pronouncing them, don’t know any particular definition of time that would not make me doubt its verity. Be humble! Neither you nor I nor any of our acquaintances is able to explain what we have in mind when we begin to consider the topic of time, when we conjugate the verb to be and divide life into yesterday, today, and tomorrow, as if those words differed in meaning, as if someone hadn’t said long ago that tomorrow is just a different name for today, as if we were able to understand even a tiny part of what is happening to us here, in the isolated space of the mysterious grain of sand, as if everything that happens, is, occurs, and exists here—really, truly was, occurred, and existed. Dear Leonardo, not long ago (now, soon) I was going (am going, will be going) in a rowboat down a large river. Before (after) that I was (will be) there many times and know the area well. The weather was (is, will be) very good, the river—calm and wide, and on the shore, on one of the shores, the cuckoo was cuckooing (is cuckooing, will be cuckooing), and when I put (will put) the oars away to take a rest, its singing promised (will promise) me many years of life. But this was (is, will be) stupid on its part because I was absolutely convinced (am convinced, will be convinced) I’ll die quite soon, if I haven’t died already. But the cuckoo didn’t know that and, apparently, my life interested it much less than its life interested me. So I put the oars away and, pretending to count my years, asked myself several questions: What’s the name of the river carrying me to its mouth, who am I, the one carried, how old am I, what’s my name, what day is today, and above all what year, and also: a boat, here is a boat, an ordinary boat, but whose? And why the boat precisely? Esteemed master, these were simple questions but so tormenting I was unable to answer even one of them and concluded I was having an attack of the same hereditary illness that afflicted my grandmother, my former grandmother. Don’t interrupt, I intentionally use the word former instead of deceased; you agree the first sounds better, softer, and not as hopeless. You see, when grandma was still with us, sometimes she would lose her memory and it usually happened when she looked for a long time at something unusually beautiful. Therefore, then, on the river I thought: Apparently, it is too beautiful around me and for that reason, like my grandmother, I lost my memory and am unable to answer my own most ordinary questions. Several days later I went to Dr. Zauze who was in charge of my case and I consulted with him, I asked for advice. The doctor told me: You know, pal, you undoubtedly experienced the same thing as your grandmother. Forget about the countryside, he said, stop going there, what are you looking for there, really? But doctor—I said—the place is beautiful, beautiful; I want to be there. In this case—said Dr. Zauze, taking off or putting on his glasses—I forbid you to go. But I didn’t listen to him. In my opinion, he belongs to that category of envious people who like to spend time in beautiful places themselves and wish that nobody else would go there. Of course I promised him I wouldn’t leave the city, but I left as soon as I was discharged and I lived in our dacha the remainder of the summer and even a fraction of the fall, up until the owners of the dacha plots began to make bonfires from fallen leaves, and some fallen leaves floated down our river. On those days it was so beautiful I couldn’t even get out on the veranda; it was enough for me to look at the river and see the multicolored forests on the other, Norvegov’s side, and I would begin to cry and couldn’t do anything with myself. The tears flowed by themselves and I couldn’t simply tell them to stop, and inside I felt anxious and agitated (Father insisted Mother and I return to the city, so we returned), but the thing that happened then, on the river, in the boat, was never repeated—neither in summer nor winter, nor generally ever since. Everything’s clear, I can forget something—a thing, a word, a last name, a date— but only that time, on the river, in the boat, I forgot everything at once. But as I understand it now, that condition wasn’t grandmother’s at all; it was somehow different, my own, perhaps not studied yet by doctors. Yes, I couldn’t answer the questions I asked, but in essence that didn’t indicate the loss of memory at all; that would still be acceptable. Dear Leonardo, everything was much more serious; in particular this: I was going through one of the stages of disappearance. You see, a man cannot disappear instantly and completely; at first he turns into something different than himself in form and essence—for instance into a waltz, into a distant, barely perceptible evening waltz, that is, disappears partially, and only then disappears entirely.

  A wind orchestra positioned itself somewhere in a glade. The musicians sat on the freshly cut pine stumps and placed the sheet music in front of them, although not on music stands but on the grass. The grass is tall, thick, and strong, like the lake reeds, and effortlessly holds up notebooks with sheet music, so the musicians easily see all the notes. Who can tell, perhaps there is no orchestra at all in the glade, but the music is heard from beyond the forest and you feel good. You want to take off your shoes and socks, stand on tiptoe, and, looking at the sky, dance to the accompaniment of this distant music; you don’t ever want the music to stop. Veta, my darling, do you dance? Of course, my dear, I really love to dance. Then allow me to take you for a spin. With pleasure, with pleasure, with pleasure! But then mowers appear in the glade. Their instruments, their twelve-handed scythes, also shine in the sun, but not like gold, as the musicians’ instruments do, but like silver. And the mowers begin to mow. The first mower approaches the trumpet player and, having prepared his scythe—the music is playing—with a swift swing cuts those grass stalks that support the notebook with the trumpeter’s sheet music. The notebook falls and closes. The trumpet player chokes on a half note and quietly heads off to a grove filled with water springs and the singing of all kinds of birds. The second mower sets out in the direction of the French horn player and does the same thing—the music is playing—as the first mower cuts. The French horn player’s notebook falls. He gets up and leaves, following the trumpet player. The third mower walks briskly towards the bassoonist, and his notebook—the music is playing but is becoming quieter—also falls. And so, by now, three musicians silently, one after the other, go to listen to the birds and to drink spring water. Soon in their footsteps—the music is playing piano—walk percussionists, a cornet player, the second and the third trumpeters, as well as the flutists, and all of them carry their instruments—they all carry their own—and the entire orchestra disappears in the grove; no players touch the mouthpieces with their lips, but the music is playing nevertheless. Now sounding pianissimo, it remains on the glade, and the mowers, disgraced by the miracle, cry and wipe their wet faces with the sleeves of their red peasant shirts. The mowers can’t work— their hands are shaking and their hearts resemble gloomy swamp toads—but the music keeps playing. It is alive by itself; it is a waltz, which only yesterday
was one of us: The man disappeared, changed into sounds, and we will never know about it. Dear Leonardo, as far as my episode with the boat, river, oars, and cuckoo is concerned, obviously I also disappeared. I turned then into a nymphaea, into a white river lily with a long golden brown stem, or, to be more precise, I partially disappeared into a white river lily. This is better, more exact. I remember well: Having dropped the oars, I was sitting in the boat. On one of the shores the cuckoo was counting my years. I asked myself several questions and was all set to answer them, but couldn’t and was surprised. And then something happened in me, there, inside, in my heart and head, as if I got turned off. And at that moment I felt I disappeared, but at first I decided not to believe it; I didn’t want to. And I told myself: It’s not true, it only appears so, you are a little tired, it’s very hot today, take up the oars and paddle home. And I attempted to take up the oars, I stretched my hands towards them, but nothing came of it: I saw the handles, but my palms didn’t feel them, the wood of the oars was flowing through my fingers, through their phalanxes, like sand, like air. No, on the contrary I, or my former but no longer existing palms, flowed around the wood like water. It was worse than if I became a ghost because a ghost can at least walk through a wall and I couldn’t, I would have nothing to walk through with; after all, nothing remained of me. And again that’s not right: something did remain. What remained was the desire to be as before, and even if I couldn’t recall who I was in my life before my disappearance, I felt that then, that is before, I lived a more interesting, fuller life, and I wanted to become again the same unknown, forgotten so-and-so. The waves pushed the boat onto the shore in a deserted spot. After taking several steps down the beach, I looked back: nothing resembling my foot prints remained in the sand. Nonetheless, I still didn’t want to believe. Many things are possible. First, it may turn out that all of this is a dream; second, it’s possible the sand here is unusually solid and I, weighing only so many kilograms, haven’t left foot prints because of my lightness; and third, it’s quite probable I haven’t stepped from the boat onto the shore but am still sitting in the boat and, naturally, couldn’t have left foot prints where I haven’t been yet. But afterwards, when I looked around and saw how beautiful our river is, what wonderful old willows and flowers are growing on this and that shore, I told myself: You are a miserable mendacious coward; you were afraid you disappeared and decided to deceive yourself; you keep inventing stupid things and so on; you should finally become honest like Pavel, who is also Savl. The thing that has happened to you isn’t a dream at all, that’s clear. Furthermore, even if you weighed not as much but a hundred times less, even in that case your foot prints would remain in the sand. But from now on you don’t weigh even a gram because you don’t exist, you simply disappeared and if you want to be convinced it happened, turn back once more and look into the boat: you’ll see you’re not in it. Yes, not in it, I answered the other I (even though Dr. Zauze tried to prove to me no other I exists, I’m not willing to trust his unfounded assertions), yes, I’m not in the boat, but instead, there, in the boat, lies a white river lily with a golden brown stem and yellow, delicately aromatic stamens. I picked it up an hour earlier by the western shore of the island, in still water, where lilies like that and yellow kingcups are so abundant one doesn’t want to touch them; it’s better just to sit in the boat, look at them, at each individually or at all of them together. One can also see there dark blue dragonflies called in Latin simpetrum, fast and nervous striders resembling daddy longlegs, and swimming in the sedge, ducks, word of honor, wild ducks. They are somewhat mottled and have a pearly sheen. Moreover, there are gulls: They hide their nests on the island, among the so-called weeping willows, weeping and silvery, and we’ve never been able to find even one nest, we can’t even imagine what it looks like—the nest of the river gull. Instead, we know how the gull catches fish. The bird is flying relatively high above the water and looks into the deep, where the fish are. The bird sees the fish well, but the fish doesn’t see the bird, it sees only a fly and mosquitoes that like to hover directly above the water (they drink the sweet juice of kingcups); they are the food for the fish. From time to time the fish jumps out of the water and swallows one or two mosquitoes, and at that moment the bird, having folded its wings, drops from the sky, catches the fish, and takes it in its beak to its nest, the nest of the gull. Yes, sometimes the gull is unable to catch the fish and then the bird reaches the needed altitude again and continues to fly, looking in the water. There it sees fish and its own reflection. This is another bird, thinks the gull, very similar to me but different, it lives on that side of the river and always sets out to hunt with me; it also catches fish, and the nest of this bird is somewhere on the reverse side of the island, directly under my nest. It’s a good bird, ponders the gull. Yes, gulls, dragonflies, striders, and the like—that’s what can be found near the western shores of the island, in the still water, where I picked the nymphaea that now lies in the boat, wilting.