A School for Fools

by Sasha Sokolov

  A SICK GIRL

  In July, one can spend nights on the veranda—it isn’t cold. And the sad large night butterflies almost don’t bother you: it’s easy to chase them away with cigarette smoke. This story, which I am writing on a July night on the veranda, will be about a sick girl. She’s very sick. She lives in the neighboring dacha with a man whom she calls her grandfather. The grandfather drinks a lot; he is a glass installer so he puts in glass; he’s no more than fifty years old and I don’t believe he is her grandfather. Once, when, as usual, I was spending the night on the veranda, the sick girl knocked on my door. She came through the gate in the fence that separates our lots. She came across the garden and knocked. I turned on the light and opened the door. Her face and hands were covered in blood—the glass installer had beat her up and she came to me through the garden to ask for help. I washed her, applied iodine to her wounds, and gave her tea. She sat with me on the veranda until morning, and it seemed to me we were able to talk about many things. But in fact we were silent all night, since she almost doesn’t know how to speak and hears very poorly because of her illness. In the morning, as always, it turned light, and I accompanied the girl home along the garden path. Outside of the city, but in Moscow too, I prefer to live alone and the paths around my house are barely visible. That morning, the grass in the garden was white from the dew and I was sorry I didn’t put my galoshes on. At the gate we stopped for a while. She tried to tell me something but couldn’t and started crying from bitterness and her illness. The girl turned the wooden block, which, like the rest of the fence, was wet from the autumn fog, and ran to her house. And the gate remained open. Since that time we have been friends. She comes to visit me from time to time and I draw or write something for her on sheets of Whatman paper. She likes my drawings. She examines them, smiles, and then walks home across the garden. She walks, touching the branches of the apple trees with her head, looks back, and smiles at me or laughs. And I notice that after each of her visits my paths seem to be more visible. That’s probably all. I have nothing else to say about the sick girl from the neighboring house. Yes, this is a small story. Even very small. Even the night moths on the veranda appear to be bigger.

  IN THE DUNES

  It’s great to date a girl whose mother works on a dredging barge: If anyone asked, you’d say exactly that—she works on a dredging barge. And everybody would be envious. They were dredging the fairway and twenty-four hours a day thin sandy kasha from the bottom of the river flowed ashore through special pipes. This brine flowed ashore and with time sand dunes formed around the cove. One could suntan here even in the windiest weather—as long as the sun was shining. I used to come to the island on my motorcycle every morning, and standing on the highest dune, I waved my faded cowboy shirt above my head. As soon as the girl noticed me from the dredging barge, she got into a large leaky boat tied to the barge and quickly rowed towards the shore. Here were our, only our dunes— because no one else but the mother of my girl poured sand on these merry free-flowing hills. And the summer was like it is on color postcards, and the air smelled of river water, willows, and the resin of the old pine forest. The forest was on the other side of the cove and at the end of the week people with badminton sets would relax there. And Sunday twosomes in blue boats would sail in the cove and talk. But nobody got off on our shore and nobody, except us, suntanned in our dunes. We would lie on the hot, very hot sand and splash around or race each other, and the dredging barge would drone relentlessly, and a chubby woman in dark blue overalls would walk atop the deck checking the machinery. I would look at her from the distance, from the shore, and I always thought I was very lucky—I was dating a girl, whose mother lived and worked on that magnificent thing. In August, the rains began and in the dunes we built a tepee from willow branches, although, you understand, it wasn’t only because of the rains. The tepee stood right next to the water. In the evenings we would make a bonfire that reflected in the water of the cove and illuminated all kinds of floating pieces of wood. And then, at the very end of summer, we had an argument and I never went to see her again. The fall was sad like hell and the leaves flew around the city like mad. Well, should we have one more?

  DISSERTATION

  The docent was spending his research leave in the country. He was writing a dissertation in chemistry and took notes from books or tinkered with various test tubes, and in the meantime, September happened to be surprisingly warm. Besides, the docent loved beer and before lunch would go to the shed that was deep in the garden. There, in the shed, in the corner, in coolness, stood a beer barrel. Using a rubber hose, the docent sucked out a little bit of beer into a five-liter can and went back home trying not to splash the liquid. His dinner was prepared by a distant relative of his wife, who had appeared from somewhere far away a month earlier like a lightning bolt or like a relative of his wife, while the docent’s wife herself had died long ago and so far there was no other. It should be mentioned that this same relative of his wife prepared breakfast and supper, but usually it happened in the morning and evening, respectively, and at midday she was preparing specifically dinner. The second half of the day the docent would spend strolling around the dacha settlement or fishing in the pond beyond the birch grove. There were no fish in the pond and, as a rule, the docent was unable to catch anything. But this didn’t upset him and in order not to go home empty-handed, he would pick late wildflowers at the edges of the forest and make pretty good bouquets out of them. After returning to the dacha, without saying a word, he would give the flowers to the distant relative, whose name, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t recall and kept forgetting to ask. The woman was about forty, but she liked signs of attention as much as when she was twenty, and in the mornings did gymnastics behind the shed. The docent didn’t know about it, but even if his neighbor, the glass installer, who knew about it quite well because he watched it more than once from behind the fence, even if the glass installer had told the docent about it, the latter would have never believed it and definitely would never spy on her. However, one day at dawn, he unexpectedly felt like having some beer, and on tiptoe, so as not to make a noise, he went to the shed; and while the beer was pouring through the hose from the barrel into the can, the docent stood next to the little window covered with spiderwebs and watched while the relative of his wife, in a skimpy bathing suit, jumped, squatted, and waved her hands on the grassy patch in the garden. After breakfast, the docent didn’t work but occupied himself with all kinds of trifles: he retrieved from the attic two rusty bicycles, fixed them, and then ironed his suit and went to the station to get some wine. Besides wine, he bought sprats and grapes and he helped the relative prepare dinner. During dinner the docent talked about the wonderful weather that had been around for two weeks already, about dark blue cornflowers growing in the grove, and about the excellent rusty bicycles he had retrieved from the attic. In the evening they went for a ride. On the highway. On bicycles. They came back late—with flowers on the handlebars. On the relative’s head was a wreath. The docent himself wove this wreath for her. She was surprised, since she hadn’t known before that he knew how to make wreaths and fix bicycles. And the docent also didn’t know that his, essentially, relative jumped on the garden’s grassy patch. Every morning. In a skimpy bathing suit. And waved her hands.

  THE AREA

  The railroad goes nearby and the yellow electric trains pass by the lake. Some trains are going to the city and some are coming from it. And this is a city suburb. That’s why even in the sunniest weather everything here seems unreal. Beyond the railroad, beyond the right-of-way, large houses begin the city, while on the other side, beyond the lake, the pine forest grows. Some people call it a park and some, a forest. But in fact it is a forest-park. This is a suburb, and it seems you cannot see anything specific around. In the past, this was known as the dacha area, but now the dachas became simply old wooden houses in the suburb. The houses smell of kerosene, and quiet old people live in them. Near the forest-park passes t
he one-track branch of the railroad. The branch leads to a siding—the trains don’t go there. The rails had rusted and the ties had rotted. At the siding, on the edge of the forest-park, stand brown boxcars. In these boxcars live repairmen. They have temporary permits to live in the suburbs and each of them has a large family. Every repairman knows that in the mucky lake close by there are no fish, but in their free hours they all go to the shore with fishing rods and try to catch something. One worker, who lives in the third boxcar from the forest-park, has an eighteen-year-old daughter. She was born here, in the boxcar, and she likes everything related to the railroad; she likes this entire suburban area. And she also likes a young man from the city who often comes with his friends to the forest-park to play soccer on the garbage-covered clearings. He’s a good kid; he courts her and has already dropped in several times for tea. He also likes these boxcars at the siding. You know, perhaps he’ll soon marry the daughter of the repairman and will start coming here even more often. The wedding will take place on Sunday; the dances will be organized on the lakeshore and everybody will be dancing—everybody who lives in the brown boxcars of the siding.

  AMID THE WASTES

  Upstairs, on the third floor, the door slammed and I was left alone. Through the open windows the gusts of wind from the wastes blew in the entrance hall and here, on the stairs, it was slightly warmer than outside. I lit a cigarette and went out to the yard, where the linen of the inhabitants of this house was drying on lines. Pillow-cases, sheets, and blankets billowed in the wind. I sat on a bench moist with dew: in front of me stood an unbelievably long five-story house: I have never before seen such a long house; its shadow ended at my feet. The helpless sun of September shone on me. Flabby clouds, resembling the muscles of old men, traversed the sky, and behind my back gaped the endless wastes of the city’s outskirts, so endless that even the city dump was lost amid them and the unpleasant smell was its only reminder. The cigarette I was smoking soon ended in the wind and since I didn’t have any more, I decided to go to a store. But I didn’t know where the store was. Basically, I didn’t know anything here; there were neither familiar people nor familiar streets here, and I didn’t know, I didn’t want to know, what the woman who agreed to help us was doing with my fiancée. That woman lived and treated patients in this long monotonous house. After passing the shaded yard I circled the house from the left side and came out on an asphalt road. New buildings, looking like that house, stood around me. I might have been little afraid of those monotonous houses. But I wanted to smoke and I kept walking to the store, pretending I didn’t mind them at all. And that was true, I was just little afraid of them: from a distance they looked at my back and in my eyes, and there was nobody nearby. But soon I caught up with a girl. She was carrying two shopping bags with groceries and I decided she would know where I could buy cigarettes. I stopped her and asked. She said she would take me to the store so I wouldn’t get lost. The wind was blowing. The wastes and the houses were gaping. Next to the houses, the billowing bed linens were swinging on lines. Huge flocks of sparrows rustled in the wastes, eating the grass seeds. The girl seemed to be very thin; there was something wrong with her eyes and I couldn’t figure out what exactly, but then I understood: she was cross-eyed. She was leading me, explaining what was where in this area, but to me it was all uninteresting and unnecessary. She came into the store with me, waited for me to buy cigarettes, and said she would walk me to the station, where she worked as a telegraph operator. I don’t need to go to the station, I said, I don’t. The girl went away. Not far from the store stood a tanker on wheels, selling milk. Elderly but garrulous women in old-fashioned coats were standing in line. Each of them had a can and they all, despite the cold wind, chattered incessantly. One portly lady, who had already bought milk, walked away from the tanker and I saw her slip and drop her can. The can fell on the asphalt and the milk splashed out; the old woman also fell and went rolling. She wore a black coat; she was sitting there covered in milk, trying to get up. The line stopped chattering and kept looking at her. I also stood and looked. I would have helped her for sure, but my hands were full: in one I had cigarettes and in the other matches. I lit up and went back to the house in which they were doing something to my fiancée and which from a distance looked at me intently, in the eyes.

  EARTHWORKS

  The coffin got caught by the tooth of the scoop and was dangling above the trench; everything was the way it should be. But then the lid opened and something poured out of the coffin. The excavator operator climbed out of the cabin and checked the coffin out: in its upper part was a little glass window and at the bottom lay patent-leather boots. They seemed to be brand new, but as soon as he tried them on, their soles fell off. Not good, said the excavator operator to himself. But something else upset him even more. He wanted to look at the skull because not even once in his life had he seen or touched a real skull with his own hands. Yes, from time to time he touched his own head or the head of his wife and imagined that if he could take the skin off his or his wife’s head he would have gotten a real skull. But for this he had to wait who knows how much longer, while the excavator operator hated waiting and now decided to act at once. He wanted to see what happened with the skull of the man who had died long ago and lay for many years in the coffin and looked through the window. Yes, thought the operator, descending on a ladder into the grave; yes, now I’ll have a good skull, otherwise you keep living and have nothing like that. Of course my own head isn’t bad, but I don’t often find the free time to palpate it sufficiently. In addition, when you touch your own head, you hardly get any satisfaction—for that you need the clean skull of someone else, without all the skin, to be able to insert a stick into it, if you want, or put it wherever you need to. What luck, said the excavator operator to himself: I will look through the rags, throw away the bones, and take the clean skull—as is. Don’t miss such moments in life, grab them before it’s too late, and don’t wait until someone puts your skull on a stick or you’ll be sorry. He peeked under the lid that was lying on the sand, then climbed out of the trench and looked through the little window into the coffin, and then looked not through the little window but simply into the coffin, as one usually looks into a coffin when the coffin is hanging on the tooth of the scoop and the one who looks stands on the edge of the grave. But there was no skull either in the coffin or under the lid that was lying on the sand. There’s no skull, he said to himself, there simply is no skull, the skull got lost or perhaps there never was a skull, perhaps only the torso got buried. What a bummer, said the excavator operator to himself. And felt unhappy.

  THE WATCHMAN

  Night. Always this cold night. Night is his work. Night is what he hates and what allows him to survive. During the day he sleeps and smokes. He never loads his rifle. Why load it if in the winter there is nobody around. Nobody in the winter, in the fall, and in the spring. And in artists’ houses there is also nobody. These are the artists’ dachas and he is the dacha watchman. He was never in the theater, but once his fellow watchman told him his son is studying in the city and goes to the theater. The son of the fellow watchman comes to see his father at the end of each week. Nobody comes to see him. He lives alone and smokes. He picks up his rifle in the guardhouse before his shift and walks along the alleys of the dacha settlement the entire night. Today and yesterday it was snowing hard. The alleys are white. Trees, particularly pines, too. They’re white. The moon is weak. The moon cannot penetrate the clouds. He smokes. He looks around. He stops for a long time at the crossroads. It’s very dark. It will never be light in this settlement in the winter. In the summer it is better. In the evening the actors drink wine on the verandas. But when it’s not summer, the verandas with their dim stained-glass windows are locked and empty. They freeze throughout and snow covers them up. And two evenings later, on the third, he takes the unloaded rifle and starts walking. Among the glassy dachas. He is walking, not following any paths, not having anything to smoke. He is walking to get smokes
at the outskirts of the settlement, where the store is. It is always warm in the store. Its door has a strong spring. An elderly woman works there. She is good because she sells on credit. In the freezing air he doesn’t remember her name. What is this woman for, he thinks. Can I do without her, he thinks, or not? No, I can’t. Without her I would have nothing to smoke. He laughs quietly. It is cold, he continues to reflect, it is cold. It’s dark. He sees the woman close the shutters of her store and go home to sleep. There she goes. I’m standing, he says to himself, smoking, and she’s going. Do I want to smoke? No. I’m smoking because she’s leaving. That’s it, she’s gone. Now I’m alone until morning. A cat is running by. At one time there were many of them in the settlement. They lived in the foundations of the houses. The fellow watchman decimated them with this rifle. It is cold. There are no cats. He is walking again, looking at the actors’ houses. Snow is coming down from above. That means it’ll be warm. If only there was no wind. There’s a light on in one of the verandas. The actors don’t come in the winter, he thinks. There are footprints on the ground. The fence is broken in one place. Two boards are lying crossed on the snow. He has never loaded it and he won’t do it now, either. He’ll go and check what’s going on. He approaches. A shot. It seems far away, in the forest. No, much closer. Aha, someone shot from the stained-glass window. It hurts a lot, my head hurts. I’d like to have a smoke. He falls face-down into the snow. He is no longer cold.