A School for Fools

by Sasha Sokolov

  You see, the years we’re now quietly discussing lasted for quite a long time, they lasted and lasted, and in that time our mentor Savl happened to live and die. Do you mean he lived at first and then died? I don’t know, at any rate he died precisely in the middle of these long-lasting years, and only at their end had we met the teacher on the wooden platform of our station, and some water creatures were splashing in Norvegov’s bucket. But I don’t understand exactly at which end of the mentioned years our meeting took place—at this or at the other. I’ll explain it to you: One day, in some scholarly journal (I was showing our father that article, he thumbed the pages and right away threw the entire journal off the balcony, and, while he was throwing it, he screamed the word Akatovism several times) I read the theory of a certain philosopher. The article had a foreword that stated it was being published in disorder of discussion. The philosopher wrote that, in his opinion, time has a reversed measure, which means it moves not in the direction in which we think it should move but in reverse, back, therefore everything that was, will only be, he said, the true future is the past, while the thing we call the future had already gone and will never repeat itself; and if we are incapable of recalling what had occurred, if it’s hidden from us by the veil of the false future, it’s not our fault but our misfortune, since we all have astonishingly weak memories, in other words—I thought, reading the article—like you and me, like both of us and our grandmother, selective ones. Besides that, I thought: But if time flows backward, then everything is fine, then Savl, who had died just about the time I read the article, then Savl will be again, that is, he’ll come, he’ll return—after all, he’s ahead, exactly like a summer that hasn’t yet begun, a summer filled with wonderful river nymphaeas, a summer of boats, bicycles, and butterflies, a collection of which you finally put together and shipped to our esteemed academy in a large carton that earlier had contained imported eggs. You attached to the parcel the following letter: Dear Sirs! Not once and not twice I asked orally (on the telephone) and in writing (by telegraph) for a confirmation of rumors about the opening of the academic entomological competition named after one of our two old men of chalk standing in the courtyard of our special school. Alas, I haven’t received an answer. Nonetheless, as a collector who is not only passionate but at the same time—flowing backward—also eternally devoted to science, I consider it my duty to bring to the illustrious attention of your scholarly council my modest collection of night and day butterflies, among which you’ll find both summer and winter ones. The latter are, apparently, particularly interesting, since—despite their large numbers—they are almost imperceptible in nature and in flight, as your humble servant had already mentioned in conversations with specialists, particularly with the academician A.A. Akatov, who commented with extraordinary warmth on the above collection that includes at present time more than ten thousand specimens. I would appreciate being notified about the results of the competition at this address: Railroad, branch, station, dacha, ring the bicycle bell until someone opens. You sealed the envelope and, before placing it with the butterflies in the egg carton, you wrote diagonally, in both directions, and in large letters on the back of the envelope: Fly with greetings, fly! Bring back a reply! Our teacher of Russian language and literature nicknamed Cafeteria taught us to do so, however, if we were to find a person less resembling a cafeteria—both internally and externally—we could not find anybody better than our Cafeteria. It wasn’t because of resemblance but because the letters forming the word itself—more precisely, half of the letters (reading every other one, beginning with the first)—were her, the teacher’s, initials: C.F.T. Catherine Fedorovna Taln—that was her name. But two letters still remain—R and A—and I don’t remember how to decipher them. In the minds of our classmates they could have meant anything at all, and yet no other deciphering was acceptable except the following: Catherine Fedorovna Taln—the rational arquebus. It’s funny that Taln does not resemble an arquebus any more than a cafeteria, but if one day someone asked you to give her, Cafeteria, a more precise nickname—although it’s hard to imagine why someone would come up with such an idea—you wouldn’t be able to find one. Even though this teacher doesn’t resemble a cafeteria at all, you’ll say, still, for some unfathomable reason, she resembles the very word, the combination of letters, of which it consists (consisted, will consist) —C-A-F-E-T-E-R-I-A.

  4. “SCREAK”

  NOW LET me clear my throat, look straight into your eyes, and clarify a certain detail from your cover letter. The letter says Akatov himself made positive comments about our collection, but I don’t recall us discussing this subject with him; we didn’t meet him even once, we only saw him from a distance, usually through the crack in the fence, but how we dreamed about walking at least once down the path of Akatov’s orchard, knocking on the door of the house, and—when the old man opens it—saying hello and introducing ourselves: A student of your daughter so-and-so, a beginner entomologist; it would be great to discuss with you certain problems and so forth. But we didn’t have the courage to knock on the door of his house even once because—or maybe for some other reason?—a large dog lived in the orchard. Listen, I don’t like when you call my collection—our collection; nobody gave you the right; I gathered my collection alone and if we ever merged in a common act, that act would have no relation whatsoever to butterflies; well, fine, now about the conversation with Akatov: It’s true, I didn’t lie to the academy, I really talked to him. Once in summer, at the dacha, on Sunday, when from the early morning Father made us sit down and copy lead articles from newspapers to improve our understanding of the problems of foreign and domestic follytics, I decided you’d manage wonderfully without me. I chose the appropriate moment: While you were putting the pen down, turning towards the window, and starting to investigate the construction of the lilac flower, I got up silently from behind the table, put on Father’s hat that hung on a nail in the hall, and took a cane—it was the cane of one of our relatives, forgotten by him some five years earlier. On the station platform five years earlier, in the evening. Our mother said to the relative: I hope you rested well at our dacha, don’t squash the wild strawberries, wash them before eating, give my love to Elena Mikhailovna and Vitiusha, next time come with them, don’t pay attention to my husband, it’s just nerves, he works a lot, has many things to do, he gets tired, but you know that in general he’s good, yes, his heart is soft and kind, it’s just that sometimes he can explode, so come again, come again, only don’t argue with him, wait a minute, where’s your cane? I thought you had a cane, you left your cane, ah, how awful, what shall we do? Distracted. Let’s go back, there’s one more electric train. The relative: Goodness gracious, stop, it’s not worth it, don’t worry, if it were an umbrella, it would be different, it’s about to start raining right now, thanks for the berries, I appreciate it, we’ll come again for the cane, what’s a cane, just a trifle, as the saying goes, a cane won’t bring you happiness, so long, the train’s coming. However, the relative didn’t come back since that time and the cane stood on the veranda until the day when I took it and set out to the neighboring settlement to visit the naturalist Akatov: Knock-knock (the dog runs up and sniffs me, but today I’m not afraid of it), knock-knock. But nobody opens the door of the house. And then once more: Knock-knock. But nobody answers. You are circling the building, stepping on the thick grass of the lawn, looking in the windows to check whether in the house there’s a large wall clock with chimes that, according to your calculations, certainly should be there to cut the dacha time into pieces with its pendulum, but all the windows have curtains. At the corners of the house are firefighting barrels dug into the ground and filled halfway with rusty water, in which some slow-moving insects live. Only one barrel is completely empty; there’s no water and no insects in it, so a happy thought comes to your mind— to fill it with your shout. You are standing for a long time bent over the dark abyss, going in your selective memory over the words that sound better than others in the empt
iness of empty spaces. There are only a few such words, but they do exist. For instance, when—after being kicked out of class—you are running down the school corridor, while classes are in session, and deep inside you a desire grows to shout in such a way that your shout would freeze the blood of your deceitful and depraved teachers and they, stopping their speeches in mid-word, would swallow their tongues and, making the idiot students happy, would turn into tall and short chalk pillars (depending on their height)—in such a case you cannot come up with anything more wonderful than the cry: Bacilli! What do you think, mentor Savl?

  Dear student and comrade so-and-so, whether sitting on the windowsill of the bathroom, standing next to the map in front of the class with a pointer in my hand, playing preference with certain co-workers in the teachers’ lounge or in the boiler room, I frequently witnessed the unearthly horror to which this insane shout of yours brought the pedagogues, the students, and even the deaf-mute stoker, since somewhere someone said: The time will come and the deaf will hear. Didn’t I see how the scooping shovel, with which he relentlessly threw the coal into the unquenchable furnaces of hell during the cold seasons, didn’t I see—I ask—how the scooping shovel fell from the hands of the wretched old man, when the time of your shout—the time when the deaf will hear—had come and he, having turned towards me his mutilated and unshaven face, smeared with coal and frightening in the dancing flashes and reflections of the flames, had received for a moment the gift of speech and, following in your footsteps, shaking his head, which was aching from a hangover, he shouted—no, he growled—the same word: Bacilli, bacilli, bacilli. And his anger was so great and his passion so strong that the fire in the furnaces used to die from his growl. And didn’t I see how, hearing your shout, the teachers of the special school, accustomed to so much, turned white and cards, the playing cards they held in their hands, changed into the leaves of wild plantain that has the ability to draw out pus, and they, the pedagogues, moaned in horror. And didn’t I see how the faces of your fellow students, infinitely dumb by themselves alone, became even dumber from your scream, and all, even the most studious ones, even those who seemed almost healthy, in a shout of response, albeit in a mute one, suddenly opened their mouths—and all the nitwits of the special school bellowed in a monstrous voiceless choir, and the sickly yellow saliva flowed from all those frightened psychopathic mouths. So don’t ask me needlessly what I think about your maddening and bewitching shout. Oh, with what intoxicating effort and pain I would also shout, if I were given the ability to shout just half as loudly as you! But that ability was not given to me; I was not given it; how weak I am, your mentor, in contrast to the talent given to you from above. Therefore, continue shouting—you, the most talented of the talented—keep shouting for yourself and for me, and for all of us— duped, defamed, dishonored, and deceived—for us, idiots and fools in Christ, defectives and schizoids, educators and educated, for all those who weren’t given the gift and whose salivating mouths had been shut already or would be shut soon, for all those who had been innocently silenced, who are being silenced or who had lost their tongues—shout, intoxicating and becoming intoxicated: Bacilli, bacilli, bacilli!

  In the emptiness of the empty spaces some other words also sound well, but, having gone over them in your mind, you understand that none of the words you know fits the given circumstances, since to fill Akatov’s empty barrel it is necessary to find an entirely distinctive new word or several words because the circumstances seem exceptional to you. Yes, you say to yourself, a shout of a new type is needed here. About ten minutes passes. There are many crickets in the orchard of the Akatovs and they hop about in the warm amber-colored grass and each hop of any one of them is equally surprising and quick, like a shot from a special school’s slingshot. The firefighting barrel lures you with its emptiness and both that emptiness and the silence reigning in the orchard, in the house, and in the barrel soon become unbearable for an energetic, decisive, and practical person like you. And for that reason you don’t want to think any more about what to shout into the barrel, but you shout the first thing that comes to your mind: I’m Nymphaea, Nymphaea!—you shout. And the barrel, filled with your incomparable voice, spits out its excesses into the beautiful dacha sky, towards the tops of the pines, and the echo carries the excesses of your shout—ea-ea-ea-ea-aaaaa-a-a!—into the stifling garrets and attics of the dachas packed with all kinds of junk, onto the volleyball courts on which nobody ever plays, into the cages with thousands of fattened rabbits, into the garages infused by gasoline, onto the verandas, where children’s toys lie scattered on the floor and kerosene lamps are smoking, and into the gardens and heather wastes that surround the dacha settlements. Your father, resting in the hammock on his plot, shudders and wakes up: Who was shouting, damn him, Mother, I seemed to have heard, somewhere on the pond your bastard was screaming, haven’t I ordered him to do his stuff? Father goes quickly to the house and looks into the room. He sees you sitting at the desk and writing diligently—diligence is expressed by you turning your shaved head to the side and absurdly bending your back as if someone had broken you entirely, yes, as if someone had thrown you on the rocks from a high precipice and then had come closer and broken you even more with smith’s pincers used for holding the hot iron. But Father sees only what he sees, he doesn’t know, he can’t even imagine that only one of you is sitting at the desk and the other one is standing at the same moment next to Akatov’s barrel, enjoying your airborne shout. You look around and notice next to the shed a relatively old man in a torn white gown that resembles the gowns doctors wear. The man is wearing a rope instead of a belt, on his head he has a triangular hat made of yellowed newspaper, and on his feet—look carefully, what does he have on his feet, that is, what footwear he’s got—and on his feet—I can’t see it well, he is relatively far off, after all—on his feet he has, it seems, overshoes. You may be wrong, are these overshoes and not sneakers? The grass is too tall; if it were mowed, I would have been able to make a more exact statement about his footwear; otherwise it’s difficult to be sure, although I already realize he’s wearing galoshes. Well, go on, look carefully; the man, I believe, does not have pants, I don’t mean he does not have them at all, but in this case, right now, he doesn’t have—in other words, he’s not wearing pants. It’s not unusual; it’s summer, and in summer galoshes and a gown should be sufficient; if you put on the gown, you’ll be hot in pants, since the gown is almost the same as an overcoat, to a certain degree an overcoat, an overcoat without lining or vice versa, lining without an overcoat—or simply, a light overcoat. And if the gown is white, like the ones worn by doctors, it may also be called a light doctor’s overcoat, and if the gown is white, but does not belong to a doctor, but, let’s say, to a scientist, boldly call such a gown a light scientific duster or a lab coat. You are explaining everything correctly, but we don’t know yet who is the owner of the gown worn by the man in galoshes; speaking more simply, who is that quiet old man standing near the shed and wearing the triangular newspaper hat, the white gown, and galoshes on bare feet; who is he? Haven’t you recognized him, really? This is Akatov himself, the man who announced at one time to the whole world that the strange lumps on various parts of plants—galls—are caused by this or this, and that was quite reckless on his part, although, as you see, justice triumphed, and after this and that, or after things generally not mentioned for a long time, the academician lives peacefully at his dacha, and you, having come to talk to him, are filling his firefighting barrel with your shout. And the academician, resembling in his permanent suspiciousness a small stooping tree, is asking you in a high-pitched and excited human voice: Who are you? I’m scared of you; are there perhaps many of you? Don’t be frightened, sir, you say, trying to be as intelligent as possible in your manners and speech—I am absolutely alone, absolutely, and should someone else appear, don’t believe him that he is also I, it’s not like that at all, and, of course, you can guess what’s going on; when he comes, I’ll hide in the
woodpile, and you—you shall lie to him, lie, I beg you, say: I don’t know anything, nobody was here; he’ll look around and go away, and we’ll continue our conversation without haste. And why did you shout like that in my barrel—Akatov is curious—what compelled you? Placing his palm next to his ear, he adds: Only speak more loudly, I don’t hear very well. Sir, allow me to walk up to you through these tall grasses. Walk, I think I’m no longer afraid of you. Hello. Hello. Dear Arkadii Arkadievich, the problem is that I am catching butterflies. Ah-ah, butterflies, and have you caught many? You answer the question with a question: The snow ones or all together? Of course the snow ones, answers the academician. Such-and-such number, you say; I am collecting a collection, at this moment it includes such-and-such species. Wow, how wonderful, marvels Akatov, but why so loudly, I can’t stand shouting, collect quietly, for God’s sake. His face, wrinkled and dark-complexioned, turns pale from irritation. But, he continues, you will shout regardless, whatever happens, I know, that’s the lot of your generation, after all, you’re young, you don’t look like you’re more than sixteen. Oh no, sir, you’re mistaken, I’m way past twenty, I’m thirty, you see, I am wearing a hat and carry a cane. Yes, fine, listen, Akatov interrupts you, can I ask you for a consultation? Agitated. I am at your service, sir, I am—all attention. Recently—the academician looks around and lowers his voice almost to a whisper—I invented a certain invention; follow me, it’s in the shed, nowadays I’ve locked up the house and live in the shed, it’s more convenient, one occupies less space. It was an ordinary shed, the likes of which are quite common in our dacha settlement: the ceiling is the reverse of the roof while the walls and the floor are made of rough wooden boards. And what did you see in the shed, when you went in, after taking off your footwear at the doorstep and leaving the cane so as not to make tracks inside? I saw a table, a chair, a bed, and a pile of books on the windowsill. And above all this, squinting in the white winter sun—wearing a raccoon fur coat—on the background of a snowdrift and a snowy dacha forest—beamed, flew, reigned—your incomparable Veta—a teacher of anatomy, botany, and biology—and on her astonishing face, suffocating like an asphyxiating noose, there was nothing that remembered you or spoke to you in private—oh, Nymphaea, that face was a face for everybody who had ever looked at it, and it was promised to many, but among that multitude—horrifying, irrevocable, and unidentifiable in the darkness of the hotel rooms and apartments— was there also a place for you, for the blockhead of the special school who was not making progress, who, on account of his passionate kindness and joy, turned into a flower picked by himself; were you there too, wishing this countless times more than the others did, were you also in that number? O my God sir what an incredible photograph she’s here like alive no wrong I made a mistake a stylistic mistake I wanted to say like real like during class beautiful and unapproachable who took the picture when why I don’t know anything some scoundrel with a camera who is he what is their relationship here or in some other place a legion of questions. Well then, I invented a certain invention, you see, it’s an ordinary stick, right? It appears to be. Yes yes it appears to be sir it appears to be I also come here in the winter quite often but I come alone without all those photographers I don’t let myself be photographed on the background of snowdrifts I simply don’t have acquaintances with cameras it appears she should have informed me should have said so-and-so so-and-so so-and-so I went to the Land of the Goatsucker in a car with an engineer doctoral candidate art historian director accountant to hell with it I had photos taken on the background of a snowdrift we didn’t even stop at the dacha she says did not want to clear snow from the paths we walked for a while and returned to the city and I would have believed her. But this is just a false impression, lad, watch how from one vertical position I’m transferring it to another vertical position, in other words—I’m placing it upside down, and what is revealed to our astonished eyes? I’m yelling sir yelling since I’m the deceived Nymphaea bald weak flat-footed with a high forehead like that of a real cretin and a face aged by doubts look I’m completely hideous my nose is covered with disgusting blackheads and my lips are pursed and flattened as if I were born of a duck and it doesn’t make any difference one time during the blossoming of my middle age I was learning to play the mother-of-pearl Barcarole three-quarters this didn’t help me I still feel excruciating pain. We see an ordinary nail, inserted in the tip of our stick, it’s inserted by its head, and its sharp end looks at us like a lethal steel sting—but don’t be afraid, lad, I won’t dispatch it in your direction and won’t inflict on you a piercing wound, but I’ll turn it against any piece of paper littering my dacha plot, and I’ll pierce it with my unique invention, and when a sufficient number of papers accumulates on the point, I’ll take them off the nail like a knight takes off the enemies that are stuck on his lance, and I’ll throw them into the abyss of the waste pit in the corner of my orchard—that’s my invention allowing me, an old man, not to abandon the ranks of dedicated warriors: Because of my ailments I can’t bend and pick up the pieces of paper, but thanks to an ordinary stick with a nail I’m fighting for cleanliness without bending, and so, since you seem to me an uncommonly honest man, I’ll allow myself to ask for your advice, to wit: Does it make sense, in your opinion, to apply for a patent, to patent this stick?