Holding back an indignant bird shriek rising in your strep-infected throat between still-present tonsils: Esteemed Arkadii Arkadievich, I value your invention extraordinarily, but right now I need your advice even more than you need mine; yours is a question of ambition, while mine—excuse me, I am talking like in a novel and that makes me uneasy and ridiculous—I have for you a question that will decide my entire life. Wait, wait, I’m again beginning to fear your presence, is it possible you’re really going to ask me something important, let me sit down, do you really need something from an elderly and half-blind dacha resident; who are you, after all, to ask me questions, and finally—stop shouting into my wonderful barrel. I won’t do it again, sir, I’m ready to explain everything: I live nearby, at my parents’ dacha, and everything around here is so beautiful that once an unpleasant thing happened to me, but more about that later, what’s most important is I hate a certain woman, a Jewess, Sheina Tinbergen, she’s a witch, she works as the director of curriculum in our school, she sings about a cat, you’ve probably learned this song in your childhood: Tra-ta-ta, tra-ta-tat, a cat married a tomcat, Cat Catson—by the way, do you remember the cat’s name, sir? One moment, lad—Akatov rubs his blue, pulsating temples, straining his memory—the cat’s name was Trifon Petrovich. Right, but again that’s not it, to hell with Trifon Petrovich, he’s an ordinary excavator operator, let’s talk about Sheina herself. Just imagine, when she, the lame old woman, moves, as if she were dancing, down the huge empty corridor (every other lamp is on, the second shift ran home and only I was left after classes to prepare for tomorrow’s classes), while I am standing at its end or walking towards her holding in readiness the respectful bow of my head, I begin to feel more awful than even in my dreams after the shots. No, she never did anything bad to me and I used to talk (am talking, will be talking) to her only about the record player, and even though it hasn’t worked for me for centuries and shouldn’t play at all, when Sheina carries it to her room and locks herself in, it plays like new. More precisely, it doesn’t play but speaks: the old woman spins on it a record with the voice of her late husband who hanged himself because she cheated on him with Sorokin in the garage or no, wrong, Sorokin hanged himself, and her husband, Iakov, poisoned himself. I understand, responds Akatov, but what kind of text is there, on the record? Ah-ah, that’s it, this is the most important thing: there, on the record, the deceased Iakov is reading “Screak.” Pardon me, lad, I never heard anything like that. A nightmarish piece, sir, I’m not even sure how to describe it, but briefly it goes like this: The aforementioned “Screak” is the title of a fairy tale, it’s a dreadful children’s fairy tale about a bear; it’s impossible to be exact, but basically a bear lives in the forest, it would seem there’s nothing special in that, it would seem! But the problem is that the bear is handicapped, he’s an invalid, he’s missing one leg, at the same time it’s not clear how he lost it, only that the leg is missing, I think it’s a hind leg, and instead of the leg the bear has a wooden prosthesis. He, the bear, had carved it with an ax from the trunk of a linden tree—and when the bear walks through the forest, the squeaking of the prosthesis can be heard far and wide, it squeaks like the title of the tale: screak, screak; Iakov imitated this sound well, he had a squeaky voice, he was a chemist. A girl also plays a part in the fairy tale, apparently a girl made of chalk, she is afraid of the bear and doesn’t wander far from home, but once—devil only knows what is going on—the bear manages to spy the girl and carries her away in a special basket—maybe made of bark—to his lair and does something to her there, it’s not clear exactly what, the fairy tale does not explain it, that’s the end of the story, horrible, really, one doesn’t know what to think. When I recall “Screak”—even though I’m trying not to recall it because it’s better not to recall—I imagine this girl is not a girl but a certain woman I know and with whom I have a close relationship; of course you understand what I mean, and I’d like to believe you understand correctly; after all, we aren’t children anymore, and I imagine the bear is also, basically, not a bear but some person unknown to me, a man, and I clearly see he does something there, in the hotel room, to my acquaintance and the accursed screak can be heard many times, and this hated sound makes me feel queasy and I think I’d kill that man if I knew who he was. I don’t like to think about the fairy tale “Screak,” sir, but since I rarely do homework, I’m often left after hours to prepare for tomorrow’s and yesterday’s classes and, left alone in a classroom, I usually go out to take a stroll in the corridor, and after going out, I meet Tinbergen there, and seeing how she walks with a deformed but at the same time almost joyous dancing step, and hearing the melancholy—like the cry of the Lonely Goatsucker—squeak of her prosthesis, then—allow me, sir—I cannot stop thinking about the fairy tale “Screak” because the sound is exactly the same as the sound in the hotel and she, the gray-bearded witch with the somnolent face of an old hag who had died but who was forcibly woken up and compelled to live, in the dusky light of the deserted corridor with a gleaming parquet floor, she herself becomes “Screak” and embodies all the saddest things in the story about the girl, even though up to this day I can’t figure out what is going on and why everything is this way and not another.
Yes, lad, yes, I understand you without difficulty. Thoughtfully. At one time something similar was going on in my life, something of this kind was happening, occurred in my youth; obviously I don’t remember what exactly, but everything to this or that degree resembles your case. But, Akatov asks suddenly, what kind of school do you go to; I’m slightly confused, since you are more than twenty, you’re thirty, so to what kind of school do you go? To a special one, sir. Ah, so, says the academician (the two of you leave the shed and you look back for the last time at her photograph), and what is the specialization of your school? However, if it’s difficult or inconvenient for you or if it’s a secret, don’t answer, I’m not forcing you, your answer is almost unnecessary, as is my question; we are talking like two friends, we aren’t taking exams to Oxford, understand me correctly, I was curious simply out of curiosity, I asked just to ask, you could say I asked in a delirium; each of us has the right to ask any question and each has the right not to answer any question, but, unfortunately, here—here, there, and everywhere—only a few individuals accepted this truth; they forced me to answer their every question, they—in the snow-covered coats. But, after all, I’m not they—continued Akatov, opening and closing his white lab coat— so don’t answer me if you don’t want to, better let’s be silent, let’s look around and listen to the summer’s singing—and so forth, no, no, don’t answer, I don’t want to know anything about you, even without answering right now you seem friendly to me, this cane and this hat become you greatly, only the hat is slightly too big, you probably purchased it with room to grow. Precisely, with room to grow, but I’d like to answer, there’s nothing inconvenient here: the school that I attend specializes in defectives; it’s a school for fools, all of us who happen to study there are slightly abnormal, all in our own way. Allow me, I’ve heard something about a similar institution, one of my acquaintances works there, but who exactly? You may be thinking about Veta Arkadievna, she works in our school, teaches this and that. But of course! Watch where our Veta goes, ’cause she wears no shoes or clothes—Akatov sang without a tune, absentmindedly snapping his fingers. What a wonderful song, sir! Just a trifle, lad, a family dime rhyme from the past, without sense and melody, forget it, I’m afraid it’ll lead you astray. Never, never—excitedly. What? I said I’d never forget her, I like her enormously, I can’t help it, yes, there’s a certain difference in our ages, but to characterize it, to define it as well as possible, there’s more that connects us than divides us; you ask, what am I talking about, well—in my opinion, I’m expressing myself as clearly as possible, Arkadii Arkadievich. The common thing I mentioned a moment ago is our fondness for everything that you and I, men of science, call living nature, everything that grows and flies, blooms and swims�
��it’s precisely that, and the purpose of my visit is not only butterflies, although—word of honor—I’ve been catching them from childhood and I won’t stop catching them until my right hand withers, like the hand of the artist Repin, and I came to see you not to shout into the barrel, although even in this action I’m inclined to see a higher purpose and I’ll never stop shouting into barrels and I’ll be filling the emptiness of empty rooms with my shout until I fill them all, otherwise I will feel excruciating pain, but I’m digressing again; in short: I love your daughter, sir, and I’m ready to do everything to make her happy. Moreover, I plan to marry Veta Arkadievna as soon as the circumstances permit. Triumphantly, with dignity and a slight bow.
A School for Fools Page 13