A School for Fools

by Sasha Sokolov

  He stopped talking; his voice was no longer filling the emptiness of the space and the sounds of the evening city became more audible: someone large, multi-legged, and endlessly long, like a prehistoric lizard that later turned into a snake, walked down the street by the school, slipping on ice, whistling Schubert’s Serenade, coughing and cursing, asking questions and answering them, striking matches, losing pens, purses, and pipes, squeezing with one hand in the pocket a recently purchased dynamometer, glancing from time to time at the watch, skimming the pages of the evening newspapers, drawing conclusions, looking at the odometer, losing and finding directions, analyzing the numbering of houses, reading signs and advertisements, dreaming about the acquisition of new real estate and about ever-growing profits, recalling the affairs of bygone days, spreading around the smell of cologne and of crocodile wallets, playing harmonicas, smirking stupidly and disgustingly, envying the dacha postman Mikheev his fame, desiring uncontested ownership and knowing nothing about us, the mentor and the students, talking here, in the gloomy boundaries of M. This multi-legged someone, resembling a prehistoric lizard and endless like a medieval torture, kept walking and walking, not knowing what it meant to be tired or restful, and couldn’t pass at the given moment because he could never pass. On the background of this movement, on the background of this constant noise of walking, we heard the ringing of streetcar bells, squeaking of brakes, and hissing created by the trolley poles sliding on electric wires. After that we heard a muffled knocking caused by the fast contact of a mass of wood with a mass of man-made tin-plated iron: apparently one of the students of the special school, who did not want to go back to the house of his father, kept methodically banging the drainpipes with a stick, attempting, as a sign of protest against everything, to play a nocturne on their flutes. And the sounds originating inside the building were as follows: In the cellar worked the deaf-mute stoker mentioned before—his shovel was scraping against the coal and the doors to the furnaces were squeaking. In the corridor, auntie janitor was washing the floor: the broom with the wet rag wrapped around it was rhythmically plunging into the bucket, squelching, plopping on the floor, and noiselessly watering a new piece of dry land—bathing of a red horse, waltzing of a man with a cold, and screaking in a filled tub. Along the other corridor, one floor above, walked the director of curriculum Sheina Solomonovna Trachtenberg and her prosthesis knocked and squeaked. The third floor was quiet and empty, but on the fourth, in the so-called Acting Hall, the collective dance ensemble of the special schools of the city was going through an insane rehearsal: fifty idiots were getting ready for the new concert season. Right now they were rehearsing the dance ballad Boiars; we have come to you, they sang and screamed, stomped their feet and whistled, neighed and grunted. She is foolish, boiars, she is foolish, young ones—sang some of them. We will teach her, boiars, we will teach her, young ones —promised the others. Indifferent, the kettledrums clapped, the oboes crawled, wiggling slowly, the large drum with a goat’s head drawn on its side droned, and a speckled stiff-winged piano convulsed in an attack of hysteria—losing its way, playing out of tune, and swallowing its own keys. Afterwards, there, on the fourth, an ominous pause commenced and after a second, if we understand this word correctly, all of them, dancers and singers, intoned together and began to howl the “Hymn of the Enlightened Mankind,” hearing the first chords of which everyone having ears is obliged to stop whatever he’s doing, stand up, and timorously attend. We barely recognized the song. It penetrated all obstacles and reached point M, but the banisters, steps, and stairwells, as well as the sharp corners on the turns, broke, mutilated its inflexible members and it appeared before us bloodied, covered in snow, and wearing the ripped and dirty dress of a girl with whom someone did everything he wanted. But among the voices performing this cantata, among the voices that meant nothing and were worth nothing, among the voices tied into a senseless, meaningless, mute, and loud ball of noise, among the voices condemned to anonymity, among the voices unbelievably common and off-key, there was a voice that appeared to us an embodiment of purity, power, and deadly triumphant bitterness. We heard it in its entire undistorted clarity: it was like the flight of a wounded bird; it was the color of the sparkling snow; the white voice sang, the white voice rang, the voice revolved, the voice floated, the voice melted, the voice dissolved. It kept breaking through everything and despising everything; it rose and fell to rise again. The voice was naked, stubborn, and filled with the loudly pulsating blood of the singing girl. And there were no other voices there, in the Acting Hall, there was only her voice. And: Do you hear?—Savl Petrovich said in a whisper, the whisper of an enchanted and delighted man—do you hear or am I imagining it? Yes, yes, yes, Savl Petrovich, we hear it, Rose of the Wind is singing, the lovely girl, sepulchral flower, the best contralto among the defectives of all the schools. And from this moment on, if to our question: What are you doing here, in the bathroom? you should answer: I am resting after classes, or: I am warming up the bottoms of my feet—we will not believe you, our superb but sly pedagogue. Because now we understand everything. Like any ordinary schoolboy in love, you are waiting for the end of the rehearsal and for the descent from the Acting Hall, among the other damaged and prematurely born, of her—the one with whom you arranged a rendezvous on the back staircase in the right wing, where no working lightbulbs remain— and where it’s dark, it’s dark and it smells of dust, where on the landing between the first and the second floor the discarded exercise mats are piled up. They are tattered, the sawdust stuffing is pouring out of them, and there, precisely there, this happens: Come, come, how I desire your untouched body. Whispering like a man in rapture. But more careful, be more careful, someone can hear you—the Chechen’s roaming beyond the hills. And more precisely: Beware of the widow Tinbergen. Sleepless and tireless, at night she roams the corridors of the tightly sealed and wisely silent school for fools. There, beginning at midnight, you’ll only hear the footsteps of Tinbergen—ee-ee-ee, one-two-three, one-two-three. Singing, muttering witch spells, waltzing or tapping the chechotka, she moves along the corridors, classrooms, stairs, hanging in the staircases, changing into a buzzing dung fly, turning while moving forward, and clicking her castanets. Only she, Tinbergen, and only the clock with a golden pendulum in Perillo’s office: one-two-three—at night the entire school is a lonely nightly pendulum, cutting the darkness into equal, quiet, dark pieces, into five hundred, into five thousand, into fifty, according to the number of students and teachers: For you, for me, for you, for me. You’ll get yours in the morning, at dawn. You’ll get them along with your cloakroom tag on a frosty morning that smells of wet rag and chalk, when you hand in your sacks with shoes and put on your slippers. So be more careful there, on the mats.

  And so, the teacher Savl says to us, I am listening attentively, facts and only facts. You are obliged to open my eyes to truth, so I can see again; lift my eyelids. A large nose, like that of a Roman legionnaire, and the tight, tightly compressed lips. The whole face—roughly put together or perhaps carved from white marble with roseate veins, a face with merciless wrinkles—the consequence of a sober evaluation of the earth and the place of man on it. The severe look of a Roman legionnaire marching in the front ranks of an unyielding legion. Armor and a white coat trimmed with the fur of the Italian purple wolf. The helmet sprinkled by the evening dew, as well as the misted-over brass and gold clasps here and there; nevertheless, the flickering of the campfires that burn along both sides of the Appian Way makes the armor, the helmet, and the clasps glimmer. Everything that is going on around me is spectral, grandiose, and horrifying, since it doesn’t have a future. Dear Savl Petrovich, following your unforgettable commandments—they are knocking at our hearts like the ashes of Klaas—we really acquired one of the noblest human traits: We learned never to lie about anything. We mention this without false modesty because here, during our conversation with you, a teacher who became our conscience and our happy youth— modesty is out of place. But, mentor, rega
rdless of any higher principles of relating to people that we may wish to use, they, the principles, will never be able to compensate for our awful memory: it is as selective as before and we doubt we’ll manage to shed any light and lift your heavy lids. We too barely remember what happened to you; after all, many years had already passed—or will pass—from the moment when. True, answers Savl, not a few years, true, not a few, truly, and more truthfully—many. Nevertheless, try, strain your astonishing memory even if it is repulsive. Help the teacher who really does suffer from his ignorance! A drop of dew fell from the faucet into the rusty thousand-year-old sink and after moving through the dark slimy sewer pipes, passing cesspools and filters of the newest award-winning constrictions, quietly slipped as someone’s untarnished soul into the bitterness of the Lethe, whose waters, forever flowing backward, will carry your boat and you, transformed into a white flower, to the sandy white shore; the drop will hang for a blink of an eye on the blade of your mandolin-shaped oar and triumphantly drip again into the Lethe—it’ll vanish: melt away—and a second later, if you correctly understand the meaning of the word, it will begin to eternally glimmer in the conduits of the just-constructed Roman aqueduct. It’s the time when trees drop their leaves, such-and-such date, such-and-such year B.C., Genoa, the Doges’ Palace. A pictogram on a birch bark rolled into a tube. Beloved senator and legionnaire Savl, we hasten to inform you that we, your grateful students, finally recalled certain details of the event that happened to you sooner or later and worried you so much. We were able to strain our memory and now we think we are getting a pretty good idea of what exactly happened and we are ready to raise your swollen-shut lids. We hasten to inform you that principal N.G. Perillo, incited to this evil deed by S.S. Trachtenberg-Tinbergen, dismissed you from work at your own request. Impossible, protests Norvegov; I haven’t done anything like that, so why? For what reason? On what grounds? I don’t remember anything, tell me. Anxiously.

  5. TESTAMENT

  IT WAS happening on one of the days of that enchanting month, when early in the evenings in the western part of the sky, in the constellation of Taurus, it is possible to see Saturn, even though it quickly hides beyond the horizon, and later at night, in the constellation of Capricorn, one can detect the bright Jupiter, while closer to morning, much more to the left and lower, Mars appears in the constellation of Aquarius. But what is most important—during this month the blossoming of the bird cherry in our school’s lilac garden takes one’s breath away: we, several generations of fools, started the garden to make the know-it-alls walking down the street envious. Esteemed Savl Petrovich, permit us to note here that we, the prisoners of the special school, slaves of the Perillo slipper system, deprived of the right to have a normal human voice and as a result forced to shout with an inarticulate uterine shout, we, pitiful midges entangled in an inflexible spiderweb of the hourly schedule of classes, all of us, in our own way, love our hateful special school with its gardens, teachers, and cloakrooms. And if we were given an opportunity to transfer to a normal one, an ordinary school for normal people, and were informed at the same time that we got better and became normal, then—no, no, we don’t want to, don’t chase us away!—we would weep, wiping our tears with our darn slipper sacks. Yes, we love it because we got used to it and if we ever, after staying in each grade for several so-called years, if we ever finish it, with its incised dark-brown desks, we will be horribly upset. Because then, when we leave it, we will lose everything—everything we ever had. We will be alone, we will become lonely, life will toss us around its corners, among crowds of clever men striving to acquire power, women, cars, and engineering diplomas, while we—complete fools that we are—don’t need anything like that, we only want to sit in class, look out the window at the clouds chewed up by the wind, pay no attention to any teacher, except Norvegov, and wait for the last, final ring resembling an armful of bird cherry during that breath-taking month, when you, Savl Petrovich, a geographer of the highest quality, quickly—not to say headlong—entered our classroom for the last lesson in your life. Barefoot. It’s a spell of warm weather. The wind is warm. When the door opens, the windows, window frames, fly wide open. The warm air wafts in. Broken into pieces, pots with geraniums are scattered on the floor. The glistening rain worms are wiggling in small chunks of black soil. Savl Petrovich—you are laughing. You are laughing, standing on the threshold. You wink at us, recognizing one and all. Hello, Savl Petrovich, on a warm Thursday in May, in a cowboy shirt with rolled-up sleeves, pants with wide cuffs, and a summer hat with many tiny holes perforated with a ticket punch. Hello, little imps, sit down, to hell with these ridiculous ceremonies because it’s spring. By the way, did you notice that the person caught in spring’s fresh breath becomes stronger all over, eh? All right, one day I will tell you about it. And now we will start our lesson. My bosom friends, according to the lesson plan, today we are to talk about mountain systems, about some cordilleras and Himalayas. But who needs all this, who needs it, I am asking you, when fast motorcars drive across our entire precious earth, splattering the taut surface of puddles with their wheels so that the splashes get under the skirts of our female street friends, the friends feel tickled and happy, and willy-nilly we are happy with them, it becomes really pleasant, and it seems that in a short while—everything we asked for will come true, and it doesn’t matter that almost nothing ever comes true, it doesn’t matter because the main thing is that we are together, we are nice to each other, and either our eyes or our hands meet from time to time, right? Joyfully, pulling up his sailcloth pants and doing a little dance in front of the map of both hemispheres that resemble gigantic blue glasses without rims. Student so-and-so, do me a favor, list for us selected women’s names the way I taught you, alphabetically. Someone among us—at the moment I do not see from a distance who exactly—gets up and says in a rapid semi-whisper: Agnes, Agrippina, Barbara, Christina, Galina, Julia . . . Yes—you repeat with a smile of a person deeply moved—Leokadia, Valentina, Valeria—thank you, sit down. My faithful friends, how glad I am to show my respect for you today, on a spring day. Spring is obviously not winter, when my secluded gloomy yard, covered with snow in every part, filled with the ringing of your bell. What a story! Passing Ostrov at night, I bought three bottles of Clicquot and toward morning of the next day I was approaching the desired destination—it was pitch-dark and windy everywhere. No, in contrast, today we will dedicate our efforts to the desert, stained red by tulips. Student so-and-so, I perceive something horrible: Of the three windows looking into the open sky, only two are opened; so open the third too! Thank you. Now I will tell you a story that I found in an empty Clicquot bottle on the shore of the dacha river Lethe. I entitled this story

  THE CARPENTER IN THE DESERT

  My bosom friends, in a desert lived a carpenter, a great master of his craft. If he were given a chance, he could build a house, a boat, a carousel, or a swing, slap together a shipping crate or some other box—if only he had the needed materials to make them. But the desert, as the carpenter himself pointed out, was empty: there were no nails and no boards. Esteemed legionnaire Savl, we are obliged to immediately point out the following fact: You hadn’t finished uttering the words no nails and no boards when the place where you are giving the lecture became for an instant kind of dark; it seemed to us someone’s shadow—a bird’s or a pterodactyl’s or a heliplane’s—was cast on the lectern and replaced the sun. But it vanished instantly. Some people will say—you continued as if you haven’t noticed anything—that it’s not true; a place where it would be impossible to find a couple of boards and a dozen or so nails doesn’t exist and if you search well, you can collect in any place enough material for the entire dacha with a veranda, like we all have, as long as the desire to do something useful is there, as long as you believe in success. But I will respond angrily: Yes, it’s true; the carpenter succeeded in finding one and then the second board. Besides that, for a long time he carried in his pocket a single nail; the master was saving it
just in case, since many things may happen in a carpenter’s life; a carpenter can find many uses for a nail—for example to scratch a line, to mark spots for drilling holes, and so on. But I should add that despite the carpenter’s continuing desire to do something useful and his constant belief in success, the master could not find anything except the two ten-millimeter-thick boards. He had walked and ridden on his small zebra the whole desert over, he had explored every sandy dune and every gully overgrown with meager saxaul, he had even ridden down the seashore, but—darn it!—the desert had not yielded any materials to him. Our mentor Savl, we are worried, it seemed to us the shadow was there again—a moment, a second ago. Once, tired by his search and by the sun, the carpenter said to himself: Fine, I don’t have material to build a house, a carousel, or a crate, but I have two boards and one good nail—so I need to make something at least out of these few pieces; after all, a master cannot sit with his arms folded. Having said this, the carpenter put one board across the other, took the nail out of his pocket and a hammer out of his toolbox, and with the hammer drove the nail into the spot where the boards crossed, joining them firmly together: the result was a cross. The carpenter carried it to the summit of the tallest sand dune, planted it vertically in the sand, and rode away on his small zebra to admire the cross from a distance. The cross could be seen from almost any distance and the carpenter was so happy about this that he turned into a bird from joy. Very, very worried, dear Savl, the shadow fell on your lectern again, fell and vanished, fell and vanished, melted, the shadow of a bird, of that bird or not a bird. It was a large black bird with a straight white beak that produced short croaking sounds. Savl Petrovich, perhaps it was the Goatsucker? The cry of the Goatsucker, the cry of the Goatsucker, protect the Goatsucker in its habitat, in the reeds, by the hedge, hunters and wardens, grasses and shepherds, trackmen and switchmen, tra-ta-ta, tra-ta-ta, ee-ee-ee. The bird flew up, perched on the horizontal bar of the cross, and sat there observing the movement of the sand. Then some people came. They asked the bird: What’s the name of the thing you are sitting on? The carpenter answered: This is a cross. They said: We have here with us a man whom we would like to execute; couldn’t we crucify him on your cross? We’ll pay you a lot. And they showed the bird several grains of rye. Beloved senator and legionnaire Savl, look, for the sake of us all, look in the window, we think someone is sitting there, on the railing of the fire escape, perhaps the Goatsucker, perhaps the bird is casting a shadow on your lectern? Yes, said the carpenter, I agree, I am glad you like my cross. The people left and returned after a while, leading behind them on a rope a thin man with a beard, who looked like a pauper. Oh, mentor, you don’t hear the mute and anxious voice of our class, alas! Once more: Watch out! There, outside the window, on the fire escape. They climbed to the summit of the sand dune, tore the rags off the man, and asked the black bird whether it had nails and a hammer. The carpenter answered: I have a hammer, but I don’t have even a single nail. We will give you nails, they said, and soon brought him many—large shiny ones. Now you should help us, the people said; we will hold this man and you will nail his hands and legs to the cross; here are three nails for you. Attention, Captain Savl, a shadow on the star-board side, give an order to fire all guns, your spyglass got fogged over, ulalume is nigh. The carpenter replied: I think it will be bad for this man, it will hurt. Whatever it may be, argued the people, he deserves to be punished and you are obliged to help us because we paid you and will pay you even more. And they showed the bird a handful of wheat grains. Woe to you, Savl! Then the carpenter decided to trick the people. He says to the visitors: Don’t you see I’m just an ordinary black bird, so how can I hammer in nails? Don’t pretend, the people said, we know perfectly well who you are. You’re a carpenter and carpenters are supposed to hammer in nails, it’s their mission in life. Then the carpenter replied: Yes, I turned into a bird just for a short while and soon I’ll become a carpenter again. But I’m a master craftsman and not an executioner. If you need to execute a man, crucify him yourself, it’s not my business. Stupid carpenter, they laughed, we know that in this abominable desert neither a single board nor a single nail remains, therefore you cannot work and you are suffering. A little more time—and you’ll die sitting idle. But if you agree to help us crucify this man, we’ll bring on our camels a lot of first-quality construction lumber and you’ll make for yourself a house with a veranda like all of us have, a swing, a boat—everything you want. Agree and you won’t be sorry. How sorry will you be, our mentor, that you don’t pay attention to our mute advice—look in the window, look! The bird thought for a long time, then flew down from the cross and turned into the carpenter. Hand me the nails and the hammer, he agreed; I will help you. And he quickly nailed the hands and the legs of the condemned to the cross, while they, the others, held the unfortunate man. The next day they brought the carpenter what they promised and he worked a lot and with enjoyment, not paying attention to large black birds that flew in with the morning’s blue dawn, pecked at the crucified man all day, and only in the evening flew away. One time the crucified man called to the carpenter. The carpenter climbed to the top of the sand dune and asked what the man needed. The man said: I am dying and I want to tell you about myself. Who are you?—asked the carpenter. I used to live in the desert and I was a carpenter, the crucified man said with difficulty; I had a small zebra, but I had almost no boards and nails. Some people came and promised to give me the needed materials if I help them crucify a certain carpenter. At first I refused, but later I agreed because they offered me an entire handful of wheat grains. Why would you need the grains, said the surprised carpenter standing on the sand dune; is it possible that you also know how to turn into a bird? Why don’t you look in the window, mentor, why? What made you use the word also—asked the crucified carpenter—you fool, haven’t you understood yet there’s absolutely no difference between us, that you and I are one and the same man, haven’t you understood it was you who was crucified on the cross that you made in the name of your great skill as a carpenter and while you were being crucified you hammered the nails in yourself. After saying this to himself, the carpenter died.