A School for Fools

by Sasha Sokolov

  I think you told the story of our mailman beautifully, dear author, and you described pretty well the morning of the letter’s delivery; I would never have been able to do it so distinctly; you’re very talented and I’m glad that no one but you undertook the task of writing such an interesting tale about me, about all of us; really, I don’t know who else could have done it so successfully; thank you. Student so-and-so, I’m extraordinarily pleased by your high opinion of my modest work; you know, lately I’m trying quite hard, I write for several hours every day, and the remaining hours—that is, when I don’t write—I think about the ways to write as well as possible the next day, to write in such a way that all future readers will like it; the most important of them are the heroes of the book: Savl Petrovich, Veta Arkadievna, Arkadii Arkadievich, you, Nymphaeas, your parents, Mikheev (Medvedev), and even Perillo. But I’m afraid that he, Nikolai Gorimirovich, won’t like it: After all, he is, as they used to say in some old novels, slightly overly tired and gloomy. I think that if my book gets into his hands, he’ll call your father—he and your father, as far as I know, are old comrades from the regiment; they served with Kuzutov himself—and he’ll say: Do you know what kind of lampoon they concocted about you and me? No, the prosecutor will say, what kind? Antiours, the principal will answer. And who’s the author?—the prosecutor will show his curiosity—name the author. Writer so-and-so, the director will report. And I’m afraid that afterwards I’ll have a lot of trouble, up to the most troubling; I’m afraid that they’ll send me right away there, to Dr. Zauze. That’s true, dear author, our father works exactly in this field, in the field of unpleasant and troubling things, but why do you want to use your real name on the title page, why don’t you use a mynoduesp? If you do, nobody will be able to find you anywhere. In general, that’s a good idea and I’ll probably do just that, but then I’ll feel awkward in front of Savl: brave and unyielding, he would never in his life have done anything like that. A knight without fear and fault, the geographer went alone against all with an open visor. He may have bad thoughts about me; perhaps he’ll decide that I’m not worth anything—both as a poet and as a citizen—while his opinion is extremely valuable to me. Student so-and-so, advise me, please, what to do. Dear author, I believe that even though Savl Petrovich isn’t among us anymore and, apparently, he won’t think about you at all, still, it’s better to do as he, our teacher, would have done in a similar case: he wouldn’t have used a pseudonym. I understand, I’m grateful to you, and now I want to know your opinion about the title of the book. Judging by everything, our narrative is nearing the end and it’s time to decide what title we’ll put on the cover. Dear author, I would call your book A School for Fools; you know, there is a School for Piano Playing, a School for Barracuda Playing, and you will have A School for Fools, particularly because the book isn’t only about me or about him, the other, but about all of us taken together, about students and teachers, isn’t it so? Yes, several people from your school are involved, but I have a feeling that if I call it A School for Fools some readers will be surprised: it is called School but it only talks about two or three students; where are the others, they’ll say, where are all these young characters astonishing in their variety, so plentiful today in our schools? Don’t worry, dear author, tell your readers, yes, tell them exactly that student so-and-so asked you to inform them that in the entire school, besides two of them and maybe also Rose of the Wind, there is absolutely nothing interesting; there is no astonishing variety, everybody is a horrible fool; tell them Nymphaea said that one can write only about him because only about him should one write, since he is so much better and wiser than the others that even Perillo realizes this; therefore, speaking about the school for fools, it’s enough to tell the story of student so-and-so and everything will immediately be clear, tell them this, but generally why are you concerned about who will say or think what? After all, the book is yours, dear author, and you have the right to do with us, heroes and titles, whatever you want, therefore, as Savl Petrovich said when we asked him about the cake: Go ahead, write: A School for Fools. Fine, I agree, but just in case let’s fill a few more pages with a conversation about something related to the school; for example, tell the readers about a botany class; after all, it’s conducted by Veta Arkadievna Akatova, for whom you’ve nourished your feelings for such a long time. Yes, dear author, with pleasure, I am so pleased, I believe that soon everything will finally be decided, our relationship will get better defined, everything will become clearer and clearer, as if it were not a relationship but a boat sailing down the foggy Lethe early in the morning: the fog is getting thinner and the boat is coming closer and closer; yes, let’s write a few more pages about my Veta, but, as often happens, I don’t know how to begin, with what words, give me a hint. Student so-and-so, I think that it would be best to begin with the words: And then.

  And then she would come in. She would come into the biology classroom, where two skeletons stood in the corners. One was artificial and the other was real. The school administration bought them in the center of our city in the specialty store SKELETONS, where the real ones cost much more than the artificial ones—this is understandable and it’s hard not to agree with such a state of fairs. One day, as we were walking by SKELETONS with our dear beloved mother—this was shortly after the death of Savl Petrovich—we saw him standing in front of the store window where examples of the merchandise were displayed and a hanging sign informed us: COLLECTION POINT OF CITIZENS’ SKELETONS. You remember, the autumn was getting close, the entire street was wrapped in long musketeers’ cloaks and splattered by the wheels and hooves of the chilled and no longer splendid droshkies and phaetons, and everyone talked only about the weather, complaining about the lost summer. And Savl Petrovich—unshaven and skinny—stood in front of the store window wearing nothing but his cowboy shirt and his sail-cloth pants rolled up to his knees and the only detail of his appearance that testified to the approach of the fall were his galoshes worn on bare feet. Mama saw the teacher and clapped her hands in black knit gloves: My goodness, Pavel Petrovich, what are you doing here in such nasty weather, you look like a ghost, it looks like you’re wearing only a shirt and pants; you’ll catch pneumonia; where is your good suit, the warm coat that we gave you as a farewell gift, and the hat; all of us, the entire parents’ committee, spent a lot of time picking it out! Ah, my dear lady, answered Savl smiling, don’t worry, for Allah’s sake, I’ll be fine, better take care of your son, he’s already got a runny nose; and as far as those clothes are concerned, this is what I have to say: To hell with them, who needs them? I can’t stand them, I can’t breathe, they rub here, pinch and squeeze there; do you understand? All this wasn’t mine, it wasn’t for work, it wasn’t bought with my money—so I sold it. Watch out—Norvegov took Mama’s hand—the omnibus will splatter you, move back from the curb. And why—she asked, trying to free herself as quickly as possible from his touch and making her attempt too obvious—why are you here, in front of such a strange store? I just sold my skeleton—said the teacher—I sold it in advance. I bequeathed it. Tell Perillo to take a car and come, I bequeathed my skeleton to our school. But why, Mother was surprised, wasn’t it precious to you? It was precious, my dear lady, it was, but one has to procure his daily bread: if you want to live, better know how to wheel and deal, isn’t it true? You know that I no longer work at the school, and if one tries to support himself only by private lessons—one will quickly kick the bucket: just think—are there in our schools many students who fail my subject? You’re right, you’re right, Mother said, you’re right. And she did not say anything else; we turned around and left. Goodbye, Savl Petrovich! When we become like you, that is, when we are no more, we will also bequeath our skeletons to our beloved school and then whole generations of fools—the A students, B students, and D students— will study the structure of the human skeleton using our imperishable carcasses. Dear Savl Petrovich, isn’t that the shortest way to immortality, about which we all so feverishl
y dream when we are alone with our ambitions? When she came in, we used to get up and block the skeletons with our bodies, and she couldn’t see them, but when we sat down, the skeletons continued to stand and she saw them again. That’s right, they were always standing. Admit that you loved them a little, particularly the real one. But I am not hiding it, I really loved and even now, many years afterwards, love them for being kind of on their own; they are independent and calm in any situation, particularly the one in the left corner, the one we called Savl. Listen, why did you just pronounce these incomprehensible words: even now, many years afterwards—I don’t understand what you are trying to say using these words—aren’t we going to our school anymore, don’t we study botany, don’t we run fortifying cross-country races, don’t we carry white open-heel slippers in sacks, and don’t we write explanatory notes about lost trust? Perhaps we don’t, perhaps we don’t write, don’t run, and don’t study, we’ve been out of school for a long time, we either finished it with distinction or we were kicked out for poor performance—I can’t recall at this time. Fine, but what did you and I do all these years after school? We worked. Aha, and where, in what capacity? Oh, in many different places. At first we worked for our father in the prosecutor’s office; he hired us as filers of files and we were present at many court proceedings. In those days our father brought legal action against the deceased Norvegov. What happened, did the teacher do something wrong? Yes, despite the new law about weather vanes, legalizing the destruction of them on the roofs and in the yards of private houses, Savl didn’t remove his weather vane and our father demanded from the judges and jurors that they apply the strictest law to the geographer. He was tried in absentia and given the death penalty. Darn it, why didn’t anyone defend him? Some people did hear about Norvegov’s case, there were demonstrations, but the verdict remained valid. After that we worked in the Ministry of Alarms and one of the ministers frequently called us to his office in order to consult with us about weather over a cup of tea. We were respected, highly regarded, and were considered valuable co-workers since nobody in the ministry had faces as alarmed as ours. We were on the short list for promotion, for advancement to elevator operators, but then as by the will of the pike we filed a petition and on the basis of Dr. Zauze’s recommendation we entered the workshop of Leonardo. We were apprentices in his workshop in the moat of the Milan fortress. We were just modest apprentices, but how much this celebrated artist owes us, the students so-and-so! We helped him observe flying on four wings, we mixed his clay, carried marble, constructed projectiles—but mainly glued together cartons and solved rebuses. And one day he asked us: Young man, I am working now on a female portrait and have already painted everything except the woman’s face; I am forgetful, I am getting old, my imagination begins to fail me, so please advise what kind of face, in your opinion, it should be. And we said: It should be the face of Veta Arkadievna Akatova, our beloved teacher, when she comes to our classroom to conduct the next lesson. Good idea, said the old master, in that case describe her face for me, describe it, I want to see this person. And we described it. Soon we gave Leonardo notice: we were bored, we had to grind pigments all the time and never could get our hands clean. Later we worked as controllers, conductors, couplers, inspectors of railroad postal bureaus, orderlies, excavator operators, glass installers, night watchmen, river ferrymen, pharmacists, carpenters in the desert, haulers, stokers, fifers, or rather lifers, or more fittingly, filers of files. We worked there and here, here and there—everywhere where there was an opportunity to hang, that is, to lend a hand. And wherever we would come, we would hear: Look, here they are—Those Who Came. Thirsty for knowledge, brave truth-lovers, successors of Savl, of his principles and sayings, we were proud of each other. All these years our life was extremely interesting and full, but in its many twists and turns we didn’t forget about our special school and our teachers, particularly Veta Arkadievna. We have usually imagined her at the moment when she enters the classroom and we are standing, looking at her, and everything that we’ve previously known about anything becomes absolutely unnecessary, stupid, devoid of sense—and immediately comes off like a peel or old skin, or maybe falls off like a shell. And why wouldn’t you tell exactly what she looked like when she came in, why wouldn’t you give, as Cafeteria used to say, an external characteristic? No, no, it’s impossible, it’s useless, it’ll only overload our conversation, and we’ll get ensnared in definitions and details. But you just mentioned Leonardo’s request. Apparently at that time, in his studio, we were able to describe Veta. We were able, but our description was laconic, since even then we could not say more than we said: Dear Leonardo, imagine a woman: She’s so beautiful that when you look carefully at her features you cannot stop your tears of joy, and. . . .Thank you, young man, thank you—answered the artist—that’s enough, I already see that person. Fine, but in that case at least describe the biology classroom and us, those who at first stood and then sat; also describe briefly our classmates present at the biology lesson.