by Sergey
“What time is it?”
“Six thirty.”
“What time was your individual session scheduled for?”
“For three thirty . . . But I am ready! You can check . . .”
“Why do I need to spend my own personal time on you?”
Sasha was taken aback.
“You missed your session, Samokhina. The ship has sailed.”
“But I had a legitimate reason!”
“No, you did not. No reason is legitimate when missing an individual session. I’m writing a report to Kozhennikov, and will let him take disciplinary action.”
“But I have memorized everything!”
“I am no longer interested. Our next meeting is in class this Thursday. Good night.” Portnov pointed at the door.
Sasha left. Then she came back, unable to believe the injustice of the situation.
“But I memorized everything! It’s only fifteen minutes! Just check . . .”
“Close the door, Samokhina. From the other side.”
Dragging her bag behind her, she went up the stairs. She stopped in front of the dining hall entrance. The tears had dried up, and her face now seemed white and long, like a bandage.
“What happened?” Kostya flew to meet her.
For an entire minute Sasha could not speak. She remembered that conversation in the summer, almost a year and a half ago:
“My alarm did not go off . . .”
“It’s very bad, but not terrible . . . it’s even good for you—it’ll teach you some discipline. The second such blunder will cost you a lot more, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Just tell me what happened!”
“Do you have . . . do you know how to reach your . . . your father?”
Kostya recoiled.
“What for?”
“I need to speak to him,” Sasha said hopelessly.
Kostya was silent.
“Do you?” she asked again.
“He gave me his number, but I threw away the piece of paper.” Kostya took a deep breath. “Listen . . . You didn’t do anything horrible, right?
“Sasha?”
Sasha managed to get hold of Mom the next day. The voice in the receiver sounded dull and tired. At first Mom made excuses, and only then admitted that the previous night on her way home from the office, she’d fallen awkwardly and broken her right thumb. It was not anything terrible. Just annoying because it was her right hand. But it could have been much worse. If she hadn’t slipped, she would have fallen into a manhole—somebody had stolen its cover, and it was dark, and the streetlights were out . . . The open manhole was only two steps in front of her! On the sidewalk, at night! So it was a blessing in disguise. We’re fighting with the regional administration, Mom said, might even go to court. But the thumb will heal. Don’t worry. Everything will heal.
After her conversation with Mom, Sasha took a long walk around Torpa. The first snow fell and melted immediately.
On Thursday the heat was turned on. Almost immediately a pipe burst in the room next to Sasha’s, and the heat was turned off. Plumbers stomped in the corridor, swearing and clanging metal tools.
By nighttime, the windows turned sweaty in their room. It became warm; the radiator was decorated with freshly washed socks, tights, and underwear. Sasha went to the kitchen, poured some boiling water over a bouillon cube in an enamel mug, and, sipping the hot liquid, started the exercises.
She felt as if she had just avoided an enormous tragedy. Actually, it was the same feeling she’d experienced two summers ago, when she saw her dazed Mom next to the stretcher where then-still-a-stranger Valentin lay. It was almost joyful—instead of a big tragedy, she faced a relatively small, easy to survive trouble.
“Why is he doing this?” Kostya asked, dunking a moist cracker into his cup of tea.
“You didn’t ask how he is doing this.”
They fell silent. Sasha was almost happy, because the torrent of events completely washed that night, those anchovies, that wrinkled sheet, and those coins on the floor out of their relationship.
“Kostya,” Sasha asked softly. “What if you . . . What if you wanted to drop out of school? Just get up and leave. Would he let you go?”
Kostya’s face darkened.
“He and I had a discussion about that,” he said, attempting to fish out wet pieces of his cracker with an aluminum teaspoon, “and frankly, I’m not even going to try. My mom is not the healthiest woman, and my grandma’s old . . . I will stay at school.”
“Right.” Sasha sighed.
Nighttime came. Lisa roamed around somewhere. Oksana fidgeted at her desk for quite a while, trying to memorize a paragraph, then threw the book aside, gulped some moonshine from the rubber hot water bottle all by herself, and went to bed. Sasha just hunched over her textbook, honing one exercise after another, climbing up a precipitous icy wall:
Read exercise nine, fall into utter despair for a couple of minutes—no one can accomplish this, it is simply impossible—rub your eyes, go back to exercise eight, force yourself to repeat it, reread exercise nine. Try it. Squeeze your temples with both hands. Repeat exercise eight a couple more times; again, attempt exercise nine and realize that an outline exists—it’s palpable, you just need to be very careful. Concentrate very, very hard . . . get as far as half of the exercise and lose it. And again—lose it right at the beginning. And again—almost get to the end. And again—finish it, but recognize that you will not be able to repeat it. Go back to number eight, run through it, repeat number nine, wincing from the tension. Repeat again. And again. Catch your breath, wipe your tearing eyes, allow yourself a minute of rest, take a sip of cold tea. Read exercise ten . . .
And again fall into despair.
Friday passed this way. And Friday night through Saturday morning went the same way. At eleven ten, right on schedule, Sasha walked into auditorium 38. She carried no fear, no anger. The world around her was dark, and Sasha’s vision narrowed down to a round window the size of an automotive tire.
Instead of Portnov’s face, she saw only his hand with a ring.
“I’m waiting, Samokhina. Full set of exercises, one through twelve. If you make a mistake, start again from the very beginning.”
She placed a chair in the middle of the auditorium, steadied herself against its high back, and began.
“Imagine a sphere . . . mentally distort the sphere so that the external surface is on the inside, and the internal on the outside . . .”
Twice she lost her place. Once, while transitioning from number seven to number eight, and then on twelve, the trickiest one. Both times she stopped and started all over again. On her third try she finished the entire series without a single pause—like a song, or a dance. Like a tongue twister. Like a long balance beam exercise sequence. . . .
The bright window in front of her eyes narrowed even further. She couldn’t make out Portnov’s face. She saw his desk, the edge of his notebook, and his hand with the ring, clenched into a tight fist.
“Good.” His voice sounded hollow. “For this Tuesday: paragraphs eighteen and nineteen. For next Saturday: exercises thirteen through seventeen.”
“Good-bye,” Sasha said.
She stepped out of the auditorium, nodded to Kostya, blindly found her way to the dorm. She lay down on her bed and switched off her consciousness.
“Samokhina, get up. First block is Specialty. Get up, do you hear me?”
Lisa was wearing expensive and very exotic but harsh perfume. Sasha opened her eyes.
“What?”
“It’s Monday morning! Get up, class starts in half an hour! If you miss one more class, Portnov will burst!”
“Isn’t it Saturday?” Sasha inquired.
“Not anymore! You snored through the entire weekend!”
Mom, Sasha thought. I promised to call her every weekend. I never called . . . And what about Kostya?
Lisa thrashed about the room half-dressed, pulling on a pair of tights for extra warmt
h, then stepping into her jeans.
“Oksana! Did you take my pads?”
“I did, the package is in your desk.”
“Idiot, what the hell are you doing, stealing my stuff?”
“Stop screeching, there are some left. I’ll buy you some more.”
“Yeah, sure, you’ll buy me more. If I see you stealing them again, I’ll stick those pads where the sun don’t shine!”
Sasha slipped on her bathrobe and shuffled into the bathroom. In the mirror, a pale, haggard—but calm, and even handsome—face looked back at her. Sasha blinked: her pupils unfolded and snapped shut again, like a camera lens, then went back to normal.
She took a shower and washed her hair; only then did she discover that her hair dryer had burned out.
“Who broke my hair dryer?”
“Wasn’t me.” Lisa was ready to leave. “The bell is in ten minutes, and I’m not going to listen to Portnov’s hysterics because of you!”
“You’ll have to deal with it, thanks to whoever broke it! Oksana, let me borrow yours.”
“I lent it to Luba from room 19, and she hasn’t returned it yet. Just wrap your hair in a towel—you’ll be fine!”
Sasha dried her hair with a towel as well as she could. She pulled on a knit cap, scrambled into her jacket, threw some books and notepads into her bag, and ran across the yard toward the main building. She burst into auditorium 1 and plopped into her seat next to Kostya the same second the bell rang.
A minute passed. Portnov was not there. First years exchanged glances and began to talk softly.
“Think he might be sick?” someone asked hopefully.
“Yeah, right . . .”
“Keep dreaming . . .”
The door flew open. Conversations stopped mid-sentence. Portnov walked in, tossed a quick hello, and sat behind his desk. He inclined his head and gazed at the students over his glasses. The silence in the auditorium felt sterilized.
“Half of this semester has come and gone,” Portnov stated. “Winter finals are fast approaching. You will have two graded exams: Philosophy and History. And pass-fail exams in all other subjects. Obviously, one of them is Specialty; those who do not pass the first time will have an unpleasant conversation with your advisors.”
A pencil rolled off Zhenya Toporko’s desk and fell on the floor with a thump, but she did not dare pick it up.
“I told some of you today during your one-on-one sessions, and now I will tell all of you,” Portnov continued. “The exercises that you are working on, overcoming your tunnel vision and your laziness, change you from the inside. Perhaps you have already noticed. If you have not, you will notice it later.”
He paused. Sasha longed to look at Kostya, but she restrained herself.
“We stand at the very beginning of the road,” Portnov spoke in dry, precise sentences. “Preliminary work is being done. Considering the rate we’re going at, I can swear: in many years, I have never had to teach a more undisciplined, indolent group of students. The only group worse than you is Group B, but they are way below any expectations, and I highly doubt half of those students will be attending the graduation ceremony.”
Silence.
“Samokhina,” Portnov barked.
Sasha got up.
“Come here.”
Sasha went to where Portnov was and faced the auditorium.
“How many exercises have you completed?”
“Twelve.”
Portnov faced the audience.
“Have any of you wunderkinder accomplished twelve exercises by now? Pavlenko, how many have you done?”
“Six,” Lisa breathed.
“Toporko, you?”
“Eight . . .”
“And you, Kozhennikov?”
“Three,” Kostya said. Despite bright red blotches, his face appeared very pale.
“This girl gets an automatic pass.” Portnov did not look at Sasha. “She knows how to study. She became a leader after the very first class. Now she has gone far ahead of all of you and can face the winter finals with confidence. You—the rest of you—remember: there are only two graded Specialty exams, a midterm in your third year, and a placement exam in your fifth year. However, the pass-fail test at the end of each semester will be a significant life-defining event for all of you, I promise you that much. Samokhina, you may sit down.”
Sasha went back to her seat. Behind her back, Group A was hushed. Everyone will hate me, Sasha thought almost cheerfully. Although, you’d think . . . what is there to envy?
At that moment she felt as if a low ceiling had spread open within her. Massive concrete walls drifted apart, hit by a ray of light. All that was hairy and dark, all that frightened her, trampled her . . . in this light, it all looked comical and pathetic. As if the underside of a low-budget horror movie was suddenly revealed: used and worn-out monsters, Death in a shroud bearing a dry-cleaner’s stamp, a diminutive, overweight director . . .
“Hey, what’s with you?”
Sasha willed herself to close her eyes—and then open them again. Her classmates scurried around, noisily moving chairs around, somebody laughed out loud. Something had happened.
Portnov was no longer in the auditorium. The door was wide open.
“What happened?” Sasha squinted.
“The class is over,” Kostya explained drily. “Gym’s next. Did you bring your uniform?”
Things were now happening very fast. Left to her own devices, Sasha reached the third floor after the bell; she joined the line still wearing her jeans and a sweater.
“Look who’s here!” the young gym teacher exclaimed. “Alexandra! How come you never come to class? And when you do show up, you’re not wearing your uniform.”
“She has no time. She’s on a special advanced program,” Lisa volunteered. Somebody sniggered.
“You must remember that Physical Education is a major subject, along with Specialty,” Dima said. “And that a winter exam awaits all of you, without pity or consideration!”
The line giggled.
“I’ll go change,” Sasha said.
“Go, but hurry up! We’re starting the warm-up! Turn . . . Right! And go! Korotkov, hold the tempo!”
Sasha trotted to the locker room. She shook her wrinkled jogging suit and sneakers out of her bag. The narrow, stuffy locker room was overflowing with shoes, foppish boots with fashionable platform soles, and stylish stilettos. Jeans and skirts hung on metal hooks like beef carcasses at the butcher’s, a bunch of sweaters lay crumpled on the bench. Somebody’s sweater had fallen on the floor. Automatically, Sasha bent down to pick it up.
She felt no fear. No courage, either. She felt detached, like a fish in slow motion. One-two-three-four, counted Dima Dimych. Sneakers thump-thumped on the gym floor. Warm-up was in progress.
“She didn’t take it.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know! You’re trying to get even with her for something . . .”
“Shut up, stop yelling . . .”
First years from Group A surrounded a bench in the yard. Lisa perched on the back of the bench, stiletto heels propped on the dirty seat.
“Samokhina! I had a hundred bucks in my jacket pocket. Give it back, or you’ll be really sorry.”
Sasha stopped.
The fourth block was over. During Philosophy and History, lists of sample exam questions were distributed. Sixty questions each, one hundred and twenty altogether; obviously, she wouldn’t have time to learn it. She owed Portnov exercises thirteen through seventeen by Saturday, and tomorrow was Tuesday, so that meant individual session, paragraphs . . .
“Samokhina, are you deaf?”
After her experience during the first block, Sasha’s brain indeed was moving a bit slowly.
Students crowded around the bench: Lisa in the company of guys, her friends and minions. Kostya, his face red and pathetic. Andrey Korotkov, massive and grim. Zhenya . . . Igor . . . Denis . . .
“What did you say?” Sasha asked.
Lisa jumped off the bench and approached Sasha face-to-face, lipsticked mouth pulled into a thin line.
“You were alone in the locker room. My jacket was hanging there. A hundred dollars in the pocket.”
“In the right pocket?” Sasha asked.
Kostya’s eyes widened. The other boys exchanged glances.
“In the right one,” Lisa agreed softly. “A bunch of thieves around here. Give it back.”
Sasha closed her eyes. She was sleepy. And simultaneously she was hungry for more exercises. Just like she would normally get hungry for food.
“Your money is behind the lining. Just check.”
The bench stood under a linden tree; the leaves had fallen off and had been collected by the janitor. One or two remaining leaves still twitched, clawing to the illusion of life, the branches beat upon one another, scratching and rustling. Aside from that sound, the silence was absolute. It was quickly getting dark. The windows in the main building were lit. A streetlight went on in front of the dorm.
“Go ahead,” Kostya said nervously. “Check.”
Lisa stuck her hand into her pocket. She took a long time. Then her delicate face reddened in the dusk, darkened like a ripe fruit.
“And how did you know that?” She twisted toward Sasha. “How did you know? You checked my pockets, didn’t you?”
Sasha shrugged. “No. I just guessed. And now you need to apologize. Say: ‘I’m sorry, Sasha.’”
“What?”
Again, Sasha lowered her eyelids for a second. The feeling she’d experienced during the first block was about to make a comeback.
“Apologize. Now, in front of everyone. You accused me of theft.”
“Buzz off,” Lisa suggested.
Sasha took a step forward. A streetlight illuminated her face.
“You heard me, Pavlenko. Don’t push it.”
Lisa stared into Sasha’s eyes. Very quickly, like a slide show, emotions alternated on her face: anger, surprise, embarrassment, and, finally, a flash of fear.
“What do you want?” Lisa mumbled.
“Apologize.”
“Fine, I apologize . . .”