“A wonderful present to our children,” said the representative of the municipal department of education. “Well then. On the first floor, we’ll have the first and second grades; on the second, then, the third and fourth, and so on. The older the student, the higher up he is in the school.”

“That is incredibly precise,” confirmed Valentina Andronovna. “Even symbolic in the wonderful, in our sense of the word.”

Valentina Andronovna taught literature and was temporarily the acting principal. Her massive figure exuded severity and a purposeful readiness to follow the newest directives and circulars.

Everything was done as ordered, with the addition of hall monitors in the stairwells, who had strict instructions not to allow any students either up or down. The school was layered like a cake, tenth graders never saw fifth graders, and first graders never saw anyone at all. Every floor lived the life of its own age, but at least no one slid down the banisters. Except the hall monitors.

Valentina Andronovna was acting principal for six months, and then a new principal got appointed. He wore wide cavalry trousers, soft kidskin boots, and a broadcloth military tunic with enormous patch pockets, had a cavalryman’s ability to make noise, liked to loudly laugh and sneeze so the whole school could hear.

“A cadet corps,” he declared after familiarizing himself with the symbolic structure of the school.

“By order of the department of education,” Valentina Andronovna said with meaning.

“We need to live by ideas, not by orders. And what is our overarching idea? Our overarching idea is to educate the citizens of a new, socialist Homeland. So we’ll chuck all the orders out the window and do it like this.”

He thought a little and wrote out his first decree:

1st floor. First and sixth grades.
2nd floor. Second, seventh, and eighth.
3rd floor. Third and ninth.
4th floor. Fourth, fifth, and tenth.

“There,” he said, admiring this layout. “Everyone will mix together and there will be friendship. Where are the main troublemakers? In fourth and fifth. Now they’ll be with the oldest kids, and they’ll keep an eye on them. And no hall monitors, let them run all over. A child is a creature of freedom and spontaneity, let’s not put up bars for no reason. That’s number one. Number two is, we have girls growing up, and there’s only one mirror in the whole school, and that in the teachers’ room. Tomorrow, hang good mirrors in all the girls’ bathrooms. You hear me, Mikheich? Buy them and hang them.”

“Are we bringing up strumpets here?” Valentina Andronovna said with a venomous smile.

“Not strumpets, women. Not that you would know what that is.”

Valentina Andronovna swallowed the insult, but did write a letter. To the appropriate destination.

But there no one paid any attention to this letter, either because they were giving the new principal rope or because his defenders were too strong. The grades were mixed together, the hall monitors were abolished, the mirrors were hung, which cast the girls into a state of continuous agitation. New ribbons and bangs popped up, at recess the school roared victoriously with hundreds of voices, and the principal was very pleased.

“It lives!”

“We’re waking passions prematurely.” Valentina Andronovna pressed her lips together tightly.

“Passion is wonderful. There’s nothing worse than a passionless person. So we should sing!”

There were no singing classes in the school due to a lack of teachers, and the principal solved the question in a unilateral fashion: by ordering mandatory singing sessions three times a week. The upperclassmen would get summoned to the gym, the principal would take his accordion and tap out the rhythms with his foot.

We are the Red Cavalry
And about us
The glibbest storytellers
Tell their tales

Iskra loved these singing sessions very much. She had no ear for music and no singing voice, but she tried to enunciate loudly and clearly the words that made chills run down her back:

We’re selfless heroes all…

On a day-to-day basis, the principal also taught geography, but he did it in a peculiar way, as he did everything else. He disliked directions and disliked requirements more, and he followed less the curriculum and more his conscience, the conscience of a bolshevik and a former cavalryman.

“What are you poking the Ganges with the pointer for? If you ever end up sailing on it, you’ll figure out the tributaries, and if you don’t, you won’t need it. Tell us instead, honey, how miserable the people there are, how British imperialism torments the working people. That’s the thing you’ll need to remember forever!”

That was when the subject was foreign countries. When the focus was on their own country, the principal would talk about even more unusual things.

“Take the Sal steppe.” He carefully traced the steppe on the map. “What is characteristic here? It’s characteristic that there’s not much water, and if you happen to be there in the summer, you should water your horse well in the morning, so he’ll have enough until evening falls. And our horse is no good there, you need to switch to the local breed, they’re used to it.”

Perhaps because of these stories, perhaps because of his egalitarianism and simplicity, perhaps because of his vocal humanity and openness, and perhaps because of all those combined, the school loved the principal. Loved, respected, but also feared a little, because the principal did not tolerate any tattling, and dealt severely with those he caught personally. He would forgive mischief, though: except spiteful mischief, or worse, cruelty.

In eighth grade, a guy hit a girl. Not accidentally, and not even in a fit of temper, but deliberately, with calculation and malice. The principal heard her screams and came himself, but the guy ran away. Handing the crying victim over to the women teachers, the principal summoned all the boys from eighth grade and gave an order:

“Find him and bring him here. Immediately. That’s all. Go.”

By the end of the school day, the guy had gotten dragged to the school. The principal lined up the upper classes in the gym, put him in the center and said:

“I don’t know who stands before you. Maybe he is a future criminal, and maybe an exemplary citizen and the father of a family. But I know one thing: right now the one that stands before you is not a man. Boys and girls, remember this, and be careful around him. You can’t be friends with him, because he will betray you; cannot love him, because he is despicable; cannot trust him, because he will stab you in the back. And this will keep being the case until he proves to us that he understands what a vile thing he did, until he becomes a real man. And to make sure he understands what a real man is, I will remind him. A real man is one who only loves two women - yes, two, what is that laughter! His mother and the mother of his children. A real man is one who loves the country that he was born in. A real man is one who will give a friend his last ration of bread even if this sentences him to starve to death. A real man is one who loves and respects all people and hates the enemies of these people. And you need to learn to love and learn to hate, and those are the most important subjects to study in life!”

Iskra started clapping first. She started clapping because for the first time in her life, she saw and heard a commissar. And everyone clapped with her.

“Hush, guys, hush,” the principal smiled. “You’re not really supposed to clap your hands in the ranks.” He turned back to the boy who was assiduously studying the floor, and in the dead silence, said softly and contemptuously, “Go study. Whatever it is that you are.”

Yes, they really loved their principal, Nikolai Grigoryevich Romahin. Unlike their new homeroom teacher, Valentina Andronovna, whom they despised so deeply and unanimously that they no longer spent any energy on any other emotion. They did not seek out conversations with her, but only patiently heard her out, trying not to respond, and when a response was called for after all, using only the simplest answers, “yes” and “no”.

But Valentina Andronovna was far from stupid. She knew perfectly well what the class thought of her, and having failed to find a way to their hearts and minds, began to wheedle just a little tiny bit. Which little tiny bit was immediately noticed by the class.

“How come our Valendra has been fawning over us?” said Pashka Ostapchuk, loudly surprised.

“She is pouring oil onto the future troubled waters of human passions,” Lena Bokova said dramatically. 

“It’s blubber she’s pouring and not oil,” grumbled the enlightened philatelist Zhorka Landys. “Where would an old bat like her get oil?”

“Stop that,” Iskra said sternly. “Don’t speak about your elders that way, and I don’t like the phrase ‘old bat’.”

“Then why do you say it, if you don’t like it?”

“As an example.” Iskra peeked at Vika, noticed that she was smiling, and was disappointed. “We shouldn’t, guys. The whole class shouldn’t be gossipping like this.”

“Yes, yes, Iskra,” Valka Edison hastily agreed. “You’re right, we shouldn’t do it in class. At home is better.”

But Valentina Andronovna did not at all limit her goals to the scope of the class. True, she wanted to rule over the minds and souls of the obstinate 9’B’, but this was not the dream she treasured. She was entirely certain that the school – her school, which she had ruled absolutely for a whole half-year – had fallen into the hands of a gambler and opportunist. This was what tormented Valentina Andronovna, this was what forced her to write letters to all possible destinations, but those letters did not yet receive any response. Yet. She took this “yet” into account.

In her relentless struggle with the leadership of the school, she did not think about her career even secretly, even to herself. She thought of the party line, and she quite sincerely, to the point of tears and despair, thought the line that the new principal took to be mistaken. She was sincere in her fight for the common good, and not for personal benefit. Nothing personal existed in her ascetic life as a lonely and uncharming woman, and had not for a very long time.

On Sunday they partied, on Monday they thought about the party, and on Tuesday after school, Iskra was summoned by Valentina Andronovna.

“Sit down, Iskra,” she said, firmly closing the door of the classroom of 1’A’, where she always held private conversations.

Unlike Zinochka, Iskra was not afraid of summons, or private offices, or one-on-one meetings, because she never felt that she carried any guilt. Zinochka, on the other hand, always felt guilt – if not about the past, then about the future – and was desperately afraid of it all.

Iskra sat, tugged down her dress – it’s awful when your knees stick out, simply awful, and they do! – and prepared to listen.

“Isn’t there anything you would like to tell me about?”

“No, nothing.”

“That’s a pity,” Valentina Andronovna sighed. “Why do you think I asked you specifically? I could have decided to talk to Ostapchyuk or Aleksandrov, Landys or Shefer, Bokova or Lyuberetskaya, but I want to talk to you, Iskra.”

Iskra instantly put together that everyone on that list had been at the birthday party, and that the only ones missing were Sasha and Zina. Sasha was no longer a student of 9’B’, but Zinochka…

“I am speaking to you not only as the deputy secretary of the komsomol committee. Not only as an A student and an activist. Not only as a principled and purposeful person.” Valentina Andronovna paused. “But also because I know your mom well as a wonderful Party worker. You will ask: why this introduction. Because enemies are today using any means to corrupt our youth, to tear them away from the Party, to drive a wedge between fathers and children. This is why it is your sacred duty to immediately tell me…”

“I have nothing to tell you,” Iskra said, feverishly trying to figure out what in the world they had done on Sunday.

“No? Are you not aware that Yesenin is a defeatist poet? You didn’t consider that you were gathered under the pretext of a birthday – I checked Shefer’s record, he was born on September second. On the second, but he only invited you three weeks later! Why? Was it not for the purpose of acquainting you with the drunken revelations of a kulak singer?”

“It was Lyuberetskaya that read Yesenin, Valentina Andronovna.”

“Lyuberetskaya?” Valentina Andronovna was clearly surprised, and Iskra did not allow her to recover.

“Yes, Vika. Zina Kovalenko’s intelligence was faulty.” This was a trial balloon. Iskra even turned away, understanding that she was being provocative. But she needed to check her suspicions.

“So, Vika?” Valentina Andronovna had completely lost her tone of passionate accusation. “Yes, yes, Kovalenko produced a lot of chatter. Someone left the house, someone fell in love with someone, someone read poetry. She is very, very disorganized, Kovalenko is! Well, then everything is clear, and… and nothing is wrong. Lyuberetskaya’s father is a prominent director, the pride of our city. And Vika is a very serious young woman.”

“May I go?”

“What? Yes, of course. You see how simply everything gets resolved when everyone tells the truth. Your friend Kovalenko is a very, very unserious person.”

“I will think about that,” said Iskra, and left. She was in a hurry to go talk to this unserious person, knowing her curious friend was definitely waiting for her in the school yard. She needed to explain some things about gossip, a loose tongue, and a frivolous attitude towards disclosures.

Zinochka was happily chattering in the company of two tenth-graders, Yuriy and Sergey, with Artyom hovering in the distance. Iskra silently took her friend by the hand and led her away; Artyom started off after them, but came to his senses and disappeared.

“Where are you dragging me off to?”

Iskra took Zina around the corner of the school, squeezed her into the nook at the entrance to the boiler room, and asked without preamble:

“Which are you, an idiot, a gossip, or a traitor?”

Instead of answering, Zinochka immediately summoned tears. She always sought their help in difficult situations, but in this case, this was a mistake.

“So you’re a traitor.”

“Me?” Zina stopped crying at once.

“What did you blab about to Valendra?”

“Did I blab? She caught me in the bathroom in front of the mirror, and started telling me off for making faces and… flirting. That’s what she said, but I don’t flirt at all and don’t even know how it’s done. So I tried to explain. I tried to explain and she started asking me horrid questions, and I didn’t want to say anything, honest to goodness, but I… did. I didn’t tell her on purpose, Iskorka, it wasn’t on purpose.”

Carefully sniffling, Zinochka kept talking, but Iskra was no longer listening. She was thinking. Then she ordered, 

“Wipe your face, we’re going to the Lyuberetskiys’.”

“Where?” Zinochka instantly stopped sniffling in surprise.

“You let Vika down. Tomorrow, Valendra will start questioning her, and she needs to be ready.”

“But we’ve never been to the Lyuberetskiys’!”

“And now we will. Let’s go!”

Vika was no less proud of her father than Iskra was of her mom. But where Iskra was proud quietly, Vika’s pride was open and triumphant. She was proud of his awards, of the Order of the Red Banner for civil war service and of the medal for significant achievement in peacetime construction. She was proud of his numerous personalized gifts from the Narkom, of the photo cameras and watches, radios and gramophones. She was proud of his papers and articles, his combat achievements in the past and his admirable actions in the present.

Vika’s mother had died a long time ago. At first, her aunt, her father’s sister, had lived with them, but then she married, moved to Moscow, and rarely visited the Lyuberetskiys. The household was run by the help, day-to-day life was ordered and settled, the girl grew and developed normally, and the aunt had nothing much to worry about. Lyuberetskiy did all the worrying himself. Every year, he worried more and more, specifically because his daughter grew and developed normally.

His worry expressed itself through extremes. Fear for her was the cause of the car that delivered Vika to school and from school, to the theater and from the theater, out to the countryside and back home. The desire to see her be the most beautiful led to the outfits from abroad, the hairstyles and fur coats that would be more appropriate on a young woman, and not on a girl only just beginning to grow to adulthood. He inadvertently hurried her towards maturity, took pride in that maturity overtaking that of her agemates, and fretted over her aloofness, not guessing that Vika’s aloofness was the direct result of his parenting.

Vika took a lot of pride in her father, and was very weighed down by her loneliness. But she was proud, and feared most of all that someone would take it into their head to pity her, and so she found the girls’ sudden visitation unpleasant.

“Sorry, we’re here about something important,” Iskra said.

“What a mirror!” gasped Zina. Mirrors were her weakness.

“It’s an antique,” Vika couldn’t resist saying. “Dad got it as a gift from an academy member he knows.”

She was about to take the girls to her room, but the sound of voices brought out her dad, Leonid Sergeevich Lyuberetskiy.

“Hello, girls! Well, I see my Vika finally has friends, instead of it all being books and more books. I’m very glad, very! Come into the dining room, I’ll serve tea.”

“Polya can serve tea,” said Vika with a hint of displeasure.

“She can, but I can better,” smiled her father, and went into the kitchen.

Over tea, Leonid Sergeevich looked after the girls, coaxed them to eat fancy little cakes and sweets that came in decorated boxes. Iskra and Zina were discomfited by the cakes: they were used to only eating such things on great holidays. But Vika’s father made jokes and smiled and gradually, the sense of being uninvited guests at a stranger’s celebration left the girls. Zinochka soon began to spin around, curiously examining the crystal displayed behind the glass of the oak cabinet, and Iskra’s tongue unexpectedly loosened, and soon she told them all about her conversation with their teacher.

“Girls, this is all unserious.” But despite this, Vika’s father for some reason became sad and sighed heavily. “Nobody banned Sergey Yesenin, and there is nothing criminal about his poetry. I hope your teacher understands all this herself, and this conversation happened, as they say, in the heat of the moment. If you want, I can call her.”

“No,” Iskra said. “Excuse me, Leonid Sergeevich, but we should take care of our own business ourselves. We need to develop our character.”

“Good. I must admit that I have long wanted to meet you, Iskra. I have heard a great deal about you.”

“Dad!”

“Was that really a secret? Sorry.” He turned back to Iskra. “It turns out that I am acquainted with your mom. We happened to bump into each other at the city committee and discovered that we had met back during the civil war, we had been in the same division. She was an amazingly brave lady. A real Joan of Arc.”

“A commissar,” Iskra corrected him, quietly but firmly. She had nothing against Joan of Arc, but a commissar was still better.

“A commissar,” Lyuberetskiy agreed. “As for poetry in particular and art in general, the kind that is most to my liking is that in which question marks prevail over exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is an imperative arrow that gives direction, and a question mark is a hook that pulls answers out of your head. Art should awaken thoughts, not lull them to sleep.”

“No-o,” Zinochka drew out skeptically. “Art should awaken feelings.”

“Zinaida!” Iskra muttered through her teeth.

“Zinochka is absolutely right,” said Leonid Sergeevich. “Art should reach the thought through feelings. It should disturb a person, make them suffer with the sorrows of others, love and hate. And a disturbed person is inquisitive and curious; a state of peace and self-satisfaction births a laziness of the soul. That is why Yesenin and Blok are so dear to me, if we are talking about modern poets.”

“What about Mayakovsky?” Iskra asked quietly. “Mayakovsky was and remains the best and most talented poet of our Soviet epoch.”

“No one doubts the enormous talent of Mayakovsky,” smiled Leonid Sergeevich.

“Dad knew Vladimir Vladimirovich,” clarified Vika.

“Knew?” Zina quickly turned around in her chair. “No!”

“Why not?” said Vika’s father. “I knew him well when I was at school in Moscow. I must admit, he and I would argue desperately, and not just about poetry. That was a time of arguments, girls. We were not content with absolute truths, we sought and argued. Argued nights through, to the point of stupor.”

“But can you really argue with…” Iskra wanted to say “with a genius” but held back.

“You not only can, you must. Truth should not be turned into dogma, it must be constantly tested for durability and advisability. Lenin taught us that, girls. And he would always be very angry when he found out that someone sought to pour the living truth into a cast-iron absolute.”

The elderly housekeeper peered in at the door.

“The car is here, Leonid Sergeevich.”

“Thank you, Polya.” Leonid Sergeevich stood up and pushed his chair in. “All the best to you, girls. Drink tea, chat, listen to music, read good poetry. And, please, do not forget Vika and I.”

“Will you be gone long, dad?”

“Meetings never end earlier than three,” smiled her father, and left.

Iskra would long remember the chance meeting and the unexpected conversation. But then, listening to the elderly (she thought) man with young eyes, she did not agree with much of what he said, tried to challenge much of it, intended to contemplate much of it, because she was a thorough sort of person that liked to get to the roots of things. So she walked home, sorting out in her head what she had heard, with Zinochka chirping alongside.

“I told you that Vika was a wonderful girl, I told you, I told you! God, we lost eight years because of you. What dishes! No, did you see what dishes they have? Like in a museum! Potemkin probably drank out of cups like those.”

“Truth,” suddenly said Iskra slowly, as if discerning a sound from far off. “Why should you argue with it, if it is – the truth?”

“‘In the character of Pechorin, Lermontov portrayed the typical features of the superfluous man,’” Zina mimicked Valentina Andronovna very closely and laughed. “Just try to argue with that truth, Valendra will just fail you.”

“Maybe that’s not the truth?” Iskra continued to ponder. “Who declares that the truth is indeed the truth? Well, who? Who?”

“Adults,” said Zinochka. “And adults get it from their bosses… and this is my left, so let me kiss you.”

Iskra silently offered her cheek, tugged once at her friend’s dark blonde lock, and they parted. Zina ran along, purposefully clicking her heels, and Iskra walked, though quickly, decorously and quietly, and diligently continued to think.

Iskra’s mom was home, and, as usual, with a cigarette: after that terrible night when Iskra accidentally spied on her, Iskra’s mom started to smoke. To smoke a lot, scattering empty and half-full packs of “Deli”.

“Where were you?”

“At the Lyuberetskiys.”

Iskra’s mom raised her eyebrows a bit, but said nothing. Iskra went into her corner, behind the wardrobe, where there was a small table and a case with her books. She tried to study, solving problems, rewriting things, but the conversation would not leave her head.

“Mom, what is truth?”

Iskra’s mother set aside the book she was reading carefully, bookmarking and taking notes, shoved her cigarette in the ashtray, thought a bit, took it out, and lit it again.

“I think you have phrased your question carelessly. Clarify, please.”

“Then tell me whether there exist inarguable truths. Truths that do not require proof.”

“Of course. If there were no such truths, man would have remained an animal. He needs to know what he lives for.”

“So man lives for the truth?”

“We do, yes. We, the Soviet people, have discovered the immutable truth taught to us by the party. So much blood has been shed, so much torment has been endured for this truth, that arguing with it, much less doubting it, is a betrayal of those who have perished and… and will yet perish. This truth is our strength and our pride, Iskra. Did I understand your question correctly?”

“Yes, yes, thank you,” Iskra said thoughtfully. “See, I think we don’t get taught to argue at school.”

“There is nothing to argue about with friends, and enemies need to be fought.”

“But shouldn’t we know how to argue?”

“We ought to teach the truth itself, not ways to prove it. That would be sophistry. A person devoted to our truth will, if need be, defend it in arms. Our business is not chattering. We are building a new society, we have no time for chatter.” Iskra’s mother threw her cigarette butt into the ashtray and looked questioningly at Iskra. “Why do you ask about this?”

Iskra wanted to tell her mother about the conversation that had disturbed her, about the exclamation and question marks that Leonid Sergeevich used to measure art, but then looked into her mother’s stern, familiar eyes, and said, “Just because.”

“Don’t read empty books, Iskra. I want to check your library record, but I keep not getting around to it, and I have a serious speech to give tomorrow.”

Iskra’s library record was in perfect order, but Iskra read outside of her record, too. The tradition of exchanging books at schools dated back probably to the tsarist gymnasium days, and Iskra already knew Hamsun and Kellermann, whose “Victoria” and “Ingeborg” thrust her into a strange state of anticipation and dismay. The anticipation and dismay did not release her even at night, and her dreams were not at all of a nature concordant with her library record. But this she told no one, not even Zinochka, though Zinochka often told her about dreams of this kind. And then Iskra would get very mad, and Zina did not understand that she would be mad about her own dreams being guessed.

Her conversation with her mother reinforced Iskra’s belief in the existence of inarguable truths, but besides those, there also existed arguable truths, truths of a lower order, so to speak. Such a truth, for example, was the attitude towards Yesenin, whose poetry Iskra read all these days, learned by heart and copied out into a notebook, since the book would need to soon be returned. She did this copying in secret from her mother, because the ban, though not explicit, was in fact in effect, and Iskra was for the first time arguing with the official position, and therefore, with the truth.

“Oh I got it a long time ago,” Sashka said when she confided her doubts to him. “They’re just jealous of Yesenin, that’s all. And they want him to be forgotten.”

Such an easy explanation could not satisfy Iskra. But there was no one she could consult, and she decided, after some serious thought, to ask Leonid Sergeevich when she had a chance.

At school, everything was quiet, as if the unpleasant conversation among the desks of the first graders had not happened, as if there had been no reading of forbidden poetry, and even as if the evening at Artyom’s had not happened either. Valentina Andronovna did not summon anyone else for conversations, smiled graciously when meeting, and Iskra decided that Leonid Sergeevich was right: it had happened in the heat of the moment. No one tangled the order of things, truths remained truths: as pure, inaccessible, and enticing as the eight-thousanders of the Himalayas. Iskra continued to study hard, read poetry and unrecorded novels, played basketball, went with Sasha to the movies or just for walks, and released the class newspaper regularly, since she was its editor-in-chief.