“We’re getting out.”
I got out with him. There were dorozhkas outside the station. We went up to one of them. The driver evidently knew him, because he was pleased to see him:
“Oh, it’s you, counselor. Greetings, greetings. Haven’t seen you in a long time.” Then he asked: “The usual place?”
We rode for quite a long time, till we pulled up in front of a building with bars on the first floor windows. There he handed me over to someone. They took me, and the first thing they did was shave my head down to the skin. Then they gave me soap and a towel and took me to a shower, and told me to give myself a thorough scrubbing. They gave me clothes and boots. I remember the boots were way too big for me. I’d left my own boots at the forester’s cottage, I hadn’t wanted to wake the forester’s wife as I was leaving. I’d been going around barefoot, though summer was almost over. They took my picture from the front, from one side then the other. Then they brought me to a cafeteria. A few boys were already eating there. There was bread and jam and black ersatz coffee, I remember I didn’t like the food despite being hungry. Then a uniformed guard led us all to a cell. The window was barred, there was a bucket in the corner and a few iron bunk beds. He said:
“You’ll be more comfortable here than at your own mother’s. Go to sleep.” And he bolted the door from the outside.
No one slept though. The moment we turned off the light we began to get bitten by bedbugs. Ever been bitten by a bedbug? I wouldn’t wish it on you. They bit all night long. There were hordes of them. We crushed them, but new ones kept popping up. It was my first time dealing with bedbugs. Believe me, fleas are nothing next to bedbugs. Our bodies were covered in welts, and they itched so bad you wanted to tear your skin off. We scratched ourselves till we bled. And the more we scratched, the worse it itched. It was like that night after night. We complained to the guard who locked us in at night, and all he said was:
“You need to sleep better.”
It was only after several days that a van came for us. Not the usual kind of truck. This one had a metal hatch with barred windows, and another guy in uniform bolted the door after we got in. He sat next to the driver and he kept glancing through the barred window from the cab to see what we were up to. What could we be up to? We were being jolted up and down, that was it. The road was all potholes, so we spent more time driving in zigzags than going straight, and we kept getting thrown against the sides. The whole way I was wondering to myself what I’d actually done to deserve this. Was it because I’d run away from the forester’s wife? Or that I was selling things in trains? That I didn’t have a ticket? Anyway, this was how I found myself at the school.
Oh — we didn’t decide how many turns we’d take. Whatever you like. At school we’d always agree to take a certain number of turns. It depended on how many of us were playing. Also on whether it was early or late we got started playing. And that would depend on when the teacher went away. But I was going to tell you why he collected matchboxes. You’ll never guess. Look at the box we’re playing with. What do you see? Right, here are the scratchboards, this is where you take the matches out from one side or the other, and here’s the label. This one happens to say: Feed the Hungry Children. Some charity. Back then there were different ones. They’d change from time to time. When you’d used up all the matches, you’d go buy more or take some from someone else’s pocket, and there’d be a new label. The previous one had said: Brush Your Teeth, while the new one said: Long Live May 1, or: Power to the Youth of the World, or: The Whole Nation is Rebuilding our Capital. If you didn’t know what times you were living in, you could have figured it out from those labels. These days I don’t know what they change from or to. Like I said, I hardly ever use matches, it’s all electric here. I don’t smoke either. But if you ask me, you could figure out any time on the basis of those labels. And it’s been possible ever since there have been matches.
That’s exactly what our teacher thought too. He had them make him a plywood display board in the shop. How big? Well, not to exaggerate, a little smaller than a classroom chalkboard. On it he would pin matchboxes in little rows. There was still a lot of free space, and so every evening he’d come and remind us to give him our matchboxes when they were empty. For each civics lesson we’d bring the display board to class. There’d be two or three of us carrying it, it was pretty heavy, and he’d follow behind and shout:
“Careful! Careful!”
The boxes mustn’t have been attached very firmly, because every now and then one of them would fall off on the way. When that happened he’d get so mad, he’d call the boys who were carrying the board all sorts of names, say they were oafs, morons, good-for-nothings. And he’d educate us using the board, matchbox by matchbox. He probably thought that since we were constantly playing that game, we’d find it easier to learn in such a way.
He’d call you to the board, point with his stick at one box or another and ask you what you could see on it. But what you saw wasn’t all, because after that it would be, Say more. Saying more was much harder. Even when one of us managed to say more, he’d still keep at him. All right, go a little deeper, think about how that should be properly understood. If anyone happened to understand something improperly, he’d fly into a rage, he’d shout about how we spent all our evenings playing matchboxes, even after he left us, we thought he didn’t know but he knew everything. He knew what kind of game it was. And what we played for.
You know, it really wasn’t such a stupid idea at all, if you think about it. Tell me yourself, how can you educate someone so they’re in no doubt about what times they’re living in? All a person cares about is the fact that they live from birth to death. But who needs someone who only lives from birth to death. Often it seems to them that even that’s too much. Plus, if they could pick what time they could live in, probably not that many people would choose their own. Living in your own times is the hardest thing of all, you have to admit. It’d be a lot easier in some earlier or later time, anything but your own. So educating someone is no simple matter. And you never know what might turn out to be the best method. Then why would matchboxes be any worse?
All right, it’s your turn.
13
Did I not tell you? I thought I told you already. I went and bought it. Not to the nearest town. The nearest towns were backwaters, they might not have had anything like that there. I wanted a brown felt one. I walked all over before I found a hat shop. I might have passed it by, the display window was no bigger than my window here, and it contained nothing but caps and berets and a single drab-colored hat. Luckily, a bit further back, behind the caps and berets, kind of hidden, I spotted a brown felt hat. I perked up and went in. The store was dark, it long and thin like a hallway, the only light was what came from the display, and right at the far end, behind the counter, was the clerk. He looked to have been dozing, because when I came in he raised his head, yawned, and said quickly:
“Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for a hat,” I said in an apologetic tone, as if for having woken him up.
“What kind?”
“A brown felt one.”
“We don’t have anything in brown felt. There aren’t any in brown. Generally speaking, what you see is all we have, young man.” He gestured toward the shelves behind him. There were peaked caps, other caps, berets, and no more than a handful of hats, most of them the same dull color as the one on display, plus two or three greenish ones, as far as I could make out in the gloom that reigned at that end of the store. “I bet you thought you’d walked into a shop, didn’t you, young man?” He grew so animated he sat up on his seat. He was a short man, but all of a sudden he seemed a lot bigger to me. “But this is no shop. And certainly not a hat shop. Before the war I had a hat shop. Now if you’d come to me before the war …”