I don’t know how to explain it.
Chapter 62. Farewell to My Childhood
There probably hadn’t been a day during all my ten years of school that I hadn’t looked into this auditorium.
To begin with, the cafeteria was here, and we rushed in either to have lunch during the long recess or for a snack, if we attended the second session. By the way, they sold wonderfully tasty cookies there. Besides, this was also the auditorium where school assemblies were held. Various events would take place there – dances, children’s New Year’s Parties, concerts – it even had a stage.
Yet still, today I was sitting in this auditorium with a strange feeling, as if seeing it for the first time. It had become quite different, huge, with high ceilings, and… I would say, solemn. It felt that way perhaps because it had never been so quiet here, neither during assemblies nor lunch breaks. And now, it held students of the three tenth grade classes: A, B and C.
The last exam before graduation was underway; it was a composition.
Long tables carefully covered with tracing paper were arranged in three rows around the auditorium. There were just two students at each of the tables, sitting at opposite ends. Not even a chance to whisper to each other. I, by the way, was sitting in the row near the huge window, which was very pleasant. The window had been thrown open, and a light breeze, like a tender hand, patted me on the cheek, saying, “Calm down, calm down…”
I sighed and looked around – many heads bent over the tables, neat haircuts and hairdos, white shirts, smart blouses. They looked smart all right, but I could see that everybody’s faces, girls’ and boys’ alike, were tense. One thought could be easily detected on the tensest faces – it would be great to manage a look at a securely hidden crib sheet. Everyone had one. You had to be an A+ student and a show-off not to provide yourself with a crib sheet.
I know well that making a crib sheet is quite an ancient skill. A paper “accordion” is the simplest and most convenient. But it’s also rather unreliable – if you are careless enough, it might catch someone’s eye. Those who wear glasses, hide them in their glasses case. I knew boys who managed to stuff them into fountain pens. Many students use their own palms. And some calligraphy aces manage to write whatever they need on their fingernails, though that isn’t appropriate for a composition, better for math. It’s easier for girls. They have plenty of resources – the lap of their dress, the other side of their school apron, and even their own legs, on which a whole composition can be written. Irena Umerova was an unsurpassed expert when it came to that. There she sat, calm and contented. You could be sure that her legs were completely covered with writing.
Certainly, lovers of reading – I was one of them – felt more confident during a composition exam than the others. But an exam was an exam, particularly the pre-graduation exam. No matter how much you had studied and read, you still had that unpleasant quivering in your belly. Besides, there’s the “law of bad luck,” well known to all school and college students: during an exam you are often asked to cover the material you know least of all.
For example, it once happened to me during one of our annual exams in biology. I knew it quite well. I was almost an A student. Besides, I had prepared for the exam. It was my bad luck! Out of thirty cards to select from, I picked that very card. I will remember card number five for the rest of my life. It included the basics of evolution theory, the composition of a DNA molecule and many additional questions, including one about Gregor Mendel’s experiments. And that was the one I didn’t remember.
“Rats! Why did this one fall to my lot?” I thought in despair.
And I only received a lowly B.
Fortunately, there were no cards for the composition exam, and I chose my preferred subject. Now I don’t remember which one. No matter how much I enjoyed reading, literature as a school subject with its compulsory “reinforced concrete” formulations didn’t arouse any particular interest in me, more often – boredom. I would answer a question, write something and immediately forget it.
I was concerned with spelling and punctuation most of all. That’s why I had an excellent crib sheet – a tiny accordion on which I had written everything that could fit there, in my left palm. I “leafed” through it with a pen.
I had to do it very carefully: teachers sat side by side near the stage, observing us with watchful eyes. They did it in part with good intentions: if something was not clear to you, you could raise your hand, and a teacher would come to help you. But their help would be trifling, mostly regarding some unfortunate comma. It couldn’t substitute for a crib sheet, which definitely wasn’t easy to look at under their vigilant stares. On top of that, either Valentina Pavlovna or some other literature teacher paced up and down among the rows of tables, glancing to left and right.
I wrote and wrote, trying to be very neat for I was already making a clean copy, remembering my palm on which an accordion still lay, checking closely whether I had expressed my thoughts correctly and placed all the commas where they belonged. What else could possibly have filled my head? Oh well, I had only to become distracted for a second for an absolutely different thought to pop into my head. It’s funny that I don’t remember the subject of my composition, yet I remember what I was thinking about at that moment.
For example, I thought about the fact that I was sitting in that auditorium for the last time. Well, I would certainly attend the graduation event, but Yuabov the student would never come here again. I would also never enter my classroom. It would be interesting to know whether those who would later sit at my desk would be able to figure out what the initials I had scribbled on it stood for. R.C. was for Robinson Crusoe. And there were my own initials, V.Yu., next to them, but they were intricately intertwined. It was impossible to understand right away what they meant. Or I looked at the teachers who had grown a little tired, become distracted and even whispered to each other, and I thought that they were people I knew well, and there would be unfamiliar strangers at college. And I grew afraid.
College… two years earlier I had decided I would go to college. That’s why I stayed through the ninth grade. If you didn’t want to continue with higher education, you didn’t really need to finish high school.
At least that’s what some of my friends believed, those who preferred vocational schools, and some of them decided to begin to work right after the eighth grade. Rustem Zinedinov, for example, went to work at the construction site where his father worked. A few boys entered technical schools to study to become metal workers or lathe operators.
It had long ago been clear what my cousins Ilya and Yasha Shaakov would be engaged in. Their father, Uncle Mikhail, a driver, knew his trade and was fond of it, and he was obsessed with technical equipment in general. His sons took after him. Uncle Mikhail had a car, an old Pobeda (Victory), gray with a sloping backside. He took better care of it than anyone who tended to the President’s limo. Whenever I visited the Shaakovs, someone’s legs could be seen sticking out from under the car. They might belong to Uncle Mikhail, or to Uncle Mikhail and one of the boys, or to Yasha and Ilya. If they weren’t under the car, they would be standing near it with the hood up, probing the wires and other interior stuff. An ongoing discussion of yet another technical problem was underway when the jingling of tools in their hands was heard, or they were on their backs under the car, or they were busy “practicing witchcraft” under the hood. Terms and jargon used all the time by drivers could be heard right and left.