In any case, Eddie-baby allowed himself to be dragged across the entire city on two different trolley lines and then to be marched in a column along with the rest of the students to Rymarsky Street, where the Kharkov opera and ballet theater is located. Over one of his father's white military shirts and a bow tie given to him on his birthday by Vitka Golovashov and a dark blue jacket a little darker than the famous pants (so that together they created the impression of a suit), Eddie-baby wore his new beige Czech topcoat in cloaklike fashion. His parents had purchased the coat for him on their own, never suspecting how their son would look in it. Eddie-baby was even then something of a dandy, and the trip on the two trolleys in the company of his variously but for the most part boorishly or childishly dressed fellow pupils annoyed him. He felt ashamed of many of them.
Having sat through the first act with great difficulty, and knowing that even though three more acts remained (they were doing Sleeping Beauty, which Secondary School No.8 had already seen twice) it would be impossible to leave, since their oppressors had ordered that none of the pupils be given his coat from the cloakroom until the performance was over, Eddie-baby was in a rage. He stood irritably smoking with a group of other kids in the toilet, and they all swore and spat independently, and Eddie swore too in a paroxysm of helpless anger at the cretinism of the school authorities. It was then that Vovka Chumakov suggested that they get something to drink. Vovka was a second-year student also known as the "Plague," who at the time was Eddie-baby's best friend (it was in fact with Vovka that Eddie had tried to run away to Brazil in March of 1954).
"We can get something to drink if we split the cost, but how will you get to the store?" Eddie-baby asked the Plague. "The bitches won't let anybody leave. And Lyova the gym teacher and the senior Pioneer leader are standing by the doors…"
"Easy," grinned the Plague. "I'll climb out. You see how big the transom window is. Only I don't have any money."
Nobody had expected him to. The Plague was the poorest kid in their class. His mother took in washing, his father had been killed at the front, and there were even times when he didn't have any lunch with him. But the Plague was respected in the school for his courage and also for his good looks – he had wavy chestnut hair and big green eyes. And he was a tall boy. At the time Eddie-baby had almost reached his present one meter seventy-four centimeters, but Vovka the Plague was even taller.
The kids started rummaging in their jacket and coat pockets, pulling out coins and crumpled ruble notes. The Plague collected them all in his pocket, grinned, and climbed out the window.
"Don't cut out on us," Vitka Golovashov said to him.
"Are you out of your goddamn mind?" the Plague answered, turning around with one leg already through the transom window. "My coat's still here."
They all started laughing. From one of the stalls, which until then had been closed, a bearded old man emerged and glanced fearfully at the unfamiliar young tribe while he straightened his suit. The tribe started whistling and stamping its feet, and Vitka Sitenko even stuck out two fingers, as if threatening to put out the old man's eyes…
The old man was gone in an instant.
The theater bell rang, summoning the audience to return to the auditorium. Everybody who had chipped in on the bottle decided to remain in the toilet and wait for the Plague, since the store was right across from the theater. But Vitka Golovashov very reasonably suggested that since Lyova the gym teacher was aware of their habits, he would come to the toilet to check up on them. Vitka Golovashov is a bright lad, and so he proposed climbing up onto the toilet bowls and hiding out in the stalls, since Lyova would hardly come bursting in but would only look to see if there were any feet visible in the open space between the doors and the floor.
And that's what everybody did. True, there were only four stalls, and so Vitka Sitenko and Vitka Golovashov had to climb into one of them together, and they giggled and fidgeted in their stall. The other kids told them to shush, and then they were quiet.
After the third bell, and as if Vitka had read his mind, Lyova came in. It was clear just from the sound of his footsteps that it was the sturdy, not very good former athlete grown soft as a teacher of physical education at an out-of-the-way school. The girls claimed that when he lifted them up onto the rings or the horizontal bar, Lyova tried to grab them by the breasts. Eddie-baby was contemptuous of Lyova and didn't go to his classes, and Lyova for his part called Eddie-baby a peacock. Lyova remained in the toilet for a while, combing his hair or something by the mirror, probably covering up his bald spot with whatever was left, and then he went out.
The kids immediately jumped down from the toilet bowls all together, just about at the same time that the Plague stuck his head through the transom window. Once he had caught sight of his friends, his head hovered in the transom window for a moment, merrily smirking, and then disappeared behind the cloudy windowpane, only to be replaced by his hands, which were holding four bottles of fortified rose. It turned out Vitka Golovashov had given him 25 rubles!
When Eddie-baby and the Plague returned to their seats toward the end of the second act, they found them occupied. Sitting in Eddie-baby's place was a beautiful adult girl oddly dressed in a long adult gown. Eddie-baby, though he had attended Secondary School No.8 ever since the first year, had never seen her before. Sitting in the Plague's seat was another very attractive maiden, wearing a black taffeta dress with a white lace collar.
"O-o-oh!" the Plague exclaimed with satisfaction. "While D'Artagnan and I were out for a stroll, our places were taken by the ladies… Who might you be, beautiful strangers?" the Plague asked flirtatiously; he knew he was a handsome boy.
"Our classroom teacher told us to sit here," the girl sitting in Eddie-baby's seat said severely. That was when Eddie-baby noticed her accent.
"Yes," Eddie-baby said, "perhaps that's true, but we too have to sit somewhere. And these are our seats."
"Go to the balcony, then. There are empty seats up there," said the girl who was occupying the Plague's seat.
"But we don't want to go to the balcony," said the Plague, merry from the wine he had drunk. "We want to sit in our own seats, the ones indicated on our tickets." And the smirking Plague dug out of his pocket the crumpled bright blue ticket to the Lisenko Theater of Opera and Ballet.
"We were told to sit here, we didn't sit here by ourselves," said the severe girl who was sitting in Eddie-baby's seat. "And anyway, you're men. A man must be a gentleman and yield to a lady."
"What I can suggest to you as a gentleman, milady," the Plague said, now smiling at the girl in his seat and standing to his full height, "is that you sit on my lap."
The Plague had obviously started to take a liking to his opponent, and since they had been shushed up by the other kids, the two of them were now bending toward each other and whispering something and giggling.
But Asya Vishnevsky, watching the prince senselessly hopping about on the stage, sat with a stern expression on her face and said nothing.
Eddie-baby had never been a malicious boy, but he had always been very stubborn. And so, having decided to behave in a cultivated way, he went down to the orchestra seats, found his classroom teacher, Rachel, and taking care not to breathe his wine breath on her, told her that his and the Plagues seats had been taken by some girls from another class.