I felt with my entire body how diligently you were trying to do all the exercises and repeated after you, sincerely regretting the ten minutes we had lost because of our lateness. Training-time passed quickly. We soon found ourselves in the breakfast room.
As usual, we occupied two chairs. They served us oatmeal with butter and tea. Everybody seemed to have gotten accustomed to our appearance; only Sprinter glanced at our side inquisitively from time to time because when we were sitting at the table we looked like two normal people of independent status.
Leaving the dining room, we ran into Marfa Ilyinichna at the door.
“Pyotr Ilyich concludes that you don’t have any serious diseases. He only prescribed you electrophoresis and physical activity.”
Without answering we went to the physiotherapy room. Fortunately, the procedure was absolutely painless. In the treatment room we saw a pretty, young nurse. She had probably been notified of our visit in advance because she behaved dispassionately and didn’t even look at us. She subtly waved her hand, pointing to the couch. Then, still silently, she approached the couch, turned on a massive device standing nearby and attached some stickers with wires to our bodies. However, she did speak two phrases:
“There are always such unfortunate kids in the population. I feel so sorry for them.”
Then she sighed impassively and went to another part of the room.
Physical education class was held in the same gym, by the same Agafia Petrovna Nag; it turned out to be her real last name. All the CCP’s hated her and from time to time made secret raids attempting to steal or damage her magic whistle, but all in vain – an old and fairly chipped whistle, apparently, had grown into her body, her life and her soul. To cut a long story short, all the kids were bending, running, squatting for forty-five minutes, having a pretty hard time. I couldn’t keep pace with you, missed the pace, my body ached and disobeyed me, but I don’t regret the time we spent performing Nag’s exercises. They helped us in the long run.
After that, we had to go to school located in a nearby building where our academic knowledge was tested.
“No cheating,” the Russian language and literature teacher repeated several times during the dictation, “and no disturbing your neighbor with your elbows.”
Should I mention how difficult it is for us to find a convenient position at a school desk in order not to “disturb the neighbor with our elbows”? I was ready to hear, “No cheating off your neighbor, or I’ll seat you at separate desks,” but the teacher of Russian language and literature had compassion for us. After all, she was a humanities-minded person.
Weird things continued to happen in that maths class. The teacher who was walking on tiptoes turned severely pale when we moved towards him, and stretched his hand forward, as if he was trying to push us aside; meanwhile, he took off and put on his glasses automatically with the other hand. We were solving one mathematical problem together and writing the solution on the blackboard while he nodded, “Right, right, sure. No doubt,” nervously wiping his forehead with a handkerchief and coughing slightly.
A history class was cancelled because the teacher got sick.
When Adoter was shown the results of our tests, she laughed long and loud. It appeared that you were supposed to stay in the seventh grade for a second time while I had made it to the eighth. On a special form she set forth her order, according to which both of us were to stay in the seventh grade. After that we went to lunch with a light heart. We had a green borsch for the first course, mashed potatoes with peas for the second course, and seniors’ protest for the dessert. Some of them tapped their spoons on the table, others trampled their feet, and everybody refused to eat.
“Why is everyone refusing food?” I inquired.
“Adoter prohibited smoking in the rooms. The kids are furious about it,” Godly Girl explained. “This is how they express their disagreement.”
“She deprives us of something she hasn’t got the slightest idea about,” Sprinter said, loudly. “You can’t survive here without smokes. On to the barricades! You’re gonna be a tank,” she encouraged us and started cackling loudly. People are strange and incomprehensible. Once they are forbidden from doing something, they revolt, growing loud and unrestricted in their hate. That’s why even non-smoking kids participated in the dining-room strike.
We went back to our room and sat on our bed. We had a lot of work to do to reshape two pairs of trousers, shirts and pyjamas, for which they gave us some thread and needles along with the clothes. On the near bed, Half-Jane was sitting, reading a book, a silly, timid smile on her face, flat like a palm. Thoughts of books were constantly coming into our heads.
“Excuse me, is there a library here?” I wondered naively, forgetting about fixing the clothes.
“Downstairs, on the first floor. But it is an extremely boring place where you can get nothing but Soviet propaganda and all kinds of nonsense about the school reading program.”
Meanwhile, Sprinter headily tottered into the room. She was still outraged.
“How dare that bitch forbid us anything that is natural? So, what next? No eating, no sleeping, no having kids?”
By the way, Adoter had no children and, apparently, not knowing what else to do, she devoted all her spare time to our foster home.
“I hate that damned wretch,” Sprinter couldn’t calm down, “especially when you go into her office and there she sits and chews her sweets calmly, not even swallowing them, and then spits out the sweet mush into the trash bin. Have you seen that yet?”
We nodded.
“She guzzles them in our presence on purpose because she wants us to drool over them. Her husband gets her those imported sweets through his connections; he’s some sort of a big gun. He’s got a private car and a country house and all that crap. Anyway, you will sneak into her office and take one sweet from the box. I have decided!”
“What for?”
“To restore justice. This will be your chance to help me, after which you will join our gang. Cripples like you could be of use. Now, got it, One-Two? I will teach you how to pull the deal.”
“We have never stolen anything before,” I tried to protest. “And if you know how to do it, why don’t you do it yourself?”
“That’s it,” said red-haired Sprinter getting enraged. “I’ve eaten too much shit here already for some four-legged sheep to tell me what to do.”
“Leave them alone,” Half-Jane cut in sadly.
“And who on earth is asking you for an opinion, you limbless dumb?” Sprinter cut her short and addressed us again. “Half-Jane is so stupid she doesn’t even get how ugly you are and what you’re going to go through because of it. But I know and I wanna take care of you. You help me and I’m gonna help you; I will take you under my wing; it’s all fair. Consider it a test.”
“How do we do it?” you showed an interest.
“Every evening after work Adoter leaves her office keys with the concierge, a half-deaf old woman of about eighty. You just appear before her the way you are, and the old hag’s going to freak out till she’s blue in the face. Or maybe she’ll peg out for real, that’ll be fun!” Sprinter paused for a moment to check the impression her words were making, but for some reason there was no reaction. “Kidding. She’s gonna survive, that scumbag,” she flung out almost disappointedly. “She’s too tough to die. Well, you should do your best to distract the creaker; meanwhile, Snot will snitch the keys.”
And she waved her hand towards the window near which the youngest dweller of the room was husking sunflower seeds. I would guess her age to be eleven; there was nothing remarkable about her appearance except her scrawny figure.