Then they played word games. The little girls, Tamara and Olga, refusing to be outdone by the grown-ups, showed a quickness of mind beyond their years. Anna Alexandrovna invited the children to take pride of place at the large oval table, while the grown-ups retreated to a corner to drink tea. Vasily Innokentievich sat in an armchair and smoked shag tobacco cigarettes. After the puppet show, Anna Alexandrovna picked out a fat hand-rolled cigarette from the silver case on the side table in front of Vasily Innokentievich and tried to smoke it, but immediately broke into a fit of coughing.
“Vasily, these are awfully strong!”
“That’s why I don’t offer them to anyone, Nuta.”
“Ugh!” Anna Alexandrovna expelled the reeking smoke. “Where do you get them?”
“I buy the tobacco, and Liza rolls them for me.”
But that wasn’t the end of the evening. After the puppet show an array of desserts was spread out for them, a presentation Mikha would remember to the end of his days—everything from the homemade punch to the pale yellow napkin rings, carved from bone, cinching the folds of starched linen.
Ilya and Mikha exchanged glances. This was a moment when Sanya appeared aloof and inaccessible to them. The two of them felt set apart, like lowly interlopers. A three-way friendship, like all triangles, is a complex matter. Obstacles and temptations arise—jealousy, envy, sometimes even treachery, albeit trivial or pardonable. Can treachery be justified by unendurable, boundless love? The three of them would be granted an epoch quintessentially suited to posing this question, and a whole lifetime—shorter for one, longer for the others—in which to find out.
That evening, not only the rather inhibited Mikha, but also the expansive Ilya, felt somewhat abashed by the grandeur of the surroundings. Sanya, preoccupied by Liza, with her long, narrow face, and her hair set free from its blue ribbon, nevertheless sensed this. He called Mikha over and the two of them whispered together for a long time, then summoned Anna Alexandrovna. A little later, it was announced that there would be a game of charades. Then Sanya turned an ungainly little chair upside down, and it suddenly became a stepladder. He climbed up to the top step so that he was even taller than Mikha, who stood one step lower, and together they raucously declaimed the following lines, all the while pushing and shoving each other, tugging at each other’s ears, snorting and mooing and making a general racket.
Two names that start the same—
A talk between two lords of the meadow.
The second part of one’s like foul disgust: “Yuck!”
The other’s like the vulgar sound
Released after a meal of slops: “Ugh!”
The two names end the same—
A German preposition.
Add them together, you have two creatures
Misnamed, perhaps, Homo sapiens.
The guests laughed heartily, but no one could guess the answer. There was only one person among them who was capable of solving this linguistic riddle: Ilya. And he didn’t let them down. Waiting until the guests admitted defeat, he answered, not without pride, “I know! The beasts are called Mutyukin and Murygin!”
In all honesty they should have chosen another charade, because no one had ever heard of any Murygin or Mutyukin; but no one took them to task for it. Everyone had had a good time, and that was what mattered.
But something in the boys’ relationship to one another had shifted: Mikha, who had taken part in the charade, was raised to Sanya’s level, and Ilya surpassed them both—he was, after all, the one to solve the riddle, and thus support the integrity of the game. It would have fallen through if no one at all had known the answer. Good show, Ilya!
The boys slung their arms around each other’s shoulders in triumph, and Vasily Innokentievich photographed the three of them together. This was their first group portrait.
Vasily Innokentievich’s camera was a war trophy—a fine one, Ilya noticed. He also noticed that his epaulets were those of a colonel, and decorated with serpents. He had been an army doctor.
On January 10, Anna Alexandrovna took the boys to a piano concert at Tchaikovsky Hall, to listen to Mozart. Ilya was fairly bored, and even took a little snooze, but Mikha felt a sense of elation. The music was so thrilling, and he was so deeply moved, that he wasn’t even able to write a poem about it afterward. Sanya was upset, and nearly broke down in tears. Anna Alexandrovna knew why: Sanya wanted to be able to play Mozart that way, too.
On the eleventh they went back to school. That very first day, the three of them, along with another boy, Igor Chetverikov, got into a school-yard brawl with the other boys. It all began with an innocent snowball fight, and it ended in a rout: Mikha had been punched in the face and his glasses were broken; Ilya had a busted lip. It was humiliating that the fight had been two against four. Sanya, as usual, had hung back—not so much out of cowardice as from fastidiousness and tact. Murygin and Mutyukin aroused as much disgust in him as the infamous rag they had wiped his face with. This time, the bullies ignored Sanya completely. Red-haired Mikha, who had aimed a rock-hard snowball at the bull’s eye of Murygin’s nose and was right on the mark, was far more interesting to them. Ilya was over by the fence, spitting blood, Chetverikov was wondering whether it was time to hightail it, and Mikha was leaning with his back against a wall, fists at the ready. Mikha’s fists were massive, almost like a grown-up’s.
Then Mutyukin took out a jackknife resembling a penknife, only for very large pens, by the looks of it. The long, thin blade flipped open, and Mutyukin charged, aiming for Mikha’s blunt fists. Suddenly, Sanya let out a shriek, leapt up, and in two short bounds was grabbing the blade with his bare hand. Blood spurted everywhere. Sanya waved his hand around and the red stream sprayed Mutyukin’s face. Mutyukin bellowed like he was the one who had been slashed, and took off running, Murygin at his heels. But no one considered this a victory. Mikha couldn’t see what was happening very well without his glasses. Chetverikov ran after Murygin, but there was no point in chasing him. It was too late. Ilya wrapped a scarf around Sanya’s hand, but the blood continued to gush out like water from a faucet.
“Run and get Anna Alexandrovna, quick!” Ilya screamed to Mikha. “And you, go get the school nurse!”
Sanya had passed out, either from shock or from the loss of blood. Twenty-five minutes later he was at the Sklifosovsky Emergency Clinic, where they quickly stopped the bleeding and stitched up the wound. A week later, it was clear that his fourth and fifth fingers would no longer straighten out. A professor of medicine came in, took off the bandages from Sanya’s little hand, and said he was very happy with how the patient’s wound was healing. Then he told them that the cut was deep, going through the transverse metacarpal ligament, and he was amazed that only two of his fingers now seemed permanently curled toward the palm, rather than all four.
“Are there any exercises he can do? Massage? Electrophoresis? Some experimental procedure?” Anna Alexandrovna implored the professor, who treated her with respect.
“Of course. After he heals completely, we can partially restore mobility. But tendons aren’t muscles, you understand.”
“What about playing a musical instrument?”
The professor smiled at her sympathetically. “It’s unlikely, I’m afraid.”
He didn’t know he had just signed a death warrant. Anna Alexandrovna said nothing to Sanya, and for six months after he was released from the hospital she continued taking him to physical therapy.
Larisa Stepanovna, the school principal, rushed to the hospital to see Sanya after his operation. Rumors about the knife had reached her, and she was alarmed. Sanya was firm and tight-lipped during the interrogation with the principal. Five times he told her that he had found the knife in the school yard, pressed a button, and the blade shot out, slicing his hand. Who had the knife belonged to? No idea. The evidence was found the next day. Just like in a movie, the knife lay on a mound of bloody snow. It was handed over to the principal, who locked it in the top drawer of her desk.