The Story of a Life

13

The Swarm

Unlike other boys, I had never envied Kiev officer cadets, who wore white shoulder boards decorated with yellow ciphers and stood at attention before the generals. Nor did I envy the boys at the gymnasium, even though their greatcoats of grey officers’ cloth with silver buttons were considered very splendid. Since my youth I had been indifferent to all uniforms, except those worn by the men in the navy.

When, in the autumn of 1902, I first put on long trousers and a school uniform jacket, I didn’t feel like myself at all for a time. It was awkward and uncomfortable. I’d become some other boy altogether with that heavy military hat on my head. I took such a strong dislike to those stiff, blue hats with their enormous insignia because they made the ears of all my comrades – pupils of the preparatory class – stick straight out. When they took the hats off, their ears would go back to normal. But as soon as they had to put them back on, out went their ears again. It was as if they’d been made especially for this purpose so it would be easier for Inspector Bodyansky to grab some poor first-year pupil by the ear as he shouted at him: ‘Late again, misérable! Go and stand in the corner and reflect on your bitter fate!’

So, as soon as Mama bought me my hat, I did as my older brothers had done and removed the small metal hoop on the inside and tore out the satin lining. Such was the school tradition – the shabbier the hat, the more valiant the boy. ‘Only swots and lickspittles go around in new hats,’ my brothers said. You were supposed to sit on your hat, to carry it around in your pocket, to use it to knock chestnuts out of the trees. Only then did it acquire that battle-worn look that was the pride of every true schoolboy. My parents also bought me a satchel with a smooth deer-hide backing, a pencil case, ruled exercise books and several small preparatory textbooks. Then Mama took me to school.

Grandmother Vikentia Ivanovna was staying with us at the time in Kiev. She made the sign of the cross over me and hung a small crucifix on a cold chain around my neck. With shaking hands, she undid the collar of my black jacket, stuck the cross under my shirt, and then turned away and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. ‘Off you go!’ she said in a faint voice, giving me a gentle push. ‘Be a good boy, work hard!’

Mama and I left. I kept looking back at our house as we walked, as if I were being led away for the last time. We were then living on the shady and quiet Nikolsko-Botanicheskaya Street. Massive chestnut trees stood pensively around our house. They had already begun to drop their dry, five-pointed leaves. It was a typical autumn day in Kiev – sunny, very blue and warm – although with cool shadows. Grandmother stood at the window nodding to me until we turned onto Tarasovskaya Street. Mama walked along in silence.

When we reached Nikolaevskaya Square and I caught sight of the yellow school building through the greenery, I burst into tears. I must have realised that my childhood was over, that now I would have to work and that this work would be bitter and long and not at all like those peaceful days I had had at home. I stopped and buried my face in my mother’s side, and cried so hard that the pencil case in my satchel bobbed up and down as if it were asking what had happened to its young owner.

Mama removed my hat and dried my tears with a scented handkerchief. ‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘Do you think it’s easy for me? But you must.’

You must! No words had ever hit me harder up until then than these two words spoken by Mama. ‘You must.’

The older I grew, the more often I heard grown-ups say that this is ‘the way you must live’. For a long time I refused to accept this and kept asking these grown-ups: ‘Why can’t a man live as he wants to and must live only as others want him to?’ They always answered that I shouldn’t concern myself with things I didn’t understand. And Mama even once said to my father: ‘This is all the result of that anarchist upbringing you’ve been giving him.’ My father drew me close, pressed my head to his white waistcoat, and said with a smile: ‘They don’t understand us in this house, Kostik.’

After I had settled down and stopped crying, we entered the school. A wide iron staircase, rubbed to the sheen of lead by so many feet, led upwards towards a terrible din similar to an angry buzzing beehive. ‘Don’t be frightened. It’s only the break,’ Mama said to me.

We began to climb the stairs. For the first time, Mama let go of my hand. Two senior boys came rushing down the stairs. They made way for us, and one of them said as we passed: ‘They’ve brought in another miserable little swarmer.’

And so I joined the ranks of the anxious and defenceless preparatory class or, as the older boys called us with disdain, the swarm. They called us by this name since being small and quick, we’d scurry about and get caught up in their feet during the breaks.

Mama and I passed through the white Assembly Hall with its portraits of the emperors. I especially remember Alexander I. He was holding a green tricorn against his thigh. Reddish whiskers bristled on the sides of his feline face. I didn’t like him, despite the cavalrymen with plumed hats galloping over the hills behind his back. We passed through the hall to the office of Inspector Bodyansky – a corpulent man whose uniform frock coat was as roomy as a lady’s house-coat. Bodyansky laid a pudgy hand on my head and then thought for a long time before saying: ‘Work hard or I’ll gobble you up!’

Mama forced a smile. Bodyansky summoned the proctor, Kazimir, and ordered him to take me to the preparatory class. Mama gave me a nod, and Kazimir took me by the shoulder and led me down the long corridors. Kazimir squeezed me so tightly it seemed he was afraid that I’d break free and run back to Mama.

Lessons were under way in the classrooms. The corridors were empty and quiet. The silence was particularly striking after the frenzied din during the break. Dust from the commotion still hung in the air, floating in the rays of sunlight from the garden. The century-old garden of the First Kiev Gymnasium was famous, as big as a park, taking up an entire city block. I looked out of the window into the garden and once more felt like crying. The sun shone through the chestnut trees. The dried, pale violet leaves of the poplars stirred in the breeze.

Even then, as a boy, I loved gardens and trees. I never broke off branches or destroyed birds’ nests. Perhaps that was because Grandmother Vikentia Ivanovna always told me that ‘the world is a marvellous wonder and people ought to live and labour in it as if it were one big garden’. Kazimir noticed I was about to start crying and he dug out of the back pocket of his old but clean coat a sticky sweet. Giving it to me, he said in a Polish accent: ‘Eat this sweet during the next break.’

I thanked him in a whisper and took the sweet.

The first days of school I always spoke in a whisper and was too afraid to lift my head. Everything overwhelmed me – the bearded teachers in their blue frock coats, the old vaulted ceilings, the echoes down the endless corridors, and, finally, Director Bessmertny – a handsome older man with a golden beard and a brand new frock coat. He was a mild, enlightened man, but for some reason we all felt he was to be feared. Perhaps it was because he sat in a large office, with moulded ceilings, a red rug and a portrait of Surgeon Pirogov.fn1 The director rarely left his office. According to the rules of the school, we always stopped to bow when we saw him, whereas the teachers we simply greeted in passing.

Kazimir and I continued to make our way down the echoing corridors. Supervisors patrolled the halls, looking in on the classrooms through glass transoms over the doors. There was ‘The Melon’, ‘The Dolt’, ‘Snuff’ and Platon Fëdorovich, the only one of them we liked. The preparatory class was in the corridor ruled by Platon Fëdorovich, and this saved me in the beginning from many unpleasantnesses. The supervisors were charged with monitoring the comportment of the schoolboys and informing the inspector of the slightest infraction. These warranted a number of punishments – detention for an hour or two ‘without dinner’ (in other words, being left to sit bored and alone in an empty classroom after lessons), a bad conduct mark or, finally, a call to one’s parents to come in for a meeting with the director. We feared this last punishment most of all. There were additional punishments in the upper forms: temporary suspension, expulsion with the right to apply to another school, and the most terrifying – the so-called ‘Wolf’s ticket’: expulsion without the right to continue your education at any secondary school.

I saw only one older boy expelled with a ‘Wolf’s ticket’. I was in the first form at the time. It was said he had slapped the German teacher, Yagorsky, a rude man with a green face. Yagorsky had called him a blockhead in front of the whole class. The boy demanded that Yagorsky apologise. Yagorsky refused. Then the boy hit him. For this he was expelled with a ‘Wolf’s ticket’.

The next day the boy returned to school. None of the supervisors could make up their minds about whether or not to stop him. He opened the classroom door, pulled a Browning out of his pocket, and pointed it at Yagorsky. Yagorsky leapt up from behind his desk and, shielding himself with his class record book, ran between the desks to hide behind the pupils’ backs. ‘Coward!’ cried the boy, upon which he turned, walked out onto the landing, and shot himself through the heart.

The door to our classroom opened onto the landing. We heard a sharp crash and the rattle of glass. Something fell and rolled down the stairs. Our form master threw himself towards the door, and we all ran after him. The freckle-faced boy lay on the stairs. He lifted a hand up and grabbed at the bannister, then his fingers went limp and he fell still. His eyes, filled with amused surprise, gazed up at us. The supervisors bustled around the boy. Then Director Bessmertny hurried up. He knelt down next to him and opened the boy’s jacket, and then we saw the blood on his shirt. Medical orderlies from the first-aid service in their brown uniforms and French caps came running up the stairs and quickly placed the boy on a stretcher.

‘Get the boys out of here, now!’ the director instructed our form master. But apparently, he didn’t hear him, and none of us moved. Yagorsky came out of the classroom and made for the teacher’s common room, slouching and his head down. As he walked, the director called after him: ‘Get out!’

Yagorsky turned round.

‘Get out of my school!’ the director told him in a low voice. Yagorsky ran off, cowering, down the corridor.

The next day Mama didn’t want me to go to school, but then changed her mind, and I went. Our teachers released us after the second period. They told us that those boys who wanted could attend our schoolmate’s funeral. We all went – small and frightened in our long overcoats with our stiff satchels hanging from our shoulders. The day was cold and foggy. The whole school followed the coffin. There were lots of flowers in it. The director led a grey, poorly dressed woman by the arm – the boy’s mother. At the time I still had little understanding of such significant moments, yet somehow I understood that life had given us our first lesson in comradeship. One by one we approached the grave and tossed in a handful of earth, as if we were swearing to always be kind and fair to each other.

But this was all much later, and for now Kazimir led me to the preparatory class. Behind his desk sat Nazarenko, the form master – a man with a loud voice and a wavy blue beard like some ancient Assyrian ruler, a King Sennacherib or Harharu. The older boys swore he worked for the Okhranka and so they called him He-Hear-You.fn2

All that year, until we moved up to the first form, Nazarenko tormented us little ones with his bellowing voice and taunts, with bad marks and stories about how he had had his ingrown toenails cut out. I feared and hated him. I hated him mostly for these stories about his toenails. I took my seat at a low desk, its top heavily scarred by a penknife. I found it hard to breathe. Our ink reeked of acid. Nazarenko was dictating: ‘One day the swan, the crayfish and the pike …’ Outside the open window a sparrow with a dry maple leaf in its beak perched on a branch. I wished to trade my fate with the sparrow’s. It looked at us through the window, let out a plaintive squeak, and dropped the leaf.

‘New boy!’ he roared. ‘Get out your exercise book, start writing and stop looking round, if you don’t want to go without dinner!’

I got out my exercise book and started to write. A tear dropped onto my blotter. Then my neighbour, a dark-haired boy with bright eyes, Emmanuel (known as Emma) Shmukler, whispered: ‘Swallow your spit, you’ll feel better.’

I swallowed my spit but felt no better. For a long while I couldn’t even draw a deep breath. So began my first year of school: dust, racing to class during the breaks, the constant fear of being called to the blackboard, ink-stained hands, my heavy satchel, and, like the echoes of a former life, the melodious ringing of the Kiev trams outside the windows, the far-off wheeze of the street organ, and the hoots of the locomotives from the station. From there the big trains raced off in clouds of steam on their way through woods and fields of stubble, while we, bent over our desks, choked on chalk dust wiped from the blackboard with a dry sponge.

Our classroom was connected to the physics laboratory by way of a narrow door. We often looked inside during breaks. It was arranged in the shape of an amphitheatre with benches that rose almost to the ceiling. The older boys were led to the laboratory for their lessons. We, quite naturally, swarmed under their feet in the corridor and they must have got tired of this. Once one of the older boys, a tall, pale fellow, let out a long whistle. Immediately, they began to grab us swarmers one by one and drag us into the physics laboratory. They took their places on benches, holdings us firmly between their knees. At first we liked this. We gazed with curiosity at the mysterious instruments on the shelves – black discs, retorts and brass spheres. Then the first bell rang in the corridor. We tried to break free, but the older boys wouldn’t let us go. They held us tightly, and those who struggled the most to escape received the dreaded ‘pear’. It really hurt.

There was a second, ominous ringing of the bell. We tried even harder to get away, struggling with all our might, pleading and crying, but the older boys did not yield. The pale boy stood by the door. His classmates yelled at him: ‘Make sure you time it just right!’ We didn’t know what was happening. We howled with fear. At any moment the bell would ring a third time. Nazarenko would burst into our empty classroom. His rage would be terrifying. Rivers of our tears would not calm it. The third bell. We let out a horrendous roar. The pale boy raised his arm. This was the signal that the physics teacher had entered the far end of the corridor. He walked unhurriedly, cautiously, listening to the screams emanating from the physics laboratory.

The physics teacher was very fat. He had to turn sideways to squeeze through the narrow door. The older boys’ prank was built upon this very fact. As soon as the teacher had wedged himself into the doorway, the pale youth dropped his arm. We were let go and now, in our crazed state, rushed blindly with tears streaming down our faces out of the physics laboratory towards our classroom. We crashed like a wave into the frightened teacher. For a moment, an agitated whirlpool of boys’ cropped heads swirled at the door. And then we ejected the teacher out of the door and into the corridor like a popped cork, pushed our way through his legs, and tore into our classroom. Fortunately, Nazarenko had been detained in the teachers’ room and did not notice a thing.

The older boys managed to pull off this treacherous trick only once. After that, we were more careful. From then on when they came out into the corridor, we immediately hid in our room, closed the door, and barricaded the entrance with our desks. This little game, which had cost us so many tears, had been the idea of the pale youth. His name was Bagrov.fn3 A few years later he fired a revolver at the tsar’s minister Stolypin at the Kiev Opera House, killing him, for which he was hanged. At his trial, Bagrov displayed calm indifference. When the sentence was read, he said: ‘I don’t care in the least whether I live to eat another two thousand steaks or not.’

There was a lot of talk among the grown-ups about whether or not Bagrov had really been a revolutionary or in fact an agent of the Okhranka who’d organised the murder of Stolypin in order to please the tsar (Nicholas hated Stolypin because he’d been unable to resist his minister’s superior will). My father always insisted that no man capable of pronouncing such cynical words while facing death as had Bagrov could ever be a revolutionary.