In the photo, we were class 7’B’. After our final exams, Iskra Polyakova dragged us all to the photographer’s on Revolution Avenue: she loved arranging all kinds of activities. 

“We’ll get a picture taken after seventh grade, and then after tenth grade,” she expounded. “It will be so interesting to look at them when we become old grannies and grandpas!”

We crowded into the narrow waiting room; before us, hurrying to be immortalized, were three newlywed couples, an old lady with her grandchildren, and а squad of forelocked Cossacks. They sat in a row, all picturesquely leaning on their swords, and stared directly at our girls with their shameless Cossack eyes. Iskra didn’t like this at all; she immediately requested that we be called when the line got to us, and took the whole class to the neighboring park. And there, to prevent us from running away, picking fights, or, God forbid, trampling the grass, she declared herself the Pythia. Lena blindfolded her, and Iskra pronounced our dooms. She was a generous prophetess: each of us could expect a bunch of children and bucketfuls of happiness.

“You will give humanity a new kind of medicine.”

“Your third son will be a brilliant poet.”

“You will build the most beautiful Palace of Pioneers in the world.”

Yes, they were marvelous predictions. It’s only too bad that we never got to visit the photographer a second time, that only two of us became grandpas, and there turned out to be far fewer grannies, too, than there were girls in the photograph of 7’B’. When we came once to a school reunion, our whole class fit in one row. Of the forty-five that had been once in 7’B’, nineteen lived to see grey hairs. Having discovered this, we would no longer show up to school reunions, where the music thundered so loudly and where those younger than us met so happily. They would talk noisily, sing, laugh, and we would want to keep silent. Or, if we’d talk, then...

“So how’s your shrapnel? Is it still shifting around?”

“Oh yeah, it’s shifting all right. In parts.”

“So you brought up two on your own?”

“Turns out women are tough creatures.”

“Heart’s a little... eh.”

“You’re gaining weight, that’s why it’s ‘eh’.”

“Oil your leg or something, it keeps squeaking.”

“You know, we’re the least numerous generation on Earth.”

“That’s noticeable. Especially for us single mothers.”

“The generation that did not know youth will not know old age. A curious detail?”

“Optimistic.”

“Let’s just be quiet. Listening to you makes me sick.”

Joyful voices - “D’you remember? Remember?” - would carry over from the neighboring rows, while we could not reminisce out loud. We would reminisce to ourselves, and over our row there would often hang a harmonious silence.

For some reason, I still don’t want to think about running off from class, about smoking in the boiler room, or about starting horseplay in the entrance hall just to touch, for one moment, the one we loved so secretly we could not admit it to ourselves. For hours, I look at the faded photograph, at the blurred faces of those who are no longer on this earth: I want to understand. After all, none of us wanted to die, right?

We had no idea that beyond the threshold of our classroom, death kept its watch. We were young, and the ignorance of youth is compensated by its belief in its own immortality. But of all the boys that look at me from the photograph, four are still living.

How young we were.

Our clique wasn’t large then, consisting of three girls and three guys: me, Pashka Ostapchuk, and Valka Aleksandrov. We would always get together at Zinochka Kovalenko’s, because Zinochka had a separate room, her parents spent all day at work, and we could feel at ease. Zinochka adored Iskra Polyakova, was friends with Lenochka Bokova; Pashka and I were dedicated athletes and were supposedly “the hope of the school”, and Aleksandrov was an acknowledged inventor. Pashka was considered to be in love with Lenochka, I had a hopeless crush on Zina Kovalenko, and Valka only cared about his own ideas, as Iskra did about her activities. We went to the movies, read aloud those books Iskra deemed worthy, did our homework together - and talked. About books and movies, about friends and adversaries, about the drift of the Sedov, about the Interbrigades, about Finland, about the war in West Europe, and about nothing at all. 

Sometimes we were joined by two others. We were friendly towards one of them, and openly hostile to the other. 

Every class has its own quiet A student, someone everyone makes fun of, vaguely respects as a curiosity, and resolutely defends from outsiders. Ours was named Vovik Hramov; back in first grade, he had announced that his name was not Vladimir, or even Vova, but specifically Vovik, and so he stayed Vovik forever. He had no casual buddies, far less any true friends, and so he liked to hang out with us. He’d come, sit in a corner, and stay there all evening without opening his mouth, with just his ears sticking up above his head. He had very emphatic ears, made more so by his short haircuts. Vovik had read heaps of books and could solve even the twistiest math problems; we respected him for these qualities, and for never being in the way.

Sashka Stameskin, on the other hand, who occasionally got dragged along by Iskra, was less welcome. He was friends with an incorrigible group and he swore like a sailor. But Iskra took it into her head to reform him, and he stopped being a permanent resident of dark alleys. Pashka and I had been in too many fights with him and his buddies to forget it; my tooth, which Sashka had knocked out personally, would spontaneously start aching the moment I would spot him on the horizon. Friendly smiles were impossible under the circumstances, but Iskra said it would be so, and we obeyed.

Zinochka’s parents encouraged our gatherings. Their family had a girlish bent; Zinochka had been born last, and her sisters had gotten married by then, abandoning their father’s roof. Her mom was the head of the family: her dad had quickly surrendered once he saw the numerical superiority of the opposition. We rarely saw him, because he did not usually come home until nightfall, but if he happened to be early, he would invariably come by Zinochka’s room and would always be pleasantly surprised to see us.

“Ah, the young people? Hello, hello. So what’s new?”

Iskra was our expert on the ‘new’. She possessed a marvelous capacity for conducting intelligent conversation.

“What do you think about the signing of the Nonaggression Pact with Fascist Germany?”

Zina’s dad didn’t think anything about it. He would shrug uncertainly; I would smile apologetically. Pashka and I believed that he was permanently intimidated by the gentle sex.

Though Iskra mostly only asked those questions the answers to which she knew by heart. 

“I think this is a great victory for Soviet diplomacy. We have tied the hands of the most aggressive state in the world.”

“Right,” Zina’s dad would say. “You’re absolutely right. You know, we had this incident at work today: we got the wrong grade of steel delivered, and...”

Factory life was familiar and clear to him, and the way he talked about it was very different from the way he talked about politics. He waved his arms around, laughed and got angry, got up and ran around the room, stepping on our feet. But we didn’t care about the factory news; we were far more interested in sports, in aviation, in movies. Zina’s dad spent his whole life working with a lathe and chunks of metal; we listened to him with the cruel indifference of youth. Eventually, he would catch on and get embarrassed.

“That’s not important, of course. We need to look further afield, I know.”

“He’s just so meek,” Zina would lament. “I can’t reeducate him no matter how hard I try, it’s terrible.”

“Birth marks,” Iskra concluded with authority. “Those born under the dreadful yoke of tsarism keep feeling a paralysis of will and a fear of the future for a long time afterward.”

Iskra knew how to explain and analyze, and Zina knew how to listen. She listened to each person differently, but always with her whole being, as if she not only heard but also saw, touched, and smelled, all at the same time. She was extremely curious and far too gregarious, which was why some did not want to make her their confidante, but also the reason they did like visiting this family with a girlish bent.

Perhaps this was why it was especially cozy here, especially friendly and especially quiet. Zina’s mom and dad spoke softly, because there was no one to yell at. There was always something being laundered or starched, cleaned or shaken out, fried or steamed, and, invariably, there was pie baking. The pies were made with cheap, dark flour; I still remember how they tasted, and I am still convinced that I have never eaten anything better than those potato pies. We would drink tea with cheap caramels, inhale the pies, and talk, while Valka wandered around the apartment, looking for new things to invent.

“Hey, what if I attach a primus burner to the faucet?”

“To make kerosene-flavored tea?”

“No, to warm it up. You strike a match, the pipe warms up, and you get hot water.”

“Go ahead then,” agreed Zina.

Valka would make a racket, poke holes in the wall, and bend pipes, but would never accomplish anything worthwhile. Iskra believed it was the idea that was important:

“Edison didn’t always succeed either.”

“Maybe I should try lifting him by his ears,” Pashka suggested. “Someone did it to Edison once and he became a great inventor right away.”

Pashka really could lift Valya by the ears: he was very strong. He could climb a rope with his legs bent, could do a handstand, and could spin on the high bar. This demanded hours of practice, and Pashka did not read much, but he liked listening to others read aloud. And since our usual reader was Lena Bokova, Pashka would listen not so much with his ears as with his eyes; he had been friends with Lena since fifth grade, and was consistent in his affections and occupations. Iskra was also a tolerable reader, but she was far too fond of explicating what she was reading, and we preferred Lena for particularly interesting books. And we did a great deal of reading, because television had not yet been invented, and we could not afford to see even the cheapest movies.

From childhood, we played at the same world we lived in. Classes competed, not for marks or percentages, but for the honor of writing to the Papanov expedition or of being named the Chkalov class, for the right to visit the grand opening of a new factory or to send a delegation to meet with Spanish children fleeing the war. 

I was once part of such a delegation because I won the 100-meter race, and Iskra was there as a straight-A student and social activist. We carried away from this encounter a hatred of fascism, overflowing hearts, and four oranges each. We ate those oranges together with the entire class, with great ceremony: each of us got a slice and a half, and a little bit of rind. To this day, I remember the particular smell of those oranges.

I remember, too, how disappointed I was that I would not be able to help the crew of the Chelyuskin, because my plane made an emergency landing somewhere in Yakutia, before ever reaching their camp on the Arctic ice. A real live landing: I got a “poor” on my report card, for failing to memorize a poem. I did end up learning it afterwards: “Yea, were there men when I was young…” The thing was, though, that on the wall of our classroom there hung an enormous homemade map, and each student had his own plane. An excellent mark gave you five hundred kilometers, but I got a “poor”, which meant my plane was removed from the route. It was not only my mark that was poor; I felt truly poor for having failed the Chelyuskinites so badly.

It was Iskra that thought of the map.

Smile at me, my friend. I have forgotten how you smiled, I’m sorry. I am now far older than you, I have so much to do, I have grown burdens as a ship does barnacles. More and more, I hear my own heart sobbing in the night; it is exhausted. Tired of hurting.

I have grown gray, and there are those who yield me their seats on buses and trains. Younger people, girls and boys very much like you, my friends. And then I ask God to keep them from repeating your fate. And if they do repeat it, to let them become exactly like you.

Between you, yesterday, and them, today, is not just a generation. We knew for certain that war would come, and they are confident that it will not. And this is wonderful: they are freer than we were. It is only too bad that this freedom at times turns into carelessness…

In ninth grade, Valentina Andronovna assigned us an essay on the topic of “Who I want to be”. Every one of the boys wrote that he wanted to become a commander in the Red Army. Even Vovik Hramov expressed his desire to crew a tank, causing a storm of delight. Yes, we sincerely wanted our fate to be severe. We chose it, dreaming of the army, the air force, the navy; we considered ourselves men, and there were no manlier professions.

In this I was lucky. I had reached my father’s height by the eighth grade, and since he was a career commander in the Red Army, his old uniform was passed along to me. A tunic and trousers, boots and a commander’s belt, an overcoat and a hat made from gray fabric. One wonderful day, I put these beautiful things on, and did not take them off for fifteen years, until I was discharged. The uniform was different by then, but its meaning remained the same: it was still the clothing of my generation. The most beautiful and the most fashionable.

All of the guys were fiercely jealous of me. Even Iskra Polyakova.

“It’s a little big for me, of course,” said Iskra, trying on my tunic. “But it’s so cozy. Especially if you tighten the belt.”

I often think of those words, because they carry a sense of the time. We all strove to tighten our belts, as if at every turn, a rank of soldiers waited for us to join it, as if the success of that rank, its readiness for battle and victory, was dependent only on our appearance. We were young, yet we yearned not for great joy, but for great deeds. We did not know that great deeds need first to be sown and raised. That they ripen slowly, imperceptibly flooding with strength, to one day erupt in a blinding flame, flashes of which are long seen by coming generations. We did not know, but our mothers and fathers did, who had gone through the fierce blaze of the revolution.

I don’t think any of us had a bath at home. Or rather, no, one apartment did have a bath, but more about that later. Valka, Pashka, and I usually went to the public baths together. Pashka scrubbed our backs violently, and then took his time luxuriating in the steam room. He insisted that the steam room be kept unbearably hot, and Valka and I did so, but we stayed on the bottom bench while Pashka laughed at us from the very top. 

“Hello there, young people.”

One day, Andrey Ivanovich Kovalenko, Zinochka’s father, slipped into the steam room, bashfully covering himself with a basin. Naked, he was even smaller, even more insignificant.

“It’s a bit hot in here.”

“You think this is heat?” Pashka yelled contemptuously from up top. “This is the subtropics! Valka, come on, add some more!”

“It’s Borka’s turn,” Valka declared. “Borka, go ahead.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t?” Kovalenko asked timidly.

“Yes we should!” I snapped. “Steam breaks no bones.”

“That depends.” Andrey Ivanovich smiled quietly.

And then I threw a full basin of water on the heater. The steam exploded with a crack. Pashka howled in delight, and Kovalenko sighed. He stood there for a bit, thinking, took his basin, turned around and left.

Turned around…

I remember his back to this day. It had been stabbed with bayonets, sliced with knives and swords, covered in knotted scars. There wasn’t a bare spot on that back - all of it was taken up by that blue and burgundy autograph of the civil war.

Iskra’s mother came out of the same war different. I don’t know if her body bore any scars, but her soul did, that much I would later understand. The same kind of scars that Zinochka’s father had on his back.

Iskra’s mother - I have forgotten her name, and no one can remind me of it now - often gave talks in schools, at evening classes, on collective farms and in factories. She spoke sharply and briefly, as if she was giving commands, and we were a little afraid of her.

“The revolution continues, remember that. And it will continue until we break the resistance of the enemies of the working class. Be ready for battle. Grim and merciless.” 

Or maybe it’s just my imagination? I am getting old, every passing day brings me further from that time, and not reality itself, but the image of it now rules me. Perhaps, but I want to escape what is dictated to me by age. I want to return to those days, to become young and naive...