Artyom had spent the summer doing odd jobs: digging ditches for plumbing, laying pipes, helping mechanics. He did not shy away from any kind of work, equally happily ran along to fetch a wrench and a pack of “Belomor”, held down whatever he was told to, hammered at whatever he was supposed to, but did not violate his principles. From square one, he let the team know:
“I… er… don’t smoke. Yeah. Don’t even offer.”
“Is it consumption, or what?” the leader asked sympathetically.
“Sports. Er. Track and field.”
Artyom did not speak well, and was morosely embarrassed about it. He was painfully short of words, and the helpful word “er” appeared in his speech more often than any others. Something was odd there, because Artyom swallowed down a great number of books and wrote essays that were no worse than anyone else’s, and yet oral exams always gave him trouble. Which was why, from fourth grade on, Artyom loved the exact sciences with devotion and fiercely hated all those subjects where one needs to talk a lot. Every time teachers summoned him to the blackboard to answer questions caused a fit of hilarity in the classroom. The class clowns whispered the funniest hints they could, the pedants calculated how many times the word “er” made its appearance, and Artyom suffered, aching not only in his wounded pride but also physically in his stomach.
“How come everything’s fine when I’m talking to you?” he complained to Zhorka Landys, his best friend. “Nothing hurts, I don’t start sweating, I can talk about… that guy… Rakhmetov. And in class I just can’t.”
“Well, yeah, obviously. You’re dying up there at the board, and she’s just sitting there staring.”
“She who? She who?” Artyom glared. “You, you… you stop that!”
But she existed. She had appeared at the end of fifth grade, when the sun was melting in the windows, when sparrows were screaming, and when Grigory Andreevich, the grim homeroom teacher who had a bad habit of calling in one’s parents for a talk on any pretext, brought a microscope to class.
Actually, she had existed before that. She had existed somewhere up front, in the horrid world of girls and straight-A students, and Artyom didn’t see her. Didn’t see her in an utterly natural fashion, as if his gaze passed straight through her braids and ribbons. And his life was good, and hers was too, probably.
Until late May of fifth grade. Until the day when Grig brought in a microscope and forgot the slides for it.
“No touching,” he said, and left.
And Artyom stayed at the board, because it was his turn on class duty and he hadn’t gotten permission to sit back down. Grig took his time, the class entertained itself as best it could, and soon, Vovik Hramov’s empty schoolbag began making flights from the “Kamchatka”, at the back of the class, to the board. Vovik did not protest, too engrossed in Burroughs’ Tarzan to care, and the bag got chucked all over the classroom, with Artyom catching it artistically and throwing it back. Until the moment when he fumbled a throw and hit the microscope with the bag.
Grig came in when the microscope crashed to the floor. The class froze. The “Kamchatka” bent down over their desks, the straight-A students cringed, and the rest of the population stretched out their necks with fearless curiosity. The pause was long; Grig picked up the microscope and inside it, something tinkled, like in an empty bottle.
“Who?” Grig asked in a whisper.
If he had shouted, everything would have been simpler, but then Artyom would never have learned who she was. But Grig asked in that whisper that made the blood of fifth graders curl up into a cowardly ball in their veins.
“Who did this?”
“Me!” Zinochka’s voice rang. “But not on purpose, honest to goodness!”
That was the precise moment when Artyom understood that She was Zina Kovalenko. Understood all at once and for a lifetime. It was a great discovery, and Artyom kept it in sacred secrecy. It was something extraordinarily serious and joyful, but Artyom was in no hurry to cash in his joy, not today and not tomorrow and not in general in the foreseeable future. He knew now that this joy existed, and was firmly convinced that it would find him if he just waited patiently.
Artyom was the youngest: his two brothers already worked, and Rosa, the most beautiful and the most flighty, had that summer left the house. Artyom had been getting ready to go to work that day: he had just gotten hired to dig ditches and felt very important. His father and brothers had already gone to the factory, and his mother was feeding Artyom in the kitchen; Artyom, thinking he was alone with his mom, was whining:
“Mama, I don’t want butter with it. Mama, I want sugar.”
And then Rosa came in. Disheveled, sleepy, in a child’s bathrobe that had long been too small, exposing knees, elbows, and a piece of belly. She was only three years older than Artyom, and was studying at the construction technical school; she wore bangs and heels, and Artyom was slightly in love with the fiery combination of black hair, red lips, and white smiles. But now there weren’t any smiles, just sleepy shagginess.
“Rosa, where were you last night?” Mama asked softly. Rosa eloquently shrugged one of the shoulders that barely fit into the ancient bathrobe.
“Rosa, the boy is here, or I would ask in a different way,” Mama said again and sighed. “Your father slapped you on the cheeks one time, and I don’t believe you liked it.”
“Leave me alone!” Rosa yelled suddenly. “Enough, enough, and enough!”
Mama looked at her calmly and attentively, refilled the kettle, put it on the stove, and then looked again. Then she said:
“I put you on the potty and darned your stockings. Is it now impossible to tell me the whole truth?”
“I’m tired of it, that’s all!” Rosa declared, loudly, but quieter than before. “I love a guy, and he loves me, and we’re getting married. And if I need to walk out, I will walk out, but we’ll still marry, that’s that.”
That was how Artyom found out about the kind of love that makes you run away from home. This kind of love did not wear a ballgown but an old bathrobe, with hips, shoulders, and breasts that bulged out of it so that the robe was tearing at the seams. And Artyom had no doubts that this was love, because leaving home, leaving a father who was strict but so fair, and a mom who was the kindest and wisest mom possible, leaving such a home could only be possible because of insane love. He was proud that this love had found Rosa, and worried a little that it would pass him by.
Their father absolutely forbade even mentioning his daughter’s name in their house. He was stern, and never went back on his word, even when it was hastily spoken. Everyone tacitly agreed to the exile of the prodigal daughter, but a week later, when the adults had gone to work, Artyom’s mom said, carefully looking away:
“My boy, you will need to deceive your father.”
“What do you mean, deceive?” Artyom stopped chewing in surprise.
“It’s a great sin, but I will take it on my soul,” his mom sighed. “Tomorrow is Rosa’s wedding to Piotr, and it will be very painful for her if none of her family is near. Perhaps you can go over for half an hour, and we’ll say at home that you are watching some movie.”
“Which one?” asked Artyom.
His mom shrugged. She had been to the movies two times before getting married and only knew Vera Kholodnaya.
“Treasure Island!” declared Artyom. “I’ve seen it already and will be able to talk about it if Matvei asks.”
Matvei was only a little older than Artyom and condescended to ask him questions. The elder brother, Yakov, did not stoop to this, and called Artyom Shpendik.
“Shpendik, fetch the hammer! Don’t you see, a nail is sticking out of the kitchen table, Mama might get hurt.”
And their mom would say then, “I don’t need wealth, I only need good children.”
The next day, Artyom put on his nice jacket, took a bouquet of flowers, and headed off to Rosa’s. It was five tram stops away, but Artyom was too afraid of ruining the bouquet to get on the tram, and carried it in front of himself like a candle the whole way. So he was late, and by the time he arrived, the dorm rec room was stuffed full of extremely noisy young people at tables of varying sizes. Deafened by the laughter and yelling, Artyom hung back by the entrance, trying to find Rosa behind the mountainous salads.
“Timka’s here! Guys, pass my brother over!”
Before Artyom knew it, he was grabbed, lifted, and just as requested, carried along the tables and put on his feet next to Rosa.
“Your present, Rosa!”
And only then did Artyom see that on either side of the bride and bridegroom were his brothers. Rosa kissed him, and Yakov muttered approvingly, “Good job, Shpendik. Just don’t let anything slip to Father.”
Rosa generally came by in the mornings, and Artyom saw her rarely. Unlike Petka, who came by their plumbing ditches, taught Artyom how to do gas welding, and became friends with him over the summer. Petka knew everything and could do anything, and Artyom was more at ease with him than with his brothers.
But that was over the summer. When September approached, Artyom got his pay and brought the money to his mom.
“Here.” He laid out all the bills and all the change on the table.
“Money earned by labor needs a good wallet,” his mom said, and took out the wallet that had been bought specifically for this occasion. “Put your money in it and go shopping with Rosochka and Piotr.”
“No, mom. That’s for you. For the household.”
“You will have a suit, and I will have pleasure. Do you think that is so little, the pleasure you get from seeing a suit that your son bought with his own money?”
Artyom stretched out the argument for a little longer out of principle, and then put his money in the wallet, and the next morning, headed over to his sister’s. But Rosa was at the college, and Piotr was the only one at the dorm.
“A suit is great,” Piotr said approvingly. “I know what kind you need: a Mostorg suit. Or a Leningrad one. Or there’s a kind that has one button, it’s called a sport cut. Or maybe you want it made to order? We can buy some merino wool…”
“My jacket’s fine, really,” Artyom said. “I’m, er, turning sixteen. An occasion?”
“That’s an occasion,” Piotr nodded. “You want it made by then?”
“I want, er…” Artyom gravely paused. “I want to celebrate it.”
“I see,” Piotr said. “Instead of the suit?”
“Instead, yeah. And I can say I lost the money. Or that it was stolen.”
“No, that won’t do,” Piotr said seriously. “That’s no good at all, your first paycheck and you lie about it? You’d be starting your life with a lie, little brother, isn’t that right? That’s the first thing. And the second thing is, why hurt your mother and father? They will also want to celebrate with you on your birthday. Correct?”
“Correct, I guess. But, you know, what about you and Rosa?”
“We’ll wish you a happy birthday separately,” Piotr smiled. “Now go tell your mom that you’re exchanging the suit for a birthday party.”
Mom agreed right away, Father grumbled a bit but also agreed, and Artyom, instead of having to go shopping, ran over to his dear friend Zhorka’s, for a consultation on who should be invited to his first ever soiree.
Zhorka Landys had two things he enjoyed: skating and stamp collecting, and while skating was an interest, stamps were his passion. He dug through grandma’s drawers looking for them, begged acquaintances for them with an indignity that approached humiliation, traded for, bought, and sometimes stole them, unable to resist the temptation. He was the first person in the class to join MOPR, personally wrote letters to Germany, then to Spain, and then to China, hungrily peeled off the stamps, and immediately composed new missives. This level of activity secured for him the reputation of a businesslike and resourceful person, and Artyom needed his advice.
“We need a list,” Zhorka said. “We can’t invite the whole class.”
Artyom would have been willing to do that too, if only she would come.
Zhorka took out some paper and opened the discussion.
“You, me, Valka Aleksandrov, Pashka Ostapchuk..” Running through the male half of the class did not take long. Then Zhorka put aside his pen and stood up from the table.
“Write the girls yourself.”
“No, no, why?” Artyom protested. “Your handwriting’s better.”
“Yeah that’s for sure,” Landys said with pleasure. “You know where I just wrote a letter? To the League of Nations about the child question. Maybe they’ll answer? Imagine the stamp on that!”
“So go on,” Artyom said. “Who should we start with?”
“Yeah, that’s a question!” Zhorka laughed. “Just say who else I should write besides Zinka Kovalenko.”
“Iskra.” Artyom frowned in concentration. “Well, who else? Lena Bokova, she’s friends with Pashka. And…”
“And Sashka Stameskin,” Zhorka interrupted. “Otherwise Iskra will sulk, and without Iskra…”
“Can’t do it without Iskra,” Artyom sighed.
Neither of them liked Sashka: he was from a different group with whom they had more than once had serious clashes. But Iskra might not come without Sashka, and that would almost certainly rule out Zinochka’s presence.
“Write Stameskin down,” Artyom shrugged. “He’s part of the working class now, maybe he isn’t so conceited anymore.”
“And Vika Lyuberetskaya,” Zhorka said firmly. Artyom smiled. Vika had long been Zhorka’s dream. An impossible one, like an answer from the League of Nations.
The date for the party was set for the third Sunday of September. They were not yet quite used to the word “Sunday” and wrote “on the third general day off”, but the post worked faster than Artyom had figured: on Wednesday, Iskra came up to him and sternly asked:
“Is this postcard a prank?”
“No, why?” Artyom sniffed unhappily. “I’m, er… sixteen.”
“Then why isn’t it your handwriting?” Iskra asked pryingly.
“Zhorka wrote it. My handwriting's chicken scratch, you know.”
“Our Iskra combines the distrust of a prosecutor with the shrewdness of Shelock Holmes,” Vika said loudly. “Thank you, Artyom, I will definitely come.”
Artyom was a little worried about how his brothers would act with his school friends, but both Yakov and Matvei just happened to have urgent things to do that day. They wished their little brother a happy birthday in the morning, and left an hour before the guests arrived, having first dragged all the tables, chairs, and benches into one room.
“We’ll be back by eleven. Have a good party, Shpendik!”
Artyom’s brothers left, and his mother and father stayed. They sat at the head of the table, and his mom poured sitro soda for the girls and offered them pie. The boys drank mom’s cordial, and Father drank vodka. He drank two shots and left, and only mom stayed, but she stayed in such a way that it seemed to everyone that she had also left.
“Your folks are nice,” said Valka Aleksandrov, an exceptionally sociable fellow, who disliked quarrels and had quickly gotten the hang of settling conflicts. “All you hear at my place is ‘Valka, what are you doing over there?’”
“You need an eye kept on you, Edison,” smiled Pashka Ostapchuk, the best athlete in the school. “The things you might invent otherwise…”
Valka had been nicknamed Edison for his quiet passion for improvement and optimization. He invented fountain pens, four-wheeled bicycles, and a Primus stove you could power with your foot. That last discovery caused a small domestic fire, and Valya’s father came to school to ask the administration to put a check on his son’s inventiveness.
“Edison will burn someone down!”
“Well, I believe we should not clip people’s wings,” Iskra declared. “If a person wants to invent something that is useful for the country, he ought to be helped. And laughing at him is just stupid!”
“It is stupid to make speeches given half an excuse,” Vika said, and again everyone heard her through the laughter, chatter, and noise.
“No, that is not stupid!” Iskra announced. “It is stupid to consider yourself better than everyone just because…”
“Girls, girls, I know a magic trick!” intervened the peace-loving inventor.
“Well, finish what you were saying,” smiled Vika. “Why?”
Iskra wanted to lay everything out right there, about perfume, and underclothes, and fur coats, and the company car that would pick Vika up at ten o’clock that night. She wanted to, but didn’t dare, because it involved girlish secrets, and she cursed herself for her weakness.
“Because my dad is a supervisor of the highest level? What is so bad about that? I am not ashamed of my dad…”
“Artemon!” Zinochka suddenly shouted out, in desperation and pity for the fatherless Iskra. “Pour me some sitro, Artemon…”
The happy howls of laughter lasted a long time, the way laughter does only in childhood. Zinochka, having so unexpectedly called Artyom by the name of the faithful poodle from Buratino, laughed louder than anyone, and Sashka Stameskin even snorted in his delight, which gave them another reason for laughter. And when they were finished laughing, the conversation changed course. Zhorka Landys started talking about his letter to the League of Nations, while also looking at Vika in such a way that everyone smiled. And then Iskra had a whispered conversation with Lena Bokova and suggested a game of charades, and they played charades for a long time, and that was also fun. Then they sang loudly, about Kakhovka, about the Eaglet, and about the boy their age that got struck down in Irkutsk.
And while everyone was singing, Zina made her way over to Artyom and said,
“I’m sorry for calling you Artemon. I just did that all of a sudden, without thinking about it, you understand? It just came out that way.”
“It’s all right.” Artyom was afraid of looking at her, because she was very close, but he wanted to look, so his eyes kept shifting around.
“You really don’t mind?”
“Really. It’s even… you know… nice.”
“What’s nice?”
“You know, that. Artemon.”
“Oh… Why is it nice?”
“I don’t know.” Artom gathered up all his courage, desperately looked into Zinochka’s sparkling eyes, and said, “Because it’s you. It’s all right if it’s you.”
“Thank you,” Zina said slowly, and her eyes smiled at Artyom with a special, unfamiliar smile. “I’ll call you Artemon sometimes. But only rarely, so you don’t get used to it quickly.”
And she moved away like nothing had happened. Nothing changed in her or in the others, but Artyom was suddenly struck by a storm of unprecedented energy. He sang louder and more assiduously than anyone, he started up the old gramophone that Pashka Ostapchuk brought, he even attempted to dance - but not with Zina, no! - with Iskra, stepped all over her feet and abandoned this enterprise.
His mom watched him and smiled the way all moms smile when they discover something new in their children, something unexpected and a little adult. And when everyone had left and Artyom was helping her clear the table, she said,
“You have very nice friends, my boy. You have wonderful friends, but do you know whom I liked most? I liked Zinochka Kovalenko most of all. I think she is a very nice girl.”
“Really, mom?” Artyom blossomed with joy.
And that was the best present Artyom got for his birthday. His mom knew what to give him.
But that was later that night, after the black Emka drove Vika home and everyone else merrily went off to take the streetcar. They sang loudly in the empty train, and when someone needed to get off, instead of “goodbye”, the one leaving would for some reason yell:
“Fizcult-hello!”
And everyone else would respond:
“Hello! Hello! Hello!”
But that too was later, and first they danced. Or rather, the only ones who danced were Lena and Pashka, and Zinochka and Iskra. The rest were too shy to dance, and Vika said, “I only dance waltz and cross-step waltz.”
Vika skipped her turn, but when everyone was finished, she took out of her handbag - she had a real lady’s handbag from Paris - a thin, battered book.
“I will read three of my favorite poems by one nearly forgotten poet.”
“Forgotten means unwanted,” Zhorka tried to joke.
“You’re an idiot,” said Vika. “He’s forgotten for completely different reasons.”
She came out into the middle of the room, opened the book, looked around sternly, and softly began:
Give me your paw, Jim, for good luck.
I’ve never seen such paws – not ever.
“That’s Yesenin,” said Iskra when Vika fell silent. “He is a defeatist poet. He sings of taverns, melancholy, and despondency.”
Vika gave a little silent laugh, and Zinochka threw up her hands. “These poems are amazing and that’s that. A-ma-zing!”
Iskra did not respond, because she had liked the poems very much, and could not argue. And did not want to. She knew for certain that this poetry was defeatist, because she had heard this from her mom, but she could not understand how such poetry could be defeatist. There was discord between knowledge and understanding, and Iskra was trying her best to figure out her own self.
“Did you like the poems?” she whispered to Sashka.
“I’m no good at this kind of thing, but the poems are grand. There were those lines… No, I don’t remember, it’s a pity.”
“Shaganeh, my divine Shaganeh…” sighed Sashka.
Vika had heard the conversation. She came up to Iskra and asked abruptly, “Are you intelligent, Iskra?”
“I don’t know.” Iskra was taken aback. “Not an idiot, at least.”
“No, you’re not an idiot,” Vika smiled. “I never lend anyone this book, because it’s dad’s, but I’ll give it to you. Just make sure to read it slowly.”
“Thank you, Vika.” Iskra smiled back at her, perhaps for the first time ever. “I’ll deliver it back into your own hands.”
Outside, a car horn barked twice, and Vika began to say her farewells. And Iskra carefully pressed to her chest the well-read collection of poems by the defeatist poet Sergei Yesenin.