“A wonderful present to our children,” said the representative of the municipal department of education. “Well then. On the first floor, we’ll have the first and second grades; on the second, then, the third and fourth, and so on. The older the student, the higher up he is in the school.”

“That is incredibly precise,” confirmed Valentina Andronovna. “Even symbolic in the wonderful, in our sense of the word.”

Valentina Andronovna taught literature and was temporarily the acting principal. Her massive figure exuded severity and a purposeful readiness to follow the newest directives and circulars.

Everything was done as ordered, with the addition of hall monitors in the stairwells, who had strict instructions not to allow any students either up or down. The school was layered like a cake, tenth graders never saw fifth graders, and first graders never saw anyone at all. Every floor lived the life of its own age, but at least no one slid down the banisters. Except the hall monitors.

Valentina Andronovna was acting principal for six months, and then a new principal got appointed. He wore wide cavalry trousers, soft kidskin boots, and a broadcloth military tunic with enormous patch pockets, had a cavalryman’s ability to make noise, liked to loudly laugh and sneeze so the whole school could hear.

“A cadet corps,” he declared after familiarizing himself with the symbolic structure of the school.

“By order of the department of education,” Valentina Andronovna said with meaning.

“We need to live by ideas, not by orders. And what is our overarching idea? Our overarching idea is to educate the citizens of a new, socialist Homeland. So we’ll chuck all the orders out the window and do it like this.”

He thought a little and wrote out his first decree:

1st floor. First and sixth grades.
2nd floor. Second, seventh, and eighth.
3rd floor. Third and ninth.
4th floor. Fourth, fifth, and tenth.

“There,” he said, admiring this layout. “Everyone will mix together and there will be friendship. Where are the main troublemakers? In fourth and fifth. Now they’ll be with the oldest kids, and they’ll keep an eye on them. And no hall monitors, let them run all over. A child is a creature of freedom and spontaneity, let’s not put up bars for no reason. That’s number one. Number two is, we have girls growing up, and there’s only one mirror in the whole school, and that in the teachers’ room. Tomorrow, hang good mirrors in all the girls’ bathrooms. You hear me, Mikheich? Buy them and hang them.”

“Are we bringing up strumpets here?” Valentina Andronovna said with a venomous smile.

“Not strumpets, women. Not that you would know what that is.”

Valentina Andronovna swallowed the insult, but did write a letter. To the appropriate destination.

But there no one paid any attention to this letter, either because they were giving the new principal rope or because his defenders were too strong. The grades were mixed together, the hall monitors were abolished, the mirrors were hung, which cast the girls into a state of continuous agitation. New ribbons and bangs popped up, at recess the school roared victoriously with hundreds of voices, and the principal was very pleased.

“It lives!”

“We’re waking passions prematurely.” Valentina Andronovna pressed her lips together tightly.

“Passion is wonderful. There’s nothing worse than a passionless person. So we should sing!”

There were no singing classes in the school due to a lack of teachers, and the principal solved the question in a unilateral fashion: by ordering mandatory singing sessions three times a week. The upperclassmen would get summoned to the gym, the principal would take his accordion and tap out the rhythms with his foot.

We are the Red Cavalry
And about us
The glibbest storytellers
Tell their tales

Iskra loved these singing sessions very much. She had no ear for music and no singing voice, but she tried to enunciate loudly and clearly the words that made chills run down her back:

We’re selfless heroes all…

On a day-to-day basis, the principal also taught geography, but he did it in a peculiar way, as he did everything else. He disliked directions and disliked requirements more, and he followed less the curriculum and more his conscience, the conscience of a bolshevik and a former cavalryman.

“What are you poking the Ganges with the pointer for? If you ever end up sailing on it, you’ll figure out the tributaries, and if you don’t, you won’t need it. Tell us instead, honey, how miserable the people there are, how British imperialism torments the working people. That’s the thing you’ll need to remember forever!”

That was when the subject was foreign countries. When the focus was on their own country, the principal would talk about even more unusual things.

“Take the Sal steppe.” He carefully traced the steppe on the map. “What is characteristic here? It’s characteristic that there’s not much water, and if you happen to be there in the summer, you should water your horse well in the morning, so he’ll have enough until evening falls. And our horse is no good there, you need to switch to the local breed, they’re used to it.”

Perhaps because of these stories, perhaps because of his egalitarianism and simplicity, perhaps because of his vocal humanity and openness, and perhaps because of all those combined, the school loved the principal. Loved, respected, but also feared a little, because the principal did not tolerate any tattling, and dealt severely with those he caught personally. He would forgive mischief, though: except spiteful mischief, or worse, cruelty.

In eighth grade, a guy hit a girl. Not accidentally, and not even in a fit of temper, but deliberately, with calculation and malice. The principal heard her screams and came himself, but the guy ran away. Handing the crying victim over to the women teachers, the principal summoned all the boys from eighth grade and gave an order:

“Find him and bring him here. Immediately. That’s all. Go.”

By the end of the school day, the guy had gotten dragged to the school. The principal lined up the upper classes in the gym, put him in the center and said:

“I don’t know who stands before you. Maybe he is a future criminal, and maybe an exemplary citizen and the father of a family. But I know one thing: right now the one that stands before you is not a man. Boys and girls, remember this, and be careful around him. You can’t be friends with him, because he will betray you; cannot love him, because he is despicable; cannot trust him, because he will stab you in the back. And this will keep being the case until he proves to us that he understands what a vile thing he did, until he becomes a real man. And to make sure he understands what a real man is, I will remind him. A real man is one who only loves two women - yes, two, what is that laughter! His mother and the mother of his children. A real man is one who loves the country that he was born in. A real man is one who will give a friend his last ration of bread even if this sentences him to starve to death. A real man is one who loves and respects all people and hates the enemies of these people. And you need to learn to love and learn to hate, and those are the most important subjects to study in life!”

Iskra started clapping first. She started clapping because for the first time in her life, she saw and heard a commissar. And everyone clapped with her.

“Hush, guys, hush,” the principal smiled. “You’re not really supposed to clap your hands in the ranks.” He turned back to the boy who was assiduously studying the floor, and in the dead silence, said softly and contemptuously, “Go study. Whatever it is that you are.”

Yes, they really loved their principal, Nikolai Grigoryevich Romahin. Unlike their new homeroom teacher, Valentina Andronovna, whom they despised so deeply and unanimously that they no longer spent any energy on any other emotion. They did not seek out conversations with her, but only patiently heard her out, trying not to respond, and when a response was called for after all, using only the simplest answers, “yes” and “no”.

But Valentina Andronovna was far from stupid. She knew perfectly well what the class thought of her, and having failed to find a way to their hearts and minds, began to wheedle just a little tiny bit. Which little tiny bit was immediately noticed by the class.