From A School Anthology

1. E. Larionova

E. Larionova. Brunette. A colonel's

and a typist's daughter. Looked

at you like someone studying a clockface.

She tried to help her fellow mortals.

One day when we were lying side by side

upon the beach, crumbling some chocolate,

she said, looking straight ahead, out

to where the yachts held to their course,

that if I wanted to, I could.

She loved to kiss. Her mouth

reminded me of the caves of Kars.

But I wasn't scared off.

I hold

this memory dear, like a trophy won

on some unintelligible battle-

front, from enemies unknown.

That lover of plump women, that lurking tom,

D. Kulikov, then hove in sight --

he married her, did Dima Kulikov.

She joined a women's choir,

while he toils in a classified establishment --

a great bony engineer...

But I can still recall the long corridor

and my struggle with her on the chest-of-drawers.

Dima at the time was an ugly little pioneer.

Where did it all go? Where's the reference point?

And how can one, today, hope to discover

that which has transfigured all these lives?

A strange world lurked behind her eyes

she could not understand herself. Or rather,

she did not understand it even as a wife.

Kulikov is living. I am living. She is living.

But what happened to that world?

Perhaps it is keeping them awake?

I keep mumbling my words.

Snatches of a waltz come to me through the wall.

And the rain rustles on broken bricks.

2. Oleg Poddobry

Oleg Poddobry. His father was

a fencing coach. He was familiar with

it all -- thrust, parry, lunge.

No ladies' man, nevertheless

he used to score, as sometimes happens

in the world of sports, from offside.

That was at night. His mother was sick,

his little brother wailing in the crib.

Oleg picked up an axe and when

his father entered, battle began.

But the neighbours arrived in the nick

and four of them got the better of the son.

I remember his face, his hands;

next, the foil with a wooden grip.

Sometimes we practised fencing in the kitchen.

He got hold of a ring with a whopping stone;

used to splash around in out communal bath...

He and I left school together; then

he joined a cookery class, while I

worked as a milling operator in the Arsenal.

He baked pancakes in the Taurid Gardens.

We had a good time carting firewood,

on New Year's Eve sold fir trees at the station.

Unfortunately, in association

with some low character,

he did a shop -- he got three years for that.

He warmed his ration up over the bonfire.

Was released. Survived some heavy drinking.

Did factory-construction work.

Got married to a nurse it seems.

Began to paint. Wanted, apparently,

to take up art. His landscapes were,

in places, not unlike

still-lifes. Then he got pinched

for playing tricks with medical certificates.

Now all there is, is silence.

I haven't seen him now for years.

Was inside myself but didn't run into him.

Now I am free. But even out of gaol

I never see him.

Somewhere

he is surely strolling through the woods, breathing in

the wind. Neither kitchen, gaol, nor college could

absorb him. And he vanished. Like Jack Frost

he managed to disguise himself.

I hope he is alive and safe.

Now he excites my interest,

like the other characters from out of childhood.

But he is more unreachable than they.

3. T. Zimina

T. Zimina; a delightful child.

Her mother was an engineer, her dad

a tally-clerk -- I never knew them.

She was not easily impressed. Although

a frontier pilot married her.

But that was later. Her trouble

started earlier than that. She had

a relative. A district committee man.

With a car. Her folks were separated.

Evidently, they had problems of their own.

A car was quite unheard of.

Well, it all began with that.

She was upset. But later, things

seemed to be improving, as it were.

A gloomy Georgian came on the scene.

But suddenly he landed up in prison.

And then she gave herself

to the counter in a large haberdashery.

Linen, fabrics, eau-de-Cologne.

She loved the whole atmosphere,

the confidences and her friends' admirers.

Passers-by goggling through the window.

In the distance, the officers' Club. And officers

flocking like birds, with a mass of buttons.

The pilot, returning from the skies,

congratulated her on her good looks.

He gave her a champagne salute.

Marriage. However, in the Air Force

a high value is placed on chastity; it

is raised to the level of an absolute.

And it was this scholasticism that

accounted for her almost drowning.

She had already found a bridge, but winter'd come.

The canal was covered with an icy crust.

And again she hurried to her counter.

A fringe edged her eyelashes.

Onto her ashy hair the neon

lights poured their radiance.

Spring -- and by the doors flung wide,

the current of customers seethes.

She stands and gazes from the piles of linen

into the murky channel, like a Lorelei.

4. Yu. Sandul

Yu. Sandul. Sweet-tempered as a polecat.

With a face that sharpened towards the nose.

Informed on people. Always wore a collar.

Went into raptures over caps with peaks.

Made speeches in the lavatory about

whether the badge should be pinned on the jacket.

Pinned it on. Generally enthused

over all kinds of emblems and insignia.

Loved ranks and titles to distraction.

Styled himself `PT Instructor',

though was as old as Jacob to look at.

Considered furunculosis as his scourge.

Was susceptible to colds,

stayed at home in bad weather.

Mugged up his Bradis tables. Was bored.

Knew chemistry and yearned for the institute.

But landed in the infantry after school --

those secret underground forces.

Now he is drilling holes. It's said,

in the Diesel works. That may not be so accurate.

But perhaps accuracy is irrelevant here.

Of course, it's a speciality, a status.

What's important is, he's doing a correspondence course.

At this point we will lift the curtain's edge.

At dusk, besides absorbing Marx, he leafs

through The Strength of Materials. Such books,

incidentally, give off

a special scent at night.

Doesn't consider himself to be

a simple worker. In fact, looks to the next class.

At dusk he strives for new

horizons. Metal's resistance

is pleasanter in theory! He is bursting

to be an engineer, to get at blueprints.

And, come what may, he will be one.

Like this... the amount of labour,

surplus value... progress...

And all this scholasticism about the market...

He makes his way through dense thickets.

Would like to marry. But hasn't the time.

And he prefers parries, casual

relationships, addresses.

`Our future -- smiling -- engineer'.

He remembers the sombre mass

and gazes past the girls, out of the window.

He is lonely in his own manner.

He is a traitor to his class.

Perhaps I am overdoing it. But

the utilization of a class for hire

is more dangerous than the perfidy of men.

`Youth is sinful. Blood is hot,' he says.

I even remember that plain-speaking poster

that dealt with casual relationships.

But there is no clinic and no doctor

to guard you against these déclassé ones, to

protect you from the inflammation.

And if the age we live in is no wife to us,

then it's so as not to pass on the infection

from this generation to the next.

That is a baton we can do without.