Now, she sat with her legs crossed, her small round predatory eyes scrutinizing those standing at the door.
“Well… Bulgakov is here, naturally… You practically live in the teachers’ room. Are you trying to get expelled from school soon? Perhaps it’s time to do it, along with Zhiltsov, for company. And you, Timershayev, have you decided to go straight from school to the courtroom? To a jail for juvenile delinquents? Imagine how happy your parents will be! Do they teach you to behave that way at home? I’ll have to ask your parents. But first, you’ll tell us how you have reached the point where you could do something like this. Do you understand that you nearly killed Shalgin?
Inna Nazarovna moved forward, fixing her eyes on Timershayev. Timur was silent. He didn’t look at Inna Nazarovna so her piercing gaze didn’t affect him.
He had that same expression on his glum face: “Just let him try it again!”
“Timershayev, are you deaf?”
Timershayev was silent.
“All right. We’ll find out why it happened. And we’ll find out what gatherings take place behind the school. Got it? And if any of you are seen there again… Andreyev, Yuabov, this applies to you too. Since when have you joined those who disgrace our school? And, in general, this class is clearly getting worse.”
Then, Inna Nazarovna at last turned away from Timur, stood up and, putting her hands behind her back, walked around the room. She stopped in front of Flura Merziyevna, stared at her and said slowly:
“This class is clearly getting worse, Flura Merziyevna.”
We were allowed to leave after being given one last stern warning. Flura Merziyevna stayed in the teachers’ room. It was clear that now it was her turn to be straightened out. I’ll bet she would rather have left along with us.
Chapter 41. How the Bottle Was Buried
“Does everybody agree?” Chingachgook asked.
His face, illuminated by the fire, was serious and undisturbed, just like the face of a real Indian under any circumstances.
His thick hair, light and amazingly straight, covered his high forehead down to his eyelashes, just like a real Indian’s. However, as we all knew, Great Snake had only one strand of hair crowned with a feather on his shaved head.
Rustem Angherov, Flura Merziyevna’s younger brother, couldn’t walk around bald. It was all right, for even with his hairstyle, he was the best Chingachgook among us.
“Does everybody agree?” he asked.
“Ugh!” came the booming response, and five clenched fists were raised above our heads.
Chingachgook cast his eyes over us and nodded.
“The council of elders has approved the decision.”
That very important event took place in the vegetable gardens near the back wall of Building #16 in the evening. The Sagamores, the elders of the Delaware and Mohican tribes, united against the Iroquois tribes, who feuded with them.
However, it had certainly not happened in the vegetable beds near our building, nor in the town of Chirchik, but in a thick forest on the banks of the Hudson River. It happened by a big hot fire, with a whole log burning in it, and not near a burning piece of plexiglass. And they passed the peace pipe around from hand to hand, as expected, not a twig torn off the hedge.
How fortunate we are that nature endows us with powerful imaginations in childhood, which allow us to enter virtual reality, as the expression goes nowadays. To put it a simpler way, it allows us to go where we want and become whoever we want the moment our imagination is fueled.
Of course, we understood that we were playing Indians.
If only my imagination were half as powerful now.
I knew it was just a piece of plexiglass buried in the ground that was burning in front of me, but I admired the way it melted slowly, the hundreds of tiny bubbles sizzling on its surface, disappearing, reappearing, disappearing again, consumed by the flame. But somehow, I also saw a dry oak log with black charred bark instead of plexiglass and the tongues of flame above the hole in which the fire had been built. It was quiet in the forest, only dry leaves rustling in the wind. And we strained our ears to hear twigs that might crack as enemies crept through the trees. And you could hear, yet at the same time not hear the voice of Dora, who was nagging someone at her place. I didn’t know how all that happened. Very few adults had the ability to transform themselves, with the exception of actors.
Could I possibly have imagined at that time that in about thirty years I would find myself in the actual places we boys had “visited” while playing, that I would stand on a wooded shore of Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes, not alone but with my children, Daniel and Victoria, American by birth? And I was glad that that faraway evening and the plexiglass fire remained in my memory…
The fire burned out. It was time for us to go home. So, simply and naturally – only children could do that – we became Rustem, Vitya, Zhenya, Igor, and Valery instead of Indians. However, our thoughts were still with the heroes of our favorite book.
“I’m sorry for Uncas,” Vitya Smirnov sighed. “Go, children of the Lenape. Manitto’s wrath has not been exhausted…” I said slowly and sadly. Quite recently, urged by Vitya, I had read “The Last of the Mohicans,” and now we talked about the book, played its heroes, and discussed everything depicted in it, often with indignation because many things didn’t sit well with us.
No real historical events were important for us, especially in faraway America, not the war between the English and the French nor relations between the palefaces and the redskins.
What was important to us was the fight between good and evil. We felt that good had to triumph, by all means. It had to. But why did Fort William Henry fall in battle? Why did the Hurons slaughter the defenseless women, who had left the fort, in front of everyone?
We didn’t forgive the author either for “unnecessary” battles or pointless sacrifices, especially the death of our favorite hero, Bounding Elk, or the beautiful Cora, Colonel Munro’s daughter. They perished, but despicable, treacherous, cruel Magua destroyed everybody and survived almost through the last pages of the book. Why did James Fenimore Cooper permit such misfortunes? No, the book should have ended a different way. We blamed Cooper for everything as we encountered the cruelties of history for the first time. We didn’t yet know much about history, or life in general.
Before breaking up, we agreed to a forthcoming battle against the Iroquois – when, how and what we needed to prepare. It would be a glorious battle! There were many battles in “The Last of the Mohicans.” We chose one at a time. Of course, we had to simplify everything, to modify, omit some details of the plot, and even do without some of the characters. There was nothing we could do about that.
We dedicated the time before a battle to preparing our arms. Each of us had his own arsenal. In the past, we had been pilots, members of tank crews or artillerymen, and all our arms looked accordingly. Now, we had to change them. After all, we were Indians.
When Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were preparing Jim’s escape, romantic Tom demanded that everything be done as in his favorite book about the escape of a prisoner. They even had to dig the tunnel under the wall with a knife instead of a shovel. As the more practical Huck had foreseen, nothing came of it.
Like Huck, we weren’t so literal. We understood that we couldn’t even dream of “real” Indian weapons. We had to adapt whatever we had on hand, slingshots, for example. Before, we had made a cannon with pebbles for cannonballs. Now, we decided it would be a tomahawk. We wouldn’t use pebbles any longer, one might knock an eye out with them. We would use a bent piece of wire, which we called a “dowel.” It was safe and could sting badly – “ouch, ouch, ouch.” We could also use our rifles. We called them zhevelushniks. The base was a piece of wood to which a metal tube was attached. A pointed window latch with a piece of thick rubber was attached to it and fastened to a rifle butt. If we put the cartridge from a starter’s pistol, zhevelo, into a tube and pulled that powerful trigger, it would produce a marvelous din.