They all had children, some as many as four. Candida's girls were lovely. So whimsical, so mannered, so unnaturally vivacious and elegant were the faces and figures of Candida's girls that when they came to class with their mother I thought of them as works of art. A blend of different bloods had produced this unexpected effect. An exquisite effect, ancient Egyptian I should say; they resembled Ikhnaton's daughters, although Candida herself was a shortish woman with ordinary light brown skin and a kind, simple face. The faces of her little girls, their hair, the shape of their eyes, held a sort of poesy… morning, daybreak, a fragrance of delicacy. I shall allow myself a flourish: they were like coffee beans, like spices, her children were.
Anyway, when I came in they were writing a composition. They had never seen me so handsome and elegant. Usually I came to school in sandals and jeans – wooden platform sandals, my only ones, and blue or white jeans. But here the Russian fellow had arrived in colorful boots and denim suit, with neckerchief and umbrella. They discussed my appearance animatedly in Spanish. To judge by their tone I pleased them, they approved.
I told the teacher that I had had a job interview that morning, and then got busy on the composition. We were supposed to write about the neighborhood we lived in. I wrote that I lived in a neighborhood where there were mainly office buildings; the world's most expensive companies, perhaps, had their offices in my neighborhood. Next came the question of whether I was afraid to walk in my neighborhood at night. I wrote that I was afraid of nothing and walked all over the city. There was nothing to fear – I had nothing. As she read my composition and corrected the mistakes, the teacher laughed.
Many in my class wrote that they were not afraid to go out in the evening or late at night. They too had little, I think, and that was why they were unafraid.
The oldest person in our class was the gray-haired Lydia. She was gray-haired and black, but her face, her figure, her gait, her habits, reminded me of a neighbor we had in Kharkov, when I was still a little boy living with my papa and mama. English came harder to her and the two Candidas than to the rest of us. The two Candidas also reminded me of some of my neighbors in the Kharkov apartment house, only their skin was a little darker. I should mention that from walking one hundred and thirty to one hundred and forty blocks a day in the scorching sun with my shirt unceremoniously removed I had become so dark that I differed little from my classmates. Luz, in fact, was much lighter than I.
Luz always sat next to Rosa, an utterly black girl, tall and svelte. She had a stern and independent air, but I always felt she was unhappy for some reason. After having several conversations with her in our common pidgin English, or not even having conversations, simply consulting her and receiving answers, I saw that she was a benevolent and likable girl, she merely took a cautious attitude toward our world. Every recess Rosa twisted the head off another little bottle that had something black in it. She did this very adeptly with the hem of one leg of her very wide-bottomed slacks. It was some special Latin-American drink. Rosa and I were considered the class alcoholics. When the teacher asked the class who liked what, I said jokingly that I liked vodka, and someone else, I think it was Luz, spoke up for Rosa: "Rosa likes drink!" I found Rosa agreeable, and her independence too. Sometimes she chewed gum and became totally unapproachable.
I sat next to yet another utterly black woman, Zobeida. As a well-read Russian, of course, I knew that one of Voltaire's heroines had borne this name. It is hardly likely that Zobeida herself knew this, but she was one of the best pupils in our class. She and I were often assigned to read a dialogue, usually between a husband and wife who constantly spilled things on themselves and on each other and then advised each other what cleaner to go to. These married couples in the book were complete idiots. Everything fell from their hands, they could not convey a morsel to their mouths; God knows how they managed to stay alive; their coffee spilled, the cups broke, greasy sandwiches fell butter-side-down on their new clothes. Things were grim.
When Zobeida and I went up to the teacher's desk and read this dialogue of two idiots, we gave it our best and were evidently funny. In any case, blond short-cropped Mrs. Sirota rolled with laughter as she listened to my menacing "Vot?" and the wife's no less stupid answer, which Zobeida read. "You're like a TV couple," she told us.
Zobeida was tail, and her rear end, as is sometimes true of black women, was very large and seemed to exist independently of the rest of her. She had a beautiful face, and like most blacks, delicate hands. I talked to her more than to anyone else. She too had a child. Her husband had been born here in America; she had tried to take him back to the Dominican Republic, but then they had returned; they found it hard to live there after the United States.
Once our conversation turned to education. Ana, a dried-up, bespectacled, sarcastic little creature of indeterminate age, from Colombia, began to talk about her brothers and sisters. She wrote their names on the blackboard, and then wrote how many children they each had. Ana herself had no children. But all in all her three brothers and two sisters had forty-four children. I asked Ana when they would all come from Colombia. Ana said that they might not all come, but that most of them, as they grew up, wanted to have a higher education, and things were tight for her brothers and sisters – they had to work very hard so that the children could have more education.
"Is that the fashion in Colombia, to have a higher education?" I asked Ana.
She replied gravely that if you wanted to be somebody you needed a good education, and it cost a lot of money. Then she reported how much a higher education cost in Colombia and how much it cost in the Dominican Republic. Then I chimed in and said that in the USSR, where I came from, higher education was free, and all other education too. The effect was greater than I expected. They were staggered. Free! It was a good thing they didn't ask why I had left such a wonderful country.
Mrs. Sirota smiled in embarrassment. Maybe she felt uncomfortable for her fat, rich country, where the level of education you can get depends on how much money you have. A lot of money – graduate from Princeton. Some – go study in Canada, it's cheaper there. None – go uneducated; sometimes you might manage to get a scholarship. I took considerable malicious pleasure in listening to their lively discussion in Spanish, exulted maliciously over Mrs. Sirota and all the learned gentlemen who alleged that socialism was practically allied with the devil. To add fuel to the fire I told them that medical treatment was also free. That really started something. I exulted maliciously and was satisfied.
I liked my class. Margarita – a stout, dark-eyed woman with a lovely face, who had three boys from eleven on down and a little girl – smiled at me, showed me photographs of her children. Painstakingly-made color photographs, specially posed, they bore witness that the children had been photographed not by chance but in order to fix their image, reflect and preserve it. As in the Russian provinces. The little girl, the youngest, was all in laces and frills and stood in a self-important pose, like a celebrity. I said, "You have beautiful children, Margarita." She was very pleased.