The young lovers kept their secret to themselves for a whole year. At the beginning of the ninth grade, rumors began circulating. Most likely, Nikita had boasted of his conquest to the other boys, and it had finally reached the staff room. Vera Alexeyevna, the class adviser, undertook to have a heart-to-heart pedagogical talk with Nora, with the noble purpose of nipping the brewing scandal in the bud.
Scratching her head nervously, Vera Alexeyevna, who was deeply agitated, broached the ticklish subject by referring to moral principles. Nora didn’t even allow her to finish. She informed her coldly that she had no intention of discussing her personal life, that her relations with men—that’s what she said, “with men” (and here Vera Alexeyevna started scratching her head with redoubled energy)—were no one’s business but her own and one other person’s, whose existence she was not going to broadcast. In short, mind your own business!
Vera Alexeyevna was offended and kicked up a fuss. The Party organizer of the school, Elena Azizovna, suggested convening a PTA meeting after school devoted exclusively to the crimes of ninth-grade minors. The criminals’ parents were invited. Romeo made a poor performance, publicly repenting his love affair and offering a version of events whereby he was not the initiator but, rather, the victim of her machinations. Dark with fury, the father of the “victim,” a hockey coach the size of a double-door refrigerator, made a testimony denouncing Amalia Alexandrovna. He seemed to be well informed about the family life of the mother of the juvenile delinquent. At that time, Amalia Alexandrovna was still not married to Andrei Ivanovich—that is, she was in a relationship with a married man, which Tregubsky père announced to a rapt audience. When Nora glanced at her mother, who was sitting in a corner of the classroom looking crushed, she was suddenly filled with a rage that surpassed anything she would ever again experience. How dare this old goat insult her mother! She saw a dark-crimson mist before her eyes, and suddenly she exploded. Later, she couldn’t remember the content of her retort to old Tregubsky and the PTA members, but most of the words she used could not be found in a standard dictionary. Taking her mother by the hand, she left the room, slamming the door behind her. She was immediately expelled from school, without further deliberation.
The next day Nora, her eyes red and swollen from weeping, as composed and collected as a parachutist before a jump, went to school and collected her records. Then she wept for three days straight. Amalia Alexandrovna tried to comfort her, but Nora rejected any involvement of her mother in the unpleasantness that had befallen her. Poor Amalia was no less traumatized than her daughter by the public execution. Nora was offended more on her mother’s behalf than her own, and resented Andrei Ivanovich with renewed vigor for putting his beloved in such a compromising position. She hated Nikita with a passion, and at the same time wanted to engage in criminal action with him again as soon as possible, which would go a long way toward mitigating the state-sponsored unpleasantness.
These events brought with them important lessons in life. First, she decided that she would never in her life have an affair with a married man, as her mother had. Second, she understood that love made a person defenseless and vulnerable, and that sex had to be kept separate from human emotions and relationships for reasons of personal safety. And, third, as she told herself: I don’t want anyone to pity me. Nor will I ever pity myself.
On the day when the announcement of Nora’s expulsion from school was pinned on the official notice board, and rumors about the scandalous PTA meeting were making the rounds among the upperclassmen, a fight—or, more accurately, a skirmish—broke out at the entrance to the school. Grisha Lieber stopped Tregubsky, who was running late, as usual, and uttered, with grim solemnity, these words: “You, Tregubsky, are scum.”
Grisha had planned to give him an aristocratic slap in the face, but, though he swung his arm out, the theatrical gesture fell flat. Nikita forestalled the blow, and punched Grisha’s soft little face with his hard fist. The duel never got off the ground. Grisha slumped down, hitting his face on the iron door handle, and, without breaking stride, Nikita rushed in through the wide-open door and up to the third floor. He lived almost next door to the school and was the only one who always arrived without a hat or coat in any kind of weather. The school nurse took the bloodied Grisha to the nearest emergency room, where they gave him stitches over his cheekbone. He explained what had happened by saying he had tripped and fallen, knocking his cheek against the door. This scar—in a faint V-shape, like a checkmark in a box—stayed with him his entire life, a memory of his first, secret love for Nora.
A week later, Vitya learned that Nora had been expelled, from Nora herself. He had come over to her house and sat down; without saying anything about it or asking any questions, he just pulled out his literature notebook. They were studying Goncharov.
“Here’s Oblomov,” he said.
“You want me to study with you? Don’t you know they kicked me out of school?”
Somehow he had managed to remain oblivious to the event, which had been hotly debated in the men’s, not to mention the women’s, bathrooms. At this point, Nora finally had to laugh. She told him what had happened between her and Tregubsky. Vitya stayed for about fifteen minutes. They didn’t feel like discussing Oblomov and the Oblomov syndrome, but there wasn’t anything else they could talk about. He drank a cup of tea, which he took with five spoonfuls of sugar; ate all the food that was set before him, emptying out the refrigerator completely; and headed for the door. Walking right behind him, Nora, who had cheered up considerably after this unexpected visit, invited him to drop by any time he needed to write an essay. One reason his visit was nice was that he was the only one of all her classmates who had visited her. In fact, she was not really friends with anyone in the class. There was Chipa, Marina Chipkovskaya, though they hadn’t met in school, but in the art studio she had started attending that year.
Vitya visited Nora after that on a regular basis, albeit not very frequently. He would appear at her door, but for the life of her she couldn’t figure out what drew him to her—certainly it wasn’t for a cup of tea. He himself couldn’t have explained it. Most likely, it was just out of inertia, a conditioned reflex he had developed: literature, Nora, essay … He visited Nora now and then in this manner until the end of the school year. In the summer, the visits stopped, which was only natural—classes were over.
During the summer, Nora breezed through the entrance exams for the Theater Arts Institute, and when the new school year began, she rode the “B” trolleybus to Sretenka Street every day to attend classes. She found everything interesting, from the trolley ride to the subjects she was studying there. Her most important new acquisition, however, was her teacher, Anastasia Ilyinichna Pustyntseva—or Tusya, as she was called—a true theater artist and set designer, teacher, and the embodiment, according to Nora’s notions, of the ideal modern woman. Studying to become a set designer and theater artist was interesting, and Nora was glad that she had been kicked out of school; otherwise, she would have had to languish in the back row for two more years.
The only thing that cast a shadow over her life was her own appearance, which had never satisfied her, and now even less so. But the theater offered her a new approach to life. Nora began to experiment, searching for a new image. She used a lot of makeup, cut off almost all her hair, lost weight—inadvertently, it must be said, but she liked it. Plump cheeks made her look like a little pink doll, but with hollows under her cheekbones she felt very sharp and stylish. She began to watch her weight seriously, forbidding herself to eat sweets—a ban she held herself to for the rest of her life, having once told herself, I don’t like sweet things. And it seemed she really did not. She picked up smoking—heavily, without deriving any pleasure from it whatsoever. Amalia could hardly keep from crying as she threw out the butts from the ashtray: “Nora, even drinking is better than smoking. It goes without saying that it’s bad for you, but the smell is also disgusting! Chekhov said that kissing a woman who smokes is like licking an ashtray!” Nora dismissed her with a wave of the hand and said, laughing, “Mama, Chekhov and I will never have to kiss anyway.”