The class was rapt with attention. Victor Yulievich savored the moment—he had learned how to create this meditative silence.
“It’s about love,” a brave soul piped up.
“Correct, but that’s not all. A lyric is about human experience, about the inner life of a human being. And that includes, of course, love. And sadness, and loneliness, and parting from the beloved. And the beloved doesn’t necessarily have to be a person. There is a famous poem, written long before our time, about the death of a sparrow. I’m not joking.
“All ye gentle powers above,
Venus, and thou god of love;
All ye gentle souls below,
That can melt at others’ woe,
Lesbia’s loss with tears deplore,
Lesbia’s sparrow is no more:
Late she wont her bird to prize
Dearer than her own bright eyes.
Sweet it was, and lovely too,
And its mistress well it knew.
Nectar from her lips it sipt,
Here it hopt, and there it skipt:
Oft it wanton’d in the air,
Chirping only to the fair:
Oft it lull’d its head to rest
On the pillow of her breast.
Now, alas! it chirps no more:
All its blandishments are o’er:
Death has summon’d it to go
Pensive to the shades below;
Dismal regions! from whose bourn
No pale travelers return …*
“This is also a lyric.
“We’ve already discussed Homer, read a bit of the Iliad. We know about Odysseus. We learned what an epic poem is. Scholars claim that the epic preceded the lyric. The first poem I recited to you was written in the seventh century BC and mentions Helen. Did anyone guess that this was the same Helen who, according to legend, was the cause of the Trojan War? The speaker in that poem compares the beloved to her. Even today we come across this ‘beautiful Helen,’ wife of King Menelaus, who was abducted by Paris. In this way she migrated from the epic to the lyric—an image of a beauty who captivates mens’ hearts.
“In the depths of antiquity, when human culture was just beginning to emerge, the word was much more intimately connected to music. Verses were recited aloud, to the accompaniment of a musical instrument called the lyre. This is the origin of the term ‘lyric.’ Two and a half thousand years later, a great deal has changed: it is rare for poetry to be accompanied by music, although new genres have appeared in which music and words are intrinsic to each other. Any examples?”
The bell rang, but none of them stirred, as though transfixed by his words. Why didn’t they slam the lids of their desks shut, tear out of their seats, and hurl themselves toward the door with leaps and wild yelps, blocking up the exit with their jostling bodies—move it! Come on, hurry up! Into the hallway, down to the coatroom, out onto the street!
Why did they listen to him? Why did he feel it was so urgent to stuff their heads with things they didn’t need to know? And he was moved by a sense of very subtle power—they were learning to think and feel. What an oasis amid the general dull and meaningless chaos!
Three days later, Stalin’s death was announced, and Victor Yulievich felt a small sense of satisfaction—he had predicted it before anyone else. Moreover, he belonged to the absolute minority of people who did not intend to mourn the loss. When he was growing up, his parents had sent him to Georgia for the summers. The last time they had all been to Tbilisi as a family was shortly before his father’s death, in 1933.
He knew from his father how much his Georgian relatives all despised and feared Dzhugashvili.
The tyrant was no more. The titan was no more. A loathsome creature that had crawled out of the underworld, ancient and tenacious, with a hundred arms and a hundred heads. And a mustache.
* * *
Classes were canceled, and the kids were rounded up for an assembly. Victor Yulievich led his sixth-graders, lined up in pairs, to the auditorium on the fourth floor. Mikha hovered around him, then thrust a piece of paper covered with large lilac handwriting into his hand. It was a poem.
A black frame at the top enclosed the words “Stalin’s Death.”
Weep, people, living here and yon,
Weep, doctors, typists, workers galore.
Our Stalin is dead, and never will one
Such as he return. Nay, nevermore.
Well, hello there, Catullus, Victor thought, stifling his amusement. Then he said quietly, “Well, ‘doctors’ makes sense. But why ‘typists’?”
“My aunt Genya was a typist. All right, let it be ‘typers’ then,” Mikha said on the fly. “Maybe I could recite it?”
Nothing good could come of this ready enthusiasm.
“No, Mikha, I wouldn’t advise it. In fact, I categorically advise against it.”
Mikha wanted to take back the paper, but the teacher folded it deftly in half, pressing it to his chest.
“May I keep it as a memento?”
“Sure!” Mikha said, beaming.
The auditorium was full. Beethoven was playing on the radio. Damp-eyed teachers arranged themselves around a plaster bust. The scarlet velvet of the school banner draped its folds onto the floor. Victor Yulievich stood at the back with a grim look on his face. Borya Rakhmanov, an eighth-grader, was pinned up against a windowsill by the crowd of students. The windowsill was digging painfully into his right side, but there was no room to wriggle free from the torment. This was a light dress rehearsal for what would happen to him only three days later.
After the solemn assembly, with copious sobbing—the teachers provided the example of sincere grief, and the children emulated them, struggling to reach the tragic note—they dispersed and returned to their classrooms. The principal tried to call the school board to find out whether school should be canceled, and for how many days, but the line was always busy. Only at one o’clock was it announced that students should be dismissed and sent home for public mourning. Later they would announce when school was to resume.
When he was sending his students home, Victor Yulievich asked the children to remain there, at home, and to stay off the streets. The best thing of all would be for them to read some good books!
Sanya Steklov was glad to follow his teacher’s advice. He was, it seemed, the only one who had the collected works of Tolstoy on his bookshelf at home, and during the four days of official mourning Sanya devoured all four volumes of War and Peace (though, it’s true, he did skip some of the passages). After he had read the first volume, he gave it to Mikha, but Mikha didn’t so much as open it; he had other problems. Aunt Genya had collapsed from a minor heart attack; Minna was having stomach trouble, which happened whenever the going got rough; and Mikha was run ragged, catering to his woeful aunt’s every whim for three whole days (although her mad grief was somewhat overblown).
Ilya didn’t give a hoot about his teacher’s advice or his mother’s pleas. The alarming significance of the event lured him down into the streets. Early in the morning on March 7 he grabbed his camera and left home with the confidence of a hunter anticipating a run of luck.
For three days Victor Yulievich never left the house, and forbade his mother to go outside as well. The bread had run out, but he said, “Bread? What are you talking about? We don’t even have any vodka.”
Indeed, on the evening of the fifth he had drunk the bottle his mother kept on hand for special occasions. He had decided that until the moment the Leader was taken away and safely buried, he would stay right where he was.
Dressed in his striped pajamas, he lay down on the divan behind the tapestry curtain with a pile of books beside him. The ultimate happiness.
At ten o’clock on March 9, the body was ceremoniously removed from the Hall of Columns, where it had been lying in state. It was carried out by squat people in heavy overcoats with astrakhan collars.