Katya Zueva, the mail girl, passed out numbers, and everyone began writing love letters. Katya darted around the room delivering them. Victor Yulievich stood over by the window, waiting for the moment when he could slip away to the teachers’ lounge for a smoke. Just as he got to the door, the mail girl intercepted him and thrust two letters into his hand at the same time. He tucked them away in his pocket. “I love you” was scrawled on one of them; it had no return address. The other one read: “Do you like Pasternak’s prose?” That one was from number 56.
Victor Yulievich went downstairs to the teachers’ room, where two young elementary-school teachers—one pretty, the other rather plain—were whispering and giggling together like eighth-graders. They were also obviously hoping to get some romantic pleasure, their small share of happiness, from the evening.
Victor Yulievich tore up the love note and threw the pieces in the ashtray. The older girls at school fell into two groups: those who adored Victor Yulievich, and, a smaller group, those who preferred the gym teacher. The literature teacher opened the other letter—it had been written with a hard pencil in a round, girlish script, very faint. Rising to the challenge, he wrote his answer: “Except for The Childhood of Zhenya Lyuvers.” He folded it up and wrote “56” on the back, and then began to muse. He had been thinking that nothing had ever been written about the childhood of girls in Russian literature. How could he have forgotten Pasternak’s early novella? He had read it before the war, when he was just a boy, and its intricacy, its contrived unevenness, its elusive structure, and its superfluity of words had not appealed to him. But this was, it seemed, the only work about a girl’s childhood in all of Russian literature. How could he have overlooked it? It contained everything that preoccupied him now: the awakening of consciousness, a psychological catastrophe that prefigured the enormous physiological changes the girl would soon, without warning, undergo. Even her first experience of death! He wanted to reread it immediately, without delay. But his home library contained no Pasternak. He’d have to look for it at the Lenin Library.
He went back to the auditorium, and passed the note back to the mail girl, Katya. He had missed the human pyramid and Schubert. The music had died down altogether now—a waltz had just ended. People shuffled back to their places by the wall. Suddenly, a ringing slap, uncannily loud, resounded through the dusty stillness. Everyone turned to look. In the middle of the room stood a lanky couple—Anya Filimonova in her absurd gypsy attire and Yura Burkin. Anya was clutching her shawl, which she had removed, to her chest. Yura was pressing his hand to his cheek, where the trace of the sturdy volleyball-playing hand was blooming, compliments of his resolute partner.
It was a scene worthy of Gogol. But the curtain did not fall. Everyone continued to stand rooted to the spot, expecting the plot to unfold. And unfold it did: Yura removed his hand from his cheek, raised it slightly, and brushed it across his partner’s face. It made the sound of a smacking kiss.
The crowd let out a quiet gasp—Oooooooh! Katya threw herself at her friend, everything came to life, everyone was overwrought. Anya, who had turned scarlet, wept on Katya’s shoulder. Through sobs, one could make out:
“He … He … blew his nose on my shawl!”
Yura rushed out of the auditorium. Katya looked around. “Is there no one here willing to stand up for her honor?”
She was pale, trembling, filled with fury, and it was clear that she would lose no time in trying to destroy the offender herself. All year she had talked about nothing but noble men and beautiful ladies!
Mikha flew out the door, as though he had wings on his feet. He caught up to Yura in the boys’ bathroom. His hands shaking, Yura was smoking one of his father’s cigarettes, which he had pinched the night before. He didn’t even smoke, it made him queasy. He had been trying to get used to it since sixth grade, but couldn’t. But he liked the act of smoking, just to hold the cigarette in his hand, and this time, he suspected that it wasn’t even going to make him feel queasy.
Mikha grabbed the cigarette out of his hand, broke it in two, tossed it aside, and then said in a slow, calm, contemptuous voice, “A duel! I challenge you to a duel!”
“Mikha, are you nuts? A duel? What duel? She just can’t take a joke, the idiot.”
“We won’t shoot, we have no pistols. We have no weapons whatsoever. Hand-to-hand combat will have to do, but we’ll stick to all the rules.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“So you’re a coward. On top of being an insolent boor,” Mikha said.
“Okay, okay, if that’s what you want,” Yura said, reluctant but also conciliatory. “When?”
“Today.”
“But it’s already nine thirty!”
* * *
Mikha summoned up all his organizational skills and the duel took place an hour later at Milyutin Park.
The tenth-graders tried to talk Yura out of it, and the ninth-graders worked on Mikha. The rules of the duel were invented on the fly.
Yura whined the whole way, “Mikha, why are you itching to have your face punched in? I need to get home. My father is going to yell at me, my mother has probably gone to school to find out what happened to me.”
But Mikha was adamant.
“A duel! Till the first drop of blood.”
Ilya and Sanya exchanged glances, winked at each other, and even snickered a bit between themselves. Sanya said, “Our little bleeding Jesus!”
Mikha’s second was Ilya, and Yura’s was Vasya Egorochkin. The snow in the park had settled in big drifts, and the seconds had to stamp out a small area for the fight. Sanya suggested that they use leather gloves for the fight, but none of them owned such a luxury. For some reason, Sanya felt sure that fighting with bare fists was against the rules.
“The ancient Greeks wrapped leather belts around their fists.”
Where had he picked that up? But he spoke with confidence. He just knew, that’s all. And they had belts galore. The seconds took off their own belts, hooked them together to make one long one, and laid it in the snow between the duelers, as a barrier. The duelers were supposed to approach it and start to fight on the count of three.
The duelers wrapped their school-uniform belts around their fists, but with the clasps inside their palms. It was very uncomfortable.
“Maybe we can manage without the belts?” Yura suggested. Mikha didn’t even deign to answer him. Ilya suggested that Burkin convey his formal apologies. Mikha rejected this on reasonable grounds.
“The apologies are due to the lady herself.”
Yura’s spirits lifted. “By all means! I’ll apologize right away!”
In view of the absence of the lady in question, the truce was declined. Mikha took off his glasses and handed them to Sanya. They threw off their coats.
“Maybe that’s enough already?” Sanya whispered.
“Just hold it!” Mikha burst out, infuriated. Ilya started counting. On the count of three, they went at each other.