Victor Yulievich walked into the office, and the principal turned to him theatrically, saying, “Just look at our fine students!”
They had such a pathetic, hangdog look about them that it was clear they needed to be comforted, rather than punished. Victor Yulievich reached for the empty bottle on the principal’s desk, turned it around to look at the label, and said, “This is certainly worth a reprimand. Godawful stuff.”
The principal launched into her spiel.
“Now then. Your parents have been informed, and we will discuss the matter further when they arrive. In the meantime, I want to know who else was in on this. If you don’t tell me their names, you will be expelled from school.”
They had acted alone, but Larisa Stepanovna was certain there had been a whole gang of them up there.
“Tarasov, why are you looking at me with such an insolent expression on your face? That goes for you, too, Maximov. Tell me the names of your accomplices. I want their names! And don’t think you can cover for them, and they’ll be off the hook. We’ll find them out anyway. Only it will be all the worse for you.”
“Hmm, this stuff is truly vile,” Victor Yulievich said with emphasis. “Where did you get it?”
“Bought it,” Maximov answered readily.
“Do your parents drink this at home, too?”
“No, my mother doesn’t drink at all,” Maximov lied.
This shady investigation continued until Tarasov’s father, a lieutenant colonel in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, arrived in his official car. Larisa Stepanovna told him the whole story. He stood there, shaking with fury. “We’ll sort it out,” the lieutenant colonel said darkly. It was clear that his son would pay dearly for this.
“When is your mother going to get here?” Larisa Stepanovna said. Obviously, she was getting bored with the drawn-out, fruitless interrogation. Moreover, her presence was required in the auditorium.
“My mother went to Kaluga to visit my aunt.”
Larisa Stepanovna paused. Her train of thought was etched on her face.
“I’ll take responsibility for him. When the party has ended, I’ll make sure he gets home. So that he isn’t picked up by the police, by mistake,” Victor Yulievich said, placing his left hand on Maximov’s shoulder.
“Leave,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “And don’t come back to school without your mother, Maximov.”
This warning meant absolutely nothing, since school had already let out for the summer. It would be three months before it started again.
Victor Yulievich led poor Maximov to the auditorium, and pointed at a chair.
“Sit down, Maximov. Be quiet, and try not to attract attention.”
Maximov nodded gratefully. His mother wasn’t in Kaluga at all. Her boyfriend from Alexandrov had arrived, and the two were at home getting drunk.
* * *
When he was writing his play, Mikha tried to capture in rhyme the whole of his vast knowledge of literature. The actors also took a creative view of Mikha’s masterpiece and made their own contributions to it. In the end, the script had ballooned to two hundred pages.
Two weeks before the graduation party, when exams were already in progress and everyone was cramming for algebra and chemistry, Ilya took Mikha’s script, cut it up into chunks and bits, then reshuffled them until a plot—at first impossible to discern—emerged. The story described the journey of a group of dimwits, all recognizable by their real names, who would just be on the verge of misfortune or catastrophe, when the higher powers—an incarnation of Victor Yulievich, from Zeus to the policeman—would intervene to save the day.
Victor Yulievich was played by Senya Svinin, the best actor in the class—he was going to enroll in the theater academy. He wore a papier-mâché mask that bore a passing resemblance to Victor Yulievich. His right arm was not in the sleeve of his jacket. Instead, they had folded up the sleeve halfway and pinned it.
It was all terribly silly and terribly funny. A statue of Zeus toppled over and smashed into bits, and Svinin-Shengeli, shaking the dust off, crawled out. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin searched high and low for some lost object. In the end it turned out that he had been looking for a dainty little foot. About fifty mannequin legs, their stocking feet aloft, floated out onto the stage. Chekhov’s gun, in the guise of a child’s toy wooden rifle, ended up in the hands of one of Turgenev’s hunters, and fired a shot—after which a seagull made out of an old rag plummeted down with a hideous screech.
The whole phantasmagorical drama centered on dear Victor Yulievich, of course.
Sanya Steklov, in a curly wig and a velvet robe, sat at the piano and played to perfection in the spots where the text faltered a bit.
Then, raising their voices in unison, they sang an anthem, also written by Mikha, which it would be a crime to omit.
Both many-armed and many-eyed,
He faced our death, and death defied
(For each of us one time he tried)
And that is why our time we bide
To tell his story far and wide.
Yes, Yulievich, we’re on your side!
You showed the truth, you never lied—
That we have noble blood inside.
At your command, it is our pride
To rally to your call, not hide,
And follow in your footsteps, ride
The waves, or fly, to keep in stride
With Victor Yulievich, our sun,
Who’ll light our way for years to come.
When the song was over, there was not a single teacher left in the auditorium. All of them had escaped to the teachers’ lounge, fuming in indignation. They had been scorned! For this reason they hadn’t even seen the end of the play, when the actors gathered in a circle on the stage to discuss what to give their beloved teacher as parting gift. They entertained, and dismissed, several highly comical suggestions before deciding that the gift had to be something unparalleled, something invaluable, something that “wouldn’t run out” (that is, it couldn’t be eaten or drunk). And it had to be useful! And bring joy! At last, they dragged onto the stage an enormous box, the size of a person. They removed the top lid and revealed a plaster statue inside: a slender young girl in a tunic. She stood there quite naturally in a Classical pose, until they commanded: “Forward!”
The statue came to life. It was Katya Zueva, covered in whitewash. It must be said that it hadn’t been easy to talk her into playing the role.
Then she walked through the auditorium amid rousing applause, and kneeled down at Victor Shengeli’s feet.
* * *
After it was all over, they removed the extra chairs from the auditorium and set up tables. The teachers were nowhere to be seen. Victor Yulievich went to the teachers’ lounge to negotiate for the strikers to pick up their tools again.
They were waiting for him. Larisa Stepanovna was the first to speak.
“On behalf of the teachers’ collective, Victor Yulievich, I am obliged to inform you…” the principal began with a triumphal air.
But Victor Yulievich quickly realized what she was going to say. He did the first thing that came to mind—he took a glasses case out of his jacket pocket, removed a pair of old-fashioned steel-rimmed glasses, perched them on his long, regularly formed nose. Then he went up to Larisa Stepanovna. He leaned down to peer at her infamous butterfly brooch pinned to the collar of her blouse, and said in a saccharine tone, “Oh my, how charming! What a dear little piglet it is!”
“Get out!” Larisa Stepanovna shouted. In a voice scarlet with fury, the literature teacher thought.
Strains of music sounded from the auditorium.
“Why are you all so on edge? Let’s go drink some lemonade and dance. The kids are waiting for you!”
He smiled his disarming smile, while thinking to himself: What a pompous son of a gun I was. I shouldn’t have behaved like that. Why did I have to humiliate them? And poor Larisa Stepanovna, the corners of her mouth turned down, like a hurt little girl. She looked like she might start sobbing. What bad kids they were … But what can I do about it now? Surely not ask their forgiveness.