Everything Begins In Childhood

Chapter 62. Farewell to My Childhood

There probably hadn’t been a day during all my ten years of school that I hadn’t looked into this auditorium.

To begin with, the cafeteria was here, and we rushed in either to have lunch during the long recess or for a snack, if we attended the second session. By the way, they sold wonderfully tasty cookies there. Besides, this was also the auditorium where school assemblies were held. Various events would take place there – dances, children’s New Year’s Parties, concerts – it even had a stage.

Yet still, today I was sitting in this auditorium with a strange feeling, as if seeing it for the first time. It had become quite different, huge, with high ceilings, and… I would say, solemn. It felt that way perhaps because it had never been so quiet here, neither during assemblies nor lunch breaks. And now, it held students of the three tenth grade classes: A, B and C.

The last exam before graduation was underway; it was a composition.

Long tables carefully covered with tracing paper were arranged in three rows around the auditorium. There were just two students at each of the tables, sitting at opposite ends. Not even a chance to whisper to each other. I, by the way, was sitting in the row near the huge window, which was very pleasant. The window had been thrown open, and a light breeze, like a tender hand, patted me on the cheek, saying, “Calm down, calm down…”

I sighed and looked around – many heads bent over the tables, neat haircuts and hairdos, white shirts, smart blouses. They looked smart all right, but I could see that everybody’s faces, girls’ and boys’ alike, were tense. One thought could be easily detected on the tensest faces – it would be great to manage a look at a securely hidden crib sheet. Everyone had one. You had to be an A+ student and a show-off not to provide yourself with a crib sheet.

I know well that making a crib sheet is quite an ancient skill. A paper “accordion” is the simplest and most convenient. But it’s also rather unreliable – if you are careless enough, it might catch someone’s eye. Those who wear glasses, hide them in their glasses case. I knew boys who managed to stuff them into fountain pens. Many students use their own palms. And some calligraphy aces manage to write whatever they need on their fingernails, though that isn’t appropriate for a composition, better for math. It’s easier for girls. They have plenty of resources – the lap of their dress, the other side of their school apron, and even their own legs, on which a whole composition can be written. Irena Umerova was an unsurpassed expert when it came to that. There she sat, calm and contented. You could be sure that her legs were completely covered with writing.

Certainly, lovers of reading – I was one of them – felt more confident during a composition exam than the others. But an exam was an exam, particularly the pre-graduation exam. No matter how much you had studied and read, you still had that unpleasant quivering in your belly. Besides, there’s the “law of bad luck,” well known to all school and college students: during an exam you are often asked to cover the material you know least of all.

For example, it once happened to me during one of our annual exams in biology. I knew it quite well. I was almost an A student. Besides, I had prepared for the exam. It was my bad luck! Out of thirty cards to select from, I picked that very card. I will remember card number five for the rest of my life. It included the basics of evolution theory, the composition of a DNA molecule and many additional questions, including one about Gregor Mendel’s experiments. And that was the one I didn’t remember.

“Rats! Why did this one fall to my lot?” I thought in despair.

And I only received a lowly B.

Fortunately, there were no cards for the composition exam, and I chose my preferred subject. Now I don’t remember which one. No matter how much I enjoyed reading, literature as a school subject with its compulsory “reinforced concrete” formulations didn’t arouse any particular interest in me, more often – boredom. I would answer a question, write something and immediately forget it.

I was concerned with spelling and punctuation most of all. That’s why I had an excellent crib sheet – a tiny accordion on which I had written everything that could fit there, in my left palm. I “leafed” through it with a pen.

I had to do it very carefully: teachers sat side by side near the stage, observing us with watchful eyes. They did it in part with good intentions: if something was not clear to you, you could raise your hand, and a teacher would come to help you. But their help would be trifling, mostly regarding some unfortunate comma. It couldn’t substitute for a crib sheet, which definitely wasn’t easy to look at under their vigilant stares. On top of that, either Valentina Pavlovna or some other literature teacher paced up and down among the rows of tables, glancing to left and right.

I wrote and wrote, trying to be very neat for I was already making a clean copy, remembering my palm on which an accordion still lay, checking closely whether I had expressed my thoughts correctly and placed all the commas where they belonged. What else could possibly have filled my head? Oh well, I had only to become distracted for a second for an absolutely different thought to pop into my head. It’s funny that I don’t remember the subject of my composition, yet I remember what I was thinking about at that moment.

For example, I thought about the fact that I was sitting in that auditorium for the last time. Well, I would certainly attend the graduation event, but Yuabov the student would never come here again. I would also never enter my classroom. It would be interesting to know whether those who would later sit at my desk would be able to figure out what the initials I had scribbled on it stood for. R.C. was for Robinson Crusoe. And there were my own initials, V.Yu., next to them, but they were intricately intertwined. It was impossible to understand right away what they meant. Or I looked at the teachers who had grown a little tired, become distracted and even whispered to each other, and I thought that they were people I knew well, and there would be unfamiliar strangers at college. And I grew afraid.

College… two years earlier I had decided I would go to college. That’s why I stayed through the ninth grade. If you didn’t want to continue with higher education, you didn’t really need to finish high school.

At least that’s what some of my friends believed, those who preferred vocational schools, and some of them decided to begin to work right after the eighth grade. Rustem Zinedinov, for example, went to work at the construction site where his father worked. A few boys entered technical schools to study to become metal workers or lathe operators.

It had long ago been clear what my cousins Ilya and Yasha Shaakov would be engaged in. Their father, Uncle Mikhail, a driver, knew his trade and was fond of it, and he was obsessed with technical equipment in general. His sons took after him. Uncle Mikhail had a car, an old Pobeda (Victory), gray with a sloping backside. He took better care of it than anyone who tended to the President’s limo. Whenever I visited the Shaakovs, someone’s legs could be seen sticking out from under the car. They might belong to Uncle Mikhail, or to Uncle Mikhail and one of the boys, or to Yasha and Ilya. If they weren’t under the car, they would be standing near it with the hood up, probing the wires and other interior stuff. An ongoing discussion of yet another technical problem was underway when the jingling of tools in their hands was heard, or they were on their backs under the car, or they were busy “practicing witchcraft” under the hood. Terms and jargon used all the time by drivers could be heard right and left.

After finishing the eighth grade, my cousins began working as drivers without any additional training. By the way, when they were drafted, their favorite occupation helped out: instead of digging trenches and drilling, they just drove commanding officers and took care of their cars.

The future of Boris, Uncle Avner’s son, took shape long before he finished school. His musical talent was hereditary – from his grandfather and father. Boris began to play the violin when he was seven. He attended a music school, performed in concerts, took part in international competitions, and won the first prize at the republic-wide competition. After the eighth grade, he switched entirely to his music school. He had already attended it for two years, and in another two years, he could enter the music conservatory.

“That’s what happens to people who are talented,” I sometimes thought, not without envy. But what about me? Boris and I were relatives, cousins. Why couldn’t I love music as much as he? I had also attended a music school. Why had I given it up regardless of how much Mama had asked me not to?

What I definitely wanted was to get a higher education. But what field should I choose? What profession? There was complete chaos in my head on that account… My desires intertwined, boiled, replaced one another, and I couldn’t decide on any of them.

I imagined quite a few possibilities for myself when I was a child. My first sweet dream was to be a crane operator. I saw myself sitting there way up high… However, I’ve already written about that. The skeleton of a dinosaur was brought to Chirchik – I was a famous paleontologist… or archeologist… My passion for history, my interest in it wasn’t merely a child’s interest. It was nurtured by plenty of reading, and even malicious GooPoo, with his irksome lessons, couldn’t kill it.

My trouble was not so much in my constant changes of interests and plans, in my hesitance, doubts, in envying my friends who had already made their choices, in asking myself faint-heartedly, “Should I go to the tank school?” It was life itself that gave me the greatest difficulties. Life, as Ostap Bender, the hero of the famous book “Twelve Chairs” put it, dictated its harsh laws to us.

To begin with, I was a Jewish boy. I belonged to the Jewish community, which meant that I was growing up, to some extent, under the influence of its traditions.

When I became an adult, I read about Jewish families in Odessa who, in their time, were obsessed with the idea of turning their children into musicians. Strange as it may seem, some of the most brilliant Jewish musicians were actually natives of Odessa. Thanks to this mania, or it may have been the other way around, that the mania sprang up because of the rise of a few child prodigies, but that’s not my point. I thought about something else: many fates were ruined when children who hated music were forced into becoming professional musicians.

Fortunately, Bucharan Jews didn’t have that kind of fanaticism. Many of them had their children study music, but the only ones who became musicians, like Boris, were those who strived for it. However, there were quite a few predilections and also biases in our little world. I don’t denounce them, for many were the bitter fruits of the centuries-old struggle for survival. But…

When, for example, I told Mama that Kolya and Sasha would enter the tank school, and perhaps I should try it too, she just threw up her hands. I wasn’t surprised. I knew Mama would be against it. They thought the same in every Jewish family I knew – a military career was not for Jews; it was dangerous. A child would go far away from home, and in general… It wasn’t the proper milieu… There was terrible antisemitism in the army. People would tell each other about Jewish lads killed by someone in their own unit. The military commanders covered up those antisemitic killings. They would inform the parents that their son had had an accident while cleaning a rifle… One of our relatives had friends in Samarkand whose son had been killed. He served in a military battalion somewhere in Russia and was sent to cut timber. A guy who was cutting a tree next to him killed him with the butt of his axe. The parents were informed that it had been an accident… No one in our parts believed in such accidents.

In Jewish families it was assumed that if you wanted to study, you would obviously choose a profession that was reputable, prestigious and well paid. Become an engineer, a physician, a lawyer. Hardly anyone seriously cared about their son’s or daughter’s interests. It was the future position that was important. For example, what kind of a position was literature teacher? How much could such a teacher earn? It was much better to go into business. Get yourself a job at a store or a warehouse, and proper income would be guaranteed. Mama must have had the same attitude about “proper income” as everyone else in her circle. She herself suffered enough from a constant, humiliating lack of money. But she understood perfectly well that I was not cut out for a store or warehouse or any other similar occupation. With my personality, I wouldn’t fit in there. She certainly would not encourage me to make such a choice. On the contrary, she wanted me to continue my studies so I could earn a living with my head, not my hands, so to speak. “I couldn’t do it,” she used to say, “I didn’t have the opportunity. But Emma and you… Believe me, to toil at a sewing machine twelve hours a day… Believe me.” Of course, we saw how hard Mama worked.

All right, it was certainly necessary to study, and I really wanted to. So far, it wasn’t quite clear what to study, but that was only a minor misfortune. The real problem was getting into an institution of higher learnng.

A forbidden, venomous and very popular song was sung in those times: “But then, we manufacture missiles, we build a dam across the Yenisei, and even in the field of ballet, we are ahead of our whole planet.” It was considered that in the field of education we were also ahead of our whole planet, for school and college education was free in the Soviet Union. That’s how it was at schools, from primary to high school, without the cheating. But then the cheating would begin.

There weren’t enough colleges. There were twice as many applicants, sometimes three times as many, or even ten times as many as a college could admit. The flood of those eager to study ran into a granite wall with a narrow slit. Only ten or fifteen per cent of those who relied on their own knowledge and abilities could slip through that slit. But even among the lucky ones, the majority of those admitted were either honor students (awarded gold or silver medals at graduation) or athletes, for each college wanted to become famous for its soccer or basketball players. The rest of the quota was reserved for those who were either well connected with someone at a college or had someone who could pull strings on their behalf or pay a bribe.

It was called “greasing someone’s palm.” Practically all the teachers were willing to have their “palms greased.” Provosts, deans, and other college officials enriched themselves from this annual competition. The price of having a son or daughter on the list of the admitted was considerable – from ten to twenty thousand rubles. That’s what it cost in our parts. It was much higher in republics like Georgia and Armenia. What could be bought with ten or twenty thousand rubles in those days? That was the price of a Zhiguly car. Converted into our family’s budget, it would be Mama’s total salary for four or five years of work at the factory. Some people used a Volga car as a bribe. The chicest Soviet Volga cost about twenty thousand.

I heard about the price from Zhenya Suchkov, who had recently taken up residence in our building. Zhenya wanted to become a physician and hoped to enter the medical school in Tashkent, in the evening department. He didn’t dream of making it into the daytime department where the competition was over twenty applicants per slot. “If only we had twenty-five thousand. That would be quite a different story. We would buy a Volga, and onward! You can only drive into the daytime department in a Volga,” Zhenya used to say with bitterness. His father was a military man, but he didn’t have twenty-five thousand, nor even ten thousand. Zhenya tried to enter the medical school without pulling strings or paying a bribe for two years in a row. He didn’t succeed. But he was a persistent young man: he went to the old Russian town of Tver and managed to make it into the evening department there. He either did it himself or with someone’s help.

Everyone knew about the bribes paid for entering college. And, of course, everybody was outraged. But it didn’t occur to anyone to protest, to fight that insolent bribery. Corruption was everywhere. It corroded the country like rust. People had grown used to it. And that was, probably, the most dreadful thing.

Yes, I overlooked one “trifle.” If you, for some reason, were not a Komsomolets (for those who don’t know: a member of the Young Communist League), you needn’t even try to enter college. They wouldn’t admit you, without even giving you a reason.

So, what could I possibly count on?

My parents began to think and worry about that issue much earlier than I, and in a different way. The question of bribes wasn’t discussed; there was no money for bribes. Something else was discussed: who could help and where did they have any acquaintances. No matter how much they discussed it, it always boiled down to one and the same person: Uncle Misha, Papa’s brother.

Uncle Misha was an “important person,” one who could have helped under the circumstances: he taught physics at the Tashkent Pedagogical Institute. Besides, he had been a member of the Institute’s selection committee more than once. What could be better and more reliable? Members of the committee had opportunities: they could ask other teachers not to give a D to their protégé, to push a protégé, even if he or she had received a C, onto the list of the admitted.

I think that my parents, without discussing it with me, counted on Misha’s help. When I entered the tenth grade, I was glad that the choice had been made without my participation. I had hesitated and suffered until it all became clear at last – there was simply no other way to do it. On top of that, I liked natural sciences, though I wasn’t an A student. After all, there was nothing wrong with becoming a physics teacher. Didn’t I want to become a history teacher?

To teach, to be a mentor – I began to think about it as something wonderful, but I did so in a childish way. I remembered, certainly with pleasure, how, after becoming a Young Pioneer in the third grade, I was a leader of the Octobrists. I taught them rules and songs, and they looked at me with respect. I began to consider our physics teacher Izolda Zakharovna a future colleague. By the way, Izolda Zakharovna quite deserved my rapt attention. She was a young, very beautiful, slender blonde with a smile that… sometimes my heart skipped a beat, and I accepted any of her reprimands with delight. And there were quite a few reprimands. Even though Izolda had a seductive smile, she was strict and demanding.

“Yuabov, you haven’t read today’s material closely.”

And that wasn’t the worst. She might say, “Your attitude toward physics isn’t serious.”

That was distressing, right? But Izolda Zakharovna was the only teacher in our school who addressed us in a formal way, “vou,” not “tou.”

In short, I easily reconciled myself to the fact that I would become a physicist. I didn’t have any difficulties on that account. Unfortunately, it turned out that Uncle Misha did have some.

In precisely that year, when I was supposed to enter college, Uncle Misha wasn’t included on the selection committee. For this reason, he found it humiliating to ask other teachers not to make it hard on his nephew, to ask that the members of the selection committee include him on the list of the admitted. So, he told my father that he wouldn’t be able to help.

You can imagine how upset my parents were and the anger of my proud, pushy father who had managed to “shove” me into school when I was still a year too young for the first grade.

But still, it was Mama who secured help, thanks to her friendship with Aunt Valya, Misha’s wife. As the girlfriends got together once again, they talked about it, and Valya said, “Ester, don’t worry. I’ll persuade him. Just think – he cannot help! He’ll do it if it’s necessary. He’ll go and ask whoever’s in charge about it.”

Everything was worked out before my graduation exams: Misha had agreed to talk to the “proper people,” and he had done so. It meant that I was about to become a college student. The expectation of changes was so strong, so new… Now, it stayed with me all the time.

I was looking over the auditorium, my classmates, the teachers. And, suddenly, perhaps just for a second, it seemed to me that it wasn’t I but some other boy with a crib sheet squeezed in his sweaty palm sitting at the long table, and I was looking at him from afar, looking at my childhood…

“That’s it, boys and girls… Hand in your compositions.” I fell back to earth. I gathered my papers and walked to the teachers’ table.

The End

Cover and illustrations are by Alexander Valdman

Literary Editor Raisa Mirer