For the Good of the Cause (5 page)

“Well, Valery,” she asked the young man in the yellow shirt with the sailboats, “do you think you got any wiser during the vacation?”

Valery smiled smugly: “Of course not! I got stupider.”

“And doesn’t that bother you? The girls won’t think very much of you.”

“Yes, they will!”

Judging by the expressions of the two girls, he had every reason for his self-confidence.

“What did you read during the summer?”

“Practically nothing, ma’am,” Valery replied as smugly as ever. He was not, it seemed, very eager to pursue the conversation.

“But why?” Lidia asked, rather put out. “Why did I waste my time teaching you?”

“Because it was in the syllabus, I guess,” Valery shot back.

“If we read books, where would we find time for movies and TV?” the two girls burst in. “There’s always something on TV.”

Other fourth-year students gathered around.

Lidia frowned. Her thick, fair hair was pulled straight back, exposing her high forehead, on which both her disappointment and perplexity could be clearly seen.

“Of course, it’s not for me, a teacher in a school where you learn about television sets, to try to turn you against TV. Watch it by all means, but not all the time! And besides, there’s no comparison … A show on TV isn’t lasting. It’s just for a day …”

“But it’s interesting and alive!” the young people insisted. “And then there’s dancing”

“And ski-jumping!”

“And motorcycling!”

“Books last for centuries!” Lidia said curtly but with a smile.

“Books last only one day, too,” said a very serious young man. He was so round-shouldered he almost looked hunchbacked.

“Whatever gave you that idea?” Lidia asked indignantly.

“Just go to any bookstore,” the round-shouldered boy said, “and you’ll see how many novels are gathering dust in the windows. The shelves are piled high with them. Come back a year later, and they are still there. There’s a bookstore on the block where I live and I know. After a while they pack them up and can them away. A driver told me they are pulped and made into paper again. What was the point of printing them in the first place?”

In their second year, these boys had been her students. They had never said things like this. They had worked so well and gotten such good marks.

A discussion like this couldn’t really be carried on while standing in a doorway amid all this commotion. But Lidia didn’t want to drop it. That would have been a mistake.

“Well, you better have another look and see what
kind
of books are made into pulp!”

“I have looked, and I’ll tell you if you like.” The boy stood his ground. He wrinkled his forehead shrewdly. “Some of them were highly praised in the newspapers.”

But the others were all talking at the same time, drowning out his voice. Anikin, the top student of his class—a husky fellow with a camera slung over his shoulder—pushed his way to the front. (They always listened to him.)

“Lidia Georgievna, let’s be frank. At the beginning of the vacation you gave us a terribly long list of books, not one of them less than five hundred pages. How long does it take to read a book like that? Two months? And it’s always an epic, a trilogy—‘to be continued.’ Who do they publish them for?”

“For the critics,” came the answer.

“To make money.”

“Maybe that’s it,” Anikin agreed. “Because technicians—and that’s most of us in this country—must read technical literature and special journals to keep posted. Otherwise they’d get kicked out of their jobs, and rightly so.”

“Right!” shouted the boys. “And when do we have time to read the sports magazines?”

“And what about movie magazines?”

“To my way of thinking,” Anikin said impatiently, “authors who in this day and age write such long things really have a lot of nerve! We always have to find the most economical solutions when we design a circuit. When I sat in on the orals last year, the examiners kept on interrupting with questions like: ‘Couldn’t this be made shorter? Or simpler? Or cheaper?’ Look at the son of thing they write in the
Literary Gazette
. ‘The characters,’ they say, ‘are too stereotyped and the plot is disjointed, but the ideas are just great!’ That’s like someone here saying: ‘There’s no current, the whole thing doesn’t work, but the condensers are perfect.’ Why don’t they just say: ‘This novel could have been one-tenth as long, and that one isn’t worth reading.’”

“Well, I agree, some things could be shorter,” Lidia said promptly.

The group of students surrounding her, which had steadily grown, howled with pleasure. That’s what they liked about her: She never lied, and if she said she agreed, she meant it.

“But don’t forget, books are a record of the people of our time, people like you and me, and about all the great things we have accomplished!”

“Memoirs are the thing nowadays,” a boy with glasses and a funny-looking crew cut called out from the back. “Anyone who has reached the age of fifty or so goes and writes his memoirs—all about how he was born and got married. Any dope can write that kind of stuff.”

“It all depends on
how
they are written,” Lidia called back. “As long as they also write about the times they live in.”

“But the kind of nonsense they put down,” the boy said indignantly.” ‘I caught a chill while strolling in the garden.’ ‘I came to the city and there were no rooms to be had in the hotel… ’”

The others pushed him aside and shut him up.

“About keeping things short, I’d like to say something.” Another student raised his hand.

“I want to say something about the classics.” Still another one raised his hand.

Lidia, seeing all their eager faces, smiled happily. She didn’t care how excited they got or how they baited her. People who argue are open to persuasion. What she feared most of all in young people was indifference.

“Go ahead,” she said to the first one, the one who wanted to speak about the need for precision in writing.

This was Chursanov, a boy with unruly hair, wearing a gray shin with a turned and mended collar. His father was dead, and his mother, who worked as a caretaker, had other, younger children. That’s why he had to quit regular school at fourteen and switch to a technical school. He hadn’t been getting very good marks in Russian, but ever since he was little he had been putting together radio receivers. Here at the school they thought he was brilliant at it. He could find faulty connections without even looking at a diagram, as though he sensed them.

“Listen,” Chursanov called out shrilly, “Anikin’s right. Time is short. We can’t afford to waste it. So what do I do? I just don’t read novels and things at all.”

They all roared with laughter.

“But you said you wanted to say something about keeping things short.”

“So I do,” Chursanov said in a tone of surprise. “When I’m at home, I turn on the radio. There’s the news or a talk or something and at the same time I’m getting dressed or eating or fixing something. That’s how I save time.”

There was more laughter.

“What are you cackling about?” Chursanov asked, taken aback.

“There’s really nothing to laugh about,” Marta Pochryonnykh came to his aid. She was a big, round-faced, rather plain-looking girl with thick black braids open at the ends. “Don’t you agree, ma’am? It all depends on the book. It’s all right if it tells you something you can’t find anywhere else. But if all there’s in it is something you can hear on the radio or read in the papers, then what’s the point? Things are shorter and livelier in the newspapers.”

“And they get things right. They don’t make mistakes,” somebody else called out.

“But what about the
way
things are said—the style?” a girl with a fresh complexion asked coyly.

“What do you mean, style? What’s wrong with the style in the papers?”

“Lit-er-ary style, I mean,” she answered, nodding her head at every syllable for emphasis.

“What do you mean by that?” Chursanov asked with a puzzled look. “People falling in love and all that? Is that what you mean?”

“Of course style is important,” Lidia said heatedly. She put her hand to her breast as though there was nothing of which she was more convinced. “You see, a book must go into the psychological aspect of things …”

She was hemmed in by them on all sides, but not all of them could hear her, and they were talking and shouting to each other. Her face was flushed.

“You just wait!” she said, trying to calm the rebels. “I won’t let you get away with it. We’re going to have a big auditorium in the new building, so in September we’ll have a debate.” She gripped Anikin and Marta firmly by the shoulders. “I’ll get all of you up on the platform, everybody who’s had something to say today, and then …”

“Here he comes, here he comes!” The shout of the younger students was taken up by the older ones. One after the other, the young ones broke away, running faster and faster. The older ones got out of their way and turned to look after them. Teachers and students stuck their heads out of the second-story windows.

The school’s battered pick-up truck, lurching, bumping, and splashing mud, was approaching from the direction of the town. The principal and his driver could be seen through the windshield of the cab being pitched from side to side. The students who had been the first to rush forward noticed that, for some reason or other, the principal looked anything but happy.

And their shouting ceased.

They ran alongside the truck until it came to a stop. Fyodor Mikheyevich, a short, stocky man in a plain, worn blue suit, bareheaded, with graying hair, climbed down from the cab and looked around. He had to get to the doorway, but his way was blocked by the young people crowding in on him from both sides, watching and waiting. Some of the more impatient ones started to ask questions:

“What’s the news, sir?”

“When will it be?”

Then, louder, from the back of the crowd:

“Are we moving?”

“When do we move?”

Once again he looked over the dozens of expectant, questioning faces. It was obvious that he would nor be able to put off answering them until he got upstairs. He’d have to do so right there and then. “When?” “When do we move?” The youngsters had been asking these questions all spring and summer. But at that time the principal and homeroom teachers had been able to brush off all such questions with a smile, saying: “It all depends on you. On how you work.” But now Fyodor could do nothing but sigh and, not concealing his irritation, he said:

“We shall have to wait a little longer, Comrades. The builders haven’t quite finished yet.”

His voice always sounded a little hoarse, as though he had a cold.

A murmur was heard among the students. “More waiting.” “Still not ready.” “And the term begins the day after tomorrow, September first.” “So now we’ll have to go back to furnished rooms again.”

The boy in the bright yellow shirt with the sailboats on it smirked and said to his girl friends:

“What did I tell you? Always the same old story. And mark my words, that’s not the end of it.”

They began to shout questions:

“But can’t we finish it ourselves?”

The principal smiled and said:

“I see you want to do everything yourselves now! But I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

The girls standing in front tried hard to make him change his mind: “But, sir, can’t we move in anyway? What still has to be done?”

The principal, a heavy-set man with a high forehead, looked at them in some embarrassment:

“Come now, girls, surely I don’t have to give you all the details? … First of all, the floors are still not dry in spots …”

“Then we won’t walk on them! We’ll put boards across them!”

“Then a lot of windows still don’t have catches.”

“That doesn’t matter, it’s still warm enough.”

“The central heating hasn’t been tested yet.”

“That’s nothing. That can wait till winter.”

“On, and a lot of other little things …”

Fyodor gestured helplessly. His forehead was a mass of wrinkles. How could he explain to them all the formalities involved in taking over the building? A deed of transfer had to be signed by the builders and by the other contracting party. The builder was ready to sign and hand over the building right away. And Fyodor was now so pressed for time that he too would have signed right away if only the school were the other contracting party. But this was impossible from a legal point of view, because the school had no one competent to make the required survey. Therefore the building office of the local relay factory had placed the contract on the school’s behalf. The plant was in no hurry to sign for the building before it was quite ready, especially since it meant infringing on the regulations. Khabalygin, the manager of the plant, had been promising Fyodor all summer long that he would sign for the building in August, come what may. But recently he had been saying: “Nothing doing, Comrades. We won’t sign the deed before they’ve put in the last screw.” And technically he was right.

The girls went on plaintively:

“Oh, we
do
so want to move. Our hearts are set on it so.”

“
Why
are you so set on it?” Chursanov shouted at them. He was standing on slightly higher ground than the others. “Whatever happens we’ve got to put in a month on a kolkhoz. Who cares which building we go from—this one or the other?”

“Oh, yes, the kolkhoz!” They suddenly remembered. Working on the building site all summer they had forgotten about the farm work.

“We won’t be going this year,” Lidia called out from the back.

It was only now that the principal noticed her.

“Why aren’t we going? Why not?” they asked her.

“You should read the local paper, my friends. Then you’d know why.”

“I bet we’ll go anyway.”

The principal pushed his way through the crowd and moved toward the door. Lidia caught up with him on the stairway, which was just wide enough for two people.

“Fyodor Mikheyevich! But they
will
let us have it in September, won’t they?”

“Yes, they will,” he replied absently.

“We’ve worked out a wonderful plan for moving everything over between lunch on Saturday and Monday morning, so as not to interfere with schoolwork. We’re going to split up into groups. The Committee is arranging it now.”