Всё будет хорошо / Everything will be fine

Everything will be fine

A young teacher by the name of Heinrich Shosholko looked out the window, and felt wretched. There were three men standing by the half-open gate. “They are here for you,” said his landlady Karpovna, from behind his back, stirring the frying potatoes. It was not clear if she was encouraging him or gloating. The teacher already knew those three had come for him, and even had an inkling why. He could stay inside of course - they would hardly barge into the house. He couldn’t care less what Karpovna thought. He could pretend to be checking the homework.

But things were complicated by the fact that his neighbour Larisa had come out of the house next door with two buckets, and was heading for the water pump under the elm tree, a few steps away from the gate. While her buckets were filling with water, she would realize that Comrade Teacher had chickened out. Heinrich could not let that happen. Twice, when they had met by chance on the bus coming back from the district center, he had laid out his views on life and claimed that he would stand his ground no matter what, and now, was he afraid to confront three drunk men? He had told her that he’d chosen the little village of Sukhinovka after Teachers’ Training college, because it was a remote spot with real, salt of the earth folk –  a “spiritual virgin land”. Let the adult victims of perestroika drink themselves to death – they for the most part are lost cases, but the new young generation now growing up, we have to “intercept them” and direct them towards our “culture’s true channel”. And to this end one has  to “start from the base”, from the wellspring of national knowledge. "And I have, indeed have a real, full-fledged programme!”

"And what, Heinrich Ivanovich, do you take me too for an elderly element?" asked Larisa, who had been working as a cashier at the village store since tenth grade; a few years now. Heinrich fiercely shook his hairy, bespectacled head - no, no, you need to study, because the world, as they say, is your oyster.

“There is a zootechnical school in Kalinov,” the cute salesgirl drawled, musing.

"Well, technical school is well and good, but there is also the regional level and higher still..."

 "Higher," the girl laughed, "is that the  Moon, or what?" The girl fidgeted on the seat, brushing the teacher with a firm thigh. He couldn’t find the right words at this moment.

Heinrich stood up abruptly, threw a jacket over his shoulders to look less puny, and marched to the gate. The figures were familiar. The one in a gray suit and creased cap with a briefcase under his arm was Ryabov from the Village Council. Second was Kuzyakin, a guy in oily overalls and rough boots who resembled the actor Andreev from "The Tractor Drivers". And he actually was a tractor driver as well as being a local authority.

 The third one was, of course, the man known as Sponsor, a well-read local drunk in a blue sweatshirt and tank top, with a cheap cigarette hanging from his lower lip.

The teacher, trying to avoid looking towards Larisa and her clanging bucket, removed a lock from his forehead with an air of independence, and adjusted his glasses.

“What’s up?”

Ryabov hissed holding onto his cap. Kuzyakin-Andreev put his hands on his hips and sucked in the air noisily through his huge gapped teeth. Sponsor giggled.

“The whole Entente is here to negotiate, but he ...”

The tractor driver made a sh-sh sound pointing at the teacher and looking directly into his trembling glasses said:

“Did they call you in?”

“Well, they did, but ...”

“Did they explain it to you?”

“Well, I also gave an explanation...”

“So what the hell are you doing starting over again, huh?” At the end of the question, the tractor driver’s voice got so low that the teacher had to gather all his strength not to lose his nerve, nor take a step back. He didn’t, and even launched a verbal counterattack.

“Bear in mind that I am not breaking any rules. I am merely reading folk tales to the children. Russian folk tales. Got it?”

“No, I haven’t!” the accountant tore his cap off his head, “My little Lena woke up four times last night, you see? Four times! A bear comes up to her looking for his paw. She sits in her bed bawling her eyes out. She’s an impressionable girl, but ...”

Kuzyakin waved to shut him up.

“Dreams are all very well, but when it comes to real life, what then?”

Heinrich Ivanovich nevertheless took half a step back and asked:

“What do you mean?”

Kuzyakin smiled menacingly.

“My fool of a son Vanka took a paling from behind the house, crept up to my mother-in-law while she was bending over a row of potatoes, weeding, and suddenly whacks her on the hump. Down she goes. Lifeless.”

Sponsor twisted the side of his face hidden from Kuzyakin, reflecting not so much on the tragic but the comic side of the situation.

“I turn to him, and say, what do you think you are doing?! And he says, don't worry dad, I know how to get rid of that dead meat. He actually used the word "meat." We’ll drag her to the road and throw her under a jeep, and we’ll be quids in”.

Heinrich Ivanovich looked down, awkwardly. The plot was all too familiar to him, and he remembered with what interest the children had heard the folk tale in which it is so masterfully elaborated.

There were few pupils in the Sukhinovka school. The seventh graders sat with the first graders. Heinrich Ivanovich was responsible for the humanities: history, Russian, literature and singing. All the Sciences were Alla Petrovna’s. The PE and handicraft teacher was the headmaster himself, Ivan S. Crossbill. At the teachers’ meetings everyone unanimously deplored the situation – it is impossible for all the age groups to be stewing in one pot simultaneously. "But that's life." One shouldn’t be defeated by difficulties! On the contrary, you show your mettle in a tough school, and not in a fancy, city lyceum!

Heinrich Shosholko stood up and adopted a posture which showed his human and professional dignity to the greatest extent. “You must understand, these are Russian folk tales... They, alongside the epics, lay the foundation for the Slavic imagination, the basis of the national mindset.”

The tractor driver leaned forward, frowning grimly. “My mother-in-law is still crawling on all fours, my wife is sobbing, and Vanka is walking around, whistling, without a care. Whom, with your assistance, are we raising our children to be, at our peril?”

"I’m telling you...”

“Don't be telling me! Cut it out! "

Ryabov furiously put his cap back on his head. The teacher took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

"Think of what you are dooming your children to. Well, Ryabov, your little Lena, should she watch Cheburashkas and Teletubbies till the end of her days? –

“Why till the end of her days?"

“ ...And quietly turn into a Barbie doll? And your Vanya must be stuffed to bursting on Ninjaturtles, and then the Terminator and Predators, right?”

“Yes, violence is just pouring from the screens,” Sponsor muttered, unexpectedly philosophical.

Kuzyakin glanced sidelong at the renegade in distaste, who took fright and waved his extinguished cigarette, trying to assure the leader that he was faithful to their original, consolidated position.

“And finally, do you understand those are all foreign situations, foreign realities, thought up by foreign brains. It’s poison for our children. The reprogramming of the national mentality. An Eskimo guy goes off the rails after a shot of alcohol, and then he is addicted to alcohol for life. Do you see what I'm talking about? And I am dragging your children back to their culture, well, I mean our children. I am teaching them to respect our national values.”

"A Russian man’s meat is a German man’s…" – Sponsor, glancing sideways at Kuzyakin, didn’t finish the saying.

“Grow where you are planted.” The teacher caught the wave of inspiration. “After all, everything is ours and native: the path, the wood, and the folk tale. I would never in my life allow myself to conjure up some kind of gibberish. Take that tale about Ivan, well, even accepting him to be a fool, in which he inadvertently kills... a relative, and then tosses her body under a rich man’s passing carriage in order to  blackmail and extort him, well, that folk tale which your son Vanya began to play out involuntarily...”

“Are you suggesting that my Vanka is not right in the head?”

“Your Vanya is a moron,” the teacher wanted to yell, but did instead as teachers do, dodging it:

 “All I wanted to say is that this folk tale of ours is very old, listed in the collection of Afanasyev long ago, number 396. You can check.”

“Enough!” Kuzyakin raised his hand. “You can talk till the cows come home, we’ve already heard you, and we are fed up.”

 “Brevity is the mother of wit,” Sponsor made a hopeless gesture with his hands.

“I don’t know anything about Afanasyev’s state of mind, but I remember well that while our kids in Sukhinovka were watching cartoons about greedy, ducky Scrooge, or A Nightmare on Elm Street, no one woke up screaming at night, no one tried to bump off their gran among the potatoes with a wooden paling.”

Heinrich Shosholko nervously scratched his forehead.

“That only goes to show that we’ve already crossed a dangerous threshold. Our stomachs have stopped aching from Fanta and Snickers, have already...”

“Hold, teacher, listen to the people. I have always been on our side, and if anyone is against us –  here Kuzyakin demonstrated his fist to all. I am a born and bred Russian man in fact, and not in fiction. My children live with me, so don’t mess with them. Better you tell them about the straits, and the Battle of Kulikovo.”

“Oh yes. The mare of the steppe flies on and on and tramples the feather grass. We’ll get to that too. What I mean is, the process has already gone too far; we must start from the roots. We’ve been overdosed on pills of prescribed Western knowledge.”

“Little Lena wasn’t able to fall asleep without a pill for the last two nights in a row,” interrupted Ryabov from his corner.

“The pills are rightly called drugs” Sponsor explained.

Kuzyakin grimaced tragically in response to everyone’s stupidity and said:

“Whatever, Fritz, no more tales of yours in our school. If you don’t listen to me, you’ll regret it,” and turning around like a tractor, he walked away.

“I'm not Fritz, I’m Heinrich,” the teacher muttered quietly behind his back. He was very annoyed with his father, who in the throws of some mysterious whim had given him such a quirky name. When Heinrich was criticized for this in the heat of a Russian debate, he used to say that, for example, V.I. Dahl, the great Russian lexicographer, was actually a Dane, and no one had ever remarked that this was not a convincing argument.

The three Russian champions left triumphantly, continuing to pick at the bones of their fallen adversary. Heinrich was thinking not so much about them, as whether Larisa had seen the battle, and whether she had appreciated his one-man stand against the madding crowd.

As it turned out the young maiden had not remained indifferent to the proceedings. She had listened to the whole thing and decided to come up to him, presumably, with words of support. Heinrich could hardly hold back a triumphant smile. Actually, a man is capable of doing a lot if he knows there is a woman who understands him. Larisa came up to him and stopped, smiling ambiguously. The teacher smiled back. He liked these moments of silent mutual understanding.

“You needn’t have behaved that way, Heinrich Ivanovich.”

“What do you mean – needn’t?”

“You needn’t be like that with people.”

“Like what?”

“Arrogant. Condescending. You should get on with people; you have to live with them. You need to understand – they are worried  about their children.”

“When you have children of your own,” a wild thought flashed across Heinrich’s mind (Where will they come from, special delivery?), then you will see. “But while you are still single, you don’t understand a thing, and you are barking at people. It looks kind of ridiculous, but it will pass.”

The teacher turned around abruptly, and walked back to the house, muttering — it won’t pass! He felt betrayed. Oh, Larisa!

 Karpovna offered him some potatoes. He declined them. Harshly. “Well, you shouldn’t have puffed yourself up like that. Why are you going against the grain? They are adults, worried about their children, and you? You've brought  some book. Big deal.”

 “They take me for an idiot,” he thought coldly, with unexpected German decisiveness, packing his briefcase. No matter. It’s good to have a woman’s understanding heart on your side, but if you don’t, so much the better. The mission is higher. It’s not the children’s fault that their parents are tractor drivers and globalists.

All the way to the school, Heinrich Ivanovich was whistling cheerfully and off-key, something festive by Alexey Fatyanov. Another ordeal awaited him at the school doors. Several unexpected figures: headmaster Crossbill, Alla Petrovna and Father Sergius, rector of St. Nicholas Church from the neighboring village of Sapronovo. They were talking peacefully and jovially, but the young school master’s body was tense like a coiled spring, the thirst for a fight stirred in his chest. Well now, another triumvirate takes to the field against him. A bureaucrat, an obscurantist and a physics teacher.

Now, isn’t it absurd that he, Heinrich Shosholko, even in the very recent past an admirer of Borges and Castaneda, has to drag common Russian children by the scruff of the neck to authentic Russian culture. And the most amusing thing is instead of battling with countless drug dealers and rock discos, he has to crush ranks of plain hard workers, priests and governmental officials. By God, the world has turned upside down... The battle did not take place. Father Sergius merely greeted him then said goodbye. The headmaster sighed in his wake.

“Well, Ivan Sergeyevich, are you raising an army against me?”

Pupils with morning voices streamed past into school. The headmaster glanced at a cockily smiling chap and sighed again.

“Gena, you shouldn’t have behaved like that. These are people. The naked truth is too much for them.”

“Are you going to give me a lecture?”

 “Why should I? We’ll just have a talk after classes.”

Heinrich Ivanovich chuckled and entered the school building. He looked enigmatically at his nine students, who stood at their desks with their backs to the huge map of the Soviet Union, which occupied the entire back wall.

“Be seated, children. Today, as always on Tuesdays, we have our Russian-word lesson and I will read you a folk tale. You may have heard about it, but I doubt you know it.” At the very moment Heinrich Ivanovich said goodbye to the priest, he had already decided to read it.

“Listen children, carefully. The tale is called Riaba, the Speckled Hen. Once upon a time there was an old man and old woman, who had a little tatarushka-hen. She laid a freckled, pointed, bony, odd egg in the corner under the window. Put it on a shelf, she did; the mouse passed by, wagged its tail, the shelf fell down, the egg broke to pieces. The old man cries, the old woman cries, the fire is burning in the stove, the top of the hut is swaying, the granddaughter… hanged herself with grief. A church-bread baker walks by and asks: why are they crying so bitterly? The old couple begin their story. As she heard the story, she smashed all the communion bread and tossed it away. The deacon approaches and asks the church-bread baker why she tossed away the church bread? She told him of her grief; the deacon ran to the bell tower and broke all the bells. A priest walks by and asks the deacon, “Why did you break all the bells?” The deacon told him of his grief, and the priest ran away and tore up all his books.” “And now I’ll tell you children what church bread is.”

 “We already know,” Vanya Kusyakin said calmly from his seat.

 In the evening, the saleswoman Larisa knocked on Karpovna’s door, fresh, made up, with a bag under her arm. In it there was a bottle of fake Georgian wine.

“Well, how is he?” asked Larisa.

“He’s shut up in his room, lying in bed,” the old woman shrugged.

“Could you turn up your TV, Karpovna?”

Quietly tiptoeing, holding the bag, the girl opened the door to the teacher's room.

She went up to the bed and sat on a stool, scrunching a cigarette packet.

This sound awoke the bed’s master.

Even in the merciful moonlight falling from the window, one could see how his face was swollen from Kuzyakin's fists.

Heinrich pulled himself up and froze in a half-sitting position.

“Is that you, Larisa?”

“It’s me, who else?” she whispered, unfolding an inappropriately crinkling bag.

“What’s in there?”

“Medicine, you could say.”

Suddenly, behind the wall, electronic voices started reverberating excitedly:

"Everything around us is a matrix. Everything you see is a matrix. The matrix is everywhere!"

 Heinrich moaned softly, fell on his side and buried his head in Larisa’s lap.

“But they are Russian people, what are they doing to themselves? What are they doing to themselves?”

Larisa pulled out the foam cork with beautiful, strong teeth and started stroking his battered head tenderly and skillfully.

Once the wine was uncorked, she sighed and said quietly.

“Everything will be fine!”