What have I just said?”
But even when engulfed by adventures in a different, Antarctic-Tropical-Martian, world, I did not cut the ties with the surrounding school nuts and bolts completely. Some tiny buoy at the edge of my consciousness kept still receiving, in a form of muffled background, the concurrent sounds in the classroom.
“Ogoltsoff!”
Aha, it’s time to come up to the surface… The memory rewinds the recording of background for some half-minute back.
“You, Alla Iosifovna, have just said that ‘read’ is an irregular verb.”
“Get seated!!”
And then at the Class Parents Meeting, she would complain to Mother, “I do see that he’s busy with something miles away from the lesson it’s only that I can’t run him down.”
Binkin had no problems with running me down. He did not demand to repeat anything, he asked questions instead, “So, what conclusion do we come here to? Ogoltsoff?”
And that’s where no mechanical rewind of the previously registered background could come to the rescue. How to present conclusions from you didn’t know what, especially when in sight of the dark ironic eyes above the thin rim of his glasses? He was killing with his rock-solid calmness and seemed to know exactly what page the book for bootleg reading was open at. So I had to sometimes skim the Physics textbook at home and stray-reading at school was rescheduled to fill Chemistry and Algebra classes. No, I couldn’t brush Binkin off.
Only once I did come to grapples with him on a thermodynamics issue when he asked whether the temperature of the boiled potato and the soup around it was the same. I stated that, no, it’s different.
“Alas, but the laws of Physics confirm it’s the same in both.”
“Well, yesterday, I ate soup for the midday meal and it was fine, but then I bit thru a potato in the soup and burned my tongue. As a scorched victim, I plea the Physics to revise their law-enforcement policy among unruly potatoes.”
The supportive solidarity giggles from the classmates mingled with bell in its deafening uproar of a ring for the break…
That is why I was so astounded when our Class Mistress, Albina Grigoryevna, announced that on Sunday, at 11 o’clock, I should be at School 11 for the City Physics Olympiad…
It was a sunny Sunday morning when I went out of Nezhyn Street to the tramway stop by our school to wait for a streetcar because the prestigious School 11 was on the other side of the Under-Overpass, halfway between our tram terminal and the Railway Station.
The Settlement red streetcar with its round, kinda clown’s nose, lamp beneath the driver cab windshield clanged up to the stop. Under the nose-lamp, there was the inventory number of the car – 33.
Fully aware that all that was a pure nonsense and stupid superstition, I, nonetheless, did not feel like letting such an opportunity pass by, to wit, when you happened to come across a double digit, like, 22 or 77 and so forth, in a car license plate, or in the number printed on your movie ticket, or on the ticket handed to you by a streetcar conductor, you were in luck, dead sure. Just don't omit secure it by balling your fist and pronouncing the inaudible incantation, “The luck is mine. Full-stop!” Which I did.
At the Olympiad, in the group of fourteen-year-old students from the 14 city schools, I solved some of the problems about acceleration, and specific weight, and density, but not all.
To the concluding question: “Why do we first see the lightning and only then hear the thunder?”, I even draw a pencil sketch explaining the time interval between the flash and the bang.
Next week, Binkin, with an unconcealed surprise, announced that I took the first place among the eighth-graders at the city Physics Olympiad.
I did not know whether the number under the streetcar’s nose really brought luck, or the solution checkers were impressed by the clumsy lightning, but it’s nice to realize that you had beaten both a representative of the prestigious School 11 and even a guy from School 12 with its mathematical specialization… Now, get it, blockheads, from the Plant Settlement fellas!.
“The Dead Season” was on show at Club. The three of us bought tickets to ensure the show because, at times when no tickets were sold, the projectionists refused to show the film for only the check-passers. However, the audience turned out big enough, not as many as at the Indian “Zita and Guita” but no less than a quarter of the auditorium got filled.
The movie was about our secret agent in the United States starring Donatas Banionis from “No One Wanted to Die” where he got shot and killed in the end and collapsed on the desk with the unfinished note he was writing. And in America, they followed him for a long time, then caught and jailed for twenty years, but then exchanged for a CIA agent caught in the Soviet Union.
A black-and-white film, yet of the wide-screen format and Banionis had a luxurious white shirt on. You could see at glance that it was no nylon, but he wore that shirt even when cooking in the kitchen, just slightly turned the sleeves up. A cool movie, in general.
When it was over, we slowly moved towards the exit, envious that some folks could manage living interesting lives. And then Kuba clapped his muskrat-fur hat against his fist and said, “Okay! First thing in the morning to see Solovey about the secret agents school enrollment!” Skully and I burst our sides with laughter because Solovey was Precinct Militiamen at the Settlement.
Actually, no one ever referred to him as “Precinct Militiaman”, they just uttered “Solovey” and everyone got it at once. When he entered Bazaar, a muffled “Sol!..– Sol!..– Sol!..” swished over the counters and swarming caboodle. The old peasant women from Podlipnoye or Popovka buried deeper in their bags the glass jars and hot-water rubber bottles with the hooch, to keep them out of sight. Then they turned to the legitimate part of