DRILL AND SONG DAY

Each year around the twenty-third of February, to celebrate the anniversary of the Red Army, we had Drill and Song Day at school.Classes from the first through seventh grades made their own “military” uniforms and performed drills in the gym, with rhymed slogans and songs. At two tables in the corner of the gym sat our patrons: our headmistress, school director, military instructor, and the deputy trade-union head from the tire factory. They assigned places.
Classes from the first, second, and third grades competed separately. The previous year, our class, then 2-B, had taken second place, and this time we hoped to be first: last year’s winners, 3-C, were now 4-C and had to participate in the older-grades’ competition. Not only had they taken first place in our school, but at the district level as well, and second in the whole city, and the director always brought them up as an example to other classes.
Our homeroom teacher, Valentina Petrovna—unattractive, prematurely aged (she was no older than thirty at the time, but her face was all wrinkled)—was very worried: what if it didn’tcome together and we failed to take first place in the school? Even worse, what if we did, but then completely humiliated ourselves at the district level?
We began to prepare for the competition at the end of January. Vera Saprykina’s parents, through their theater-club connections,got us red cavalry budyonovka cloth helmetsand red stripes to sew on our shirts. We learned by heart the song:

White army, black baron
Are readying for us again the tsarist throne
But from the taiga to Britain’s far seas . . . etc.

Every day after our lessons, Valentina Petrovna went to find out if there was a class in the gym, and if there wasn’t, our whole class went there to sing the song and practice our march with rhymed slogans.Sometimes Valentina Petrovna invited our phys ed teacher, Ksenia Filimonovna, to take a look at how we marched.
Some ten days before the competition, Valentina Petrovna staged a purge, eliminating those who might spoil the class’s performance.
“Tsygankov, it’d be dangerous to bring you to the competition: you could show up in a dirty shirt, for crying out loud, or forget to sew your stripes on it. And you, Zhuravin. Same goes for you.”
Tsygankov was a small, skinny little guy. He was the youngest of many children in a family that lived in a private house behind the tire factory. His nickname was Piss Boy, because in the morning Tsygankov often reeked of urine, and everyoneknew that at night he pissed the bed. Besides that, he often came to school in a dirty shirt. One didn’t usually notice this, but when we undressed before phys ed in the cramped, stinky booth and he hung his shirt on a hook, one could see the ring around his collar. I didn’t call Tsygankov “Piss Boy” myself, because I had only stopped pissing the bed as recently as second grade.
The other outcast, Zhuravin, spent two years in the first grade and two in the second, and was now on his second year in the third. He was already twelve or thirteen. Zhura was cross-eyed and his mouth was always hanging open, but he was considered the premier hooligan around. He smoked and had a juvenile-offender’s record at a local militia precinct.
On Ksenia Filimonovna’s prompting, Valentina Petrovna also excluded Korkunova—afat girl and unremarkable C student, who just couldn’t march in lockstep with others—and me. I was tall and clumsy and marched unhandsomely. Valentina Petrovna consulted for a long while with Ksenia Filimonovna—I heard them say my last name a few times. Valentina Petrovna was probably hesitant because of my good grades, but in the end, she must have decided that the interests of the whole class—and potentially the entire school, were we to go on to district level—were more important than mine.
I was upset and came home sad. When I told everything to my parents that evening, my mother said, “Maybe I should go to the school and speak to that twit.” But Dad convinced her not to go.
“You’ll only turn her against Seryozha,” he said. “There’s no grade given for the competition, after all, and all the grades are in her hands.”
Soon I realized I’d lost nothing, while actually gaining something. After class I didn’t have to trundle to the gym anymore and march like a moron.Instead I went home, changed clothes, turned on the television or the Radiola, ate,then sat down to do lessons, and tried to do them as fast as possible so I could play with my construction set or draw in my notebooks.
When the big day was just a week off, even lessons themselves were sacrificed for the sake of preparation. If the gym happened to be free as early as first period, Valentina Petrovna assigned homework andthe class went to rehearse. We, the four “losers,” went along, and while the rest marched, we sat on the long, bare, wooden benches by the wall and watched. Valentina Petrovna was always freaking out.
“What is this nonsense?” she would yell. “What kind of marching is this? What kind of singing? A shame and a sin! You want to humiliate me, your own teacher? In front of the whole school? I’d be ashamed to look other teachers in the eye if we didn’t take first place.”

~

“Today we will rehearse for two periods, the second and third. The gym will be free,” Valentina Petrovna said right after the bell rang.
The class shouted, “Hooray!”
Almost everyone was happy that instead of doing lessons we were preparing for the competition.To me it made no difference and was even a little upsetting: I did my lessons, fair and square, and now nobody was checking them.
“Let’s cut out during second period,” Zhura said to Tsygankov and me. “Let them keep hoofing it till they shit themselves.”
The three of us sat on a bench. Korkunova was absent—she was sick.
“What if Valentina notices we’re not here?” I asked.
“Don’t piss yourself, she won’t notice.”
Tsygankov didn’t say anything, but he came with us. Nobody was friends with him or invited him anywhere, so he was probably glad that Zhura had included him.
“First let’s see if maybe they brought rolls for the buffet. Then we could fucking cop some,” Zhura said.
The buffet was next to the dining room, on the third floor. I hated the dining room because there we were made to eat the gooey, unappetizing mess of semolina gruel or watery potato puree with a flaccid dill pickle. And one time Ivankov from the C class found a cockroach in his beef patty, and all the students came running to see it, and Lenka Vykhina from our class threw up, right on the table.
At the buffet, on the other hand, apart fromthe withered cheese sandwiches spread out in the glass case, they did sell a few tasty things—pirozhki with jam for five kopecks, for example. True, these pirozhki were delivered rarely, and when they were delivered, an enormous line formed, and there were never enough pirozhki for everyone. But there were also poppy-seed rolls, shortbread, and sugared pretzels. All of it was carried to the third floor from the back entrance, where trucks from the bread factory drove up. Right up the stairs, because there wasn’t a freight elevator in the school. The buffet lady, Olga Borisovna—a crusty, sinewy old woman—usually enlisted the help of one of the dishwashers, and together they lugged a basket with pirozhki and shortbreads up the stairs, during a class period if possible, so that nobody would try to steal anything.
We were lucky. Down below they had just unloaded the truck, and Borisovna and the dishwasher in her dirty apron were carrying up a basket of rolls.
“Now listen,” Zhura commanded. “We run up, snatch two each, then run down.”
“Ah, you motherfuckers, I’ll kill you!” screamed the dishwasher, but she didn’t chase us. We ran down the stairs into the first-floor bathroom and stuffed ourselves with our rolls.
“Wanna smoke?” Zhura asked when we were finished eating.
“Okay,” I said.
“And you, Piss Boy?”
“Me too.”
Zhura slipped a crumpled pack of Primas from his pocket and gave us each a cigarette, then took out a lighter and lit his own and ours. I held the cigarette in my mouth, not knowing what to do with it.
“You, like, drag on it or something, what the fuck’s it burning by itself for?” Zhura laughed.
I dragged and began to cough. I looked at Tsygankov—he was smoking like Zhura, inhaling and letting smoke out. I couldn’t do it like that.
“Now let’s go to the store and cop a fucking loaf,” said Zhura.
“You’re not full from the rolls?” I asked.
“Nah.”
“Maybe we should go get dressed first in the cloakroom.”
“Well, you do that if you want, but me, I’m plenty warm.”
We didn’t go to the cloakroom either. We all three walked down the hall and out into the cold in our uniforms and slippers.
In the store Zhura whispered to us:
“Fucking learn, children.”
He inconspicuously shoved a loaf of white bread under his jacket and calmly walked past the cashier and out onto the street. We darted out behind him.
“How often do you do this?” I asked.
“Always,” Zhura guffawed. “This ain’t pissing the bed for you.”
I thought Tsygankov would get offended, but he didn’t say anything.
Zhura broke off a piece of bread and passed the rest to us. “Well then, now—let’s go ride the elevator.”
Tsygankov and I broke off pieces. I noticed that he had dirty hands—not just blue with ink,but also covered in some kind of brown crud.
We headed toward the nine-story apartment building, the only building in the whole neighborhood with an elevator. Zhura walked ahead a little, Tsygankov and I following.
“I’ll only ride with you,” said Tsygankov. “Not with Zhura.”
Zhura pushed the red elevator button, and the doors slid apart.
“You go first. We’ll come after you,” I said.
“All right. I’ll wait at the top.”
Zhura went into the cabin and pressed the highest button. The doors closed, and the elevator went up with a noise. We heard it stop somewhere high above and the doors open.
The button light went off, and I pressed it.
When the elevator came back down, Tsygankov and I climbed into the cabin. The plastic walls werecovered in ink doodlings, and the lamp on the ceiling was smeared with soot. I pressed the highest button.
“You’re an all right guy,” said Tsygankov. “How about you be my friend.”
“Okay.”
The elevator arrived on the ninth floor, and we got out of the cabin. Zhura was waiting for us by the iron stairs to the elevator room, from which there was a passage leading to the roof.
“The pad’s open. Let’s shove in,” he said.
We climbed up behind him on the raggedy iron stairs, went into the elevator room, and from there, to the roof, which was covered with snow. Our entire neighborhood was visible:several five-story buildings, the school, whole blocks of wooden houses. The streets were busy with cars, and the tire factory billowed smoke in the distance. Along the edge of the roof ran a banister—it was not very tall, about a meter high or maybe a little less.
Zhura went to the edge, leaned over the banister, and looked down. Then he climbed up there, sat down, and lowered his feet  as if it wasn’t high up there at all.My legs ached with fear; I was scared of heights.
Zhura turned to us.
“Come on over. Don’t be piss-pants. It’s awesome up here.”
He took out the cigarettes and lit one up. Tsygankov went over to him, and Zhura passed him the pack and lighter. Tsygankov took a cigarette and lit up too. I couldn’t force myself to move.
“Well, what say, you too yellow to sit like me?” Zhura said to Tsygankov. “I understand—you’re the Piss Boy.”
Tsygankov silently returned the cigarettes and lighter. My legs ached still more, and I thought I might piss myself.
Tsygankov touched the banister with his hand. It was too high for him, and he couldn’t just sit on it like Zhura. Tsygankov threw one leg over the banister, pushed off with the other, slipped, and fell.
Zhura looked at me.
“That’s fucking it for Piss Boy. But he proved he was no Piss Boy. And you didn’t.”
Zhura got off the banister and came up to me.
“You’re the Piss Boy, Nikonov. A mama’s boy.”
I was afraid he’d hit me, but he didn’t.
“Let’s go downstairs,” Zhura said. “The cops’ll come in a minute. They’ll ask questions.”
“What if we just leave? As if we were never here?”
“What are you, nuts?”
We went back downstairs.A crowd of people surrounded the spot where Tsygankov lay. An ambulance and a militia car showed up. It seemed like I had been dreaming and was just about to wake up.
The cops put us in the car and drove over to the precinct. They interrogated us separately in juvenile-detention rooms.
“Admit it, did you push him off the roof?” the cop asked, grabbing me by the shirt collar right under my throat. “Fess up quick, you little maggot.”
I cried quietly. Then my parents arrived, and the cop let me go. The three of us went home.The whole way home we were silent.

~

Drill and Song Day was postponed a day because of Tsygankov’s funeral. Our whole class went. Tsygankov lay in a coffin, and his mother was keening over him. She was already drunk and from time to time began to swear. Valentina Petrovna cried a lot. Everybody said she was going to jail, because Tsygankov was killed when we were supposed to be in class.
On Drill and Song Day our class took first place. At the district level, we placed only fifth.Valentina Petrovna didn’t go to jail, but she left to work at a different school, and in the fourth quarter we were taught by a student trainee, Anna Sergeyevna.

 Translated by Andrea Gregovich with Mikhail Iossel

This short story appeared in the Agni Review magazine (Issue 67, Spring 2008) and in the collection "Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia"