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We were afraid one of them might get caught under a crane or fall or something. But we kept an eye on them.”
    “Wasn’t it chaos?”
    “We did our best to make it work. The foreman in charge told us a week ahead how many hands he would need, what kind, and when. So we set up a sort of headquarters and decided who was to do what. The kids worked every day—some before classes and some after. And a lot of them worked on Sundays too. They decided that everybody should put in at least two weeks’ work during the summer vacation. Of course we tried to fix it so that out-of-town students could do their share either at the start or the end of the summer. But even if they were needed in the middle they showed up.”
    “Amazing!”
    “Not at all. What was amazing was that it was all done without any kind of pressure. You wouldn’t have recognized those kids. The people from the Trust just couldn’t believe it. They said: We can’t keep up with them, we just can’t.”
    “Incredible.”
    “You don’t believe me? Ask anybody you like.”
    “It’s not that I don’t believe you. I suppose enthusiasm is natural, and a good thing too. But the trouble is that in this country the word has become hackneyed. It’s abused all the time—take the radio, for instance. What I hear constantly at the factory is: ‘What’s in it for me? What does the job pay? Let’s have it in writing.’ And nobody raises an eyebrow— ‘incentives’ and all that.”
    “And that’s not all. They took a copy of the architect’s plan and made a scale model of it. Then they carried it at the head of the May Day parade.”
    “Lidia Georgievna is giving you the romantic side. But to really understand it you have to hear the practical side. This school’s been in existence for seven years and all this time we’ve been stuck out here near the railroad. A while ago they added a one-story wing for workshops and gave us another small building about half a mile from here, but even that didn’t help much. And then Fyodor Mikheyevich managed to get hold of some land right in town where we could build. There were some shacks on it that had to be pulled down first.”
    “That didn’t take long, did it?”
    “No. They dug two holes with power shovels and put in the foundations for the school building and the dormitory. They got as far as building one story and then everything came to a stop. For, the next three years there was never any money. During all those changes in Moscow we were always overlooked—whether they split up the ministries or amalgamated them, we were always ignored. And the snow and rain didn’t help either. But now they’ve set up these economic councils (The organizations created by Khrushchev for local economic planning as a reaction to the excessive centralization under Stalin) and the one we come under gave us some money on the first of June last year, and …”

    “Dusya, open the window. These men! They really filled the room with smoke!”
    “Do we have to go outside every time we want to smoke?”
    “Well, that’s not what the teachers’ room is for.”

    “What jobs did you do on the building site?”
    “Oh, all sorts of things, like digging the ditches for the boiler room.”
    “As a matter of fact, we dug all the ditches. For the electric mains, and … And we filled them all in again.”
    “And unloaded bricks from the trucks and stacked them in the hoist. And we cleared the eanh out of the foundations.”
    “And we removed all the trash, brought up all the stuff for the central heating and the flooring, and then we did a lot of cleaning up and scrubbing.”
    “So actually the builders only had to send skilled men, no laborers?”
    “As a matter of fact, we even trained some of the boys and girls to do skilled jobs. We had two teams of learners: plasterers and painters. They were really good at it. It was a pleasure watching them.”
    “Where’s that singing coming from? Outside?”
We’re sick and