The Adolescence of Zhenya Luvers Read Online Free PDF Page B

liked them. They spoke as if they were sprinkling water on the tablecloth—noisily, briskly, with sudden twists that nobody expected. Their jokes and anecdotes, clean and satisfying, were always understood by the children.
    Noise was everywhere, everything flashed—the sugar bowl, the nickel coffeepot, the strong white teeth, the heavy linen. With Mrs. Luvers they joked pleasantly and courteously. As her husband’s colleagues, they knew how to restrain him when he made ponderous replies to their allusions to people only they, as experts, really knew. Haltingly and long-windedly, in bad French, Mr. Luvers told stories of contractors, of “ références approuvées ” and of “férocités,” that is “ bestialités , ce qui veut dire en russe , embezzlements, in Blagodat.”
    The beardless one, who had been eagerly learning Russian for some time, often tried himself out in this new territory, but it wouldn’t bear his weight as yet. It was improper to laugh over the French sentences of their father, whose “ férocités ” were embarrassing to the children, but the laughter that drowned out Negarat’s experiments in Russian seemed to be justified by the situation itself.
    His name was Negarat. He was a Walloon from the Flemish part of Belgium. They recommended Dikikh, Zhenya’s tutor, to him. He wrote down the address in Russian and made very comic pictures of complicated letters like “ yu, ya, yat !” They looked as if they were double, these letters, as if they stood straddle-legged. The children let themselves kneel on the leather seats of the chairs and lean their elbows on the table—everything was allowed when the Belgians were there, everything was higgledy-piggledy. The letter “ yu ” was not a “ yu ” but a figure too. They all shouted and shook with laughter. Evans hit the table with his fist and wiped away his tears. Their father walked up and down the room, shaking and red-faced, saying over and over, “No, I can’t go on,” and crumpled his handkerchief in his hand. Evans added fuel to the fire: “ Faites de nouveau! Commencez !” Negarat timidly opened his mouth, as if fearful of stuttering, and considered how to pronounce the Russian “ yery ,” still as unexplored as the colonies along the Congo. “ Dites : uvy-nevy-godno ,” their father proposed to him in a hoarse, choking voice. “ Ouivoui , nievoui ... . ” “ Entends-tu? Ouvoui, nievoui—ouvoui, nievoui—oui , oui—chose inouie—charmant! ” the Belgians shouted, rocking with laughter.
    The summer was gone. The exams were passed, some even with distinction. The cold, transparent noise in the school corridors flowed as if from a well. Here everybody knew each other. The leaves in the garden turned yellow and gold. The school windows tormented themselves with their bright, dancing reflection. Half of milk glass, they darkened and their lower parts shook. The upper panes quivered in a blue cramp. Bronze maple brandies furrowed their cold clarity.
    She had not expected that all her excitement would turn into such a lighthearted joke. Divide so many ells and inches by seven! Was it worth while to learn all these “ dols , zolotniks , lots , pounds and poods?” The grams, drams, somples and ounces, which always seemed to her like the four ages of the scorpion? Why does one write “ polezno ” with an “ e ” and not with a “ yat ”? The answer was so difficult for her only because she strained her imagination to envisage why a “ yat ” should suddenly appear in the middle of a word, although it made the spelling look so wild and unkempt. And her coffee-brown school uniform, cut out but still held together with pins, was fitted to her for hours. And her room already held many new horizons: school satchel, pen case, lunchbox and a remarkably repulsive