The mitten
I can’t say that I remember my school often. The thoughts about it came back hard like a remote event of another different life.
I wasn’t an excellent pupil- I didn’t have good marks.
Now I understand: it could be worse. When I was five years, for two years before school, I didn’t speak Russian at all. Karelian was my native language. We talked only Karelian at home and in the street.
Ten years school was the first high step, behind which I wanted to see a new, bright and high life. A merryschool bell, my bag, my notes, my first books, stories about the unknown, boys’amusement, after school- that all, like an open gates of a hay shed, attracted me to the space.
Marks were not everything.
Thirty years has gone.
A daily cares,fewer joyscovered my childhood. The years accumulate so imperceptibly, like tree’s rings. Every new layer change nothing, but it becomes harder to see the deep. And the faces, events, symbolsfrom the past appeared like a strange picture on a smooth trunk of memory.
I don’t know, why it so happened, but for school years I remember an event with a mitten best of all.
We studied at the first form.
Alla Ivanovna Grishina, our first teacher, showed us the labor’s cabinet.Girls learnt housekeeping: they learnt to sew, to knit. It wasn’t a silly hobby. It was impossible to buy clothes of your size. People usually renewed clothes or wore after the adults. All people lived hard and poorly. The ability to make things by hands was appreciated.
We were confused and fussed like a flock of a disheveled sparrow, we sat down to the tables. We sat quietly and blinked eyes.
First the teacher of housekeeping talked us about her lesson, sometimes she spoke Karelian, and than she gave us design albums with the best children’s works.
There were embroidered and knitted socks, mittens, caps, scarves, dresses, trousers. It was all of a doll’s size, it could be a little even for a newborn baby. I saw not once, how my mum made us new clothes at the sewing- machine, but it was something different.
We looked at this marvelous thing with a little envy when it was at the neighbor's desk and we had been looking at it with pleasure when it occurred to be in our hands.
The bell thundered abruptly. Suddenly it rang.
The lesson was over.
We looked at the album and left the classroom in a full confusion.
The break finished, next lesson started. We got out our books. Legs hadn’t stopped yet. Legs were jumping. And the head was either. We set more comfortable. Our whisper became calmer and calmer. Alla Ivanovna stood up from the teacher’s table, she came to the blackboard and took a piece of chalk. She tried to write. The chalk crumbled. White and fragile piece of small dust streamed from the hand.
Suddenly, the door in the class opened. The teacher didn’t come, she ran, it was the teacher of housekeeping. Her hair was uncombed, she had red spots on the face.
-Children, the mitten has been lost! – and she said quickly again.- You have taken it…
To prove it, she pulled an album with the models, out from back she opened it widely and rose it above her head. The page was empty. On the place, where there was a small and fluffy lump, I remembered it very well, now only a short scrap of black thread stick out.
Everybody kept silence. Alla Ivanovna looked at us and started to ask everyone.
-Kondroeva?
- Gusev?
- Retukina?
- Yakovleva?
She came to me, but moves forwards.
Guys stood up from the tables, bended their heads and talked the same: “I didn’t take, Alla Ivanovna”.
So, good,- our teacher said maliciously,- we will find it in any way. Come here, one by one. Kondroeva, come here with the bag, with the bag…
Sveta Kondroeva came back to the table and lifted up her bag.
- Hurry up! You are heroes, when you are going to make a crime. You should answer for it.
Alla Ivanovna took the bag from Sveta’s hands, turned it over, lifted up and shook it. Books and notes poured down on the teacher’s table. Pencils fell on the floor so loudly. Alla Ivanovna shook and shook the bag with her fingers.
A doll fell out. It fell to the books and stopped in the awkward pose.
- Ha, you are fool!- Leha Silin laughed. - She has brought the doll to the school!.
Kondroeva bended a head and cried silently.
A housekeeping’s teacher sorted out things from the bag. She found nothing.
Undress!- commanded Alla Ivanovna quickly.
Svetka started to take off a darned blouse silently. Tears leaked like big disobedient drops from her swollen eyes. She always sobbed and took away the hair from her swollen eyes. She squatted, undid the shoelaces, stood up and undressed it. The beige knitted tights were with a hole. Svetka’s pink finger stack out from the tights. She undressed a skirt, tights and a white T-shirt with the drooped stapes.
Svetka stood barefooted on the bad school floor faced a class and fingered her warmed drawers.
An aluminum dagger on a linen thread rocked on her children’s neck like a pendulum.
-What is it?- the teacher was indignant, we looked at the dagger,- Don’t dare to wear it at school. Put on your clothes. Next!
Kondroeva splashing her bare feet took her pencils from the floor, put her books to the bag, crumpled the clothes and pressing her doll to the breast tiptoed to her table.
Children were undressed one by one. Everybody was searched. Nobody cried. Everybody were silent and executed abrupt commands.
My turn came nearer.
Now Yuri Gurov was searched for the mitten. Our houses were nearby. Yuri was from a big family, he had three brothers and two little sisters. His father drank a lot, and Yuri escaped at us.
His bag was without a handle, and he carried it to the teacher’s table under his arm. Slovenly notes and only one book fell at the teacher’s table. Yuribeganto undress. He undressed a pullover, didn’t undid the shoelaces just took off the shoes, than the socks, and suddenly he stopped and began to cry.
Alla Ivanovna began to take his T-shirt off and on the floor fell… a little… a blue mitten.
- How did it happen? Why?!- cried Alla Ivanovna to the Yuri's face,- Why?! Answer!...
- Minya an tiye! Minya an tiye! Minya an tiye…- spoke Karelian intimidated Yuri.
- Don’t you know? Don’t you know? So, I know! You have stolen it! You are a thief!
Yuri's lips shivered. He tried not to look at us.
The class was silent.
We learnt together until the eight form. Yuri stole nothing any more, but it wasn’t important. “A thief”- said everybody about him and his family in the village. It seemed that eight years at school were like a prison period for him.
He became an outlaw.
His older brothers never came in our class and never protected him. He could not hit back and protect himself. He was always alone. Classmates didn’t hit Yuri. He was humiliated.
It was a deed to spite in the Yuri's cup with juice, to pour the things on the cold puddle, to throw a cap in the garden. Everybody smiled and me too. A physical necessity to be above a week person seemed very strong.
Fatalninetiesbecame forthe whole of Russiaa great ordeal. The wholecitiesbecamesilent,factories, plants andfarms were closed. People like rats in a barrel became brutalized, took food from each other. People drank a lot of alcohol.
There were a lot of stealing in villages and small towns. Everything could be stolen at night: potatoes from the gardens, food from the cellars, sauerkraut, jars with jam and vegetables, beetroot, turnip, which had been prepared for the following harvest.
Many families had nothing to eat for winter. Police did nothing. In a Russian fairytale by Chukovskiy all the animals had been afraid of a cockroach till the present moment if nobody helped them. Here people didn't want to wait for the help and decided to punish the thieves by themselves. They couldn't bear it any more.
At first a broken farm car hardly skidding in mellow snow moved along the village from one thief's house to another one, then it moved to the country road. Seven strong men tossing from one side of the car to another while moving aggressively kept silence. Exhalation from their smooth breathing was soaring in a dank air of the car salon. There were some local thieves on a metal floor. Everybody in our village knew their names. They were five: Leha Silin, Kared, Zyka, Petka Kolchin and Yuri Gurov. They had been robbing the people for the last eight years without any punishment. The only who didn't know about it was police.
We didn't tie their hands, there were nowhere to run. We caught them easily, they didn't come to their senses. We chose the best moment for it: midday. It was during their dream after the night work.
Our car grumbling went to the village along the forest country road. Everybody kept silence during the way. Everybody had his own thoughts. Everything was clear without words. Nobody wished to be procurator or advocate.
The road ran straight along the bank of the forest lake Kodayarvy. We stopped at the fifth kilometer and muffled the engine. We pushed the "guests" to the snow, gave them an instrument and ordered to cut through the ice-hole.
Snow clouds were heavily approaching to us. The sun hid away. It was getting windy and snowy. It became frosty in the evening. Nobody wanted to drown the thieves but it was necessary to teach them. There were some cases where a delicacy was not suitable, it was worse then rudeness.
We guzzled two bottlesstanding in a farm garage. We had the only slice of brown bread. We drank for the victory above the evil.
I left for the city the same evening, but in the morning I was called from the country: Yuri Gurov hanged himself in a shed.
If it were not for the same call I wouldn't probably remember a blue mitten.
I imagined very clearly crying Yuri who was small and helpless with shivering lips tiptoeing barefooted on a cold floor.
I imagined his sorrowful: "Minya an tiye! Minya an tiye! Minya an tiye…" - it deafened me greatly.
I remembered a Bible plot: Jesus not only knew from the very beginning who would betray Him. When the Preceptor soaking a slice of dread in wine gave to Iuda, after this slice of bread a satan entered Iuda. This was called to put somebody under another place or to betray.
Yuri,Yuri... Your fate is a reproach for me. And a sense of my fault increases.
Something has changed in my sole. It hurts me.
But I don't want to release this ache.