Breaking Stalin's Nose by Eugene Yelchin Read Free Book Online

bearing the banner, imagining the May Day parade. It seems like ages ago.
    In no hurry to get back to Nina Petrovna’s class, I dawdle in the corridor, listening to the sounds coming from behind the closed doors. The classes are in progress. I hear teachers’ voices, feet marching to an accordion, chalk knocking against a
blackboard, someone practicing a bugle. Everyone is learning to be useful to our country. Everyone is marching toward Communism, everyone but me. I am no longer a part of the Communist “WE.”
    This is a new feeling, and I don’t like it, but it’s better not to think about it. This new feeling, I decide, will go away by itself. To distract myself, I peek in on the Russian literature class, not particularly my favorite. The portraits of dead writers line the walls. They all have beards. Luzhko, a substitute teacher, stands at the blackboard. He also has a beard.
    â€œWhat is the profound meaning of this masterpiece of Russian literature?” he says to the class. “Why is ‘The Nose’ still so important to us?”
    No hands go up, and I’m not surprised. He’s talking about a crazy old story they always make us read, called “The Nose.” It’s really stupid. Some guy’s nose is dressed up in uniform—imagine that!—and it starts putting on airs, as though it’s an important government official. It takes place
way before Stalin was our Leader and Teacher, of course. Could something like this happen now? No way. So why should Soviet children read such lies? I don’t know. I’m in no hurry, so I keep listening.
    â€œWhat ‘The Nose’ so vividly demonstrates to us today,” says Luzhko, “is that when we blindly believe in someone else’s idea of what is right or wrong for us as individuals, sooner or later our refusal to make our own choices could lead to the collapse of the entire political system. An entire country. The world, even.”
    He looks at the class significantly and says, “Do you understand?”
    Of course, they have no idea what he’s talking about. This Luzhko is suspicious. I always thought so. All teachers use words you hear on the radio, but he doesn’t. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. I turn and walk away.

    The fact is, Vovka is telling on me right now. By the time I get back to Nina Petrovna’s class, everyone will know the truth. Right away they’ll start treating me like an enemy of the people. And why shouldn’t they? My dad is in prison and it is I, not Finkelstein, who damaged Stalin’s statue. I am an enemy of the people and I must face the consequences. “The state will bring him up,” said the senior lieutenant last night when they took my dad away. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now. He was talking about the orphanage. Instead of joining the Pioneers, this is where I’m going. They will feed me, clothe me, and put a roof over my head, but nobody will ever trust me again. From this day on, I will be unreliable and suspicious. Me, who loves Stalin more than any of them! It’s hard to believe this is really happening, but it is. I don’t have to keep thinking any harder to know what I have to do. I’m going to disappear.

    I turn and run back across the main hall, push open the doors to the staircase, and race all the way down. At the bottom of the stairs, I hop over the banister and land right in front of the same senior lieutenant and his two guards.

25
    DISSECTED FROGS, foul chemicals, and something else stomach-turning, all pickled in jars. The biology lab is empty. A good place to hide.
    The senior lieutenant recognized me right away and opened his mouth to speak, but I didn’t wait to hear. I bolted back up the stairs to this room. Nobody ever comes here since Arnold Moiseevich, a foreign spy pretending to be a biology teacher, was arrested three months ago.
    Now, peering through the