For the Good of the Cause by Alexander Solzhenitsyn Read Free Book Online

laughter.
    “What are you cackling about?” Chursanov asked, taken aback.
    “There’s really nothing to laugh about,” Marta Pochryonnykh came to his aid. She was a big, round-faced, rather plain-looking girl with thick black braids open at the ends. “Don’t you agree, ma’am? It all depends on the book. It’s all right if it tells you something you can’t find anywhere else. But if all there’s in it is something you can hear on the radio or read in the papers, then what’s the point? Things are shorter and livelier in the newspapers.”
    “And they get things right. They don’t make mistakes,” somebody else called out.
    “But what about the way things are said—the style?” a girl with a fresh complexion asked coyly.
    “What do you mean, style? What’s wrong with the style in the papers?”
    “Lit-er-ary style, I mean,” she answered, nodding her head at every syllable for emphasis.
    “What do you mean by that?” Chursanov asked with a puzzled look. “People falling in love and all that? Is that what you mean?”
    “Of course style is important,” Lidia said heatedly. She put her hand to her breast as though there was nothing of which she was more convinced. “You see, a book must go into the psychological aspect of things …”
    She was hemmed in by them on all sides, but not all of them could hear her, and they were talking and shouting to each other. Her face was flushed.
    “You just wait!” she said, trying to calm the rebels. “I won’t let you get away with it. We’re going to have a big auditorium in the new building, so in September we’ll have a debate.” She gripped Anikin and Marta firmly by the shoulders. “I’ll get all of you up on the platform, everybody who’s had something to say today, and then …”

    “Here he comes, here he comes!” The shout of the younger students was taken up by the older ones. One after the other, the young ones broke away, running faster and faster. The older ones got out of their way and turned to look after them. Teachers and students stuck their heads out of the second-story windows.
    The school’s battered pick-up truck, lurching, bumping, and splashing mud, was approaching from the direction of the town. The principal and his driver could be seen through the windshield of the cab being pitched from side to side. The students who had been the first to rush forward noticed that, for some reason or other, the principal looked anything but happy.
    And their shouting ceased.
    They ran alongside the truck until it came to a stop. Fyodor Mikheyevich, a short, stocky man in a plain, worn blue suit, bareheaded, with graying hair, climbed down from the cab and looked around. He had to get to the doorway, but his way was blocked by the young people crowding in on him from both sides, watching and waiting. Some of the more impatient ones started to ask questions:
    “What’s the news, sir?”
    “When will it be?”
    Then, louder, from the back of the crowd:
    “Are we moving?”
    “When do we move?”
    Once again he looked over the dozens of expectant, questioning faces. It was obvious that he would nor be able to put off answering them until he got upstairs. He’d have to do so right there and then. “When?” “When do we move?” The youngsters had been asking these questions all spring and summer. But at that time the principal and homeroom teachers had been able to brush off all such questions with a smile, saying: “It all depends on you. On how you work.” But now Fyodor could do nothing but sigh and, not concealing his irritation, he said:
    “We shall have to wait a little longer, Comrades. The builders haven’t quite finished yet.”
    His voice always sounded a little hoarse, as though he had a cold.
    A murmur was heard among the students. “More waiting.” “Still not ready.” “And the term begins the day after tomorrow, September first.” “So now we’ll have to go back to furnished rooms again.”
    The boy in the