The Big Green Tent by Ludmila Ulitskaya Read Free Book Online Page A

your own choice whether you grow up to become human beings, or remain on the intellectual level of beasts.”
    Later, when he had learned all the students’ names and assigned them seats after his own idiosyncratic fashion (not in the same order as their class picture, and not alphabetically, either), after everyone had formed a bond through discussions about cunning Odysseus; the mysterious chronicler Pimen; the unfortunate son of Taras Bulba; Pushkin’s honest but slow-witted Alexei Berestov; and swarthy, clever Akulina—all part of the school curriculum, by the way—the boys started asking questions about the war: What was it like? And it immediately became clear that Victor Yulievich loved literature, and hated war. A strange bird! In those days, the entire population of young men who hadn’t had the opportunity to shoot Fascists was enamored of war.
    â€œWar is the greatest abomination ever invented by man,” the teacher told them, curbing their tongues before they could even ask: Where did you fight? How did you get wounded? How many Nazis did you kill?
    One day he told them.
    â€œI had just finished my second year of college when the war broke out. All my classmates immediately reported to the recruitment office, and all of them were sent to the front. I am the only one from my group who stayed alive. Everyone else perished, including two girls. That is why I am against war with all my heart and with both my hands.”
    With that, he lifted up his left hand. He tried to raise his right half-arm in tandem, but was unable.
    On Wednesdays, literature was the last class of the day. When it was over, Victor Yulievich would say, “So, shall we go for a walk?”
    The first of these walks took place in October. About six of them went. Ilya had rushed home, as usual, and Sanya had skipped school that day, which he often did, with his grandmother’s permission. The Trianon was represented solely by Mikha, who later recounted word for word the stories he had heard from the teacher on the way from school to Krivokolenny Lane. Victor Yulievich had told them about Pushkin, but the way he talked about him made them wonder whether he and Pushkin hadn’t been actual classmates. It turned out that Pushkin was a card shark! And a skirt-chaser! He was a real womanizer! On top of that, he was a brawler, held grudges, was always ready to make a scene or kick up a row, to fight in duels.
    â€œIndeed,” Victor Yulievich said, “it was this kind of behavior that led people to consider him a bretteur .”
    No one asked what this foreign word meant, because it was obvious anyway: a troublemaker.
    Then he led them up to the shabby building on the first corner of Krivokolenny Lane after its intersection with Kirov Street. With a broad gesture of his left hand, he said, “Just imagine what it was like here in Pushkin’s day. Of course, there wasn’t any asphalt, and the roads were paved with wooden blocks. A carriage pulls up from the direction of Myasnitskaya Street. Well, most likely not a carriage, but a small cart with a coachman. Pushkin was visiting Moscow, partly on business. He had many friends and relatives here, but he never had his own home in Moscow, or his own equipage—with the exception of the apartment he rented on the Arbat; but that was only for a little while, after his wedding. Then he moved back to St. Petersburg. He did not like Moscow. He said there were ‘too many old Aunties’ there.
    â€œNow imagine it’s more than one hundred years after Pushkin’s death, after the Revolution. A woman is walking down this lane, and, suddenly, from the direction of Myasnitskaya, she hears, clip-clop, clip-clop: a carriage rounds the corner and stops right at this spot. Pushkin alights from the carriage, his heels clicking on the wooden pavement, and disappears inside the house. The lady gasps, and then everything disappears—the wood pavement,