Most of
the time, I felt peaceful. I rarely talked to anybody. I had
always lived in unstable silence, winters hurling snow and rain
at my windows, passing unnoticed and unnecessary. Probably,
my next-door neighbor thought I was a queer fish. I could tell
that by the way she stared at me when she met me at the grocery
store. I’d been living in this neighborhood for five months.
I chose that room with a window to the North tucked away down
a narrow street. All the houses, here, were small and you could
scarcely see them in the fog. There was fog everywhere: on the
roofs, in the trees, in my hair and coat. The sun gave birth
to fog instead of mornings.
I thought I was bad company, so I kept myself to myself, going
for interminable strolls in the wasteland surrounding the only
bridge in town. I tried to remember the outlines of the low
squat buildings as they slowly dissolved into the afternoons
like memories of a snowstorm. Sometimes guys whistled at me.
The town was not big, people knew each other, and I was a complete
stranger in it, like a new poster advertising a concert in the
main street.
I guessed the townsfolk unanimously mistrusted me when they
got to know what I did for a living. Even before the end of
the first month of my sojourn in the narrow street, I gained
a steady notoriety as an unbearable teacher in mathematics.
I wanted the students to prove theorems and solve problems.
I didn’t speak much to them. On the first day at school,
I caught two guys cribbing from finely folded sheets of paper
they had tucked up their sleeves. The bad thing about me was
that I saw and heard most of what happened in the classroom.
I could almost always tell when a guy was trying to cheat. When
I was a little girl, even grandma could not trick me into believing
that dad had gone on a long business trip to Greece to make
money for us. I knew he had divorced mother. A year after that,
I knew mother would not come back home to see me as she had
promised after uncle Ivan took her to hospital for some blood
tests. I tried to keep a stiff upper lip, but all I managed
to do was to bite my lower one that had long ago become very
thin and colorless.
The only place I talked was the classroom, when I examined my
students. I hated to see guys copying from their neighbors.
I took the neatly folded sheets of paper with the formulae from
their fists and kept them on my desk. I supposed it was mortifying
to be stared at by your math teacher, but I couldn’t think
up anything else.
My classes hated me. I saw it in their eyes and everything I
said seemed short, stiff and formal. I felt awkward every time
I met a student I knew, as he sauntered by, the fog making me
freeze in my tracks in front of the bridge between the wilderness
and me.
One Wednesday, I asked one of the students to prove the theorem
about raising the diagonals of a rhombus to the second power.
I watched him closely as he tore the sheet from his textbook
and started for the blackboard. He began to copy the theorem
from the sheet, not even trying to conceal what he was doing.
He printed the words slowly, unfalteringly, taking peeks at
me behind his shoulder. I gave him a poor mark.
“Sit down,” I said.
He remained in front of the blackboard—calm, tall, writing
the formulae, his fingers sifting out the chalk powder. He copied
the theorem to the end and bowed to the class. The students
applauded vigorously, some laughing, others smirking. I wished
the fog was with me now, but it was a mile away, and I thought
I’d never again make it to the wilderness. I didn’t
know what to do with my eyes and my hands. I panicked that I’d
start to cry. It turned out I'd dropped the piece of chalk some
time ago, and I saw it at my feet on the floor. It was very
hot in the room. Words failed me. I stood there, mute like the
fog, egg on my face. I was scared my voice would sound gravelly
and they all would dissolve into laughter. They watched on,
perfectly silent. I staggered to the blackboard and gripped
another piece of chalk, then started dictating slowly, the words
dead on my lips, “The diagonals of a rhombus...”
The students listened. I hoped they had not noticed how dry
my voice was or, perhaps, they were accustomed to it that way.
Suddenly, the boy I had given a poor mark jumped from his desk
and sent his bag crashing to the floor.
“Excuse me,” he said, strutted to my desk, took my
piece of chalk, and left without closing the door.
All the rest were silent, watching me. I checked the boy’s
name in the register. He was called Mikhail.
That day, I had four more lessons that weighed a ton each. I
felt squashed; in fact, every day I left school exhausted, as
if I had dragged crags and stones from the slate-quarry in the
hill to my living room. I had a headache. The schoolyard, the
shops and birches were brown silhouettes, and the town was whispers
and whirring of motors through which my headache and I walked.
I reached my narrow street where the houses were neat and immobile
mussel shells.
The small square in front of the cottage where I lived was my
medicine. It ended abruptly at the foot of a hill overgrown
with shrubs and thorns that mixed with the autumn and its starless
sky. I wanted a cup of tea, and I wanted my warm room where
I forgot the classroom, the town and the theorems. Every evening,
I lit all the lamps and celebrated the absence of fog and blackboards
around me. I had counted the steps that separated my room from
the schoolyard. It was fun counting the yards that I had to
go before my cup of strong tea.
Suddenly, somebody whistled at me. I jumped. I rarely met people
in my narrow street; silence felt like the ocean floor, here.
The face, which popped up in the fog before me, gave me the
creeps. It was the student I had given a poor mark—Mikhail.
I walked slowly on, aware of strange noises. I soon realized
there were two more guys I didn’t know with Mikhail. I
crept on, forbidding myself to turn back, feeling their words
and breaths on my neck. I was not scared, not in the least.
I could hear their light footfalls behind me. When I was a little
girl, my grandmother used to leave me at home by myself when
she gave lessons in math to students at their homes. I was accustomed
to silence and I knew it was my friend. The three guys stalked
me, silent like the brown clouds. I had lived alone and I was
not afraid of footsteps in the dark. I reached the front door
of the house where I lived, turned around, and looked at them.
They stared back.
I entered the house and closed the door. It was quiet and warm
inside.
On the following day, Mikhail walked out of the classroom in
the middle of my lesson. He was humming a familiar tune for
quite a time. When I asked him to stop, he winked at the class,
then left.
In the afternoon, Mikhail and the other two guys trailed after
me while I walked along the street paved with anxiety and fog.
I wished I could dash off, yet I wasn’t scared. It was
dark, and I could hear their shoes hit the pavement. One of
the three guys—the tallest among them, with the swarthy
face—caught up with me, halted, and looked me in the eye.
“I’d like to tell you something,” he said. His
face, long and thin, almost touched mine. He cleared his throat.
“I have never met a girl like you. You have a good figure.”
His dark eyes measured me slowly. “You have a beautiful
voice. Your eyes are beautiful.”
A thick stream of derision oozed from his words. Mikhail and
the other guy were only a step away from us, watching me, snickering.
The swarthy one was snickering, too. Suddenly, he let out a
loud guffaw. I did not mind that. I could endure anything. I
looked at him, then turned and went on down the street. The
mussel shell houses waddled in the dusk, making it jagged and
menacing. I reached the small square, the shrubs, and the wilderness.
This time, my well-lit room and my cup of strong tea were no
good.
In the morning, I had a headache that became excruciating during
the five lessons with my classes. I dictated the problems and
repeated the theorems, trying to ignore the waves of uneasiness
as best as I could. Finally, the lessons were over and I walked
slowly out of the school yard.
The three guys were waiting for me at the beginning of my narrow
street. They roared with laughter the minute they saw me. I
hurried past them, trying to remain composed.
“I’d like to tell you something,” one of the
guys shouted. I didn’t stop. I noticed his eyes were the
color of the fog, watery, cold. “I have never met a girl
like you before. You have a good figure. You have a beautiful
voice…”
Suddenly, he was short of breath and looked at Mikhail and the
swarthy guy for support. I didn’t wait for the remaining
part of the explanation.
“Will Mikhail be the next one?” I asked.
My question was greeted with jeers. I ignored them. My eyes
were beautiful; I knew that. I left the guys where they were
and walked down the narrow street feeling their eyes
on my back.
I went home and tried to get some sleep. The fog and the town
were blue behind the windowpanes. In the morning, before I went
to work, I found the three guys in the square with the bridge
to the wilderness. The swarthy guy and Mikhail came striding
along to meet me.
“I’d like to tell you something,” Mikhail said.
He looked away, blushing.
“I won’t listen to you,” I told him.
“I have never met a girl like you,” he started. “You
have a good figure. Your voice is beautiful. Your eyes are beautiful,
too…” Then, he didn’t know what to say. He looked
at the bridge for help, hoping I’d go away. I waited.
“Her hair is beautiful, too,” the swarthy one gave
him a clue, whispering. His words, sharp and edgy, cut his face
into two halves.
“Tomorrow, I’ll wait for you at 7pm, in front of my
house,” I said.
Mikhail coughed. The swarthy guy stared, surprised.
“She’s up to something,” the swarthy one muttered.
Perhaps my neighbor had seen me and was wondering what I was
discussing with these young men. I took a step forward. I had
to go to work.
“What did you say?” Mikhail asked.
I did not answer.
“Hey, what did you say?” the swarthy guy cried out,
his voice indignant. “You’ll wait for me, is that
it?”
I didn’t answer him. I knew I had one thousand steps more
before I reached the classroom.
“What did you say?” The swarthy guy caught up with
me.
“Tomorrow at 7pm,” I said so quietly he had to bend
if he wanted to hear my words.
That day, I examined many students. I spoke slowly, avoiding
their eyes. I didn’t look at Mikhail.
At 7pm sharp, I was in front of the house where I lived. The
swarthy guy had already arrived. The other two boys were a couple
of yards away from him, hiding behind a clump of pine trees.
This time, they were not laughing. They watched me. I watched
them, too, and I was not scared.
The swarthy guy waited, his hands thrust into his pockets. I
came up to him, nodded, studying his face. It was very smooth
and dark. He kept silent as I watched him run his fingers through
his hair. It was black and thick.
“Hi,” he said at last.
The other two guys had pushed aside the branches of the pine
trees. They waited, ready to start sniggering. Suddenly, I hated
them.
“Stop fidgeting,” I told the swarthy guy.
He stared, confused. I caught him by the shoulders, stood on
tiptoe, and kissed him.
I hated Mikhail and the other guy. I hated the man I had just
kissed, and I couldn’t stand the fog. I had already taken
my revenge on them. No sound of steps chased me, no one guffawed.
The fog and the pavement were peaceful. The mussel shell houses
smiled at me with their cloudy roofs.
I entered the classroom. It was very peaceful there, too. The
students looked at me in a peculiar way, their eyes quiet like
my evening cup of tea. As always, I started the lesson with
a new theorem, leaving a storm of chalk dust in my wake. Mikhail
smiled and that made me feel awkward. I felt ashamed of myself
and stopped turning back to look at them.
After the lessons were over, the swarthy guy waited for me near
the bridge, which led to fog. His two friends were not with
him.
