Igor Yevtishenkov - School Stories in English and Russian

It was a remarkable day.

The sixth form guys were very excited with some PE exercises and could not calm down for a long time. When they did, he sighed and repeated his standard phrase «Good morning, Ladies and Gentlemen!..» In vain. «Ladies and Gentlemen!» he increased his own volume: «Good MO-OR-NING! Cut the noise and let’s begin our wonderful journey. Who is on duty today?»

One more lesson has begun. It was little different to his previous lessons but there seemed to be no sign of improvement either. «So, my friends, how’s things? Where have you been? What have you seen?», half of class began to shout loudly and he could not recognize a word. «Let’s begin’ with «oysters’, so to speak,» he smiled. «Ms. Loginov, how are you?»

«I’m fine. Thank you. And you?», a chubby girl answered quickly. She got her face made up and a thick layer of Mascara rested on her eyelids even though she was twelve.

«I’m fine too. Thanks. Tell us what your rest was like?», he wondered.

«Pardon?», she asked in Russian. He had to repeat the sentence more slowly, «Have you had any rest?»

«What Everest, Andrey Ivanovich?», the girl was completely confused. «I was at dacha. Are you joking? I’ve got no money for Everest!», she chuckled and he looked up expecting a loud laugh but nobody even smiled. «My God,» he thought, «how can I go on? And they are in the sixth form now…»

«Ms. Loginov, not «Everest’ but «any rest’. Got it?», he tried to explain her mistake with a sad smile. Only then some of her friends laughed a little. He shrugged.

Half of the lesson has passed by and Yuriy Ilyasov, a quiet and an industrious pupil with thick-lens glasses, was desperately fighting against the army of unknown words in his text book. He joined this class last year and had studied in another city until his parents moved to Moscow. Andrey Ivanovich patiently waited for him to make mistakes and then corrected him. He turned his eyes for a second but still kept listening to the pupil’s reading and translating. Suddenly a word grated on his ears. He turned around and asked him to repeat.

«Lord Baron,» Yuriy said blinking his eyes.

«What?», Andrey Ivanovich was surprised.

«Lord Baron!», Yuriy repeated in an injured voice. «Can’t you see, Andrey Ivanovich, it is written is the text. I’m reading it as it is!», he pointed out down to the page with his finger. Andrey Ivanovich began to laugh and the laugh turned into dry cough with tears on his eyes.

«Yuriy, my dear friend,» he whispered hoarsely, «it’s «Lord Byron’. Haven’t you ever heard of him?»

The boy shook his head. Andrey Ivanovich looked around the room. The guys and girls looked puzzled. He felt perplexed as well.

«Hey, little monsters, no ideas?!», he raised his brows and waited. No-one replied. He nodded and sighed. «OK, just for your information «Lord Baron’ as you said,» he pointed out to Yuriy, «or Lord Byron was the greatest English poet.» He shrugged in disbelief and asked the next boy to go on with the text. A quiet voice began to read the next sentence, and he sat listening to it. Ten minutes left before the bell rang but «that was not the half of the story’, though. The pupil read the sentence a bit disconnectedly and finally has begun to translate. He was slow but OK. The first half of the sentence took him two or three minutes and the second part was supposed to kill the rest of the lesson time. The boy mumbled to himself before speaking loudly… and finally said, «The Queen Charlatan was presented,» he sat thinking about something nobody but him could know about. Andrey Ivanovich opened his mouth thunderstruck with the translation and asked «What? What did you say?»

«Queen Charlatan was presented,» the boy was embarrassed but he could not understand his mistake «What’s wrong?», he asked in an offended voice again.

«Buddy, it’s written «Charlotte’. Can you pronounce in Russian «Sharlotta’? Hey, you, class, have you heard the name before?!», he looked at them. No one nodded.

«Andrey Ivanovich, is that different to say «Sharlotta’ or «Charlatan’?», the «offended boy’ wondered. «It sounds very similar.» He was quiet and sincere. There was no joking in his voice.

«Not that much indeed,» Andrey Ivanovich smiled. «Charlatan, shalopay, scapegrace, who cares? It’s similar to sharmanka and sharlatanka . Right?» The class burst into laughter. «OK, guys and girls, not much time left. Let’s sort out homework.» He could not stand it anymore. But he had to. Life was supposed to go on.

December saw the first meeting with parents at school and it wasn’t easy. Not for the parents but for him. He had been told the pupils’ parents mostly considered a school as a temporary shelter, a lodge for their children from 8.30 a.m. till 2.00 p.m. Pure and simple. He thought, however, that some may feel differently and have an understanding of what he did.

Initial greetings and smiles didn’t seem to matter much tonight, even though he felt that a first impression was the most important thing. He didn’t know what impression the pupil’s parents had, but his own wasn’t a good one. Tired, estranged faces with empty eyes, wooden stares and some unclear sounds like sighs or indistinct mumbles were in the air. And dark hopelessness from the thirty or so adults simply spoilt the atmosphere. They listened to him and nodded, mostly in silence. Some women tried to encourage him, smiled then sank back into their immovable detachment again. Andrey Ivanovich despaired, but went on describing the way their kids learnt English and every pupil’s virtues and shadows but nobody seemed to care even when it concerned their own child.

«We try to learn some more or less common things, for example, in geography. But they know little about these points in Russian, let alone in English,» he tried to explain why the kids were not so successful. «For example, Ms. Ivanova said we could go to London and Washington by train. Can you imagine that? Ms. Ivleva sincerely thinks Dali and Deli are two brothers from a blockbuster film. Great Britain and England are two different countries. One is in Europe and the second somewhere in the hell. UK and the US are OK, they think. You see, a lack of basic knowledge is scary and it’ll be difficult for them to get to the airport, let alone a foreign country.»

«Ha!» a woman’s voice interrupted him. «We’ll never get to the airport «cause our salary is only enough to get to the closest bakery!», apparently it was her mother. Some nodded with sympathy. Andrey Ivanovich was stunned. There was nothing more to add. How could he dare call their children brain-dead, beer-addled or an airhead? What a cheek! It wouldn’t be unfair on their parents though…

Next morning it was bright and fresh. 6.00 a.m. and the coffee machine has begun to spread it’s charming aroma around the room and even though he knew he’d be better off without caffeine, the delicious coffee smell made him feel good. He couldn’t refuse a cup of coffee that morning. He narrowed his eyelids, sipping the black liquid with pleasure and thinking of the pupils. The tenth form ones seemed to understand the Sequence of Tenses and Present Continuous Tense. The previous grammar rules weren’t as difficult to practice. However, «PCT» was more difficult to grasp and hard to compare with something similar in Russian. There was a short advertisement for bed-linen on the TV with a naive love-story plot. He took a pen and jotted down a few sentences: