Igor Eliseev - One-Two

“You don’t have any chance to beat Sprinter because half the girls will join up with her,” Half-Jane shared her thoughts in a low voice. “Making friends with her is impossible too and, to be honest, pointless.”

“Where have they gone?” I asked her.

“They’re going to pour glue into buckets.”

“What’s that for?”

“It’s their revenge for the downtrodden honor; so sensitive have they become,” Half-Jane continued willingly. “An incident happened last week: cleaners brought their children to work with them so that the young brats could help them to wash the walls, and one of our guys caught their attention. They surrounded him in a semicircle and began mocking or, to be precise, gloating over the fact that they were born healthy and he was a cripple.”

She sniffed in contempt, moved her shoulders and proceeded with her reading.

“I think they didn’t care that he was a cripple,” I said. “They just grabbed the chance to bully someone.”

“Well, very naturally, children are always careless,” Half-Jane remarked sarcastically. “They just treat everyone like pee, especially cripples.”

People have no limits either in love or in hatred. But is it their fault? They despise us because they are afraid, for we remind them that getting crippled or sick might happen to anyone; or, perhaps, the true reason for their hatred lies much deeper inside, stemming from a hidden ugliness in their souls?

We got to our first class early. The number of school-desks in that huge classroom nearly tripled the number of students. At three o’clock sharp, a history teacher appeared who was said to be sick, but she didn’t look sick at all. She wrote today’s date, month and year in the top, right-hand corner of the blackboard, after which she dispassionately sat at her desk and started shouting out our last names to check attendance. After the check-up she seemed to calm down, glanced at us and asked icily:

“Does anyone notice what’s wrong?”

A deathly silence in the class. I thought she might be talking about us, meaning that we were something wrong , and in my mind I prepared to put up with further mockery. Meanwhile, the history teacher became extremely upset and finally declared:

“Today is the twelfth of September, and what date is on the blackboard?”

“The fourteenth of December,” reasoned Godly Girl.

“Then would you be so kind as to rise and write the date correctly?”

Godly Girl got up and, hobbling guiltily, dragged herself to correct the “mistake”. It was the first time we were in such a situation. For forty-five long minutes I was tormented by the question: If the first lesson begins with an intentional mistake, then how can we possibly believe anything we study in that history class?

During recreation between Russian language and mathematics classes, some bullyboy who looked like an overgrown child tripped us. I badly bruised my knee and we limped for the rest of the day, leaning to my side clumsily.

“Hope, I wonder if they understand that we obviously feel exactly the way they feel when healthy children make fun of them?”

“They don’t, Faith,” you answered. “In their eyes, we are not poor cripples deserving compassion, but just a two-headed freak they hate and fear.”

You have always seen people in their true colors, without any illusions, not hoping for anything. As for me, I still can’t manage to understand why even such a ridiculous animal as an ant-eater or a desman can get people’s sympathy and affection, but not us ? Perhaps they just haven’t got used to us yet?

I often wondered what it would be like – having your own body, going where you wanted, doing what you liked doing. How does it feel not being the hostage of somebody else, even if it is your closest and dearest relative? It was determined by nature that you make the first choice in all our decisions. Our minute difference in height sorted things out: intuitively I have always had to adjust to you and your desires. During our free time when we were supposed to go for a walk or play games, we had to decide where to go and what to do. When one of us was in a bad mood, felt drowsy or needed to weep, both of us were confined to bed. In the boarding school we were physically inactive and quite seldom able to socialize with our peers; here, our life was supposed to be pretty much the same. But when we started talking about the library, both of us got really excited. Our excitement and curiosity made us think it was the place where we might find answers to all our questions. What if someone had already faced a problem similar to ours and had already written a book about it? What if there was actually a great variety of people just like us scattered around the world and incapable of meeting each other and uniting? The library acquired a special significance for us, and without further ado we were off to it. We searched for relevant information for several hours, but, unfortunately, our search proved fruitless; however, we found a vast abundance of other interesting books. Is it worth mentioning how dramatically Half-Jane was mistaken? The library represented the true adornment of the foster-home. But most of all, I remembered the librarian, a slovenly-looking woman nearing forty with intense streaks of gray in her hair and a sharply pointed, long nose. I had no doubts at all that the foster kids would nickname her Pinocchia if they happened to visit the library just once in their lives.

She always recommended books by truly good and genuine writers, and poets.

“One guy happened to come here quite often previously; he was very fond of reading. So, he marked the places that he liked the most in books. It was about ten years ago, at the commencement of my work here. I was inexperienced and didn’t forbid him to scratch books with his nail, thinking: “All right, that’s no big deal, no one comes here”. Poor guy was feeling much worse than you: he couldn’t move, was shaking all over as if he was feverish, and his speech was inarticulate.”

“And where is he now?” we exclaimed in the same breath.

“He was transferred to a nursing home, where he soon passed away asleep at the age of nineteen as was discovered later. It may sound strange, but he had a good death,” she remarked thoughtfully. “Well, all right, enjoy your reading, but don’t damage anything.”

A good death at the age of nineteen, it sounds terrible! But perhaps, at some point in time, those who are living without a body want nothing more. And the more surprising it was to see his marks, those dead traces stretching throughout the library books like a web; and sometimes in the margin we found his illegible scribble – thoughtful judgments that survived their author? He used to read a lot, reflect on things, had a desire to live though he realized there was not much time left to him. At times I imagined him sitting at the nearest desk, concentrating, flipping the pages and, after finishing the book, joyfully dancing on the desk with his fingers – fingers only .

We wanted to stay in the library as long as possible, but closing time came, so we said goodbye to the librarian and left for supper.

Everybody was eating with evident pleasure, including the instigators of the lunchtime strike, and we gladly joined them. In the dining room Sprinter stayed clear of us and didn’t even look our way, but once we returned to the room, she immediately interfered in our life. She called us over with a rude gesture; Snot was fidgeting in the corner, on her bed.

“Adoter made tracks long ago; the oldster woman is idling around at the reception desk. Payback time has come. And don’t even try to hide under that sheet so that the devil only can sort out what you really are!”